The crazy nights of Buenos Aires

Wednesday afternoon my cell phone stopped working. At first I was really concerned, and then I thought, this is probably a good thing. It had been ringing nonstop, and every night when I would say to myself, “I’m kinda tired and should just take it easy” someone would call and force me to go out and party until some ungodly hour of the morning. No more!

But by Friday I was feeling guilty that I hadn’t talked to anyone in the last two nights. My body was thankful and definitely appreciative of the last two early nights in, but since I was almost feeling healthy again I broke down and went to the cell phone store. They fixed it right up and by 1:00 PM it was back in working order. At 1:30 Joanna called me. “Me and Anna are going to Foz de Iguazu for the weekend, are you interested in coming?” Oooh…I really wanted to go to the Foz de Iguazu. Everyone describes it as one of the most beautiful sights in all of South America, and apparently it just puts Niagara Falls to shame.

At first I said no, I had classes on Tuesday and I just didn’t think I had enough time. Then I thought about how much fun it would be, and when I talked to Joanna again and told her I was in. Then I thought about the 20 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu. The nice thing about being a burnt out Software Engineer is that you have the savings of a burnt out Software Engineer, and sometimes you can throw money at a problem and turn a 20 hours bus ride into a 1 hour airplane trip. Then I learned it was Amy´s birthday today, one of my fellow classmates. Maciej, the Polish guy, and Till, the German guy, thought we should all go celebrate. “Salimos?” they asked. “Como no!” I responded. Ok the falls would have to wait, I was going to spend one more weekend in Buenos Aires.

One other thing I have learned about myself on this journey is that I’m a flake. I have changed my mind about so many plans so many times, and I don’t think I’ve been on-time to a single encounter in the last 3 months. I guess that’s the problem with being overly easy-going and spontaneous. Sure when someone is depending on me I make sure to come through, but that’s probably the only time. When I told Joanna I was out again, she didn’t seem very surprised. I think she might have figured out this character trait of mine in only two short weeks, while it’s taken me 28 years. “Can we still leave our stuff at your place?” she asked. Of course! It always feels nice to help a friend in need, especially when it costs you nothing and your friends are two very pretty girls.

When the time was right, our group of Birthday well-wishers managed to find each other with just the normal amount of difficulty I seem to encounter whenever I try to meet up with friends in this country. The night started out with loud music, plenty of drinks and lots of cigarettes, and kinda ended the same way. In between I think we managed to offend just about everyone involved with some highly unsensitive comments about our respective countries, and there was even a beer spilling incident that was not soon forgotten.

Two in the morning proved to be the turning point, as usual. We were all kinda dragging but we managed to find some food to fuel us which kept us going for another couple of hours. As the wee hours rolled around we decided to take a break from the club scene and just sit and chill and shoot the shit.

Some of my best conversations happen at 4 AM. For some reason after you´ve been partying with a group of people all night, by the time that hour seems to roll around no one worries about being polite anymore and will just say whatever is on their mind. We all shared our stories of how we wound up in Buenos Aires, and what was next in our lives. Well those of us that had any clue, which turned out not to be too bad a ratio at 50%.

I always seem to meet two kinds of people when I´m travelling. Those that think they´ve got it all figured out and those that know they don´t. The thing about being a cliché is, you´re not the only one. Some things just resonate deep within the human soul and it doesn´t seem to matter where you come from, what language you speak, or what you´ve been doing with your life. We´re all trying to make sense of this world, and we´re all at different points in that journey. Some of us have got the path mapped out and others of us have miles to go before we sleep.