BsAs: Bike Tour

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.