BOSTON (MainStreet) — The key to surviving winter in the Northeast – and last year’s was a doozy — is the body’s natural response to any threat: fight or flight. At some point, you either have to dig your heels in and embrace the season — skiing and sledding, sipping hot cocoa by a roaring fire, building a snowman — or escape to someplace warm where you can charge your solar battery.
But to where? Our top priority — besides that pair of perennial constraints, time and money — was to exchange our frozen 4 p.m. sunsets for long, balmy days, ideally in a place with a cultural heartbeat. We settled on Argentina.
While heading south to escape winter is a time-honored tradition, chances are you’re not thinking that far south. Fewer than 500,000 Americans visit Argentina each year, according to the U.S. State Department, compared with the nearly 4 million of us who vacation in the Bahamas annually.
But if you prefer cobblestone streets to sandy beaches and art galleries to T-shirt huts, you may want to consider Argentina. Heat-seeking travelers undaunted by a longer flight and a little bit of Spanish are well rewarded by world-class restaurants, colonial architecture, natural beauty and a celebrated wine region. With its cosmopolitan culture and relatively stable government — though inflation continues to run high, with official estimates near 10% — it offers something like a midsummer European vacation in January.
And so, after a 10-hour nonstop flight from JFK, we found ourselves in sunny Buenos Aires, Argentina, where it was 90 degrees out just a week after New Year’s.
When Paris met Mexico
Travel guides love to call Buenos Aires «The Paris of South America,» and with good reason: the city teems with cafe culture, trendy nightclubs, fashionable stores and gourmet restaurants. But underneath it all is a slight feeling of lawlessness, evident in the ubiquitous graffiti, the stray (but friendly) dogs and the locked iron gates.
So yes, Paris is a fair comparison; but picture Paris in Mexico.
Fuente: thestreet.com