SOUTH AMERICAN AARON

Mi Nueva Vida Colombiana

2010-11-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

So I'm living in Bogotá now, WTF?

Here is an album that I will be constantly updating to give you guys all a look into my new Colombian life. Enjoy!

Mi Nueva Vida Colombiana

Time to catch everybody up

2010-11-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

Well I've been slacking. Big time. I've been incredibly busy turning my sneaker hobby bucketfeet into the real deal, so I haven't had much time to update you guys!

Over the last few months I've spent more time in airports and on airplanes than I care to describe, but it's been a blast. From Mendoza, Argentina to Colombia to Chicago to Shanghai to Buenos Aires to Brazil, I've been all over the place.

The big big news is I no longer live in Argentina, I actually have made the move to Bogotá, Colombia, where I will be through New Years before I make the big, more permanent move to....you'll never guess: CHICAGO. Yep, making a journey back to the Land 'o the Free!

Since there are just too many stories to tell, too many anecdotes and things to remember, I am going to leave you guys with my most recent photo albums from Facebook. Enjoy!!

Mendoza

Colombian Coast

Colombian Interior

Chicago/Indiana

Shanghai

Buenos Aires and Brazil (Floripa and Rio) with the Family

2+ Years in Buenos Aires

New Posts Coming...I Swear

2010-10-11T16:59:00.001-07:00

Hey guys, sorry I have been so MIA. I have been incredibly busy with my bucketfeet venture. Stay tuned for new and hilarious stories soon!

End of the Sueño

2010-07-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, a beautiful fall day in Buenos Aires, Argentina, thousands upon thousands of faithful Argentinos descended upon Plaza San Martin to watch the 2010 World Cup Quarterfinal match against powerhouse Germany. The mood was incredible until....well the 2nd minute of play when Germany began its romp. Finishing 4-0 to knock Argentina out of the tournament, Germany dominated from the get go. Unfortunately for me it was the only match I got to see in one of these large public viewing parties, but I'm glad I went. I have here a bunch of photos and videos to give you all a sense of the experience, I can only imagine how cool it must have been when they were winning. Damn that pyschic octopus to hell !

More videos to come later, YouTube is working slow...

Mustache Mania!

2010-06-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

For those of you that were wondering why I had a mustache, it was all part of a bet. This bet however turned into a sort of "playoff beard" type of adventure. My good friend Will and I decided to see who could last the longest with a mustache, with a bottle of Fernet on the line. When we both discovered that neither of us would back down we decided to just grow them through the US run in the World Cup, which sadly ended yesterday. So here are a couple pictures, 7 weeks with a mustache is a long time. Especially when it starts curling into your lip...

Bittersweet

2010-06-26T15:57:00.001-07:00

You have all probably been seeing the "reaction" videos being floated around the web these days, so I thought I'd hop on the bandwagon. Unfortunately the US has been knocked out of the World Cup by Ghana but this video still means something. Thank you US Soccer for the fun, thrilling times you gave us in this years Cup!

This video was taken at the Northside Bar in San Telmo, Buenos Aires.

View from the Top

2010-06-25T13:02:00.000-07:00

One of the things I miss most about living in Buenos Aires, is the lack of good view spots. This city is so damn flat! Fortunately some friends of mine live in a 1950's-era monster of a building they have nicknamed the "Death Star" that has an amazing terraza some 30 floors up. I decided to take them up on the offer to snap some photos to give you all a good sense of the magnitude of this city. Note that in the very last photo, you can see Uruguay across the Rio de la Plata.

Reaction to Donovan goal in the US

2010-06-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

Thank you Señor Ben Hyman for this amazing video of people in Seattle celebrating what they are calling the "Miracle on Grass": Landon Donovan's game-winning goal against Algeria in the 91st minute to help the US advance to the "octavos".

Arg v. Greece

2010-06-24T10:03:00.000-07:00

Argentina beat Greece on Tuesday to solidify their place in the "octavos". Once again people went nuts, this video was taken from my balcony as soon as the game was called. It's kind of unfortunate that I watched it at home, a friend and I tried to go down to one of the many fanfests that they've set up with huge screens, but we weren't let in because they were at capacity. Anyways enjoy!

Spanish School Commercial

2010-06-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

My two roommates Chris and Agustin, as well as a friend of ours Tatiana were picked to help out with a Spanish language school by starring in their new commercial series. They ended up getting the job because a friend of ours, Arash, was in charge of the shooting. Apparently there are 2 more to come!

An A's Fan in Buenos Aires

2010-06-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

I saw this guy sitting on his motorcycle outside of a club with a couple girls drinking champagne and couldn't believe my eyes that he had an A's jacket so I went up and asked if I could take a picture. I explained to him how weird it was to see anything A's related down here and he just laughed, he had no idea who they were nor that they were a baseball team.

On another sports note, what an effort by our boys in South Africa! Shame when a bad call changes a game, all we can do is focus on Algeria!

Have a great weekend!

Diego Maradona: Sick Guy of the Week

2010-06-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

Vamooo Argentina! For those in the Northern Hemisphere that don't recognize him, this is Diego Maradona, arguably one of, if not the greatest players to ever play the game of futbol. He is now coaching Argentina's national team.

Revolutionary War 2.0

2010-06-12T17:51:00.001-07:00

It couldn't be a more awesome way for the United States to get started in the World Cup than to face our former Limey occupiers! We didn't get the win we wanted but a 1-1 draw is nothing to complain about! Here is a hilarious, yet slightly redneck, commercial to get the blood pumping.

Argentina 1 - Nigeria 0

2010-06-12T17:42:00.000-07:00

For the next month or so this blog will be dominated by all things futbol, considering that's about the only thing people are and will be talking about in this part of the world. The 2010 FIFA World Cup officially started yesterday with Mexico v. South Africa and France v. Uruguay, but unofficially it started today for los Argentinos. A decent showing this cold, grey, rainy morning gave Argentina a 1-0 victory over Nigeria. I have here a video taken from the window of my bedroom after the final whistle had been blown to give Argentina that 1st round victory. Imagine what it will sound and look like when they make it farther!

Mi Nuevo Barrio

2010-06-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

Well I've already given you guys a video-tour of my new apartment here in Palermo, so now I'd like to show some pictures of the neighborhood to give you all a good sense of what it looks like to walk around in my shoes!

Deporte Nacional FUTBOL Y TANGO

2010-06-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

World Cup Fever is really heating up down here! The commercials and videos coming out in anticipation are really awesome. Check this one out combining Argentina's two big passions: Tango and Futbol.

Estampate Photoshoot "Let's Get Weird"

2010-06-06T18:28:00.000-07:00

A good friend of mine here, Adrian Gross, started a t-shirt company (Estampate) a while back so the idea of doing some photos to promote it sprung to mind. One of the most popular shirts they have designed is one that says "Let's Get Weird" in huge, bold lettering. What the meaning of "Getting Weird" is is up to you. Check out these pictures to see how we got weird in the beautiful Bosques de Palermo parks of Buenos Aires!

All pics here! Join the fanpage too by clicking "like".

Vidt y Guemes

2010-05-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

For all those out there in the blogosphere, I thought I'd put up a tour of my new place of residence here in the Palermo neighborhood of La Ciudad de la Furia. Taken with a Nikon d90 and 8mm fisheye lens for viewing pleasure!

Super dramatic Argentina World Cup ad

2010-05-26T21:18:00.001-07:00

The World Cup is coming!

2010-05-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

This is the newest commercial to come out in Argentina in preparation for the World Cup. Even if you don't understand what's being said, it's worth watching. Gives you chills! Can't wait!! GO USA!!!!!!

Krial x BucketFeet

2010-05-12T12:27:00.000-07:00

Recently I was put in touch with the owner of Krial Footwear, and these shoes were born!

Carrera de Camareras y Mozos

2010-04-24T18:27:00.000-07:00

Every year in Buenos Aires there is an event even more epic than the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain: Running of the WAITERS! No joke, every year there is a race of waiters and waitresses down one of Buenos Aires' main drags. It's absolutely hilarious and apparently taken quite seriously because the prizes at the end are pretty damn nice. It's important to note that they race in their work outfits and with a tray with a bottle and a glass poured (whatever drink company sponsors it), so it's a very steady speedwalk so as not to spill. I fortunately found out about it just in time to head down to Avenida de Mayo and snaps some pictures and a quick video. Pretty random...

(unfortunately there is a really annoying siren in the background of the video, I apologize)

Video of asado during lightning storm

2010-04-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

This is a video my good friend Alex Weber shot with his Nikon D90 camera that has HD video capabilities. Pretty awesome representation of a standard weekend here at the house. Enjoy!

Paredes que hablan BSAS

2010-04-16T13:13:00.000-07:00

Awesome show they play down here in Buenos Aires called "Paredes que Hablan" (Walls that speak/talk). This is a clip about a dude born in Korea that lives down the street from me. Check out my neighborhood!

Moving on up!

2010-04-15T09:55:00.000-07:00

After months of searching, we have finally found a new place to live. Life here in Casa Pasco has been great but it's time for a change. Check out where I'm gonna be living for the next 12 months!

My New Crib!

Junin, Argentina

2010-04-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

This last weekend might have been the beginning of the rest of my life. Well maybe that's a bit drastic, but it was my first job as official wedding photographer, something that has been in the works for some time now. My good friends Julien St. Hilaire and Luciana Patiño got married in Luciana's hometown of Junin, a provincial city about 3 hours to the northwest of Buenos Aires. The happy couple had arranged for transportation for Julien's side of the wedding party, he's from Quebec, and for the close friends here in BsAs to ride up altogether in a big shuttle bus. So off we went at 9 am to real gaucho land, something I had been wanting to do ever since I arrived in Argentina.

It's pretty standard here for people to have vacation or weekend property in the countryside, a way for people to get away without going too far. So even though we all hotel reservations in the city of Junin, our first stop was Luciana's family's campo, a full working farm about 20 minutes outside of the city. Apparently her grandfather, who at a young 81 might be the coolest man on the planet, and some other family friends were putting together a massive asado for our arrival. I had been to asados before, a lot of them in fact, but there is nothing like going to an authentic Argentine asado where almost everything you are eating comes from the farm. The specialty of the day was lechon, or suckling pig in English. The most amazing pork I've ever eaten in my life. We ate, drank a lot of wine, and played on the farm. Some people rode horses, the rest of us just sat there and basked in the silence of the country. It felt so nice.
The wedding wasn't until the evening on Saturday so between the asado and the main event, we wandered around Junin which to be honest isn't too exciting, but still worth seeing I think. Weddings here are pretty much the same as in the States except there are a couple major differences. For one, there are no bridesmaids or groomsmen. I had some ideas for pictures of both those groups of people, but apparently they don't have them. Also, the bride and groom don't kiss facing the priest, they do it facing the crowd from the podium with the priest at their side. Kind of interesting.

After going to this wedding, I can't wait to go to my next one. The party was incredible and in Argentine fashion went until about 7 am, with even the oldest guests staying awake until the end. They just can't get enough here! I have attached a link to the photos on facebook and will be uploading them to my pbase as well as my new wedding photography site (yet to be named or registered). Now that I have something of a portfolio I can let the wedding biz going! Yeah!!

Enjoy!

Full Facebook Album

Video Blog Coming Soon!

2010-04-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not updating my blog as much in the past few months, it's just another task for the day, and to do it properly takes a fair amount of time. This being said, I have started recording with my Flip Video HD camera, video blogs. Unfortunately I haven't found any good free video hosting sites to post them since they are at least 20 minutes long. So if anyone has any advice on where I can find a place to do that, let me know! Peace and love to everyone!

Ask me anything!

2010-04-03T16:59:00.001-07:00

There is a new website, or at least new to me, that allows people to ask anonymous questions. So, what do you want to know???

http://www.formspring.me/steeznuts

Stencil Art in Buenos Aires

2010-04-03T13:37:00.000-07:00

Art in Buenos Aires is everywhere, especially street art. The main medium is the stencil and there are awesome pieces everywhere. Here is a great video (in Spanish) about the stencil and graffiti culture of the city. Enjoy!

Bagels in BsAs!!

2010-02-28T16:28:00.000-08:00

After about a year and a half of being down here, I finally got my act together and ordered bagels from El Bagelazo, a family run bagel company. Here's a picture of one of my sandwiches :)

Funny Random Anecdote of the Week

2010-02-24T14:18:00.000-08:00

The other night as we were preparing to head out, our doorbell rang. Hmm, "who could it be?", we thought. We open the door to see two policemen standing there, who proceed to explain to us that two wayward tennis players from the gym next door didn't leave the club in time and we're stuck on the courts. We became involved in this because the tennis courts touch our rooftop and their only line of escape was through our house. So after leading the police to the terraza, they helped these two poor guys over the fence and onto our roof so they could run to freedom. It was pretty hilarious.

Floods in Buenos Aires

2010-02-22T11:31:00.001-08:00

The last few days have been filled with rain here in the city. Our part of town wasn't hit as bad with floods fortunately, although we did get our power knocked out for 2 days. Here's a video clip from a local news station of the flooding.

BucketFeet is Coming Up in the World!

2010-02-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

In the last couple months my shoe company, BucketFeet, has had some exciting things happen. The first is that I was invited to participate in an independent designer feria in the city of Rafaela in the province of Santa Fe. This experience was not only great because I got the opportunity to sell some shoes (which I did!) but the town itself was really interesting. It's about 8 hours to the Northwest, and it's a whole different world. The city I learned, is comprised almost entirely of descendents of Italian and German immigrants. There is actually a dialect that the older generations speak that is more Italian than Spanish. If you were to come from Buenos Aires, and hear them speaking, you wouldn't understand it. The woman that invited me to this feria owns a small shop in the town and organizes these things ever few months. After picking me up from the bus station we went to her family's estate where they had a huge spread of Italian food on a long table with about 40 people sitting at it. Apparently I hit the night they were celebrating the end of 2009. One of those moments that it would have been nice to have a video camera rolling. In any case, the whole experience was great. Here is a pic of me sitting at the feria selling kicks!

The second really bad ass thing that has happened in the world of BucketFeet happened just last week. A good friend of mine lives with the trombonist of a very well-known band here, Onda Vaga. A few weeks ago I came up with the idea of doing shoes for all of the members as a sort of promotion, get them to plug me, and in turn get exposure to thousands and thousands of people. The other day when they had a show, Eva, my friend, got me on the list and I brought the shoes. It was an awesome experience, I got to spend the whole time backstage hanging out with them, partying, and then got to watch the show. I had heard them before but never had I seen them live. They are AWESOME! Great energy on stage. Oh and by the way, they loved the shoes, and they all fit! Here is a picture of the guys with their new shoes, and a couple of tracks to download off their new album. Enjoy!

Onda Vaga - Mambeado .mp4
Onda Vaga - Me Pega Fuerte .mp4

Semana de Musica

2009-12-19T13:47:00.000-08:00

I'm on my way out the door to the Creamfields Music Festival right now, but I thought I'd post a cool video of some great music I've seen recently.

This video is of a very well-known Argentine rock star named Palo Pandolfo. A former roommate of mine, Jake Falby, a kid from Boston, is an amazing violinist and while studying abroad here from Pomona College got put in touch with Palo. He subsequently ended up dropping his classes for the semester and touring with the band. Last night was his despedida, his last night in the country, so we went to watch him play with this great musician. It was a blast. One of the coolest things about this show too was that Tigre, the guy who owns the house I live in, has been a fan of Palo Pandolfo since the early 1980's. Jake managed to get him to get a couple of guest appearances on his songs, since he is a musician himself. It was a childhood dream carried out. Was quite a moment.

All the best to everyone wherever they are! Un beso grande a todos!

3 Months of a Photo-a-Day

2009-12-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/foto_por_dia

Enjoy! I promise a real blog update soon too! Lots to share...

Back in BA!

2009-11-14T16:53:00.000-08:00

I recently arrived back in Argentina after an amazing five week jaunt through various parts of the USA to see friends and family. It feels great to be back here though, I'm re-energized and ready to go! Stay tuned for more posts to come! Much love to everyone!

2009-10-16T20:05:00.001-07:00

Even though I am not in Argentina for the time being, I am going to continue this OH SNAP segment.

1. Asado on my rooftop in Congreso
2. 2 more pairs of BucketFeet
3. San Telmo futbol canchas
4. Cathedral in BA somewhere along the way to EZE Int'l Airport
5. A junkyard company in Queens, NYC
6. Stop-sign in Boulder, Colorado
7. A mural of a cowboy musician in downtown Denver, Colorado

OH SNAP! Photos of the Week: Sept 27th- Oct 3rd 2009

2009-10-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

1. Drinking yerba mate
2. "Imagine" BucketFeet
3. Nightime view from my terraza in the Congreso neighborhood of Buenos Aires
4. Hype @ Kika
5. Shadow
6. Hype edition BucketFeet
7. Ex-pubcrawl leader, Lilith Eller, doing a little modeling

Parabens, Rio!

2009-10-06T07:25:00.000-07:00

BucketFeet Stop Motion

2009-10-02T19:46:00.001-07:00

I recently started compiling stop-motion videos of shoes I've worked on. It takes a long time but the result is completely worth it! Check 'em out!

Photos of the Week: Sept 20th-26th 2009

2009-09-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

1. Stream of headlights on Pasco, taken from my rooftop
2. A guy getting pumped about the weekly La Bomba de Tiempo drum concert
3. Delivery-only sushi from Sushi Pop
4. El Litoral, my favorite no-frills parilla in the city
5. Malbec, baby!
6. Shoppers and vendors on Peru street pietonal
7. Silvia Duga, judge for upcoming reality TV show

Photos of the Week: Sept 13-19th 2009

2009-09-22T17:32:00.001-07:00

Boca vs. Godoy Cruz

2009-09-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

Well I finally made it to La Bombanera, Buenos Aires' famed stadium that houses CABJ (Club Atletico Boca Juniors) to watch a game on a beautiful, nearly-spring, day. Added bonus was that before the game, Argentina's very own Juan Martin del Potro (0:39) came out on the field to a standing ovation and chanting of "SALE CAMPEON!! SALE CAMPEON!!"

Arpoador Skate Park, Rio

2009-09-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

Felipe Motta and Marcelo Ment (tags: Mottilaa and Ment) recently got commissioned by Converse shoes to repaint the famous skatepark on top of Arpoador rock that separates Ipanema from Copacabana beach. Ment was one of the artists I worked with when I was in Rio, he is a GENIUS! This skatepark is amazing, check out Mottillaa's blog. Cheers!

http://www.sneakersbr.com.br/blogs/mottilaa/3634/FIX-TO-RIDE:-A-SAGA

Funny Argentine Commercial

2009-09-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is a funny commercial I just saw about a guy who was raised by hippies...

Photos of the Week Sept 6th-12th

2009-09-13T16:03:00.001-07:00

Una Foto Cada Dia

2009-09-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Photo-a-Day is back! Keep your eyes on this gallery, I will be trying to take and post a different photo everyday for as long as possible.

Facebook
Pbase (high-res)

Argentina v. Brasil

2009-09-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

Vamos Argentina!!!! Today is the Argentina vs. Brazil World Cup qualifier in Rosario. If Argentina doesn't win, they probably will not make it to the World Cup, unless one or more of the other teams playing today too get upset. Big deal, because not making it to the World Cup is unacceptable. VAMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS!

As Praias do Rio

2009-09-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

Video montage of Ipanema and Copacabana beaches.

A Journey on Rio's Craaaazy Buses

2009-09-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

Take a ride on Rio's crazy crazy crazy buses. The bus drivers seem to be the only Brazilians to ever be in a hurry, I swear!

Friday Nights in Lapa

2009-09-01T08:46:00.000-07:00

Neuza and Parada de Lucas

2009-08-27T06:13:00.001-07:00

I decided to go up and check out the northern community of Parada de Lucas, where my friends Karina and Rafael have been doing community projects. Karina teaches an art class and Rafael, even though he is Mexican, has been in Brazil long enough to be an accomplished capoeira teacher. The woman that runs the program, Neuza, grew up in this neighborhood, and as Karina put it, is like Mother Theresa except she "shags, smokes and drinks." This favela is in the northern part of the city, a place few tourists or foreigners go on purpose. Since practically ever major attraction is located in the southern part of the city (Christo, Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, Pao de Azucar), the north has been largely forgotten and ignored. You get a totally different sense when walking into the favelas here, they're grimier and smell horrible because of the lack of proper plumbing. In any case, I thought I should see it firsthand, and I'm glad I did. The kids in this center, although hyper as hell, were great. Here are a few shots I g ot.

Kitesurfing Ipanema

2009-08-26T07:42:00.001-07:00

Taladanatela Exhibition

2009-08-23T17:53:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I came to Rio de Janeiro from Buenos Aires to take part in an art exhibition of graffiti artists, most of whom are from the notorious Favela communities of the city. Fortunately by the time the event (which changed dates numerous times) was held, my Visa was still valid so I decided to come back (on a 42 hour bus-ride). There will be a much longer blog post about my 2nd trip here once I am back in Argentina next week, but for the time being here are some photos of the exhibition as well as a 7 minute long, very roughly edited, video of the actual event. All in all it went well, seeing about 200 people come through, and was a great experience. Enjoy!
official Taladanatela Blog

La Bomba de Tiempo

2009-08-11T14:30:00.000-07:00

Every Monday night in the Once neighborhood of Buenos Aires, there is a concert called La Bomba de Tiempo which translates to Time Bomb. The idea of the concert is to hear rhythm in its purest form, with nothing more than drums. The show is always 2 hours long with the second hour featuring some sort of instrument, last night being a 6-string electric bass. Here is a compilation of last night's show, which to date has been the best one I have seen yet.

Correo Argentino

2009-08-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

Ah, Correo Argentina, how I loathe you. About a month ago, my parents sent me a package for my birthday, which I knew would not come to me easily. 'Tis the life in this beautiful, yet sometimes frustrating land. The postman came last week with my parcel but no one was here to collect or sign for it, so instead of leaving a note with the address of the location to retrieve it, he left a piece of paper that said he, or someone else, would come by again. He did not mention however, a time or a date. It just said, someone will come again. Gee, thanks. Unfortunately for me, the second time the postman did come, our doorbell decided not to work, and I was at home! The note left this time did have an address to a post office, although as I would later find out, was not the correct one. Thinking this process would not take more than an hour, travel time included, I set off from my house and hopped on the subte. I arrived at about 2:45 pm at L.N. Alem 196, the address written on the notice, and was immediately summoned to a clerk's window. I thought hmm, this is too easy, no line, no waiting. I hand the clerk my slip, he disappears into the back and about 2 minutes later I see him kind of scratching his head as he starts typing in all this stuff into a computer. Uh oh. No matter where you are, body language is a constant, consistent way of reading someone. He had no idea where this package was, and I knew it. He went on to tell me that the postman had messed up, written the wrong address and that I would have to go around the corner to the main office, walk all the way down to the end and speak with the Customer Relations people. This was all said to me in probably the most incomprehensible accent I have heard to date. In any case, I followed what I had to assume were his directions and made my way to the office. There were two women at their desks (random note: One was named Silvana and the other Silvina, it was weird). I handed the slip that I got at my house and they looked at it and said, oh, this address is around the corner, to where I had just come from. I tried to explain as calmly as possible what the previous guy had said to me, that it wasn't right. After rooting around in her desk, Silvina or maybe Silvana, I don't remember, found a phone number that would lead me on yet another leg of my wild goose chase. She calls this mystery person at this other office, explains the situation, and hangs up. She explains to me that they are going to look for the package and then call back. About 10 minutes after sitting awkwardly in silence in this tiny little office, the phone rings, they have found the package!! The only problem is that it's at a post office way across town that closes in an hour and a half. This post office is the only one that holds international shipments, and it's in this seedy, dirty, Tijuana meets Delhi, part of town. Yippee! After speed-walking through downtown to the subway station that connects to Retiro, where the post office is located, I finally made it. This place was PACKED! Since I only had about 45 minutes to get through the line and get my package, I thought this would all be for naught, and I nearly gave up. I just really not want to have to go through this again, so I held out, and eventually my turn was up. I pass the slip, still with the LN Alem 196 address on it to the clerk, who tells me, no no, wrong address. At this point I'm very frustrated so I kind of yelled at him what had happened. He too walks away and gets on the phone, also for about 10 minutes. He finally comes back with my slip and says, yes, it's in the warehouse next door. Sweet! It wasn't that simple though. He writes something on my slip, a name. Koki. He then proceeds to tell me to go around to the warehouse, ask for Koki and he will sort me out. Uh, what? Who the hell is Koki, and why can't the post office employee do this? Since I had no choice but to find Koki, I went to the warehouse where I found a nice security guy who knew who Koki was. We walk around the side of the building to where this little Wizard of Oz door slot is, he rings the bell, and who I would later find out is Koki asks who it is. The security guard explains my situation and immediately two huge metal sliding doors retract. It's KOKI!!! I hand him my slip and he too disappears, this time into a MASSIVE abyss of post. And wouldn't you know it, he reappeared with MY PACKAGE!!! I felt like I had just beaten Muhammad Ali in a fight. Well, not really but I felt victorious, like I finally tamed the beast that is the Argentine postal service. It took nearly 3 hours all in all, but I got my package. Oh, by the way, on my way home the subte line that I needed to take stopped working about 3 stops before my house. Perfect!

Rio de Janeiro: Açaí, Praia e Grafite

2009-07-07T17:03:00.001-07:00

Well I made it to the promised land! The land of good music, great culture, and amazing bodies. The process for getting here wasn't all too easy however. Normally the travel time from BA to RJ is about 5 hours door to door but since I flew through Sao Paulo it took about 13. In the end it was kind of worth it because seeing Sao Paulo, the world's 2nd largest city, from the sky is mind-blowing. In any case, the airport seems to be as crazy as the city itself, easily the most cluttered, unorganized airport I have ever been to in my life. Upon landing is when I realized how much Spanish I know. Portuguese is craaaaazy. Fortunately I had a good 4 hours there and was able to get to my connecting flight to Rio with plenty of time to spare.

I was hoping to have a daytime landing in Rio because the view is supposedly out of this world but I landed at about 7 and it was already dark. It's funny when you land in a new city at night because the next day when you look outside there's all this stuff you passed and had no idea. In any case, I arrived at the hostel, Casa Carioka, run by an Australian woman Alegra and her husband Fabio, who is from here. This past Saturday was their monthly Couchsurfing sponsored party so it was great timing, within less than 2 hours of landing, I had a caipirinha in hand. The party was a lot of fun, people from all over the place, and a lot of cariocas (Rio natives). I had a long day but managed to stay up until 4 am dancing, in true Brazilian fashion.

I woke up on Sunday to get started on the project I was here for in the first place, documenting graffiti artists and their work. Karina (my friend here in Rio that I met working the pubcrawl in Buenos Aires) and I headed down to Praia Vermelha (Red Beach) to meet up with Leandro, who goes by Tick (pronounced Cheeky), to take photos of him working on his newest piece. Watching graffiti artists at work is very interesting. You would never guess the finished work to look as it does based on how it starts. The piece that Tick was working on was of a face of a black kitten. There's always a story behind these artists works, sometimes good, sometimes bad. This cat apparently had been beaten by some kids in his favela so him and his friends tried to nurse it back to life, apparently staying up all night trying to help it. Unfortunately in the end it died, but now lives on on a wall.

The next day Karina and I headed to the Santa Teresa neighborhood to check out some works by some other artists that we would be working with and get some food. Santa Teresa is a very, very nice part of town, but just like everywhere in Rio, has favelas all around it. The way you get around is by a trolly that takes off from the center. The views from it are incredible. Here is a picture from the restaurant where I had my first feijao (traditional bean dish).
After going around taking pictures for a bit, we headed back to the hostel, where I was able to take a nice long nap, before heading out to the Marina da Gloria for a party hosted on a boat, which by Argentine standards cost quite a bit. The party was not too incredible, but seeing Rio from the water at night was amazing so it was well worth it in the end.

Since this was not so much a vacation but work (albeit a very fun job), Tuesday ended up being the only day of my 9 days in Rio that I got to spend entirely at the beach. Rafael, one of the guys that works at the hostel, had his day off so we went down there together. Really cool guy, been living in Brasil for about 3 years now and has perfected his portuguese, and is such a Brasilian expat that he teaches his own capoeira classes to kids in the favela. Anyways, we spent the whole day at the beach with a really nice Japanese guy in the hostel and a hilarious young Irish couple. We spent the whole day swimming, drinking beer, and lounging. Couldn't have come at a better time. One of the funniest things about Ipanema beach is the amount of vendors. One constant theme in Latin America is that because of the amount of vendors everywhere, any successful ones have developed their own style. My favorite was the abacaxi (pineapple) guy whose tactic was to go up to unwary sleeping beach patrons and screaming AAAAAAAAAAAbacaxi in their faces. I guess he's so well known that people don't get mad at him, they just laugh and end up buying a couple. It's all in good fun anyways, and I'm really happy I got a nice picture of him, he really enjoys his job. One thing I found hilarious about Rio culture is that because the beach is such an integral part to life, there is actually a salutation specifically for people on the beach, boa praia, good beach, or good beachday to you, love it! To round out the day, we headed to Lapa that night, the neighborhood where samba originated and continues to have a strong presence. It was a blast, we spent the whole night dancing in the street while local musicians gathered around a table at a bar and jammed out. Samba could quite possibly be the most beautiful music I've ever heard, and since a lot of the songs are standards, everyone knows the lyrics so it's like an interactive concert. So much fun!

Lapa is also neighborhood to the famous steps that Snoop Dogg filmed a video at and to a lot of graffiti, especially by Ment one of the artists I would be working with.

This being said, I went down during the day with my camera (definitely didn't take my camera anywhere at night...) and went around shooting his work as well as general shots of the neighborhood. It's a very beautiful neighborhood and even though I haven't been there, reminds me exactly of what Havana looks like. Very old buildings with a lot of character.

The whole way that this project came to light is that Karina volunteers in a community center in Tabajaras, a favela in Copacabana, with Tick, who teaches graffiti to the little ones. Through Tick, she got in contact with all the other artists, since they all seem to know each other, mostly from seeing each other doing work on various streets and walls. I decided to go up with her to check out the project and wait for Tick so I could go around with him in the favela and take some pictures of his work. While we waited we had some work to do: organize the library! So for an hour or so, we organized books into different sections and hung out with the kids a little bit. When Tick arrived we headed out and wandered through the maze of the favela. He has work all over the place so there was a lot for me to shoot. I really wanted to take pictures of things going on in the favela: old guys playing dominoes, kids flying kites, gangsters sitting around smoking weed, etc...but I respected the fact that I was an outsider and that cameras are not seen as very positive, so I stuck to just taking pictures of the work. Walking around the favela is amazing, it's crazy how easily he navigated around. If I had been alone I would probably still be trying to figure out how to get out! At certain points, we had to knock on people's doors to see if we could use their roofs to take pictures, no problem. Tick still lives in Tabajaras, now with some friends from all over the world. There's Alex from Cape Verde, Pablo from Colombia, and Emily from England. Their house is great, and seems like a lot of fun. We ended up having a big dinner of feijaoda (feijao but with linguica sausage) and rice that Alex made. Damn good cook! It's really funny how mellow the favela was, how the threat of something bad happening never occured in my mind. This is not to say that bad things don't happen, but if you respect the rules, seems like it's not such a bad place to be. When speaking with richer Brazilians, the favela is about the scariest, worst place one can go. And I would go as far as to say that about 99% of those people have never set foot in one. Go figure...

At this point I had only gotten to meet one of the artists, even though I had plenty of photos of the work of the other three I would be working with. Karina and I got up early Thursday morning to head out to Rio Comprido to meet with Acme, one of Rio's most prolific and well-known street artists. Taking the bus to this neighborhood, which is quite inland, felt like going to another world. Once you are away from the tourist attractions and the beach, you realize there is another Rio out there. Acme recently had a baby and has saved enough money to get his family out of the favela where he grew up. Him and his wife now live on the outskirts of another favela, in a nice little apartment with a balcony for him to do his work (he sometimes sits outside and watches bullet traces at night between the two rival factions across the way from him) and a nice studio inside as well. We spent all morning, about 6 hours, watching him create some canvases that he was preparing for an exhibition he was doing that night. Every artist has a different approach to the work and different subject matter, and Acme's is quite political. He has a massive Che Guevara mural in Tabajaras and most of his work reflects the sentiment of the government forgetting the people, discrepency between rich and poor. He could have chosen a life with the narco-traffickers, but in his own words, "picking up a spraycan was better than picking up a gun". For a lot of these artists, the streets are the best canvas and the best place to truly express themselves. Acme and his family were awesome. His dad ended up cruising by for lunch, and we all ate together. Even though I don't speak portuguese that well, I could tell how proud his dad was of what he was doing, that he has found success in art. We unfortunately had to cut the afternoon short and I wasn't able to see him finish the piece he was working on, but I'm sure it came out great. We now had a meeting with yet another artist, Cash, way across town in Tijuca. On our way out, I got my first look into the drug game, when two kids who couldn't have been older than 14 or 15 rode by on a scooter with gigantic semi-automatic rifles. Karina has spent quite a bit of time in the favelas and seen her fair share of guns, but this was the first time she had seen kids outside of the community that armed.

Upon meeting Cash, I was surprised by his appearance. Out of the four artists we worked with, he was the only one not from a favela. He was small, 20 years old, and white. None of this matters though, he is an amazing artist, and is respected by all street artists in Rio, from favelas or otherwise. His work is much more cartoony and visually enticing. He is still from the big city after all, so his work is a reflection of day to day experiences and encounters. When he started to work on a wall at a park, the lighting was bad, so I wasn't able to get any pictures of him painting, I did however go the next day to see what he had done and was bummed I didn't get to see him create it.

In the meeting with Acme, we had arranged to meet in his native Pavao so he could take me around and show me his work. The favelas here are interesting because of their proximity to rich neighborhoods. You turn the block and all of a sudden you are in a different world, loud music blaring, little kids with fireworks every 5 seconds, people selling everything you can imagine. I took a mototaxi up to the Museu da Favela to meet him, but he never showed. It is Brazil after all. In any case, the 45 minutes I spent waiting was entertaining enough just watching the world go by at the top of hill. On the way down I ran into Felipe, a local kid I met at the Couchsurfing party when I first arrived, who is from Pavao as well. When he saw me walking through the community he called me over and was like "O quê você está fazendo em o morro", translated to "what the hell you doing up here on the hill?" as in he was surprised that I was just walking around up there by myself. I told him I was looking for Acme, who everyone knows, and he said he wasn't going to be showing up. It also turns out that Acme teaches graffiti to kids in the Museum, which he started, and that Felipe is one his students. Small world.

Later in the day I was in the complete opposite of a Rio favela, as I moved into my friend Stephanie da Souza's family's apartment on the border of Copacabana and Ipanema for the weekend. What an amazing place! After moving in, it took me about 15 minutes to head to the beach and get me one of those amazing caipirinhas and go for a walk on the beach and just kind of remind myself where I was. Later that night I met up with my friend Lexi, a fellow Duck, that now lives in Rio. We hit up a fun club in Botafogo and once again got my samba fix before hitting the sack.
I got to sit down with Ment on Saturday and talk to him about his work and take photos. He is also very well known an d very prolific. His style is amazing, out of all the artists, his work really spoke to me. One of his expertises is doing memorial walls for Brazilian musicians that have passed away, famous or not. One in particular is of a guy that few people knew the name of but was one of the most important Samba composers of Rio. He didn't even know the guy, but his family found the mural and sent him a picture with them posing in front of it. Anyways, very cool guy and a real inspiration. I can see BucketFeet getting some ideas from him for sure. Saturday night is Baile Funk night, so that was the plan. Funk is a very popular Rio favela music and it's standard to have the parties outdoors but unfortunately it started pouring rain so it was cancelled. We thought we were going to go so we were given the list of rules of what NOT to do at one of these parties. Even though it is a fun party, they are set up as a front to sell drugs, this means that everywhere around are gangsters. Here's the list of rules, at least for us gringos anyways:

-No cameras
-No phones
-No doing drugs
-No getting drunk
-No speaking or dancing with pretty girls (you never know who they are related to or dating...)
-No eye contact with gangsters
-No speaking during moment of silence for fallen gangsters
-No peeing on random walls, only designated ones

It would have been a great experience to just be there and see what it's really like but, hey, can't control the weather. Fabio, our friend that was going to take us to the party and who is from that favela, knew about a birthday party of a friend so we went there and in the end became the best night of the trip. The people there were so warm, so friendly and had a gatorade sized cooler full of amazing caipirinhas. They also had the barbecue going so I ate to my heart's delight: linguica, chicken, steak, miscelleneous meat products (chicken hearts, etc...). The night turned well into morning, with all of us dancing to Funk and Samba in a tiny little room, having a blast. The night was most definitely saved.

The rest of the trip, the next two days, consisted of me editing my photos and taking notes down for the blog. I did get up to Cristo and I did have as many acai's as possible before taking off. The experience was unforgettable and I am definitely going back, sooner rather that later it's looking like. There is going to be an exhibition for this project and it has been postponed for another month so since my Visa will still be valid, I'm going to try to get back up for it. This time by bus I think...

I apologize for the length of this post but it was necessary. I hope it finds you all well! Boa Noite!

For pics on facebook go here
Hi-res pics coming soon!

BucketFeet in the newspaper!!

2009-07-04T05:40:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, I have been pushing my hand-designed shoes here in Argentina, and to great success. I was recently interviewed by the largest free English-language newspaper in Argentina, the Argentimes, and the article is now out! To read it click here:

http://www.theargentimes.com/reviews/theconsumer/bucketfeet-watch-this-space-/

Thanks for all the support, and if you wouldn't mind, spread the word!!

I am writing this post from Ezeiza International Airport, waiting for my flight to Hee You Chee Djanayru (phonetic pronunciation of Rio de Janeiro), I'm screwed haha. Surely there will be quite a lot to write about when I get back!

Hope the 4th of July finds you all well, chau!

Silicon Fly Interview

2009-06-26T15:28:00.001-07:00

This is a video interview of Guillermo Savoi, the singer from my roommate's band, Silicon Fly. It's really well done and also provides an opportunity for you guys to hear a Uruguayan accent a full. Enjoy!

Brazil, here we come!

2009-06-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

Some of you readers might know that I am heading to Rio de Janeiro on the 4th of July for a little over a week for an absolutely incredible photo project, where I will be shadowing a collective of Favela graffiti artists. In order to enter the country as a US citizen, it is required to have a tourist Visa, a direct reciprocal action for the Visa requirements we impose on them. In order to get the Visa, you need roundtrip airfare, application form, bank statements, passport photo, credit card, and most importantly, the fee ($147US). I was under the impression the process would be kind of difficult, or at least take a long time, inside the consulate, but it went very smoothly. Where it got tricky was making the payment. It was one of those TIA moments (This Is Argentina). You can only go to two banks, both of which are mere blocks from the consulate. I arrived thinking it would take 5 minutes. Nope! The place was absolutely PACKED, no seats at all. You had to pull a number to see a teller, I got number 69. They were on 45. Well whatever, I'll wait. The problem was that at about 52, the machine went all haywire and began going out of order, thus creating the problem of the person with the correct "number" going to the window, even if it meant they were skipping 8 people who should have gone before them. After about 45 minutes I finally got my turn, and paid the fee, 30 second transaction. So now, with Visa in hand, I will be setting foot in Brazil in a mere few weeks. YES!!!!!

Viva Argentina, Che!: Tranxgo

2009-06-11T12:53:00.001-07:00

Most people know that Argentina's greatest contribution to the world of music is Tango. To this day you can wander around any of Buenos Aires' neighborhoods and find milongas, where people of all ages dance to the classic music. What has happened in recent years however is the world of electronic music that is also beloved by the Argentines, has been introduced and mixed with the old, traditional style. Mixing violins, bandoneon, piano and old vocal samples with hard drubbing, heavy-bass laced tracks produces an amazing, original sound. Three main groups that have taken this new genre (sometimes referred to as tranxgo), Bajofondo, Tanghetto and Gotan Project, have come out with countless amazing tracks. I was fortunate enough to see Bajofondo play live in a free festival to celebrate 200 years of independence in Argentina a few weeks ago, and goddamn, they are sick! Here are a few tracks to download, enjoy and let me know your thoughts!

Gotan Project-Santa Maria.mp3
Gotan Project-Epoca.mp3
Gotan Project-El Capitalismo.mp3
Gotan Project-Mi Confesion.mp3
Bajofondo Tango Club-Grand Guignol.mp3
Bajofondo Tango Club-Naranjo en Flor.mp3
Bajofondo Tango Club-Exodo II.mp3
Bajofondo Tango Club-Duro y Parejo.mp3
Tanghetto-Enjoy the Silence (Depeche Mode Tango Remix).mp3

Young Squondra Comes to Town: BA and Colonia

2009-06-02T19:14:00.000-07:00

The plan when Sondra got here was to make at least two trips to places within the country. Iguazu down, we were going to try to make it to the western wine-country city of Mendoza but it was just asking too much. Decided not to do it for various reasons, one of them being that if we went, she wouldn't get to experience a full weekend in this madness that we call a city. We did make it to Uruguay for a day though, to the city of Colonia. We decided to do this because it's a nice day trip and also because I was at the time an illegal alien and wanted to get that feeling off my chest. Fortunately, the rules are a bit more lax here than they are in the States. Consequences for overstaying your tourist visa is now about $80US, up from the $18 that it used to be a month ago. You get a slap on the wrist and then you're given a pass and another 3 months in this wonderful country. Here are some photos, with captions, of our day in Uruguay...
The view over Rio de la Plata from Puerto Madero, Buenos Aires before getting on the ferry

Street scene

Sondra showing off her wad of "play" money that is the Uruguayan peso on her hog...we couldn't rent mopeds as originally planned since we didn't have our driver's licenses with us...

Just some of the many many street dogs around the town

That's me sneaking into the grounds of an abandoned bullring; interior of the bullring

The rest of Sondra's time here consisted of shopping in ferias, pubcrawling and fortunately, on her very last night, the Grand Opening of Fusion, our very own nightclub/restaurant. Well, it's not technically mine but Dustin, my good friend who started the pubcrawl company, put together this place with some other friends. Will be doing a blog update about this new spot. It's so cool! All in all had a great time with her here, and sounds like she had a good time too because she's hoping to come back in the summer (winter for you Northerners).

3 Videos from the Bicentennial Celebration

2009-06-02T16:40:00.001-07:00

There will be a longer post coming but for the time being here are three videos from the Bicentennial Celebration Free Concert at the Obelisco in the middle of the city. La Bomba de Tiempo and Bajofondo performed, it was amazing. La Bomba is an incredible percussion orchestra and Bajofondo is one of the most well known bands to have incorporated Argentina's beloved Tango music with electronic and dance music. EPIC!

This video is of a couple that broke into an impromptu Tango dance during Bajofondo's set. Love that this kind of thing just happens...

Whoa...she's eating STEAK??

2009-06-02T16:37:00.001-07:00

For those of you who have known Sondra for a while, you know she has been a pretty staunch vegetarian. Well, while in the land of the best steaks on Earth, she decided to cross to the other side, if but for a moment (and wouldn't you know it, she thought it tasted GOOD) Thankfully there is video proof.

Iguazu Videos

2009-06-02T16:34:00.000-07:00

El Tigre y Sus Manchas feat. German Varela

2009-06-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

This is a great video Sondra shot of my roommate Tigre's band, El Tigre y Sus Manchas (The Tiger and His Spots) featuring our other roommate German Varela of the pretty well known rock band, Silicon Fly. German absolutely rips it up! This is performed at L'O Bar in San Telmo, Buenos Aires.

HYPE!

2009-05-29T11:37:00.001-07:00

This is a promotional video for a party I work at. All the still images were taken by me...it's pretty cool!

http://blip.tv/file/2175126/

OH SNAP! Barrios: Puerto Madero

2009-05-27T18:55:00.001-07:00

Located between San Telmo/La Boca and the Rio de La Plata, Puerto Madero is easily one of Buenos Aires' most aesthetically pleasing and unique neighborhoods. Whether you want to go shopping, hit the clubs, eat the most amazing churrasquitos or choripan, ride bikes in an ecological reserve or even go to Hooters, Puerto Madero is the place to be.
Here is a collection of some of my favorite shots of the old wherehouse district:

OH SNAP! Jardin Japones

2009-05-21T15:50:00.001-07:00

Located in the middle of Palermo, near the Bosques de Palermo, lies the Jardin Japones. Donated to the city by the country of Japan many years back, the park is a beautiful, tranquil place to spend an hour. There's a big pond with lots and lots of massive koi, a Japanese restaurant, and a greenhouse where you can buy plants and Bonzai trees. It costs $5 to get in, but it's worth it. It's located at Av. Figueroa Alcorta and Av. Casares, not terribly far from the D line subte.

The Last Seven and a Half Months in Photographs

2009-05-21T08:09:00.000-07:00

This is a compilation of my favorite shots since I've been down South America way...

http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/saafaves

Young Squondra Comes to Town: Iguazu

2009-05-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

In the 7 months I've been in Argentina, I've had plenty of visitors come through. The month of May marked for the first time, however, that someone of the family came down. Sondra arrived at about 6:30 am on the 10th of May, as opposed to the 4 am time that was originally thought. It was fine though since I work in the nightlife industry (sounds weird when I put it that way) and I was up anyways. I got to the airport at about 3:45 and was actually able to sleep on a bench until her delayed flight landed. Next stop was the hostel, the Milhouse, which is located on a street unpronounceable by anyone who is just visiting. The street is Hipolito Yrigoyen, pronounced EE-PO-LEE-TOE EERIE-GO-SHEN. Anyways, this just meant that anytime Sondra needed to get back to the hostel, I had to go to the cabbie and tell him. The first few days in BA were spent pubcrawling, eating, and basically lounging around watching TV since the weather was pretty crappy. This was all good though as we decided to bus up north about 2000+ kilometers to Las Cataratas de Iguazu, or in English, Iguazu Falls with my good friend Freddy.

Getting to and from Puerto Iguazu (the actual town) is fairly easy, as is most travel in Argentina. The only issue is that distances are so deceptively big here, that most bus trips to anywhere of interest are between 15-20 hours from Buenos Aires. We hopped on a 6 pm bus on Friday the 15th and got in at about 11 am on the 16th. It's always good to take buses that take as long as this as an overnight option. That way, you aren't losing time and you don't have to pay for a hostel. Sondra managed to sleep like 15 hours or something ridiculous. The buses are THAT comfortable. So we arrived, checked into our hostel, and planned our first day. Unfortunately because we arrived a couple hours before check in time, we missed out on being able to go to the falls that day. So instead we ended up walking across the street to an animal rehabilitation center that ended up being really interesting. It is mostly full of birds, but there are monkeys, coatis, and other strange animals that have been injured in some way. It ended up being that most of them were taken illegaly from the Brazilian rainforest to be sold around the world and were injured in the transit process. Some had been rescued from as far as Madrid. After doing the tour of the center we headed back to the hostel for a big asado and Brazilian dance show (which would later prove to be HILARIOUS).

The asado was good, not great. Either way it was a fun night. We met some really nice Canadian girls and a really obnoxious guy from New Jersey (who we later found out used to be a pimp, or at least claimed to have been one). Now onto the Brazilian dance show. The town of Puerto Iguazu is on the "Triple Border" between Brazil and Paraguay. The show was put on by dancers from Foz do Iguacu (the Brazilian side) who came over to Argentina to do this weekly show at the hostel. The guy was dressed in perhaps the most sparkly shirt I've ever seen and the "women" might not have been women after all. Good thing they get all the guests liquored up on caipirinhas before the show, otherwise no one would stick around for the embarassment that would ensue. This "show" is more of a ploy to get drunk tourists to get up and look stupid. Fun right? It's the kind of thing where they pick you out of the crowd to samba with the dancers. Fortunately
almost everyone had to go
through it so it's not so bad. I came in second in the guy's samba competition (woohoo!) which was fortunate because the winner got a very weird, nasty lapdance from the "women". After the show, everyone ended up outside at the hostel's poolside bar. Yes, there was a big pool, complete with volleyball net. One of the most unhostelly hostels I've ever been to. The dance party was pretty uneventful but a funny thing did happen. There is an outdoor individual bathroom by the pool. At about 3 am, I ended up going in to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately I didn't realize that on the other side of the door, the handle was missing. So after about 20 minutes (no lie) of trying to figure out how to either get someone's attention or get out of the bathroom, I used my drunken strength to wedge it open. It would have looked pretty funny because there was a tiny, little window facing the bar outside and every time the music would stop I would flail my arm out of the window and scream for someone to open the door. I really thought it was going to be my bedroom for a moment.

Image: Sondra sitting at the triple border. Left is Argentina, middle is Paraguay and the right is Brazil.

Sunday was the day of the falls. All I can say is WOW! You see pictures, you hear stories, but until you see them with your own eyes, you can't full understand just how amazing they really are. We also didn't realize it was such a big park. You really need at least one full day to explore the whole thing. Some of the main highlights:

1. Butterflies.
Never in my whole life have I seen so many butterflies and so many different kinds. Amazing!

2. Boatride.
One of the main attractions of the waterfalls are the speedboats you can take UNDERNEATH the massive falls. Terrifying but so thrilling.

3. Garganta de Diablo (Devil's Throat). The biggest fall in the park. The viewing platform overlooking it is amazing. Apparently a lot of people commit sucide there...

4. Giant bug. Not so much a highlight, but a funny story. The way you get around the park is with this little tram thing. As we were walking to go to the Devil's Throat, Sondra noticed this gnarly ass monster of a bug on this woman's neck. She obviously had no idea it was there. I felt the obligation to let her know, being the concerned citizen. Her friend upon seeing it reacted instantly and flicked it off her neck, RIGHT AT ME! Some grateful people they were...

After the day at the falls, Freddy treated us to an amazing meal in town. Being that we were still in Argentina (if not barely) we had to get some bife de lomo. We did also get some amazing river fish, the name of which is escaping me. The three countries are separated by rivers so there is a lot of good river fish. We were pooped after the full day in the sun at the falls and a big meal that I think we ended up passing out at about 9 pm.

The next day we contemplated going to Ciudad del Este in Paraguay for well, no real reason. Apparently it's a seedy, Tijuana-like border town, known most for having a physical black market where you can buy anything from guns to cheap electronics. Unfortunately, to get there, you have to pass through Brazil, for which we didn't have Visas. We ended up just taking a walk around the dinky little town and catching an earlier bus back to BA. This busride had some moments on it that made me feel quite anxious. Because of the unmonitored border between Brazil and Paraguay, there is a lot of drug trafficking. A lot of which ends up in BA. This meant that there are frequent police checkpoints. Within an hour we had been stopped 3 times. Each time, a new policeman would come on board to check our passports. The first two guys were very nice and quick. The 3rd guy however had a real chip on his shoulder. He must have looked over my stamps about 3 or 4 times. This would have been fine, but I was illegal at the time, having overstayed my 3 month visa by about 3 months! I was sweating a little bit. Apparently he didn't notice. Fhew! In any case we made it back in one piece, even though the return bus took about 20 hours...

OH SNAP! Protests

2009-05-08T13:28:00.000-07:00

This is a segment I've recently started on the Buenos Aires Pubcrawl blog (pubcrawlba.blogspot.com), so I thought I'd do it in my own as well. Every week (or more than one time a week) I will be showcasing photos I've taken that correlate to a specific theme, idea, or neighborhood. Enjoy!

Anyone who's spent any time in this city has certainly witnessed at least one protest. This week's edition of OH SNAP! is a compilation of some of my favorite shots taken of various protests and demonstrations in Buenos Aires.

Mustafa Yoda - El Nino

2009-04-11T15:50:00.000-07:00

The hip hop scene is pretty small but Mustufa Yoda, one of Argentina´s most recognized rappers, is pretty good. Here´s a cool video of his song "El Nino" with english subtitles.

Federico Aubele - Postales

2009-04-11T12:12:00.001-07:00

Another video I wanted to post on here is a song called Postales by a Porteno (Buenos Aires) group called Federico Aubele. Very, very chill. A lot of the video was filmed around where I live. Enjoy!

La Vida es una Tombola

2009-04-11T12:04:00.001-07:00

One of Manu Chao´s many homages to Diego "Dios" Maradona, a man literally more important to the people of this country than Jesus Christ.

MUTO Street Art in Buenos Aires

2009-04-11T12:01:00.000-07:00

Unbelievable street art here in the city. It´s stop motion photography of a piece of art that took months to create. Watch the changes in the sky...amazing!

Residents of Casa Pasco

2009-03-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

Ruth and Lauren, both from Leicester, England

Gus from Buenos Aires

Mette and Anika from Denmark and Germany, respectively

German from Montevideo, Uruguay

Petros from London

Tigre from Buenos Aires

Olivier from Lille, France

I'm not a businessman, I'm a business...man

2009-03-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

I haven't been updating this blog as regularly as before because I have been UNBELIEVABLY busy with two entrepeneurial ventures: Bucketfeet and Ojo Photos. For those of you that don't know, for the past couple years I've had a small-scale custom shoe design business (www.bucketfeet.com), and it has taken off a bit down here in Argentina.

My other, newer venture, is nightlife photography. Since working with the Buenos Aires Pubcrawl, I have been the unofficial, official photographer. The work I've done with them has encouraged me to go out on my own and start a company that essentially documents the ridiculous nightlife of Buenos Aires. My good friend Julian Walter, who in his own right is an amazing photographer, came down here to help me set it up, mostly with getting the website up. The two of us have very different styles of taking pictures so we compliment each other very well, both can learn a lot from one another. In any case it is very, very exciting and I will only be getting busier, but it's a GREAT kind of busy. The website is: www.ojophotos.com. Check it out, there will be new updates regularly!

Aside from these new developments, life is generally the same here. I'm hoping to get out of the city for a couple days next week, maybe hit up the beach in Mar del Plata, or go to Uruguay for a day or so. This massive concrete jungle can suck you in.

Manu Chao live in Bs As

2009-03-06T06:54:00.000-08:00

The second I found out about Manu Chao was coming to Buenos Aires, I rushed down to the local locura to get my ticket. At 70 pesos (3.6 to the dollar) I could not pass it up and after his playing for nearly 3 and a half straight hours, made it a huge bargain. It was good I got them when I did because they ended up selling out really, really quickly and a lot of my friends were pretty bummed they couldn't go. In all honesty it wasn't really anyone's fault it wasn't advertised very well. I heard about it word of mouth, otherwise I wouldn't have known about it till it was too late. I saw Manu Chao at the Outsidelands Festival in SF in August and while it was great, I have to say the atmosphere was a bit different here. Everyone knew all the words to every song, there was a lot of OLE OLE OLE OLE, MAAAANU...MAAANU! Here is a 10 minute video compilation of the footage I got with my digital camera.

Re-Cap of the last month...

2009-02-17T13:04:00.000-08:00

I think this is the longest period of time I've gone without updating my blog and for all those diehard fans I apologize (that one's for you Jonah...). In early January I realized that in the three months I had been here, I took at least one trip every month. Because of this, I also realized that I didn't have any clear idea of how much money I was actually spending so I decided to stick around here to try to gauge it (I still don't have a clear idea, my bookkeeping skills haven't improved). In any case, I have stuck around Buenos Aires and for that, multi-weekly blogposts would be kind of dull.

Life here is excellent. My house is now rolling seven-deep with the addition of three new roomies: Petros, Ruth, and Lauren, all twenty-four years old, and all British. We have a good time going back and forth with roast-like jabs about why the other person's country is worse. They have ridiculous expressions and words that I have a very hard time understanding, and to them the way I speak is equally confusing. We definitely have some good laughs. Having them in the house too is a great gauge for my spanish, which by the way is doing excellent, because they don't speak ninguna carajo (literally translated as: not a single fuck) of it and I am now the sole link between my spanish speaking roommates and them.

For those of you that don't know, I am one of thousands of fully employed illegal aliens/expats living in this city. I work with various other wanderers on the Buenos Aires Pub Crawl, doing promotion, and most recently all of the photography for the website and various fliers (all of the pics can be seen at: http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/buenos_aires_pubcrawl). It is an awesome job, every night is a different adventure, and a lot of the people you meet are incredible. It is however, still a job, and can get VERY exhausting. I wouldn't put up with it though if I didn't really love it and didn't think what we are doing is a great thing. When a city is this big, and with so many nightlife opportunities, you don't want your night to be a bust. For all those travelers coming through and spending a night or two, we are the perfect solution, and people love it. Sidenote: so far the craziest countries represented based on my experiences on the PubCrawl go in this order: 1. Brazilians, 2. Aussies, 3. Brits.

I'm going to leave you all with that for the time being, hopefully I'll get around to getting a much more detailed post, but to be honest it is just too damn hot to do anything.

Inauguration Day in South America

2009-01-21T21:17:00.000-08:00

Well, the day finally arrived, and it couldn't have come soon enough. Barack Obama is our PRESIDENT!!!!!! I woke up around 11 (that's early here) to get ready and go meet some friends at a very well-known American expat owned bar called Sugar. They had a big election night party that I missed so I wanted to make sure I was around for this. The festivities started at 3 pm BA time but just to make sure I could get in I tried to get there a little earlier. The bus that takes me to the nearest point of the bar picks me up right on my block but since it is almost clear across town, it is at least an hour-long ride. I ended up getting to the bar at about 2:30 to find, to my horror, that it was already filled beyond capacity. I just HAD to watch the speech(es), especially since election night, while fun and amazing and all, was missing that little something: other Americans. Fortunately I remembered hearing about another place, also owned by an American expat, that was broadcasting all the events. I hopped in a cab and screamed over to that bar, which is about 5 minutes from my house (I didn't opt to go there in the first place because the vibe just isn't the same) and managed to get there just in the nick of time. It's a good things cabs are faster than buses. It was amazing watching this part of history happen in a foreign country with so many Americans living here right now. The place was packed, standing room only. The speech to me was great, but as I've mentioned to a lot of people, what really made it seem real was watching footage of the Bushes literally "flying" away, as if now maybe they can just fly away from our collective conscience and let a new beginning arise.

I hope all of you had a great time wherever you were (especially Tristan and Andrew, those lucky SOB's). I love it down here, but Election Night and Inauguration Day are two days I really would have loved to have been in the States. Oh well, we got 8 more years!

BsAs Breakdancers

2009-01-16T12:16:00.001-08:00

The music scene here, at least on the surface, is not the most diverse. About 90% of the bars or clubs I've been to have played literally nothing but electronic music, which don't get me wrong, is fun, but it gets old. I actually found a place that plays hip hop and was eager to check it out. Here is a video of some fairly decent Argentine breakdancers from last night.

Best Photos of 2008

2009-01-13T10:31:00.000-08:00

I thought since we have entered 2009, I would compile my favorite pictures of 2008. These are in no particular order. Enjoy and let me know which ones you like the most!

Tigre

2009-01-12T08:43:00.000-08:00

Trying to escape the deathly heat of Buenos Aires, my roommates Gus, German and myself headed off to the town of Tigre for the weekend. We were also accompanied by Mark and Alex, two Swiss guys that are staying in the house for a few weeks (Mark used to live here, but has since moved back to Switzerland). So all 5 of us crammed into Gus' old VW coupe and made the 40 minute drive to the Delta of the Rio Parana. I had heard about Tigre but I had no idea it was so close to downtown BA. Essentially, Tigre is like any other river town, but what makes it different is that there are hundreds of islands dispersed throughout the delta. A lot of the islands have houses on them that you can rent. Gus and 9 of his friends rented a really cool house for the entire month of January for about 1000 US. The house has it's own private dock, about an acre of land behind it, a big area for a fire pit, a nice kitchen, and a few big rooms inside. Furnishing however is another story, thus making my night's "sleep" rather interesting. Getting to the islands too is pretty interesting. All the beds that were in the house went to those who paid so I settled for one of the hammocks outside, which all things considered was very comfortable. The only problem was that the mosquitos on this river are EVERYWHERE. You know the rest of the story. Since everything revolves around water, there are boat "buses" that go to different islands via various waterways. We had to take the number 59 I think. If you didn't plan well enough for supplies, there are floating supermarkets that come by every few hours too.

Once we got there, we ate unhealthy amounts of meat, had hours long drum circle sessions and swam. By the end of the afternoon, the house of 10 became about 50, with the friends of friends randomly hopping off #59.
It was great getting out of town for a day or so, getting some swimming in, meeting all of Gus' friends and exploring yet another part of the world. Aside from the mosquitos having an asado on my body, it was a blast and I will definitely be going back soon!

as always, my photos at: http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/tigre

San Telmo Drummers

2009-01-05T11:19:00.001-08:00

Every Sunday there is an awesome feria in San Telmo with dancers and musicians. The moving drum circle is always one of my favorite things to watch. Here's a video of them last night in the middle of Defensa, the main street of the feria.

Bear Fights

2009-01-01T08:31:00.001-08:00

Video of some of the guys I work with taking what they call Bear Fights on NYE. First you take a Jaegar Bomb (Jaegar and Red Bull) then you follow it with an Irish Car Bomb (Baileys in a Guiness). Burly.

Happy New Year!!

2009-01-01T08:08:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everybody! 2009 is going to be a good one...

The Reads, Hana, and the Weirdest Uruguayo Ever...

2008-12-28T17:31:00.000-08:00

Since coming back from Patagonia I have been pretty bad about keeping up with the blog and for that I apologize. For all you people out there that have been waiting for a new update with bated breath, you are now in luck.
Sidenote: I'm extremely hopped up on Yerba Mate right now (and no, that is not a drug and yes, it is legal).

The last few weeks have been really amazing. My buddies from Oregon that I went trekking with all came back to Buenos Aires after their respective trips (some to Iguazu, others to Mendoza). The Read Brothers also made an appearance (with their buddy Jeff). We all ate, drank and laughed together. It was a grand ol' time. So many people I have met here have merely been passers-by so it feels like every other night there is a fiesta de despedida (going away party), this of course was the case with all the American guys here. Trevor was the first to go. We spent his last night here at La Bomba de Tiempo, a very famous weekly drum orchestra concert that turns into a large outdoor party. I'll hopefully have some video of it up soon. Even though everyone was starting to head back to the States, Hana was coming here to visit me for a couple weeks.

Hana's time in Buenos Aires was incredible. The weather for the most part was perfect, not too humid. We spent a lot of time eating, drinking really good wines (the best wine I have had in Argentina was at La Brigata, a very famous restaurant here that's known for cutting your steak with a spoon to show you how tender it is), going to ferias and parks and doing generally touristy stuff that I would have probably been too lazy to get around to had I not had a guest. We really only went out late her first night here when we all went to Bahrein on their drum-n-bass night. The music was intense and I guess everyone we went with hated it but we had fun. The second day she got here we went down to Plaza de Mayo. It was a Wednesday which meant that the weekly Mother's protest was going on. For those that don't know, Argentina went through what was known as the Dirty War in the 70's when the country was under a very cruel dictatorship where some 30,000 people simply disappeared. Every Wednesday starting at 3 pm, mothers of those who disappeared march around the plaza with pictures of their sons. They've been doing this for nearly 30 years. It's pretty haunting.

The highlight of the couple weeks Hana was here was Punta del Este, Uruguay. The original plan was to get out to Colonia for a day and then come back to go down to Mar del Plata, a big coastal city in Argentina. The beaches in Uruguay are much more incredible though so we decided to forego Colonia and Mar del Plata and just head out to the Atlantic coast in Uruguay. After taking a ferry directly from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, we hopped on a bus for Punta. The total travel time is about 5 hours (3 hour ferry, 2 hour bus). I had gone ahead and booked a place to stay in advance because this place is one of the most popular summer destinations for people in the region. We got in a cab (which are all cream colored brand new Mercedes' by the way) and headed to the hotel/hostel. As we drove further and further away from the downtown area and into what looked like the forest, I could feel Hana's disappointment radiate from her being. Oh man I thought, I really hope I didn't blow it. We arrived and were immediately greeted by Rodrigo, the owner. This guy would become one of the strangest people either of us had ever met. He gave us a tour and then gave us a map to look at to orientate ourselves. When shown to our room there was a standard skeleton key sticking out of the key hole but you could tell it wasn't the right size or anything. We asked if it worked and got a classic response from Rodrigo, "oh the room doesn't lock, no one steals things here." Luckily he was right, we never locked our room and nothing got stolen. The city really isn't very big and it turned out we were a 20 minute bike ride from the farthest point of the city so it ended up being really nice location-wise. His longtime girlfriend who he had a kid with then came out to explain the map to us. This was a funny situation because Hana really had to go to the bathroom and this woman was blatantly stoned. She moved very, very slowly and kept talking about all this stuff that we couldn't care less about. All the while Hana is like, ok lady, HURRY UP!! She survived though. After getting settled in we went down the road to rent bikes. Each of us got a beach cruiser for 3 days, which came out to about $5. The great thing about Punta del Este is that it's like the St. Tropez or South Beach of South America but at discount prices. Our days basically consisted of riding around all over the place on our cruisers, chilling on the beautiful beaches, and eating good food. There's not really much else to do out there.

Some explanation of the weirdness of Rodrigo I was referring to. For one, he was always up in your business. He seemed to show up around you all the time which I found to be incredibly annoying. He would also recommend certain food items to order for delivery and then once you ordered them ask you why you didn't get something else. Example: There was this restaurant called Rico y Famoso that he raved about because of their chivitos. So we each ordered a chivito to get delivered one day. He sees us eating them and goes, oh their chivitos aren't that good, you have to get the empanadas. Thanks dude. The other weird thing was that he printed these advertising fliers for the hostel in English so he asked Hana to go over them and see if there were any mistakes. She found that he had spelled bicycle, bycycle. When she tried to correct him on it, he flipped out on her like she was badmouthing the hostel or something. Very odd fellow who seemed to get weirder and weirder as the days went on. In any case, the facilities were great, the other people staying there were really cool too, and they made a great Christmas Eve dinner for everyone.

Funny story about the bikes too. They give you a lock to go with your bike of course. These locks they give you have a little string with a key. Well one day at the beach as we were preparing to leave, I realized that somehow the key fell off this little string. This was not good because I had locked my bike to Hana's, facing the opposite way, so there was no way one of us could just ride back to the shop and get a backup key or have them somehow break the lock to at least get it free. I ended up staying with the bikes as Hana went to this bar up the street to see if anyone had anything to cut the lock. No one did, but she found this guy who had pliers and a sledgehammer. Him and I carried the bikes, in their jumbled mess, to a place where he could try to break the lock. After placing the part of the bike where the lock was up on a trash can, he held the lock chain with the pliers and smashed them with the sledgehammer. To my amazement it actually worked.

So after 4 days and 3 nights in beautiful Punta, we headed back to Argentina for a night before she flew to Hawaii to go on vacation with the parents. It was an awesome trip. Now I'm back in Buenos Aires, working. Can you believe it? I got that job with the pubcrawl that I had tried for my first week here. It's been a blast.

Cuban Street Band

2008-12-27T13:24:00.000-08:00

sweet video of this Cuban band playing while waiting in line for La Bomba de Tiempo (a weekly percussion concert)

Backpacking Patagonia

2008-12-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

Everyone has that list of places they gotta get to at some point in their lives and I'm no different. The funny thing about these lists is that they constantly evolve. I had always known about Patagonia and wanted to go there, but until I actually touched down in Argentina it wasn't a major priority. After going there, I don't know how it wasn't in my top 3. It is a "whoa" type of place meaning I found myself saying whoa A LOT!

On Tuesday, my buddies Chris and Trevor from Oregon arrived in Buenos Aires with their friend Josh after two months of traveling through Colombia and Peru. Once they landed they came straight to mi casa so we caught up, I showed them around and then we went out for dinner at the parilla up the street. Obviously, their first meal in this country was steak, but not just that. We were all starving so we chose the parillada para 4 personas. The old lady that works there gave us this look like, "you guys aren't nearly big enough to handle that" so she convinced us to do the same but para 3 personas. This ended up being a good call. The other parilladas I have had here have been at semi-fancy places so they come with recognizable meat products. This being a typical neighborhood parilla meant that we were getting a few surprises. There was of course some asado (beef ribs), vacio (flank steak), and chicken. Even the morcilla (blood sausage) at this point doesn't really phase me. What we weren't expecting however were the cow hearts and chinchulines (small intestine), and in such quantity. Trevor and I were the only ones to try the chinchulines, and aside from the texture, they weren't horrible. Fortunately there was enough "normal" food to get us all sufficiently full. Maybe some day chinculines won't phase me either, but I won't be ordering them any time soon. After dinner I hooked them up with a hostel not far from my place on Avenida de Mayo. Everyone was pretty wiped so we all stayed in and planned to meet in the morning around 10:30 to head to Retiro Terminal de Omnibus to get our bus tickets to Bariloche. We had no real plans for when we got there, but we had ideas.

To my surprise I actually got up at 10 a.m. very effortlessly. That is early here. Very early. After heading to the supermarket to pick up food and whiskey (a recurring theme for the next week) we hopped on the subte to Retiro. A couple stops before we got there, Trevor caught a guy with his hand in his cargo shorts pocket trying to rip off his digital camera. Had he gotten away with it, Trevor would have officially been that "bad luck" guy. In Colombia, he got his wallet, passport (which he eventually got back) and first camera stolen. In any case, we got to the terminal around noon and quickly found a couple companies that ran buses to Bariloche. One for 225 pesos (full-cama) and another for 150 (semi-cama). We opted for the cheap one, and caught the next bus at 1:00. The bus is advertised as having leather seats and making the trip in 22 hours. Naturally, there were no leather seats and the trip took 25 hours. But hey, who cares about details? The trip was fairly effortless to be honest. The bottle of whiskey was a huge bonus. The looks of jealousy on everyone else's faces were priceless, even the people working on the bus. To stay busy we played poker with paper for chips. Busses here also play movies, that is when the the electronics actually work. After a couple botched attempts at our in-ride entertainment, they finally got the movie "Che" to run. A couple things about this made me laugh. Ernesto "Che" Guevara de la Serna was from Argentina and is somewhat of an idol here to put it lightly. Why the bus company decided to show a movie about this guy with Latino actors from the States speaking English with Spanish accents is beyond me. The acting was also terrible. Other highlights of the bus trip were passing through Bahia Blanca (Manu Ginobili's hometown) and sleeping. What's really funny is that of the 25 hour trip, about 20 hours are spent driving through the Pampa, Argentina's version of the American Midwest. Not a whole heck of a lot to see. The last few hours of the trip were stunningly gorgeous though.

We arrived at around 11ish I want to say, on Thanksgiving. The city of about 90,000 is beautiful. It's like a Swiss village built on Lake Tahoe where the people speak Spanish. First item of business was finding a hostel. After striking out at this place 1004 with absolutely incredible views of Bariloche, we headed to Hostel 41 Below, which did indeed have space for us. Very chill spot run by a Kiwi who has been living in Bariloche for years now, skiing, hiking and doing all kinds of other outdoorsy stuff. I learned on the bus trip that these guys' priority in Patagonia was to go fly-fishing, because apparently this part of the world is a fisher's mecca. In the States, it's pretty common to have rental shops in fly-fishing regions. Here not so much. The guys quickly found out that in order to actually go fishing they were either going to have to buy all the gear they would need (estimated at about $1000 US) or go through a fishing lodge at about $600 US a day. Plans quickly changed which ended up working out in my favor, as I know zilch about fly-fishing. We ended up finding an outdoor store that sold a sleeping bag/tent combo for about 200 pesos, roughly $60, so we decided to venture into the wild for a few days. After going to the tourist office to find out good routes, we were told that there was a fair amount of snow and that we probably needed snowshoes. After speaking to the guys at the hostel we found out that it wasn't actually necessary to get snowshoes. We went with their opinion. Plans figured out, the next item of business was to find a good place to get Thanksgiving dinner the Argentine way: you guessed it, steak! Everyone recommended a local staple, Alberto's, so that's where we went. Holy shit was that a good steak! Best fries I've had here too. We got 4 half porciones (Vacio, 2 Bife de Chorizos, and a Lomo), 2 orders of fries and a large salad. This would be a meal that would be talked about the next few days while eating salami sandwiches or carrots.

Friday: Day 1 of backpacking

We woke up, went to the supermarket up the street to get our supplies for the next few days: bread, salami, crackers, tuna, apples and oranges, carrots, granola bars, chocolate (Bariloche is a HUGE chocolate town) a bottle of red wine, and 3 fifths of Hiram Walker's whiskey. My guess is that we all had at least about 70 lbs. in our packs. To get to the starting point of our backpacking trip, you have to take a bus with no number to Cerro Catedral (in the winter, it's a huge ski resort). This bus supposedly comes every hour on the :15. If there is one thing that Argentines are good at, it's being late. We get to the bus stop at about noon so we figure perfect timing. Once 12:45 came around and no bus showed up, we started wondering if we were in the wrong place. I went around asking people what the deal with the bus was and got 4 or 5 different answers. Some said you catch it here, some said you catch it 3 blocks from here, some said it comes every hour on the :30, etc...I think it was at about 1:30 that we caught it, 3 blocks from where we were. I guess the proper strategy is to ask a lot of people the same question and then follow a combination of their answers to succeed. After a 30 minute ride past enormous cabins along the lake we arrived at C. Catedral and the journey began. The first day was easily the easiest of the four days we would be in the mountains. The day was spent very peacefully except for when we were hiking close to a couple of Israeli guys blasting really horrible Israeli pop out of external iPod speakers. We walked along beautiful dark, dark blue lakes, through bamboo forests, and along rivers for about 4 or 5 hours until we got to Refugio Frey, our first campsite. The place was ridiculous, the campsite was right next to a good sized mountain lake with giant icebergs floating in it atop a ridge. This was a perfect vantage point to check out all the Andean condors flying around, they are freaking massive. After we all took our first celebratory whiskey pull, we made camp, ate some food and played poker. We were of course finishing a bottle of wine and our first fifth of whiskey. This led to Trevor naming his tent Abigail, it was weird. Josh and Trevor's tent site was wind-protected, but the spot Chris and I put ours had by far the better view. Before falling asleep we all chilled up at the lake and saw by far the longest lasting shooting star I have ever seen.

Saturday: Day 2 of backpacking

After a pretty restless sleep because of the wind we packed up camp and headed to our next site which at the time we thought was a placed called Lago Jakob which according to the map this was going to be about 7 to 8 hours of hiking without any real breaks. Before we actually left the campsite though, we all had a good laugh watching a couple climbing a huge rockface. They were having serious domestic problems, the husband wanted to climb fast, the wife was taking her time. All we could hear was the guy yelling at the top of his lungs "FUCKING CLIMB! I NEED MORE GODDAMN SLACK!! CLIMB!!!" It was pretty comical. After hiking straight up snow and maneuvering creatively up boulders, we made it to the first pass, where we found another lake, Laguna Schmoll. Not only did the hiking require a fair amount of strength and technique, the scenery was breathtaking, there was no need to rush. We chilled up at the lake, tried to stand on the icebergs (the water was very shallow) and had some grub. After another, even bigger vertical snow/boulder field, we made it to the highest pass of the day. Literally one of the best views of my life. The mountains, lakes, and rivers a site to see but what is so unique to Patagonia are the jagged huge rock formations. We got really lucky with weather, maybe a bit too lucky, it was really hot. The hot sun on the snow is so sneaky, you don't realize you are burnt to a crisp until it's too late. We didn't really think about sunscreen until the middle of the second day. I look like a tomato, but it could be worse. From this ridge we looked down at a huge meadow and forest that we would have to trek through to get to Lago Jakob (our originally planned 2nd campsite). To get down there we had to get down a very steep snow field which we all slid down on our asses (except for Chris who managed to walk/ski down it). After the snow field came the steep loose rock patch. That was fun. Not! It was like walking down a hill that looked like a mixture of Mars and Afghanistan. Josh hyper-extended his knee rafting in Peru so it really sucked for him. No new injuries from this hill fortunately. After we got down to the meadow we walked along the trail in the forest and found an absolutely ideal spot next to a waterfall and stream to make camp and break up the long day. It was a brilliant idea. In the Refugios (legal campsites) you are surrounded by lots and lots of other people. This spot was technically off-limits for camping but there were fire-pits everywhere and even the guy at the tourist office suggested breaking up the second day in this meadow so we risked camping there and having a fire (pretty sure we would have gotten fined if a ranger came by). We set up camp and headed for the river (it was hooooot!). I think I might have lasted about a tenth of a second in the river being that it is nothing but snowmelt. The night once again consisted of drinking a bottle of whiskey and eating salami sandwiches. This time however it was by a fire next to a waterfall. Life was prettay, prettay, prettttay good as LD would say.

Sunday: Day 3 of backpacking

Definitely woke up feeling the past couple days. This was the first time I had exerted myself this much in what felt like years. Since we had broken up an 8 hour day in two, we didn't really have to rush. I don't think we got out of that campsite till about noon. Once again, we had another day of climbing up vertical snow. On the way up through some brush, a couple of the guys saw a rabbit that was so big they thought at first it was a deer. Bummed I missed it. Made it to the top of another ridge where we met a Swiss couple that moved like they were mountain goats. In a way they are I guess. Our destination this time really was Lago Jakob and after 3 and a half hours, we made it there, after another really steep annoying loose rock field. The nice thing about breaking up the two days was that we got so much sunlight in every site we made it to especially since the sun doesn't set till about 9:30. At Jakob we got there early enough that I was able to get a two hour nap in and enjoy 4 or so hours of sunlight. We had staked out our campsite and were kind of put off when this guy traveling by himself set up camp 2 feet from my tent. It ended up working out fine though, he was a nice guy from Herzliyah recently out of the army and traveling South America for a year. We found out he was doing our trip in reverse. After going DOWN those loose rock fields, the thought of going up them sounded like the most unpleasant thing in the world. Finished our last bottle of whiskey (this time it was a bit more forced, we had to get rid of the weight) and hit the hay.

Monday: Day 4 of backpacking

According to the map, our last day was geographically the easiest to handle. As it turned out, it ended up being easily the longest day of them all. For the majority of the time we were following (or crossing) a river. At times when we had to cross, we either had to hold a rope line set up to keep you from going over waterfalls or cross Indiana Jones-style bridges that feel like they're going to collapse with every step. We found a beautiful spot along the river to have lunch and go for a swim. This time the water felt a lot better for some reason. At the end of day 3 we all began talking about how much we were looking forward to another Alberto's steak but tried to stop thinking about it. At points on the last day, that juicy hunk of beautiful cow meat was the only thing keeping us going. A lot of the hiking this day was nothing more than walking on hot, dusty roads for hours so it wasn't the most pleasant. To get back to town we were told to follow the river to a service road which we would have to follow until we get to the main, paved road where we could catch a bus. Following Latin American standards, this service road had a couple of forks in it with no signs. We guessed which way to take both times and were fortunately correct. After finding the bus and disturbing all the clean passengers with our lovely stenches for half an hour, we made it back to town. Alberto's didn't open for 3 or 4 hours so we showered and chilled at the hostel and decided to all drink a bottle of wine each before getting to the restaurant. I don't know if I've had a better meal in my life. Alberto is the man.

So now that we were back in Bariloche, the next plans needed to be discussed. I knew I was going to head back to BA because I'm paying rent here and being gone longer than a week is really hard to justify, The hostel we had stayed in for the nights before and after the trip didn't have room so they guys went back to 1004 to see if they could bunk there. Not only did they have room but they offered pretty cheap, all included daily fly-fishing trips. Everything worked out for everyone in the end. So now after a very long bus-ride back with more dysfunctional DVD players and bad movies, I am back in BsAs. Good times.

all pics at: http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/bariloche

Corrido de cabashos en la veesha

2008-11-24T19:25:00.000-08:00

While waiting to play futbol with the kids today (which didn't happen because none of them showed up) there was a random local horse drag race going on down the street. I'm guessing people we're betting on it but I'm not sure. Here's a video of one of the races...

Note: Corrido de cabashos en la veesha is the phonetic pronunciation of corrido de caballos en la villa in an Argentine accent meaning "horse race in the shantytown".

L.I.F.E. Argentina

2008-11-24T14:10:00.000-08:00

To keep myself busy during the week I have been volunteering with an NGO called L.I.F.E. Argentina. The organization goes to the villas (pronounced vee-shas), or shantytowns, surrounding Buenos Aires and does work with kids. Most of the work is school support stuff like teaching english, math, etc..but we also set up birthday parties and play futbol with the kids. For the most part the kids are great, but because of the hard homelife situations that most of them come from there are some real out of control kids too. Another great thing about working with this group is that the people that are a part of it are all really cool, it's been a great way to meet people. I will be adding photos from our work here on this portion of the blog.

Notable story from my first day on the job:
On my way to the office, my colectivo (city bus) broke. Straight up. Everyone had to get off the bus and wait for a new one. I have no idea what happened. So anyways, I finally get to the office and get set up with the bus/van thing that will take all of us to the villa for the day to play futbol. Funny thing happened. About 30 minutes into the ride as we're getting off the freeway we hear the worst sound I have ever heard any sort of motor vehicle make. This time we found out what happened: the drive shaft fell off. Once again, everyone had to get off the bus and wait for another one. Welcome to the 3rd world. We made it to our futbol game eventually, 2 broken busses later.

Protest

2008-11-20T05:53:00.001-08:00

There's always some sort of protest in front of the Congreso Nacional here on Wednesdays. Here's a little video of the one going one yesterday. I'm not sure exactly what it was they were demonstrating against, but there was a lot of anti-Kirchner (the last name of both the current President, and her husband, who preceded her) stuff.

Rosario: Asados, Owl Fights, and Caipirinhas

2008-11-15T16:23:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, November 13th I got on an "omnibus" at Retiro Station in Buenos Aires to Rosario, a city of about 1 million people 4 hours to the northwest. My friends Mike and Scott Read from the U of O are both living there right now. Mike is a junior and is finishing up his semester abroad up there and Scott is basically doing the same thing as me. He graduated a few years before me and is now trying to work and live in Rosario. I arrived at about 7 pm, checked into my hostel and met up with Scott to go buy meat for an asado. Vacio and chorizo for me of course. This city is located on the banks of the Parana river and it seems to dictate where all the fun stuff goes down. All the asados I've been apart of have been relatively small, one parilla (grill). In Rosario, there is a spot down by the river where there are roughly 50 or so parillas and people freely come and go with meat. Essentially what ends up happening is you have about 200 people grilling and drinking from separate groups which eventually turns into one large party. The smell is amazing. Mike invited people from his AHA program, the same organization that I did my study abroad program through, and we had about 30 people at our asado. Very randomly there was a girl in his program that I was really good friends with at school but had lost touch with, Corrie Burdett. It was really awesome seeing her and I'm pretty sure we'll meet up next time she comes through BA. Another random event of the asado was the hour long owl fight that went on in the tree above our table. 2 or 3 owls, not sure, were fighting one another and screeching right over our heads. Strange. After the asado, we went to this club called Berlin, had a Fernet and Cola and took off after an hour and hit the sack. My bed in the hostel by the way was even more uncomfortable than my bed in BA, didn't think that was possible.

The next day I went to lunch with Mike and his friends Dane and Alex, all U of O kids. Their program has a deal with a really good restaurant where they can get free food. I'm all about free food, especially when it's good. I had chicken for the first time in a restaurant here. It's good but it's not beef. After we went to lunch we walked to the Newell's stadium, one of the two soccer teams in Rosario, so they could get tickets for the game on saturday (which I didn't go to btw). The highlight of the day was La Florida, one of the most popular beaches on the river. After an unnecessarily long busride (we took the wrong one) we finally got there. It's unbelieveable how fine and white the sand there is, you forget you are on a river. We chilled there for a few hours, went swimming and basically just lounged.

Rosario is an unexpectadly international city. I'm not sure if it's every Friday night, or if I just hit the right weekend but there happened to be a massive international fair type of thing called colectividades where community groups organized by what country they claim heritage to set up stands with food and stages with typical music and dancing. Scott lived in Peru for a while so he was pretty much obsessed with the Peruvian section. The food was awesome, it was nice having something with some spice for once. If you put pepper on your food, Argentines will look at you with utter amazement as if you just doused your food with puree of habanero peppers or something. Most of the night however we hung out in "Brasil". Not surprisingly, this was the most energetic and fun place to be, probably because they sold 6 peso (less than $2) caipirinhas. This video is an example of what happens to you when you have about 8 of these things and think you can sing (that's Scott singing with our new friend, the jolliest Brasilian lady I've ever met):

The colectividades came to an unexpected end however when a huge downpour ensued. Argentines are also unusually scared of rain, once it started, people started screaming and running for cover. All of us who had spent so many years in Eugene were not the least bit phased. The night then of course ended at a boliche, a pretty fun one too. Wouldn't you know it, it was located on the RIVER! They love that thing here. At about 5 or so, we headed home and I went back to my uncomfy bed.

Before I left to go home to BA, I had one last thing to check out: the Che Guevara mural. I have to admit I was a bit disappointed in it because I had this idea that it was some grand monument or something, but it wasn't. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool. Ernesto "Che" Guevara was born and raised in Rosario, everything seems to be some reference to him. Here I am at the memorial,
and here is a picture of his childhood home, which has been turned into a hostel:

I'm back in BA now, I have my first day with my volunteer program this afternoon. We're playing futbol with the kids, it's gonng be rough...

FYI

2008-11-12T08:27:00.000-08:00

I have updated my pbase photo site to make it easier for people to follow my photos from here. Whenever you want to check out my photos, all you have to do is go to this address:
http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/saa

Creamfields

2008-11-10T13:11:00.000-08:00

Since coming back from Uruguay, life here has been pretty mellow. That is until this last Saturday, when I went to the most insane electronic music festival ever. Creamfields is a festival that started in the UK a few years back and now has branched out to various big cities around the world such as Rio, Prague, Barcelona, etc..The festival is more of a giant party with 100,000 people rocking out from 3pm to 6 in the morning than a concert. For anyone that knows electronic music, the highlights were Booka Shade, deadmau5, Simian Mobile Disco, the Gorillaz and Gui Boratto. On the bus to the event, German and I met a group of people from all the over the world also going to the show. We ended up partying with them a lot. The international crew consisted of Dutch, German, British, Uruguayan, and American people. It was a good time. Unfortunately, the place was so nuts that getting seperated was inevitable and I never managed to get any of their contact info. Oh well.

I had a blast at this festival but I'll tell you that once the sun came up and the show was over, there was nothing in the world I wanted more than my bed. After battling the other 99,986 zombie-like people for a cab, we finally made it home. How sweet that sleep was...

Coming up: Trip to Rosario to see my friends Mike and Scott Read from U of O and the start of my volunteer program at L.I.F.E. Argentina (http://www.lifeargentina.org).

Que haces, bo? Halloween in Uruguay

2008-11-04T08:23:00.001-08:00

One of the coolest things about Buenos Aires is its proximity to Uruguay. On Friday, Halloween, my roommates Anika, Mette, German and I got on the ferry to Colonia, the nearest city by boat. We had to be there by 9 a.m. which was incredibly hard because to be honest I hadn't been up before noon since I arrived in this country. The terminal and the ferries here are incredible. Very modern, spacious and built to represent what looks like a shopping mall. The weather was nice so we hopped on the top deck and found a table to sit at by the bar, which of course was decorated with tropical plants and blaring techno music. It felt like Club Med or something. We took the slow ferry (3 hour ride as opposed to 50 minutes), which of course is the cheaper one. It's totally worth it though because you are allowed to sit outside. The trip isn't the most scenic one you've ever been on. The Rio de la Plata, the body of water you have to cross, is brown and murky. Aside from the sight of the skyline of BA you don't see anything but water until you get to Colonia. Once we arrived in Colonia we hopped on a bus to Montevideo, the capital city. Uruguay in total has about 3 million citizens, a huge number live outside of the country and about 1.2 million live in Montevideo. It's a small town compared to Argentina. But that's what is great about it. This is my first exposure of life outside of BA since I arrived a month ago so it was awesome to get some natural scenery and beach time in. Also the fact that it's quiet was pretty refreshing.

Once in Montevideo, we got a cab to German's house where he grew up. It is in a neighborhood called Malvin, really nice, near the Rambla (beach promenade) and literally right next door to a huge fruit stand. As soon as we showed up, his mom had like 50 bizillion sandwiches made for us which was awesome because I was STARVING. After socializing with his madre for an hour or so, we went on a driving tour of the city until we found a nice overlook point with a park to relax and look at the river (which is so wide, looks like the ocean). After chilling there for a while we went back and ate more food and started the night. The plan for the night was to get to this huge new nightclub called IN. German's friend (DJ Hippy, hilarious DJ name) was spinning that night so it was looking like we were going to be getting in for free since we were put on the list. Of course, to be able to use this list priority, you have to get there by 1:30 am. That's incredibly early by the standards here. So, we drank at his house with his friends till about 3:15 and headed to the club. Of course, we weren't let in. German, trying to charm his way in ended up calling the bouncers "boludo" in the process of buddying up with them. In Argentina, boludo is a not-so-endearing term (roughly meaning asshole) but is used almost in the same way we say "dude". In Uruguay, it is not so. This didn't help our case so we ended up having to pay, but it was a good time.

The way I spent Saturday in Montevideo was roughly the same as every Saturday I've spent in Buenos Aires: horizontally. Getting back from the club as the sun is coming up after who knows how many Fernet and Colas usually results in a whole lot of nothing the next day (or that day, shall I say). Aside from going to German's sister Laura's jewelry show, we laid around in the sun and on the beach for pretty much the whole day. We had a lot of relaxing to do before Pomo's birthday party. Pomo is the bass player from the band German is in and has spent a lot of time at our house here in BA. Part of the reason we were in Montevideo this weekend was for his birthday down at the beach. It's typical to rent out fisherman clubhouses for parties because of their location and because there is a lot of space. Saturday night was pretty much a repeat of Friday except there were no bouncers to insult and the entrance was free. Once again a great time was had by all.
Left to Right: German, Laura (German's sister), Annika, Maria Jose (Laura's friend)
I'm guessing this is the head fisherman...

Sunday was the day of chivito. I had been waiting to eat one of these things ever since I heard about them 2 weeks before I went to Uruguay. Another meat-lover's food. It's similar to a hamburger but the dressings they put on the sandwich are totally different. My mouth is watering right now as I write about it. Basically it's an amazing sandwich and my trip to Uruguay wouldn't have been complete without it.

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Now I'm back in BA. I hope to make it back to Uruguay in the next couple months, the whole eastern coast (which is on an actual ocean) seems amazing. Plus it's pretty sweet how you get your tourist visa renewed for another 3 months every time you go, for free! Oh and I just woke up from what felt like a dream watching Barack Obama become the next President of the United States of America. Holy shit!

the rest of my Uruguay pics are here: http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/uruguay

Asados and Gothic people dancing to Reggaeton

2008-10-27T07:56:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a little bit since I last updated this thing so I guess a new posting is due. I am loving it here. The weather is getting nice, summer time attitude is creeping in and there is never a shortage of people to hang out with. The house I'm living in has become even more appealing now that the water heater works. It's kind of bizarre that there have been two isolated incidents involving water heaters in less than a month. So basically what my life has consisted of the last couple weeks is sending applications to various non-profits (chances are much better of getting unpaid internship positions in cool programs than getting paid), Spanish conversation classes, going out, and eating good food. Life is pretty damn good.

Going out here is always something different. For example in the last week, I've gone to Pacha (a massive Euro style super-club), a milonga (tango house) at 444 Cochabamba in San Telmo that has probably not changed since the 30's, a small club also in San Telmo called Torquata Tasso to see my roommate Tigre's folk band play, and a huge party at my German friend Hannes' house where Gothic people were going dumb to reggaeton music. There are many faces to this city it seems.

On Sunday (yesterday) I experienced my first asado. For anyone that loves meat, asados are pretty much the best place to be. I went out pretty hard on Saturday night so chilling during the day with friends and meeting new people was perfect. Since the weather is really starting to be amazing, we're going to be doing these pretty much every weekend. Here are a few photos from the asado.

That's all for now. I have a lot to look forward to though. Playing tennis with my friend Hannes this week, going to Uruguay this weekend with my roommates, then the week after that I'm going to CREAMFIELDS (a huge electronic music festival). In between all of that, the job hunt continues. Things are really starting to fall into place here though so I have a good feeling. OK, time to go watch the Rays hopefully beat the Phillies.

more photos on http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/buenos_aires
also, have a new gallery to check out: http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/playing_with_fire

Funny Money

2008-10-16T17:45:00.001-07:00

Hopefully this is the last time I will have to mention my money issues or dinerWOES as I like to call them. Wow, I'm even making puns in Spanish. Progress! So anyways, I got $200 transferred to Western Union thanks to the suggestion from Hana (I had no idea they were international) and the patience of my dad. Getting that actual money would of course prove to be a huge fiasco (surprise, surprise). On the Western Union website there is a tab to select "Agent Locations". This is very helpful since it shows you the location of the branch and gives you driving directions. I should say, this WOULD be helpful, if it were CORRECT. I plug in my current address and find one that is a little over 2 miles away. I figure, hey what the hell, I'll put my iPod in and go for a walk since the weather isn't so bad. I look at the map that shows up and it turns out the route is very straightforward: walk 4 blocks down Avenida Rivadavia, turn left at Jujuy and arrive at Avenida Caseros after about 10-12 blocks. Of course that didn't end up being the case. I walked for well over an hour before I even got to Caseros. I guess I should have asked someone where it was. In any case, I got to the Western Union, went upstairs and pulled a number that determined my place in line. Fortunately, there weren't too many people in front of me and I only waited about 15 minutes. Once I got called to the cashier, I gave her my fund transfer # and my passport. It seemed like all was going to be fine. I should have guessed it wasn't going to be as smooth as it should be. The teller looks at my passport and then walks off to her supervisor where they discuss something for a few minutes. The teller comes back and tells me that they can't deliver my money because their computers are only equipped to handle identifaction numbers (passports, etc..) of 8 digits or less. USA passports are 9 digits. I am not kidding. She then hands me a piece of paper with an address on it for a Western Union with computers that are so advanced they can handle an extra digit in their database. The address is 2500 Rivadavia. RIVADAVIA!!!! I live on the corner of the 2000 block of Rivadavia! I tell her where I live and she gives me this look like, aww man I'm sorry, you are not the first to get this bad news. For some reason, this branch isn't listed on the website and a lot of people have the same reaction. Fortunately, I discovered a subte line that runs almost directly from the bank to a few blocks from the Western Union I wanted to go to. So in the end, I did get my money. The actual Western Union I needed to go to was packed of course and ended up taking forever, but I got my money. It only took over four hours when it should have taken twenty minutes.

In other news, life is good here. I had an interview for a receptionist position at a hostel in the Palermo neighborhood. The guy wanted to give me the job but there was a major catch: Friday through Tuesday from midnight to 8 a.m. Not gonna happen. I've been getting to know my roommates, finally met them all. It's going to be a good time. A couple funny sports-related things to report too. I've been watching the Tampa Bay-Red Sox series on ESPN Deportes. I didn't realize that the commentators call home runs just like they do goals in futbol. Every time someone hits a home run, the commentators yell at the top of their lungs: "OOOOHLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLO!!!!". It's pretty funny. The second thing that I find funny about sports here in South America is that apparently coaches smoke cigarettes on the sidelines in soccer. I watched the Argentina-Chile match yesterday and the coaches were chain-smoking the whole time. That would never fly in the States.

Casa Pasco Tour

2008-10-16T09:05:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick video showing a little bit of my new home.

I've also posted more pictures:
http://www.pbase.com/afirestein/buenos_aires