The first clue that we would have to make some adjustments to our body clocks came in our landlord’s verbal checklist: Open the window like this, turn on the oven like that, and “Best to put out the trash in the afternoon,” he said, “between 6 and 8 p.m.”

Maybe it was just a shaky translation.  Could 8 p.m. be considered anything but the dead of night?

At home we are, like all industrious Americans, “early to bed, early to rise.” But here we have been slipping almost unaware into Buenos Aires time.

It is not an issue of jet lag.  The day here simply begins and ends later.

Flipping through my guidebook, I can find only one museum that opens before 2 p.m.  Restaurants open for dinner at 9 p.m. and diners begin to trickle in at 10 p.m. or so.

From our bedroom window, you can watch people – lots of them – leisurely walking their dogs between 3 and 4 in the morning.

The tango show we saw last week began at 11 p.m. Everyone around seemed to think this was completely normal.

It’s no wonder, I suppose, that we are still in pajamas at 10:30 in the morning and that we look at our watches during an outing to find that it’s not 2 p.m., but 5 p.m.

When October arrives, we expect our days to grow shorter, but here in South America, the tenth month brings the long, leafy days of spring.

Our signals have gone awry.

We are upside down, posing for a picture next to a blooming azalea bush – and sitting down for dinner at bedtime.