Central and South America

I couldn’t even get here to the classic bridge view at San Antonio de Arecos.

internet.

There are a ton of different maps identifying The Pampas but I’ve chosen this one from wiki because it suits my story. Everywhere I’ve been this trip except Rio has been in The Pampas which I didn’t realize when I set it up.

No wonder there’s a similarity in language and culture.

I’m packing up for the last time. In a few hours I will head to the bus station here in San Antonio de Arecos and something like 20 hours later I’ll be opening my front door. Time FLIES!

November 12-13

Places are mostly closed here in San Antonio de Arecos. Even here, they’re not open.

Remember all that rain?

Goodness, what’s this? I’d better go look…and no falling in the mud!

There were a few guys about who immediately wanted to show me the kitchen and offer me one of the breads they were frying up right at that very moment.

From what I could gather, and that would be 50% gathering and 50% guessing, they supply restaurants, shops, and sell them on the street. I’m so glad to have had a chance to taste them hot from the oil.

Parque Criollo y Museo Gauchesco Ricardo Güiraldes. Pretty cool, it reminded me a little of the California Missions but it was built much later as a museum.

There are other, older buildings around the property that look even more like the missions.

There were many interesting displays, no English anywhere, and every time I could read an entire sentence I was so happy.

Fun, from in front of the museum.

…and it was a kick. These guys where all old friends from forever who meet here every afternoon. There was great enthusiasm from the table for me to join them in a drink which, under normal circumstances, I would have jumped at the chance, but nope, not this time, I was already stuffed full of food and tired and Spanish words were not on the tip of my tongue.

This place looks appealing…

This is the market that is open for a few hours in the morning and then not again until 4pm. No broccoli, which I suppose is fine because they don’t grow broccoli now so why fly it from across the world.

I’ve seen this in many places where you go to a fruit and veg counter and tell them what you want and the clerk picks, bags, and prices the bag, which you then take up to the cashier.

Here’s the market from the outside, right on the main square.

I do have a few more pictures that I won’t be able to get to until I’m home. Fingers crossed!

It wasn’t raining at the moment and it was an easy walk from the bus station to the town. But wait. Where are these promised gauchos…with horses and a parade and music and dancing and food and crafts and everything.

So sorry, cancelled because of the weather!

Luck: Good luck because I could get a reservation, bad luck because it was raining, good luck because it wasn’t raining, bad luck because they cancelled the festivities. SIGH!

internet.

November 11

At a café at the bus station where my intention was to get some coffee and fruit, but no. The place was quite crowded when I arrived and every single table had orders of coffee and a large pile of these rolls that you can barely see there on the counter that were replaced every ten minutes.

For less than three dollars you got a good cup of coffee and three of them, nice and crispy with big grains of sugar over the top and soft and chewy and heavy in the middle, just like I like them. Fine. It was the special and the obvious thing to do, and I did.

I dropped off my things and went out for a little stroll. This is the church and you can see four people by the steps.

Clearly out-of-towners, the ladies had formed themselves here for the guys to take their picture and then…

…I asked for a picture of the guys too. Hola fellows!

I went into the church and again more with the church tile. I seem to be unusually taken with church tile this trip.

And a huge picture of the pope.

There was live gaucho music and dancing here, and food and drink too. I stood around at the very very back for a little while because it was LOUD, SO LOUD. I wasn’t crazy about loud music even when I was young so this is Not one of the many ways I am showing my age.

The town is very charming and I plan to keep my patience with the weather, do some chores I have in mind, and enjoy my especially cozy accommodation.

I spent more than usual because of the scarcity of rooms and was so pleased to hook onto this one…someone must have cancelled due to the weather and maybe that someone foresaw that the festival was not to be.

What they were eating looked good so I asked where they got it – just there they said pointing to an open door.

This was past that open door and I could not say to myself oh no thanks I’m off ham and cheese. I said I’ll try this one and that one and I’ll take some of that amazing bread too. It was yummy.

Clouds are nice for sunsets.

Back to Mendoza Malbec.

The waiter offered me a home-made limoncello on the house. Why yes please, thank you very much.

November 10

The last two days have been quiet for me since it’s thunder-storming like crazy and ever since my close call with sickness after the episode of several hours wet to the bone at Iguazu Falls I’ve been more than reluctant to go out touring in the drenching rain. I could take a taxi to a museum for example, but there wasn’t any museum I longed for and hadn’t yet visited.

My last meal before the rains…

…was so much fun!

And then I needed to make some plan for my last four days. Stay in Buenos Aires? See some of the countryside?

After a few lazy hours of googling around, I decided on the countryside because two hours by bus would take me to the biggest gaucho festival in Argentina and it happened to be on this weekend and there happened to be a few rooms available.

And the cooks too. They were closing down for the afternoon break.

I was thinking I had to take an uber to the bus station because I had failed in a couple of attempts to get my bus ticket for the journey north but I decided to go back to the hotel and try one more time, to save the round trip in the rain. Success!

There’s always a long line out front, I’d been meaning to go and today I stood in that line. We were in the line so long I ended up getting to know my line-mates pretty well. Bus loads of tourists passed the line and poured into the back rooms.

The seats were comfortable, the service was decent, but the food was definitely not why a person would stand in line. Hard to say if it was worth it because if I hadn’t gone I’d still be wondering.

November 8

Café Tortoni, and google thinks it’s an “Iconic French-style cafe opened in 1858, a favorite haunt of the cultural elite with live tango.”

I’ll tell you for 100% true the cultural elite were nowhere to be found when I was there.

I’ve been using the subway since I got here from Uruguay. All the large old stations are decorated, decorated and very old. Tiles are missing, pipes are leaking, gunk has accumulated over the decades.

But the trains come fast and full so the system is definitely used and I haven’t had any problems. I’ve even got a SUBTE card (Subterráneo de Buenos Aires = Subte) the first section opening in 1913.

I really like the old tile works and there are some new projects too, I just didn’t happen to get off at those stations.

Considering how it looks it’s surprising how well it seems to work.

Whole long tunnels look like this.

I walked all the way around this fabulous piece that is no doubt different every hour of every day as it is basically one giant reflection machine.

I clicked every few feet and this one is my favorite.

“Floralis Genérica is a sculpture made of steel and aluminum located in Plaza de las Naciones Unidas, Avenida Figueroa Alcorta, Buenos Aires, a gift to the city by the Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano. Catalano once said that the flower “is a synthesis of all the flowers and, at the same time, a hope reborn every day at opening.” It was created in 2002. The sculpture was designed to move, closing its petals in the evening and opening them in the morning.”

I might appear in all of them!

I had a stroll through The National Museum of Fine Arts and there were a lot of things to look at. They also were having a Turner show, loaned from the Tate. I’ve seen so many Turners before without a huge amount of enthusiasm, I almost didn’t walk up the stairs to see these.

Fortunately I did because I got to see…

…this little guy, a nearly 10×10 image. It’s about a dream of Venice and I loved it.

I was thinking of looking for a reproduction in a book or a poster but it isn’t really this exact picture that I want. What I want is to go back to Venice and experience again what it was that inspired this picture.

I can’t even count how many times this has happened in the last seven weeks. Just two examples: A waiter is trying to tell me they have to change my food for some reason I don’t understand, but that’s ok because my hair looks great. Or I’m wondering if this line will Ever move but that’s ok because my hair looks great.

This is my hair on day two from a wash, just coming in after a full day out. I know, my hair looks great.

I’m also so happy I got the lighter camera. I feel like the life of my right hand has been extended by years.

(self-portrait)

Here’s an aerial I got from the internet. Pretty awesome.

internet.

November 7

Most days something is going on in the streets of Buenos Aires. Today there is an event in support of disabled services.

Someone else set up this picture and I was just standing there and took advantage of the opportunity.

There are several long walk streets and within every eight steps there’s someone chanting ‘cambio cambio cambio’ which means they are offering to change money.

Why there are so many and how all of them can stay in business and why we have these cambio butterflies, I have not the least idea.

I walked through a lovely park on the way to…

It’s old in here, first established in 1732. There are some crypts from the 1700s, a good number from the 1800s, and many that are dated in the early 1900s so it’s interesting to watch the evolution of styles.

Some of the old ones aren’t marked but they’ve got mighty great doors. A lot of the glass is broken, there are plenty of broken tiles, some corners lost to the spiderwebs, you know, old.

Evita, why most people come here.

One of the few touches of color.

…La Recoleta Cemetery.

“Cementerio de la Recoleta contains the graves of notable people, including Eva Perón, presidents of Argentina, Nobel Prize winners, the founder of the Argentine Navy, and a granddaughter of Napoleon. In 2011, the BBC hailed it as one of the world’s best cemeteries, and in 2013, CNN listed it among the 10 most beautiful cemeteries in the world.”

Look where I’m staying, that’s the view from my bedroom window!

November 6

First thing, food, at a highly rated sausage place called Chori. Sausage sandwiches have a generic name, choripan, chori from chorizo and pan from bread. It was delicious, grilled crisp over an open fire, grilled onions, butter pickles which were a tasty surprise, YUM.

I took these from the internet because my hands were full and I had to hurry to the Second thing, a Street Art Tour!

internet.

Speaking of feeling at home.

We had most of the tour walking down alleys looking at tidy murals. I liked this because the Ché image is so familiar it made me feel at home, weird, I know, and it wasn’t another mural.

A close-up of about a 4×6 inch piece of a wall-sized work.

According to the guide there was never a culture of graffiti or underground street art. In the ’90s the city just said go ahead paint murals, just ask the owners, and everyone did. Also at least half of what we saw were commission pieces as are 7 of the 9 I’m showing here.

There’s very little tagging over the murals either. Street art, or basically making murals, seems to be a very well behaved practice in Buenos Aires.

Like in Rio though, if you get too political the government will paint over your whole wall which I think is what takes a lot of the life out of the entire enterprise.

Hola chico.

One of the few that integrated a part of the structure, the gas meters, into the piece. And lazer eyes. Who doesn’t love lazer eyes.

Check out the shadow from the metal sign.

Another pretty picture with her leafy hair. The camera lens reads Tourista In Buenos Aires.

The only big piece we saw, a collaboration by two artists, one who did the figure and another who did the background. I like it pretty well but I don’t love it.

Another tour company runs a program in a different neighborhood so there are more pieces and maybe more big ones, I’ll have to check it out.

The guide in the orange shirt did manage to make himself heard to the whole group so that’s very good.