Misc from Buenos Aires

Tomorrow I'm heading out to the province/city of Córdoba for a week -- to have a look around Argentina's second largest city (over a million people) and otherwise be a tourist. Plus get out of the BsAs pollution and enjoy the foothills (they're not what I'd really call "mountains") and rivers/streams. A friend-of-a-friend from Dallas lives there, so I'm going to entrap him into being a tour guide for a day or two... if all goes as planned. So, this will be my last update til... I don't know when.


But I can finally post some photos that I've had for a while but no reason, excuse, etc, to talk about til now. Several times I've randomly mentioned Corrientes Ave., which is sort of the Buenos Aires version of Broadway. Except they have a mini-version of the Washington monument in the middle of it. And it crosses one of the widest streets in the world, "Avenida 9 de Julio". These photos were taken during the height of last winter's energy crisis, so you can see how serious they were taking it downtown. But the show must go on, even if the lights in your house won't.

Next up, you can see the new light rail train that just went into service a few months ago, I was there for opening day. It's down by the swankiest and most expensive-est barrio in town, Puerto Madero. If you're a real estate investor, this is where the real action is in Buenos Aires. Anyhow, this train will be humorous to watch evolve... in theory, it's going to link the poorest part of town to the main bus terminal, which requires going through the richest part of town (here in Puerto Madero) to get there.


For now, it only has 5 stops, costs a peso (outrageous! the subway only costs 70 centavos and is far more extensive!), and takes a year and half to go anywhere because it's above ground and has to navigate the stop lights and traffic. Actually, as I think about it, it's not that different from DART when it hits downtown Dallas.

This stylish bridge over to the right is called "the woman's bridge", and is somehow supposed to represent the tango... if you smoke crack and hallucinate as the designer obviously must have. To the rest of us, it obviously represents "a harp". The outstanding thing (if you read the tourism literature) about this area is that everything is named "whatever" of the woman or else has a specific woman's name. A shocking departure from tradition, here in the land of machismo.


But you know you're in Puerto Madero when you look up all around you and all you see are towers, towers under construction, and cranes. It's actually not that different than being in whatever other large city in the world although it doesn't really feel all that "Buenos Aires-y". Even the graffiti is lacking, unlike in other parts of the city (where there is an over-abundance). OK, this concludes my mini-tour of BsAs but I have to go pack my bags for Córdoba now.

Patagonia - Part II

Continuing where I last left off, I was in Chile and took a 3 hour bus ride from Puerto Natales down south to Punta Arenas... it was a nice uneventful ride with lots of wildlife to look at along the way, like ñandús, guanacos, maras, and patagonian geese.


Since they don't exist in North America and I am too lazy to find pictures of them, you'll have to do a search for them if you want to see them. Although I will say that Punta Arenas, for being the biggest city in Patagonia (about 120,000 people), didn't have a lot going on.

But they DID have some "quaint" little phone booths and a really weird cemetary... and you know your town doesn't have a lot going on when the cemetary is a big tourist attraction.

Later I stumbled upon a funeral procession whilst there among the tombs and the odd trees lining the walkways (I have no idea what they're called but they looked like giant, green, McDonalds' Grimaces). Naturally I had to take some photos much to the annoyance of the funeral attendees but the person in the casket is (presumably) already dead, so what did it matter?

After the visit to Punta Arenas it was time to venture across the Magellan Straights and Tierra del Fuego to return to Argentina and "the end of the world", Ushuaia. Last stop on the way to Antarctica -- about 620 miles further south across some really rough ocean, where the Atlantic and Pacific clash together. Or so I've been told.

The downside was that it was a 12 hour bus ride, of which 2/3 of it was over a bumpy, unpaved dirt road. But it was a good way to see most of Tierra del Fuego, when the windows weren't coated with mud and dirt. The final hour or so of the drive was pretty spectacular, morphing from desert into snow-covered mountains that dribbled down into the sea.

Ushuaia is a really nice place, very touristy though (I used to think it would be "exotic", "far-flung", etc) and it's really getting built up compared to the last time I was there 3 years ago. It's right on the Beagle Channel where Darwin & Co sailed through on the way to Galapagos Islands, etc, over a century ago .

It was here that I too navigated the Channel, as you can plainly see from my captains hat. There's quite a bit of wildlife to see, including sea lions, cormorants, whales (not in season), and penguins... also not in season. Although we saw two of them swimming around, so maybe they were lost or something. At least they were smart enough to stay out of my way.

So after all that, vacation time was over and it was time to head home to Buenos Aires. Also, it was then that I had yet to experience that delightful three and a half hour flight back, with all the screaming toddlers, absentee parenting, and surly Aerolineas Argentinas employee service. But at least they weren't on strike, which is somewhat rare in this country.

El Che

EVENTUALLY I'm going post those other pictures from my recent trip. Alas, at the moment I am too caught up in all the Ernesto "Che" Guevara excitement here in Argentina.

"El Che" was shot & killed exactly 40 years ago in a Bolivian jungle by the police/government (which the newspapers and magazines ALWAYS stress were manipulated by the USA, CIA, etc... to help refocus "the blame" I suppose, actually it's kinda funny). He was born here in Argentina, for anyone unaware of it. That's probably why he's replacing Evita Peron and Diego Maradona as the face of Argentina... so to speak.

For such a dead commie, it's quite ironic that T-shirts with his face on them are the biggest seller in Argentina... probably in all of South America for that matter. Soooooo capitalistic! The marketing of Che is everywhere down here in S.A. If I were a betting man, I would bet that only about 5% of Che t-shirt wearing public knows anything about him that wasn't in the "Motorcycle Diaries" movie. Anyway, Happy Che-is-dead Day to you from all of us down here in Argentina on October 9, 2007!

Spring is here in the southern hemisphere and the weather is really nice. Well, except for today since it's rained all day and will likely rain all week. Now please excuse me since I need to log off this computer and go buy my Che Guevara t-shirt now...

Patagonia in September

I can't believe it's October already... time is flying by here in the far south. I'm about to leave the latest school I'm attending (it's my final week) but it's been amusing since there's a fairly famous Canadian musician in class -- as I've learned from the various random Canadian students that come through the school. Apprently he played with 'SuperFreak' Rick James and opened for Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and some other 60s bands back in the day, plus was recently inducted in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. So, I SUPPOSE he has credentials. A pretty modest guy actually, I had to Google & Wikipedia him to find anything out. Oh yeah, Bruce Cockburn is his name.

Moving right along to the recap of my two weeks down in Patagonia... it was INCREDIBLE! What scenery! What distances! What animals! What COLD!!! But worth it. A friend and I went down to see the Perito Moreno glaciar near El Calafate and Argentina's glaciar national park and then I planned to go it alone in Chile (one of the advantages of having more vacation time than others!).

The glaciar park was amazing... having already flown over it on the way to El Calafate, I could tell that we only saw a fraction of the glaciars because most of the place is off limits. But we were able to hike around on Perito Moreno so that was awesome. Yes, I was a little concerned about cracking through some thin ice and plummeting down a crevasse (sp?). But the guides were JUMPING up and down on it, thus proving how safe it was. Or else how short their potential life spans are likely to be. Whatever.

One day we stopped at an island to eat lunch and it was there that I learned about the "wild cows of Patagonia". It sounded laughable but the guides warned us not to mess with the "feral cows" since they were imported to the island over a century ago and their decendents are fairly ill tempered if you approach them. All I saw were a bunch of cowpies everywhere.

Anyhoo, I would have been happy to spend some more time in the area but after 5 days, it was time to part ways and go across the Chilean border, all by my widdle self to Puerto Natales. And then wander around the nearby Torres del Paine national park! It was stunningly beautiful just like the glaciar national park -- assuming you're into mountains, gorgeous landscape, glaciars, icebergs, and the occasional deer, guanaco, or ñandú (basically a south american ostrich). You know, "nature stuff".

Obviously we REALLY got lucky with the weather. The initial 5 or 6 days of my trip were just sunny-and-blue-sky days. The locals said it was really rare to have so many sunny days in a row down there because usually it's just cloudy and/or rainy. But the Torres del Paine park was amazing... it was a lot like Alaska without all the large, carnivorous mammals that would like to eat you. I was there about three months before tourist season kicks off in high gear so the crowds were nil. It would have been great to have several days to hike around in it while going from one refugio (basically shacks with fireplaces) to another across the park. But I didn't have that kind of time, so alas. Next time!

We ended the tour at a huge cave (but not that deep) where some Chilean cowboy back in the late 1800s discovered a frozen piece of ice-age-mammal hide that was still somewhat intact. It cost me $3 to go in but since we were there for the next half hour whether I liked it or not, I was stuck. So I paid and looked around... it was semi-interesting but hiking in the park was better.

OK, that's enough typing today. Next I'll pick up the story "on the road to Punta Arenas Chile," including their weird/surreal cemetary plus the Magellan Straights, Ushuaia, the Beagle Channel, and oh-so-much-more.