by Stan Sinberg
I was wondering how they’d celebrate New Year’s Eve in Buenos Aires, given that on a regular Saturday night many clubs don’t even open until 1AM, and don’t fill up until much later. Still, what I discovered shocked me.
At 11:20 PM on NYE, I left the fashionable Recoleta-area apartment I’d rented for a month, and encountered… nothing. The streets were deserted. Restaurants were actually closed. There was nary a car, bus, or person to be seen.
Disoriented, I walked two blocks to a major thoroughfare. Desolate! I felt like the guy in the Twilight Zone episode who emerges from a bunker and discovers that a world war evaporated everyone else.
Absolutely flabbergasted, I returned to my apartment for my camera, in order to document it. I stood in the middle of the major boulevard, snapping pics in both directions.
Then I spotted one lone person – a young, attractive woman in a black and red party dress, incongruously carrying a small champagne bottle. I yelled, “Where are all the people?” and she laughed, “I don’t know!”
I showed her my photos. She thought that was funny. I said I was dropping off my camera. She joined me. At 11:30 PM, I was all alone. A half-hour later I was sitting in my apartment with a beautiful stranger, toasting in the New Year with her little bottle of champagne.
That was the beginning: we traveled together for the next month.
PS: Everyone comes out about 12:30, and parties till dawn.
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