Buenos Aires - Part 2

December 23, 2011

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA -- Good evening from EZE, Buenos Aires' Ezeiza International Airport.

It has been an eventful 24 hours! Yesterday we got to USH a couple hours before our flight, originally at 7:30pm, and found out it was delayed three hours. Thus instead of arriving into Buenos Aires at 10:45pm, we wouldn't end up even leaving Ushuaia until then. We got into AEP around 2:00am, baggage claim took forever (they probably only had one or two workers still there), and the cab line was really long as well (not so many drivers going by the airport at a late hour). By the time we got to our hostel and to sleep it was about 4:00am.

Four and a half hours of sleep later, we were up, checked out, and met up for a quick mini-reunion breakfast near La Casa Rosada with ten of us from the trip. Immediately after breakfast, four of them left, but the remaining six of us hit the Buenos Aires public bus system and took a cheap one peso ride over to La Boca, one of the more famous barrios of Buenos Aires. La Boca was the most European of all the places we visited over our two day-long trips to BA, and it maintains a colorful and artistic influence that is partially catered to tourists, and partially to locals as well. Another member of Penguin Highway, our new group-name for those on our trip aboard the M/S Expedition, joined us in La Boca, where we spent some time looking at all the art. We ended up in an artist's studio, where we got a private tour thanks to one of our fellow travelers, and eventually we settled for some lunch before returning to La Casa Rosada, in downtown.

We had some ice cream while wandering down Florida Street, an overcrowded and market-oriented part of downtown, and then said goodbye to more of our group, and eventually made it back to our hostel in the rain. As it turned out, while we were drying off and enjoying our last hour, yet another one of our shipmates was staying at our hostel, so we got to spend some time with him which was nice. Three of us shared a cab to EZE, and here we are, along with a fourth, about to board our flight to the United States. It has been a lovely last day in Buenos Aires to wrap up this trip of a lifetime.