Day 1. Buenos Aires, Argentina

We flew in to the Buenos Aires airport from Miami which was almost a 9 hour flight that sent us south east and moved us back two time zones. Curt and Paula were on the same plane and will be traveling with Mike and Cathy and us for the next two weeks. We landed at 9:35pm and spent the next hour or so going thru immigration and customs. The four of us found a driver at the airport who would provide us with our first adventure. He represented he had a mini-van. What he had was actually a micro-van. We loaded our luggage, to the extent we could into the van and had the balance on our laps. As we left the curb at the airport the back right tire started to scrape against the wheel well. The faster we went the louder the noise became. We stopped after the first half mile to check the tire along side the highway to check it out. Seeing nothing we could do we proceeded for about another two miles before the driver pulled over again. This time he re distributed luggage to try to take the load off of the right rear tire. This amounted to moving heavy luggage to the left and taking some of the smaller bags and piling them on our laps. Unfortunately, this did not solve the problem and the rubbing continued unabated as our driver proceeded to weave in and out of traffic at 80 mph for the next 25 minutes. Apparently, he did not want to be detected by the police so he drove with the headlights off while on the highway. I kept waiting to have the tire explode from the friction but fortunately it never did. Arriving at our hotel about 11:30. We were up this morning for a city tour of Buenos Aires. Curt, Paula, Chris and I met our guide and driver and set off to see the sights. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city as long as you know where to go. We saw some of the high end residential areas; a cemetery composed of mausoleums (including the one holding the remains of Eva Peron) the presidential offices, a 150 year old cafe (Cafe Tortoni) and local restaurant area that caters to the interest in the Tango. We were then dropped off near our hotel where we had a marvelous lunch and then walked back to our hotel. Our lunch allowed us to sample some of the world famous Argentinian beef that lived up to its deserved reputation. Tonight we are going to a Tango show and dinner. Tango has made a resurgence and is very popular. We will see if it is popular with us. Chris - I love Buenos Aires! It has a very European feel to it, the architecture reminds me a lot of Paris with the rod iron balconies in many places. Buenos Aires has one third of the population in all of Argentina with 15.2 million people. The van drive today was like a walk in the park compared to yesterday. Apparently highway lines and traffic light colors are only a suggestion here, really not as big a problem at 25 or 35mph compared to 80 mph yesterday. In the city during the day you can barely go 25 with all the traffic. Apparently a really big problem here. the highway also had 16 lanes of traffic, pretty sure I don't want to drive here!! The Recoleta cemetery Paul mentioned was incredible! It was the size of 4 city blocks and held 6,400 mausoleums!! It was set like a miniature city with various streets. You'd look down the "street" and there would be mausoleums on both sides of the street ... Very impressive. The mausoleums are like an architectural free for all which included Greek temples and pyramids. Eva Peron's is concealed in a concrete vault 27 feet underground but there in 1976 because her remains had been stolen so many times by various military governments after her husband's fall from grace in 1955. I hope we're eventually able to post some pictures so you at least get an idea of this extraordinary cemetery. The old cafe Paul mentioned called the Cafe Tortoni, was very much like you'd find in Paris. It was gorgeous with a beautiful wood bar and interior with an intricate glass design ceiling. The hot chocolate was great too! They, don't have a lot of violent crime here in the city with few residents owning guns. They are very hard to come by and in areas of town where there are a lot of shanties they actually had two policemen standing on the border streets keeping people from coming into the areas. With seeing lots of different areas of the city one that was kind of an odd duck and stuck out from the others was a neighborhood called La Boca. It sits at the mouth of the Riachuelo River and is home to colorful houses made from cast off ship building materials like planks, sheet metal and corrugated iron painted in bright colors. It almost gives you the feel of a carnival. It is a somewhat depressed area but is very interesting. In the same neighborhood is the futbol stadium, 'La Bombonera' home to the world famous Boca Juniors. Then off to one of the best lunches I've ever eaten. Ever since I was 15 and heard Carl rave about Argentine beef I've wanted to come to Argentina and try the beef....it didn't disappoint! The restaurant, Las Lilas, sat right on the river with boats dotting the sides. The food they brought out before we even ordered was enough to feed all of us for lunch! Amazing and I would go back tomorrow if anyone else is game. We finally met up with Mike and Cath tonight and we all went to dinner and to an dramatic Tango show. Tomorrow we board the ship but don't leave until Wed.