¿podria ser???

so, as fantastic as the food is here, buenos aires suffers from a serious dearth of non argentine/italian/spanish restuarants. what it does have, however, is numerous peruvian retsurants. one fantastic one is in our neighborhood, 2 blocks from our house. since we are lazy gluttons, we like to go as often as possible. but so does everyone, and there is always a line outside. sometimes we are deterred by this, since its kinda cold here these days, and waiting outside is no fun. but last night we made a pact: we were going to go no matter what. we would go later than the other times, at 1130, and if we had to wait, we reasoned, we would buy a beer from a nearby almacen and make the best of it.

so we went, as planned. and of course there was a line of 8 other parties waiting ahead of us. so we executed our plan, and were rather contendedly waiting outside sipping from a can of quilmes, planning our menu for the evening, when i saw all the mosquitos. they were flying around, bouncing off the window, attracted by all the ceviche i guess. i should have left them alone, but lately ive been on a mosquito killing kick. see, even though it is winter, there is an invasion of mosquitos occuring now in buenos aires. its really bad, some people are getting dengue, and i dont want dengue. so, i had just finished killing 48 mosquitos in our apartment when we left for dinner. therefore, when i saw more mosquitos, a part of my brain switched off and i began to swat at them menacingly. the fact that they were sitting on the window of the restuarant did not deter me and i began, rather like a maniac, to smack the window in hopes of killing the mosquitos.

well, i didnt kill them, but i did attract the attention of the party seated close to the window. they were a part of 3 seated at a table for 5, and when i smacked the window for the fourth time, one of them stood up and waved maniacally at us. we waved back, but then realized they were waving us to come into the restaurant. we entered with our can of beer and they invited us to sit at the 2 vacant spots at their table, thus helping us to skip the line entirely. what luck!! we sat next to them and exchanged a bit of small and not so small talk. for example, they asked where we were from and if we liked buenos aires, and then the old man talking to us the most pretended like he was a cannibal. it was cool, he was very funny, if not a little bit drunk. but, by that point, so were we and we appreciated the company and the fact that we got a table quickly.

as we were seated i noticed 3 things:
a) we were sitting at a table marked "reserved" in a resturant with no other reserved tables.
b) people looked at us a lot. one guy who had been on line with us looked at me and shook his head with an ironic smile which indicated that he thought we were lucky. but, i attributed this to the fact that we had skipped the line. also a few people said good night to the man at our table when they left. but, you know, the people here are pretty friendly like that. so i didnt think much. and:
c) the waiter, who is a good waiter but always very busy, was especially attentive. how nice, i thought, he must remember us from other times weve been here.

i noticed these things, but i was really hungry and concntrated on the absolutely delicious parihuela that i had ordered, as well as anthonys ceviche and the rest of the beer from our can. at one point the man next to me looked at me and said, "you must be very hungry". i was a bit embarrassed by the way i had been eating. see, argentines are very blunt, and wont hesitate to tell you if you are eating like a pig or getting fat. i have been hearing about my incredible appetite a lot lately from my surrogate argenitine family (cesar and his family), and im beginning to get embarrassed. so, to detract attention i offered the man some of my parihuela, and anthony offered his ceviche, and the man dug into both with gusto. the he looked up at us and said, "you dont know who i am, do you?" we said no and his friend said "hes charly garcia!" to which we smiled politely and shook our heads. all 3 burst into laughter and we shrugged and ordered dessert. they left and wished us luck and we thanked them and marveled to each other about our luck in finding a table. then we went home.

today there was a big lunch with above mentioned surrogate family. we asked my cousin (ok not my cousin at all, but for lack of better word lets just call him my cousin) axel if he had ever heard of charly garcia because we had eaten dinner with him the night before. axel dropped his fork. turns out this charly garcia guy is the argentine equivalant of mick jagger. extremely influential and famous and all that. who knew???

was it really him?? well, we arent 100% sure, but i googled him today and whoever we ate with looks exactly like him, and this guy seemed a little famous or something. but then, people always think my father is eric claption and he doesnt exactly deny it, so maybe this guy was playing off the fact that he just looks like charly garcia. who knows thought. if it was, we must have looked like such assholes, sitting there with this big time famous rock superstar and drooling over our seafood. but it was really good....

anyway.