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