With the sun setting on travel opportunities for the year, I decided that six days Thanksgiving were just enough to continue my continental checklist and make a stop in trusty Colorado Springs.
The saga began with a 4 AM departure from my cozy apartment home and a frantic run through my typical parking and bus-riding schemes. Due to Thanksgiving flight loads and the nature of standby travel, I thought I would be lucky to leave LAX after a five or six hour wait. Surprisingly, the sea of full flights parted just in time for me to walk on to the second plane of the morning. Score.
A seven-hour layover in Dallas might have been dull if a strong majority of my Texas-social-circle was not passing through the same airport en route to their own holiday plans in the Rectangular Republic. As such, I was pleased to cross paths with more friends in Dallas than I usually see in Colorado and to eat lunch with my brother Mike. Thanks for stopping my way Doog, Brittany, Sarah, and Abigail. It appears that I’m the only American interested in spending Thanksgiving in the Southern Hemisphere, thus meaning the second flight of the day was wide open.
After thirteen hours of flight and non-alarm-clock-governed sleep, I was thrilled to step into Buenos Aires at 8 AM the next morning. I immediately set to work in the usual quest for a route to the city center and a hostel accommodation. My friends at Lonely Planet didn’t let me down and after a series of buses, subways, and “navigational re-calibrations,” I was checked into a hostel by 11 AM.
Following settling into the hostel, I hit the open Spanish-speaking road in search of as much Argentine culture as I could absorb in 36 hours. I hadn’t walked three blocks before wrapping myself up in my first cultural spectacle: a noontime protest at Plaza de Mayo. The grievance of the demonstrators still eludes me (cut me some slack: I took French in high school) but it was certainly exhilarating to watch these folks hold up traffic while banging drums and carrying a block-long Argentine flag. Seemingly splendidly, the protest terminated at the next stop on my tourist top ten: the Argentine “White House,” quite rightly called the Pink House.
After absorbing the basic political freedoms and institutions of the city, I set to work for some economic exposure by traversing Florida Street, a mile or more-long pedestrian mall. I soon discovered Argentina’s consumer secret weapon: bargain prices without the Third World surroundings. Financial crises earlier in the decade have re-valued the Argentine economy such that it’s an amazing bargain for the rest of us.
The waning hours of the afternoon spent in the shopping sojourn soon gave way to a dusk rainshower. Realizing that my jacket was still in the Bear Republic, I decided that the best escape from the rain lie in Argentina’s Armory Museum. For anyone that played “war” as a child, this place is a WMD candy store. The collection included everything from spears to missile launchers and a number of lesser-known combat contraptions (horse gas masks, anyone?).
While profitable, my afternoon saga on the streets of the Argentine capitol left me a solid fifteen blocks northwest of my hostel home. Realizing that evening dinner plans were quickly approaching, I executed an about-face and scurried back to my hostel. In another case of travelers taking care of travelers, Virginia, a friend from my freshman seminar, studied abroad last year in Buenos Aires and had been kind enough to put me in contact with her host family. Perpetuating their generosity towards American students, the Merodio family was kind enough to invite me into their home for dinner, an evening that quickly became the highlight of the trip.
As I stood knocking at the Merodio’s door, I wasn’t sure what to expect on the other side of the cultural threshold: here I am, an American whose only Spanish knowledge came from Taco Bell, stepping into a home of a family on an entirely different continent. Thankfully, the Merodios—and their three daughters—were marvelously gracious and even spoke a good deal of English. In addition to offering some home-cooked beneficence, they gladly shared hours of intriguing conversation on topics ranging from life with foreign exchange students, to Argentine geography, to current political attitudes. I told them it was worth the trip just for them and that was the truth.
The following morning, I ventured out to continue my city tour in the opposite direction of the previous day’s exploration. Most of the pre-noon hours were siphoned off in stops at local markets and in an interesting, albeit Spanish, bookstore. After grabbing lunch, I set out to visit Casa Holden, Pepperdine’s outpost in Buenos Aires. Though rather surprised that a Pepperdine student who wasn’t in the study abroad program had somehow found a way to their doorstep two days before Thanksgiving, the staff was kind enough to let me in—following a very close inspection of my student identification cards—and offer a short tour of the sharp facilities. After lodging my silent protest of noticing that the Hong Kong program was not supplied with its own swimming pool, I savored the company of some fellow Americans and again hit the open road.
In preparation for an evening departure, the last stop of the day was an American-minded shopping trip to pickup some gifts for folks at home. I found the recommended store and completed my shopping list without a hitch—the hiccup came when I returned to the subway stop that I had dropped me off at the shopping center, only to discover it had curiously closed. My nervousness grew with a quick recollection of the facts: its late afternoon, I’m catching a flight in just a few hours, I’m on the wrong side of the city from my hostel, and it appears that public transportation has decided to take the rest of the day off. The very existence of this post gives away the happy ending to the story, though: after observing the continued closure of the subway for nearly an hour, I eventually found a taxi and played “dumb tourist” until he dropped me off somewhere in the vicinity of downtown.
The rest, they say, is history.
