Buenos Aires! Modern Tango, Giant Flower, Japanese gardens, Percussion concert! Taking public transportation sucks!

So finally after all the craziness of the engine again I was finally in the city of my dreams, Buenos Aires.

I’ve always wanted to visit this fascinating city and finally I was here!  Initially when I first planned this trip, this was my final destination where I was going to fly out of along with my bike. But then I said, might as well visit Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay while I’m here.

So the motorcycle is at the dealership for the next 2 weeks while parts are ordered and it’s reconstructed from scratch, so time to explore!

So my best friend’s dad is Argentinean, and has family is in Buenos Aires. So I was fortunate to gets some free accommodation with his sister’s (Silvana) son, Gabriel, that’s around my age.

The very night I arrive in Buenos Aires, I check out the amazing apartment Gabriel has

Gabriel's cat, that has two different colored eyes, and uses my backpack as a home

My bed

The apartment

and then I’m thrown into the amazing city by attending an art opening that was cureated by Silvana.

It was very colorful and had a vast array of lively people.

Some of the art was… umm…. Interesting to say the least.

I seem to find the beauty of the world more interesting rather than the drawings  and paintings depicting or symbolically attempting to send a message in an artistic way, but hey, different strokes for different folks! I enjoy getting lost in the world and other like to paint, the world is wonderful!

Had dinner with Silvana’s other son, Alan.

The next day I had dinner with Silvana, her mom, husband and mother in law. The food was great and the apartment they lived in was exquisite. The elevator was one of those real old one’s that doesn’t run on electricity and has the old school buttons.

Afterward Gabriel invited me to see a modern Tango show.

It was a Tango orchestra but with young people that played in a modern rock way. It was pretty cool.

Met some of his friends and had a good time.

The next day was spent researching on the computer. As it’s towards the end of this journey, now I have to decide where the cheapest flights are from, if I’m going to sell my motorcycle or not, find out how expensive it is to ship it by sea, or air etc.

So I placed numerous ads for my bike online hoping someone will alleviate me of the hassle of shipping the bike back home, the money I will spend on shipping from what ‘m told might come out to half the value of the motorcycle itself. So time to research all the options.

After a complete computer day I had to get out.

I tried using the public transportation. But this city is so huge it’s extremely confusing and I kept getting lost.

Its amazing that 90% of the population of this country lives in 2% of the land, or some crazy statistic like that.

 It took a bus ride, a train ride and then a metro ride to finally get to the center of the city where I walked around.

Saw the memorial for he solders of Argentina that died in the Falkland island war with Britain not too long ago.

More statues

Big boat.

Cool bridge

Took a tour of the white house aka the pink house of Buenos Aires.

Ugly view of it from the back

5 de Mayo plaza where the mansion looks over

There was lots of art, in fact the entire tour was about the art exhibit inside the place and nothing really interesting about the political system or house itself, which kind of sucked, but still got to walk around the place and see where the president resides and does her work.

The presidents room

Even got a picture of the Che

Throughout this journey people have compared me to Che Guevara say I'm doing the same journey. Fact is I"m doing it bigger, although some of our experiences with the motorcycle may be very similar, I believe we both had an intriguing experience in accordance to the time we lived in.

Tour groupies

The city is big, reminds me of New York City, but better in my taste.

And just like NY, has some funny and crazy people.

And has some great live music on the streets.

There’s lots of architecture and monuments as well.

I was most looking forward to visiting the planetarium, but it was closed for renovations.

Facebook is taking over the world!

More statues around

Japanese gardens were gorgeous and peaceful.

Coy fish

The giant metal flower open in the day and closes at night, pretty awesome.

The university was ridiculously huge!

Other famous sites.

Later on that night, went to the coolest concert ever.

It was a percussion ensemble with everything you can imagine.

They switched around directing each other adding beats and rhythms to the music.

It was all improvisation but it was so cool it was beyond cool. They were always in rhythm and from my musician point of view did a great job at everything.