18 Hours in Buenos Aires

on returning to one of my favorite places in the world

Deep orange sunset landing, passengers clapping. I compliment the pilot on the way out, bien hecho, as cleaning staff wait to board. We have been shuttled airborne across 2000 kilometers of scorched earth, Patagonia to Buenos Aires, two and a half hours, for one hundred dollars. An insane value. We should clap.

Outside the terminal the humidity swallows me, jeans clinging to legs. Long line for taxis, so I walk five minutes and summon a car with the app built ten miles from my birthplace. The sky fades as a man drives me to the center, tapping the steering wheel to radio jazz, pedestrians flowing through urban arteries, a Saturday evening in the autonomous city of Buenos Aires.

I’ve been told horror stories about beggars everywhere, swarms of newly hatched mosquitoes, general insecurity due to the newest crisis económica. But it feels no different. It’s my tenth visit in 17 years, a full cumulative year of my life in this country, much in the capital. Maybe it feels the same because there’s always a crisis económica, or because I’ve never strayed too far from gringo-centro. The city has always struck me as perfectly safe, or at least, perfectly safe enough.

I move into a shabby-chic high-ceilinged 3-bedroom walking distance from Congress. Three and a half weeks for $825. I’ll only pay half of that, because a good friend and my younger brother will soon join. In the apartment I place nine crisp hundred-dollar bills on the kitchen table. In return, the manager counts out 76 thousand-peso notes.

Strolling two blocks along Rivadávia I encounter everything I need: a 24-hour supermarket, pharmacy, greengrocer, parrilla, fancy corner café, empanada joint, kioskos, and three ice cream shops. I bring home a bacon cheeseburger in a greasy paper bag from Mostaza, the Argentinian McDonalds, where the young attendant’s terminal repeatedly froze while his co-worker teased and flirted with him.

Goodbye, mountains. Goodbye, El Chaltén. Goodbye hikers and climbers and Couchsurfers and Warmshowers and blonde Bavarian biker Blanka. Nowhere else have I integrated as quickly as El Chaltén. Not Freiburg, not Wanaka, not Boulder, not South Lake Tahoe. The goodbyes happen spontaneously, casually, by virtue of doing my normal thing: Manocho at the bakery, Romi at the coffeeshop, other Romi at the hostel, Maca at salsa class, Sofia and Vero at Friday night tango, Luz and Flor at the bar, Memu at ice cream, Iara at the outdoor concert, Jenni on the street, Juan through the window, Herman and Patricio at the snack shack, Mima upside-down in the street. To Mica, the one who made it all possible, I bid goodbye multiple times: dropping off a paperback, returning spices I borrowed, coworking upstairs at the restaurant with decent wifi, and ultimately, a glass of vino tinto at my place. To the mountains I said goodbye three days earlier, alone, atop a favorite perch.

What are you doing here, in this city? In the past you’ve run around goal-setting, box-checking, shepherding teens, exploring, meeting expats, dancing tango, sweating, straining your neck at the sight of the next impossibly attractive Argentinian. Today you still strain your neck, but there are no boxes, nothing to see, nothing to achieve, no lofty dance goals, no teens to show around. Familiarity outweighs novelty. This is a home. You stroll.

I carry a cafecito four blocks to the park where men lounge on the monument and women watch young children play and massive golden retrievers cavort with featherweight white poodles. It’s a perfect late-summer t-shirt morning. One tiny mosquito lands on my arm. With caffeine a seriousness sets in, a seeming profundity.

I migrate to an outdoor café where a young gringo is receiving a basic Spanish lesson from a cute local. Gray-haired estadounidenses Facetime with grandkids. The café workers jog from patio to tiny kitchen, placing little plates on trays, staring blank-faced out the window in momentary respite. A delivery man waits outside the neighboring courtyard, single plastic bag in hand, checking his phone, wearing his motorcycle helmet, patient yet impatient. A mother and daughter sit engrossed in their phones until coffee and croissants arrive. They take pictures of their food and drink, then take pictures of each other with food and drink, then send these pictures to parties unknown, then return their attention to the screens.

This afternoon I will be paid $150 for a single hour of online consultation about alternative education, almost as much as a full month’s work at minimum wage in Argentina. What does this mean? My mind gravitates to questions of economics, history, development, governance, and the origins of wealth.

The grand leafy tree-lined streets are still here. So are the tiled sidewalks and the dog shit landmines. Porteños viejos still sit in their corner cafés, say hello with single kisses on the cheek, goodbye the same. Beauty remains. Dignity remains.

Welcome home.