Yesterday some friends and I decided to make the journey over to Tigre, which is a little town on the Delta about an hour outside of Buenos Aires. On a normal day it may have been a lot of fun, but the weather turned sour on us and pretty much ruined the trip. No matter though. We rolled with the punches and found humour in crappy situations. The Journey The train to Tigre leaves from the Retiro train station. I had thought we would be able to use the subte (subway) to get part way there, but would have to taxi the last part of the journey. Once we got on the D-Line though, we realized that we ...

Yes sports fans, it’s time for another update. Today is day 65 in Buenos Aires. About an hour ago I had my last hair-cut in the city, and going forward there are a bunch of “lasts” about to happen. In fact, it seems like most of the expats I’ve met in the city are already gone or on their way out. A guy named Emerick from Montreal left two weeks ago, and another guy from New York is leaving this weekend. I suspect many people came to experience a summer in Buenos Aires, and now that summer is trailing off, it’s time to leave. Everyone I’ve talked to had enjoyed their time here, but ...

Next weekend I’m off to visit the southern most city in the entire world, Ushuaia, Argentina. From there, many people hop on a cruise ship and head down to Antarctica. It’s an expensive trip to Antarctica, starting at around $5,000 a person, but spending a day or two visiting one of the most remote parts of the world is apparently well worth the price. I will not be visiting Antarctica, but I will be visiting the Antarctica Hostel, located close to the Beagle Channel and in the shadow of the tail end of the Andes mountain range. Ushuaia will obviously be the most south I’ve ever been in ...

As many people know, I’ll be heading to Europe right after my trip to New York City. I officially arrive in Ireland on April 6th, and will be spending the next few weeks around the United Kingdom. Europe is expensive, there’s no doubt about it. Most hotels are around $150 a night for anything decent, and many hostels get bad reviews for what they charge. Since I’ve been living pretty cheaply in Argentina, I’m going to live it up a bit in April. Ireland was definitely on the schedule, as was London (briefly, as I’ve been there before) and Paris. But given that I had a full week to kill ...

I’m hungry. Not in general, but for some of the comfort foods from back home. I’ve been told most people miss their friends and family when they are away from home for extended periods of time. But after a while, most people start to really crave some of the foods back home. I sure know I am. What kind of foods do I miss? Bacon? It exists, but not it’s more like fried ham. Pizza? Simple thin crust only. Only ham and olive toppings mostly. Breakfast food? Not really, mostly just breads and yogurts here. Perogies. Nope, haven’t seen any at all. Thai food. Not really. In fact, rare to find ...

When I first started planning this trip, the thought of spending almost a full year in perpetual summer seemed like an amazing goal to shoot for. I mean, who wouldn’t want sunshine and warm temperatures all the time? Truthfully though, I would love nothing more than to have a serious cold snap down here in Buenos Aires. It’s been around 28C or higher pretty much since I arrived. If that were a dry heat, it wouldn’t be too bad. But it’s very humid here, and it makes the heat seem that much worse. In fact, we’ve had 45C days here since I arrived if you factor in the humidity into the ...

I met a guy from Ireland at a pub about four weeks ago here in Buenos Aires. Once we got a few beers into our system, I thought I would pick his brain about what happened is his country. In North America we all know that they got themselves into a bit of a debt crisis, but the how and the way are mostly lacking from media over here. In short, it was their own fault. Banks were participating in predatory lending, and most people in Ireland were hungry for credit. Many of this guy’s friends had three of four credit cards, fancy cars, and banks were basically giving away mortgages to most people ...

I’ve been busy making plans for April. I haven’t pulled the trigger yet on most of it, but I’ve done a preliminary timetable and the budget works. So this is what it’s looking like. March 31 – April 5 – New York City, USA April 6 – April 10 – Shannon & Limerick, Ireland April 11 – April 15 – Edinburgh, Scotland April 15 – April 17 – Dublin, Ireland April 17 – April 21 – London outskirts, England April 21 – April 26 – Paris, France There’s a bit of bouncing around there, but I’m coordinating meeting up with a few other people, and that’s how it has to ...

I’ve been blogging about buying a new camera for quite some time now, and I’m pretty sure I have it narrowed down. Unfortunately, buying a camera at this point is a compromise for me, and I have a hard time making compromises in the technology sphere. SLR cameras and lenses are heavy. They are hard to carry, hard to pack, and a pain to take from place to place. But if you want high-end image quality, than a SLR offers you the best of the best. I love my SLR, but my Canon 40D SLR is in need of replacement at this point. I sold most of my lenses last year, so I don’t really have any professional ...

This last week was a weird week. I met up with a few friends and had some great times, but it was also the first real time I’ve been homesick in any capacity. There was nothing really that happened to make me feel that way, I was just sitting around and realized I was a long way from home. So I spent a day or so of being a bit melancholy. Thankfully the feeling has past, and it’s business as usual again. Weekends always get me excited, mostly because I have more opportunities to get out and explore on Saturday and Sunday than during the week. My Mac widget says I have 26 days left in Buenos ...

Today is my mom’s birthday! Like almost everyone older than me, she just turned 39 today. That means she has many long, happy years of bingo playing ahead of her! My mom was pretty sad when I moved out of Chilliwack, but she’s been taking my absence like a trooper. I try and do a call with her at least once a week, and we catch up on all the excitement back in cow town. I hope she has a great day today, and that people at work treat her to lunch or something awesome like that. Happy Birthday Mom! ...

I’m not sure why, but the internet in all of Buenos Aires seems to be on its knees. It’s definitely worse in my apartment, but it’s sporadic all over the city right now too. The first two months I was here it was slow, but reliable for the most part. It would take me 10 hours to download something that would take me 1 or 2 back home, but you could always get online when you needed to. It’s been getting worse over the last two weeks, and these last few days have been pretty brutal. The internet in my apartment went down this afternoon for a while, so I went across the street to a coffee ...

Well, it’s officially midnight in Buenos Aires, which means I can start wishing happy birthdays. Today of course is Dale’s 31st birthday. Dale is not only a trusted friend, but the second (and arguably less good-looking) half of BraveNewCode, the company that Dale and I both own. The last few years have had ups and downs, seeing me move from Vancouver, to Chilliwack, and now to Argentina. Amongst all the turmoil, there have been only a few constants, and Dale has been one of them. For the most part, I have talked to Dale nearly every day for the last few years, sometimes about politics, about ...

I’ve always been fascinated with baseball. Back when I was a kid, my dad and step-mom took me to a few Mariners games in Seattle. While prices have changed, back then you could get VIP tickets for around $30. While it’s not as popular in Canada, I do appreciate the game, the stadiums, the hot dogs, the peanuts and the entire atmosphere that goes around with watching a live baseball game. James Earl Jones’ speech in Field Of Dreams regarding baseball is a great one. Throughout all the turmoil in the states, the Great Depression, the multiple recessions, the shanty towns, there was one constant ...

It shouldn’t be a huge surprise based on the previous few entries, but I’m starting to get a tad restless in Buenos Aires. Unlike Canada where the WiFi is generally reliable, the WiFi here is pretty spotty, which makes it hard to get out of the house to work. The last week and a half it’s been absolutely terrible, with constant drop outs and complete blackouts for an hour or more from time to time. Back home, I would often go to Starbucks to break the day up a bit, but the WiFi at the nearest Starbucks has been down about 50% of the time I’ve been there, and none of my e-mail works for ...

I went for a walk at lunch to clear my mind, and ended up strolling through a little park in Palermo. There was an empty bench that was cast in a bit of shade from a large tree, so I sat down with the intention of relaxing for a few minutes while listening to music. About 45 degrees to my right was another guy on a bench casually reading a book, and 45 degrees to my left was another guy who was taking a little nap on his bench. Just a couple of dudes enjoying a nice sunshiny day in the park. A few minutes later, this old women approaches the guy reading a book and starts muttering to him in Spanish. ...

Last weekend I flew up to Puerto Iguazu and checked out Iguazu Falls. It was a great trip, and it was nice to get out of town for a few days. Puerto Iguazu reminded me a lot of Tofino actually, without the surfing. It was a quant little village with only a few main streets. The people were friendly, the food was good, and there were less bars on the windows and graffiti than here in Palermo Soho in Buenos Aires. The WiFi in my apartment (which is shared between about six suites) has been really dodgy lately, so I’ve moved over to a little coffee/pizza shop across the street. The photo pictured ...

Observe this photo from the KatKam: If you look closely, you can see some kind of flying object in the sky. I can only assume it’s an airplane, but it looks like it’s flying from the top of the photo down to the bottom. As a kid, I used to think every time I saw an object like that that it was the Space Shuttle. As an adult, I now know that the Space Shuttle doesn’t fly every day like I thought it did as a kid. But I guess that has to be a normal commercial plane and the fact it looks like it’s flying strangely is just due to the curvature of the earth. But then I have to ask, why doesn’t ...

One of the strange side effects of being tossed through a plate glass window was that I pretty much had a complete medical evaluation of my entire body done over the course of a year. The stack of papers I collected from the hospital due to the initial injury and subsequent surgeries was about 100 pages worth of material. I also have two or three CDs with the raw digital data from both CT scans and my MRI. It’s an amazing amount of material, and an incredible amount of insight into my own body. Reading through my admission report from the night of November 4th, 2006, I remember reading that ...

Last weekend I flew up to Puerto Iguazu to check out some of the most impressive waterfalls in the world, Iguazu Falls. Here is a breakdown of my visit to Iguazu Falls in South America. Flight From Buenos Aires To Puerto Iguazu I booked a flight on LAN airlines from Buenos Aires to Puerto Iguazu. Round trip airfare on the weekend is roughly $380 CAD, but thanks to some points on my credit card I managed to get about $300 off, ultimately costing me only $80 or so. Unlike most international flights, domestic flights within Argentina usually leave from the Aeroparque Jorge Newbury, which is a small ...