Bye bye ''blanco''
Trip Start
Dec 29, 2007
1
5
42
Trip End
Ongoing
Buenos Aires,
Argentina
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Because of the rising cost of living here, people look for any way to avoid excess expenses. Naturally enough almost everyone brings their own food & eats poolside. A common snack {and breakfast} over here are cookies (crackers to you & I), PAN DULCE (literal translation is sweet bread but its fruitcake to you & I) & the most popular drink over here by a mile is MATE
MATE
. For all the world it looks like a bong or crackpipe. Basically you fill the MATE (container and contents) with leaves called YERBA and pour in boiling water and drink it up through a filtered spout. It tastes quite strong like old tea but more earthy. Initially it will taste fairly mingin but it grows on you. The pool is 4500m2 (http://www.faecys.org.ar/filiales2/seccapfed/parquenorte.ht ml) and is divided into sections one of which is little Jersualem where a Cristo Redentor Statue pops up through the ground and rotates at 6pm(check out the video)! I was insisting on factor 15 for the day so I became negro (black) but under the advice of my better half it was factor 30 all the way. That said, as visible in the last photo, I now look like a boiled lobster & have gained the gait of John Wayne, smooth...
