Argentina 2005

2005-10-17T21:38:00.000-07:00

We did a bunch of other stuff too. We went out to Rosario for a day (ask me about the flooded hotel room), saw an opera at the Teatro Colon (awesome building, crap opera), and generally wore down our shoes while enjoying being somewhere else.

We've more or less decided on going back next year, this time to El Calafate in Patagonia. Mmmm. Glaciers. It oughta be swell.

I might even be ready for more cafe con leche y medialunas by then.

Chao!

Miscellany

2005-10-17T21:17:00.000-07:00

We had our best conversations with cabbies. This guy played his harmonica, no hands, while careening through the streets of Buenos Aires. After regaling us with "When the Saints Go Marching In," he played a Carlos Gardel tango tune and told us about how he played his harmonica at the Teatro Colon at age 10. He was awesome.
This is a fantastic sculpture in the Palermo barrio of Buenos Aires.

There are sensors in it that make it close at night.

Seriously. This was on a highway feeder road in the Buenos Aires suburbs.

Our last day in Buenos Aires, we whiled away a few hours in a bar in La Boca.

One more from Iguazu

2005-10-17T21:10:00.000-07:00

That red dirt stuck to our shoes until... well, I think some of it is still on them.

It was so quiet and peaceful here. I'm a huge fan.

Iguazu Falls

2005-10-17T20:51:00.000-07:00

We were really lucky to get great weather. Look at the double rainbow!

That night we went out and got plastered with Peter and Heidi, two fantastic kids from England.

Yeah, I spilled beer all over myself.

Iguazu Falls

2005-10-17T20:37:00.000-07:00

There are really a whole bunch of these pictures, but I'm getting super tired of waiting for Blogger to play nice.

These two are pictures of us before we went out to the very end of the walkway, which was about 20 feet from the waterfall. We couldn't take pictures out there, on account of the water.

Behind Chris on the left you can see how close we got.

Here's a coati. That's South American for "weird raccoon thingy."

Iguazu Falls

2005-10-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

28 September -- Iguazu Falls

2005-10-11T21:21:00.000-07:00

Once we got to the falls, we finally ran into the teeming hordes of tourists that had so far been missing in our travels. Most people belonged to tours led by Iguazu Falls staff. So there were wandering groups of like 50 people each, every one with a laminated card around their neck that said "Omar." There were lots of different tour guides but Omar seemed to dominate. The most impressive views were at Garganta del Diablo, but our favorite experience was standing in the spray of the falls at the end of the lower trail. We took a million pictures that tell the story pretty well.

Thar be snakes out there. Outside the trail. As clearly marked on this sign.

This is on the walk to Garganta del Diablo. Note the mist rising up from the falls in the background. If you can't read the sign, it's pointing out the catwalk destroyed by a flood in 1992.

More Puerto Iguazu goodness.

2005-10-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

People here are so friendly. When we would run out of beer or water, we went across the street to a little kiosco. The guy who worked there was so great. His accent was really hard to understand, but he was patient and used lots of gestures -- he's probably used to dealing with English-speaking tourists.

He wouldn't sell us our liter bottle of Quilmes until he made us understand that he wanted his bottle back, so he could get the return fee. Which is fine. But when we brought it back, he (along with his wife and 2 or 3 kids) tried to give us half our money back since we returned the bottle. Half our money. The liter of beer was only $1.60 to begin with. Like we're going to take that out of his pocket.

For Aidy

2005-10-11T20:43:00.000-07:00

As promised, here is the $10 meal you are buying us. Steak, and chicken milanese. Don't mind the fries, they come with the entrees in the nicest of places.

27 September -- Outta Dodge.

2005-10-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

While wasting time before our plane to Puerto Iguazu, we went to the Japanese Garden, which is probaly a lot prettier in the summer, when everything is in bloom and they're not doing major consturction. But it was nice anyway.

Puerto Iguazu is a cute little town, where only the big streets are paved, you can hear treefrogs at night, and there's still more internet cafes per capita than you can imagine.

This is the Rio de la Plata, the big 'ol river in Buenos Aires. It's big, and it's brown.

Mmmm. Quilmes 'n' cheesy poofs in Puerto Iguazu.

Hotel Lilian was everything that Lonely Planet promised. Quiet, cute, and most importantly, quiet, it's a charming tin-roof building with a little garden in the courtyard. The weather was simply beautiful, and a little warmer than in BA.

26 September -- Buenos Aires

2005-10-11T19:07:00.000-07:00

Rather than take a bus to Puerto Iguazu, which was our original plan, we decided to look into plane tickets, thereby cutting our travel time from 20 hours to 1.5. After checking into a new hotel, lovingly nicknamed "The Convent" for its spartan furnishings, we tracked down the AmEx office and listened to the worst "buy our package" sales pitch ever.

First she sold us plane tickets, which was fine. But the minute she started in on the 2 night hotel package that included "breakfast and dinner because the hotel is so far from town, but it's the only one available and it's US $300."

Um, no. Both Chris and I felt our ripoff Spidey sense going off, so we bought the plane tickets and went across the plaza to a locutorio. The first phone call we made to a US $20 hotel, in the middle of town, welcomed us with open arms. Lesson: never buy the package.

That night, to while away the forsaken hours between afternoon medialunas and dinner, we saw "Las Rompabodas," -- the Wedding Crashers. Great fun for $4.

Thanks, Lonely Planet. You provided us with a hotel that is offers a central location, safe neighborhood, and up to six inches of sunlight at a time. I'm serious. The metal shade didn't go up any further.

Nathan, this one is for you. At least this place has a TV.

Yay! Escolares! This is the most pimped out school bus that we had ever seen.

25 September -- and the rest.

2005-10-11T19:01:00.000-07:00

After the cemetary, we had lunch at Munich de Recoleta, a Recoleta restaurant that turned out to have great German food and lots of locals. Our waiter had worked there since approximately 1927.

To walk off lunch, we walked all the way to San Telmo on the south side of town to look at the antiques fair that springs up on Sundays. They had some cool stuff, but since it's pretty popular, there aren't really that many bargains.

Dinner was with Javier at a trendy little Italian place in Puerto Madero, the recently refurbished dock area downtown. Trendy or not, they still played bad 80's music, a common theme in Argentina.

After Javier dropped us off at our hotel around midnight (we told you dinner is always late), we behaved like true locals and went right back out for ice cream at Freddo.

That's Javier and Chris, who I assure you just has bad eyelid timing.

Yay! Ice cream at midnight! A 5-year-old's dream!

25 September -- Recoleta Cemetary

2005-10-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

25 September -- Recoleta Cemetary

2005-10-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

She was one of my favorites. On account of the dog and the neat windows.

The more well-kept tombs look like small chapels on the inside.

25 September -- Recoleta Cemetary

2005-10-09T16:55:00.000-07:00

They're not all shiny and smooth. This one was was all made out of rough-hewn rock.

This is what happens when the family money runs out.

It's very weird to see "buried" caskets in the open air, but it's how they do it here.

Families use these tombs for generations. The caskets go down for quite some way.

After we saw our fill of the cemetary, we did what we knew we had to do: we tracked down Evita's tomb. Hey, we are tourists after all.

25 September -- Recoleta Cemetary

2005-10-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

They're not all ornate. There were a few that looked straight out of the Home Depot custom shower department.

25 September -- Buenos Aires

2005-10-09T09:30:00.000-07:00

This was our first full day in Buenos Aires -- we've slept off our jetlag, sorted out the intricacies of daily life (where to buy bottled water, how to make phone calls), and enjoyed a late breakfast of cafe negro (black coffee), cafe con leche (coffee with milk), and medialunas (croissants).

You will notice this as a theme -- people in Argentina aren't too hip to breakfast. When they do eat it, it's invariably a cup of coffee and a couple of medialunas. Language lovers note: medialunas = "half moons." Cute, huh?

After breakfast, we were ready to tackle what was, for me, the most anticipated item on our must-see list: the Recoleta Cemetary. Now, I happen to dig cool cemetaries anyway, but it doesn't hurt that this one's on just about every list of things that you should do before you die. Nathan's been hankering to see it since he read about it a couple of years ago.

The Recoleta Cemetary is the final resting place for Buenos Aires' richest and most influential citizens. It occupies the space of several city blocks of prime real estate, as if the people there would hardly stoop to spend eternity anywhere less chic. We wandered around for hours, marveling at the different eras of opulence represented, from the 1850s, through Victorian times and Art Deco. Go on to the next post for pictures.

Here's a view of the cemetary from the second floor of the McDonald's across the street.

24 September -- Señor Tango

2005-10-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

Later that night, we went to one of these massive flashy tango shows. Might as well, right? I'm so glad we trusted the judgement of our Buenos Aires contact, Javier, because otherwise we never would have gone somewhere called Señor Tango.

I got the gitchy feeling when we arrived in our van full of gringos, only to be met at the front door by more loud, fat Americans. I hate loud, fat Americans in the best of times, but to think that we might have to be seated next to a drunk guy who's most comfortable with a foam wedge of cheese on his head-- it was just too much.

Fortunately, we were seated at a table with Spanish speakers. This presented a problem all of its own. It was our first day in this country, at about 10 at night, and let's just say that my conversational skills were not at their peak. One nice man, who happens to be the operations manager for the Hard Rock Cafe in Rio de Janeiro, took pity on us and talked to us in English.

The food was fantastic. I had a perfect steak and the table wine, because this was Argentina, far surpassed anything I had expected. After dinner, the the show started out cheesy but got mesmerizing right quick.

Yeah, this guy actually flew in whilst playing the accordion. Chris can correct me later on exactly which type of instrument in the squeezebox family this thing is.

But he flew in. I had no idea at the time, but this was to be the first of several incredibly surreal moments in this trip.

I know blurry = artsy is not always true, and I would have preferred a clear picture, but I'll take this.

This guy has been doing this for the last 185 years.

24 September -- Buenos Aires

2005-10-07T15:49:00.000-07:00

After what I assure you was a very entertaining initial foray into the Spanish language, during which I had to describe to our cabbie where our hotel was because we didn't have the address or phone number, we set off on a prearranged city tour to get a feel for the city and its various barrios.

First off was the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace from which Juan and Evita Peron made their charismatic speeches.

They say that it's pink because in the old days, when the river was a lot closer to downtown, they painted the buildings with bovine blood to protect the stone from humidity damage. Now it's just tradition.

Cut me some slack, this picture was taken from a moving bus. I'll probably dig out some better pictures later. This is Avenida 9 de Julio, the biggest street I've ever seen. It's 8 lanes in each direction and takes 2 lights to cross. The big obelisk is a great landmark in the Microcentro -- after big wins in football matches, fans circle the roundabout for hours in celebration.

Next stop was the barrio of La Boca. Most of this area isn't very safe for gringos, so you'll only see us in the small Caminito tourist area.

Like the Casa Rosada, the paint jobs here are traditional -- it is said that the original multicolored houses were the result of citizens painting with whatever leftovers they could find in the shipyard. Today the effect is more for tourist cameras and garish street art.

Chris gets absolutely all the credit for this one. There are seemingly constant tango shows outside cafes in La Boca -- here he caught them on a break. This one's probably going on our wall.

This wasn't on the bus tour, but it's funny. No one uses public pay phones in Argentina -- they're unreliable and expensive. Instead, there are locutorios everywhere. These are little shops where you go into a little glass booth and make all your phone calls, and pay for everything at the end.

This just shows how ubiquitous the damn things are.

23 September: It's really a longer flight than you would think.

2005-10-05T20:30:00.000-07:00

Chris' dad was nice enough to drop us off at the airport, in plenty of time for us to get inspected, neglected, detected, and all other kinds of mean and nasty things that the TSA has dreamed up. After a 5 hour flight over to Atlanta, we embarked on another 9 hour flight down to Buenos Aires. It's really somewhere around hour 11 of 14 hours on a plane that you start to question reality, and wonder if you haven't been sitting on a plane all your life.

Atlanta Airport highlight: they have a muppet.

Airline highlight: they have a creepy exercise video that looks like a bad Robert Palmer video.