Beautifully Amazed in Buenos Aires.

You’re always more likely to come back from a trip abroad with more destinations added to your list of places you want to visit. For every one place you check off, you add another three in its place.

After this trip abroad, I’ve added about another ten places to my own list.

It never gets any shorter.

You also never realize how big a country is until you have to solve the logistics of getting from point A to B within the country. The same couldn’t be more true of Argentina. It’s HUGE. But unlike some other countries I’ve traveled to which had far less infrastructure and ways of getting around, Argentina has a huge network of airports and highways that can get you just about anywhere you want within the country.

Although if you’re driving, be prepared for a long ride. I met a couple from Amsterdam that I had lunch with in Mendoza who had a bus ride scheduled to the northern part of the country that evening. The entire ride was going to last sixteen hours. They’d downloaded an entire season of Grace and Frankie on Netflix, though, so at least they were prepared.

When I landed in Mendoza, a quick fifty-minute flight from Santiago, I was met with beautiful, dry desert heat and a blue sky stretched out above me. Being in the middle of a desert, Mendoza has a huge problem with water shortages, as much of the world seems to be having anymore. And even though the temperatures during peak summertime can reach up to above one hundred and ten degrees, I couldn’t have had better weather.

The actual town of Mendoza isn’t as big as I thought it’d be, either. It’s also, contrary to popular belief, not where you’ll discover all the world famous vineyards. Most of the wineries you’ll find outside of the town in little villages and towns. Mendoza happens to be the name of the province that a lot of the famous wines you hear about are made. So when people say a wine is from Mendoza, they’re talking about the province, not the city.

Just a point of clarification.

From the start of my time in Mendoza, I was a little screwed over with my schedule, partly because Argentinians take their Sundays really seriously in doing absolutely nothing. So my first day there – a Sunday – I could do little more than walk around on a free tour and scavenge for lunch and dinner, as most restaurants weren’t open.

At dinner that night, after ordering a glass of wine, the waiter came out with an entire bottle of merlot, not just a glass. I tried to explain to him that I only wanted a glass or two. Using Google Translate, he told me it'd be cheaper to have the entire bottle than it was to just get a glass.

It didn't take much arm-twisting for me to accept...

On the free walking tour, our guide noted a few things whichI thought were really interesting. All throughout the town were beautiful, huge trees, mostly lining the streets.“We know what you’re thinking,” she said. “If we have such a water shortage, why do we use so much water to keep the trees alive?”

In short, what she basically told us was that if we’d ever felt the excruciatingly hot Mendoza sunshine during the middle of summer, we’d want some shade, too. “It keeps us safe during the summertime,” she said.

There were also a decent number of stray dogs running all around the city, which you’ll find in most Latin and South American countries. Except these dogs looked well cared for, clean, and as though they were being fed on a daily basis.

Because they were.

“If you notice, they’re all wearing blue collars,” our tour guide told us. The blue collar means that particular dog is being fed and cared after by a local animal shelter, who each night go out and feed the dogs. The name of the dog is on the collar, and if after interacting with the dog while out in public you decide you want to adopt it, you can call the shelter with the name of the dog and take it home with you, right there on the spot.

It was a really novel idea, and one that I’d never seen in aplace before.

But going back to my scheduling difficulties, the primaryreason that I had gone to Mendoza – to drink hella wine – was complicated whenI found out that a lot of wineries don’t do tastings every day as I hadexpected. Further, a lot of the transfer companies that take you from winery towinery likewise don’t operate every day. So for me, only being there fromSunday to Tuesday, my options were fairly limited in those companies I coulduse or wineries I could visit. Luckily, my hostel had a partnership with acompany that gave tours on Monday afternoons, which took us to two differentwineries, an olive oil factory, and a chocolate shop.

A quick note on the olive oil. While Mendoza isn’t world-renowned for its olive oil, as they’ve only gotten serious about its production in the past twenty-ish years, it’s a very up-and-coming industry for them. It was also super interesting to see how easily it’s made, a process that really doesn’t take much more than six hours.

But the real reason I went on the tour – to visit the wineries – were more amazing than I could’ve hoped for. One of them was operated by a small family, their yearly production small in comparison to other wineries. It was there that I bought a bottle each of 2012 Syrah and Merlot for seven dollars a piece.

You heard me. Eight-year-old bottles of wine for only seven dollars each.

I was especially stoked when they told us that, when flying nationally in Argentina, you can bring up to six bottles of wine in your carry-on luggage onto the plane with you, for no additional cost, and no questions asked. The whole fluid-size restriction when traveling through airport security is completely null when it comes to wine.

I knew there was a reason I loved Argentina.

That being said, I had to content myself with buying onlytwo bottles of wine. Having only one large backpack for all of my stuff, I wasalready limited on space. But when the wine was as good as what I was drinking,you have to make exceptions.

We learned a lot on the tour, one of which being that there are 1,200 wineries in the province of Mendoza, but that only 150 are open to the public. It’s still a very coveted, protected business in Mendoza, the practice of winemaking. And after seeing the intricacies that go into its production, I can see why.

The next day I did a similar tour with another company,traveling to three more wineries and then ending the day with a mid-afternoon,five course lunch.

And let me tell you, I know for sure that heaven is a place on Earth because I found it in Mendoza in a small restaurant where I drank more wine and ate more food than I ever thought was humanly possible.

I boarded the plane that evening with a full belly, not altogether sober, ready for Buenos Aires.

To start, Buenos Aires is absolutely huge. It sort of reminded me of London, which was another city where it took some time to get from one part of the city to another. But it was even larger than that.

I stayed in Palermo, a part of the city that multiple people I’d spoken with who were from Buenos Aires said was the best places to stay. Lots of restaurants and bars, they said. Also plenty of street art. And they weren’t wrong.

And speaking of bars and restaurants, a random note is that, in Buenos Aires everything starts much later than in the States. Breakfast, lunch, going out at night. I walked into several coffee shops my first morning in the city only to be told they were closed or to find their doors locked altogether.

It was eleven o’clock in the morning.

The same goes with dinner. One evening I went to dinner around seven, which I think is a reasonable time for dinner, if not late for some. Except I had the entire beer garden I was in to myself. It was only when I was leaving around ten that people finally started to pour in.

So if planning for lunch, dinner, or god forbid coffee to wake you up in the morning, know you'll probably need to push it back a few hours later than you would in the States.

Palermo reminded me a lot of New York City, which made it all the more interesting after I found out that people within the city actually call it Palermo, SoHo – a play off of SoHo in New York City because of their similarities to one another. I spent the first day walking around, seeing all of the shops, stopping into a few different coffee shops. It never fails that the last city of my trips abroad is always the one where I’m the most tired. I tried to keep it chill that day so that I could be rested enough for the next couple of days of exploring.

The next day I did a free walking tour of the city. Again, Buenos Aires is huge. A lot of the time when I do a free walking tour, I’m able to see a good majority of the city. Not all of it, but most. With this walking tour, which lasted over three hours, we saw only one small part of the city. I could see why the gentleman who had checked me into my hostel the day beforehand had told me four days in Buenos Aires was, “Waaaaay, too short to see this beautiful city.”

It was also on that walking tour that a huge storm rolled through, keeping our entire tour group trapped in a little coffee shop for overan hour.

We ended the tour at a cemetery in a part of town calledRecoleta. Having just traveled to New Orleans a few weeks ago, it was supersimilar to the cemeteries there, except much more elaborate.

If ever in the city, it’s for sure a place you’ll want tovisit.

I spent the following day, my last full day in the city, riding a bike I had rented around the city. This is something I’d like to start doing most places I travel to from now on because it was such a great way to see the city at a much faster pace. It can be really easy to travel to a new place and then have no idea where to go once you get there. I always find that walking around the first day or two gives me a chance to see some places I wouldn’t mind exploring a little more. But with the size of Buenos Aires, walking wouldn’t have been feasible.

The bike made it so much easier.

I spent most of the day riding from park to park. The city has a huge number of parks and tons of green space. The fact that it was another gorgeously warm, sunny day made the ride only that much more perfect.

I boarded the plane the next night to head back to theStates. It was a nine-and-a-half hour flight from Buenos Aires to Atlanta, which wasn’t as long as my flight to Southeast Asia last year, but a long flight nonetheless.

Sitting on the plane, about to take off, I couldn’t help but think about how amazing the entire trip was. My big solo trips every year always manage teach me something, but this year in particular. In my three weeks abroad, I found that I had discovered a lot more joy and self-realization than I had on previous international adventures. I was more confident in pushing my comfort levels in those places I traveled to, finding an amazing amount of reward in the risks I took. Trying foods I would never have otherwise. Striking up conversation with random people in coffee shops and bars. Going on excursions I never thought I'd do.

It's the memories that keep me coming back to traveling. The joy I feel when thinking back on trips, in writing these blog posts, in documenting my adventures through photography.

I have so many memories from this trip that I know will stick with me for life.

Standing atop an incredible hill in the middle of Santiago, the city stretched out beneath me.

Meeting a former nurse from Australia, spending an entire day drinking the most incredible wine with her, hearing her stories about her forty years of life in nursing.

Dancing in a Chilean bar with newfound friends, ones that I know I’ll remain in contact with for years to come.

But this trip also reminded of how big this world is, and how you should never stop exploring.

What an amazing trip it was, indeed, and how I can’t wait for the next one.

Until the next adventure.

Ciao.