Puerto Madero and Costanera Sur Eco Preserve

The weather was lovely today, so I went over to Puerto Madero to check out Buenos Aires´downtown waterfront development, which is one of the newest parts of the city, and the nearby ecological preserve.

Puerto Madero

Puerto Madero was the first complete port constructed by the Argentine government. Work began in 1887 and was completed in 1898, although the interconnected dike design and location of the port was not without controversy, and by 1910 the importance of Puerto Madero was no longer operating as its size was insufficient to handle the increase in maritime traffic after the turn of the century, and a new port located further north (Puerto Nuevo) was in the process of being completed. An attempt was made at redeveloping the area, but Puerto Madero was not used again until 1969, when it was made into a military depot by the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía and several subsequent regimes.

Cargo Crane, Puerto Madero
The cargo cranes were left in place around the port.

True redevelopment came in the late 1980s when a public/private corporation was formed to redevelop 170 hectacres of the old port. By the mid 1990s, hotels, shops and residential developments had begun to flood into the port, a process that is still ongoing. Two museums on historic ships, restaurants and shops that face out onto the port. Most of the city´s recent luxury hotel development has occured in Puerto Madero, and there is also a bridge, the Puente Mujer (Women´s Bridge) designed by Santiago Caltrava.


Puente de la Mujer, Santiago Caltrava
View from Dique No. 3

Puente de la Mujer, Santiago Caltrava
View from Bridge looking South

Although there wasn´t a whole lot of activity going on when I strolled through, I can imagine that Puerto Madero would be very lively, if a little soulless, during the summertime.

Costanera Sur Ecological Preserve

To the immediate south of Puerto Madero is Costanera Sur Ecological Preserve, an ecological preserve that started out as a municipal spa for the residents of Buenos Aires. The area opened as a municipal spa in 1918 and was an extremely popular day and night-time destination in the 1920s and 1930s, however by the 1950s its popularity began to slide as many of the bars and candy shops began to deteriorate and were demolished and signs prohibiting swimming in the river due to pollution began to appear.

Costanera Sur Ecological Preserve
View looking back toward Buenos Aires with winter foliage

In the 1970s, a new land reclamation project was initiated, however the development of the reclaimed land never began. By the 1980s, various species of flora and fauna had begun to live in the recreated wetlands, and in 1986 the area was designated an ecological preserve. I walked from the northern entrance, near Puerto Madero´s dike four to the southern entrance, and the experience was unique--as I headed towards the Rio de la Plata, the noise of the city fell away, replaced by the sound of waves lapping against the shore and the occasional songbird.

Palermo "SoHo"

Because I haven´t been spending nearly enough money lately (hah!) I went over to Palermo "SoHo" this afternoon. Palermo SoHo is part of the larger Palermo Viejo neighborhood, which in turn is part of the much larger barrio of, well, Palermo, which is the largest of the 48 barrios in Buenos Aires.

The main focal point of Palermo SoHo is little Plaza Serrano, which is right now even smaller than usual, as half of the plaza is closed for renovation. The other half was taken up by craft and clothing vendors, as were a significant minority of the bars and restaurants that bordered the plaza. The quality of the stuff being sold was, eh, enough to make the walk from Recoleta worthwhile, although the architecture of the neighborhood, as well as the people watching at Plaza Serrano I did while drinking beer at one of the sidewalk cafes not overrun with screen-printed t-shirts were the real highlights of the day.

Photo of the day:

Pirulín (lollipop) vendor´s display at Plaza Serrano

Our Lady of the Good Airs of the Subte

After class today (which is located at Avenida Callao and Avenida Corrientes in an area whose ugliness reminds me a LOT of the boring parts of Midtown Manhattan) I hoofed it over to Calle Florida, which is kind of the uber-tourist shopping street, closed to traffic and lined with leather goods stores (hi, Mom!) and souvenir shops selling tango and mate-related tchokes.

I hopped on the subte at Catedral, and while I was waiting for the train I found this on the wall at one end of the platform:

If you can´t see from the kind of blurry picture, the image of the Virgin is set in tiles on the wall, the artifical flowers and ribbons and whatnot are attached to the wall. There was also a prayer further down the wall (translated): "Oh Mary, my mother, comfort of the mortal, protect us and guide us to the celestial homeland." Some protection and guidance against Subte pickpockets would have been nice too, but oh well.

What´s up with the sun?

I´ve noticed that I have been having a little problem navigating Buenos Aires without a map, and for that I blame the sun. In my past experience with that big firey thing in the sky, it generally goes up in the east, passes overhead around noon or so, and then sets in the west.


Not so much here.


L. was kind enough to enlighten me over lunch last Saturday. There are two reasons why the sun rises in the east here, and then just sort of hangs around for a while, and then kind of sneaks off without setting. The first reason is that it is winter here, and because we´re so far south, the daylight hours get kind of messed up, and the sun moves pretty much from north east to north west during the day, but we´re not so far south that there is no daylight at all. Secondly, there are no sunsets in Buenos Aires because the Andes alter the western horizon and block the sunset rays from reaching the city.

Oh, and I started Spanish classes today, which is not really all that exciting as so far it´s mostly review of all the stuff I´d managed to forget--damn you irregular preterites!

Kayaking in the Paraná Delta

L.´s two oldest sons have a kayak tours business in Tigre, which is where the Paraná River meets the Rio Plata, creating a huge delta where lots of people have vacation homes. Sunday is a popular day for speedboats and jetskis, so C. and N. generally go kayaking for their own enjoyment and don´t take clients out because the water is too choppy. I had never been kayaking before, and I thought that may arms were going to fall off after the first twenty minutes or so, but it got easier after that.

The Paraná Delta is very beautiful, with vacation houses with manicured lawns and non-native trees alternating with unbroken patches of wetlands, although the water itself is an ugly muddy brown and there are TONS of mosquitos. We paddled past the house of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, one of Argentina´s early presidents, whose house is preserved in a glass and steel box:

Some nice fall foliage:

We took a lunch break at one of C.´s friend´s aunt´s vacation house, where I had my first mate, and then paddled back to the launching ramp.

Sabado en Recoleta

My plan for today was to wake up kind of early and hoof it to MALBA and the Museo Nacional de las Artes Bellas, but then L., my host mother, decided I should go out to lunch with her instead of wasting a day of beautiful weather inside the museums.

We took a bondi (bus) over to La Biela, which is located just up the street from the Recoleta Cemetary and had some sandwiches, drinks, and soaked up the winter sun on the outdoor patio, which is separated from the church of Nuestra Señora del Pilar and the Plaza Francia by an enormous gum tree.

La Biela opened in 1850, and became famous in the 1950s as the place where racecar drivers came to hang out, and is still aparently a good place to go people watching, although we didn´t see anyone notable (or at least L. didn´t point anyone out to me) while we were there. After lunch, we crossed over into the Plaza Francia, which is adjacent to La Biela, and wandered around the craft fair that was going on:

There was also some street tango going on, so I watched that for a while then went back to the house and hung out with a couple of L.´s sons and their friends and drank beer and ate empanadas, which you can get delivered. The empanadas here are much smaller than the ones from Julia´s in D.C., and when you get them delivered they come with a little paper guide as to what is what:

Personally I think that these guides are put in the boxes just to tease you, and that the empanada places just put in whatever they have that is handy, since no one can ever seem to find the one that they are looking for!

First tango lesson and the city of the dead

Today turned out to be a pretty busy day for not really having much to do. I left the house around ten or so and walked over to Comme il Faut to buy some tango shoes and ended up with a gorgeous pair in black (of course!). I booked back to L.´s neighborhood for my tango lesson with Gustavo and María.

Yeah, so tango is kind of difficult. I´m used to dancing salsa and merengue, where I can get away with not having the steps down perfectly...not so much with the tango. Your hips have to be still, carriage upright, move on the balls of the feet etc. It feels almost closer to ballet, or maybe that´s just because María kept reminding me about my sucky posture throughout the lesson. Anyway, my next lesson is on Monday, and maybe I´ll post some pictures from the lessons once I progress past walking backwards, forwards, and in a circle.

After the tango lesson, I went back for the house for some lunch and to search for a Spanish program that would take me on short notice, as I hadn´t quite had time to set something up before leaving for Buenos Aires (oops!). After that I decided to go check out Recoleta Cemetary and take some pictures before it closed for the day.

Recoleta Cemetary

http://www.cementeriorecoleta.com.ar/index.html

"It is cheaper to live extravagantly all your life than it is to be buried in Recoleta."

Recoleta is the final resting place for the creme de la creme of Buenos Aires society, and also a way to show off one´s wealth even after death! Most of the tombs are set up like miniature chapels, with an altar (generally with some coffins under it), some stained glass, and a set of stairs leading to the crypt below. The "streets" of the cemetary become less dense as you move further away from the gates--maybe being further away from the entrance is more like "living" in the suburbs or something.

A typical street:

A lot of the older tombs are in various stages of disrepair, I guess their descendants either can´t or don´t or won´t take care of them. Most of the older tombs, and some of the newer ones have traditional churchy architecture. However, there are also a lot of modernist tombs, some of which have clear plate glass windows and doors and kind of resemble posh marble showers. Here are pictures of some of the better modern ones:

And, of course, here´s Evita:

Bienvenido a B.B.A.A.

I landed this morning at about 8am local time after spending the night in what must be American Airlines´ oldest 767. I got really lucky in that the seat next to me was empty, so I had two whole seats to myself (which is really more like having one and a half seats, but whatever), and was able to get some sleep, sort of. I´m not sure if it was my being nervous about coming to Argentina, alone, without being particularly proficient in Spanish, or the general stressfulness of the last couple of weeks, or the fact that I kept contorting myself in pretzel shapes to try and take advantage of the extra seat without accidentally hitting the flight attendant call button, but I kept having really vivid, strange dreams. (Normally I can sleep like a log on planes.)

By the time the plane landed I was in full freak out mode. "What if immigration decides to grill me? I´m not sure I even know the reason for my visit!" and the old standby ¨What the f&%$ am I doing?¨ Fortunately, sitting in the back of the plane gave me plenty of time to calm down while waiting to deplane, and waiting some more to go through immigration, where the agent took a look at my passport, stamped it and sent me on my way without batting an eye. I collected my baggage and found the car that L., my host mom, had arranged for me.

On the way in, looking at the trees, plants and birds alongside the highway it really began to dawn on me that I really had flown half a world away. Traffic was terrible, due to a subway strike, but the driver held forth on the history, culture and current events in Buenos Aires, and I definitely was able to follow at least half of what he was saying. L. met me at her apartment, which is an absolutely gorgeous turn of the century building with high ceilings, tall windows and doors, and a patio courtyard. I also met L.´s two sons, who are both university students, and also the family dog. (Yay! Dog!) For the near future, I may well end up staying here.

I spent the afternoon wandering around the neighborhood and window shopping. It really doesn´t feel all that cold here (it´s late fall now, like November back in the U.S.), but people were pretty bundled up, and the shop windows are showing coats, hats, scarves and gloves on the mannequins. It feels really weird to purposefully go from warm weather (I think it was like 90 degrees in Chicago right before I left) to cold weather. Then again, this will be the second time I´ve ¨skipped¨ summer (the first being the summer I spent in Alaska). On the plus side, I can stock up on fall clothes early, as it´s not like Boston doesn´t have its fair share of cold weather!

Here I go...

Traveling today -- I left Chicago at noon and I'll arrive in Buenos Aires tomorrow morning after a long layover in Dallas. More posts when I have something to post!