12 Days of Christmas: Argentina
The 4th country we visited in 2024 (not counting the US)
After fast traveling through Japan in the first half of February, we flew “home” to California for about 2 weeks. The house wasn’t rented out yet, so we stayed there. It felt sooooo good to sleep in familiar beds, do huge loads of laundry, have tons of space to spread out, and wear clothes that we had left behind. But the best part was seeing friends and family. Alas, our travel insurance only covered 2 weeks in the US so, when they were up, we headed off to Argentina via Houston. (Sadly, we couldn’t figure out a way to see family while we were there; none of the layover options was long enough and purchasing separate flights jumped the price by a lot.)
Our goal in Buenos Aires was to see if we liked it enough to live in, so we strategically tried AirBNBs in various parts of the city. A couple were just outside the city to the north, where some of the international/bilingual schools are. Changing accommodation so frequently was a lot of work. It did help us evaluate different locations, but our psyches would’ve benefitted from us having stayed in one place for a whole month.
One day I’ll do a series of posts about our five weeks in BsAs; for now, here are highlights and lowlights, plus some additional reflection:
Highlights
Meeting Estefi and her family in person! (We had worked together years before, but only remotely)
Gelato
Meat
Lemonade with ginger and mint
Teatro Colón
Celebrating S’s birthday
Playing cards with Spanish decks
The parks
Meeting up with Andrea and her daughter, twice! (friends we met in Kuala Lumpur)
Boating to El Tigre with Estefi and her family
Celebrating Easter with Estefi and her family
Lowlights
Mosquitoes
More mosquitoes
Did I mention mosquitoes?
Rain—so much rain
The leaking AC in our second accommodation
Losing N’s beloved stuffy “Shroomie” (we did eventually get him back but it took a lot of effort)
Additional Reflection:
Our mood/mental health in Argentina wasn’t the greatest. It was hard to come down after the high of Japan and then seeing friends and family in California, especially knowing it would likely be a long time till we saw them again. Add the constant challenge with mosquitoes (they were the worst and most prolific we’ve seen anywhere in the world by far) and we were honestly a bit miserable at times. S started having issues with her teeth and we didn’t get answers until we got to Albania. We missed out on activities like going to an estancia to go horseback riding because there was so much on-and-off rain that we couldn’t figure out how to go on a non-rainy day. Plus, C would’ve gotten eaten alive by mosquitoes (and the girls probably would’ve, too).
We ended up spending a lot of time looking into and visiting schools, which was a whole education. We considered taking some side trips; I wanted to go to Bariloche and maybe down the coast or to Iguazu Falls, but flights were more than I wanted to pay and I kept reading mixed reviews about internal flights (constant flight changes without notifications, plus there were some strikes while we were there). But really, we had already done so much long-haul flying; it wasn’t enticing to get on yet another plane for just a handful of days somewhere else, with additional accommodation costs. One day maybe we’ll go back and hike through Patagonia and see the glaciers. I would 100% love that. It just wasn’t our focus this time.
In the end, we didn’t love Buenos Aires the way others seem to. Maybe it was just the weather and mosquitoes when we went; maybe it was our mental state. I do know that schools complicated things for us. While we probably could’ve made one of them work, it was going to take a lot of jumping through hoops, plus diving headfirst into Spanish was going to be hard for the girls at their age. (It would’ve been better if they had been even a couple of years younger.) Our gut said it wasn’t the place for us at this phase of life. Oh well, onward!