New Friends and a Trip to an Estancia

Friday, Feb. 4 (Part II)

Carnival was a bust in Paraná. I walked to the riverfront in the afternoon. A lady at the tourist office told me about carnival tonight beginning at 9:30. I had already noticed they had seating set up like a sambadrome (stadium for carnival) on part of the waterfront.

I walked back to there in the evening. I bought some pastries and ate them, then I paid and entered the sambadrome. I waited and watied and waited. Most of the crowd didn´t enter until after 10:00. The activities didn´t begin until 11:00—1 ½ hours after the scheduled start. Then the pace was so slow it was boring. The first gropup wasn´t even a samba group. It was twirlers wearing high school uniforms and twirling to recorded samba music. At 11:30 they had made it only half the distance down the sambadrome, and it was obvious the second group wouldn´t begin until that group was finished. At the rate it was going, it would take 45 minutes to an hour for each group with lots of waiting between. It just wasn´t worth the time and effort. I left. I had a much better Carnival experience in Puerto Iguazu a few weeks ago just listening to the neighborhood group parcticing there!

Walking: 38,063 steps (27,598 aerobic steps, 1550 calories, 25.87 km (15 ½ miles)

Saturday, Feb. 5

One of the frustrating things about around-the-world travel is that I cannot really shop for anything. I am not much of a shopper anyway, but occasionally I see something I would like. Here in Argentina I have seen 3 things:

1. They have official rugby club shirts of high quality for only $12-15 U.S. per shirt.

2. They have nice quality men´s leather shoes for about $35 a pair.

3. Weather vanes are popular here—fancy ones. I have seen one of a fisherman pulling a fish from the water. There are a couple of friends at home who might appreciate one of those.

I am limited to 1 checked bag on most flights, and I have to have my clothes and supplies in it. Besides, I walk a lot with my luggage. The heavier it gets, the harder it would be to get around. Most of the guidebooks and most of the travel magazines warn against internationl shipping. It is just not reliable from most countries and it is impossible to follow up when a shipment doesn´t arrive.

I made it to Victoria—2 hours through more lush farmland. There are only two hotels in town that I could find, but I was able to get into the cheaper one which is across the street from the bus station. It isn´t a great room, but it is a clean one.

It was lunchtime when I got here, so I walked to the riverfront. I have found a wonderful local place. It was full of people, and I had to wait for a table. I am sitting outdoors on a patio under some type of weeping trees and a net awning. There is a slight breeze. There was no written menu. I have ordered “pescado parrilla para uno persona” (grilled fish for one person). I expect to get some local fish that will be whole and will have been cooked over a wood fire. While I am waiting, I am having a cold beer because it is HOT here.
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It´s 7:20p.m. and I am sitting on the square in Victoria. Many people are out. There is a pleasant breeze, so it is a good place to relax. Most people are visiting with friends, some are watching people, and one is reading. It is a nice old town. It is small—maybe 50,000 people. It is filled with ornate old buildings. According to my guidebook, it is known for the elegant and elaborate grillwork on many of the old buildings.

This has been a rare, special travel day. To explain, I must return to the restaurant. Apparently people were aware I was a trouist. After ordering, two men walked by my table as they left, and they said, “Bon Appetit,” to me. That´s not what a Spanish speaker would say to another Spanish speaker. The real excitement began, however, after I finished eating.

My meal was delicious. The fish I got was a sabalo. It was bout 14 inches long (35 cm). It was soft and tasty both from the charcoal and from garlic. I ate the whole thing with nothing else. Then I was amazed at how cheap it was—8 pesos for both the fish and the liter of beer. (Less than $3 U.S.)

As I was preparing to leave, a man asked in English, “Was it good?” I then joined him and his wife thinking we would have a brief conversation. Instead, I was with them for the next four hours.

He (Daniel) works for an international agricultural firm and has 3 farms in the area which are his responsibility if I understand it correctly. The company has offices in Chicago, Houston, Mallaga, Buenos Aires, etc. She (Fatima) has been a hospitl administrator but is now a housewife and mother. She also owns an estancia (farm) outside of Victoria. They live in Buenos Aires and have a second home here. Daniel said that most owners of estncias today have homes in town instead of one the fams.. They are here for a week with their children and friends of their children.

They offered to show me around town. We drove through the original part of Victoria. After a flood in the 1800s, they rebuilt the town further from the river and on a hilltop. That is why there are so many old buildings from the same period of the late 1800s and early 1900s in town. They stopped at a craft stand where a man showed me products made from fishskin, from cow´s stomach, and from wild water hogs. They showed me the cattleboats and chutes that are used to bring the cattle from the islands in the river onto the mainland. They showed me the old mines where lime was removed. They took me to a Benedictine Monastery where we toured the old church and then the new one that was build directly on top of it. They suggested that I return by taxi tomorrow morning at 6:30 to hear the monks doing their Gregorian chants. Apparently, they take vows of silence and only two of the leaders are allowed to speak. Then they took me to a golf club owned by one of their friends where we had coffee and cake (roffel?). It was thin layers of crust with rich heavy dulce con leche between.

Tonight is Carnival here in Victoria, and I was asked to join Daniel and Fatima and their family for it. Apparently anyone can rent a costume or make one and join in the celebration. I think it would be too much for me to stay up that late. Instead, I have accepted their invitation to go to the estancia for a cousin for the day tomorrow. They will pick me up at 10Ñ30 and we will drive 60 km (36 miles) to there. All I know is that there are plans to have fish and that I can ride a horse if I want.

As soon as they let me off at the hotel, I rushed to the supermarket to buy two nice bottles of wine (Lattitude 33 Chandon). I will take them for us to have with the lunch tomorrow.
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Well, I stayed up and went to Carnival. I went on my own. I didn´t see the family I met today; almost the whole town was there! It was what I wanted Carnival to be. It was all local groups. Many were samba groups, but between them were clowns, kids on bicycles decorated to look like mice, people wearing huge papier maché costumes, etc. There were women wearing hardly anything—mainly thong tights and bouncy beaded belts. There were men dressed similarly, but most of the men wore bikini briefs rather than thongs. There were loud samba drum groups. There were feather headdresses. It was what would be expected from a small town effort. There were no professional groups—just practiced local groups. It was almost 1 ½ hours of constantly passing groups. When the last group passed, it was followed by the first group which had already finished the circuit. I don´t know how long the loop will continue, but I saw it all, and there were still many people just arriving when I left at midnight. Besides the “parde,” many local people came in costume. It was a lot like Hlloween in the U.S., except teenagers and adults were as likely as kids to be in costume. I was surprised at the number of teenage boys there who were in drag. And it amazes me that so many 15-16-year-old girls in such a small town would run around in thongs in front of everyone they know!

It´s been one of the best days of my trip. I am so tired, though. I must get to bed to be prepared for the excitement of tomorrow.

Sunday, Feb. 6

It´s 7:15 p.m., and I am sitting at the station waiting for my 8:00 p.m. bus to Rosario. I have had the most wonderful day. Daniel was at the hotel at 10:40 to pick me up. We went to their Victoria home to get the others who were still getting out of bed after a late night at Carnival.

Soon everhting was organized and packed and we were off to the estancia of Fatima´s cousin. It was about a 50-minute drive to there. I felt guilty because they insisted that I take a front seat alone while 5 of them packed into the back seat nd the children sat in the hatchback area.

There were three ladies at the estancia along with the son of one of the ladies. The two others are close friendss with Ema, the cousin. The house serves as a vacation home, but it is quite large. There were at least 5 bedrooms and 3 baths, a large living room-dining room combination, a kitchen, an office, and a laundry room. Out back is a large swimming pool and quarters for the employees. To the side is a small vegetable garden. Far out front is a pig pin. And all around are fields and fields of crops.

The house is fascinating due to all the antiques inside. It is filled with objects that have been used over the years and are now decorative items—trunks, horsewhips, telephones, sideobards, ranching items, etc. It is almost like a museum of estancia life, but is obviously a warm, cozy home.

Ema and her friends travel as much as or more than I do. They have been to Asia, the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the U.S., etc. We talked a lot about thravels we´ve made and ways of traveling. Everyone spoke English quite well, so I didn´t feel as if it was a great effort for them to deal with my lack of Spanish.

Lunch was just like what I have seen in movies about Latin America. There is a long porch along the front of the house. They had set up a long table for the 12 of us. It had plates, bread plates, water glasses, wine glasses, etc. A salad buffet had been set up against a side wall. There were sliced tomatoes, leaves of lettuce, shredded carrots, boiled potatoes with chopped boiled eggs, spinach and boiled egg quiche, sliced cucumbers, rice, soy beans, and probably other things I am forgetting. There were various oils and vinegars to season it all. We each took our plates to serve ourselves. On the table, we had fish empanadas (pies with seasoned, ground fish filling) and fish milanesa (thin filets of fish which were battered and deep fried). It was all so delicious!!

After stuffing ourselves on all that, we ate melon and a sweet pastry—little flaky pastry pockets filled with a sweet fruit mixture and dipped in a sugar water after they were baked. We had coffee in demitasse cups with the name of the ranch and the form of the ranch brand on them.

After lunch, I went swimming with some of the children including the daughter who is studying to be a dentist and her boyfriend who is studying to be a lawyer. Some others took naps. Still others continued to visit.

We all gathered in the living room again (with air conditioning going because of the heat and humidity) around 4:30. We took some group photos and exchanged contact information. Then we had tea at the dining table before rushing to leave around 6:00.

It was a wonderful day. Daniel and Fatima and their children are so nice and friendly and are so esy to be around. Ema and her friends are such relaxed ladies and are so interesting because of their traveling adventures. I imagine this weekend will be the highlight of my South American travels this year.

One interesting side story: After talking for an hour or so with Fatima and Daniel on Saturday, my voice became hoarse. For a month I had not spoken more than 2-3 sentences at a time and more than 3-4 times per day. My vocal chords were not in shape for talking an hour or more.

As I caught my 8:00 p.m. bus for Rosario, I was worried. I would be arriving at 9:30 at night with no hotel reservation and no map. The guidebook said that the bus station would be 30 blocks from the center of town. Andlightning was beginning to flash with such great intensity that rain was guaranteed. How bad it would be to arrive in a city I don´t know, late at night, without a map, and with it raining!

The entire 1 ½ hour trip was across theflood plains of the Paraná River. It was raining hard on us most of the way. But as we entered Rosario, there were signs there had been no rain yet in parts of town and only sprinkles in others. I watched constantly for hotels, not knowing how close or how far away we were from the terminal but wanting to remember what I had seen if the terminal proved to be in the next block. I became more relived as we traveled further into town, realizing it would be easier to walk and find a hotel in an older part of town than in a spread-out suburban area.

The terminal was huge—a former train station changed into a bus station—and I could see a neon hotel sign beyond it. No rain was falling either. Luck was with me so far. I got my luggage and went hotel hunting. It was beginning to sprinkle as I walked out of the terminal. Also, it was then quite obvious that the side street to the terminal and the streets off it were lined with hotels and other businesses. The first hotel I saw was big, had 3 stars on the door, and looked like it hadn´t been remodeled for 20 years. I guessed it would be expensive and dumpy. I went down a small side street figuring it would be quieter and cheaper awy from the terminal. The first place I entered had a room for 25 pesos ($8.37 U.S.). I took it and was pleasantly surprised by the room. It has a large window opening to the top of a rubber tree. It is clean, quiet, and comfortable. So I have decided to stay in it for my second night here, too, rather than moving elsewhere as I had originally thought I would do.