A cruising we will go!

The Vendam

 We sailed out of Buenos Aires at 9 pm on December 20 and before we were out of port a container ship crane swung around and hit the top of the cruise ship. It smacked the side of the "Crows Nest", the disco, on the 12th deck and the highest point on the ship. There was not much damage, and only a couple of minor injuries, but the coast guard made us anchor just out of harbor until they could do a daylight inspection of the ship to ensure it was still sea worthy. Twelve hours later we were on our way again, but we will miss one port stop (Port Madryn) to make up for the lost time. So is life, be happy, no problemo!

On the way to the cruise ship terminal in the taxi, I realized why Argentinians make great Formula One race car drivers. Traffic was extremely heavy and they have this way of straddling the dotted line to make five lanes out of four, or six out of five, and they are all very good at it. Sometimes you think wow, there is no room here and somehow they manage to slide through between two other vehicles all trying to get onto the same lane. At one point, another taxi pulled out of an intersection into our lane and for thirty feet the drivers just kept staring at each other as they played chicken about which one was getting the lane, but it worked out and with one cab half way into the next lane and the other almost on the sidewalk we eventually got to where they wanted to be.

We arrived in Montevideo, Uruguay, 12 hours late so spent December 22 instead of December 21 in port while the ship resupplied and refueled for the journey south. Montevideo is an old colonial style city and the country, like Argentina, went from being a leading exporter of manufactured goods to broke and is still trying to recover. Classes here seem to be very poor (like tin and cardboard housing poor), poor, lower middle class, rich and extremely rich. Uruguay is a small country stuck between Brazil and Argentina with a population of about 3.5 million - 1.3 million live in the port city of Montevideo.

Montevideo is like other South American Spanish influenced cities, with lots of plazas and statues of their heros that gained independence. To me the best statues in Montevideo are the two that are dedicated to the settlement of the land, one of an oxcart of settlers and one of a stage coach of pioneers.



The Stage Coach of Pioneers

Another interesting statue is one depicting five indigenous people that belonged to a tribe that refused to recognize Uruguay government, so they were exterminated at the direction of the president. Five were left alive, a chief, a medicine man, a warrior and a mother and her baby. They were captured and sent to a circus in Europe were they spent the remainder of their lives on display as exhibits. 

The Indigenous

It is mostly a rural culture and now the biggest exports are beef to Russia, soy to China and wine to the US, Canada and Europe.

True to our reasons for coming to the southern countries in South America, for the wine experience, we spent our day in Uruguay touring a winery, having lunch and sampling the expressions and vintages. Like Chile and Argentina, Uruguay is known for European grapes that grow in these countries better than they do in Europe. They grow a Tannant grape from France, and the samples we had at the vineyard were vey good. I had never drank Tannat before but was impressed, especially with the merlot-tannat blends.

The Winery

We were served four samples before lunch and their premium vintage with the main course. There were about fifty people on the tour but only about five or six besides Loreen and I were true connoisseurs of wine! Some of the folks hardly sampled any, while others just drank the whites or the reds, but we true connoisseurs sampled to the fullest and emptied every glass they poured for us. We were troupers and very considerate of their feelings!

The Wines

We sat with a fellow that was born in Chile whose ancestors were from Croatia and he has lived in Britain for the past 35 years. His family still has property in both Chile and Croatia. He was great to visit with and has a vast knowledge of the settlement of the Patagonia and mining areas of both Chile and Argentina. These areas have more descendants from Croatian, Scottish and Welsh ancestry than either Spanish or Italian, which are the dominate two countries where South Americans immigrated from.

On our second day into the cruise I watched a lady walk by the pool and thought, now where do I know that lady from, but was not sure. Then later in the day she walked past again with her husband and yes it was a couple, Harm and Elly, from Holland that we had met in January at Uluru in Australia. We did not make contact that day but tracked them down at the pool the next afternoon and spent a nice couple of hours catching up. What a small world.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

A wish for the best during the holiday season and all the best in the coming year.

or as they say in Buenos Aires
Feliz Navidad y Feliz Ano Nuevo

Last days in Buenos Aires

Today is our last day in Buenos Aires, tomorrow we catch the boat for a cruise around the tip of South America and into the Antarctic.

Buenos Aires has been hard for us communication wise. The country itself has not been difficult, intimidating or unenjoyable, but the language barrier has made it hard. We knew this going in and Keenan certainly let us know the language situation would be tough, but nothing ventured nothing gained! We are just now at a place where we feel comfortable to try and ask questions in Spanish. I still can only pick out the odd word in the answers, but if I can understand one or two words I can usually figure it out. Loreen asks lots of questions in bus stations, etc, then looks at me when they respond in Spanish, but with my few Spanish words, our phrase book, their few English words and some miming we can get it figured out. However, our experience would have been so much better if we knew the language. I am so glad that Keenan chose French Immersion as a child and has went on to learn more languages, people that have languages can enjoy the world outside of the English community so much better. A young couple, Christian and Katherine, from Switzerland arrived the week after us at the school and s stay at the same B&B. They already have three languages and are picking up Spanish much more rapidly than us.

Loreen, Katherine and Christian

Argentinians are a friendly, polite bunch of people that seem to live a happy life. They chatter and laugh in the bars, restaurants and in the streets. The country has ancestry from many European countries, but the heaviest immigration was from Spain and Italy and the Argentinian psyche is a marriage of the two cultures. Although they speak Spanish, they say it is in an Italian style, what ever that means. Some communities still have the old European traditions from the homeland, like Port Madryn, where Welsh tea and crumpets are taken every afternoon.

Beef Cattle

Argentina brags about their beef and they say it is the best in the world and it is a beef dominated culture. Every restaurant has a page dedicated to the cow and you can order any and all parts, including tripe, sweetbreads, tongue and all other organ meats. We stick to steak, ribs and veal and it is all delicious. It took us a couple of days to figure out how to order as everything is shared. Our first meal was a lettuce, tomato, carrot salad, to share and each of us ordered a steak. The salad came in a medium sized serving bowl and the steaks were probably around 16 to 18 ounces cooked with spices over a wood fired grill, delicious but far too much to eat. Now we order a salad to share, maybe one empanada or a chorizo sausage (both to die for) and one meat dish to share. Very few restaurants serve a dish like we do with vegetables and starch on one plate - you order those as a side dish. We stick to a salad as a side dish as the tomatoes and onions are oh so good, sweet and full of taste. Argentina is a carnivores delight and the meat, mostly grass fattened, is as good as any I have eaten - to me better than US or Australian beef, and as good or better than New Zealand and Canadian beef, it is so tender and full of flavor.

Yesterday we passed large market and fruit gardens on the way to San Antonio de Areca, a small country town of Gaucho heritage. Argentina is the largest producer and exporter of soy beans in the world. Some of the fruits, like banana, come from Ecuador, but the country is mostly self sustainable.

Front of the Estancia

San Antonio de Areca is a quaint little town with clean streets, lovely housing and several museums dedicated to Gaucho history - like Fort Steele, Fort Calgary and Fort Macleod all put together in Spanish. The tack they use is different than ours, saddles are a simple woolen pad with a little seat and wooden or steel stirrups and the most severe spade and combination spade/lower jaw ring bits that I have ever seen. They were absolutely brutal, but there were also hackamore rigs that have no mouth piece or jaw ring at all, so I guess they are like us, some used harsher methods of control on their horses than others. There were also some wicked spurs with one and a half inch dagger point rowels and two three inch jingle chains on each shank - they were pretty but hopefully they were just for show. The carriages and buggies looked the same as our buggies from the 1800's did, but the ranch houses were different, the one even had a little dirt barricade and cannon in the front yard, not sure if the cannon was for the natives or the neighbors!

Back of the Estancia with left wing

We have enjoyed our time here, but it is time to move on, so as they say in Buenos Aires, Chau and Hasta Luego!

Tigre, The Rio Plata and San Telmo

We had a nice long weekend in BA, Thursday and Friday were holidays for a religious celebration, the Day of the Immaculate Conception.

Saturday we took a tour to the town of Tigre, about one hour from the city center by train. We took a public train to San Isidro and then we were to take the tourist train on to Tigre, but they had shut the tourist train down for the day. Seems someone had thrown a rock at it, broke a window and hit a tourist in the head. So back to the public system we hiked and pressed ourselves back onto the train. Only on trains in Japan have I been more crowded. There the train employees push you on after the train is full, here only the people keep crowding you in. It was easy to balance against the sway, extreme masses of people keep you upright.

A Canal in Tigre

Tigre is a combination Venice/Florida Everglades kind of place. It is situated on the confluence of three rivers in an area of islands, canals and tourist attractions. Originally started as an inland port town, it was surpassed by more available ports downstream and slipped into a bootlegger/smuggler town. The canals are endless and with numerous islands to hide amongst, the area prospered at this. Now it is a vast area of cottages on islands shored up by timber and concrete break walls to keep the soil erosion in control. The area is the most polluted waterway in Argentina and the banks of the larger canals are littered with ship wrecks. The pollution does not stop the use of the river for water sports. The area is like any ocean or lake town with cruise boats, and private craft of all shapes and sizes plying the water ways. Many people live here year round and are supplied with floating stores, markets, water taxis and water buses for the school children. The town of Tigre now has a large casino and amusement park and 1000's of Buenos Airians flock there on weekends.

On an Island in the Tigre Delta

The Rio Plata, into which the Tigre drains, is a wonder onto itself. The river is made up from drainage that runs from the highlands of Paraguay, northern Argentina and Uruguay. It becomes the widest river in the world where it enters the Atlantic Ocean, some 220 kms in width. The large basin seen from the air, some argue that it is a large bay not a river, goes inland for 290 kms before it starts to break into a delta area of many smaller water ways. Buenos Aires is upstream from the mouth of the river 115 kms and due to the amount of sediment in the river the channel has to be dredged constantly for the huge container and other ships that port here. The size of the city of Buenos Aires was fully realized on our boat trip back in from Tigre. You fly into large cities, but the enormity is minimized by the speed of travel and being in the air. When you are in a boat and you travel along the water front for half an hour just to get to the center your light bulb moment is kind of, whoa this place is huge.

The Rio Plata from the air

Buenos Aires is a contrast from rich to poor, from new to old and shows in many ways what can happen when the lofty fall. At one time Argentina was one of the richest nations in the world, but a combination of pride, the 1930s depression, a succession of military dictatorships and a debt load that no longer could be serviced has moved Argentina from a leading country to one that is working to regain a leading place in the world of culture and economics. Many barrios in Buenos Aires have new modern shopping plazas, high rise condos, and modern office complexes. But with an average yearly age of US $7,000 many areas of the city are still depressed with large ghetto like communities.

Typical San Telmo Architecture

San Telmo, the barrio we are staying in, was once the barrio of the rich and aristocratic of Buenos Aires. They built huge homes and estates here, similar in size and elegance to the plantation homes in the southern US. Many of the buildings we have been in, including the home we stay at, have marble floors in the foyers and marble stairs and as single family homes, I am guessing, they are in the neighborhood of 3,000 to 5,000 square feet. Today these homes are chopped up into apartments, stores and schools. A lot have deteriorated and are in need of TLC. The building structures are very sound, but the paint, plumbing and electrical could be upgraded. There is not enough income to upgrade at a pace equal to growth in other areas of the world.

Buenos Aires Traffic

Buenos Aires sees some seven million tourists a year and the areas for the tourists have certainly been brought up to a higher standard than some pure residential areas. There is no recycling program in BA, the result is an overwhelming amount of rubbish on the streets. By Sunday nights the streets become very cluttered and dirty, this includes heaps of dog excrement, as BA has an extremely high dog population with very little green space, so the job is completed on the sidewalks. About one in twenty dog owners is seen with a plastic pick up bag. By Monday morning the streets are quite clean as a massive effort in cleaning is completed sometime overnight Sunday.

All that said we are privileged to be able to be here and experience the warmth of the Argentinian people, the culture and the food. More about the food next blog.

Graduation! Classmate Amber, Teacher Cecilia, Loreen y Me

Spanish School, the City, and Polo Ponies

Three days into Escuela de Espanol, and it is not easy. We spent most of these days learning how, well that is false, trying to learn how to conjugate verbs in Spanish. It's hard for me to do in English! We have progressed to the point where the instructor will only speak to us in Espanol and we are only to speak to her in Espanol. If we sit there long enough with a bewildered look, she will eventually tell us what to do in Inglese. Loreen has a special way of doing it! Next week is to be all about learning vocabulary and phrase structure. It seems that Argentina has their own way of speaking Spanish and use different sounds for certain letters than the rest of South America or Spain. We have one other lady from England in our class, so with only three of us we get a lot of attention. Amber, the English lady, I think actually studies in the evenings as she seems to be advancing quicker than Loreen and I (also, this is the fourth winter that she and her husband have spent in BA). People here are maybe a little hard of hearing as I often have to repeat my simple Spanish three or four times before a little light comes on in their eyes and they say something different but always bring us back what we ordered:) I can now start to pick out some commonly used words in a conversation. One in about every three hundred!

We have been out and about the city a bit, a couple of days wandering on foot, a city bus tour and a long day yesterday through a few barrios picking up other turistas to go out to a polo club, about 65 kilometers in the country. It is a huge city with everything from homes built in the 1800's to modern homes. It is laid out on a square grid and housing numbers run from zero up from the city center so it is easy to find our way around. Like any city it has some pretty dodgy areas and we don't pack any bling. The streets, other than the very main corridors are all a lane and a half, although they seem to be able to get three cars wide some how, one way. A large percentage of the streets in the downtown are still cobble stone.

On our drive yesterday we passed huge modern shopping complexes, didn't see any Costco but Walmart stores. Shopping may be a national pastime as every parking lot was full of vehicles (and even late in the evening). I guess this is not unusual here as Argentinians do not go out for the evening meal until 9 or 10 in the evening, Loreen and I are starved by 6. Then to be very cool they venture out to night clubs at around two in the morning. We have not adapted well to those hours yet and our host family must think we are pretty dull! We have eaten dinner and are home by the time they start to make the evening meal. The English lady at school goes for drinks at 8:30 and then for dinner and they are usually the first ones in the restaurant.

We spent yesterday at a polo club out in the country. Polo is very big in Argentina, with maybe the best players in the world. It is also a rich sport, some of the horses used by the national team cost upwards of $200,000 US. Lots of polo families children grow up on polo camps (farms) and go into other professions, but keep a few horses at clubs and play makeup games on days off and weekends. It was a club like this we were at. We watched a four chukka game, four periods of ten minutes each, four players to the side. Having never even watched polo on television it was very interesting and not too many rules. You switch the direction of the goals every time the ball crosses the goal line and you are not allowed to cross in front of another rider, although you are allowed to push them off the ball with your horse as long as you don't cross in front. After the game we were treated to an asado (BBQ or grill) which was very, very tasty. We had empanadas, chorizo sausage, beef short ribs, blood sausage, salads, roasted vegetable side dishes and plenty of Malbec. There are no sauces on the meat just seasonings and local olive oil and vinegar for the salads. Argentina has vast grass plains and the beef is mostly grass finished, tender and flavorful. They love their beef here and are probably the largest consumers of beef per capita in the world. Not too much on fruit and vegetables though.

Then all us tourists had a quick lesson in polo and riding and out to the field we went for a little polo match. Two Argentinian amateurs, a British girl that is here training and the tourists played a "free for all" game. Not being competitive at horse sports, I kind of held back and let the rest take the lead, not! My caballo, Feona and I got along great and we even managed to score a few goals. Loreen said her stomach hurt from laughing, watching me and the British girl or the Argentinean chasing the ball at full gallop with me shouting "Feona, vamoose, get up, vamoose". Loreen, who has not been on a horse for probably 10 years took to those English style polo saddles and was racing up and down the polo field with an abandon, but they gave her too short of a polo mallet and even by lying almost on the horses side she had trouble reaching the ball. It was great fun and a great day!

Buenos Aires

December 2nd, in Buenos Aires and it is "caliente" (about 25 degrees Celsius). It was a long flight, four hours to Houston, three hour layover, then another ten hours to BA. Neither of us slept that well on the overnight flight.

Flying into BA we flew over miles and miles of agricultural land. Fields that looked from the air to be larger than the square, one section fields that we see in Canada and the US.

We went through customs and immigration in BA with no problems except for the $75 US entrance fee charged to Canadian citizens. It is called a reciprocal fee to off set the visa fee the Canadian government charges Argentinian travelers.

Pepe, the school's driver, met us at the airport and spoke no English, although he did understand my three words of Spanish enough to correct my fractured pronunciation. The airport is about 30 km from the city centre and it seemed like every 5 kms there is another toll booth on the freeway. At that rate it would cost a couple hundred dollars to drive through Calgary on the Deerfoot.

Then to the host home in downtown BA, which has a population of 13 million, over one quarter of the population of Argentina lives in BA. It is mucho busy. No one at the host home speaks English, so we have some interesting conversations. The hostess explains things in Spanish, we nod our heads and ask questions in English, then we all dig out a dictionary to try and find the words. It all works out, and we all walked over to the Spanish language school where we are enrolled for a two week intensive beginners course. We start Monday.

Our room is in an older building, maybe circa 1920's. A four story walkup and the flat we are in takes up three quarters of the top two floors. The bottom floor was at some point a store of some kind but is now closed. Rooms are many, spacious and when built was probably a very high class home. Twelve foot ceilings, dark wood panelling on the bottom half of the living and sitting rooms and parquet or hardwood flooring throughout.

We have a Castilian style patio off our bedroom with double French doors.

There are 48 barrios or buroughs in BA, we are in the San Telmo area which is full of charm and personality. The guidebooks say it is one of BA's most attractive and historically rich barrios. We went to a little plaza Friday afternoon where there are restaurant patios and artisans selling their products. We had a couple of beer and watched couples who come to the plaza and dance the Tango for donations. I really like watching them dance the tango.

What I learned about the tango. The dance was started in the late 1800's by migrant workers from Europe who were here with no wives or girlfriends, so they visited the local bordellos. While waiting they took to dancing with each other in an aggressive, almost fighting style. As more ladies of the night migrated to Buenos Aires, the migrant workers started dancing with the prostitutes and the tango evolved into a very aggressive sexual dance. Frowned on by the high society of Buenos Aires, the dance was none the less taken up by the sons of the very same families and exported to Europe on their overseas jaunts. Eventually the tango returned to BA and became the refined sensual dance that we see today.