We made it to Buenos Aires Argentina after a couple of very long flights.
It’s never short, as is a long way from Napa, California. USA!! (I traveled to Cordoba Argentina a few years ago to go Dove Hunting (that’s another story)). This time we flew from San Francisco to Miami FL. to Buenos Aires. Total elapsed time from leaving the house to touch down in Buenos Aires was about 18 hours of travel.

Getting through customs was easy, but we had a mix-up with the driver who was going to pick us up. He was waiting at the normal foreign arrival point Terminal “A”, but because our plane was late they rerouted us to terminal “B”. He knew when we were to arrive but didn’t know our exact flight number or what we looked like. About ½ through our phone conversation trying to figure out where we both were at, his cell phone died.  Well we stayed put and eventually found each other. The person who picked us up was Robert, the apartment rental company manager. Fortunately he spoke excellent English as he grew up in southern California. On the way to the apartment he educated us on many parts of the city and most importantly the best restaurants around our neighborhood. (Palermo Las Canitas).

To get more of the feel of what it would be like to live in Buenos Aires, I had decided to rent an apartment. I had my assistant Holly check online to find a number of options. Then I went on Craigslist.com and found this apartment. It is a newer two bedroom, bath and a half apartment. It’s really quite nice with everything we need. It’s on the 4th floor and the way the building is set up you have a security door at the front entrance to the building. Then you have a private elevator shared by all the two bedroom apartments in the front of the ten story building. The back of the building is comprised of two one bedroom apartments on each floor and they have an elevator servicing them. Therefore you are seldom waiting for an elevator.  Which is really nice because I am not a patient guy. The apartment itself has a high security door with a steel frame door and over a dozen deadbolts just like a safe. I doubt that a SWAT team could get through that door short of using explosives. I definitely feel secure.

However right below us is a Major Street and the traffic is LOUD, 24 hours a day. Coming from a Suburban neighborhood, it is REALLY DIFFICULT to Sleep!! But hopefully we will soon get used to it…..

We arrived at the apartment on Friday August 1st, mid-day. Basically we hung out at the apartment (I took a short nap) until dinner (supper for some of you). Here they eat really late. The restaurants open between 8pm and 9pm. At that time they are almost empty even on a Friday night. But from 10 to midnight and beyond they are booming. After walking around the neighborhood for a while, We decided to go for it and eat at what we were told was one of the best steak restaurants in our area, the CampoBravo. It is! 

The three of us had Ribeye Steaks and trimmings with wine and sodas for a total bill of $147 pesos. That’s less then $50. Which is pretty good when you consider that where I live it would been about $50 EACH or More for the same thing!

Saturday we slept in, (we only got an hour or two of sleep on the plane). Then we took a cab to a tourist agency I had found. The main one we were suppose to use answered the phone but they didn’t have anyone that spoke English and my Spanish will only get me a bathroom and a cold beer if I am lucky. So it was frustrating. And the second agency I got a hold of only had one part of their phone message in English. Which basically total us to press 2 For English. Just kidding. But it was all in Spanish except for the last part in English that said hold for an operator.

Well, no one answered. But because I am a “Message to Garcia” kind of guy (if that reference means nothing to you get the book “The Ultimate Success Secret” written by Dan Kennedy and myself. It’s part of our “Professional Gunsmithing Course Business Success package” But if you contact us at 1-800-797-0867 and request it, I will send it to you for just $10. I hate to give it away but part of the message is that you Don’t Quit. And I don’t!!) I started punching buttons until I got a hold of someone and they found someone who could speak English for me. So we got a tour in. Actually I recommend the company www.Tangol.com

We took a City Tour through them and I lined up a couple of more that I will be telling you about. Whenever I go to a new city whether it is in the USA or abroad, I always try and get a city tour my first or second day there. It’s always worth the money as it enables me to understand the “Lay of the land” and to note the various places that I want to go back and see.

I will never forget being in Rome, Italy for the first time and finding out on the Tour that the day before I had walked by the Pantheon and didn’t even know it. What a bummer it would have been to have missed it. So again I recommend you include a city tour as part of your first day or two on the ground anywhere in the world.

Anyway if you don’t do so, make sure you take a city tour each time you land in an unfamiliar place. Hey some of them are Hokey, but overall you will get some good intel.

So that evening we went to an Italian Restaurant. A large immigrant portion of the population before and after the turn of the 19th Century were Italians and the influence here is strong. The food again was excellent. This time the staff spoke very little English. To order I told the waiter to pick for me the “Muy Bueno” pasta dish and wine. I was very pleased with his choices! The pasta was excellent and the wine, a fine red Malbec by Alamos by the Catenas Family. It was about $11 a bottle. An equivalent wine would have been $40 or more in California.

I neglected to mention that the exchange rate is about 3.1 Argentine Pesos to one Dollar. We are very fortunate that for now, the dollar still has a great deal of value around the world.  The minimum wage here is 700 pesos (233 dollars more or less). The average wage of the middle class is about 2,000 to 3,000 pesos. Less than $1,000 a month.

Today we went Walking through the San Telmo district which is famous for Tango and we saw some street performances. Tomorrow night we are going to see a professional Tango show with dinner. It wouldn’t seem right to come to Buenos Aires and not see Tango!!

In the street markets, Jacob bought four miniature lead soldiers two that were British replicas from the Falkland war, one with a Sterling SMG (a favorite of mine) and one with a Bren Gun. The other two were from the other side of the same war, Argentine Royal Marines (one with a FAL and the other with a Belt Fed MAG). They are very detailed and Jacob is adding them to his lead solider collection. (If any of you know where to get lead solider molds, let me know).

To get there in the first place we took the underground (subway) to the Plaza De Mayo in the center of Buenos Aires and then walked about ten blocks down Defensa Street which is blocked off and full of street vendors. I purchased a hand made Chess Set, with one side being “Tango” and the other side “Gauchos” for $24. Jake and I played a game while waiting for over 40 minutes to have our order taken in a restaurant. This was a first because up until this point the service has been excellent and the people VERY friendly. After getting a cab ride back to JUMBO ( a very large super market the size of a Big Walmart) we picked up some food for the apartment. We walked back to the apartment and cooked up some vegetables to go with our yummy left-overs from the last two nights.

Going through a foreign Grocery store is really an experience. Particularly when you don’t speak the language. Everything looks different and is packaged differently. For example Milk (Leche) is packaged in box cartons and Bags. Weird, I had to look around for quite a while to find it. The funniest thing I purchased was my Coffee. (Got to have it!!!) – I purchased a bag of “Yerba Mate, Caf©”. I thought it was Coffee. WRONG! It is an Herbal Tea of sorts that has all kinds of supposed benefits and definitely an acquired taste (I tried it.) BUT it is definitely NOT Coffee. And I asked before I purchased. So much for my communication skills….

That was at the local market at the base of our apartment. At the JUMBO I double checked and got ground coffee for a drip maker. I will let you know if it really is the right stuff in the Morning! All for now.

Good night from Buenos Aires!!

Gene Kelly, President AGI