Adios Buenos Aires

Jan arrived safe and sound in BA on January 6th. She is a friend from Calgary who winters in Palm Springs with her husband and dozens of close friends. Jan is just the best house guest ever; she is physically fit, has an unfailing sense of humour, is ready for whatever comes next and she loves to shop. Ha, ha, let’s not get carried away, let’s just say she takes shopping to a higher level than normally can be seen with a telescope. At one point we joked about buying a sturdy leather leash and collar like the dog walkers use in Buenos Aires. To hold her back from scourging the inside every dress store in the city. Every single dress store.

There are more dress stores in Buenos Aires than fire hydrants.

As I said in a previous post, Buenos Aires has many faces and some of them were ignoring us. Of course, BA is ‘Tango’ and Jan is a big fan. We attended three shows at the Borges Cultural Centre which is attached to the Gallerias Pacifico Shopping Centre on Florida Street. One was flamenco dance (ho hum) and the other two were tango (yee ha!) These shows are held in small theatres without flossy sets and are sold at bargain prices. The tango shows have a dancing cast of eight, a live orchestra and a Carlos Gardel type singer. The dance is edge of your seat remarkable and every complex step demonstrates the intricacy and intensity of the teamwork – they are the best in the world. A four inch heel could spike distress into a partner if timing is just a little off. We also visited the Carlos Gardel museum to discover the central history of the tango. Carlos was a singer, songwriter and actor who’s voice lifted the sultry music out of the brothels of la Boca and on to the world stage. The internet is filled to the brim of Gardel’s hat with information about his biography and the dispute about where he was born and the origins of the dance. If you are interested please read the attached Wikipedia link.

Another museum that caught our attention was so brand new it opened while we were in BA. The Beatles Museum. But make no mistake; nothing about the Beatle’s Museum was easy for the wimpy Spanglish. There were a couple of small write-ups in an English online newspaper but the location was sketchy and we had asked at an information booth the day before about the new museum, but the rep didn’t know anything, made a phone call and still knew nothing. After a great deal of online research we were pretty sure we could find it, so off we went on foot – a very long walk along overcrowded streets on a sizzling hot day. Pouring hot coffee over a ten mile chain of confused army ants would be a fair description of the walk. We stopped for help at another tourist information booth and bingo – this one knew the drill. Unfortunately she marked the museum in the wrong place but had the right street so we eventually found the entrance after a rather undainty walk of about 76 blocks in the wrong direction. Inside Paseo de la Plaza we asked one of the maintenance men for the exact location of the museum. He did not know. Even though it was only a few feet away, he just did not know! Hot. Did I mention that by the time we arrived, Jan was ready to rewrite It’s Been a Hard Days Night into It’s Been Hell All Day and then murder the Fabulous Four as well as the not so fabulous two. Honestly, she was good sport about anger management even after we found out the museum did not open until 5pm. Alas we were turned away and again slunk off into the searing melee with our tempers bumping along behind. We were Day Trippers gone bad. But now this! We returned another day and everything was so easy. What was all that fuss about anyway? The museum boasts the largest collection of Beatle memorabilia in the world. It includes a brick from The Cavern Club, the original club in Liverpool, a check for £11 signed by Ringo Starr and even a box of condoms branded with the names of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The collection is the work of Rodolfo Vazquez, a 53-year-old accountant who became a fan at the age of 10 when he got their album Rubber Soul. Since then he has collected everything he can related to the Fab Four and has amassed more than 8,500 items. In 2001 he was recognised by Guinness World Records as having the planet's largest collection, with a hoard of 5,612 items. But his haul has kept growing and his museum, which opened on Avenue Corrientes is attracting tourists from all over the world. Imagine how busy it would be if people could actually find the place!

We stopped at many other tourist sights that were also entertaining. The Steel Flower was inaugurated in April 2002 and become one of the icons of Buenos Aires. Officially the flower goes by the name of Floralis Generica, but since nobody remembers the 'scientific' name it is called the Big Steel Flower. And big it is at 23 metres high, weighing 18 tonnes. The petals used to open and close but the mechanism broke so lately it has been stationary. When the petals are open they span 32 metres and the flower sits in the middle of a pond to enhance the reflection. Interesting!

The famous Recoletta Cemetery also merits mention because it receives about 500,000 visitors a year and they can’t all be wrong. As one of the guide books states, you can spend hours wandering the grounds that cover 4 city blocks, full of tombs adorned with works by local and international sculptors. More than 6,400 mausoleums form an architectural digest. The most popular is the tomb of Eva "Evita" Perón, which is always heaped with flowers and letters from fans. To prevent her body from being stolen, as it had been many times by the various military governments installed after her husband's fall from grace in 1955, she was finally buried in a concrete vault 27 feet underground in 1976. Many other rich or famous Argentines are buried there as well, including a number of Argentine presidents.

Out of curiously Jan asked a guide at the entrance to Recoletta about the body of Juan Peron. Well that is an interesting story! Perón was buried in La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires. In 1987, his tomb was desecrated and his hands and some personal effects, including his sword, were stolen. Perón's hands were cut off with a chainsaw. A ransom letter asking for US$8 million was sent to some Peronist members of Congress. This profanation was a ritualistic act to condemn Perón's spirit to eternal unrest, according the book La segunda muerte (Peron's Second Death), which connected it to military officers involved during Argentina's Dirty War. The bizarre incident remains unresolved.

On 17 October 2006 his body was moved to his former summer residence in the Buenos Aires suburb of San Vincente. People were injured in riots, as Peronist trade unions fought over access to the ceremony. The police contained the violence enough for the procession to move to the mausoleum. This move of Perón's body offered his self-proclaimed illegitimate daughter the opportunity to obtain a DNA sample from his corpse. Martha Holgado, 72, had been trying for 15 years to do this DNA analysis, which, in November 2006, proved she was not his daughter. Martha Holgado died of liver cancer, on June 7, 2007. Before her death, she vowed to continue the legal battle to prove her patronage to Peron.

The Eva Peron Museum was also a highlight, and the lunch in the courtyard was one of our favourites. We also walked the length of Florida Street with its relentless pressure of dizzying crowds way too many times, shopping and visiting the Borges Cultural centre. We took a day trip by train to el Tigre, a charming area 17 miles north of BA. Tigre lies on the Paraná Delta and is a huge tourist attraction but it is also a residential destination as hundreds of beautiful weekend cottages are scattered along the banks of the canals. El Tigre sits on an island created by several small streams and rivers and was founded in 1820, after floods destroyed other settlements in the area. We took a one hour boat ride along the canals and enjoyed insight into the priveleged lives of rich and famous Argentines. A wonderful way to spend an afternoon except for one thing. Jan took a tumble, a bad one. We thought she broke her glasses, nose and front teeth. Alas, you simply cannot keep an old travel agent down. She was back up in no time, not complaining, whining or moaning and, after a quick clean up, went on about the business of being a die hard toursit. Nose, lip, knee and elbow all with collateral damage. Yikes! Poor Baby! After that, we were all more careful.

We rode the subway, waited for busses, strolled and ran and sometimes we even walked in the right direction. We visited shopping malls, grocery stores, market stalls and thousands of small dress shops; we went to San Telmo twice, La Boca three times, visited Puerto Madero and strolled along Avenida Santa Fe (and a few hundred other Avenidas). We had dinner in an overpriced restaurant on trendy Baez Street, we ate breakfast in the apartment and at our favourite sidewalk cafe, we enjoyed many dinners at our beloved empanada restaurant and at our affordable and delicious state of the art vegetarian restaurant. We were there in the crowd, on the street to welcome the back the participants of the Dakar race - almost as exciting to see them finish - and a once in a lifetime thrill for us all. In fact we did a lot more than this report could ever reveal, but you are quite tired of reading and enough is enough.

We left the apartment at 6am on January 21st by taxi headed for the airport, but good old reliable Jan stayed behind to clean up our affairs. At 2:30pm she met with a representative of the landlord for the outgoing inspection and accepted on our behalf, the return of our US$300.00 deposit, then took a pre-arranged taxi to the airport herself. Her flight wasn’t until 8pm. What follows is her email sent to us in Quito, but it is so good I asked for permission to add it to the blog. She’s an excellent writer and after years of being in the travel industry (she managed a large agency in Calgary with about 15 employees) she knows bad service when she meets it face to face. Enjoy!