Two Beers and a Pretzel

I didn’t sleep at all Tuesday night for some reason.  I flew out of San Jose into the Sunset.  We got to altitude, ate a quick, bland meal, and descended into Panama City.

The layover was supposed to be 1 hour.  It was 1 hour in the airport, 1 hour on the plane, 2 more hours in the airport again, then we finally left for Argentina.  I couldn’t sleep on the plane (I never can).

Buenos Aires has been a mixed bag so far…  I was soooo tired after being awake for about 36 hours.  I got to the Hostel Florida (on Florida Ave in the central pedestrian district) at about noon and crashed in the lobby until I could get a room at 2pm.  Then crashed in the room until noon this morning.  I feel much better.  The rest will do me good, since I booked a pub crawl with the hostel tonight, bike tour of the city tomorrow, and semifinal soccer match on Saturday.

The area I’m in kind of reminds me of a cross between anywhere in Rome and the Marienplatz in Munich.  Very cool, lots of street musicians, Tango studios, upscale shops, and nice places to eat.  There’s an intersection of two pedestrian streets that is busy and just fun to people watch.  I am no longer the tallest, or the only blue eyed person.

I had a few hours to spend this afternoon, so I walked all around the pedestrian area.  In the most ironic thing to ever happen to me… I was snapping a photo of a “What would Chuck Norris do?” t-shirt when a guy bumped into my left side, showed me a knife, and pointed to an alley – literally to the immediate right of this picture.

I handed him my wallet with my left hand (the knife was in his right hand).  As soon as he had to fumble with he knife to get the wallet, I hit him with a right jab with my camera (Olympus 1030SW – impact resistant) and hotel key in hand.  He went down.  I picked my wallet back up and walked away.  I think he got $AR60 worth of Pesos (about $12 USD), but I wasn’t going to go back for it – it’s always better to get the hell out of there as fast as possible, just in case the guys really is tough.

NOTE: Kids, don’t try that at home.  I have actually taken 6 months of quasi-legal fighting classes from a guy who trained policemen in Cincinnati, and turned out to be a coke-head (but a brilliant fighter)  – in his basement fighting multiple people at once, as well as disarming people.  These classes were good enough to get me to quit Taekwando at a gym that preferred real sparring to memorized dances just before making brown belt (that’s a whole ‘nother story).  Granted, had this mugger been with a buddy, or had a gun, I obviously would have sacrificed the $200 in my wallet, but this guy looked like a lone punk trying to scare me, and in general, Managua was much more intimidating anyway…

I now had some adrenaline to burn off, so I walked around a bit more – in the middle of the street this time.

After a while I got back to the hostel to see a street band performing outside.

I’m finally calming down.  Hopefully tonight will be fun without incident.