ODO: 341,040
Another day, another wintery beach (the things you get used to!). There are no coastal roads, so we drive back inland before heading back towards the ocean again. We see three armadillos (we’ll never get used to that)! It’s always windy in Argentina, today we get to drive straight into it. It’s a bad gas milage day. There is a Chinese restaurant in Mar del Plata, and we are in! Unfortunately it, like most restaurants along the coast, doesn’t open until 8pm. Instead we end up at a pizza place with neat art. They can’t seem to get our drink order correct, and end up brining us three beers we didn’t order. No complaints. We finally get a coastal road, that takes us twenty minutes outside town to a nice beach spot.
ITS SO WINDY! The sand is blasting around us. More long flat Argentinian countryside before we come to another beach town, with uncontrolled five way intersections everywhere. Madness. There is a gigantic campground here, we assume this place is packed during the summer. Currently we are the only people here. We have sushi delivered, which is fantastic. It’s work to find rolls that do not have cream cheese in them. That seems to be Argentina’s jam.
One. More. Long. Day. On. The. Road. In reality, it’s only four hours to where we plan to leave the truck for the weekend, but it feels much longer. We pass a Maguari stork but only have an image courtesy of Wikipedia. Our plan is to store the truck in a campground, and take a taxi into Buenos Aeries. Because of the rain, our storage place is a muddy field, but what do we care? We wont be here! We wrap up some work, pack our backpacks, and order a taxi. And by taxi, we mean the friend of the campground owner. Whatever works. We get to our hotel, and during check in, they make us a dinner reservation at a nice steakhouse. It’s a short walk, and it’s incredible! This weekend is off to a good start. We walk back to the hotel for a very respectable bed time.
Everything is slippery. It’s rainy. The sidewalks, the hotel floors…Because everything is tile. Our work colleague, Laura, lives in Buenos Aries. Today she is taking us on a tour of her city. Laura takes us to every single corner of Buenos Aires. We see all of the embassies. She takes us through the old financial district. There is the pink mansion where the president lives. And most importantly, the stadium where BOCA, her soccer team plays. Fancy grilled meat is our lunch of choice, and really the only thing to eat here, it’s so delicious. After lunch, more tour! She shows us where all the artisan markets and good shopping are before taking us back to the hotel.
After a little relax, we head to Don Julio for dinner. A top 50 restaurant in the world, we have high hopes for this steak house. We expected to wait, since we did not make a reservation, but they seat us immediately. But outside. But the give us blankets and a heater! We don’t notice the cold at all. The service is top notch, as is the food. Is it better than our dinner last night? Not better, about the same. Maybe our pallets aren’t fancy enough to tell the difference. It is very delicious, and we have a great time. Very full of steak, we bar hop and art walk our way back to the hotel.
It’s a slow, hungover start to the day. The artisan markets are calling our names, so we get to walking. After exploring our first market, we find a rest stop that has beer and F1 on the TV. After some more casual shopping we head back to the hotel and try to see a tango show. That’s what you do in Argentina! At least, we tried to. We got back too late, so that fun adventure will have to wait until next time. We settle for food tour instead: dumplings, pizza, and fancy cookies. All the restaurants are deserted at 6pm, dinner time here is 8pm. We love reasonable dinner time and no waiting.
Check out day, but no fancy late check out for us this time. We run some quick errands and do one last art walk in the morning, before hoping an Uber back to the truck. Being a holiday (again!) it takes us a few tries to find an open grocery store. We do a small resupply, since we’re getting on a plane in a couple days. The campground plays Queen’s Live Aid album at beyond loud, late into the night. Good album, odd choice.
Today is not the sunny day we were promised by our weather service. Being the week before we travel, we need to get serious: find truck storage, clean, clean out the fridge, do laundry, and generally make sure things will be in good shape when we get back. But we’re also tired today, so we spend one more day here, resting. We can get serious tomorrow. This place is a little odd, and very muddy. A tuk-tuk turned camper becomes our neighbor for the day. At night the fog rolls in and makes everything feel like a scary movie.
