Argentina La Parte Tres:
At breakfast the next morning an Argentinian guest at the hotel strikes up a conversation with me addressing me initially in Spanish, until he, a little embarrassed, realises his error. Quite a few of the locals seem to think I’m a Latino, until I open my mouth that is! Having inadvertently broken the ice we converse whilst choosing consumables from the buffet selection. He mentions to me that the Argie president (simply known as ‘Cristina’ to the masses) was in the process of having an operation on her brain (I was aware of this, it being the main topic running on the BA news). He said it with such gravitas seeming to infer great respect, but then he applied the sting in the tail, adding in a deadpan tone betrayed only by a trailing chuckle, “Perhaps they will find nothing there!” I ask him if he knew Hugo Porta, curious if El Puma has a profile here in soccer-obsessed Argentina. Yes he does, not so much because he was an international rugby star for the Argentine team, but because he was the Government’s sports minister under the Menem regime.
The breakfast news runs yet another story about La Desaparecidos. A woman is being interviewed on television about her sister who is one of the young Argentinians who was suddenly and mysteriously seen to disappear from society. In South America this is code for ‘abducted’ by the authorities or the military and probably murdered for alleged left-wing activity (defined as subversive activity). The television ‘interview’ comprises the distraught sibling, wailing and sobbing incoherently, pleading for the return of her lost sister. What was extraordinary about this spectacle, was that, despite the woman being largely incomprehensible and reduced to a rambling, emotional mess, the coverage uncomfortably persists, letting the story run live on and on for over half an hour on prime-time TV without cutting it! On Australian or UK TV they would never permit something as indulgent and as loose and unstructured as this to happen, but I understand why it is accepted here. The plight of ‘the disappeared’ is THE emotional issue for so many South Americans, the raw wound for ordinary people which remains unhealed. The lingering issue of La Desaparecidos is the continuing, unaccounted for exemplar of justice denied for so many citizens in Chile and Argentina in particular.
Having ticked the previous day’s city tour off my list of things to do, it was now time to take the excursion to Tigre. The “Eye of the Tiger” tour, as it is called, is a standard part of all Buenos Aires tour packages. Tigre is a town at the mouth of the delta region of the Paraná River some 30 km north of BA and close to the Uruguay border. ‘Tigre’ is a bit of a misnomer, as it was thus named by the early settlers because of the presence of jaguars (not tigers as you might presume) in the region during the pioneering years. The delta comprises many branches (5000-plus waterways in all) linking thousands of tiny islands. We set out from Tigre on a river cat cruiser down one of the main tributary rivers of the Paraná, Rio San Antonio). Our guide for the Tigre tour was a very personable, gentle young guy called Jeremy (Jeremias) who looked like an Argentinian Ferris Bueller. Jeremy was very informative and accommodating, and spoke excellent English, albeit with some delightful idiosyncrasies which betrayed his non-English speaking background, for example, he referred to Canberra as a ‘planified’ city (a real gem!), I didn’t try to correct him, after all the meaning was clear, and the idea of the insular hinterland of Canberra being described as ‘planified’ sounded spot on! Jeremy mentioned that geoscientific experts have predicted that the Tigre islands which under tectonic force, are ever so slowly moving south, will eventually collide with the northern suburbs of Buenos Aires!
The cruise went past a number of distinctive buildings on the foreshore, none more impressive than the Tigre Art Museum with its large classical columns, extended upper deck and classy marble staircase. The waterfront along the Paraná contained a number of 19th century mansions, where the upper classes engaged in leisurely activities. There wasn’t a lot of passing traffic on the river as we cruised on it, mostly single scullers doing their rowing practice, with the occasional pilot boat and water taxi. The sight of moored houseboats and smaller ‘family’ boats were very common on the river, given the isolation of delta dwellers maritime vessels are just about obligatory. Other sights that we pass further up the river include a casino, an amusement park and old shipbuilding yards.
Another distinctive feature of Tigre and common to the entire length of the delta’s waterways is the presence of heavily-laden, wooden provisions boats. More than anything else in the region. these moored boats illustrate the isolated nature of the delta region. With no supermarkets or even shops around, the 3500 or so Tigrean locals rely on these “floating stores”. The supply boats, laden with household goods, cruise from dock-shed to dock-shed, from property to property, enabling the rivers’ residents to stock up their weekly shopping needs. Right along the lower delta there is an interesting array of riverfront houses (all dwellings on the river are numberless but are identified by their own distinguishing names), as well as holiday and camping grounds providing a weekend escape for the Portenos, and heavily wooden parklands, the delta was a traditional source of osier wood used for construction in the capital (the Osier is a willow found in wet habitats). The number of homes on the Paraná raised up on stilts was testimony to the threat of flooding, an on-going reality.
The river itself was alluvial, exhibiting a muddy brown colour which gave the impression of being brackish, which Jeremy assured us was more to do with the particular sediments in the water rather than any indicator of pollution. The river cat looped round in a circuit past the weird spectacle of Museo Sarmiento, a small house totally encapsulated in a large, transparent glass enclosure, which reminded me of the imposing glass cathedral in Peter Carey’s novel Oscar and Lucinda. From Sarmiento we headed back into the open channel at River Plat, docking again at Tigre Delta Station. I tipped the rivercat captain 60 pesos because he got us back in one piece. The delta excursion was an interesting diversion but not really a riveting tour, and it certainly didn’t live up to the tour provider’s brochure description of the Delta del Paraná experience as a “sensation that cannot be transmitted,” and even more obliquely, “(containing) tiny details that enclose big emotions.” The tour visited the nearby city of San Isidro, which is the stronghold of rugby union in Argentina, stopping off at Puerto de Frutos to visit the dock markets where other members of our tour, comprising mainly Mexican car dealers and their spouses, clicked into bartering mode for a hectic 25 minutes of shopping! Puerto de Frutos, despite the name, seems to be a emporium for bargain domestic goods with a few tourist shops thrown in. The fruit vending side of the markets was nowhere to be seen.
Later, we took a tour of the Villa Ocampo also in San Isidro, the former home of a famous Argentinian woman writer and publisher, now owned and administered by UNESCO. The childless Victoria Ocampo, to avoid the Villa being acquired after her death by the right wing, militaristic Argentinian government of the Seventies, signed it over to UNESCO. Villa Ocampo is a magnificent mansion, quite eclectic stylistically, with various, many French and British, influences evident. During Ocampo’s time, it was a meeting place for many famous intellectuals and writers (Camus, Lorca, Le Corbusier, Tagore, Malraux, Borges, Graham Greene, etc), today it is a cultural centre, a venue for music and the arts. Inside, the rooms are very grand, stylishly decorated with a room devoted to the literature and magazine work (SUR) of Ocampo. As we were visiting, workers were setting up the drawing room for a jazz recital. The gardens (Centro del Paisaje) are extensive (the property is 10,500 square metres in size) and a particular delight, a reflection of the great passion Victoria Ocampo had for gardening, and for the Villa in its entirety. From Villa Ocampo, we connected up with the Av de Liberador (named in honour of the ubiquitous General San Martin whose statutes line the Avenue), the main thoroughfare passing right through the city. At the Tigre tour’s end, after getting some advice from Jeremy on what to see, I set out on foot to explore more of Buenos Aires. Being in the metro central I went first to the nearby Av 9th de Julio, reputed by Argentinians to be the widest avenue in the world. It is very, very wide, but it depends on how you look at it! Within parts of the Avenue I counted what I might call five distinct streets, the two inner ones being restricted to metrobus transport.
On coming to South America, and venturing out into the busy pedestrian zones, I soon realised that here, the practice is that you walk on the right of the footpath (a reverse of the ‘down under’ custom). This makes sense, you drive on the right side and you walk on the right, so wherever I walked, I tried to be conscious of this ‘rule’. What I found though, is that the locals in the various cities do not consistently adhere to this rule. Some pedestrians automatically just veer straight across to the left side when it is closer to the shops. Accordingly, I soon adopted the approach of walking in the middle of footpaths to be flexible enough to hop either to the left or right as the occasion required.
After traversing 9th de Julio I headed for the Parques district where the Zoo and Museo Evita is. Despite having an electronic assistant (my iPad maps), but because of my poor sense of direction, I managed to get hopelessly lost, and ended up backtracking to Microcentro, where I started from. Trying again, this time using a different route, I did get eventually to the Zoo and close by, the Museo Evita. I passed on the Zoo as it was too close to the closing time & headed for the museum. It had a very elegant interior with a classy staircase, but it wasn’t a very propitious entrance for me, the first thing the girl at the ticket booth mentioned to me was the toilets weren’t ‘available’. I wondered, is this code for ‘not working’? – or for “we only say we have customer toilets on the brochure to get more tourist brownie points”? Either way, after walking halfway across BA, I thought ‘great!’ Museo Evita was a good insight into Argentina’s most famous woman. On display were carefully assembled items from Evita’s childhood, her theatre and movie careers, and of course, given that Evita was a fashionista for millones of Argentinian women, her dresses and outfits (lots of them!). And, very stylish they were. A curious exhibit included in the display was Evita’s kitchen, complete with fake slabs of meat on the griller. The once powerful husband, Juan Peron, does not get much of a look-in, a single bust and one of his military uniforms encapsulates his total representation at the museum. After the museum, I did some more sightseeing around the Palermo district, before heading back in the direction of the hotel. I noticed the widespread habit of naming streets in Buenos Aires after Argentinian generals, they’re everywhere, Avenida General Paz, Avenida General Alvear, Calle General Balcarce, Avenida Díaz Vélez, and of course, Calle General San Martin. There is even the practice of naming streets after cruisers named after generals (the outstanding example of this, geared toward achieving maximum propagandistic effect, is the General Belgrano). Walking down General Las Heras I passed a street named Coronel Diaz, and concluded that they must have run out of notable generals to honour! Something else occurred to me whilst strolling around the city, there were very few priests to be seen on the streets. I had come across maybe one member of the clergy in my time in the Argentine, which seemed strange in the capital of such a staunchly Catholic country. Whimsically I pondered, were priests becoming the new desaparecidos? I stopped off in Av Las Heras for dinner, picking a restaurant that was reasonably busy but not crowded. I had pizza again and a pisco sour (I did not like this South America specialty when I first tried it but by now I was warming to it). I declined the sweet on offer, dulce de leche (I had tried it earlier at the hotel – way too caramelisingly syrupy for me!), but washed the meal down with what is becoming a custom, a bottle of Qualmes.
Walking around Buenos Aires at night you experience a different side to the city. All sorts of things come out of the woodwork after dark. I didn’t have to stray far from my Centro hotel to find the dodgiest parts of BA. Walking down Calle Florida from Lavalle I soon came across the illegal money changers all shouting out “Cambio, cambio” at the passing punters. Usually these street touts quote very good exchange rates for USD, but this can be a risky venture with a fair chance of you ending up lumbered with counterfeit notes. Florida is an area to exercise caution, I was warned that flashing a wad of cash could be an invitation to robbery around here. Along Florida you will also find callow youths on every corner or cross-section handing out their tiny squares of paper advertising either some special pizza deal or certain massage parlour services which may with or without the additional “happy ending”!
Wander a bit further along to Av Corboda, close to Av 9th de Julio, and you’ll soon find the spot where the local streetwalkers ply their trade. It was after 11.30 when I passed a girl standing in the shadow of a door of a closed business who canvassed her ‘recreational‘ services so softly and in such a low-key manner that I virtually didn’t notice her! My second encounter, which followed minutes later contained no such ambiguity. I was waiting at the lights to cross the road, when one overweight, overenthusiastic woman, in a very forwardly way, bounced up to me grabbing my arm and proceeded to try to entice me to accompany her to a nearby hotel for “a little drink and maybe some massage later, eh?” Caught somewhat off-guard by her directness, I fumbled around for several seconds eventually managing to utter some excuse and slipped out of her grasp and up the street. Later I learnt that the ‘sting’ involved enticing the target back to the hotel to fork out for overpriced drinks, before a taxi to a telos (quaintly described by Portenos as “love hotels”). A lot of the night action seemed to centre around Avenida Cordoba and Noveno Julio, where you can experience both the subtle and the not-so subtle approach of the street-stalking girls.
I don’t know why but this seems to happen to me on a regular basis when I head overseas. Perhaps it’s because of my preference for exploring new cities on foot and often late at night. When I do venture out in places I am visiting for the first time I often find that without either knowing where I am or any dubious intention on my part, I end up in the heart of the local red light district! I was similarly accosted by overzealous working girls when I innocently stumbled onto Canton Road in Hong Kong and Ronda Litoral in Barcelona. To avoid more encounters with late night shift workers on Av de Cordoba, I head off in the opposite direction. Needing to make another early start in the morning for the next leg of my trip, I decide to call it a night and return to my not-so-Gran Hotel. I take a circuitous route down Lavalle, noticing that despite it being past midnight the restaurants are all full of people who, revived by a late afternoon siesta, are now tucking avariciously into supersize portions of pizza, parrillada and bondiola. Everywhere Portenos demonstrating the Buenos Aires obsession with late night non-vegetarian dining!
