Buenos Aires, Argentina
I arrived in Buenos Aires on the day of my 23rd birthday, which felt like a fairly decent way to kick off a new year of life. There’s something about landing in South America for the first time that hits differently - the heat, the noise, the Spanish flying at you from every direction. I was equal parts excited and terrified.
To get my bearings I jumped on one of those hop-on hop-off city tour buses. Normally I’d consider myself above the tourist bus (I wouldn’t be, but I’d like to think so), yet when you’ve just arrived in a massive city with no clue where anything is, it’s actually a pretty smart move. Buenos Aires is a beautiful city - wide boulevards, European-style architecture, and an energy that’s hard to describe. It feels like someone took Paris and gave it a Latin American heartbeat.
That evening I met up with a group of people and we went out for dinner and drinks to celebrate the birthday. There’s nothing quite like spending your birthday with a bunch of people you’ve just met in a foreign country. Everyone’s in the same boat, so the barriers come down pretty quickly and before you know it you’re clinking glasses with strangers who feel like old mates.
The next day I headed to La Boca to see the famous Bombonera stadium - home of Boca Juniors. Even if you’re not a massive football fan, walking around La Boca is an experience. The colourful buildings, the street performers doing tango, the vendors trying to sell you everything under the sun. The stadium itself has an incredible atmosphere even when it’s empty. You can almost hear the ghosts of Maradona dribbling past defenders.
That night we did the Argentine Experience for dinner, which is essentially a cooking class meets dinner party where you learn to make empanadas and steak the Argentine way, all while drinking a dangerous amount of Malbec. It was brilliant - the food was unreal and I picked up a few cooking tricks that I promptly forgot by the next morning. After dinner we headed to Kika nightclub, where I discovered that Argentines take their nightlife very seriously. The place didn’t really get going until well after midnight, which at that point in the trip was still a foreign concept to me.
Buenos Aires was a whirlwind introduction to South America, and it set the tone perfectly for the months ahead. From here, the next stop was a ferry ride across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay.
