Our favorite place was, by far, Confiteria Ideal. People actually go there to learn, meet new partners, make new friends, and generally have a good time.

We're sure there are other places to tango dance in Buenos Aires. In fact, there are probably hundreds of other places to dance tango, and learn tango, in the city - we just didn't visit those places.

The same thing applies for tango. If you come here expecting to learn tango, just do a little looking, and you're bound to find it.

Despite taking a class before coming to Buenos Aires, we didn't dance tango ourselves while were here. (They did play some swing music at Confiteria Ideal, so we got up and danced to that a few times.) We may have been intimidated by the experience level of the people we saw dancing at Confiteria Ideal, (we are total newbies when it comes to tango), but mostly I think we just enjoyed watching other people dancing and listening to the live orchestras made up of violins, a bass, a piano, 2-5 bandoneons (like an accordion, but boxy - see the picture), and sometimes also a singer.

As I said, our favorite place to watch tango was Confiteria Ideal. I made some videos of the two "shows" we saw there.

If you decide to head to Confiteria Ideal, as of right now, lessons are Tuesday and Wednesday nights

To see one of these shows, you'll want to check their schedule on their web site (in espanol), but we went on Thursday nights both times we went. We think that these shows are most likely to happen on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, seeing as they don't start until very late.

How late?

Well, we arrived at 10:30 PM. There was music playing over the sound system, and people dancing, but the orchestra did not start until 1:15AM (ish), and the show didn't happen until 2:30 AM. So, on the day you plan to go, it might be wise to take a little siesta, and plan on staying until the wee hours of the morning.

As you'll see from the videos below, staying for the tango shows is completely worthwhile.

And, by no means should you consider our post to be an authority on the subject of Tango in Buenos Aires. I've also posted links below to a couple of Buenos Aires tango-related sites we've found useful below. They should help you when searching for places to Tango in Buenos Aires.

(Each of the 8 videos below is a different dance and different music... just so you know.)

A Little Different Style

Confiteria Ideal
TangoSpam Blog
SallyCat's Adventures
Tango Speak
TangoScopio (in Espanol)
TangoCherie
Cafe Tortoni

If you know of other great sites about tango in Buenos Aires, please feel free to post them in the comments below.

Also, if you loved the videos, or think they need improvement, or would like to see something else in them, I'd love to know. (It was a last-minute decision to record them with my little digital camera, and it did a good job with the low lighting in the place, but any comments on the videos are welcomed.)

Meat Eaters' Paradise

Now I'm not 100% vegetarian. I still eat meat, just very occasionally. I do eat cheese and eggs on a regular basis though. Because I don't consider myself super strict when it comes to meat consumption, I can generally find a few vegetarian options (3 or more) on every menu, at least in the United States.

Here in Argentina, it's a different story. About 90% of the restaurants here do have an option for vegetarians. The challenge lies in that there is only ONE choice. (Even a majority of the salads here contain some form of meat.) So, if you're not feeling like spaghetti for the 3rd night in a row, then you're out of luck. For example, three of the last four restaurants we ate in offered only one vegetarian option. All of them were a variant of pasta. (Pumpkin ravioli is the most popular option.) I'm not a huge pasta eater. I like it occasionally, and usually for lunch. However, down here, I have eaten more pasta than probably anything else.

All I'm asking for here is a few more choices. I'm tired of pasta, and not having a choice of what to order. Even if I had two and I could choose from two options, I would be grateful.

May the Argentine beef gods forgive me.

(If you'd like, you can check out some of my Buenos Aires Restaurant Reviews)

The land that was once used for cattle to graze is apparently now being used for Soybean production, so they need to have more land available for use.

Not really sure how all that works, or who controls what happens in the provinces outside of Buenos Aires. There is a 400 year old history of the provinces not really getting along with the city/province of Buenos Aires, so the provinces may not care that much if their smoke is engulfing Buenos Aires. Difficult to say really.

One thing is for sure. Carrie and I don't smoke, but our apartment smells like someone smokes, and the visibility here is pretty poor at the moment. The smoke got REALLY thick last night, and has done some clearing today, and hopefully the fires will die down so that we can be without smoke once again.

(More interesting news is coming soon from the variety of things we've been doing over the past few days, but just thought we'd update you on the latest in Buenos Aires.)

Bob Holmstrom was nice enough to send this to us as well - NASA's satellite picture of the fires and the cloud they're creating...

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Update April 18th
Adam sent us a link earlier today that CNN is now talking about the fires. Pretty crazy how thick the smoke is in the city, and isn't supposed to clear up for a few days.Here's the CNN article about the fires.

And one from China's Xinhua news agency
-----------------

Update April 19th
Just a few places you can get the same news linked below. Basically the fires and the smoke will be with us for at least three more days.

Oh goody.

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/americas/features/article_1400702.php/Buenos_Aires_smoke_blows_death_and_political_winds
http://paddyinba.blogspot.com/2008/04/thick-smoke-blankets-buenos-aires.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7355723.stm
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-smoke18apr18,1,4114176.story
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90777/90852/6395047.html
And, thanks to the BBC, you can see the smoke in pictures.

Here are a couple quick pictures we took from our apartment today. In the first one, the smoke looks darker, but it's actually just later in the day. You can judge the thickness of the smoke by the builidngs in the distance, which, by the way, are only about 10 blocks away. My plan is that once this smoke clears up in a few days, that I'll be able to add an additional picture (in the green space) with what the view normally looks like.

And I was going to post pictures of the sunset, because smoke from fires creates amazing sunsets, but the smoke is so think that we couldn't see the sun setting.

Paddy In BA posted this YouTube video, which does a good job showing how much smoke there really is here.

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Update April 20th
Today was actually mostly clear. I'm not sure if that's due to a change in the wind or because they were able to put out some of the fires. The smoke creeped back in to the city a bit this evening, but mostly all day we had clearer weather. Which is definitely a nice change from what it's been.

Just for comparison sake, here's the above picture with today's picture added (a day with nearly normal visibility for the city). I never thought I'd say that I'd be happy just to get back to a big polluted city, rather than a smoky one too, but today has been SO much better. (We can actually breathe now.)

Here's the picture comparison from our apartment. These are the original pictures. I've done nothing to change them other than resizing them:

As you can see, we've been living in a cloud for the past few days, but the smoke has lifted, drifted, or blown away for the day.

Hopefully it is gone for good.

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I suppose this comes with living in a big city.

But it was actually rather comical. I was sitting at the table in the main room, and Carrie was in the bedroom with the twin beds.

Suddenly I hear this "Whoa! Whoa! Yuck!"

Followed by a couple of swats with what sounded like a flip flop.

Jonathan: "You okay?"

Carrie: "Yep. Cockroach."

Jonathan: "Yuck. Big one?"

Carrie: "Uh-huh."

So I get up and go into the room where there is a cockroach which has clearly been smacked because it's sort of oozing. (Sorry to be gross.)

Carrie: "I'm just surprised how fast it moved!"

Jonathan: "You're sure it's dead?"

Carrie: "Yep. I heard it pop."

Jonathan: "Want me to throw it away?"

Carrie: "Yes, please."

Jonathan: "Sure it's dead?"

Carrie: "Yep."

So I moved a suitcase to get closer to pick it up. Despite the oozing nature of it, the thing took off and freaked both of us out.

So I asked Carrie for a bigger shoe.

Carrie: "But I heard it pop."

Jonathan: "I know. I saw it oozing."

A few solid heel swats later with a dress shoe, and the cockroach was definitely dead.

Mostly, he just freaked us out with his erratic moving. We didn't know just how crazily or fast a big cockroach moved.

I wrote a poem/limerick (below) in response to this incident.

We actually stayed in Capilla del Monte, did hiking on the hill Cerro Uritorco, visited the artesan village at La Cumbre, and ate some of the best steak I've ever had in my life there at La Cumbre, Argentina.

The hills above Cordoba are a good 10 hours away from Buenos Aires, because a good portion of the road between here and there is a two-lane highway. (And don't let anyone tell you that it will take less time. It's just not true. Getting there took us 12+ hours.) So we spent a lot of time together in the car.

Here's the highlight video.

Prior to the trip to Cordoba, we spent some time doing things in the city, including going to Café Tortoni (big tourist destination, fun though), and the Evita Museum (only open since 2001).

I made a short video to highlight our evening at Café Tortoni.

Visiting Evita's Museum was absolutely fascinating! I was in Evita (the musical) in high school, and had really only heard one side of the story about her life (Andrew Lloyd Webber, while writing an amazing musical and making her famous in the eyes of people in America - not only Argentina and/or Europe, shows some bias that he didn't have a fully favorable opinion of Evita and her life choices... at least that's the way I remember it from doing the show in high school). The Museum costs 10 pesos (about $3), and wasn't feeling "worth" it until we were invited to take the English guided tour of the museum.

TOTALLY worth it. No additional cost, and was given by a great tour guide named Santiago who had an awesome approach to the whole tour. "Love her, hate her, it really doesn't make a difference to me, my job here is to tell you about her life, make it as interesting as it actually was, and let you make your own decision about whether she was Santa Evita (Saint Evita) or a devil."

What a fascinating life she lived, especially for someone who only lived to be 33, and was instrumental in making so many changes in the government in her lifetime.

Like us, Kevin and Annmarie like to cook, and Kevin made some awesome guacamole, so here's a pic of Kevin's guacamole...

And now, here's the limerick.

We were sad to see Kevin and Annmarie go, but we're enjoying our place here in Buenos Aires, and we are looking forward to having Carrie's older sister come and visit us starting tomorrow.

More to come soon!

It's really the best way to see things, and really experience the place where you're at.

(Not to mention the health benefits of walking.)

So, this post will catch you up on what we've been up to over the past few days.

But first, since most of the visitors to our site are American (and Americans are notoriously bad at geography) and because it might help someone wanting to visit Buenos Aires, we'd like to offer a little refresher about where in the world we are, and familiarize you with the neighborhood a little bit.

In Argentina

In Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is separated into a bunch of different neighborhoods, called Barrios. Our barrio is Palermo.

If you have been following the blog, you know that we have been in four different apartments up to this point.

The next picture gives you your bearings as far as everything we're about to talk with you about. Everything contained in this post (and everything we have done so far in Buenos Aires) has taken place inside of this area on the map.

Buenos Aires also has the oldest and largest subway system in South America.

So we wanted to go down to the main part of the city, and Annmarie needed a computer cable for her laptop. We had read online, through the awesome power of Google, that Galleria Jardin might be a good place to go to get a computer cable. So we took the red line (Line B) subway (Subte) from the Malabia stop to the Florida stop. For anyone who might get to Buenos Aires without the right computer parts, Galleria Jardin, or Galeria Jardin, is on Florida Avenue between Correnties and Cordoba and is definitely the place to go. Galeria Jardin a 3-story computer store/mall made up of about 50+ computer stores that appears to have everything computer-related that one could need.

I got the correct cord for my computer so that I don't have to use an adaptor plug. My cord was only about $3. Carrie's cord though, has a different plug, and hers was going to be $17, so we decided to just use the adaptor plug for the time we are going to be here.

While the variety of stores at Galleria Jardin does seem to have everything computer-related that one could need, not all the stores are open on Saturday and Sunday. So, if you are going to Galeria Jardin, definitely go after 10:00 AM (because not much opens before 10:00 AM), and go on a weekday.

From Galleria Jardin, we wanted to walk down to see the water.

So we started walking, and ended up thinking that there was not really a good way to get to the water from where we were. Turns out (after looking at Google Maps) that had we walked about 10 blocks north, we would have been able to see the water pretty easily.

But ah well. We'll head back there sometime during our time here... perhaps to take the ferry to Montevideo.

But, we did walk across a really neat suspension bridge, and got to see the ministry of defense, as well as the Casa Rosada. Most people who have seen the musical Evita know this as the place where Eva Peron spoke to a waiting crowd of Descamisados (the "shirtless ones" - the working middle class who helped put and keep Juan Peron in power), and is the same balcony where Madonna stood when she played Eva Peron in the movie version (which came out in 1998).

From there, we walked some more, and took the dark blue line subway back to the red line subway, and came back to our place.

We went out and had Parilla food, which is like the Argentinian equivalent of grilled food... It's supposed to be some of the best meat and vegetables in the world, but there is a strike going on here right now, so there has been a huge interruption in the availability of a lot of fresh food, and so I think the steak I had was previously frozen, and wasn't the best I'd had.

Check out this store shelf which would normally be stocked with chicken and beef

(Read more about the strike here)

We will definitely try some parilla though again while we're here, and today there are talks of the strike ending soon, so that should help with that.

Every Sunday, there is a market at a square in a neighborhood called San Telmo. We found that the market was more like a flea market, or a swap meet, with lots of antiques and people selling things like glasses and silverware. So that wasn't super-exciting for us, but there were street performers there and that made the market a fun experience for sure.

Here's a video I put together with highlights from the market at San Telmo.

(By the way, if you're coming to visit here, the market is only open on Sundays, is absolutely HUGE, and is a great place to visit at least once, but more often if you like to hunt through antiques and knick-knacks.)

From there, we came back and had Yerba Mate (pronounced Yer-buh Mah-tay), which you can see more about in the video below that Kevin put together.

Monday, we walked to the botanical gardens and visited the cemetery in Recoleta (another of the Barrios), and then walked back to our place. (About 9 miles round trip)

We walked from our place now to the botanical garden (which is close to where our first apartment was), and then walked from there to the cemetery in Recoleta

The Botanical Garden in Palermo is definitely worth a visit, is very nice and is well-cared for.

However, though we found that the garden wasn't as quiet as being in the center of Central Park in New York City or Hyde Park in London.

The thing that people know most about the botanical gardens in Palermo is that the park is filled with cats.

We saw some...

And some more

And some more

And some more

And...

Yes. LOTS of cats.

From there, we walked to the cemetery in Recoleta.

I'll talk more about the Recoleta cemetery more in a separate post, since this one is getting long, and since we'll probably go back there when Carrie's sister comes to visit later on.

So, I'm going to close this out with a couple of Kevin's videos.

Kevin does a daily video on healthy living at Renegade Health, and we have been in a couple of his videos while Kevin and Annmarie are down here. So I've posted those below!

But up until now, we have been having some big issues with our Buenos Aires Apartments. We went through a real estate agent who is from Buenos Aires and is based out of Florida.

We told her that we wanted a nice place that was quiet (and obviously clean, if we were going to be paying $1400 or $1500/month for the time we were here).

The apartment we originally had reserved, we got talked out of and got talked into this one. We saw that it was on a busy street, so we asked (before confirming our reservation) if it would be noisy. The real estate agent confirmed that it would not be noisy.

When we got to the apartment, it was both noisy and dirty.

So I got up and made a couple of videos to show the real estate agent why we needed to move.

The dirt:

The noise:

And pictures...
Loud and dirty apartment in Godoy Cruz, Palermo, Buenos Aires

Thanks so much to Emily (Emily, you rock!) who let us crash at her apartment for three nights while her brother was in Paraguay (somewhere we'll probably also visit).

So, we complained loudly, but didn't get moved for four days, because we arrived at the apartment the night before Easter, and then Monday was also a holiday, so it was Wednesday before we moved into a different place.

And to the credit of the real estate agent, they did find us two nice apartments. (Although one had a very basement-like feeling about it, and we swept up 5 cockroaches when we moved in. But they were dead when we moved in, so that at least made us feel a little better.) We moved to that one from Wednesday-Saturday morning, and have been in the second apartment last night and tonight. Pictures of it will be coming soon, but it's very nice, and we're enjoying it a lot! Feels like we're finally able to settle in here for the rest of the time we'll be here.

In the midst of the apartment stuff, we also greeted our first visitors who are going to be staying with us during our time here.

Kevin Gianni and Annmarie Gianni have been friends of ours for about a year and a half now. Kevin and I actually "met" because they have a whole bunch of great health information online and I called him in November of 2006 to chat about his book... and then we started talking, and he invited me to work on a project with him in March of 2007, and they came to our wedding, and our friendship has been building from there.

Prior to yesterday, most of our time had been occupied with apartment hunting, and dealing with the apartment stuff. Other than eating at quite a few great restaurants at prices that are 2/3-3/4 the cost of what similar food would cost in the US... here's what we have been up to since finally getting moved into our home away from home yesterday.

(Since this has already gotten a bit long, I'll do this in another post - but we have now seen the Casa Rosada (Where Madonna played Eva Peron, in Evita, singing to the crowds), and had Gelato at (reportedly) the best Gelato shop in Buenos Aires.)

I'll just conclude this by saying that the challenges with the apartment have taught us A LOT about ourselves and about our desire and ability to travel to (and in) other countries, and I'll talk more about that at some point in the future.

Thank you for following along as we explore Buenos Aires, Argentina!!

We'll answer that soon...

2. What's the weather like? Is it summer there?

We're in the southern hemisphere, so the weather is the opposite season as the northern hemisphere. This means that it is just the beginning of fall down here. So, just as we were beginning to see the very first buds and even a flower or two right before we left Colorado, we are just beginning to see the leaves change colors and drop from the trees here in Argentina. The weather is still rather warm (high 70s to low 80s), and pleasant. It is definitely more humid here than in CO (but it's hard not to be).

March is the rainiest month here. We've experienced a few rainstorms. The rain here is very different. It comes down in sheets. It downpours for about 20-30 minutes, and then stops. It might do this 2 or 3 times during the night.

3. What's the food like?

We have yet to try parrilla (grilled meats - from every part of the cow, literally every part). Carrie, being (mostly) herbivore, won't try it, but Jonathan probably will give it a shot.

4. How are you getting places?

We're walking. Pretty much everywhere we go, we go on foot. And we're loving it!

5. Where are you in Buenos Aires?

We're in a neighborhood called Palermo. We're also kind of in the center of this neighborhood. Palermo is known to be one of the nicer neighborhoods in BA. We're quite fond of it. It has its "hippy" place, its "yuppy" place, and its "hip" place. Here's a map where you can see the neighborhoods of BA.

6. Have you seen Eva Peron's house yet?

No, not yet, but we plan to. We also plan to see where she's buried in the famous Recoleta cemetery. (Recoleta is another neighborhood in BA, and it borders Palermo.)

7. Is there really poop on the street?

Yes. We really have to keep an eye out for it. It's everywhere! People don't really clean up after their dogs. So, I wouldn't go around kicking leaves if I were you (you never know what's underneath them).

8. Are the taxis actually dangerous?

We've only ridden in a taxi once so far. We were fine. But, we were told by a friend to be sure and double count your change before you get out of a taxi to make sure that you got the right amount back. (Our friend didn't get correct change once, and it's sort of known that tourists are often short-changed in every major city in the world.)

9. What's the city like?

It's a big city. Big cities are a little dirty, noisy, and smoggy. That's how it is here. It's just like any other big city: constant motion, movement, and change. But this also means that there's really great shopping, food, people, activities, etc.

10. I saw in pictures that your bathroom has two toilets? Do all the bathrooms have this?

Every bathroom we've seen (the private bathrooms anyway) has had a bidet in it as well as a toilet. No, we haven't used it yet.

11. What's a bidet?

We don't really know, but according to Wikipedia: "Bidet is a French word for pony (and in Old French, bider meant to trot). This etymology comes from the fact that one rides a bidet much like one does a pony."

"You're staying at like, a resort, right?"
"How did you get that much time off of work?"
"Do you have friends who are Argentinian?"
"I'm sorry...How many weeks did you say you're going for?"

Most of these questions revolve around the basic question that no one's really asked directly, which is:

"A six-week "vacation" in South America? How Is That Even Possible?

We hope that by our example, we inspire others to do similar things in their lives, but here's the real answer to the question no one's asking directly.

How Is This Possible?
-------------------

In a lot of ways, I don't really know what to tell people about the idea that we're spending a good deal of time here in Buenos Aires.

Most people's lives are based around working a certain number of hours every week or every month at a JOB. That job is usually based in a specific location.

Emily and BoRyan (friends who are down here), are fortunate to have jobs with a company which allows them to work virtually.

But most people have that traditional job which requires that your life be structured around your work.

So when we say that we're going away for an extended period of time, we almost always get very puzzled looks. So we explain that we're actually going to Argentina to test out how we like living a lifestyle that isn't dependent on location. But that draws even more puzzlement and confusion from people about how that's even possible.

So we step back a bit, and explain that whether or not we're working, or earning income, has nothing to do with being "away".

And we are fortunate and blessed to have found a way to be able to have success with this kind of work.

It's come through a lot of late nights, a lot of work, a whole lot of learning, a ton of struggle, and it's come through using the awesome power of the Internet.

For most people, earning income without being tied to a location is such a foreign thought, that in order to explain it, I have to mentally step back from the picture and step back to where I started on my enterpreneurial journey - which is now nearly 10 years ago (and could probably even be traced all the way back to my parents' design wall printing business 15-20 years ago, but that's a whole other story).

10 years ago, I was really solidly introduced to the idea (through a guy named Dan Osborne - "Hi" to Dan if you're reading this...) that there could be something other than "go to school, get a good degree, so you can get a good job with good benefits." (And then work for 40 years at 40% (or less) of what you're worth so that you can retire on 40% of what wasn't cutting it (financially) to begin with. I knew that if you'd started in the job force prior to 1980, you would have the chance to actually succeed on the 40/40/40 plan, but I knew that gratuating in 1998, the 40/40/40 plan wasn't really all that realistic for me, because no one I know keeps jobs longer than 5-8 years anymore. But back in 1998, I just didn't know what the other opportunities could be).

One of the questions I was asked when I was first introduced to this kind of thinking was "If time and money weren't an issue for you, if you didn't have to have a job, and if you had virtually unlimited resources:
- Who would you be?
- Where would you go?
- What would you have?
- What kind of work would you do?"

And while going to Argentina feels like a new beginning, what I'm realizing is that being able to do what I am doing right now is a culmination of a process which began a long time ago.

And it's hard to sum all of that up for someone in a way that will make sense, without going into the explanation I have just taken you through while you're been reading this.

Having a partner alongside me to go with, to experience this new place together, is an amazing blessing (and in itself is a culmination and realization of things I've been working on for many years).

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Today, I'm realizing that even though this is a new journey, I've already come a thousand miles.

I'm so excited to see what Amazing and Great opportunities the next 10,000 miles will bring.