good airs

¡amigos! hola from this little spot they call buenos aires. it´s been a fine couple days settling in, but sadly my photos are held hostage. this might be the swankiest town this side o´ the equator, but hell if i can find a computer from later than 1990. i´ve captured my jaunts in uruguay as well as my little apartment, but alas, i cannot share them. i scour the big (and i´m not kidding when i say big) boulevards and all i find are these crappy little locutorios. fabulous for checking email on the fly, but no good for jumping on board the information super highway!

i have highlights from b.a., but first i must mention my revelation from uruguay...

many of you have enjoyed a sky bursting with stars that you never knew existed - while camping or traveling in remote lands with few people - but it took me a moment to figure out what was extra special about the billion stars that revealed themselves to me one night in punta del diablo. i´ve had the pleasure of seeing a pregnant night sky and appreciated all of those little bits of light that aren´t around the night skies of the city, but i had never, until last week, sat in awe of such a star harvest coupled with the soundtrack of crashing waves. the stars, all zillion of them, just tumble right into the ocean. and that, my friends, was cool. i´ve spent some pretty killer nights in my time star gazing on the beach, but there has always been some sort of a city relatively close by to keep some of the good stuff at bay. but not in uruguay. it´s so dark there and the skies so wide, that the stars of the milky way just pour directly into the ocean. amazing.

b.a....turn ons:

1. alfajores
chocolate-loving people of america, may i introduce you to the alfajor! a tasty delight that is the sweet of choice for the region. they are everywhere (instead of candy bars in the stores, they have these)... it´s basically a sweet sandwich made up of either two round chocolate cakes or two vanilla-ish cakes. then, in the middle, you find a layer of dulce de leche (also to appear on the turn-ons list). then you coat the whole shebang in chcolate, wrap it up and put it in whitney´s hand. even oreo and chips ahoy are in on the game...but yet they keep it from us. so unfair. i tried the oreo one. smashing. pretty much a big oreo (these things are a little smaller than a ding dong) coated in chocolate. not your classic alfajor, but i have to taste em all for my research. i´m not going to say they´re on the list of all-time favorite sweets, but fun to discover something i had never seen before.

2. dulce de leche
while i´m on the topic, might as well get this one over with. i´m not as nutzo over this stuff (on every table at breakfast and would be approached the same as nutella) as the entire country seems to be, but it is quite a treat on a sliced apple (they thought i was crazy for doing this. apparently they only put it on bread here. leave it to me to bring a revolution to the people.) and, i do love it swirled in some of their famous gelato.

3. straws
when you buy a bottle of anything...water or soda... from the mini marts they give you a straw. it´s a strange little behavior, but one i´ve come to appreciate. i think it´s because they´re used to sipping the maté from their metal straws. (still don´t get what´s so great about the maté that you´d be willing to haul around a thermos, a little ceramic pot, a metal straw and a tupperware of maté leaves everywhere you go.) but water and soda always through a bendy straw is tremendous fun!


b.a....turn offs:

1. dog shit
well, all the feral dogs of cusco are gone, but they´ve been replaced with more dog shit than i´ve ever seen in a city.
people actually own dogs here apparently.
and walk them all around the city.
and leave their shit, like little potent, slippery mines every five inches.
it´s unbelievable. for as fabulously european and sophisticated as porteños insist they are, someone needs to tell them that one of the steps to class would be not having a city (and shoes) covered in dog crap.

2. wet drops from above
picture yourself walking happily along the sidewalk - intensely focused on weaving your way safely through the poop bombs - and you feel a few wet drops of something land on your head and shoulder. once the surprise passes, you keep your pace steady and your head high, sincerely hoping that there´s not a huge smattering of bird dropping all over your head. luckily, the culprit usually is not poop from above. it´s currently 96 degrees here and all of the apartments have their air conditioners going, so you can´t walk a block without getting dripped on. i know about the a.c., i´ve been dripped on, but it still doesn´t alleviate that tense moment of prayer as you casually brush your hand through your hair and sneak a glance at your palm. the stress of simply making it safely down a block justifies the quick trip into one of their gelato places!

3. shhhh with the ¨sh¨
oh argentinians, why must you deny the existance of my friend "y" and its spanish cousin "ll"?? why must you deny their turn on the tongue? i say the "s" and "h" have plenty of time in the sun and need not be given even more power and popularity. i hold strong. i walk along a "calle" not a "cashe". i lost my first three layers of skin on the "playa" not the "plasha". i´d like a "botella" de agua, no "botesha".
and me "llamo", dammit, es whitney.... wheet-nee. si. como, whitney houston. si.