Martes, 15 de Abril

Tuesday morning was tough. I was tired and hung over from the mix Quilmes (the national beer of Argentina), champagne and red wine the night before. At 10 we were picked up in front of the Alvear by Monica and the female taxi driver from the day before – apparently she and Monica had such a good time the day before that she agreed to drive us around again today. Monica had set up appointments for us to see a few different locations. The area of the locations was nice but they were all too big for what we needed. Some featured upstairs bedrooms and balconies, great for a house but not for our business.

Monica and the female cabbie dropped us at a middle class Argentine apartment, otherwise known as home for the next five days. The end of Jack and Babette’s stay meant the end of the Alvear and so Jaspar and I had rented a weekly apartment on one of the many Buenos Aires short stay rental websites. $375 (US dollars) bought us three bedrooms, one and a half baths, a full kitchen, cable TV and internet, not bad by American standards. But we had to pay $750 ($375 plus a $375 deposit), which meant a trip to the bank.

Our trip to the Banco Galicia was the low point. Banks in Argentina are open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., which means a half hour line all day long. Inside it was sweltering hot, at least 85 degrees Fahrenheit, without the faintest hope of air conditioning. We tried to use the ATM but found that it did not dispense dollars – the preferred form of currency for the housing deposit. I waited in line while Jaspar called to find out if we could pay for the apartment in pesos. Ten or fifteen minutes passed as I sweated out Quilmes and inched through the line. Thankfully Jaspar returned to say we could pay in pesos, which meant we could use the ATM. At the ATM I tired to take our $1,000 (pesos), and the machine informed me this was not possible. Next I tired for $700, again not possible. $600, $500, $400. Finally trying for $300 I received three purple $100 pesos bills. Then I tired for another $300 which machine happily dispensed. Two more goes and I had my $1,000 pesos plus four 95-cent transaction charges from Banco Galicia, and of course four $5 charges from Bank of America.

After we dropped our bags at the apartment and paid the woman who owned the place, we got in a taxi and headed 30 minutes east of the city center. Here we met Eduardo and Hugo two potential suppliers for our business. We spoke with them at length about the business and wholesale prices for supply. They were both extremely nice and in classic Argentine fashion the meeting lasted two hours. Next we went down the street to meet with a guy Eduardo called la Doctora – an old Porteno, wearing black-rimmed glasses and a white lab coat, who spent his whole day developing chemical compounds. Eduardo explained our idea to him and he said he could develop our product. At the end of the meeting Eduardo was kind enough to drive us all the way back to the city center, where we met Babette for a late lunch at the Hyatt before she left for LA.

That night we were both beat. We went for dinner at Green Bamboo – a high fashion, Thai restaurant in Palermo Hollywood. Awesome food and overpriced super sweet cocktails ended the night early.