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And do you remember recently there was such a covid
And do you remember recently there was such a covid, everyone sat at home, closed the borders and did not shake hands when they met?
The question of where the epidemic has gone gnaws at the most inquisitive minds of mankind. Less than half of the population is vaccinated, judging by the posts here, people occasionally continue to get sick, but they treat it as seasonal flu: well covid and covid.
Has the virus run out of batteries? Has humanity’s immune system adapted? Covid was man-made and they shut down its source?
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Five years ago, I was just a cab driver
(If and when I open an infobiz named after myself, I’ll say – how to become a millionaire in a week, the record is at the link).
I rented a car with a cab license when my Mercedes was left in the service for a week, and then I got so involved that I got a license for myself. And what I’m surprised about is why everyone doesn’t do it: it’s much faster to drive in the center on a dedicated line, and it’s not necessary to carry passengers with you at all
What are some of your favorite driving tricks?
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The main skill of an entrepreneur is a well-trained intuition
The day before yesterday I took a close look at the map and for some reason I drove to Chile through the worst border crossing in all of Latin America, instead of taking the new road to the salt lakes of Bolivia.
At the border I mentally cursed dirty – the customs officers made me unload all the things from the car, which is six suitcases and ten bags, backpacks and bags. A specially trained dog took away all the apples and bananas (rhetorical question: why canned crocodile food can be smuggled, but honey cannot?).
Then I watched the news and realized what it was all about. Bolivia has a military coup and a change of power, I would have made it to La Paz (where all the fuck ups happened) just that day
Do you ever have it happen that decisions you don’t understand at first turn out to be the right ones as a result?
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Where to meet a capybara?
The most important thing in Argentina is not steaks, soccer, or even the eccentric President Miley, but the fact that here you can easily meet a capybara right on the street. I tell you the places to look for them, from civilized to completely wild
🎡 Ecoparque Buenos Aires: capybara 1 piece. A way for the lazy. In the heart of Buenos Aires, in a park in the center of Buenos Aires, there is one sad capybara living in an enclosure. At 5pm, the park closes and the capybara goes off to drink mate.
🏡 Nordelta: 3-4 capybaras. A semi-enclosed village with lagoons about an hour’s drive from Buenos Aires. Mark Centro Comercial on the map and don’t forget to take your DNI or passport – security checks IDs. Capybaras walk around the village, not many, but you’ll be lucky!
All the most interesting things start further away, of course.
🌴 Parque Nacional El Palmar: a crowd of capybaras in the national park of palm trees, 3 hours from the city. Capybaras live here in families, after the rain they bask in puddles like in a Jacuzzi, and at night they come out on the roads and don’t let late tourists leave (why?).
And finally, my favorite point:
🐊 Parque Nacional Iberá, 10 hours from Baires, the last 2 are on dirt roads, don’t forget a 4-wheel drive car and a full tank of gas! Iberá is a beautiful swamp where not only capybaras live, but also caiman crocodiles, ostriches and other birds (I didn’t expect myself to get into birdwatching, but when you don’t even have to get out of the car to do it, it suits me). You should come here for a few days, stay in a good hotel and walk around the park with ranger guides: the correct marsh trails are not marked on google maps.
Important thing about capybaras: they bite and move fast, so you should not make them angry.
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Argentina: a ratty museum in the mountains
I have a very simple way of looking for hidden gems when traveling: I open a map, filter out five-star hotels in the middle of nowhere and ask chat gpt, what’s good about these places?
That’s how I found the best contemporary art museum on the continent, the James Turrell Museum of Light in Huhuya, in northern Argentina. It’s an unforgettable experience:
From the nearest village, it’s 3 hours down a dirt road. In the rain, the river can cancel the road. Suddenly you arrive at a pleasant hotel in the oldest winery. I haven’t had a drink in a long time, but I respect the views of vineyards and mountains from the window.
Next door is a museum. It is usually signed up a month in advance and not allowed with children, adepts of spontaneity, repeat my path: arrive before closing, when no one else is there, convince the Spanish-speaking seniors that you are very similar to a group of ten people 18+, especially a three-month-old infant. Every time I’m surprised at the speed of learning in Latin America: as soon as I booked my hotel and bought 10 tickets, I immediately found a guide with excellent English, a duolingo owl, how about that?
The museum itself is amazing: Tarrel creates impressions from the movement of natural and artificial light within the architecture. It’s like walking through a visual illusion or being in a trippy Gaspar Noé movie. In fact, you just sit on a bench in a white room and stare at a square of blue sky, lucky it’s blue all year round in Huhuja. The artist calls it skyspace. Photos and words do not convey feelings, you just have to come here through all the mountains and rivers and feel. By the way, the Museum in Huhui is Tarrel’s only personal museum and the largest skyspace in the world
There are 90 such locations in total, one of them is inside a volcano in Arizona (why not, really!) I’ve marked them on my secret map of epic places and will definitely stop by all of them
What’s the weirdest museum you’ve been to? Tell us in the comments!
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Places in Argentina: a coffee shop on the way to the ocean
The map makes it look like Buenos Aires is on the ocean, but in fact there is a brown river called La Plata, and the waves and beautiful water are 400 kilometers away.
A rare occurrence on the Argentine highway: exactly halfway along the route there is somewhere to get a speshalti coffee! Save yourself a point and send photos: Cafequevá.
But August needs to plan a trip to a more distant ocean. More about that in the next post.
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Argentina Autoguide. Valdes Peninsula: the whales have arrived! 🐋🐋🐋🐋
I’m driving quietly through the vineyards in Argentina’s Mendoza Mountains, looking at museums, and then there it is, short as a morse code telegram of news: whales have come to Valdes. Tchk
🐳 Why would whales come anywhere?
It turns out that baby whales are scared to swim in the big ocean, so female whales come to breed in bays. In the Atlantic Ocean, the coziest one is on Valdez. The peninsula looks like a whale’s tail, the whales probably have an ancient whale legend on the subject, but chat gpt hasn’t been able to translate it yet, so just take my word for it.
It turned out to be very easy to get to Valdes: 600 kilometers of road crossing Argentina across, one day and I’m there, and most importantly – before all the tourists. I’ll tell you what to do on the spot.
Puerto Madrynes is the big town in front of the peninsula. Have a coffee at Casa Hulpe and go to the wild beach Playa el doradillo, you can see whales from the shore, and it’s also a rare place where there are more whales than tourists, which is nice.
Puerto Pyramides is the harbor village where the whale watching boats leave. Minuses of the low season: at 1pm the boat trips end and the captains go on a bender. Pros: the boat is all yours. Arrive early and book via wotzap. There is one pizzeria open in the evening and one bar for locals. The cutest shithole!
The boats on Valdes are prehistoric, after them you really want to sleep, I advise you to spend the night in the village and the next morning go for a drive around the island. Pastoral landscapes, sheep and the biggest herds of ostriches in all of Argentina!
The whales are amazing. Everyone knows they are huge, but it’s only when you get up close that you realize just how big! A big ancient animal, every breath exhales as if the ocean and the whole planet is breathing with it. Must see! -
Everyone who says time is money is lying to you
I realized a long time ago that the most valuable resource for an entrepreneur is not time, money or even networking.
The most valuable resource is focused attention.
All the right decisions are born from a state of flow, when no one is pulling me and I am completely immersed in the task.
Remember how good it feels to think on airplanes? How to achieve this state every day? Just fly more often.) Just kidding.
Here are the three lifehacks that help me:
- Enable silent mode with no notifications on all devices. This is the base, there’s not even much to comment on
- Swim in ice water every day: invigorates and puts you in the right state of mind better than meditation
- Delegate all the little things in life to helpers and assistants. Attention is like a muscle, you can’t do 1000 pull-ups in a row, can you? It’s the same here
Explained to the delivery guy how to find the door and got a dentist appointment? Сongratulations, the day is spent, pick it up and bring a new one.
How do you get in the right state of mind?
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I have long noticed that emigration flows of techfounders are divided into two tracks
I have long noticed that emigration flows of techfounders are divided into two tracks:
- Those who want to go to the US
- Those who want to leave the US
Peter Thiel recently discussed this in an interview with Joe Rogan
- In Covid, Thiel, like many, moved from California to Miami for the simple pleasures of humanity: lower taxes and simpler laws. The weather there is also normal.
- Wants to move further from the U.S., wisely notes that it’s good where we are not and the simpler countries have other problems: freedom of speech (haha, as if the U.S. has it), security, etc. Considers New Zealand and Costa Rica (obviously, the ocean is on the short list of criteria).
Which way are you headed?
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Everyone can get an Argentine passport, I tell you my experience 🇦🇷
Benefits in one line: EU, UK, Japan and 172 more countries without visas, steaks are delicious, really fast and easy citizenship on another continent, beautiful mushroom on the passport cover. A great specimen for my collection!
So what is the fast citizenship for? As they say in ancient Jewish wisdom, a child is not a luxury, but a means of transportation. There are many countries where a born baby will be given a passport. In some countries, they also give a passport to the parents. I will tell you what criteria I used to choose a country for the birth of my son.
The choice is simple. There are 8 normal countries for childbirth: USA, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Chile, Ecuador.
Canada and Portugal need to be planned in advance – parents must be residents before birth.
Giving birth in the US = risks a check from the maternity hospital like a small airplane + parents only have PML + the grown baby will have problems with bank accounts around the world. Thanks, I’d rather just buy an airplane.
In Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador, parents need to live for a few years before citizenship.
All that remains is Argentina!
How does it work? You enter on a rf passport together with your pregnant wife, after birth the baby gets his Argentine documents (residence + passport) within a week, the parents can immediately apply for citizenship. The fastest decisions from the court will come out in six months, the longest will be stuck for 5 years. How to influence this? Send the right requests to the court on time and come to cheer up the clerks so they don’t forget about you. Hola, señores, how are you? Just don’t do it in bad Spanish. Our team has a great experience, by code word capybara will discount those who have read to this line.
Medicine in Argentina is excellent, wife was pleased. For ~$4k in Argentina you can give birth in a maternity hospital of Lapino level, with a separate two-room ward and a personal English-speaking doctor. By the way, Argentinians are very supportive of partner births, I was given a funny protective suit and allowed to my wife without questions.
For those who do not want to have children in Argentina the process of obtaining citizenship is almost identical, but longer by 2 years 🙂 .
About other joys of life in the country I have already written earlier, links in the comments. I will only say that Argentina pleasantly surprised me, it’s a place where you want to come back next European winter. Already in the status – to my home.
Vamos, Argentina!