Like Robert Mugabe and military juntas too numerous to name, I have decided not to abide by the poll results in the recent "Send Me on Vacation" post, and instead have decided to take my annual "I don't have any kids or a wife to support and therefore have money and time to burn" vacation in...wait for it...Argentina. Now, in fairness to me, there was no clear winner in the blog poll results. As I think I mentioned, a couple of places tied with two votes each, and I had not established any rules on how to break ties. Since that poll, the dollar has pretty much bit the big one, so going to more conventional vacation spots, like Italy or Salt Lake City, was going to be extremely pricey. [The SLC reference, of course, is a tip of the cap to one of my favorite stories, about this guy who lived in Wyoming and who won free round-trip tickets on Pan-Am airlines to anywhere it flew, which at the time was everywhere in the world, and who chose to go to Salt Lake City because he always wanted to see the Mormon Tabernacle]. Anyway, given the lack of a legitimate winner, and the currency debacle occurring since the vote, I rationalized, errrr, decided that it would be ok to chart an alternate course. I picked neither Bush nor Gore.
Argentina, land of the pampas and Nazis fleeing the Allies, sun-drenched paradise, birthplace of the tango, overflowing with tender, succulent beef and raging yellow fever in the northwest. I will take it all in (although I'll get a yellow fever shot first-YF used to wipe out about a third of New Orleans and Houston every few years pre-air conditioning, so with all the Houston DNA floating throughout my body I'm sure those bacteria would think of me as "home"). I will do so from afar, of course, interacting with as few people on a human level as possible because that's what it means to roll Reeder-style. After all, hell, those people hid Eichmann and Mengele for 10 years, their military carried out a "dirty war" against the populace for about seven years after they invited the dictator back from exile (like, what did they expect was going to happen), and they're still seething over the Malvinas/Falklands. Maybe its best to keep my head down.
But, still, the place is beautiful and cheap [apologies, but I had to make an "ideal date" reference here]. The dollar still goes far in Argentina, and the sights reportedly are varied and excellent. Lots of hiking, and Buenos Aires has gotten good reviews from some people I know (and by that, I mean these late twenty-something doofuses I had dinner with at Vic and Anthony's last summer before an Astros game-they were totally stoked about the BA, dude). Now, I have to say my friend Maridee went to Buenos Aires a couple of years ago and didn't think it was so great, but that appears to be a contrarian view in light of the glowing reviews that all the usual travel resources give it. Plus, I'll go to other places in Argentina, like Ushuia, southermost permanent settlement in the world, or Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, near the Chilean border, a UNESCO world heritage site.
Now if I can just keep that damn song out of my head. Curse you Andrew Lloyd Webber! I'll also have to brush up on my spanish, learning crucial phrases like "I demand to see the American ambassador," and "my family hates me and will not pay a ransom."
Oh, and yeah, I'll blog daily, or as near as possible, during the trip, which will be the first two weeks of September.
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