2/18  Ths cutest kid sat next to us on the plane. Simon from Switzerland. He is taking 6 months to travel in South America before he starts college to study solar and renewable energy. Very talkative. He is taking a 4 week spanish class in Buenos Aires to start his adventure. We gave him Nikki's email to contact her for couch surfing. Ha ha.  He was very impressed that we are staying in hostels versus hotels (his exact words were "you are very cool people") and also wished us luck with the Inca Trail.
A couple more things to share
1. Don't put the toilet paper in the toilet, it goes in the garbage. If it weren't for visiting Nikki in Puerto Rico, I would be shocked. They do the same down there.
2. At any given moment a torrential downpour could start (even if the sun is shining). Guess I should have expected that since we are in rain forest.
3. No extra fee for your luggage -EVER
4. Seems Argentinians are not concerned that you take your shoes off when going through security or with liquids. But, they pat you down eventhough you go through a metal detector.
5. There are speed bumps everywhere in Argentinia and there does not appear to be any rhyme or reason to them.
6. We have only seen small cars. Gas in Buenos Aires is 1.79 pesos per liter.  In Rio, we walked past a garage that was super tiny. There was a turntable built into the floor. You drive in, get out and push the car around 180 degrees so you can then just drive out. Too much traffic to back out. Pretty clever.

Every so often, I will post random observations so I don't forget and to give you a better idea of the country we are in.
Eduardo from La Toscana Hostel made a reservation for the shuttle for us , so that when we land in Trelew, it is easy to get to Puerto Madryn. The highlights here are :
The largest penguin colony on the continent, 1, 000, 000 penguins strong
Sea lions and sea elephants
Orca whales
Tea ceremony
Snorkeling with all those animals ???
Bike riding on the penninsula
Beaches

A very nature oriented place.  Our first order of business will be to do laundry. The 5 shirts we brought only last so long.

We landed in B.A..  Had a small snafu with the comnection. Seems they decided to move the flight, not to another terminal, but to another airport. So we had to figure that out, then figure out how to find the free shuttle to take us there. A 1 hour bus ride. Interesting. None of the drivers spoke english. We got on a bus, but were the only 4 people and they wanted to wait til the bus was full.  So we asked to get on the smaller shuttle after trying to explain we would miss our flight. It worked and the guy took only us.
On the way we saw lots of slums, concrete, traffic, much like any other big city. We also saw Avenue Eva Peron. I am sure there are some nice parts here too. I am glad we decided to skip spending some days here. Hopefully we will get to see a tango show.