Iguassuooked an apartment for 11 nights in Buenos Aires through BA Apartments Inc. With side trips to Montevideo and the Iguazú Falls as highlights and visiting a ranch of friends, we then move on to Santiago and.....
We are seasoned enough as travelers to know that what we plan and what we do, may bear a resemblance to one another. On the other hand, it may not! That is the fun and challenge of travel.
Day one: Tues Jan 29, 2008
We arrive safely after a long, uneventful and not too tiring trip, to be met by a driver namedAlejandroo provided by our apartment renter, BA Apartments Ltd. Now, 'Paris of South America' Buenos Aires might be, but we are not talking 21st century Paris !! We traverse a dirty, polluted, diesel smelling city much like Sao Paulo, Brazil, but with hints of richness in history, culture and beauty yet to come. The first impression was not of a vacation coming upon us but an ordeal! However, the apartment makes up for it all as does the bed; both welcome respites after the long flight and the initial shock of the city. (Not helped byAlejandroo taking the back streets to avoid traffic).
Sleep comes easy for both of us in mid afternoon after meeting with Cecelia who conducted us through the apartment, signed our contract, went over our inventory, explained how everything worked and most importantly told me how I could plug in my digital camera battery recharger. For anyone reading this who has not encountered the need for both an adapter AND a transformer consider what is like when all your batteries are dead and you are on the tour of your lifetime. I took 3 batteries with me just in case and I lost one! In the end, I found a shop that sold a combined unit called a 'step down transformer MW30R. This is specific for 0-50 watts such as tape recorders, calculators, cassettes, radios, digital cameras, shavers etc.
It wasn't long before the parks, the people, the warmth and the slowness of pace (Plus the fabulous restaurant food) and Ingrid sheds her snake skin of the North and commences her adaptation. We do so much this day, we surprise ourselves. All by foot. We go to the Park districts below Palermo and allow a torrential tropical evening storm to halt our progress homeward just before midnight. Seeing little let up, we swim home ! -(kinda) Well, here is the actual blog as I wrote it in my note book: On our first venture outside, Ingrid saw the up heaved sidewalk tiles and the lack of modernity and gulped hard. This is her first real intro to a second world country. No matter how much they attempt to emulate the 1st world ! Awake at 5:00 pm we went grocery shopping for basics, came home for coffee and another kip and then... and then, we walked from our apartment into surrounding neighborhoods, to the parks. From our first look, sure it is 2nd world, no Paris 'yet', on the other hand it isn't 3rd world either. Ottawa, for instance, has a plethora of beggars and homeless on its city streets compared to the trickle observable in BA so far. The greatest signs of distress as the first day came to a close was the tiles heaving up from the sidewalks, the unscooped dog poo and the feral cats in the park all settling in to their favorite 'curl-spots', as the gates closed.
We had earlier decided to purchase an umbrella in response to threatening/portending signs. We turn around perhaps a one hour stroll and head home with an attitude of 'the first restaurant we come across when the rains start'... The rain doesn't come. We choose a pizzeria (better the food we know and is easy to order on the first night). We each order a different piece plus a 'fien' (bread/maize cooked in fat? we think) and a bottle of water that comes as a combo just like a good Canadian fast-food establishment.
We are up paying the bill, we have done our toiletries and stuff and about to head for home via the front door - noting that the rain never came after all. It is dry outside. However, inside...a waiter stands before the table at the window close to us where we had observed a dad and his two young teen-age kids drinking and playing cards. I had commented earlier how wonderful it is to see a family eating together, drinking, playing games late at night:
"nothing you would see with English speaking tribes", I said.
The waiter has brought a huge plate of meat and a separate plate of fries. We had heard of this Argentinian specialty where they cook everything and serve you a bit of every part of a good healthy range steer! This is called El Asado or the barbecue, typical Argentinean meal with black pudding, sausage and ribs. With Ingrid's wide-open imploring eyes, twitching and almost steaming ears, mouth open with silent words attempting an exit, she is doing everything to make me aware that she wants to lasso my camera and stop my forward movement. She has this compulsion to not let me embarrass her with taking a photo of someone's dinner. Of course, I don't notice any of this (grin), as you can see by the photos. Arriving at their table, I point to my camera and blurt in hesitant, simple English:
'photo (and I point to their meal) por favor, if you do not mind...'
Dad replied in a heavy Aussie accent:
"Sure enough mates - would ya like to join with us, there's more here than we can eat - where are you from?"
We linger long enough for the photo-op and for me to try the intestines (on a dare), steal one of the young ladies french fries and make the lad laugh over both incidents, especially when I tried chewing the intestine and could not get past the hot fat squirting down my throat.
As we ready to leave, a debate ensues between the MASTER and the 'idiot' regarding directions for returning chez nous. The MASTER insists, the ACOLYTE keeps questioning (something he is not usually allowed to do, due to his record of 142,563,497 straight directional errors in almost 8 years of living together). The MASTER always relies on her intuition and it never fails her.
And THEN, the ocean parts, the light bulbs come on, and for the first time ever, the goof shows he has value: first day jitters in a foreign country are absent from him; and in fact turn him into a veritable compass - especially where the world is turned upside down and 'down-under' is here where we walk; the Northern Star is a Southern Cross, the crescent of the moon is opposite what we usually see; and the water goes down the drains in the opposite direction to which we normally experience; left becomes right and East is West... all, heaven for an idiot savant.
Ingrid has an incredibly bemused and wondrous look on her otherwise implacable and indomitable face that is to say, when it comes to directions. This look reflects her agreement with what up to this point has been her otherwise erstwhile umbrella holder, blog-writer and battle scarred patient. She takes his advice and probably does not know why she is doing so! She knows that this could be error number 142,563,498 - but no, she sees the parting of the waves and she knows that THIS time he is correct, and then, and then...
Departing at last, and after 3-4 blocks of evening curtain darkening our way, we feel a splat, followed by two, four, eight and exponentially turning suddenly into a torrential, tropical rain storm. Ankle high rivers soon show at every part of the sidewalks and even worse at the corners. We take refuge under a concrete awning with another man (presumably a native BA'arian) who is gingerly protecting a package that later he tells us in Spanish he does not or cannot get wet! We ask him how long the storm may continue and he seems to be saying 'a long time...'; he urges to keep moving. We stay put. We stay put under the umbrella that the idiot-savant had the wherewithal to purchase earlier. Or the MASTER suggested it and I happen to have a revisionist way of remembering salient touristy things. We wait, we wait some more and after perhaps 45 minutes with the rain stopped but the rivers still flowing we make a decision to go for it. We swim home! As we reach the door of our apartment, soaking and with squelching shoes, we step on a line of ants marching 12 across to the front door, under and into our foyer. We kill 100 million of the little bastards in 10 steps rushing to the elevator only to find that they are on the soles of our feet and on our pant bottoms/cuffs. Naturally we take them into our apartment rooms six floors up. There the meet their end - just one more job allocated to the umbrella carrier and human compass. Hey we are home via the route I said was necessary to take. They met their end and we are now meeting ours.
It is midnight; sleep again comes very easily. We wake up at 9:00 am.
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