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(Aventuras Argentinas Part 7)

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In our last travelogue, we forgot to mention that we had decided to stay in another part of Buenos Aires for our last week there. After checking on-line, calling a number of places and talking to various people we still hadn't found what we wanted. Paul decided to try Craig's List and e-mailed people who had apartments or rooms for rent. The night before we flew out of Jujuy, we got a confirmation e-mail from Lidia that she could rent us a bedroom with shared bath in her Congresso area apartment for $20 per night. Hopefully, we were set!

Tuesday, February 14, we flew to Buenos Aires, arriving at about 3:30 PM. We hopped on a local bus from the airport and set out to find Lidia's apartment. By about 4:30, we found ourselves ringing the door to Lidia's and in addition to getting a warm greeting, could immediately tell that we had made a good (or lucky?) choice. She had a large, spotless, attractively decorated apartment on the sixth floor and our bedroom had a big window over looking the street. After she showed us around and we chatted a little, we saw that it was about 5:45 and we could just make a group tango lesson with Ernesto at 6:00. (Thus revealing the true reason we wanted to stay in the Congresso area - it was a quick bus ride to Ernesto's dance studio!).

Lois & Lidia

Of course, it was great to see Ernesto and all the other people we had met while taking lessons. After a quick recounting of our last five weeks of travel, Ernesto was back to his old tricks of making fun of us for our terrible dancing! While we immediately settled into our old routine of late nights, eating incredibly good food and taking Tango lessons, we managed to get in a bit of sightseeing.

Puerto Madero was a newer, very upscale area of BA along the water with large gleaming office buildings covered with names like Sun and Microsoft. There were very nice, expensive restaurants (around $20/person for a three course dinner!) and some museums. The Museo Frigata Sarmiento was a frigate built for Argentina by England in 1898. It had sailed all over the world and been used as a training ship for the Navy. We got to climb all over it checking out all the hidden corners.

The Frigate Sarmiento

The Gran Hotel Inmigrantes was built in 1911 as temporary housing for recent immigrants and is now the Museum of Immigration. In a way, this museum laid out the source of the difference between Argentina and most of Latin America. There was massive immigration from all over Europe to Buenos Aires – Italian, English, Spanish, German, Russian etc. One exhibit documented the immigration and progress of the new lives of a variety of immigrants that came to Argentina in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. However, the most interesting part was the history of the hotel and its predecessors and all the political battles surrounding whether or not the money should be spent to provide temporary housing for immigrants. Funded one year, then not funded the next, moved because a politician wanted the building for other purposes, in disrepair because the was no maintenance budget and then finally closed down. Sounded just like our political system – made me homesick for the Washington Post!

The final tourist spot was La Boca; an old port and Italian working class neighborhood which originally was full of warehouses and meat packing plants. The dock workers painted the facades of their houses with left over paint from the ships. This created a patchwork of colorful buildings which eventually became a tourist attraction. Additionally, there was a museum of paintings by Benito Quinquela Martin who documented life and work in La Boca with some wonderful, large, dark and stormy oil paintings.

La Boca Harbor

Paul Makes a Friend

El Caminito

Being back in Buenos Aires we decided to visit our favorite Italian restaurant – Arturo’s for the third time. It was a small, friendly neighborhood place. We got a very warm welcome along with complimentary homemade lemoncello the first time we had dinner there. For our third visit, the waiter was positively overcome with smiles while welcoming us back with a kiss on both cheeks for Lois and a hearty handshake for me. We had another great meal with homemade pasta but the best part of the evening was a group of about 25 guys who were celebrating a friend’s birthday. They had hired a small band to play music and sing during their dinner. It was mostly “folclorico” – folk music and songs which I was hard pressed to translate, but we still enjoyed the melodies and rhythms. After essentially closing down the place with the birthday party, we wished the guest of honor a happy 50^th birthday and headed back to Lidia’s.

The following night, Lidia invited us to join her for dinner in San Telmo where her flamenco teacher was putting on an outdoor show for one of the restaurants. We arrived a little early (10:00PM!), before the show started, got to meet the flamenco musicians and dancers and sit at their table right in front of the action. Pretty soon, they started and we could tell we were in for a treat. The music was provided by a young girl playing guitar, her mother singing and a percussionist playing a wooden box while sitting on top of it. There were two dancers who either danced or kept the beat by tapping their feet. After a couple of songs, the dancers would dance a couple of numbers, then a couple of songs etc etc. I guessed that the dancers needed a couple of song break between dancing because it looked like pretty hard work! We didn’t get home until about 4:00am, so clearly we had a good time watching the performance and then talking to everybody when the show was over.

A Night Of Flamenco

Unfortunately, our trip was drawing to a close. It turned out that our last afternoon in Argentina, Lidia had her family over and invited us to join them. This included her mother, a brother and a sister and their spouses. We talked about politics and the Argentines feeling that they had the most corrupt government in the world. Their list of complaints sounded familiar to us – sweetheart deals to corporations with ties to the government, a government that ignored its own laws, influence peddling, corruption etc. Seemed like people’s complaints are the same the world over – is that heartening or disheartening? We’re not sure and we didn’t have much time to mull it over since we had to catch a taxi to the airport and then out flight back home.

So, that’s the story of Aventuras Argentinas. Thanks for listening and we hope everyone enjoyed it. As for where to next, we are thinking “Vietnam Vacation”. What do you think? We are always interested in feedback on this and all other travelogues.

Final Notes on Argentina

$2671	food, accommodation and local transport = $53/day
$250	tango lessons
$356	Souvenirs
$1965	plane tickets (local + international)
$40	Guidebooks
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$5282	Total expenditure for 51 days in Argentina
$15	average cost for a room
2000	miles traveled

THE END OF AVENTURAS ARGENTINAS

Aventuras Argentinas Part 6 Pictures From Argentina

All content is copyright © Paul Schneider, 2006.