¡Feliz Bumple!

Yesterday was Ande´s birthday. We celebrated with dinner at a fancy restaurant on the water front of the Rio de La Plata in Buenos Aires (Cabañas Las Lilas - $25 US pp) After the meal, Jen pulled the old ´going to the bathroom trick´ and secretly told the waiter (ín spanish! after 5 yrs of high school and college spanish, she was so proud!) that it was Ande´s special night and wink-wink, was there anything he could do. A few minutes later, he showed up with 2 glasses of champagne and a delicious blob of chocolate on a plate decorated in chocolate icing to read ¨¡Felize Bumple!¨ Two Argentine naval officers looked on approvingly (no doubt admiring our fleeces), and we chalked up the Bumple to ¨Argentine¨ spanish being different from the ¨Mexican¨spanish we had learned in school. (The bus boy later enlightened us that it´s just hard to write in chocolate and ¨Bumple¨was in fact ¨Cumple¨ and perhaps we were just thrown by the whole missing ¨anos¨part.) Ah yes, just like the time Ande and Kirstie (full name Kirstie Linda McCarter) were traveling through Vietnam on Kirstie´s birthday and the old ¨going to the bathroom trick¨ resulted in a cake that said ¨Happy Birthday Linda Carter¨and a rousing rendition by the Vietnamese waiters of the ¨Wonder Woman¨theme song in place of ¨Happy Birthday¨.

Back at the Virtual Tourist-recommended Milhouse Hostel, a party was in full swing. By party we mean 18-yr old Polish Edward Furlng DJ spinning the latest electronica circa 1999. (Earlier in the hostel´s events del dia, Beer Bong Challenge at 7pm; Remembering Jacques Derridas at 9pm. No joke, Chandra!) The typical grungy backpacker crowd was in attendance, chainsmoking and trying to get into each other´s pants. After only interacting up until that point with one other person in the hostel (an Israeli guy who popped by our room looking for an iron for his wrinkled Seder shirt), Ande struck up a conversation with a couple cool American guys. She jokingly (we thought obviously so...sorry, Ande) told them it was her 21st birthday. But after numerous missed 90´s references...¨Hey, doesn´t that guy look like he stepped off the set of ´Singles´?¨...Ande revealed to the young, blank face staring back at her that she was actually 29, not 21. The blank face then morphed into one of horror, as if he had just seen Large Marge herself (not, of course, that he would get that Pee-Wee´s Big Adventure reference). Clearly no one in a backpacker´s hostel contemplates the fact that life goes on after...23?

So here we are, day four of our trip. Buenos Aires is a cool, friendly, large and very European city. We´ve been getting around using the tagteam approach to Spanish - Jen speaks and Ande interprets the response, relying on her life long skill she has acquired growing up around incomprehensible Israelis. We´ve had fun doing typical tourist things like visiting the Casa Rosada, touring the Teatro Colon and shopping for antiques at the San Telmo flea market, bouncing among all of Buenos Aires´ distinct neighborhoods - Palermo, Recoleta, etc.

Despite our horror at being forced to run around in a stupid fleece, we´ve been trying to fit in as much as possible and have taken to eating dinner at 11:30 pm and polishing it off with a bottle of wine. The fleece is really our only complaint. Jen looks like an Outward Bound leader and Ande in her white fleece looks like a polar bear that has lost her way. Needless to say, the fleece will not be joining us on leg 2 of the trip.

All is good. Ande has opted to stay the veggie course and has not partaken in any famous Argentinian beef. But shortly after our arrival she was slipped a ham roofie in her tomato y queso tortilla. Jen was a good friend and swears the jambon was not actually in the piece she put in her mouth.

We´re off to Patagonia on Thursday. Perhaps we will have a new appreciation for the fleece.