01-April-2012 – Buenos Aires, Argentina
As it turned out, a number in our tour group also had difficulty sleeping. A disco right next to the hotel and a car alarm that kept going off was blamed but most would agree that we could have slept through that. The body clock is probably more to blame. At 7:00am, I decided to survey the area without a camera. The streets are starting to get busy. There is a street race that will occur sometime in the day – so there were road closures and some traffic police movements. I felt the street it safe enough so I went back for my camera and catch a few of Buenos Aires life in the morning.
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The tour company originally planned today being a Sunday as a city tour day, but the car race means not only road closures but also people coming into the city making the tour route impossible. The schedule was then switched and we headed 35km away from the city into the Tiger Islands.
Life in Buenos Aires grew from the Rio de la Plata which, when the tour briefly pointed out the river from what can be seen from the main road, does not look like a river at all. There were ships and the opposite bank cannot be seen – it looks more like a sea to me. But it is a river 84 km wide, and on some parts can be over 200 km wide. The Tigre Island is formed from a series of small rivers on what they call a delta. I was a bit surprised because when we were heading to this place, the picture of islands in my mind are distinct land masses separated by wide bodies of water – much like the Hundred Islands in Pangasinan, Philippines. But I could not have been so wrong. Imagine a large land mass which was sliced randomly in pieces and between cuts are rivers up to 2.5 meters wide. From an aerial view, the river would look like capillaries.
In these islands, there are no road networks but there are electricity, telephone, and internet services. It is serviced by boat busses, boat taxis and supplies are sold on boat supermarkets. The houses faced the river and have their own docks, but these are modest houses worth around $60,000. It is no different from a suburb except that the river system is their roads and highways. There are kayaks everywhere – it is the equivalent of the kids push bike in the neighbourhood. Amazing.
San Telmo Market, Buenos Aires
After having a big lunch, we decided to walk back to the hotel, asking directions along the way. Someone said it’s about 22 blocks back to the hotel from where we started, so we saw a fair sample of Buenos Aires. There were a lot of people heading home from the race – the atmosphere is a bit festive. Some kids even asked their photos taken as we really look like a bunch of tourist with a backpack and camera on hand clicking at every odd objects and buildings.
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At night, we walked around the hotel and discovered a lively city with all the hustles and bustles of a city can be – shops, street performers, street cafes and restaurants. We sampled the cuisine of a ‘Parilla Libre’ – (it is not free, but rather you are free to choose which ever grilled meat you want). They said that Argentina is a country of 45 million people and 90 million cows – what they are really saying is, when you are here – eat steak – it’s the best in the world. They are not wrong.
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