The VanNess Vagabonds

We have been in Buenos Aires for about a week now, it seems like it has been much longer. All of the snow issues seem so long ago. I guess being immersed in a hot party city full of happy Argentineans stretches time. Since we arrived (like always) we have been pretty busy, excluding the first couple of days we were here when we just slept and drank gargantuan Stella Artois beers.

We landed in Argentina at 4am, took a cab to, what we thought was, the artsy neighborhood Palermo. Once the cabbie sped away from the side street where he dumped (in Centro) us we quickly realized that this was not an artsy neighborhood or where we asked him to take us. Imagine asking to be taken to the Village in NYC and being dropped off in the Financial District- mostly suits, overpriced restaurants, and huge business buildings. It was an interesting feeling- a little culture shock, some exhaustion, confusion, add a dash of disappointment (expecting to see cute boutiques, galleries, small cobblestone streets) throw in a bit of chaos from realizing that everything is shut down with bars over the doors and huge overwhelming avenues. A feeling that is great-freedom to do whatever you want and scary-where the hell are we?

Not knowing where we were going to stay or where Palermo was, we went to the only open place in- sight– a small little restaurant with 3 Australian guys drinking beer (at this point about 5am). As we drank a coffee, we asked where we could find the Internet, they replied “don’t know, we haven’t used it since we arrived’. Their response bewildered me, many thoughts of why they hadn’t used the Internet rushed through my head- it’s lame to sit on the Internet when you are trying to party? It is silly to use the Internet, because you lose a little bit of that ‘free from everything’ feeling? We have been so drunk since we got here we can’t read the computer screen? We have only been here for an hour? Finally, I stopped myself and realized okay, we still need to get to the Internet and, at the very least, figure out where we are. Are we even in Buenos Aires? I think so. What neighborhood are we in? I don’t know, let’s ask. DJFJLSLI:JID:VDnknvdlksjlisg- what our first totally Spanish, very quick, Italian accented, form of Argentinean directions sounded like. . . .(in Latin America double l’s are pronounced “ya” where as here it is “sh”- very confusing for people who don’t speak Spanish well and what they did know now is meaningless because of an accent). Okay let’s just google our location. We end up finding an Internet café, finding where we were, and looking for a place to stay.

We find a hostel in Palermo (had to take another taxi to get there) meant for (what seemed like) gaggles of under 21 Americans with a handful of Brazilians. The guy checking us in offers us some mate, an Argentinean tea. Mark graciously tries to drink it from the side of the gourd like container, even though there is a beautiful straw sticking out, almost screaming- “you are supposed to use me”. The guy laughs and stops Marks, “no, drink from the straw”. As Mark takes a sip the guy starts telling us how tired he is because he was up screwing all night, WAH, Mark quickly gives him back the tea- “no, I am good, I don’t want anymore” as we chuckle at how ridiculous it was. We can’t go to our room for another couple of hours, so we venture around, have breakfast and return.

We are given our key, after some serious up-selling on the part of the front desk to buy a “world card” for their hostel chain. We cave and buy one without even seeing our room, lesson learned. Go to our room, the hostel is laid out really cool with a bar in the lobby, then a bunch of separate houses connected by various stairways, really cool, really confusing. We open the door and YES 6 foot ceilings, not a problem for Mark, but my head barely misses the ceiling, one plug in the room for the fan (nice because there was no ac and our room happened to be in the middle of all the houses, so no motion of air via a window) the bathroom was okay (no light in the shower, so kinda hard to shave). Okay, lets check for bedbugs “UGGHHH” are you serious- the bed looked like many a drunk kids had many, many, many fun nights on it as well as some not so fun nights. Either way it was so dirty we wouldn’t even be able to see bed bugs if it was infested with them. Yippie for silk sleep sheet pod thingies. Thanks Dad & Carolyn, we used them the first 3 nights of our trip, probably will use them a lot more.

We checked our emails got the hell outta there, no use in hanging out in this nasty room when we can sit on the roof. We get some (didn’t know at the time) highly overpriced beer and head alto. We sat on the roof, met some Americans, got drunk and went to sleep. Repeat the next day excluding the whole finding a place to stay thing and add in some breakfast and another American (a super awesome guy from NYC studying abroad here for 6 months). We end up at this great show, La Bomba, packed full of people in an outdoor bar, with the longest lines for beers and bathrooms I have ever seen. It made since though-the beers were huge and people’s bladders just aren’t built that way. The show was cool, rhythmic drummers, happy excited people, and an all around good time. One striking thing-people were knocking into one another spilling beer all over each other and no one cared! In the US that would be means for some serious brawls and if not at least the person would be expected to buy the victim another gigantic beer. But the people at the show would just smile, apologize and bounce away happily. We returned to the hostel, drank some more, hung with some Americans, and went to bed.

The next day we decided it was time to get out of this place, our room was a little too dirty, too much English, too expensive, and too far from where Mark was going to start work the next day, Well Done Tattoo. We walked to the shop from the hostel and realized it took us about 1.5 hr- not so nice to walk 2 times a day for 2 weeks. So, we searched out another hostel and ended up finding a place much more clean, quieter, less English, and closer to Well Done.

During our last night at the original hostel we met a super nice Australian couple- (ended up playing drunken Uno with them), an American couple, the guy from NYC, and a random German guy. The girl had traveled to 23 countries before age 21! Crazy, amazing, incredible, and inspiring. Her stories made me remember what makes traveling so amazing, the experiences you get to have and the stories you have to share. She has worked Octoberfest, with Monkeys and ocelots in Bolivia, toured the US in a van with friends. . . Mark ended up tattooing her and her boyfriend (who just finished a 20 something day stint riding boats down the Amazon together). Oh by the way she is 22 now!

We moved over to our new hostel the next morning with an awesome room- normally for 4 people- a loft, clean, on the top floor, ac, full wifi bars sitting in the room, large bath, a balcony across the hall to smoke on, on the other side of the building from the garden area where everyone drinks and hangs late, clean beds, extra sheets and pillows from the other beds. We loved it and have been in this hostel for a few days. We extended our stay for the next week a few of nights ago and were super stoked to have a great affordable place to stay. The next day as we were enjoying our morning coffee, pleased with ourselves for finding such a great place, and a guy approached us and told us we have to move rooms. Uh, okaaaay . . .where is the room? Is it the same price? Air-conditioned? Bathroom? He says everything is the same, but we have to leave our bags until the new room is clean.

I leave for the next few hours, walk with Mark to work, down to the Malba (Modern Art Museum) and a couple other parks/monuments, then return to the hostel. I am given a key to a room on the 2nd floor (we were on the third) open the door and WOW this room is a lot small, uh and so is the bathroom, and uh the toilet seat hard yellow tinted cardboard coming out of it- uh the pillows are non-existent except for a few lumps of old matted cotton. Well, at least now I am closer to the wifi and should get a better signal- Nope. No signal at all. Okay, well at maybe it will be quiet because it is not on the street side- no, your head is next to the wall shared by the elevator shaft and the window is directly above the employees nightly hang-out (until 3-4 am)- the back patio. Remember those nice clean white sheets, no mas, you get sheets so old you can see through them, saggy new beds and a single pillow case. Really- the same? You mean we will have to pay you the same and you are going to seriously downgrade our room. We decide to talk with them about moving rooms, paying less, or us leaving the next morning. We mentioned it to the guy working and he said he would figure something out for us 2 days ago! F-it, I guess we will just take the losses because it is too late to move to another hostel (all are booked).