Wallabies, wine, and wonder!

Our first view of Buenos Aires primarily consisted of two five story 1800s era Mississippi River paddle boat casinos. We got off in the port and instead of having the bags come around on a conveyor belt like at the airport, porters came out wit the bags yelling, “Who´s is this?” to the 400 waiting people. We soon discovered the great hidden wonder of Buenos Aires—the prices. A taxi across the city of 14 million cost $4.50. We were quite excited, and after getting to the hostel and meeting up with Tomer and Ziv, we hit the streets for some Buenos Aires nightlife! The nicest taxi driver in the world picked us up, and took us to the center of the action. Dozens of bars lined the streets and plazas, and it took about half an hour just to get a seat somewhere. We had an amazing time spending very little money. We went back to the hostel and marveled at it´s beauty. It was everything our Montevideo hostel could have been and we truly enjoyed spending the other three nights of our visit there.
The next morning, we discovered that breakfast consisted of 2 croissants and dulce de leche. For those of you who don´t know, dulce de leche (incorrectly translated as “milk jam” down here, is similar to Nutella but much sweeter. Needless to say, we both felt gross afterwards and desperately purged our bodies with yogurt and liters upon liters of water. The 4 of us went walking through the city and ended up in a gigantic tourist market where Nicole and I met lots of middle-aged American couples on vacation! We figured it was because Buenos Aires is exactly like Europe, and it really is—impossible to tell a difference from Spain. We walked through the market and Nicole bought many beautiful glass pieces of jewelry before breaking only one earring that night. We bought a liter of what we thought was fresh squeezed orange juice but realized that it was from concentrate a little too late...Stacen was thirsty, and naively trusting the street vendor about the health of his purchase, drank the liter in 15 minutes. Meanwhile, we all went to the most famous cemetery in Buenos Aires, the kind where the coffins are just placed in little tombs. Looking in to see the decaying coffins was only slightly creepy. There was however, a family of stray cats that basked in the sun which made Stacen feel better—that is, until his frail body began to feel the effects of the cheap OJ. Needless to say, he almost fainted and thought he was going to die. He drank water and felt better, and to celebrate, we all went to the zoo!
The Buenos Aires zoo is incredible. Complete with fountains, pigeons, and animals without fences, it was nothing short of a free for all. Pigeons were stealing food from emus, muskrats were stealing food from Galapagos tourtoises, and Stacen and Tomer took extreme pleasure in going up to a cow and feeding it the grass from the expertly manicured grounds. However, the most incredible thing was the wallabies. Hundreds of them hopping around as 3 year olds attempted to catch them. They roamed around just like the pigeons! Not too bad for $7. We headed back home and after stumbling upon a family of stray cats complete with 6 snuggling kittens, made a pit stop in the super market for supplies. Vegetables were 50 cents per pound, and we indulged in spending 8 dollars on 3 bottles of Mendoza wine! We spent an amazing night in the hostel.
The following morning we ate our OWN food for breakfast and were much happier for it. We walked through some beautiful plazas with some of those awesome huge trees, and ended up on Avenida Florida, the central shopping district of the city, no cars allowed. The street vendors spotted Stacen the American instantaneously, and attempted to sell him anything from carriage rides to tango classes. We walked for hours, stopping for a romantic lunch in a café where we spent a grand total of $15. We continued on, walked past the presidential palace, ironically called “The Pink House”, and shopped street vendors the rest of the day. We returned to the hostel to prepare for dinner—at the Hard Rock Café! Drastically over-priced, Nicole received a cold soy burger and says that it wasn´t worth it. Stacen, however, said that it was part of the traveling experience, but she is correct and we will never do it again. We went back to the hostel and hung out all night.
The next day, Nicole and I went to an internet café to do boring grad school, application stuff, when we made a discovery…Nicole has been accepted to the Yale School of Public Health! In pure happiness, Nicole practically was floating through the streets as we made our way to the waterfront, which took a lot longer than expected. After a 2 hour lunch we just turned around and walked back. That night after dinner, we taught Tomer and Ziv how to play Nicole´s favorite card game—continental. That consumed the rest of the night before we had to wake up the next morning and catch our taxi for the airport…After some mix-up as to where exactly the plane was leaving from, we boarded our small little plane and 5 hours later were in Ushuaia………