Buenos Aires, Day 1

We arrived safely in Buenos Aires today, after a long overnight flight and some delays in JFK due to a customs inspection of the plane from a previous flight. The price of the JFK airport food was absurd, and really made me look forward to Argentina. Somehow paying $15 for a steak sandwich right before landing in a country that is famous for its steak just doesn't feel right. New York pizza on the other hand was awesome. 

Uneventful plane flight, we landed in BA and I immediately beg

an to sweat. We were traveling across a 80+ temperature difference between the states and here, and it was a very rude 99 degrees F. To further complicate our arrival, the airline personnel ran out of customs forms before they made it to the back of the plane, and the customs officials initially didn't have any extras either. My travel companion, blissfully fluent in Spanish, negotiated customs forms after talking to a string of people. I am not completely sure, but I think we talked to airline personnel who said to ask the immigration folks, who told us to find the customs employees, who went off to find a manager, who then talked to immigration, and immigration finally handed out forms. Minor hassle. 

Once in the airport and out of the customs line (they apparently don't distinguish between "nothing to declare" and "goods to declare" everyone just gets x-rayed). We passed into the airport lobby. Two things struck me right away. The first is that the airport lobby was very small, even though the airport handles a large number of international flights every day (two from JFK within 3 hours). The second was that they apparently have policemen who walk around in all b

lack clothes with no markings or badges, just a pistol and a few spare rounds of ammunition. There's just something about secret police that I don't like. 

The cab ride into the city was interesting, I think we passed a few of the poorer neighborhoods on the way into the city. All the buildings here seem to be high rise, but only one room thick (possibly a result of a nation with a less-than-robust credit market). Our cabdriver also had a number of words of wisdom to pass down to us, translated out of Spanish. One, although the city is calm, avoid walking around with a camera around your neck. Two, you'll almost never be asked for your passport, so there's really no need to risk bringing it around. Three, it should cost about 10 pesos from where we were to get to the city center, and the farther destinations were 20 pesos to get to Sam Talmo (a major tourist district we'll visit on day 2). You can get food any time of day, even three am. Finally, you should always look at the prices on a menu before going into a restaurant. You should be able to eat a good meal, any cuisine, for 40 pesos (Current exchange rate is 3.4 Pesos: 1 USD) but some places will charge you about 300 pesos!