Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Relaxing on the River Plate--February 2016

Livingstone, Zambia, March 21st

Before I get stuck into writing about the various stages of our African overland adventure, I want to finish up describing the last stage of our South American journey, eleven days spent in Buenos Aires and Uruguay.  It was a different style of travelling than we had done up until that point:  no bicycles, a largely urban setting, hotels instead of our tent, and culture and history rather than nature as the main focus.

We left Asuncion at 1 pm on Wednesday, February 3rd in a biblical downpour.  At the bus station, the TVs were showing scenes of flooding in some neighbourhoods of the capital, reminiscent of the devastating floods a month earlier.  Our bus left late, with my bicycle packed in the luggage hold after the usual last-minute negotiating and bribing with the luggage guys.  It’s amazing how the easiest, most elegant way to get around becomes so tedious, difficult and fraught with hassle as soon as you pack the bike in a box and try to get it on public transportation.  I had to pretend that I had spent most of my Paraguayan currency in order to get a discount.  And no sooner were we underway than we went through the Argentinian border and had to unload the bike and luggage for customs:  more negotiating, half-truths and bribes to the luggage guys there.  I think Argentinian luggage handlers at the borders must make an absolute killing out of the obligatory tips which they extort from passengers.
Buenos Aires Art Nouveau architecture
After that, the bus trip was quiet and very long.  We retraced our previous bus trip south along the flat floodplain of the Parana (the Argentinian side of the Chaco), then continued along the river towards the metropolis.  We were in comfy seats and slept most of the way.  The next morning I woke up in the Buenos Aires suburbs, dozed off again and woke up definitively as we drove past the huge soccer stadium of River Plate, one of the two biggest clubs in the country.  We raced past one of the two airports, Aeroparque, and the port, and quite suddenly we were in Retiro bus station, the nerve centre of transport for the entire country.  It was very early in the morning, and we sat in an overpriced café slowly waking up and making plans. 

I ended up leaving Terri with wi-fi and a second cup of coffee and lugging my bike the (considerable) length of the station to a left-luggage place, then heading out into the city to find a place to exchange dollars for pesos.  As I walked out into the early morning commuter rush, across a small park towards the tall buildings of the Microcentro, I felt as though I was in New York City.  On Calle Florida, the pedestrian heart of this business district, I passed dozens of dubious characters shouting “Dollars?  Cambio!” before finding a slightly less shady guy who led me to a Chinese shop where I got 14 pesos to the dollar.  I was unsurprised to find that the new president, Macri, had not gotten rid of the cambio guys when he got rid of the artificially low official exchange rate back in December.  I retreated to Retiro to pick up Terri and we set off on foot towards the apartment we had rented for the first two nights.  We walked back along Florida and its Belle Epoque buildings, then turned right up Hipolito Yrigoyen to find the Loft Argentino serviced apartments.

I don’t often rhapsodize about places that I stay, but I loved the Loft.  It wasn’t that expensive (about US$32 a night in the most expensive city in the most expensive country in South America), and gave us a big space to spread out our stuff.  We had a bathroom and a king-sized bed in an air-conditioned bedroom upstairs and a kitchen and living room downstairs.  The rooms faced inwards onto a courtyard and were remarkably insulated from any noise from the street outside.  Best of all, every morning we went across to the breakfast room and enjoyed a sumptuous spread while leafing through copies of the morning’s newspapers.  I couldn’t believe how good a deal it was.  We only had two nights booked, and they were booked solid over the weekend, but we decided to go to Uruguay for a few days and then return.  We made reservations for our return, and then set off to explore Buenos Aires. 

Evita on the Avenida
After a filling and inexpensive Asian buffet lunch, we caught the Subte, Buenos Aires’ excellent and inexpensive (5 pesos, or 35 US cents) subway out to a shopping mall to buy tennis tickets.  I had noticed that there was an ATP tennis tournament the next week in Buenos Aires, with Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga among the featured players, and I was keen to spend a day watching pro tennis for the first time in 16 years.  I used to go to a lot of tournaments; between 1990 and 2000 I probably averaged a tournament a year, including trips to Wimbledon, the Australian Open and the US Open (twice), along with smaller tournaments in Toronto, Sydney, Santiago and Madras.  We also knew that the Rolling Stones were arriving in Buenos Aires to give three concerts and, although tickets were probably sold out, we wouldn’t mind seeing them live either.  As it turned out, tennis tickets were inexpensive and plentiful, while Stones tickets were rare and almost US$300 a person, so tennis was on but the Rolling Stones were not.  We then retreated back into town to Calle Florida to get our boots professionally shined and for Terri to do some window-shopping.  While I was having my boots done, Terri wandered off to have a look at shoes in a nearby shop and, presumably on the way there, somebody opened the top compartment of her daypack and stole the wallet inside.  Welcome to the big, bad city!  BA has a well-deserved reputation for pickpockets and for more violent crime as well, and Terri got off lightly; perhaps $50 in cash and her NZ bank card.  She decided that we would regard it as a “city tax” paid by the unwary.  We finished the shoe shining, then walked back to the apartment so that Terri could make the tedious call to her bank to cancel the card.  We nipped out to Carrefour, bought a small fortune in groceries and cooked up some excellent steaks, washed down by some equally excellent Argentinian wine.

Protest outside the Casa Rosada
Friday, February 5th was a great day of exploring the bustling metropolis of Buenos Aires.  After filling ourselves up at the breakfast buffet, we strolled towards the centre along the Avenida de Mayo, crossing the Avenida de 9 Julio, the broad Champs Elysee-style boulevard that features a huge obelisk in one direction and an immense mural of Evita Peron on the side of a building on the other.  Portenos (the Argentinian term for a native of central Buenos Aires) strolled by looking elegant, and the city looked at its best under cloudless blue skies.  Public transport buses rolled by along 9 de Julio, and at the end of Avenida de Mayo we detoured into the beautiful Cathedral, once Pope Francis’ church, before coming out into the Plaza de Mayo and its elegant buildings.  Here, during the dark years of the military dictatorship, the mothers of the people who disappeared during the Dirty War (mostly tortured and murdered by the army and then buried secretly, or else thrown out of helicopters into the ocean) held weekly protest meetings.  They were the only people who dared stand up to the junta publicly, and they were an immensely important force of moral suasion in convincing the army to hand over power after the Falklands fiasco.  The day we went there, the Plaza was a buzzing hive of protest again, this time over the arrest of a left-wing activist in the province of Jujuy.  Peronists, labour activists, Falklands veterans, students and citizens of all sorts, from all over the country, had come to establish a protest camp in the square, right in front of the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada.  Riot police had established a line of barricades to dissuade the crowd from storming the palace gates, but otherwise it was a peaceful scene, with marquee tents set up for lectures and folk dances, and vendors selling hats and handicrafts.  We admired the grandiose architecture of the Casa Rosada, then headed out behind the palace towards the harbour of Puerto Madero.

Aboard the Uruguay in Puerto Madero
It was a blisteringly hot day, just as we had experienced for the previous few weeks in Paraguay, and it made for a long sweaty walk to the Costanera Sur.  Along the way we detoured to visit the SS Uruguay, an Argentinian naval ship which had played a key role in the drama of the Nordenskjold Antarctic expedition in 1902-04.  We had had a lecture during our cruise on the MV Ushuaia about this expedition, and had visited one of the key sites, Esperanza, where some members of the team had waited out a very long winter and summer waiting for rescue after their ship was crushed in ice and sank.  It was the Uruguay which came to the rescue, and walking around the ship and peering at the old black and white photos, it was though we were suddenly back on the Antarctic Peninsula where we had spent such memorable days back in November.  The views from the ship along the waters of Puerto Madero to the yachts and condominium skyscrapers of the new developments beyond were sweeping, and reminded us that for all that Argentina has had a lot of miserable economic news over the past few decades, there are still a lot of Argentinians who are living a comfortable, or even gilded, existence.
Fancy yachts and buildings, Puerto Madero

After all the urban bustle and architecture, culture and history of the first part of the walk, the Costanera Sur was a welcome change.  It’s a nature reserve, tucked between Puerto Madero and the waters of the River Plate estuary, and it’s a surprisingly good place to go birdwatching.  There were dozens of species of birds to be seen, particularly waders and waterbirds bobbing around in the long ponds along the road.

Me with the Bull of the Pampas
Office workers from the tall buildings nearby came out for lunch at the various food trucks parked along the road, and we joined them, eating delicious churrasco sandwiches for an unbeatable price (about 35 pesos, or under US$ 3) and watching the birds.  After a while, we decided to penetrate further into the reserve itself (so far we had just been wandering along the perimeter), but we found that there was a Formula E electric car race in town, and their racecourse blocked access to the park, which was closed for the day.  We watched a bit of the practice session (those electric cars can accelerate amazingly well, and make very little noise) and admired the statues of Argentinian sporting greats that lined the walkway:  Fangio, Vilas, Pascual Perez, Sabatini, Ginobili and others.  I had my picture taken with Vilas and my teenage idol Sabatini.

We headed back towards town via the ferry terminals for Uruguay.  The prices that Buquebus were asking for the following day’s departures were astonishing:  just to Colonia (the port on the other side of the estuary), they wanted 1800 pesos (US$130) each!  Cursing their prices, we walked to Retiro and bought night bus tickets instead for 590 pesos (US$42) instead.  Finally wilting under the heat, we walked back to our apartment and had a luxurious apero dinner of cheeses, meats, bread, salad and more good wine, happy with our day at large in the big city.
Horned screamer, Costanera Sur

The next day, February 6th, we left our luggage in storage at the apartment and headed out for another full day of exploring on foot.  This time we headed towards the upmarket neighbourhoods of Recoleta and Palermo, past luxurious apartment buildings and chic cafes.  Unlike Santiago de Chile, the wealthy have not abandoned the downtown core of the city, and it felt very vibrantly urban and chic, like New York or London or Milan.  Our destination was Recoleta Cemetery, where the great and good of BA society were buried for a century and a half.

Raul Alfonsin's grave, Recoleta
There are dozens of graves of well-known figures—presidents, generals, scientists, writers, sportsmen—but the one tomb that everyone heads for is that of Evita Peron, wife of President Juan Peron, subject of Andrew Lloyd Webber musical immortality, icon of the populist left and the most famous Argentinian (aside, perhaps, from the Pope, Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona).  She is still a potent symbol for the aspirations of the poor, and her image and name are everywhere, including all over the protest camp in front of the Casa Rosada.  The cemetery breathes Italianate luxury, with gorgeously carved funeral monuments and mausolea.  Evita’s grave still boasts lots of fresh flowers, but some of the lesser-known graves from the past were overgrown with weeds and had broken windows.  My favourite graves were those of Raul Alfonsin, the first post-military president in the 1980s, and Luis Federico Leloir, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry in 1970.
The tomb of Evita Peron

Funerary monument, Recoleta
We lunched in a little pub just outside the cemetery, and then set off on foot through the succession of wooded parks that lead through the neighbourhood of Palermo, making for a great place for cycling, running and walking.  We later heard that Mick Jagger had been out alone on foot along the same path that morning, tweeting photos along the way; the local press were devoting pages and pages of coverage to the Stones, more than you would expect for a visiting head of state.  We eventually turned off the tree-lined avenues, past the rather dumpy-looking zoo and went up the Botanical Gardens, where we spent a happy hour wandering in the shade of the trees and watching the colourful butterflies in the butterfly garden.  A quick supper in a Lebanese restaurant, then a Subte ride back to the apartment to pick up our bags and another Subte ride to catch the bus to Montevideo. 

The bus ride was easy and uneventful, although when we got off the bus at 1 am, we didn’t realize that we hadn’t been stamped out of Argentina, only into Uruguay, and spent the next three days worrying that Argentinian immigration officials would give us a hard time on the way back.  (They didn’t.)  We woke up at 6 am as we pulled into Montevideo bus terminal, and once again spent a couple of hours relaxing and enjoying good, fast, free public wifi (a rarity in Argentina, but common in Uruguay) as we searched for a place to stay and for affordable ferry tickets back to BA.  Seacat Colonia offered us tickets for Wednesday afternoon at a much more reasonable US$ 22 per person, so we snapped them up quickly.  The bus station was the cleanest, safest, best-organized bus station we saw in South America, a far cry from the menace of Santiago or the chaos of Retiro.  No hotels online seemed very cheap, so we decided to walk into town and find a place on our own.  It was a pleasant 40-minute stroll through Saturday morning streets, past big apartment buildings that had seen better days, into the centre of town.  Half an hour of searching turned up an acceptable hotel at an acceptable price, as well as explaining the dearth of rooms:  it was Carnival season in Montevideo, and tourists from Argentina and Brazil were flooding into the city for the party. 

Palacio Salvo, Montevideo
Showers, a quick lunch and a wander through the old town followed.  I liked the Ciudad Vieja, although many of the buildings were in a state of advanced disrepair.  My favorite building was the hyperbolically grandiose Palacio Salvo, like something out of a 1930s futuristic movie.  We rented bicycles and rode along La Rambla, the coastal road, for 15 km, past the flashier suburbs where the upper middle classes live in beachside apartment buildings.  It was good to be riding a bicycle again and to get around to interesting neighbourhoods.  Montevideo sprawls a long way along the coast, and we were nowhere near the edge when we turned back.  We stopped at a lighthouse and gazed out to sea.  It was noticeably cooler than in BA, and there was a hint of rain in the air.  Uruguay is most visited by Argentinian tourists for its beaches, and we had thought of going further east to explore them, but had been put off by weather forecasts of rain.  We rode back to town, had a disappointing pizza for dinner and were in bed early, wiped out by the night bus.

Montevideo coastline by bike
Monday, February 8th was a fairly lazy day, as we slept in, then made a late start on exploring the old town, via a stop in the fashionable Facal café (Terri was surprised and somewhat horrified that Montevideo does not boast a single Starbucks outlet).  We had an afternoon snooze that somehow lasted until 4, then went out to the wonderful Andes 1972 museum which commemorates the survival story of the Uruguayan rugby team that crashed high in the Andes in 1972, and which provided the story for the movie Alive.  It was done very tastefully and thoroughly, and the proprietor’s enthusiasm was infectious.  We wandered out into the streets, had a steak sandwich in a little café, then watched a crowd of mostly older Montevideans dancing the tango in a main square.  It looked very elegant and fitting for the country that produced Carlos Gardel, the greatest figure in the history of tango.

Very nice Uruguayan wine, Colonia
The next day we had some time before our afternoon bus to Colonia, and we spent it wandering through the old city again.  We tried several museums, but they were all closed for Mardi Gras, so we ended up just walking, ending up in the lovely atmosphere of the Mercado Central, a tourist mecca full of seafood restaurants.  We sat and drank a glass of quite quaffable Uruguayan wine (we never even knew Uruguay produced wine) before heading back to pick up our luggage, catch a city bus to the bus station and then take an intercity bus to Colonia.  Once again we snoozed away the afternoon, lulled by the rocking of the bus.  I think our bodies were finally recovering from the exertions of our months of cycling and hiking. 

Sunset meal, Colonia
Colonia proved to be a very pretty colonial gem.  It was founded by the Portuguese back in the late 1600s to keep an eye on the Spanish just across the River Plate estuary in Buenos Aires.  After decades of conflict, the Spanish took over the city in the 1780s.  In the confusion of post-colonial South America, Uruguay changed hands a few times between Argentina, Brazil and independence before finally settling into a role as a buffer state between its two giant neighbours.  Colonia had a number of colonial-era buildings and ruins, but most of the buildings are slightly more recent, with a flavour of an early 20th century retreat for the rich.  The little cobbled streets of the old town make for lovely walking, and the views from the lighthouse, all the way to the skyscrapers of downtown BA on the horizon, are wonderful.  We ended up eating a tasty steak dinner in a waterfront restaurant, watching a spectacular sunset light show on the horizon, a memorable ending to our too-brief visit to Uruguay.

Back streets of Colonia
The next morning we strolled around the old town in greater earnest, visiting the ruins of the old governor’s mansion and the old city defensive walls.  I sat and sketched the lighthouse, and then, after a lunch that consumed our leftover Uruguayan pesos almost exactly, we headed to the ferry dock for the long and tedious process of going through Uruguayan and Argentinian immigration procedures. Despite our worry, the Argentinians didn't mind that we had no exit stamp from Argentina from a few days previously.  Once again we snoozed most of the way (it was actually a bit of a rough crossing, and sleeping probably prevented seasickness).  We stumbled off the ferry, stood in another long line to put our luggage through Argentinian customs and came out at cka place we couldn’t identify.  It certainly wasn’t the ferry terminal we had visited before, and we were completely disoriented, underneath a huge expressway.  A bit of random walking and we finally figured out that we were just beyond the edge of Puerto Madero.  We tried unsuccessfully to find a cab (there was stiff competition from the hundreds of fellow passengers) and ended up walking the familiar streets back to Loft Argentino.  We were tired, but looking at our schedule, we realized that it was our only chance to go see a tango show.  Many were quite expensive, but they involved an entire evening of a fancy meal, all-you-can-drink alcohol, a tango lesson and finally the show.  There was a more reasonably priced show without any of the add-ons just ten minutes’ walk from our apartment that we had checked out previously, so we quickly showered and headed over, arriving around 9:30 for a 10:15 show.  We had the bad luck to hit the one evening of the year that they had a special early schedule for a special group, so we hopped on the Subte and headed to another show, the Gardel.  There we found tickets for the show only (no food, no booze, no tango lesson) were still US$ 96, which seemed far too high, so we returned tango-less to the apartment and turned in for the night.  Buenos Aires seemed to be a study in contrasts in terms of prices:  either really quite reasonable, or incredibly expensive, depending on how far in advance you bought tickets.

Pablo Cuevas unleashes a backhand
Thursday, February 11th was Terri’s last full day in the city, and the day for which we had bought tennis tickets.  After breakfast we tried to register online for the EcoBici free bicycle rental service run by the city, but failed.  We walked into town and spent a long time finding an EcoBici office, filling out forms and then going to a municipal office to get the magnetic cards.  It took forever, and we were late arriving at the tennis.  The first match was still going on, and we sat, baking in the furnace-like heat, high in the stands watching Pablo Cuevas dispatch Santiago Giraldo.  Next up was the tenacious clay court terrier David Ferrer who handled local hope Renzo Olivo.  After a break for supper, we trooped back in for the night session.  First of all the Italian veteran Paolo Lorenzi beat another Argentine, Diego Schwartzmann, in a highly entertaining three-setter, before the main event of the evening.  Rafael Nadal, cheered on by a suddenly full stadium, had little difficulty beating the Argentine veteran Juan Monaco, although his once-fearsome clay court game didn’t look up to his usual impeccable standards, with lots of forehands sailing long.  There was a murmur in the crowd at one point as Guillermo Vilas and Gabriela Sabatini wandered in to take their seats, Argentinian tennis royalty.  We came out at 10:30 to find the trains finished for the day, so we ended up catching a cab.  Again, for a long (10 km) ride, the fare was a reasonable US$ 9.
Pleased to be back at a pro tennis tournament
Friday, February 12th we set off after breakfast to use our hard-won EcoBici cards, only to find that the system has a few flaws, like a complete absence of bicycles anywhere in the city centre.  We eventually gave up and walked to the Costanera Sur, where this time the park was open and we were able to walk the interior pathways looking for birds.  There were plenty to be seen, and it was good to get some exercise, although the heat was like a hammer.  We emerged after a couple of hours, had another tasty churrasco sandwich and then headed back to the apartment, via some last-minute shopping on Calle Florida for leather belts for Terri.  I escorted her to Retiro, saw her onto her bus, and suddenly was alone in the big city.

David Ferrer, the Energizer Bunny of tennis
I spent the last three days in BA cocooned in the air conditioned comfort of the hotel, writing blog posts, sorting through photos, napping and watching the rest of the tennis tournament on TV.  Nadal and Ferrer lost, surprisingly, in the semifinals and the young Austrian Domenic Thiem looked impressive winning.  I did venture out one day to the Bellas Artes museum, where an impressive collection of Old Masters and Argentinian paintings provided a couple of hours of aesthetic enjoyment.  And then, all too soon, on Monday, February 15th, I was on a flight back to Ottawa on my bike after three and a half months in South America and Antarctica.  It was a wonderful adventure, and I look forward to exploring more of the northern half of the continent on my next visit! 

Waiting for Rafa

Terri at her first-ever tennis tournament

Rafael Nadal, showing off the forehand that ruled tennis for a decade
As for my final take on Buenos Aires and Uruguay, I really, really enjoyed Buenos Aires, despite its crime and obvious social problems.  It has a confident urban feel and provides culturally rich city living to its huge population and feels unlike any other South American city I have encountered, an island of cosmopolitan sophistication.   Uruguay is an interesting country, very socially progressive (legalized marijuana, a very early welfare state) but a bit non-descript compared to Argentina.  If I went back, I would concentrate on the eastern beaches before heading off to Brazil. 


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