I was just at ticketmaster searching for tickets and came across what is arguably the best CAPTCHA I will ever encounter in my life.

I wasn’t finished, but considering its been six weeks since I got back, I have been too lazy to try to finish, and it doesn’t seem like you’re all that interested anyway, I’m going to just going to put it to bed. At some point I’ll put all of my pictures up on flickr. I’ll post when I do.

Anyone still curious about what I did on the trip (or anyone looking for suggestions on visiting), please feel free to email me.

I will now return to my regular schedule of posting irregularly about nothing in particular.

Our other major excursion during our stay in Buenos Aires was a day-long boat tour through the Tigre River Delta. Our group set off for the marina in the morning with our guide - oddly also named Santi - and after a brief stop for coffee, set out for our private tour of the delta.

I planned out all the pictures for this post, including the one immediately below, before realizing it wasn’t even taken on our actual boat, but the boat that ferried us from our own boat to the place we stopped for lunch. Whatever. Here’s us on a boat. Some of us wearing ridiculous sunglasses.

We spent a couple hours in the morning boating through major passages of the delta and smaller channels in between the various islands. We passed small vacation homes raised on stilts to prevent against flooding, homes only accessible by boat. We attempted to fish but caught nothing. At one point, we even played Perudo.

At midday, we stopped for lunch at a restaurant tucked away on one of the islands . We were served a feast by native islanders while sitting on the banks of the channel, with hummingbirds fluttering around us.

After lunch and a small hike through the island foliage, we set off for more sun, scenery, and boating through the delta. We found a spot with little current and dropped anchor for a swim. Though the water looked brown and murky, we were told the color was due to the sediment flowing through the delta, and that the water was quite safe. In we went.

Though we took a series of multi-shot pictures of us jumping off the roof of the boat, the below picture - of me backflipping off the side - was the only one that came out without anyone looking overly obese. You may think you want to see more, but trust me, you don’t.

We wrapped up the trip in the late afternoon as the sun settled behind some clouds, our singular excursion outside the city of Buenos Aires complete.

I know I’m behind. Shut your cakehole.

Attempting to buck conventional tourism activities, our group engaged on a bike tour as a way to explore the various neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. Starting in - crap, I can’t really remember where we started - we made our way through, among other places, the revitalized “seaport” area of Puerto Madero, the cobblestones and antique shops of San Telmo, and the vibrant, colorful immigrant neighborhood of La Boca.

After hours of riding, and swamp ass you would not BELIEVE, we stopped for a break to enjoy some Mate (pronounced ma-tay), a traditional Argentinian tea beverage/experience. The process for drinking Mate is complex. There are a series of steps you must take to prepare the tea, place it in the cup thingee, prepare the straw and drink it - a process not unlike the consumption of another popular illegal leafy substance. Additionally, there are a number of social etiquette rules to follow, such as not saying Gracias when you ask for more because apparently that means you are done. These rules make the process so long and drawn out, and while the experience was culturally enlightening, by the end of our break I was like, “DUDE JUST GIVE ME SOME FUCKING LIPTON.”

I’d upset the others in our group if I didn’t mention Santi (picture), our guide who led us around the city. A young college student studying Tourism, he did a great job of entertaining six American jackasses for the better part of the afternoon, deftly handling questions like “How do you say boobs in Spanish?”, or “Como se dice boobs en Espanol?” But our love for Santi was not in his friendliness, his ability to misunderstand us at times (at one point, someone in our group used the word ‘ir’ (the Spanish verb for ‘to go’), Santi thought we were talking about ears, and we all had a good laugh about the fucked up reverse lost in translation moment), nor his common goal of pointing out every hot Argentinian booty we could find. Rather, we were obsessed with his hair.

Its hard to define what exactly it was about the hair that made it so fascinating. It had kind of a thin thickness to it. A clean cut shagginess. It was a ‘do that just fit his personality so well, and we were all incredibly jealous. Even his facial hair was awesome. It had this perfect unevenness to it that made this born-again beard-wearer jealous.

We immediately requested him to be our friends on Facebook. Apparently he doesn’t use a computer much, so we weren’t approved until yesterday, and the last 24 hours has seen a flurry of emails within our group celebrating this event.

On the third day in Buenos Aires, the six of us went to a soccer match between River Plate, one of Buenos Aires’ two main soccer clubs, and Racing Club, another Argentinian team. Latin Americans have long been known for their passion for soccer, but having been to a multitude of college and professional athletic events around the US - all with pretty intense fanbases - I wasn’t expecting to be too impressed. I was.

- Fans are separated from the field by a high chain-link/barbed wire fence (think NASCAR fencing).
- Not a drop of alcohol is served throughout the stadium. For safety reasons.
- There is zero cohabitation of seats between fans of different teams. Its not uncommon to see opposing team fans sitting in your section here in the US, but that would never happen in Argentina. The home team gets nearly the entire stadium and the away team fans sit in a small section, again separated by high chain-link fences and barbed wire.
- We were not allowed to go anywhere without our guide accompanying us.
- Although many people seemed like pretty normal citizens, there were a ton of people that were a little intimidating to be near. Like the 50% of the stadium not wearing a shirt, or the guy sporting the tri-hawk/ponytail combo. Dude had gelled up three mohawks into his head (front view looked like this \|/ ), and then threw in a pony tail with the mullet in the back of his head!
- After the game, the home team’s fans have sit in their seats for 30-45 minutes. Not because they’re hanging back to celebrate or anything, but because they are physically not allowed to leave. In order to prevent any violence between rivals, the away team’s fans leave first, get the hell out of the area, and then the cops let the home team out.
- In general, the fans are apeshit passionate for a full 90 minutes and never stop cheering or singing songs. I’ve sat in the student section at Michigan and while I do think we can get rowdy, our chants and cheers are event-driven (i.e. after big plays and touchdowns) as opposed to a continuous chorus throughout the game. And let’s be honest, sometimes we’re jingling our fucking keys. These Argentinians were singing songs and banging drums non stop, and at times they got so loud that I got chills. And the game we went to happened to be scoreless. It was sad to have not witnessed the scoring of a goal. I’d imagine the place turns into a shitshow.

(Note: The soccer pic above is from Sachin’s point-and-shoot, since I was told it would be a good idea to leave my camera at home.)

The house game for the duration of our trip was Perudo (a.k.a. Liar’s Dice). This wasn’t an Argentina thing - we actually brought the game from home. Its the game played in one of the Pirate’s of the Carribean movies (I think Dead Man’s Chest). Every player has a set of dice which they roll and keep hidden, and they take turns bidding on how many dice of a given value they think are on the table. Eventually someone challenges the bid that came before him, all the dice are revealed, and the incorrect person (either the bidder or challenger) has to give up one of their die. Last person with dice left wins. Its an amazing game that combines the strategy of poker with the blatant bluffing of ‘Bullshit’.

We played this game constantly throughout our trip, before heading out for the day, during afternoon breaks, and while pre-partying in the evening. For the latter, we added an additional rule. Anytime someone lost a die, they had to take a shot.

On one of the last night’s of the trip, Rishi made yet another stop motion / time lapse video of us playing the game.

There was one additional game that was played during our trip. Needing to get up early the next day for a boat trip, the six of us had gone out to a low key bar one night. We sat in a circle on the quiet roof of the bar, and having spent the last 4 days with each other, had run out of things to talk about and decided to start playing Buzz. The rules are simple - the players go around the circle counting off numbers, and anytime a number containing a 7 or a multiple of 7 or 11 is reached, the number is replaced with the word “buzz” and the direction of the count is reversed. We started the game with standard rules - if you screw up, you drink, and you start the next count - but then added a unique (highly questionable) twist.

If anyone screwed up, not only did they have to drink, they had to undo a button on their clothing or remove something else they were wearing.

I was hesitant to tell this story. Being a part of six guys who let their Tuesday night devolve into Strip Buzz is not something you really go around telling people. But the hilarity of this situation isn’t in the rules we instituted, but rather how lopsided the game became. One of the guys in the group, Pujan, could not seem to grasp the concept of the game. The 20-buzz-buzz-23 combo was particularly tricky (at one point, out of nowhere, he shouted out “40!” to dropped jaws), and while the other five of us lost at most two buttons on our shirts, he managed to lose his flip flops, necklace, watch, polo, and jeans (button fly, mind you).

There we were, sitting on the roof of a bar, 5 of us fully clothed and one scrawny Indian kid in nothing but his boxers. Sadly, I was not allowed to post pictures of this game, but trust me, they would’ve made for a great stop motion video.

This is the first in a multi-part series in which I try to document the awesomeness that was our trip to Buenos Aires.

As I mentioned previously, we rented this house for the duration of our 9-day/8-night stay. We had obviously rented the place site unseen, and were a little concerned that the http://www.apartmentsba.com/system/galeria.php?mover=0&id_prod=519" onclick="javascript:urchinTracker('/outbound/www.apartmentsba.com');">pictures made it seem nicer than it actually was. Our worries were unnecessary… aside from making the place seem a little larger than it actually was, these professionally shot pictures (read: better than anything I could have done myself) do a pretty damn good job of portraying how great a house it was.

We were located right in the heart of Palermo Soho, a neighborhood named for its similarity to New York’s Soho. We were literally steps away from great boutique shops (more on this in a later post), a cool outdoor square called Plaza Serrano that featured outdoor cafes and an artist’s market, and La Cabrera, arguably Buenos Aires’ best steakhouse.

Although we took advantage of the fantastic Argentian cuisine, we also made use of our full kitchen and cooked up some homemade meals filled with fresh veggies.

Perhaps the most loved feature of the house was the surround sound stereo system with iPod hookup in the living room. Loud enough to be heard throughout the house, from the main floor garden to the roof terrace, that stereo was singlehandedly the reason a large portion of our trip was spent not out and about in BsAs, but at home drinking Malbec and listening to music. Anytime we were home, the music was on, and as the booze flowed preparties turned into all out dance parties. On our last night, we drank so much that we never even made it out, opting instead to just dance in our living room while Rishi created stop motion videos like this one.

We were six guys frequently dancing around our living room to mostly American music. AND IT WAS TOTALLY AWESOME.

I’m back from my vacation (a.k.a. grown-up spring break) in Buenos Aires and have spent the last day and a half wishing I was still there. I know I need to blog about the trip, and I certainly intend to, but I’ve got 10 days worth of hazy memories and 800 pictures (some equally hazy) to sort through before I can put together anything worth wasting your time on. But if you’re looking for a head start, listen to Sam Sparro’s “Black and Gold” while drinking a glass of Malbec. Repeat both until your head starts spinning and you’ve got yourself about 60% of the story.

In just a few hours I’ll be boarding a plane headed headed for Buenos Aires, Argentina. Myself and 5 other friends have rented this ridiculous house for a vacation that’s a little less spring break and a little more The Real World. I don’t want to give away too much else about our plans yet, mostly because it’ll give me something to write about when I get back (not that our plans involve much else other than drinking).

I’ll be back with tales of our adventures (and hopefully some manlier pictures) in ten days. See you then.

I know I promised to put up more pictures with my new camera, but the fact is I still suck at photography. Here's one good shot out of like 150 that I took in San Francisco this weekend. I know flowers are girly and all, but whatever. I drank a beer like ten minutes later.

Late last year, I wrote about how my roommate and I accidentally overtipped our doormen. Well, this extreme generosity was not a one time occurrence. Today, I overtipped our cleaning lady.

Our apartment had been in pretty bad shape. Embarrassingly dirty, to be quite honest. A half hour into the cleaning job, the cleaning lady’s daughter showed up to help out. Yeah. The lady needed reinforcement. A couple hours later, they wrapped up and she told me the total would be $70. I gave her a folded up wad of cash containing $90. Percentage-wise, it was a pretty big tip (~29%). But for the effort it took the two of them to clean up the microwave explosions, crumb spills, bathroom grime, and general accumulation of dust, I thought that a $20 bump was reasonable.

But apparently, the cleaning lady herself didn’t agree. 10 minutes after she left I heard a knock at the door. When I answered, she asked me to confirm how much I had given her, implying that she herself was shocked to leave and find $90 in her hand. Unable to bring myself to back into a smaller tip, I sent her on her way with the full amount.

I’m afraid of what sort of dangerous precedent we’ve inadvertently set here. Next thing you know, I’ll be handing benjis to the dog walker. And I don’t even have a dog!