Day One. Landed in Buenos Aires, and taxi ride to San Antonio De Areco. Ariel was my new friend. We both went to get lunch for my first parilla (bigtime grilled food) when we arrived. He also arranged through the tourist office a room for me with a local woman. She made a great breakfast the next morning, which was after a great meal the night before. It was hard not to get carried away with all the crazy waitresses working in that restaurant. Ariel was so nice, he allowed me to leave my bike box with him. I simply needed to call him when I was back in the capitol to get it back. He picked me up on my last day at the youth hostel Limehouse. He had the box and even had some tape for me. This was great and made it real easy to return. Then, he drove me to the airport, but not before stopping at his house for a mate.
At the airport, the first thing I did was take out 600 pesos from the ATM, that's about $200 dollars. Then I went outside to get a ride out of there. I had my bike in a big box and saddle bags and one dry bag. So quite a bit of stuff. Within about two minutes, an older man came up to me and asked me where I wanted to go. I told him I wasn't really sure, but that I had a big box for my bike. He acted like it was no problem, and within seconds his son Arial arrived on the corner. After getting the bike in the back, which was pretty easy for this hatchback, we were off. The photos above are from the first few minutes in Argentina. We made it to San Antonio de Areco and he immediately found a small tourist office. Once inside, Ariel arranged a room for me to stay with an older woman. He got the address from the young woman at the office, and we left. Our next stop was a restaurant. I was super hungry, and he was too so we ate at a rather nice place, and he ordered a huge amount of meat that was brought out in a small bbq still cooking. There was sausage, steak, chicken, pork and this one sausage called musstaffa. It is "blood sausage" and I did not like it. There was also a small amount of intestines to be had, which was real hard to chew. But all in all, the steak, chicken, and pork was real good. So were the french fries. And of course our first bottle of wine.
After the meal, he drove me to the house where I would spend my first night. It was pretty nice staying there, and I went for a several hour sleep once I got there. After waking up, I went along for a bite to eat, and made it to a pretty nice spot for dinner. Then, it was getting late for me, so I hit up a bar for one beer then went to bed. That was a great first day there. Day Two was to involve some bike riding, which I was most excited for.
