Adventures in South America

Trip Planning - Argghhhh!!

Seth and I are thrilled that our first visitors to Buenos Aires will be Natalia and Usama. They are arriving on January 28th and returning on February 7th. As they will be coming soon, we have already begun the process of planning for their trip. Out of the 10 days that they will be in Argentina, they would like to spend 5 or so days in other parts of the country. Requests have been made by Nat and Usa to visit regions of Patagonia (to see Glaciers and Penguins) and perhaps a little hiking (in Mendoza or other regions). The challenge is actually putting these requests into reality within the time frames of their visit! Traveling from the extreme south to the north is tricky as Argentina's domestic airline travel is not as developed as in the states. It looks like to get from many destinations we will first have to travel back to Buenos Aires and then travel to the next stop. ARRGHHH!! I have been communicating with a few travel agencies, but the responses have been generally slow. Looks like we will have to do most of the planning immediately after we arrive in Buenos Aires.

While in Buenos Aires with Nat and Usa, we are looking forward to eating some good food, hitting the Evian Agua Club and Spa in Palermo for some R&R (www.aguaclubspa.com), seeing the sights and checking out the nightlife. As Usa is someone who can function on very little sleep, smokes and loves espresso, the life in BA should suit him well!! For Nat, being in a meatlover’s country, we will have to choose some culinary selections that will appeal to her vegetarian sensibility J! As the food scene in BA is becoming more and more international and sophisticated this shouldn’t be too hard.

Can’t wait to see you guys!!

posted by Kathy T @ 5:50 PM 0 comments

Kathy, Nat and Seth! 

posted by Kathy T @ 2:53 PM 0 comments

The Happy Travelers! 

posted by Kathy T @ 1:15 PM 0 comments

Adventures in South America

21 Days and counting!!

We are making the final preparations for our trip to South America. In exactly three weeks, we will be heading down to Buenos Aires for a few months. After much nail biting, we finally have our apartment situation straightened out. We used bytargentina's service to book an overpriced apartment (by argentinian standards). It has taken us some time to pick an available apartment - we chose a couple of other apartments, but lost out on them because other people were ahead of us and got the apartments. So, our housing situation is as follows:

Jan 12th- 17th we will be staying at the following apartment. It is a small studio apartment located in a trendy district called Las Cañitas. This area has lots of restaurants, cafes and bars (think East Village).

The main draw of this place is that it is in a good location and affordable while we are waiting for the place we really wanted to become available. There is no AC in this apartment... we will really get to experience that BA heat firsthand :-)

Jan 17th - April 1st we will be staying at this apartment at Oro and Paraguay streets.
This location is a little more centralized - closer to the subway, closer to other neighborhoods but still close to the "action" of Palermo Viejo. Palermo Viejo, which is next to Las Cañitas, is also an area with a ton of restaurants and things to do.

The other neighborhood that we were considering living in is Recoleta. This is an exclusive, safe neighborhood.... think Upper East Side. More families as opposed to young people. Recoleta is a nice area. The infamous Recoleta Cemetary is here, which has Eva Peron's grave, among other famous Argentinians.

posted by Kathy T @ 10:34 AM 2 comments