Buenos Aires is an incredible city, full of action and noise and grime and beauty, colossal avenues and endless cobblestone, ornately carved churches next to ugly apartment buildings. I was never able to find the cathedral, which I think is nestled among a bunch of banks and stores.

Not often do I find a city that loves statues of naked women as much as I do (pictures pending). The northern part of the city center is dominated by large parks, filled with statues and people playing futbol. Nearby is the huge famous-people’s cemetery, a city of tomb monuments, of every style if its huge, criss-crossed with passageways so mazelike that you can take two turns and never see another non-dead being.

On the weekends, outside the cemetery is the Feria Hippie, one of Buenos Aires’s many crafts/trinkets/antiques/art fairs (this one specializing in my pot-smoking friends). This city throbs with its fairs (on weekends). On Sundays, several blocks near the hostel I stayed at (in San Telmo) are taken over by little outdoor stands and street performers and music and food and most of all, lots of people. Everyone seems to come out to the fairs.

My second night, I went out drinking with a group of Spanish-speakers from the hostel (a first for me). Before getting drunk, we stopped at a Tango Bar, mostly to watch. Tango is definitely a dance I can get into– rather than salsa’s bag-of-tricks, tango seems to be a humming duet of bodies. And after a few songs, the music changed, and suddenly, everyone got up and broke out in the SCA Maltese Branle! Bizarre.

I have more stories from Buenos Aires, like catching a parrot and late-night talk of Derrida and the kick-ass hostel I stayed at, but now I’m a full location behind (I’m about to leave Iguazu Falls for Brazil– its own odyssey), so I’ll see you there.