I went for a trip just over 3 weeks to South America. It was something that I have been wanting to do for years. Most of my time was spent in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Argentina, April and May 2005
April 20th to 21st
I arrived on Wednesday morning and now it is Friday midday. It is so good to be here; I have done some sightseeing and I have enjoyed some good food. I really should try to speak more Spanish. I need to try harder. I think I shall spend some time doing language drills on the BBC languages web-site.
I am renting an apartment from a couple Steve and Mariana. Steve and I have known each other for a few years now; we met at a conference in New York about 4 years ago and stayed in touch. We have met up in Los Angeles and London and now in Argentina. Steve was living stateside but has been living in Argentina now for a year and a half. Mariana is from these parts; hence the move to Argentina to greatly simplify the story.
The apartment is in Palermo Viejo.; Viejo means old. This area was rundown about ten or so years ago. It has been become quite popular of late and is full of bars and restaurants. It reminds me place like East Dulwich and Northcote road in London. The area is self contained and you can find many thingss within walking distance. There is even an Irish pub in the area. There is a new shop or restaurant opening up here all the time. It is a fantastic place to be based in Buenos Aires. The buildings are not so tall here and it is quite laidback during the day. It can be quite hopping at night. Many of the streets are named after Latin Amercian countries in this area. The apartment for example is near Honduras street.
Buenos Aires is a big place; a few things I did not know until I got here. Most of the streets are one way and the driving is quite reckless and lets just say there is a lack of courtesy from drivers here; it does not mean they are bad people but their style is lousy; it everyone for them self when driving. The taxis drivers can be infuriating with the way they drive and cut you off. I saw the same kind of thing in Italy. So you need to drive quite agressively; it is like being in a video game.
This is a city full of dogs and people hire dogwalkers; it is quite common to see a guy walking about 6 dogs at a time. I did see one guy who should have been walking his canine charges but was instead having a long coffee break sitting outside a bar. The dogs did not seem to mind; they all lay about on the sidewalk around the table.
On Thursday morning, I went to Puerto Madera. This is new development in the city; some docklands have been turned into high tech office buildings and restaurants. There is a bridge in the middle of the development that is represents a couple doing the Tango. Check the photo gallery elsewhere on the web-site.
In the afternoon, I went on a guided bus tour of the city. One of the places we stopped in was the La Boca. Boca means mouth and the barrio is near the mouth of the river. This barrio is where many immigrants came to and it is the home of the Tango. From the photos, you can see the area has become very touristic; it was nice to walk around and see it all. But it was quite funny, to me, seeing all the couples in the neighborhood doing the Tango for the tourists. Tango is enjoying a great deal of popularity in the city at the moment; it is not just limited to the Boca area; this is something I have to do: is see some Tango performances and hear some music; one of my favorite composers is Astor Piazolla who wrote pieces like Libertango. I have danced the Tango on and off while living in London; I plan to take a few lessons here. The house in La Boca are quite distinct; they are mutlicoloured and often will have corrugated metal as walls.
In the evening, I went out with Steve and we went to restaurant in Palermo and I had a very good fillet steak along with some fine red wine. Argentina is famous for it's beef. Way back when when the Spaniards came to South America, they brought cows with them and when they left again the cows were left behind. Argentina is a mostly flat country. The cows had it good; wide open spaces lots of grass to munch on few predators. When the Spanish came back again, well you can imagine; these days the Argentines love a good BBQ. Apparently, the average Argentinean eats almost a kilogram of beef a week. I had the beef with very distinct condiment called chimichurri; I don't know of anything quite like it.
http://www.globalgourmet.com/destinations/argentina/sauce.html
The night before I went out with Steve, Marian and their son Les to a Mexican restaurant just down the street from the restaurant. I had a very nice chicken in Mole sauce. Mole is a sauce made from Chocolate and it is not sweetened. Yummy.
April 22nd
Today was an absolutely fantastic day; it was about 23 degrees Celsius.
I went with Steve and Mariana to the Relcoleta district. It is famous for its cemetery. It was quite an interesting place to walk around. Mariana was saying how many of the streets she knows in Buenos Aires are named after people buried here; she was saying how it is amusing for her to make the correlation.
You can see examples of ironwork in the photos that I took in the gallery link.
There are also a lot of cats living in the cemetery. Check the photo of scruffy cat.
We then went to Centro Cultural Recoleta and saw some contemporary art and a display of feather headdresses from the Amazon and some other artifacts made by Amazon Indians. There is just a few exhibits on at the musuem; I was quite impressed with the work of Ramiro Fernandez Saus.
Web-site for Maestro Impertinentes
His style has an antique look to it with the choice of colours he uses. The exhibit was series of portraits of people like Leanardo Da Vinci and Darwin and a few Spaniards and Latin Americans who I did not know. I definitely want to follow the works of this artist more.
Afterwards, we went to Steve's office; he had a few things to do. One of the great things about Buenos Aires is you can get almost everything delivered. We ordered some helados. It was so very good; I think it must the same thing as Italian gelatto. We can order pizzas and Chinese food in many major urban centres but tell me where can you gelatto delivered to your home or office? You can ever get medicines delivered by pharmacies in the middle of the night here.
And then we went to a local library to hear a music performance. Mariana is involved with a group that performs traditional Latin American folk music. The musical director for her group was giving a performance with his group called Cas..... The singing style is mostly acapella with instruments. Suffice to say they were very good and I was fortunate to see the performance in such an intimate setting a library.
That is it for the moment. All going well, I shall be going to a place called Colon on the weekend and get a chance to see some nature and hopefully some capybaras.
April 26th
I am now in the Sheraton hotel in the national park at Iguazu in the north of Argentina as I type this.
Colon
Early Saturday morning on April 23rd, Steve and I leave Buenos Aies to go a town called Colon in the province of Entre Rios. It was over a four drive. We left Buenos Aires around 6 AM which meant we had to get up around 5 AM – ughh. But we wanted to get an early start on the day and make the most of it.
Originally, the plan was to go stay in a place outside Colon that has rooms made from railway cars. But when we got there, we found that they were all booked up. Before we left, we had a look around grounds. There was a flock of birds that looked like minature Ostriches kept in a pen; they are type of Rhea called Nandu. The father tends to the raising of the young; I got fairly close to the adult bird and looked it in the eye briefly; you want to pet them but I would like to keep my fingers so I resisted the temptation. A bird that big and their brains are quite small in comparison. As Steve said to me they may not be that smart but they act rather instintively.
We then drove to Parque Nacional El Palmar. It is known for the palm trees that are native to the area. I was hoping to see some Capybaras which are known to live in the park. They are the world's largest rodent; they can weigh up to 60 kg. I did not see any but we did see some tracks and piles of shit that we thought might have been from a Capybara. That is just it though; you would have spend some time tracking the animals and waiting quielty to see them; they are wild after all and probably aren't too keen on people. In Venezuela the Catholic chuch decreed that they are fish during colonial tiimes as they live in the water some of the time and therefore could be eaten during lent. The church never revoked the decree. I wonder if there is a Capybara cookbook. We did see in a roadstop cafe jars of cured meat like Capybara.
After leaving the park, we then drove to Colon; Colon is situated on the Rio Uruguay; we went to find a friend of Steve's : Charles Adamson; Charlie was born in Argentina of Scottish parents and spoke fluent English and Spanish; twelve years ago he set up an eco tour company that did excursions in the area; people in the area just did not get what Charlie was up to; he has made a success of it with his partners. Charlie knows so much about nature and is very well read; Charlie and his partner Pablo took us on a trip to one of the islands in the river. It turns out that we were in Uruguay when we were on the island. And tomorrow I am going on a excursion into Brazil. So it means I will have been to three countries in South America on this trip.
We would walk through some trails on the island and Charlie told us how the tree bark of certain trees could be used as a form of Aspirin; the Guarini tribe knew about the medicinal properties of the tree park. Charlie pointed out a type of berry that was called Doll's Eye. The berries would split open and look little eyes with pupils; this was a tatic to get birds to eat the berries thinking they were insects. Speaking of insects, we were under constant assault by mosquitoes; we had applied liberal amounts of bug repellent but they still bit us. I got bitten on the lip and my lower lip swelled up. Fortunately, the swelling was gone by the next day. I don't know when I had ever been bitten like that.
We had travelled by Zodiac boats and we then left the island and went down the river and came up to a huge sandbank that was in the middle of the river. I had never seen such a thing; it was like a beach in the middle of the river.
We than spent the remaining part of the excursion there. We also saw some tracks of what would have been a large capybara. We waiting for the sunset and drank some beer, It was a full moon that night and the sky was taking on a beautiful purple hue on the horizon. Steve was filming Charlie reciting some poetry against full moon and then we heard something that was like pan pipes. I thought was somebody in the island nearby playing a musical insrutment? In fact is was the sound of type of Egret. Four large birds emerged from the forest canopy and flew upwards into the evening sky – remarkable. Eventhough, I was really hoping to see some Capybaras (and maybe I will at some point)l, seeing and hearing the birds was such an unexpected delight. I should mention that there was couple with Flor and Fedeirco; Fedeirco was a videographer and had some done some filming with Charlie before. In fact, there was three of us with mini DV cameras filming. Hopefully, an edit of the trip will appear online soon. Later that night we did stop by Federicos places to have a quick look at some of his video work with Charlie from before. Charlie and Fedeirco were having sips of the Mate which is like tea; it is a drink that many people drink in Argentina; the cup has a drinking straw and is passed from person to person to drink from; there is a social element to sharing a cup of Mate with another person.
Steve and I had rented a small house in Colon for the night; Colon is gem of a town; it was just so relaxing to be there; the great weather had a lot to do it. Talking to many people in the town some who lived there and some who were just passing through, they all said how pleasant it was there. Steve was a big fan of Colon as well. We went to a hostel run by a friend of Charlie's called Marcella and spent the evening drinking Brahma beer and just taking it easy. One of the guests of the hostel was an young Italian filmmaker from Milano and she was making Pizza and Pasta with some of the others in the hostel. We ate and drank and talked all evening. Mareclla kept bringing more and more bottles of beer out. We finished the evening off with some Helados (ice cream) and then Marcella started serving glasses of Champage with lemon ice cream melted in it. I was so full by this time I declined having a glass but I did have sip. I think I got to bed about sometime after midnight what a long and eventful day it was.
The next day we did not get up so early and met up with Charlie at his house and then went to one of the local restaurants for lunch. Before lunch, I went for a walk around the centre of Colon. It had rained through the night and it was a bit blustery but I still was enjoying the vibe of being in Colon and just having a stroll. One of thing about Argentina as I mentioned before there are lots of dogs in this country. In Colon, the dogs just roamed the streets and chased cars and lazed about. Some of the dogs did not seem to belong to anyone. If a dog comes up to me I will pet then and within the space of ten minutes; two pooches adopted me and wanted to be my best friend. One tried following me into a coffee shop. Later, I would see the same two dogs having a rather heated disagreement with each other involving one dog being chased down the street.
Before we returned to Buenos Aires; we paid a visit to a friend of Charlie's. I should made a note of the woman's name (I may update this copy). She was a rock collector. She had an impressive collection of Agates, Jaspers and Amethysts. She alo had petrified fruits; one of them seemed to be an Avacodo. She got into rock collecting many years ago when she picked up a rock as she was herding her geese by the river and she was about to throw the rock by them to get their attention. There was water sealed inside the rock that made a noise as she brought the rock near her ear as she was about to throw it; that was how she got into rock collecting and she went the library and learned all about Geology and has been collecting rocks for at least a decade. She kept her rocks in a shed by the family house. She also sold some of the rocks but most of the special pieces were part of her personal collection on display.
I was really glad to have gotten see another part of Argentina outside of Buenos Aires. This counttry is a really big place and there is a good amount of things to see. You need at a least month to begin to see the country. I was planning to go South to Pueto Valdes to see the Penguins but I found out they were not there at this time of year. I could have gone to see some Elephant Seals and Sea Lions but I thought, naw not without the Penguins. In Buenos Aires, I did see many flocks of Parrots flying about. Also, around Colon, I saw many types of birds. I am sure I am going to see birds and other creatures here in Iguazu. There are signs around the hotel telling people not to feed the monkeys.
April 27th
The hotel I am staying in is in the park grounds; I took a small train that takes you to the path to get to “The Devil's Throat” or “Garganta del Diablo” in Spanish. The Throat is the main feature of the falls. See the photos and you will see what I mean. There was many groups of people jostling for position to take photos in front of the falls.
An impatient older lady in said something in Korean to make me move as she pushed me out of the way. Isn't funny how you be looking at something so beautiful and people cannot just wait a minute to give people a chance to have a look. The falls were not about to dry up and run out of water. I took the time to admire the majesty of the falls for a little while.
There are a few paths in the park to see different sections of the falls; I walked along alll of them today. I was not having much luck in seeing wildlife; with all the people about the park, the animals keep to themselves. I did hear that other people saw: an anteater, caimain, monkeys and a family of coatis (a type of raccoon); I did see some vultures and fish and many little birds. It also rained quite a bit today; I am going to visit some of the paths again tomorrow if the sun is out.
After lunch, I went on a guided tour that was first by a truck through one of the roads in the park and then a by boat to go right up to the waterfalls. I got so wet and so did everybody else on the boat; we went into one of the waterfalls not once but twice. You cannot see a much when you are in the spray of a waterfall; what a hoot. It was raining pretty much the whole time that I was on the boat. The boat was moving quite fast and the raindrops felt like they were exfolliating my skin with the force of impact
During my stay in Iguazu; I had met people from Seattle (yeah, the Pacific Northwest which Vancouver is part of; ask Douglas Coupland what he thinks), Greece and Australia.
Tomorrow, I shall return to Buenos Aires in the afternoon.
I have seen the waterfalls at Iguazu and they are incredible. The day however did not go off as planned. I was supposed to go on a excursion to the Brazilian side of the falls; I got up at quarter to seven in the morning for a 7:30 start. But I did not have a visa to enter Brazil so I had to get off the tour bus; I was a bit annoyed; I was told the day before that I did not need a visa. I did not actually know that I was booked on a trip into Brazil until I got to Iguazu. The travel agency was surprised that I had any problem and shall refund the fee for the trip I never took. It took me some time to get over my grumpiness; shit happens. I was travelling on my Canadian passport and Brazil requires that visitors from Canada to have a visa; I understand the politics behind it.
May 6th (updated July 2006)
Well, here I am one day before I fly back to the U.K.
Over the last few days I went on a day trip to Colonia in Uruguay, took a Tango lesson, and saw some contemporary art along with walking around Buenos Aires a bit more.
I have on and off been taking Tango lessons in London and I wanted to take a little refresher. I took a two and half hour lesson with a friend of a friend. The teacher's name is Miriam. I went to the lesson with Javier who works at Red Car. Javier dances the Tango and came along with me. He was very helpful translating for me when I did not understand what Miriam was saying. I was kind of worn out by the end of the lesson but I was happy. The Tango is a very technical dance; it is the only type of dance that I have tried to learn; I did try Capoeira once in London but that is not a typical dance. You need to concentrate but not over think. And there is of course as the leader you need to lead your partner and move with the music. When all three things are going well, it is such a great feeling.
I went on a day trip to Colonia on Tuesday and the day was a sunny 24 or 25 degrees. I was dressed the part as a tourist wearing shorts. I wanted to feel the sun on my skin. Part of the reason for this trip was to experience some good weather. Which I have managed in Argentina quite handily. Today, it is supposed to hit 18 degrees but it seems much colder. There is a bit of dampness in the air making it a bit chilly. It is fall in South America after all. To get to Colonia, I took a boat across the river. Buenos Aires is not actually on the sea but on the mouth ofRio de la Plata (River Plate) and the river mouth is very wide. It is a one hour crossing by a high speed ferry otherwise it takes about three hours. Colonia is a town of 20,000 people where Buenos Aires is a metropolis of 3 million people. I went on a guided tour around the townand to see this historic old town. It is Unesco world heritage site.
How often can one say that they have walked on a street that was a dating from the 1700's and has not changed much since then? I can now after my trip to Colonia. Colonia was founded by the Portuguese and was constantly fought over with the Spanish. It was a strategic fort town during the colonization of South America.
On the trip I had met a fellow Canadian who was originally from Cape Breton and recently Calgary and was currently embarking on month long journey around South America. Frank works as an accountant in Yemen and works for something like one month on and then gets one month off. He is going to be doing this for three years. And there was Tom from Galway, Ireland and Diane from Santa Monica in California. We met on the trip in Coloina and upon Tom's brilliant suggestion we went to an Irish pub in Buenos Aires called the Kilkenny. I got a photo of us enjoying some drinks in the pub but the photo has a big problem with Red Eye. I will see if I can correct it.
On Thursday, I went to the Malba museum of contemporary art; it is a privately held collection on display. I saw a painting by Frida Kahlo the famous Mexican artist amongst the work of many other artists from the Americas.
I then went to a Japanese garden and had a walk around the grounds. Work was being done on the Koi ponds and it looked there was specialists from Japan overseeing the work being done. Koi are a type of Japanese carp.
Then I went to the see a very large metal sculpture of a flower called the “Floral Genérica” It is powered by hydraulics and the petals would be open or almost closed depending if it was day or night like a real flower.
On Wednesday night, I went out some people I have met in Argentina to a very good restaurant called the Nacional in the barrio of San Telmo. San Telmo is famous for it's antique market on the weekends. I missed the market this time perhaps on another trip to Argentina. I already thinking I would like to visit here again perhaps next year. In fact, Tom, the chap from Ireland, was saying he had been here before for two weeks and that was not enough time so he had come back to Argentina for a four week trip.
Yesterday, I went into the centre of Buenos Aires and had a look at the Obelisk.
Today, I am going to go on a guided tour of some artist studios in Buenos Aires.
Updated (July 2006)
The tour was organized by "Puntos Arte"; they are two charming ladies Flor and Silvina. They have a web-site but there is nothing to see at this time. We saw the works of three different artists: Maria Jose Lascano, Marcela Sinclair and Nicolas Castagna.
There is a larger version of the image here.
Florencia Peña & Silvina Faga, PUNTOS - el arte en su lugar de origen
(5411)4633 8348
And they have finally got a web-site running : www.puntos-arte.com.ar
I went on a bit a shopping spree yesterday and did some clothe shopping. The British pound is quite strong against the Argentine Peso making it a shoppers heaven. The exchange rate is about 5 pesos to the pound. It does make it hard for Argentinians if they want to travel abroad
Epilogue
I am truly glad I went to Argentina. I keep thinking about gong back. After years of thinking about going to South America it finally happened.
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This photo above was taken in the square near the apartment I was staying in. I ended up sharing a table with the these 2 women and the fellow was taking instant photos to sell to people. But then who took the photo of us? This was sometime in May which is the start of fall in South America. Even though, the nights were getting cooler it was still warm enough to be sitting outdoors in the middle of the night.
I did go visit Rocio one more time at the studio space she was working in. I shot some video with her which I have yet still to edit. We had a chat and drank some tea.
I do want to go back to South America and go for a ride in the Tren a las Nubes (Cloud Train) in Northern Argentina and go to places like the wine country in Mendoza. And I would like to see some of Bolivia and get up to Peru to see lake Titicaca. Steve has been telling about a place called San Luis in Argentina. I hope to be there as soon as possible
I keep saying this; I really should improve my Spanish before going back.