Dates: 13FEB – 15FEB2024

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina

GPS: 34.590570, -58.3826448

Weather: It was warm in the 80s while in Buenos Aires with blue skies, sunny and moderate humidity. Perfect weather for urban exploration.

Wildlife sightings: lots of rescue dogs

Notes: I am doing this trip solo as Tony did not want to come due the number of days at sea required to get from Ushuaia to Antarctica. The night before my departure when I was packing for this trip, Tony started to have a full-blown FOMO moment. I think he could twist my arm to come back and do this trip again. A good friend has several of her immediate family on this tour as well, but she is working, and she was not able to join us herself. So, I am not completely alone alone. I have also met many nice people from all over the US, so even though I am traveling by myself, there are many friendly faces in the mix [Yes, I wrote this sentence for you, MOM, as I know you are worried about me traveling so far from home by myself]. Everything is great with lots more to come.

Flight from Arizona to Dallas then connecting on flight to Buenos Aires was uneventful. I was able to get on an earlier flight to Dallas as I had only booked myself 55 minutes with my original connection and in hindsight, I felt that was too close for an international transfer.  I had not been on a huge plane like the one I took to Buenos Aires in many years, but somehow even though the plane itself is massive, the seats and legroom are not.  I intended to sleep on this overnight flight, but the airplane seats are small and uncomfortable, the plane was a full capacity, so I only got in about 2 hours of broken sleep during the 11-hour flight. Upon arrival in Buenos Aires, I arranged for private transport to my hotel, the very lovely Four Seasons, and my airport driver was kind enough to give me a mini-driving tour of the city on the way to the hotel. I am on this trip arranged by Gohagan with 115 other people, mostly made up of various US University Alumni groups (Columbia, Georgetown, Brown, Clemson, etc.) with a handful of adult family groups and about 15 independent travelers without an association.

On the night of my arrival in Buenos Aires, I went to the Tango Rojo show at the super fancy Faena hotel which included a private driver, 4 course meal and 1.5-hour Tango show. It was a small venue of about 65 people and the show was fantastic. The bodies on the dancers were incredible as they were tall and lean with obvious muscle tone, but not bulky. Think ballerina or Pilates body shape. The exacting movements and physicality from these dancers, who ranged in age for 20’s-60’s, to do hours of tango dancing was impressive. They did not seem to even sweat.

My first full day in Buenos Aires, the tour operator arranged for a bus tour of Buenos Aires. We visited several sections of the city including the historic district, Palermo, Plaza de Mayo, Puerto Madero, and Recoleta including a visit to Eva Peron’s (Evita’s) grave. The architecture in the city is a mixture of elaborate French and Italian facades and it truly does feel like the Paris of South America! I did have one very embarrassing moment on this tour. The military guard was in formation to instill 2 guards in front of the tomb of an unknown soldier at the same time we were entering the cathedral. The police were backing everyone up, so the guards had unobstructed access to the hallway. Well I kept backing up, but I backed up too far not realizing there was a small step behind me, and I fell. The military guard was marching right by when this happened and he couldn’t break formation, but he looked at me via side-eye as he passed me as if to say WTF? I popped back up quickly as I was physically unhurt but super embarrassed. Luckily, I don’t think anyone got me on camera.

After the bus tour, a friend and I took a walk around the city including a stop at the El Ateneo Grand Splendid which is a famous bookstore housed inside an old theater. There are lots of vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Buenos Aires and I ate at the fully plant based Seibo for lunch and for dinner I took a short Uber to the vegetarian restaurant called Naturaleza Sabiav. Uber is very widely used in Buenos Aires and it is very inexpensive with my trips costing only 3300 Argentinian pesos (<$4 USD).

Overall, I enjoyed Buenos Aires. With a population of 14 million people, there is access to everything I could want. I feel safe walking around during the daytime by myself in the city. I did not change any money as most place take credit cards and for tips locals are fine with US Dollars. I had plans to change out some US Dollars at the informal “Blue Market”, but I didn’t end up needing to do that. I want to bring Tony back in the future as there is so much to do and other things I want to see that I didn’t have time for on this trip.

Next Stop: flight to Ushuaia, Argentina to board Ponant’s La Boreal for cruising to Antarctica…very excited!!!