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Our mission was to escort Henry and his teammate Ryan to Encarnacion, Paraguay for Optimist South American Championships, a prestigious sailing competition they qualified for in New Orleans last Thanksgiving. SFO > Atlanta > Buenos Aires (very last row of 10 hour flight) > switch airports in BA > fly to Posadas > bus w/ Team Chile across the border to Paraguay hotel. Seeya boys, we backtrack to Buenos Aires for 8 days of adult vacay while they race. We will return to see last day of racing and do it all again in reverse.
Kicking Off Eight Days in Buenos Aires
We stayed at the CasaSur Bellini Hotel in Palermo and it was perfect. Highly recommend. Killer location and surrounded by excellent cafes and pizza joints. Really enjoy the density here. Most building are 10 stories and each building is unique. Everywhere has a doorman. We speculated all the doormen share a social app and I got flagged when I photographed an interesting art deco door outside a Palermo synagogue. (He made me delete the pic.) I still wonder... are there more taxi drivers or doormen in Buenos Aires?
City of the Dead
We wound up at Cementerio de la Recoleta in the late morning (by accident) so the photo lighting is not optimal but what a place to see. Met some tourists from New Orleans and we all agreed Buenos Aires' City of the Dead makes NOLA look like they didn't even try. Really, this cemetery is spectacular. Evita is here and countless other famous Argentineans. The picture didn't turn out but our favorite mausoleum had a bar setup with a nice view (I imagine) from the inside.
Recoleta and Monserrat
After City of the Dead we enjoyed a touristy Sunday afternoon in Recoleta at the parks and an excellent free museum. Eventually we walked all the way to Soho (?!?!?!?) for memorable bread and wine tasting. The following day, we took the excellent "Belle Epoque" tour of Buenos Aires with a local architect. Utterly fantastic!
Meanwhile, back at the regatta in Paraguay....
This pics are from the main event: 2017 South American Opti Championships (or S. Americans for short.) Teams included host Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru, ISV (Virgin Islands), Bermuda, and USA. These pictures are from an excellent pro photographer Matias Capizzano mixed with pics sent to us by other USA parents. Henry had a great regatta and was 31st going into gold fleet. Looks like all the kids were having a fantastic time. We finally made it there for the last day of racing.
The BIG Buenos Aires Gallery
Highlights including walking around Soho in the rain, the MALBA (a must-see in Palermo), taking inside/tower tour of Palacio Borolo, getting close-up to Vice President of Argentina along the Puerto Madero waterfront, and exploring the San Telmo barrio.
Looping back through Paraguay
Sadly, after 8 nights in Buenos Aires we had to go fetch the sailors. At this point, Henry was having an awesome regatta and was 31st heading into the split (he made gold fleet.) We flew from BA back up to Posadas and cab across the border to Encarnacion. The border crossing went nicely but it's a multi-step process including taking our luggage out of the cab through x-ray. We had to do this in reverse with all the sailors and their gear and cumbersome sail tubes. Our bus ride this time was with Team Bermuda who is hosting America's Cup this year. Some day I'm not going to miss those opti sail tubes.
