Argentina…I could spend my life here!
I woke up at 3:30am with Jenny in Brazil because she had to fly back to Guatemala at 7am, my flight wasn’t until 9am. I arrived in Buenos Aires without a hitch at about 2:30pm after hitting a connection in Montevideo. Strolled up to my hostel, Hostel Estoril, just shortly after and was greated with a smile by the desk clerk, Damien. I chilled for a few hours and got my ideas of what I might like to do, but was too exhausted to get moving or to nap.
I met some other travelers there and we went to fetch some empanadas around 8pm. (Cash register noise) “Tres empanadas cuestan 8 pesos.” Translation: 3 empanadas = <US$3. 3 empanadas can make you feel very full when you are very dehydrated, it’s 90 degrees outside, and you haven’t eat much all day. We started to drink on our rooftop terrace just shortly after we crushed the empanadas. Actually we drank 4 bottles of wine (3 white, 1 red) between 3 of us. This night had potential!
I started to time-travel (lose track of details) around the end of bottle number 4, before leaving for The Crobar. Still not sure if I drank beer after the wine or not, but at this point it doesn’t really matter. We went to Crobar at 2:30am, it was supposed to be one of the best clubs in BsAs (Buenos Aires). We got there and it was 50 pesos to get in and no one saw it coming. So “drunken Joe” decided to spot 5 other people on his credit card…not my usual act when meeting some peeps for the 1st time in a foreign country but they seemed cool, I was drunk, and so I said, “This is your chance to earn a little Karma, kids! You can pay me back tomorrow or you can go to hell! It’s completely up to you.” Whatayouknow, they all paid me back the next day.
So we finally get into the bar…..and the shit was lame, I was thinking, “Ok…so this is Pacha? Pacha was way cooler in Ibiza…I cannot believe they would stand behind this kind of product.” I was corrected once I opened my mouth, “It is Crobar, not Pacha…Pacha is closed for improvements.” But it was dead, where the hell are all the people? So I grabbed a companion and myself 2 alcoholic beverages and the music started to pick up. BAD CHOICE: I picked Red Bull & Vodka. I was tired, what else should I pick? We started gettin’ our dance on and then all of a sudden I wake up.
Actually, I was woken up. And this guy would not stop speaking Spanish and shaking my arm. “Ouch…my head hurts,” I thought. So Dude was asking me what room I was staying in (I now recognize that I was passed out on the rooftop terrace)…I say 511. He didn’t like that number so he tried to pick me up and escort me from the table to the elevator. 511 wasn’t a good number because the hostel was on the 1st and 6th floors. 511 was also the last room I had in Brazil. I was woken up in Spanish at 6am after passing out on a terrace…”What do you want from me?” Finally, I just said my name and “1st floor” over and over until he let me go and I went to bed.
I came to find out that there was a 2nd Red Bull & Vodka and that club was awesome and that I had fun. I got home around 4:30am, just 25 hours after waking up. The reason it wasn’t busy at 2:30am was because it opened at 2:30 and no one was there yet. There are clubs here that stay open til 10 or 11am and open at 2 or 4 or 6am. There is no such thing as time here, just what time it is. We eat dinner between 10pm and Midnight, we go out to clubs around 3am and there are no guarantees when you come home. I can tell you from experience that it is sometimes better to forget your watch at home. Damn, I love this place…
