In preparation for our March trip to the British Virgin Islands, Emily and I decided to finally take the plunge (so to speak) and get certified to SCUBA dive. I love snorkeling and have wanted to dive since I was twelve, but I never managed to get it done. We figure that as long as we’re going to be in Florida for the foreseeable future, we might as well embrace its access to the water.

Our schedule this winter was tight, so we had to do a little hunting to find a good match between our open days and class schedules. Ultimately, we decided on American Dive Institute. They were a little further from Orlando than I would have liked (about 25 minutes away in Winter Garden), but it was an absolutely fantastic experience. James and Alex, the owners of ADI, were fantastic teachers, very patient and accommodating. Along with their expert instruction, they set beginners up with top-of-the-line dive gear: Zeagle BCs, Atomic regulators and fins. If you’re looking to learn to dive in Orlando I would recommend them in a heartbeat.

We really lucked out by getting our certification in the winter. Normally classes are capped at 8 students, but getting certified over Valentine’s Day weekend let us take classes with a 1:1 instructor-to-student ratio. It let us really fly through the classes, we didn’t have to wait around for some other student who was having difficulty mastering a skill. Since we’ve both spent a lot of time in the water–lifeguarding or swimming competitively as kids–we both felt comfortable enough that counterintuitive things like breathing underwater or negotiating adding or losing air to maintain buoyancy felt easy to learn.

The open water checkout dives were a lot of fun, particularly the final dives at Blue Grotto. Blue Grotto is a freshwater cavern that goes down to a little over 100 feet. Emily was a little surprised to discover upon arrival that although the grotto is open water, the cavern receded back from its opening and much of the dive is spent with rock overhead instead of a straight shot to the surface. It’s to the credit of Alex and James’s instruction that we both felt prepared and relaxed about diving in these conditions. We dove to about sixty feet, checking out a limestone rock with carvings from previous generations of divers and through deep, turning passages of rock. More than once someone in our group stopped to wonder who was the first person to see a hole in their backyard and think, let’s see how deep that goes.

Of course now I’m totally hooked and thinking about advanced certifications. The gear-head in me is psyched about a hobby that has so much technically cool gear, and I’m already putting together wishlists in my head. We’ve bought an inexpensive underwater digital camera; I’m sure lots of photos will pop up after our trip to the BVI.

The footage, which unfortunately isn’t the whole show, is divided into three sections:

Diane / Hate Paper Doll / Green Eyes

Divide And Conquer / Pink Turns to Blue / Eight Miles high

Makes No Sense At All / Louie Louie

He was one of a number of writers reading at a “Downtown For Democracy” event at UCLA, sharing the stage with Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, Anne Lamott and Alice Sebold. Emily bought us tickets as surprise birthday present. He was reading a short story he’d written which, as far as I know, remains unpublished. I’ve forgotten the plot of the story, but the main character was a goody two shoes kid. The part of the story that’s important to this anecdote is a conversation between the child and the child’s school principal (who detests the kid). The child is getting more and more wound up in the conversation while the principal is quietly seething. Wallace read the child’s dialog in character, mimicking the child’s hyperventilating. He starts to smile as he reads, and quickly the smile turns to an attempt to stifle laughter. As he quickly shifted between the child’s excitement and the quiet hatred of the principal, it seemed to crack him up even more. People were laughing out loud, both at the story and with Wallace’s obvious enjoyment. He was unable to keep it up, forced to walk away from the podium and take a drink before continuing.

It was a charming scene, and I loved the fact that after obviously having written and rewritten this countless times, he was still able to crack himself up over it.

The strength of the dollar compared to the peso was another huge factor. The peso spends about like the dollar, but the exchange rate is three-to-one. The nicest boutique hotels in the city were around $120/night. A stunning meal for two ran 150 pesos including appetizers, dessert, and wine. As expected, the comparable meal in a major US city would be around $150. Coming back to a credit card statement with these $40-45 charges was very nice.

My mighty dollars also made it a great place to shop. Palermo, the neighborhood for our second stint in Buenos Aires, is a bohemian shopping district full of local designers. I ended up getting an amazing leather messenger bag for a fraction of what it would have cost in the US.

Buenos Aires felt very comfortable and western, and with our rusty Spanish we were able to get along ok. Our only real communication problems had to do with people expecting Castilian pronunciation: “Hon-dur-as” “Que?” “Hon-dur-as” blink-blink . . . we show written address “Ah, On-door-as.” Taxis were cheap and made it very easy to scoot around town, even for short trips.

Our two day trip to Iguazu turned into a one night plus one day trip after LAN airlines overbooked and booted us from our flight, leaving us to hang around the domestic airport for over four hours. In the end we arrived in time to enjoy caipirinhas on the patio of our bed and breakfast followed by a tour of the town (complete with views across into both Brazil and Paraguay) and a nice dinner out. We had a full day at the National Park / Falls, and that was plenty. We were able to cover all the network of trails and vantage points. It was absolutely stunning; Eleanor Roosevelt’s “Poor Niagara” quote definitely rang true.

I’ll make some recommendations for things to do and places to stay/eat, hopefully helping out any future Argentina travelers who might happen upon this:

Hotels:
Home Hotel: In Palermo, this boutique hotel was absolutely pitch perfect. An amazing complimentary breakfast, impeccable design, effortless service.
Art Hotel: In Recoleta, it was in a nice quiet location but was close to everything. A small room, but very cozy.
Secret Garden B&B: In Iguazu Falls. Comfortable rooms, John makes a mean caipirinha (or more accurately, three) and is happy to chat, dispense advice, or give you a tour of the town.

Restaurants:
La Cabrera: The steak was delicious and never-ending. An outstanding meal.
Cluny: Right in the shopping area of Palermo, we had a great prix fixe lunch here.
Gran Bar Danzon: It was a little hard to find at night, but the cooking was inventive and the wine selection was stellar. In a really nice room, too.
Un Altra Volta: Supposedly the best ice cream in Buenos Aires, it didn’t disappoint. We still dream of the dulce de leche ice cream.

Shopping:
Qara: This is where I bought my messenger bag, they had without a doubt the nicest leather goods in the city.
Papelera Palermo: As the name might suggest, they had a huge selection of very cool homemade paper goods.

Regardless of how long it’ll hang around I put together a mix of stuff I’ve been listening to lately, either new(er) to me or re-found. Enjoy.