Don’t Trust Photos

This past week wasn’t a whole lot of fun. Where I stayed last week wasn’t in the nicest neighbourhood and a ways out so I booked a place closer to the center of the city. It was another overpriced apartment on AirBnb but was closer to Palermo and all the action. I was getting tired of the long commutes into city to see things and meet up with people.

This new apartment wasn’t as nice as it looked in the pictures. The girl who I rented the room off was a photographer and let’s just say she did some things to make the place look bigger, brighter and newer than it actually was. It was marketing at it’s finest and similar to how fast food restaurants present their food.

But I only have myself to blame. I waited too long to book my next apartment so not much was available. The apartment owner did give me the option to look at the place before which I didn’t do. A couple of positives were that it was quiet and had a nice desk for me to work on as I got slammed with work. I’ve been able to get a lot more work done here as I have less of a social life down here so that’s great for business!

A Hermit Explores

In the end I wasn’t really able to enjoy much of the city but that is why I gave myself two months down here. With that much time I could work when I needed to and not feel rushed in having to see everything BA has to offer. However I was able to visit a few places.

First up was the Jardin Botanico Gardens in the center of the city late one evening. Talk about a wonderful place to unwind and get away from the busy city. I setup shop on a bench and chilled out as the sun started to make it’s decent which was really nice. This is a place I will visit a few more times to do the exact same thing.

The next day I went to exchange some US money for the cheaper blue dollar. I’ll write a post about the blue dollar later on. Anyways, it was pretty close to the north west of the city and was far away from where I was staying. On the way there I visited the El Ateneo bookstore which looks more like an opera house.

After exchanging my money I decided to walk through the northern part of the city along a wider main street to see what was up there. I stumbled across the Floralis Generica. Kind of cool to see but not all that exciting. Surprisingly no one was in the vicinity of the giant flower. For sure I thought I would see more tourists like me. Not the case.

As I kept on walking I came the beautiful Recoleta neighborhood. It’s more upscale than Palermo and seems where a lot of the old money is located. Recoleta has some really cool french architecture and of course nice trees!

Down the road a few more Km’s was another nice park with beautiful trees to shield me from the sun. Walking around on pavement really takes its toll so a rest was needed and this area was very chill. After this I headed home and proceeded to drink cheap vino and work my ass off!

The last area I got to explore this week was the cool and quaint neighborhood of Belgrano. This is where Pablo, Gustavo’s friend who I’ve connect with, lives. This is a really cool area that is very quit and feels like you are so far out of the city. There are more homes and tree lined streets in Belgrano and seems like a great place to raise a family. I could see myself living in a neighborhood like Belgrano.

I did mention that I didn’t get to see much of the city. What I did see I enjoyed and will no doubt be spending more time in the places I saw this past week

No Clubs For Old Man Jordo

Friday and Saturday night were supposed to be nights I was going to see a couple of DJ’s spin. Both DJ’s sets started at 2 AM and went until 5 AM. Of course I was super pumped to experience the music that I love live on a huge sound system. It’s probably been 7 years since I’ve seen seen a DJ play and that was Nick Warren in Vancouver back in 2008.

Old man Jordo go too tired though. Both nights I was dead at 12:30 AM and the thought of trying to stay up until 5 AM was too daunting. So I crawled into bed early both nights.

There are plenty of other great DJ’s coming into town so I’m not sad.

Where To Go Next?

I also spent most of the week trying to figure out where I should go. Last week I mentioned I was going to head to Bariloche which looks beautiful and a mix between a British Columbia’s coast and Switzerland’s mountain range. But the more and more I looked into, the less it appealed to me for a few reasons.

First of all, getting down there isn’t easy. It’s either a 3 hour plane road which is very expensive for non Argentinian’s or it’s a 22 hour cheap bus ride. The 10 hour flight from Dallas was enough and despite how comfortable I hear the bus seats are, I’m not going to get a lot of sleep no matter how many melotonins I pop. That means I’m left to fill the time with reading or staring out the window and getting lost in my thoughts. Doesn’t appeal to me right now.

Another reason was the cost of the accommodations. In retrospect $55 CAD taxes in is pretty cheap but I’d need to make this long journey worthwhile and it seemed like staying under a week wouldn’t be worth it. So at $385 for a week, that’s just a bit outside my range to head down to Bariloche. I’ve already spent $450 for two weeks on accommodations here in BA and don’t want to be spending too much cash while I am away. I’m going to keep my eyes peeled for better rates over the next month as it still seems like the high season.

I looked into other areas I could go. I feel the need to get away from the big city of BA and relax in a quiet town for a week or two and just chill out. The beaches look really shitty here in Argentina but there are a couple of nice beach areas in Brazil. They’re too costly to get to and accommodation isn’t cheap. Plus I’d need to spend $200 on a Brazil Visa. Doesn’t seem worth it.

What has been interesting in my countless hours of researching where I want to go, I’ve stumbled across some great blogs of people who have travelled across South America. It’s fun reading about others adventures and what they thought about certain cities. However, it’s best to visit those cities yourself and get to get persuaded by the opinion of someone you don’t know.

Some of you know I am in Buenos Aires right now. I’ve been here for almost a week and I wanted to do a little summary of my thoughts so far. I promise you photos but you have to read or scroll to the very bottom! Do as you please, I won’t judge.

Buenos Aires

I’ve wanted to come here for sometime now. There are many reasons but the top three are weather, food and music. Funny enough, one of my favorite tracks is titled Buenos Aires.

Now that I am landed and settled in, here are some thoughts.

BIG BIG BIG

Do you remember those Lotto649 commercials? The one I am thinking of is similar to this but not as old.

The thing that strikes me right away is that this is a big city! If you know me, I hate big cities and lots of people. Not really knowing the scale of this city, I booked a cheaper AirBnB apartment outside of the downtown area for the first week to get situated. This would give me some time to choose the proper neighbourhood I wanted to stay in for the rest of my time in BA.

I thought it was within walking distance to most neighbourhoods. Boy was I wrong! Luckly the placed I booked is close to the Subte. The subway is hella cheap, about $.75 per ride and has 4 different lines with good connections. So getting anywhere in the city is easy and cheap.

One interesting thing that I’ve seen on the Subway is people who are trying to sell you stuff. They have a box of items like pens, notepads, used playing cards and gum. They will walk by everyone on the subway and drop whatever item their selling in your lap. If you want it, you get your cash out and pay the person before the next stop. I’m surprised the items are sold as much as they are. Surely there has to be better items you can sale on the subway? “What about some aqua because it’s a muggy 32 degrees down here” my inner self is saying. Anyways, it’s interesting and wonder if other cities have this happen on their subways.

Food

I love food. I love all types of food including beef and pasta. Well, Argentina has plenty of that and I have had only a couple meals out at nice restaurants. The first place was Las Cabres in Palermo. This was the first night I got here. I met up with a friend of my squash pro Gustavo, Pablo who has been great so far.

Las Cabras had a great patio that was quiet when we walked by around 8:00 PM to grab a drink somewhere close by. We choose Negroni right across the street for a couple of happy hours drinks. Yeah, happy hour starts at 8 PM and goes to 10 PM.

Las Carbes started to fill up really fast after we sat down at Negroni. By the time we walked over to see about getting a table at 10, I didn’t think we’d get one. But we found a spot on the patio right away. It was a great spot as the patio had a large tree and dim lighting. I love sitting outside late at night when it’s warm out.

The meal was pretty good. We had a couple of Enpanada’s to start. I will eat many Enpanada’s on this trip. We then had some Chorizo which was ok but surprisingly more sweet than spicy. Another type of sausage we had I think was Morcilla. The inside was very soft and reminded me of stuffing in a way. The meal was topped off with ribs which were pretty average actually. They were not drenched in sauce and instead they gave us a side of some home made sauce which was pretty bland too.

The other night Pablo and myself went out was to a place on Baez Street called El Estanciero in Belgrano which is a neighbourhood just north of Palermo. Like Palmero though, this area has some great restaurants and the same vibe. El Estanciero was a mix of Italian and carnes or beef. We had some gnocchi and veal Milanese. The veal Milanese was topped with ham, mozza cheese and some tomato sauce. It reminded me a lot of Chicken Parmesan and was really good.

The grocery stores are pretty weak though. Especially when it comes to their produce. Everything seems to have been sitting on the shelf for a week two long. Also, they don’t store eggs in refrigerators at any grocery store.

Mom warned me about their food preparation and how it was much different. She bought some Dukaral and I was reluctant to take but I did. Her persistence and motherly care was smart as I am needing it! Without getting graphic, my stomach is not happy with the food down here dispute that it tastes good.

Spanish

A few friends have been down here and didn’t mention much about needing to speak a lot of Spanish. Er,in and Sulley leant me their Rosetta Stone Spanish version. It’s been slow going and I am doing my best picking up what I can from everyone I talk to down here who knows english.

Regardless there is less english spoken here. I don’t know why I expected to hear locals speak in English. I was also expecting to be able to go into a restaurant or grocery store and try to communicate in English. But that hasn’t been the case.

This is holding me back a bit from heading South to Bariloche which looks a lot like Swiss town. I don’t want to go to an area which was little English spoken and try to survive for a week by using sign language!

But I have done it before with Sulley on our Europe travels and on my own when I cruised around Portugal for a few days after a golf trip in 2008.

So I think I will head down there in a week to escape the warm weather and large city BA has offered up.

Progressive House

One of my main reasons for coming here was because of the music. I’m a big deep and progressive house fan. Buenos Aires and Argentina is home to many producers and DJ’s I love. Also, many of my favortite international DJ’s play here frequently. I’m sad to see local Hernan Cattaneo, Guy J from Isreal, Henry Saiz from Spain and Eelke Kleijn from Holland are not going to be here when I am. They are the DJ’s I wanted to see most.

But there is still some other DJ’s I listen to playing here. This Friday Cid INC from Finland is here and John Digweed from the UK is playing Saturday with an opening set from local Martin Garcia.

I’m going to check those shows out then make the trek down to Bariloche next Tuesday.

Work

Since I have been here I have done a fair bit of work for my clients. Partly because I haven’t been one to really venture out of this neighbourhood that I have been in. It’s not the nicest nor is there much too do. But it’s also to prove that I can work while resisting the temptation to treat this like a holiday and to relax or go exploring BA.

I’ve been able to actually to grow the business too. As of this writing I have three verbal agreements for new clients! Closing business abroad is pretty damn cool and something I wasn’t expecting.

I remember reading the chapter from the Four Hour Work Week in which Tim Ferriss talks about his first work vacation and how nervous he was. In the end things all worked out. Seems like that way for me and when you have the ability to connect to the internet, you can work from anywhere and communicate with anyone.

Although I may have a few extra minutes of my travel plan from. But it’s the cost of doing business and I will gladly pay Bell Mobility more money because we all know they need it!

Tom Doak & The Jockey Club

Originally I was going to bring my golf clubs and try to play. South America and Argentina are not hot beds for golf and there were only a few courses I wanted to play. In my research I contacted a golf architect Randy Thompson from Chile who suggested some places and has been a great help for me outside of golf courses.

Anyways, I asked him if we could connect if I made it to Santiago. He told me he was going to be doing a two week South American tour with one of my favorite architects Tom Doak. I’ve played three Doak courses and loved them all.

In conversations with Randy, he invited me to visit The Jockey Club with Tom and himself. The Jockey Club was designed in the 1930’s by Alistair Mackezine, the godfather or golf course architect and the man behind Augusta National and Royal Melbourne. I have looked at the Golf Club Atlas course profile of Jockey Club probably 50 times.

Obviously I jumped at the chance to go on this tour of a great course with Tom Doak! Randy wasn’t going to tell Tom though which could and was a bit awkward!

I showed up at the holiday yesterday morning at 8:00 AM and were were going to get breakfast and go from there. I figured this would be where I’d be introduced to Tom and Randy would tell him I am tagging along. When I got to their hotel lobby, Randy was there by himself and we chatted for a bit. Then we went up for breakfast. Tom had left to his room though. So we ate breakfast and when finished Randy went up to his room to grab some things. I went down to the lobby and saw Tom at the front desk.

So I sit down and so does Tom a few minutes later. I pull out of my phone and look busy. Since Randy hadn’t told him yet, I felt odd thinking about introducing myself and saw I am tagging along. We both sat there for a few minutes.

Finally Randy comes down but he doesn’t introduce me to Tom! And he didn’t until we were leaving out the door.

We shake hands and I say to Tom “Nice meeting, you don’t mind if I tag along?”. He says it’s fine and we’re off. I didn’t interact much with him as I didn’t want to come off as a fan boy and ask a bunch of questions. I interacted with the others who were on the tour though which was great to share some insights and love for classic golf architecture.

It was all a little awkward with Tom in the morning but in the end the tour was a great and I really hope to play the course as it looks like a lot of fun. Fairly wide open off the tee, a lot of long par 3’s and 4’s with some killer green complexes.

Photo Time

One thing you might not know about me is that photos don’t really mean much to me. I have never been one to take many photos on vacations. Even when I do I rarely look back at them. I always remember my trips and the many amazing sights I saw as they have been ingrained in my memory forever. Pictures just don’t do being their physically any justice.

With that said, he’s a small batch of BA.