Wednesday, December 21, 2011

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

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

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!

Saturday, December 17, 2011

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

Saturday, December 10, 2011

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!



Monday, December 5, 2011

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.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Summer in Calgary

As we pack up our home once more, it is time to reflect on our summer. It was a good summer, spent in Calgary with friends and family. We have really great friends in Calgary and enjoy our time with them. We stayed a couple of weeks in April with Lloyd and Pat and then moved downtown into a 24th floor, two bedroom condo. The views to the mountains and the Bow River were great and it was a nice place to spend the summer. We looked around a bit for a place to purchase, but I guess we need to mature a bit more before settling down again. I mean what can be more exciting than moving into and out of a storage locker twice a year!

Encana employed me on a seven month contract that kept me occupied and out of Loreen's hair, which was good. I call it the Encana Summer Seniors program. I'm lucky to have made some very good workplace friends there. Loreen spent the summer working in administration at a care facility. We are thankful that we are still able to work and that there are places and people that value our contributions.

Keenan moved to Calgary in July and spent three months with us. This is the longest Keenan has been home since she graduated from high school. Remarkably we all have become wiser over the past 12 years and the summer went well. Loreen even managed to sleep when Keenan was out late at night! We are thankful that we could spend this time with her before she ventured off on her next adventure, teaching in the UK. Now it is back to email, weekend phone calls and Skype.

Even with us both working we managed to get out and see all our family at least once over the summer and some of our long distance friends. We also made a trip back to Saskatchewan to meet some of my Dad's cousins. He had around 74 first cousins and I had only ever met one of them. I met with three cousins over coffee at the Co-op in Moose Jaw, how like Dad is that? It was a wonderful experience meeting some of that side of the family.

As we prepare for our next adventure we give thanks to our family, friends, health and having a great country like Canada to return to.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Fall in Auckland, Brrr!

Well it is fall in the Southern Hemisphere. Samoa was in the low thirties, Tonga was around 28 and 29 but Auckland is only 20 above, I am chilly. I think I could be an island boy! We liked New Zealand so much that we changed our plans from a two week stay in Tonga to a 5 day stay and back to New Zealand for another week.

Auckland (a.k.a. the City of Sails), like the rest of New Zealand is a very nice city. We took a day tour on a hop on/hop off bus and seen the points of interest. Auckland is situated on two bays and the distance between the two is only a couple of kilometers. This huge amount of water means a large portion of Aucklander's own some kind of boat and most seem to be sail boats.


Downtown Auckland

 The Auckland Museum is an awesome place, very informative and full of both public and private displays and collections. Approximately half of the first floor is dedicated to Maori history and culture and another large area dedicated to the other South Pacific Islands, the people and cultures. The Maori area consists of artifacts including large transport canoes, made from a single hollowed out log, their type of totem poles, art, weapons, a Maori family home, prior to European influence and their oral history of settling New Zealand. One of the things that surprised me was how closely the Maori art, canoes and family home are to the First Nations of Coastal British Columbia.

We rented a car, now this was different, the car was empty of fuel, (the little warning light was even on) but the rental guy said "oh just bring it back empty". Have you ever tried to estimate how much fuel it needed to get back empty? Quite a science, but we made it, five blocks from the rental agency the little warning light came on and I really had to let the guy know how accurate we were. Actually with fuel costing $2.40 a liter in NZ, I did my utmost to ensure I did not give away any fuel.

We went to two areas where all the Kiwis told us were must go to places for North Island residents.

First Mt. Maunganui, one of the few mountains in NZ that is not an old volcano, a fast growing community with miles of beach and surfer schools. We stayed in a self contained suite where we could cook and took day trips. Mt. Maunganui is about 200 meters to the top, we hiked up it twice, because I forgot my camera the first time, and is a very steep climb. I was amazed to find young guys that were running this thing two or three time, but even more amazed by a lady my age that ran it twice while we went up and down once. The views from the top are quite nice.

Communities of Mt. Maunganui and Papamoa Beach from the summit

Mt Maunganui is one spot where paragliders jump and glide to a beach somewhere.

Warning Sign


Gliders run past that bench and off into thin air!

We took a day trip south along the coast to the communities of Whakatani,(wh in Maori uses the phonetic ph sound), and Matata, which is the Kiwi fruit growing region of NZ. We stopped at the, lonely planet guidebook words not mine, cheesiest tourist place in NZ.


Loreen in the Kiwi!

Kiwi fruit is grown on a vine much the same as grapes and is grown in NZ, Italy and California. The northern hemisphere fruit is in stores in NZ now as the picking season is late April and May. Kiwi fruit is expensive in NZ as the producers grow for the export markets and with no consumer protection, NZ stores have to pay export price for local fruit.

We then drove up island to the town of Whitianga, for the last three days of the trip. Again we took day trips and just looked at the sites around the area.

We went to hot water beach, where there is a huge lava rock on the beach where for about two hours on either side of low tide you can build your own hot pool, hot enough I could only stay in our little pool for about 2 minutes, had to allow the tide water in to keep it cool enough to sit in.


In Hot Water!

We then hiked up the shore to Cathedral Cove, where the soft cliffs have been eroded over the millenniums.


Erosion Art #1
Arch to Cathedral Cove


Erosion Art #2



Erosion Art #3 complete with the Princess!
 Then back to Auckland for the long flight home to Calgary. It has been a great four months, we only got into one fight, I think I had an opinion on something that day! Which is pretty good for living out of a suitcase and sharing the same bathroom for that long. I think Loreen is a keeper!