It has been over two weeks since our arrival in Buenos Aires. I think we are suffering from traveller's fatigue. Our guide book, "The Buenos Aires Time Out" is super interesting , BUT our motivation for going and seeing exciting, new things is waning. Once I am back in Vancouver I plan to buy the most recent edition of "Time Out Vancouver" (I am certain they will be publishing one especially for the Olympics), then I can check off how many sites, museums and special places I have visited in my many years as a resident and see what I am missing or perhaps what they are missing.
We are staying in San Telmo, a great neighbourhood! You might call it emerging, on the verge of gentrification or soon to be yuppified , since many of the businesses and some of the restaurants seem to be catering to tourist or trendy traffic. We have a small studio apartment on Humberto Primo and Piedras with an interior courtyard. The design is a concrete, rectangle shell with a kitchen and a few other basic fixtures. This building is new, but we are surrounded by old buildings in their faded elegance. Many have been transformed to hostels and hotels. This is one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, in 1870s cholera and a yellow fever epidemic moved the city north . North is defined as north of Avenida Rivadavia, even though the city is a perfect grid, at that point all the streets get a name change. Apparently many streets have seen their names change over time, (Humberto Primo used to be Comercio), which might explain the annoying lack of street signs. A number of people have stopped and asked me what street we are on and when I was looking up at the sides of buildings, where street signs might be, a women kindly approached me and explained where we were.
Arriving here is a huge contrast, after the Jardim District in Sao Paulo. The first thing we noticed was that everything was so cheap; OR is it that everything in Sao Paulo was SO expensive? Let's take laundry for instance. There are 3 laundry locations within sight of our front door. We chose the one kitty corner to the left. Not a laundromat of course, a drop off and pick up, where your laundry is done for you. A big bag, with some wash and not dry things, was weighed by the woman who piled it into a basket then picked up the basket and estimated the weight. She was going to charge us 15 pesos, equivalent to $4 canadian Dollars. The same amount of laundry in Sao Paulo cost us - GET THIS - about $85 Canadian dollars or 120 reales...OKAY we were crazy to pay that BUT we needed to get some clean clothes. We are still removing the staples and tiny blue tags the overpriced Sao Paulo launders put on our clothes since not only do they charge a fortune, but irritatingly, blue, tags are the only way they can keep track of clothes. So anyway, here, I am asking for the super-duper treatment; getting things ironed and put on hangers, just to bring my laundry bill to 5 dollars.
Even fast food in Brazil was very expensive, a meal for 2 (no wine) at a mediocre tex-mex place equivalent to McDonalds cost 70 Reales 42 dollars.
We were very happy to arrive at La Esquinita, a restaurant at our corner and have empanadas (any flavor) for 3 pesos/.84 cents each. Down the street there is a tiny wine store, La Bodega del Pintor. There we bought a sparkling white from a grape called Torrontes (unique to Argentina); a floral aroma but very dry with a complex finish. A white Saint Felivier nature; nature meaning drier than extra brut, and two Malbecs; our total came to 189 pesos, $52.91 CND... and these were the mid -priced wines.
At the bakery we often treat ourselves to "media lunas" small crispy croissant (but heavier) delicious with your cafecito in the morning. Practically everything sweet, in Argentina, includes "dulce de leche" milk carmel jam, cakes and cookies "alfajores" and just on the side with any other desert. Dulce de Leche is omnipotent in Argentina and it is available in many forms no matter where you might be. Please see this small excerpt from an email Yvonne sent that I must include to give you a better idea about the superb food here in Argentina.
(food is so cheap):
-El Sanjuanino- fantastic lorco, essentially a pork stew with white beans and many part of the the animal- fantastic and the best empanadas we have had.
-El Cuartito- beautiful pizza
-Cumano- baked pumpkin and cheese and beef in a cazuela dish- fantastic
-La Bridgada- steak (one of many places-always good,always tender)
-Nacional- best flan so far served with dulce leche
-many street carts- choripan- chorizo sausage bbqed and then slathered with chimmiciri sauce and onions---yummy in a bun
-going to try the lomo-essential a steak sandwich with a friend egg, cheese, ham and other toppings
-fresh pasta, beautiful place close to our house, got two kinds and two sauces for the equivalent of $9.00- fresh, fresh, fresh
-lots of pumpkin in everything...I will cook more things with pumpkin when I get back, often combined with cheese and corn..yummy..we will have a savoury pumpkin pie tonite for dinner.
-wine-malbec, cheap and delicious, sparkling wine from patagonia-fantastic..
Sunday's in San Telmo are insane! The little square, Plaza Dorrengo hosts an antique fair. The antique fair is surrounded by an artisan's market that goes on for blocks and blocks; all the way down Calle Defensa, maybe all the way to Plaza de Mayo; we get waylaid and have not walked the whole thing. It seems everyone has a stand with something to sell , as if the financial crisis forced people into their basements, sorting their nicknacks just to make ends meet. There is no shortage of curiosity type shops stocking the souvenirs of the ages. The artisans are of every stripe: many jewelers , a woman who carves the heads of wooden matches, storages boxes made in the shape of bandoneons, and my personal favorite the photographer who makes three dimensional photo collages.
There are so many icons that represent Buenos Aires. I suppose other places we visited also have their iconography, but here it seems more obvious and present . What says Buenos Aires: tango dancers, the bandoneon, mate, Che, Evita, Madres of the Plaza de Mayo, gauchos close at hand and meat.
We paid a visit to the Plaza de Mayo on Thursday and saw the "Madres" with their distinctive white headscarves. They have been marching in protest every Thursday at 3:30 for 30 years. Now, internationally renowned, currently fighting for the return of stolen grandchildren, sometimes protesting can go a long way. Thursday in the square takes on a bit of a carnival atmosphere with all kinds of causes being represented; activists mingle with foreign onlookers; we kept thinking we would see someone we knew.
We have wandered farther afield than our neighbourhood on buses (colectivos), the metro (subte) trains and cabs (also very cheap!).
Almost every time we board Subte blue line, our metro, we see a small boy barefoot maybe 10, who after shaking hands and giving the traditional one kiss to the left greeting, places a small card or toy or whatever he is flogging that day on the lap of his potential client. He travels the length of 2 cars doing this then returns to retrieve his product or receive some pesos. Many mobile sales people of all ages use this method (not the kissing part) but leaving the product on the lap for the potential client to examine at their leisure while riding. No one seems to mind. they take a look and either buy or not and either is fine. A hard sell BUT without the really hard part.
I love the buses; reading the schedule is complicated. Yvonne thinks she could walk to the destination for the time it takes me to study the Guia T, the bible of the buses. First you have to know the city. The guide is a small 4X3 paperback of about 200 pages. The right hand side of the page it has a grid map of a part of the city, the left hand page has the same grid squares with the numbers of the buses that pass through that grid square. Find out where your going and where you are and voila. But wait you have to make sure your going in the right direction, find the bus stop and know where to get off. There are over 180 city bus lines , each one managed by an individual company. Companies compete with each other and there is virtually no public financial support of the colectivos. Buses cover a far wider area than the Subte. Colectivos are painted distinctly and beautifully; every bus number has a different design and colour. With very cheap tickets (1.20 pesos a ride depending where you are going) and extensive routes, the colectivo is the best way to get around the city.
-We have been to the second most beautiful bookstore in the world. (This was in the guidebook which only led us to wonder where the MOST beautiful bookstore in the world is). Ateneo is on Avenida Santa Fe and is housed in a spectacularly restored old theatre, where you can sit in the boxes read and gaze below at the show of book shoppers.
-We have been to San Isidro to one of the two horse tracks where they have beautiful sculptures of racing horses.
-We have been to Palermo Viejo to 28 Sport where Yvonne bought gorgeous handmade leather shoes that look like bowling shoes.
-We have been to Acassuso to have a BBQ with friends who live here.
-We went to La Boca to the Gallery of the Benito Quinquela Martin, a turn of the century painter who does striking huge, canvasses of mostly boats in the harbour (some on fire). He painted with a triangular metal spatula tool.
-We went to the gallery that used to be a skating rink "Palais de Glace".
-We have been to Adrogue and learned to make empanadas with Teresita.
BUT we feel like we have spent an inordinate mount of time planning for our next destination. This week we confirmed, against all odds since it is high season, a stay at an eco-estancia and a cabin on the beach at Punta del Diablo for January. That may have been difficult but not as frustrating as trying to get enough cash out of the bank machines to take it to Western Union and pay for our January stays. The trick with the bank machines here is that they will only give 500 pesos ($140 Canadian) (700 if your lucky) in one go, for each 500 you pay 12 pesos ($3-35) service fee. A little scam, which forces us to stand at the bank machine for a long time with every card we have making many withdrawals. Then going to Western Union with a huge wad of cash.
In preparation for our next destination Uruguay, we have been searching for a road map. Asking at various places I am met with a look that tells me they have never heard of the place I am saying. Coming back with "you know the little country just south of here" allowed us to hear how really to pronounce the name of the country Ooh (rhymes with boo)-roo-GWI. There are no maps or guide books that we can find specifically dedicated to Uruguay. They are just included in the Argentinean books and maps. We have come to the conclusion that it is a quieter, gentler Argentina with similar traditions and all the same cultural things. They are small and modest and don't seem to make anything of themselves. Strangely Canadian? We shall see...
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