I arrived in BA and made my way to the hotel I had booked for the last leg of my trip. The man who showed me to my room must have thought I resembled a caveman as the expression on my face while he showed me how to use the air conditioner probably looked like the excited caveman in the Geicko commercials. (Low, medium, high settings….Que Bueno!). Eventually before he left the room he reccomended I take my bag off and take a seat because, standing there with my bag still on my shoulders, I must have looked as though I thought I was only taking a tour of the room and not actually staying there.

Coming back to Buenos Aires has been the biggest culture shock of my entire journey, except for the one back to the states that awaits me (in a few hours). However, even though the never ending city seems to have the pace of life of New York, the laid back attitude of everyone seems to put you at ease despite the hustle and bustle. I have always liked the Spanish way of acknowledging that someone has thanked you, as opposed to the English way. In Spanish they say ¨de nada¨ after being thanked, which, directly translated, means ¨of nothing¨. But in Argentina they take it a step further by saying ¨no, por favor¨, meaning ¨no, please¨ when someone thanks them, as if they mean, no, please, thank you!. Almost as if they are continuously deflecting your attempts to thank them, where as in the English language, ¨you´re welcome¨ seems to simply acknowledge the fact they someone has thanked you.

 My first night back in BA I went to a cafe for some coffee and a ham and cheese sandwhich. After 2 cups of coffee and my sandwhich I asked for the bill only to realize that I had left all of my money on the table in my hotel room. I apologized and assured the waiter I would come back with his money. The waiter simply put up his hand to stop my rambling and without asking how far away my hotel was or how long it would take, he said ¨Tranquilo, amigo…¨, ¨Relax, friend, I´ll see you in a bit¨.  This man decided to trust me without reason other than the fact that I said I would be back. Also, when I was in the market buying some gifts for friends and family I frequently asked vendors ¨how much is this….this….this?¨, and then said thankyou without buying anything. They always returned my thankyou with the sweet sounding ¨no por favor¨ or the even better ¨al contrario¨, ¨on the contrary¨, Nothing like the grunt you would expect from a big city market place after not buying anything.

 Saturday night Hank, Sofia, Dakin, and I went out to dinner and had the usual late night Buenos Aires experience.  Arrive at the restaurant at 11, dinner until about 1:30, drinks until 2:30, arrive at the club by 3, get in the door by 3:30, go home at about 6:30 or 7am.  Argentines seem to operate on little sleep…it must be that powerful coffee.

On Monday I took a day trip to Colonial in Uruguay.  I rented a moped for the whole day and drove it up and down the coast, occasionally stopping to rest on the beach.  At the end of the day, with fifteen minutes until I had to return the bike, the damn thing died.  It said there was no gas even though there was plenty.  This was a huge problem given that I had to return the bike in fifteen minutes and be at the port to check in in 45 minutes….unfortunately I had not allowed time in my schedule for moped malfunctions.  I was even more stressed because I had to give my passport in order to rent the moped, and if I didn’t get back in time they would close the stand and take my passport.  I tried to flag down a few trucks to see if I could put my moped in the back of their beds, but my frantic waves with both arms were only returned with friendly waves instead of a ride.

I saw few guys who had motorcycles and asked them if they knew anything about these things.  One of them responded, “you speak English”  so I described the problem to him and after a few tests he said it was an electrical problem and offered to use his cell phone.  With two minutes left until closing I contacted the rental place with the number on the receipt, he came and fixed the bike, and followed me to the gas station and then returned my passport to me. 

So my simple day trip to Uruguay had to end in a frantic stressful last half hour.  But it lead to the interaction with the guy at the rental place who was extremely kind and apologized for the malfunction as well as the kid, about my age, who ran some diagnostics on my moped and then offered me to use his phone.  I had heard that the Uruguayan people were very kind and welcoming, but would not have experienced this had my moped not broken down.