My last post left off at Friday afternoon. After my shopping trip, I came home to Arabic empanadas that Claudia had bought for Kassidy and I. Arabic food and Mediterranean food are both very popular aqui en Argentina. Claudia told us that they are prepared using lemon juice and I liked that they didn't have the strong taste of olives that the Argentine empanadas have.
Kassidy and I hopped on the subte to go to a concert. We were going to see Los Perricos, a band that we were told would play reggae music. The concert was much different from what I had imagined. I imagined the concert to be somewhat similar to La Bomba de tiempo...lots of dread heads, a bohemian venue, an easy vibe and relaxing music. There were lots of people with dreads, but they were the only thing that matched what I had imagined. The concert was held in a semi-fancy concert hall. Much fancier than what I had imagined and the musical style was more ska than reggae (ska= reggae infused rock. Think No Doubt or Sublime.). In addition, I had a slight headache before the concert began and they kept shining really bright concert lights directly into the audience's eyes. They were blinding, which made my headache worse. Considering the circumstances I didn't really enjoy the concert. I could definitely appreciate the music that they played, but we all thought that we were going to a reggae concert and it was hard to enjoy something that was so different from what we had all expected. I will say that it appears that Los Perricos have a cult following. They were an older band and their fans were decked out in Los Perricos shirts. A lot of the fans sitting in the balcony seats were waiving flags and they even stretched a huge banner across the entirety of the balcony.
After the concert, we split off into different groups. My group went to search for something to eat before we headed to a bar. As we were walking to the street where the restaurants and bars were a group of guys who were walking behind us started to try to flirt with us (there were 6 girls and one guy in our group). Aki said that if they came up to us again she would make weird noises. Sooner than later they caught up with us again and when they tried to hit on us Aki started squaking and making high pitched chirps like she was speaking some animal language lol! It was so funny and we were laughing so hard that we were all on the verge of tears.
After dinner, we headed to a bar called Shamrocks. It was really crowded, but I liked the vibe. Upstairs they had a large tv that was showing a soccer game and downstairs they had a dancefloor. By no means were they playing dance music (it was more like the music that you hear in a department store), but it was a nice space to just talk. I headed home around 2.
Saturday:
Por la mañana:
Saturday morning Kassidy and I woke up early to meet our group at the Reserva Ecológica de Buenos Aires. Although we had a rough start (we got on a bus going in the wrong direction that took us 20 minutes out of the way and ended up taking an expensive taxi ride there), we were some of the first to arrive from our group. We walked about 3 or 4 blocks to the reserve to rent bicycles and we were off to ride the trails that crossed through the Reserve.
It was obvious that some of our group members hadn't ridden a bike in a long time. One group member almost hit a group of joggers, who promptly responded with some not so nice words. LOL! Other than that the bike ride was probably one of the most relaxing activities that we've had on the trip (other than horseback riding). The Reserve was beautiful, even as Argentina's fall turns to winter. It reminded me of the Augusta Canal, but larger. Depending on which direction you were riding, you could see the city over one shoulder and marshlands and the ocean over the other. The grass was still green in most areas and certain parts of the trail were lined with trees that hung over the trail. The weather was a little chilly, but once we warmed up from riding it was perfect. There were lots of spots along the way that were ideal for taking pictures. The lonely trail also made for great conversation with my group members.
After bike riding we walked through Puerto Madero on the way to eat lunch. Puerto Madero is a modern, upscale part of Buenos Aires. It consists of a lot of restaurants, business and luxury apartments that line the river, Rio de la Plata. It reminds me of Chattanooga, Tennessee or other cities built along rivers. One thing about Puerto Madero that was really interesting was that they had an outdoor gym. It looked identical to a park except for it had metal elliptical machines and pull up bars rather than swing sets and monkey bars. We all found this interesting and all preceeded to try out all of the equipment. A group of local Argentine guys that were trying to have a legitimate workout were laughing at us! Haha! We ate lunch at a buffet called Siga La Vaca. They had a parilla with all different kinds of meats and VEGETABLES!! YAY!! Por la noche
Saturday night we decided to try out one of the infamous boliches (clubs). Aki had heard about a boliche in Palermo. A big group of us got dinner together at this little cafe close to my house. I had milanesa and french fries. Then we headed over to Aki's house so that we could all take taxis together. When we got to the boliche it still had opened yet (it was 1 am.). We waited in like for about 30 minutes before we could go inside. While waiting in line, we noticed that all of the people there looked substantially younger then us. When we finally got inside, being typical girls we ran into the bathroom. When we got inside there was a group of about 5 girls. They heard us talking in English and asked us in Spanish where we were from. When we told them we were from the United States, one of the girls was like "OMG Los Estados Unidos!! Ahhh!!" and proceeded to take picture after picture of/with us and put them on her instagram. I literally felt like a celebrity. We asked them how old they were and they said 16 (I wasn't just imagining that everyone was younger than me). One of them spoke really good English and she told me that she had been studying since she was 7. We thought that this would be our only strange encounter, but it gets better. The boliche was separated into two rooms. One large dance floor that was playing house/electronic/American music and a smaller room that was playing reggaeton and cumbiaton. We started off in the smaller room, but there were a lot of people smoking so we came out to the larger room. Eventually the djs in the larger room started playing cumbiaton and reggaeton as well and it got really fun. They were playing all the reggaeton songs that I have on my ipod that no one ever knows when I'm in the United States and Cumbiaton is my newest Latino music obsession
 |
| All of us! |
After those boys left two other boys came to dance with us. They seemed to be closer to our age and were actually fun to dance with (and did not try to put my braids in their mouths lol). The kept putting their hands in
a bridge and made us walk under it. LOL!
Towards the end of the night my friends and I moved closer to the entrance of the club. Big mistake. We literally got swarmed by Argentine boys that were thirsty for American girls. We were obviously American because we had four blondes, a red head, a brunette, an Asian and a Morocha in our group. We could barely catch our breath without getting harassed. LOL! I was asked the typical "¿ Eres brasileña?" and we each were the recipients of several proposals for marriage, double dates and love confessions...all by boys who were 3 or more years younger than us. I'm not quite sure if I could deal with that on a weekend-ly basis! Regardless of the hormonal and overly confident boys that tried to hit on us, this night was definitely one for the books. Oh & did I mention that this was a true Argentine night out? I came home at 6:30.
Besos y Abrazos,
Jackie
Ummmm...LOL!
ReplyDelete