Some about my Argentina trip.
Yes, the toilets do flush the other direction down there. Now that that's out of the way, feel free to read the rest and look at pictures of my sweaty-ass self. ;)
Anywhoo, Argentina is right here:
I was in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. It rests on the Atlantic coast and is located in the middle-ish of the country, near that small inlet and pretty close to Brazil. It is a 12-hour flight from Houston. We arrived last Monday and came back on Tuesday. The trip back was over 24 hours including layovers, delays and flight times.
It was summer in Argentina, with temperatures up to 100 on the first few days we were there. The last couple of days were rainy, with lower temperatures. I was there to attend Lucia's sister Rocio's wedding. She was marrying a dude named Nicolas. They both met in Argentina but have been living in the U.S. for years. They're now U.S. citizens and had their actual wedding ceremony in front of a justice of the peace back in Houston. They were having their official "wedding party" in Buenos Aires for their families and Argentine friends.
I didn't know much about the place before going, except that it was featured in Starship Troopers. I learned a bunch of stuff and now I'll share it with you, along with piiictures.
This here is Plaza De Mayo, which commemorates Argentina's independence from Spain on May 25 in 1810. This makes the country younger than the United States. Not pictured is a memorial for "The Disappeared," which is a series of bandannas painted onto the concrete in white. "The Disappeared" refers to the disappearance of roughly 30,000 people between 1976 and 1983. It's blamed on the dictatorship in power at the time. Lucia's mother and father lived through this period and rarely talk about it. The memorial was established by "The Mothers of the Disappeared," a group that holds routine protests demanding justice for the vanished.
The official offices of the country's president is the Casa Rosada, or the Pink House. Lots of buildings were named "Pink House" or "Yellow House" or "Big Yellow House."
Lucia had a bad habit of not telling me where we were sometimes. So, here we are in the crypt of the country's liberator, Jose de San Martin, with me looking bored off of my ass. Eventually she told me where we were and I became more interested. San Martin's grave is guarded by sentries during visiting hours.
Here we are at a soccer stadium for Boca Juniors, Lucia's favorite soccer team. Try and guess the team's colors. Boca Juniors is famous because it is the team Diego Maradona played on. Maradona is, according to Argentina, the best soccer player that's ever lived. The rest of the world thinks it's Brazilian player Pele.
If you didn't know any better, you'd assume the Boca Juniors team is the "Megatones." That's because Megatone sponsors the team and plasters their brand name in giant letters on the player's jerseys. I've never liked that about international soccer. I once saw a team that I swore were the "El Salvador Alka Seltzers."
This is an official Argentina national soccer team jersey, which ran about 100 pesos. The exchange rate was much more favorable for the U.S. dollar than it was in France or London. One dollar equaled about 3 pesos, which meant I got to buy lots of fancy shit. Unfortunately, prices in Argentina were inflated so I didn't save as much money as I could have.
Here we are at Caminito, which roughly translates to "cute little street." Some rich artist dude decided that he'd paint all of these buildings in different bright colors. The entire street is painted in this fashion. It's a big tourist trap. To see more pictures of it, click here, here, and here.
According to every Argentine I spoke to, Argentina is world-famous for the quality of it's beef and the superiority of its barbecue. I dunno if they're that much better than we are, but they did make some damn good barbecue. I had some delicious steak, the best sausage I've ever had and tried some sweat glands and cow's intestines. They were the small intestines and, I was told, were not washed out prior to being cooked. I dunno if I believe that or not. Here's a picture of me standing next to their traditional, hot-ass cooking fire. The guy next to me is wearing traditional dress for cooking next to a hot-ass fire.
This is the cemetery in the Recoleta neighborhood. It's filled with lots of fancy crypts and mausoleums, ranging in different artistic styles from art nouveau to falling apart to really god damned expensive. That last crypt cost more than $1 million and features a portrait of Jesus on the roof of that dome made from solid gold. This is a public cemetery, so if you've got the dough or you're important enough, you get to be buried there.
Some of these graves were pretty elaborate. Others were just plain weird. My favorite, I think, is the penis Jesus, which all of the locals referred to as the "scary Jesus." C'mon. That's a cock and balls.
Oh, and the cemetery plays host to a colony of feral cats.
More later.
Anywhoo, Argentina is right here:
I was in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. It rests on the Atlantic coast and is located in the middle-ish of the country, near that small inlet and pretty close to Brazil. It is a 12-hour flight from Houston. We arrived last Monday and came back on Tuesday. The trip back was over 24 hours including layovers, delays and flight times.
It was summer in Argentina, with temperatures up to 100 on the first few days we were there. The last couple of days were rainy, with lower temperatures. I was there to attend Lucia's sister Rocio's wedding. She was marrying a dude named Nicolas. They both met in Argentina but have been living in the U.S. for years. They're now U.S. citizens and had their actual wedding ceremony in front of a justice of the peace back in Houston. They were having their official "wedding party" in Buenos Aires for their families and Argentine friends.
I didn't know much about the place before going, except that it was featured in Starship Troopers. I learned a bunch of stuff and now I'll share it with you, along with piiictures.
This here is Plaza De Mayo, which commemorates Argentina's independence from Spain on May 25 in 1810. This makes the country younger than the United States. Not pictured is a memorial for "The Disappeared," which is a series of bandannas painted onto the concrete in white. "The Disappeared" refers to the disappearance of roughly 30,000 people between 1976 and 1983. It's blamed on the dictatorship in power at the time. Lucia's mother and father lived through this period and rarely talk about it. The memorial was established by "The Mothers of the Disappeared," a group that holds routine protests demanding justice for the vanished.
The official offices of the country's president is the Casa Rosada, or the Pink House. Lots of buildings were named "Pink House" or "Yellow House" or "Big Yellow House."
Lucia had a bad habit of not telling me where we were sometimes. So, here we are in the crypt of the country's liberator, Jose de San Martin, with me looking bored off of my ass. Eventually she told me where we were and I became more interested. San Martin's grave is guarded by sentries during visiting hours.
Here we are at a soccer stadium for Boca Juniors, Lucia's favorite soccer team. Try and guess the team's colors. Boca Juniors is famous because it is the team Diego Maradona played on. Maradona is, according to Argentina, the best soccer player that's ever lived. The rest of the world thinks it's Brazilian player Pele.
If you didn't know any better, you'd assume the Boca Juniors team is the "Megatones." That's because Megatone sponsors the team and plasters their brand name in giant letters on the player's jerseys. I've never liked that about international soccer. I once saw a team that I swore were the "El Salvador Alka Seltzers."
This is an official Argentina national soccer team jersey, which ran about 100 pesos. The exchange rate was much more favorable for the U.S. dollar than it was in France or London. One dollar equaled about 3 pesos, which meant I got to buy lots of fancy shit. Unfortunately, prices in Argentina were inflated so I didn't save as much money as I could have.
Here we are at Caminito, which roughly translates to "cute little street." Some rich artist dude decided that he'd paint all of these buildings in different bright colors. The entire street is painted in this fashion. It's a big tourist trap. To see more pictures of it, click here, here, and here.
According to every Argentine I spoke to, Argentina is world-famous for the quality of it's beef and the superiority of its barbecue. I dunno if they're that much better than we are, but they did make some damn good barbecue. I had some delicious steak, the best sausage I've ever had and tried some sweat glands and cow's intestines. They were the small intestines and, I was told, were not washed out prior to being cooked. I dunno if I believe that or not. Here's a picture of me standing next to their traditional, hot-ass cooking fire. The guy next to me is wearing traditional dress for cooking next to a hot-ass fire.
This is the cemetery in the Recoleta neighborhood. It's filled with lots of fancy crypts and mausoleums, ranging in different artistic styles from art nouveau to falling apart to really god damned expensive. That last crypt cost more than $1 million and features a portrait of Jesus on the roof of that dome made from solid gold. This is a public cemetery, so if you've got the dough or you're important enough, you get to be buried there.
Some of these graves were pretty elaborate. Others were just plain weird. My favorite, I think, is the penis Jesus, which all of the locals referred to as the "scary Jesus." C'mon. That's a cock and balls.
Oh, and the cemetery plays host to a colony of feral cats.
More later.