Day 1 · December 20, 2027 · Buenos Aires, Argentina
The ship sails for Antarctica on December 21. On December 20 you land in eighty-four-degree summer heat.
Flights from North America typically come in overnight into Ezeiza International Airport, which is just outside Buenos Aires. You clear customs in the morning, jet-lagged, carrying a bag full of fleece and waterproof layers.
Then the doors open onto a South American summer.
December 20 falls one day before the summer solstice down here. In Buenos Aires the sun rises before six and sets after eight. The average high in December runs about 84°F.
From Ezeiza (International Airport) to Buenos Aires
Ezeiza sits about twenty miles outside the city. The drive takes forty-five minutes to an hour, depending on the traffic.
You have one evening before the ship. That is enough for Buenos Aires, if you spend it the way the city does.
Dinner does not start until ten
Walk into a good restaurant at seven in the evening and you will have the room to yourself. Come back at ten and there will be a wait.
Dinner in Buenos Aires starts late. Families come in at ten with children. Tables are still full at midnight. On a summer night the sidewalks stay busy long after that.
So take a nap in the afternoon. Then go out when the city does.
What to order at a Buenos Aires parrilla
Argentina runs on beef and on the fires that cook it. A parrilla (grill house) cooks over wood coals, slowly, without much on the meat except salt.
Order the bife de chorizo (a thick sirloin) or the ojo de bife (ribeye). Ask for it jugoso, which means juicy, closer to medium rare.
Finish with anything made of dulce de leche, which is milk and sugar cooked down slowly until it turns to caramel. Argentines put it in pastries, ice cream, and pancakes.
Recoleta Cemetery
If you land early enough to see one thing, see Recoleta Cemetery.
Four city blocks. Roughly 4,800 tombs. The families of Argentina built them like small houses, in marble and granite, with doors and steps and stained glass. You walk down lanes between them the way you would walk down a street.
Eva Perón is buried here, in her family’s vault, behind a plain black door with fresh flowers on it.
El Ateneo: a theatre full of books
Eight blocks away on Avenida Santa Fe is a bookstore called El Ateneo Grand Splendid.
It opened in 1919 as a theatre for a thousand people. Carlos Gardel, the great tango singer, recorded here. Buenos Aires saw some of its first talking pictures on this screen.
In 2002 the owners filled it with books and left everything else alone. The frescoed dome is still up there. The theatre boxes are still on the walls, with chairs in them, and people sit and read. The red stage curtain still hangs, and there is a café on the stage underneath it.
National Geographic named it the most beautiful bookstore in the world in 2019.
Where to see tango
Tango came out of the port neighborhoods of this city more than a century ago.
You can watch it two ways. The dinner shows are polished and made for visitors. A milonga is the other kind, a social dance hall where people come to dance with each other. Some milongas run a beginner lesson early in the evening, before the regulars arrive.
Either way, you are watching a dance that started here and went everywhere.
On December 20 the sun sets in Buenos Aires at 8:06 in the evening. Dinner starts about two hours after that.
