A funny thing happened on the way to Brazil

… I didn´t make it. I guess I looked at the wrong chapter in Lonely Planet. I didn´t think I needed a visa for Brazil, but I do. They wouldn´t let me on the plane for the Toronto-Sao Paolo leg of my flight. So I applied that ticket toward one for Buenos Aires, then spent all day Christmas in the Toronto airport waiting for that midnight flight.
The good news is that I was only half excited in the first place about traveling in Brazil alone for two or three weeks. This way I met up with Myung on the 26th. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. We have nice reunions after this and that month apart. Brazil will be there later.
As you know if you´ve been reading my posts, Myung has been traveling hard since we left South Africa. While I was basically taking in Americana and fattening up on burgers, pizza and burritos, she went around as much of Turkey as she could in only two weeks, then pushed hard through southern Brazil. She had been in Buenos Aires for about three days when I got here. By that time, she had already decided she liked it here a lot and had begun inquiries into long term stays. My initial impression was good, as good as it´s been for a big city since Hanoi, ten years ago. So, just like that, we spent another day looking for a one month apartment rental. Then the next day we selected a fully furnished one. Now we are all moved in. Wow.
Buenos Aires is big and modern. It´s not exactly New York City, but it´s no third world dump either. I can´t help but remember when my friend, Mary, and I lived in Manhattan. That was lively enough. Now, as then, we were in the heart of the city. This time we are REALLY in the heart! Eight floors below is teeming. The nice thing about this apartment is that it is almost silent up there. We are in the back of the building. It´s also air conditioned. There is even weekly maid service. There are elevators and a doorman. Quite cushy, I must say.
It reminds me of NYC also in that there are no big stores or supermarkets, yet everything you need is a short walk away. There is a subway entrance about 10 meters from out front door, and about 20 bus lines begin withing about a half kilometer.
Oh, and the weather is lovely. We are at about the same southern latitude as Los Angeles is in the north. It´s generally sunny with a high of 80 degrees F (about 30 degres C).
This could turn out to be really sweet. There is so much to do. A third of Argentina´s population, about 11 million, live in or around Buenos Aires. Everything you could want to do eat is here. It is a true world city, with current visitors and past immigrants from all over the world. Its almost like the diverse cities in America. The streets are full of every kind of people and what they´ve brought with them. There is even a fair concentration of Americans. You don´t usually see that.
So far, Myung and I have done a couple of days of exploring, nothing terribly exciting. I´ll post what happens, of course. It´s New Year´s Eve, and almost everything is closed for a few days, including the internet places. ¨This place was open, but won´t let me upload photos. I´ll post some of those later.
I just wanted to keep up to date, unlike in Africa where I neglected to do that. I hope your holiday seasons have been nice. Be well, all of you.