About Argentina
Second in South America only to Brazil in bulk and population, Argentina is a plain, rising from the Atlantic to the Chilean border and the towering Andes peaks. Arriving in Buenos Aires is like jumping aboard a moving train. Outside the taxi window, a blurred mosaic of drab apartment blocks and haphazard architecture whizzes by as you shoot along the freeway toward the center of town. The driver – probably driving fashion too fast while chain-smoking and talking incessantly about government corruption – lastly merges off the freeway. Then the actual city appears, the cafes, the purple jacaranda flowers draped upon the sidewalks, stylish portenos (residents of Buenos Aires) walking purposefully past the newspaper stands and candy kiosks and handsome early-20th-century stone facades.