Menu |
Home |
Hire Me |
Hickory Aviation Museum |
Calvary Lutheran Church |
Contact Me |
Adventures in South America, Part 2:
A Brief Tour of Argentina
Though a bit belated, here is the next round of pictures from South America. Be sure to check out the first batch by clicking here.While the last rotation involved lots of new experiences and getting used to the new places, the second trip led to much more exploration. The first was to nearby Puerto Madero, which is just a 5 minute walk from the hotel. Please feel free to enhance the realism of this section by walking around the room and viewing a different picture each time you pass your computer. Don't worry about what everyone else is thinking about you... they already know you're a little bit strange, right? For the best results, I would suggest playing, humming, or singing "...these boots are made for walkin'..." as you go.
Could you feel the light breeze become a little bit cooler as you approached the waterfront? Could you hear all the cars going by, and smell the exhaust of passing vehicles? I just hope you were watching where you stepped- you know how dangerous the sidewalks can be, especially after prime dog-walking hours.
As you can see, the Puerto Madero area used to be a series of docks and warehouses for water shipments, but has since been renovated with fancy dining options. As you will be able to see from aerial photos later on, the area is a long stretch of buildings that sit on the edge of an artificial harbor. You can see the remains of an old lock that must have been used to help regulate the water levels, and cranes that must have been used for loading and offloading cargo.
The sailboat masts are part of the Puerto Madero Yacht Club, which is one of two in that neighborhood. The old looking vessels are on display, and serve as floating museums. The one with the yellow masts was commissioned as a museum to celebrate it's 100th anniversary, which was in the 1970s.
Since we have a little bit of spare time, I'll give you a brief walking tour of the neighborhood. As before, simulate to your own preferred degree of realism. First, we have the hotel. The lobby is very fancy, and they even have people to open the door for you. This part of Buenos Aires is a very pricey one, so there are lots of hotels like ours. Just a block or so away you can see San Martin Plaza, which has monuments, benches, playgrounds, open areas, dogs..., and lots of other fun things to do. One corner of the park exits onto Florida St, which is a pedestrian-only leather, cashmere, and souvenir shopping wonderland. There are lots of high-pressure salesmen that would love to sell you whatever they may have, which may include anything like purses, jackets, shoes, apparel for girls, girls without apparel, and little souvenir figurines. I would suggest that we avoid most of these things, since they are typically priced for tourists.
Now we will pass back by the hotel on our way to Recoletta. If you would like, you can wave as we pass the white building next to the church, since that is the hotel. We get to cross Nueve de Julio, which is advertised as the widest avenue in the world. After crossing it so many times, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if that claim were actually true. On the topic of realism, here is where you can take a break and play a game of Frogger, that classic computer game where you try not to get run over by passing traffic.
Here we are at Recoletta, which is a neighborhood that features lots of open-air restaurants, markets, a giant cemetery, and of course, break dancing. Since we are so close, we should stop in at the cemetery. There are several more pictures from here from the first rotation in that section. This is where Eva Perone is buried, so we can be sure to stop by her spot.
One of the next day trips was to Tigre, a 45 minute train ride north of town. It is essentially upstream from the part of BA that we usually stay in, and is in an area of many small rivers that eventually lead to the Atlantic Ocean. On this particular trip, we left on a Sunday afternoon around lunch time. Just in case you are thinking of going, let me recommend a weekday. Apparently the train ride is very popular on Sunday; so much so that we would have been glad to have "standing room only." But alas, we were packed in very tightly. So first, we get to walk to the train station. By now, I'm sure you know the drill.
The train station is very old as you can see from the picture, but it looks suspiciously like lots of other train stations in the world. After paying the equivalent of about 30 cents, we were on our way. In addition to being a popular tourist weekend destination, Tigre seems to be very popular with the locals. The lady at the information booth told us that there were a handful of rowing clubs that started in the late 1800s, and most of them are still operating. These clubs look like churches from the outside, and seem to operate much like country clubs do at home.
On this particular trip, we took a ride in a catamaran, like the one pictured below. It was about an hour ride up and down the river, which made for some good photo opportunities. As you can see, the rivers became fairly crowded too, with lots of large and small boats.
There were plenty of interesting houses with well-manicured lawns along the rivers. As best as I can figure, the people who live in that first house are the ones that aren't supposed to throw stones. Or it could be that it has some kind of historical significance, and they want to preserve it. Either way, you can decide.
Tigre also offers an Argentina Navy museum that is very interesting. There were several model ships and planes of all sizes, and lots of big guns and torpedos. While walking to the museum, we passed an orange tree on the sidewalk, which should give you an idea of the climate down here. The star emblem is a giant version of what is in the middle of the Argentine flag. And that machine with all of the pulleys and knobs? Well, that is the new Mountain Air Cargo crew scheduling machine. Not really, it is actually a "tide predicting machine" according to the placard. Finally, the last two pictures are of the bridge of an Argentine ship. One of our spanish speaking companions for the day said that it was the first ship in their fleet to be hit when they had their little disagreement with the British over the Falklands. Special thanks to "save-the-day Wayne," who is such named for his repeated usefulness and help.
I'm sure by now you are wondering... does this kid ever work? Or does he just go take pictures of stuff? I should confess that things haven't exactly been in chronological order. But trust me, it would be much more confusing if the pictures were in the order that I actually took them. So imagine now that we get to work, which in case you have forgotten, means taking all the little packages to Brazil. We leave BA in the middle of the night, so there aren't many opportunities for pictures. On the other hand, we leave Campinas in the afternoon, so there is still enough daylight for some plane pictures. The aerial pictures are in the vicinity of Curitiba Brazil, which is a fairly large city near both the mountains and the Atlantic. Look closely and you can see what I mean.
Whew, goodness. That was tiring! Just thinking about work for that long. I think instead we should go back to vacation. By this time TB had come to visit. She first arrived just a few hours after I left for Brazil, so we missed each other for the first few days. But finally, we ended up having a weekend in Argentina together. We took a trip to Bariloche, which is a popular ski resort in the Andes. The trip started with a flight that departed from the downtown regional airport, Jorge Newberry. So of course, I took some pictures of the planes that were there. The last picture is not very good from a photography standpoint, but it does give you an idea of how big BA really is. You can also see the artificial harbor that makes up Puerto Madero. If you are one of the people who visits often, you will be able to pick out lots of other landmarks and roads.
What would have been a 20 hour bus trip was only a 2 hour plane ride, thanks to American Falcon and their 737. When we got to the mountains, we found our hotel and set out to find something to do for the afternoon. We found that a company sells cable-car rides to the top of one particular hill, called Cerro Otto. This was reasonably priced, and the view on the way up was nice.
Here are some views of this section of the Andes Mountains. The ones that you see aren't all too tall by rocky mountain standards, since I took the photos from about a 4000 foot vantage point. It was a very chilly place though, mostly thanks to the strong winds. There were also scary creatures with big green heads that had little ears on top.
The top of Cerro Otto also offered some great views of the town below. Bariloche sits on the edge of a very large natural lake that seems to have been settled around the turn of the last century. There was a lot of european influence in the architecture and food, and perhaps my favorite part was that it wasn't as crowded and noisy as the big city of Buenos Aires. Even though there were fewer english speakers, this town felt more like home and more familiar than any other place I have been to in South America.
The top of the mountain has a restaurant, so we figured we'd check it out. For some reason people in the restaurant weren't sitting over by the windows with what we thought was the good view, so we helped ourselves. Thinking we had beat the system, we realized that the floor was rotating, and that we were going to get to see the other views too. But it worked out fine, because in the time it took to eat our fantastic brownie, we got to see everything at least once.
Sometimes we tourists can tell when a local entrepeneur sees us coming. After all, some places just seem to count on being able to sell stuff. When you go to the beach in the US, you can count on a cheesy store that sells t-shirts, swimsuits, and foam surfboards. Well, when you go to Bariloche, you can find places that sell you chocolate. Doesn't it sound more and more like my kind of place? Even though we were fitting the mold of tourists, we did go to the chocolate stores, and bought some to eat and some to take home. In the picture you can see one example that was big enough for me to feel comfortable walking to the back and taking a picture. It was about the size of a small grocery store, with ice cream, all kinds of chocolates, gourmet fruit preserves, etc. They even made some of the chocolate on site, which was a fun thing to watch.
The town square has several buildings that look like little chalets or cabins, but they are actually just the run-of-the-mill municipal buildings that every town has. There were people with big Saint Bernard dogs and puppies that would gladly take a picture of you with the dogs for a small tip. I should say that we assumed all he wanted was a small tip, since that is what we gave him. On second thought, maybe that was what he was telling us in spanish as we walked away. No really, I don't think he was talking to us.
We walked along the edge of the lake, which conveniently coincides with the edge of town. The surrounding terrain is quite picture-worthy, but it sure was chilly. The cathedral, which is actually visible in the pictures from the top of Cerro Otto, seemed to fit nicely with the neighborhood.
One of those cute buildings on the town square was a museum for goodies local. The taxidermy section had lots of strange animals, but I'm not sure how local they were. One that looked like an opossum was actually the size of a rat, instead of the southeastern US version that is the size of a small dog. The hummingbirds had red shiny heads, and there was a nice display about rodents and altitude. If I were making it, I think and appropriate title would have been "the wonderful world of rats." But interestingly, different types thrive at different altitudes. The skunk was brown and white instead of black and white, which made him kind of more like some kind of sepia-skunk. Maybe "sepkunkia" would be a good name for him.
After three short days, we had to return to our warmer home climate. While the plane in the pictures wasn't the one we rode on, it was in a nice place to be photographed.
In Buenos Aires, there are a handful of museums that advertise in tourist literature. Each one, it seems, is free on a different day. One prime example is a Hispanic Culture museum that is only a few blocks from the hotel. And the day for which it was free was also the day that we had some time, so we went. The site used to be a palace, for which the buildings were arranged around the perimeter. A high concrete wall connected the buildings to render a garden space in the middle. While the idea seems sound (and probably worked well when the place was built), it is a bit moot now that the neighboring lots are home to high-rises that look down into the property. But it is the site of an interesting museum, with some rooms set up to simulate what they must have been like.
After that museum, we scurried off to the Palermo part of town, where there are several attractions. The two on our list for the day were the botanic gardens and the rose gardens. While there were some fancy-pants plants in the garden, we were far more interested in the cats. I've never been to a botanic garden, or really any other place, that had this many cats. (If Larry S. would invite me to his house, I'm sure I could set a new record...) It was fun to play "spot the kitties," which I should clarify, is not the version that involves a bunch of permanent markers. For instance, check out the first picture in this set. I don't think there are more than five, but there's no way to really be sure. Now look at the bottom of the second picture. At first it looks like there are two, but some people that I've showed the picture to seem to spot a few more.
As you can imagine, this concentration of cats can pose a few logistical infrastructure problems. What do they eat? I am still not sure how to answer that one. What do they do with all of the hairballs? Well, I think that second picture pretty much sums that one up. Let's just say that you should probably remember to bring your lint roller. Where do they come from? This question was also answered, when we realized that they were actually growing from the trees. I knew that botanic gardens had some rare and exotic plants, but this was my first encounter with a cat tree. I know that this one is a cat tree because the branches have claws like cats, and of course because you can see a few of them that are almost big enough to climb down and start roaming around the park. If you don't believe me, just look at the third and fourth pictures more closely. Seriously, I'm not making this up.
Another interesting find was the ant super-highway. There was a stretch that was so well-travelled by ants that the small bits of debris were cleared away, giving them easier passage.
Geez, this sure is getting to be long. I'm even the one who was doing all of this stuff and I'm just about to fall asleep. Hang in there, we don't have much more. You can always bookmark the page and come back next week when you have more time.
So here are the pictures as we walked to the rose garden. I didn't see any cats there, and it was a much more meticulously groomed display. That is probably why the old ladies were blowing their whistles at us and telling us (as best we can figure) to get off of the grass. After all, you know how old ladies can be when they are given a weapon of authority like a whistle. They might have been swatting flies- the uncertainty of the language barriers will leave yet another ambiguity unsolved.
The flowers were arranged by variety. There would be a big stretch of lilies, a patch of one particular variety of rose, then another over there, and so on. The whole place was very pleasant, and there were enough painters sitting around to make up an art class.
There was also a part of the park that was closed for the filming of a movie. They kept practicing some little dance, where they counted in spanish and had a little flying camera on a stick zooming around over their heads. I have no idea what kind of movie it was, but if you ever see it, let me know.
Well, we've had a long day touring Buenos Aires, so it is a good time to stop by the Disco supermarket, grab a box of sushi to go, and head up to the roof for a nice view of the sunset. It's a great place to relax and think about the sequence of events that brings a person to a place in time and space, and I like to wonder how I will remember my experiences for years to come. It's also a great place to toss indiscriminate items over the edge so that they can fall 15 floors. If some where, some place, you should find a small green splat of wasabi on your windshield while driving, don't ask me about it.
| Home | Contact Me | Copyright © 2009 Jared Yates - All Rights Reserved |
|
|
|
| This page last modified 03/27/09 | |||||