Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Arriving to Buenos Aires

Today was interesting..

I originally thought I was arriving at the Jorge Newbery airport, which is conveniently located within 2 miles of my hostel. When I arrived in Buenos Aires, I quickly realized that I was not in fact at that airport, but rather at the I was the cities other airport, which is roughly 20 miles away.

So after getting my bearings, I decided I would take the colectivo (public bus) into Buenos Aires for roughly 50 cents USD instead of paying ~35 USD for a cab. At first, I was very excited about my street savvy--I was taking the local's bus.

Ok so this did NOT turn out to be easy. Basically there are about 140 bus lines in Buenos Aires, which are not well marked. After an hour of watching buses go by at the airport, I figured out which one was my line, and proceeded to take it for 2 hours into the center of town. This was pretty awesome as I got to see many of the different poorer barrios as well as the beautiful city center all from one convenient seat. I got to see the development from rural setting to urban metropolis through the bus system.

Fun fact: the buses don't make complete stops for patrons wanting to get off. This makes them fun because they go faster, and exiting like a game show where contestants try not to get killed.

To make a long story short, after 5 hours and a visit to the wrong hostel I got to my temporary home. A cab would have taken 40 minutes--totally worth it.

As promised, here is a picture from the plane of me flying over the andes.

3 comments:

  1. we've already started a collection for when you get kidnapped.. so far we've gotten like $1.87. Thats about how much you're worth to us at this point. Enjoy!

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  2. Whats the fun of the journey if you don't get lost!! As the commenter above said, I shall start a collection at CCLS too :)) enjoy!!

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  3. Sounds great Chase! Hope your having an amazing time! You could probably record these busses and citizens exiting styles and turn it into a youtube game show!

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