The flight length was not too bad at all. Both of us managed to watch a couple of movies and get a few hours of shut eye.
Arrived at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires, paid our $75 US per person (Argentina's idea of a visa) got a stamp on our passport and whizzed through customs. After fretting about how to fill out our forms, as they seem to want to know about everything you're bringing in, they didn't even look at our declarations. "Put them there," said the customs man in English, indicating a large messy pile of forms. Apparently he had his hands full with a suitcase of incriminating underwear.
We arranged through our only Buenos Aires contact and family friend, Julie-Anne, for a taxi driver, Nico, to pick us up and drive us into the city. Nico indeed meets us, armed with a name sign (We've always wanted one of those!) Tall, good natured and with a beard, he shunts us along to his car, speaking in a mixture of English and Spanish. We try to converse with him the best we can in Spanish and he corrects us as we fumble all over it.
It's 30K into the city centre, about 30 minutes. Our rented apartment is located in San Telmo, a barrio that Julie has told is representative of the old Buenos Aires. We arrive at the apartment front door a little before our scheduled meeting time, just as the owner of the apartment is arriving to "get things sorted" for us. I'm assuming this is what she is doing — her English is about as bad as our Spanish. While we sit on the sofa, smile idiotically and wait for the rental company agent to show up, she runs about, throwing open windows, making up the bed, lighting the pilot light for the hot water (or so we think). We offer to help, but by the way she looks at us, I think our poor Spanish actually conferred something like, "Can we get in the bed with you?"
Eventually the agent shows up. He speaks English — hooray! We go over things in the apartment — how to work the windows, the locks, the safe, the heaters, the AC. Sign some papers, hand over the cash (it's all cash here, no one wants to deal with credit cards). He marks out on the provided map the laundromat, the supermarcado, some good areas for shopping and some areas not to visit at night and some not to visit at all — ever.
"But these areas, you are fine," he says, pointing with his pen. "Just not there. Or there. Oh, and there..."
Okay then. Good to know.
And so in a flourish, they are gone, leaving us to our place. It's quite spacious for the two of us with a small but renovated kitchen and bathroom. Even has a bidet which we've yet to test out. There's TV, free WiFi, a little courtyard that looks into all our neighbours windows so we can reenact Rear Window.
We're wiped by this point. It's 5:00 in the morning for us and we know we need to stay awake until it at least gets dark so we'll hopefully sleep through the night. And we need food. We take a trip to the Supermarcado down the street (not the one they recommend, but we figure that out later) and do some very fatigued translation as we figure out what food to get (what food it even is?) Apparently, Argentinians like their sugar. Azucar (sugar) appears in just about every food item. And what's the deal with no peanut butter? Dulce de leche, sure. Creamy, sugary spreadable milk product on your toast every morning? Well, maybe we'll try it once...
We manage to get enough to get started — some vegetables and fruits. Cereal and milk. Bread. Pasta. Oh, and of course wine and beer. One thing we notice is that things are significantly cheaper than New Zealand and Australia. Wine for 20 pesos, which is about $5 Can. A bottle of beer for $1 Can. Our groceries came to about $50 in total, including the wine and beer.
We stop at a bakery and pick up empanadas and a veggie quiche like thing and then back to the apartment for hot showers and bed.
Except there's no hot water... apparently we need a fontanero!
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