Exploring Buenos Aires

Wednesday, Feb. 9 (Part II)

After stopping at an Internet cafe, I returned to the room. I must have been more tired than I thought. I slept for over 2 hours. When I awoke, just after 6:00, it was dark. Within a few minutes it was raining heavily. That spoiled my plans for going back out.

Walking: 17,228 steps (13,735 aerobic steps), 703 calories, 11.71 km (7 miles)

Thursday, Feb. 10

There seem to be few homeless people here in Argentina. I have seen a few in various cities, but not many. What I have seen often, however, are trash scavengers. No one´s trash goes to the dump without someone opening and going through it, I don´t think. Sometimes it is people with horse-drawn carts who actually pick up the garbage. Before they are out of sight of the home, however, they are going through it for treasures. Yesterday, I saw two men who had ripped open a garbage bag outside a restaurant. They had opened the remains of 8-10 sandwiches and were removing the pieces of meat that had been only partially eaten. Last night, I heard a noise outside my window and looked out. It was someone emptying a bag of garbage to see what was in it. And as I looked from there to the intersection, I saw a woman pushing a grocery cart that was full of garbage bags. I wonder how many people are living like this here?

I annot believe that I slept another 8 hours last night after my long nap in the afternoon. I guess my body is tired form the physical and emotional stress of changing locations so often in the past few days. I hope to put in a full day of sightseeing today, however. The subway strike, which still continues, makes it more difficult to do as much. I am not sure of what buses will go where I would like to go, and walking 20 blocks to get downtown or 40 blocks to get to Ricoleto north of town eats up a lot of time. Of course, it has the advantage of letting me see everything along the way.
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It is now the middle of the afternoon. I have spent the morning exploring parts of the center of Buenos Aires. Some of the observations:

1. Buenos Aires is a big city with the feel of a place like Manhattan or London. It is possible to go blocks and blocks within the crowded city center without feeling that you are leaving it.

2. It is amazing how many massive, heavy buildings exist in the city. It is almost an embarrassment of riches. They are all in the European-style with thick stone walls, embellished with sculptures and carvings, and topped with domes, spires, and other special features.

3. There are no department stores here anymore. There was a Harrod´s, once a branch of the London store and then operated independently. (There was a court case I read a few years ago that gave them the right to keep using the name.) But it is now a vacant building. There is another place, Gallerias Pacifica, that probably used to be a department store, too. Today, however, this massive building with glass canopies, has been remodeled into a shopping mall with the best known international brands.

4. The port area has been moved away from downtown, and the old port area has been redeveloped. The old warehouses have been remodeled into sidewalk restaurants, shops, and offices. Across the channel from them, new offices and hotels have been built. Where the old reailroad tracks were, prarking lots for the restaurants and offices have been placed. On the rest of the land which existed between the tracks and downtown, a string of high-rise office buildings have been built. It seems to be a highly-effective redevelopment plan.

5. I think there is more live theater here than in any city I know other than New York and London. Corrientes Street is lined with teheaters that are booked with both local and international shows. One example of a local production is a musical about the encounters between the Spanish and the natives.

6. Stores here sell knockoffs of classic modern designs in home furnishings. The quality looks pretty good. All the well-known chairs are for sale, and many of the lighting designs, too. I saw a pedestrian street stall selling knockoffs of the expensive Danish light fixtures of interlocking plastic pieces for form a globe.

7. Mosquitoes are horrible today. I tried to rest in a park and couldn´t. At least 10 mosquitoes were buzzing around my legs at any given time. I had to start walking again to keep safe from them.

For lunch today, I switched gears. I had Chinese food. It wasn´t very good, but I just couldn´t resist a change of pace.
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After writing the above, I went to the Plaza de Mayo, the main square in Buenos Aires. The Casa Rose (Pink House, equivalent to the White House in the U.S.) is located there. I went, however, because at 3:30 p.m. on Thursdays the mothers of missing children march. They are the mothers of the children who the government eliminated for political purposes years ago. These mothers, marching in the main square, caused the government to face up to what had happened. Of course, it wsn´t total victory for them. Governments never admit to specifics, so the mothers never got answers about individual children who disappeared. That´s why there are still children unaccounted for and why there are mothers who are still marching.

From there, I visited the Cathedral and the historical museum in the old military headquarters. Both are on the same square. Then I walked back to the hotel arriving at 6:00 p.m.

I bought liquids on the way back--water, diet cola, and a bottle of wine (Gato Negro Malbec 2003 for 6 pesos--$2 U.S.). I stayed in the room, as usual, in the evening.

Walking: 35,185 steps (24,983 aerobic steps), 1433 calories, 23.92 km (14 1/3 miles)

Friday, Feb. 11 (Part I)

I am in La Boca. It is one of the oldest neighborhoods and one of the poorest ones in Buenos Aires. My guidebook warned about coming here alone, but I figured they were talking about night time. Anyway, when I walk somewhere, I review the map and have the route in my head so that I can walk directly and purposely. With my tan, dark hair, and dark eyes, I am always being taken as a local person. Since I am alone, no one hears me talk to know otherwise. I feel safe, therefore, going almost anywhere. Besides, it is only 10:00 a.m. Trouble makers aren´t out at this hour.

As I walked here, it was obvious how poor this section of town is. The sidewalks are uneven with broken tiles, there is grafitti on the buildings, many storefronts have been vacant for years, people don´t look as prosperous (and sometimes as clean) as those in other parts of town.

The main reason people come here is for a little neighborhood that consists of brightly painted houses built of slats of wood and sheets of corregated metal. It was the original waterfront district here. Most of these quaint buildings have now been taken over by artists and cafe owners. They have tarted them up with sculptural figures on balconies and other features. The cafes hire couples to dance the tango out front. Artists who don´t have galleries in buildings set up street stalls to display their work. Guitar players, mimes, etc., provide street entertainment. In other words, it is no longer much of a quaint neighborhood. Instead, it is a full-time tourist attraction. I did, however, manage to find similar buildings on the fringes of the district that were still occupied by normal families and were more like what the neighborhood probably used to be before the invasion of the artists and the tourists.
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Walking back from La Boca, I took Nicochea Street which the guidebook said had Italian seafood restaurants. And, yes, in the 10 blocks or so I saw maybe three restaurants. In general, the street was worse than the one I had taken to enter the district. The buildings were of poor construction and decaying. There were so many trashy, empty storefronts that the street could be used to represent a war zone in a film. Lots of people were standing around doing nothing. Walking through there reminded me of some of the bad parts of Harlem where I have walked before.

As I came out of La Boca, I was in the waterfront area again. I had read about an ecological reserve, so I decided to explore it. I took the first bridge across the port area and walked beyond the new apartment and office buildings. I was surprised to first come to a nice, old waterfront park. It had a prominade and ldots of small, portable sandwich bars. A movie crew was filming at one location on the prominade.

Another bridge brought me to the ecological reserve. It is an area that used to be river flood plains. The city decided to fill it in and raise it all the way to the river´s edge so that they could develop the waterfront. They planned a compound of new government buildings on part of the filled area. After years of work, priorities changed. By then, lots of area had been filled, but lots was still low land. Plants began to grow. Lakes formed in the low areas. Birds and other wildlife moved in. Finally, the city declared it a nature reserve. It exits within a 15-minute walk from the main part of town!

I took Trail 2. It gave views of two lakes, swamplands, the river, areas with trees, etc. There were lots of waterfowl including many black-necked swans. In the trees, I saw parakeets and other yellow, green, and purplish-blue birds. I saw a large rodent cross the trail in front of me. And there were beautiful orange butterflies fluttering everywhere. Most prominant among flowers were a purpose trumpet blossom. And prevalent EVERYWHERE were mosquitoes! With the daily rains we have been having, they have burst out everywhere. But they are worse where there is lots of water such as in this nature reserve. It was a good hiking area, though. I just had to do a lot of swatting as I went along.

As I exited the reserve, I went to one of the sandwich stands. I had one with bife de chorizo. It was a crusty roll with two thick slabs of tender roast beef that had been cooked over charcoal. Ummmm!