Buenos Aires fiesta

From Calafate, we marched back up the coastline some 3000+ kilometers to the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, located on the southern banks of the Rio de la Plata river. Actually we road a direct bus for 42 hours (two days two nights) and arrived in BA a bit worn and slimey. I dont recommend riding any bus for that long, granted… ours was decked out with heat/AC, reclining “semi-cama” chairs, and various movies (and you can bet your house there was at least one Schwarzeneger film)!

We decided to get to BA quickly to meet up with the great Tom, good friend of Paul who was on vacation there at the same time (for those of you who have been following, this is the same Tom that we visited in Santiago de Chile).

Arriving in BA on Saturday, we finally caught up with Tom and found some lodging… Hotel Cambremon, a really nice hotel of four stars! Tom, the diamond geezer that he is, insisted on putting the entire bill on his card! So we stayed in BA for three days for free. In return for this generous offer, we bought Tom dinner a couple nights, but the food never really turned out to be quite what we expected.

To make a long story short, the next three days were filled with sleeping late, eating competitions, and tourist shoping while the nights were filled with discos, bars, ladies, and general borachera… it was bound to happen sometime. A great time in general.

Somewhere in the midst of the madness I found Che Guevara’s book Mi Primer Gran Viaje, the story of Che’s motorcycle trip around South America, a book I’ve been thinking about picking up for a while.

P.S. the results of the eating contest are in:

Third All-American Gluttonous Eating Contest

• Food of Choice: eggs sunny-side up.
• First place: Paul, an even dozen;
• Second place: Tom ate 11;
• Honorable mention: I choked down 10 (hey, it was my first ever competetive eating competion, I’m still working out my strategy)