2016 South America Trip – Argentina

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Paul and Will on the ferry from Colonia, Uruguay to Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Here are a few more pictures and anecdotes from the Argentina leg of our recent trip to South America. If you’re looking for good pictures, though, then you should check out Paul’s pictures from the trip. He also went to many more places than we did, and he is a much better photographer. So check out his Flickr albums here. Then when you’re done, you can come back to see my Argentina pictures. Although I should really say the “Buenos Aires” leg of that trip, since that’s the only part of Argentina that we were able to see this time.

The main reason we only saw Buenos Aires, besides the fact that we only had about 5 days in the country/city, was that we had already been there before in 2011, and during that trip we crossed off a lot of things that we wanted to see and do. And this time we had a 22-month old kid and he was also sick. As we were quickly discovering, that’s often not the recipe for a light-hearted jaunt through a huge, crowded city.

My brother Paul hadn’t been to Argentina yet, though, so I think he was able to take in a lot more and hopefully enjoy it some. A lot of the time, he often went off on his own to see cool places around the city and escape from us, and that was a great idea.

The three of us stayed pretty close to the hotel, mostly within walking distance. Like in Colonia, Uruguay, the cobblestone streets and sidewalks were pretty crappy for walking with a baby stroller, and there were also many more people in Buenos Aires than tiny Colonia, of course. The other drawback to this part of the trip was that the hotel was a bit small and didn’t really have anything for children to do. Don’t get me wrong–it was a really nice, classy hotel, but it was an urban hotel that catered to young businesspeople, so it might not have been the best choice for us. But at least the included breakfast was delicious.

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Will in the courtyard of our hotel, basically doing laps for about an hour. I guess at least that’s one way to use up some energy.

Still, there were some nice times in Buenos Aires. We did get out and walk some, and we also got to visit our friends Andres, Julia, Juan, and Nacho one night, which was another highlight since it had been several years since we’d seen them.

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A group photo of all of us during a nice evening with friends.

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Will with Uncle Paul, who was very patient and willing to play with him.

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Will and his newly-minted “Tio Nacho.”

I didn’t take many pictures during this part of the trip, though. That was mainly because I didn’t see too many new, amazing things, and also because I was hot and tired and sick. Plus, ever since I’ve had a kid, I’ve not had nearly as much time to dedicate to improving my photography as I’d like. Although that’s still a pretty good trade-off, since the kid is good. Still, I apologize for not having any mind-blowing pictures.

And the food was delicious, as usual.

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A delicious “Milanesa Suiza Suprema,” a breaded chicken cutlet with cream sauce and melted cheese, served with potatoes. The food was amazing. This particular lunch was at El Desnivel in San Telmo.

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We “jokingly” said that this was the best meal because Will slept the whole time. But I put “jokingly” in quotes because we weren’t actually joking.

But on the whole, we decided that for future reference, going on vacation in the middle of a large city with a very young kid is probably not a very wise move. They just need more space and things to do. If you have kids and you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking, “No shit, Sitzman!” But this is our first kid and our first trip like this, so we were still behind on the learning curve.

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This was at our hotel near the airport, which happened to have a kids’ play area. I realized that this poor little guy must not have been on a playground before this one! They just don’t really exist in Costa Rica, and when we’ve gone to Colorado he’s been too small or it’s been too cold. So he was overjoyed to just play with the bubbles.

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Finally, a nice, genuine smile, instead of a whiny face.

Anyhow, after a pretty tiring 5 days, we headed to our airport hotel for a ridiculously early flight to Peru, where we’d stay for 12 hours before heading to Rio de Janeiro. A 12-hour layover was one of the not-so-cool parts about the tickets being free, but in the end the layover wasn’t that bad at all, since we had lounge access in Lima and the lounge there was excellent.

Nevertheless, we were still concerned about Will’s cough and head cold, and we were basically wiped out, so we even decided that when we got to Lima, we’d check into options to return directly to Costa Rica, instead of continuing on to Rio. All the flights we saw were over $2,000 one-way in economy, so that quickly put an end to that idea, and we decided to just follow through on the original plan and go to Rio. We were very happily surprised to discover that that turned out to be a great choice. But that’s a story for another post. The next post, in fact.

Thanks for reading, and check back in a few days for the post about Rio.

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Sitzman

Errand-Running Monkey at Sitzblog
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