City Day

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Buenos Aires, Argentina


Every trip we take includes a trudge, a long walk that seems to go on forever. We’ve trudged all over the world. Today we trudged through Buenos Aires and it was a perfect day for it. Being Christmas, the city was dead. No traffic, no crowds, and a lot of closed stores made for easy exploration of the city’s neighborhoods and parks. Our new Fitbits said we did around nine miles of walking.

We we stopped for pizza in Recoleta and then strolled by the botanical gardens and the zoo.

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Restaurant in Recoleta

As the afternoon wore on, more people began to emerge. We finally pooped out at about 4:00 and grabbed a taxi back to the hotel.

It’s very warm here. We saw a sign that said 35 degrees Celsius, which equates to about 95 degrees Fahrenheit and that was at 8:00 pm.

The weather reports said it was over 100 degrees at mid day. That’s no big deal for us, coming from Arizona, but the Porteños are complaining.

Tomorrow we catch an early flight to Mendoza and begin our education of Argentine wines.

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Christmas Eve in Uruguay

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Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

Like most Porteños, we fled the city for the holiday. Real Porteños go to the beach, which is about a five hour drive. We just took a one hour boat ride across the Rio de la Plata to the beautiful town of Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay. It was a lovely place to spend a day.

To to get here we took the modern and fast Buquebus ferry. Comfy seats, wifi, and television made the trip painless. Upon arrival we were greeted by our guide Fabian and our driver Julio. Yes, we’ve had two drivers, both named Julio. Immediately we took a tour of this small town of 25,000 people. Colonia was originally settled by the Portuguese and was the site of many battles between the Portuguese and Spanish. Even the English gave it a shot.

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Colonia

Today, the city is a UNESCO Heritage Site, which means the buildings and structures are preserved. Fabian showed us how you could tell the difference between streets made by the Portuguese and those made by the Spanish (Spanish road drain on the sides, Portuguese down the center). We visited the old bullring that has not been used since the Uruguayans outlawed bull fighting in the early 1900s.

After Fabian finished our tour, we set out to explore on our own. There wasn’t much more to see but we stumbled upon Los Farolitos, the little sandwich shack on the main road. Los Farolitos is known for its chivito, a huge sandwich with a thin slice of beef, ham, cheese, fried egg, bacon, and a bunch of other things that make it yummy.

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Chivito

We enjoyed watching the town’s people prepare for Christmas while eating our chivito and sharing a beer.

It’s really warm here, like a summer day in Arizona. So, after our lunch we took to our air conditioned room at the Hotel Plaza Mayor. The hotel is right off the main square and has a beautiful garden courtyard. Steve went out on his own for a haircut and a run while I read and napped. We needed to save up a bit for the big Christmas Eve festivities.

Tonight we had dinner at Pulperia de los Faroles, which sits on the main square in Colonia. All of the tables were set up outside, lit with candlelight. We shared dinner with locals and tourists, enjoying the Uruguayan wine tannat. It was yummy. The festivities peaked at midnight with fireworks and champagne. In fact the fireworks went on throughout the neighborhoods for several hours.

We’ve seen a lot of stray dogs. They are fat and happy, as they are known as community dogs, and people take care of them. The numerous dogs roaming throughout the dinner area were sure satisfied. I tried to give a potato to one and he wasn’t interested. When our Argentine friend at the next table offered chicken, the dog scarfed it down.

Back to Buenos Aires for more city exploration tomorrow.

Merry Christmas to our friends and family!

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Tigre, Tiendas y Tango

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Tigre, Argentina


Today we headed north of the city to Tigre, Argentina. Tigre is on the Paraná River and a weekend destination for porteños, the people who live in Buenos Aires. Tigre is a town that revolves around the river.

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Tigre

In addition to the massive market and amusement park, Tigre has hundreds of little islands where many people live. The homes are cut off from the “mainland” and only accessible by boat. We took a tour through the delta to get a glimpse of this unique lifestyle.

Every house has a dock and no one on the islands has a car. All services to these homes is by boat. We saw the supermarket boat, the trash boat, and learned there are many others, including a school bus boat and an ambulance boat. This was a fun excursion into a different way of life.

The river here looks like chocolate milk. They said over and over that it’s not polluted. Instead the sediment from up river make is murky. We saw similarly colored water in the Amazon and it’s kind of freaky to see people swimming in it. We stayed on the boat.

After our tour we were driven back to the city and dropped at the Plaza de Mayo. After a quick peak into the pope’s church we explored Florida Street.

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Florida Street

This is the main pedestrian-only street that is a primary shopping destination for Porteños. Considering it’s two days before Christmas, we shouldn’t have been surprised to find it packed and chaotic.

in the middle of it all is a huge upscale mall. Mom, you would have loved it!

Florida Street is also known for its “arbolitos” or change makers who convert dollars into pesos at a better rate than you can get at the bank. For example, you can get 9 pesos to the dollar from an arbolito while the official rate is around 6 to 1. We’ve been told that buying from the arbolitos can be dangerous though. We’ve been exchanging dollars at the hotel or at restaurants and getting about 8 to 1. Better safe than sorry.

After browsing the mall we hit up a little cafe for empanadas and a beer. The place was packed so we sat at the little bar while looking over the fabulous baked goods. We’re finding the Argentine people to be very warm and friendly.

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More empanadas

The lady behind the bar at the restaurant advised us to eat our empanadas with our hands and quickly provided a squirt of hand sanitizer before our food was served.

We finished our day with the Esquina Carlos Gardel tango show. A bus picked us up and delivered us across town to a theater that stands on the ground where the most famous tango singer ever, Carlos Gardel, did his thing. The dinner and show was very touristy, but we can now say we’ve seen good tango. It’s not Jimmy Buffett, but it certainly represents the heart and soul of this city.

Tomorrow we head to Uruguay and hopefully get another stamp in our passports.

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