Buenos Aires

We're about a week into our almost-two-week stay in Buenos Aires, and we've had a pretty awesome time here so far. We hadn't thought much about B.A. before getting here, but it is an excellent city. It's got great weather (maybe a little on the warm and humid side, but I realize that's not something I can complain about to a mostly Canadian readership in late January), delicious food, interesting history, cool architecture, and the relatively uncorrupted rule of law. Alright, that last one should kind of be expected, but after our time in Dar es Salaam, it is a welcome change. We don't feel like we're constantly 30 seconds from being mugged here. It's nice.

The first place we went when we got here was the Hostel Estoril, our home for the first few days here. We booked it online based on nothing more than its score on Hostelworld, but man, was it a good decision. It definitely ranks in the top 3 best hostels of the trip.

Why? First off, the free breakfast includes fresh squeezed orange juice. Amazing! I love fresh squeezed orange juice, but I usually have a hard time justifying the purchase of the 17 oranges it takes to make a full glass of juice. Here, they're free! Secondly, our room is in a cupola/dome/thing on the roof of a 7-storey building, which itself means two things. First: I get to say things like "home sweet dome". Second: awesome views.



On Monday, we went to go check out this giant drum show thing called "La Bomba de Tiempe" which translates to time bomb, or the more literal (and way cooler sounding) "The Bomb of Time". It's a huge weekly show that draws thousands of people to a big open air concert put on by a group of about 15 insanely talented percussionists. Kind of like a huge club dance party, with drummers instead of DJs. If you're familiar with Montreal, it's kind of like the Tam Tam if the drum circle was on stage, and if you replaced the hippies with hyper-disciplined professionals. The whole show is improvised every week and all the communication in the band is accomplished via the conductor. He's the band leader, and he's devised this whole mind-bogglingly intricate system of gestures and hand signals to tell which sections of the band what beats to play, and when. They played for two hours without a single off-tempo note. It was crazy! Also, this picture is kind of dark, but there was one guy standing on his friends' shoulders and flapping his arms like a bird for like a third of the show. It was awesome.


Here's Mal with Rich and Garett, two of the very cool people we met at the hostel. They are enjoying some of La Bomba's comically oversized beers. I think Mal's about to topple over.


One of the other big highlights of our time here in B.A. so far was a meal we had at a restaurant called La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar. The chef, Alejandro Digilio, trained under Ferran Adria, who's a big celebrity in the (admittedly, very very small) world of people who enjoy both fine dining and crazy food science. Being both foodies and big science geeks, we struck out for La Vineria in the hopes of eating some weird, delicious dishes. We wound up getting a 9 course tasting menu that left us so full we were barely able to move, all for about the price of an entree at a medium-to-upscale restaurant in Kingston or Toronto. Pretty sweet. On top of that, just about everything we had was crazy delicious. As for the scientific weirdness of the food, here's a three word summary: "liquid french fries". Here's a picture we took of our appetizer plate.


That's all we have time for today, we're off to go take some spanish lessons. Mallory es un estudiante muy buena.