Two BA lovers in BA barrios

Our stay in Buenos Aires was a hot one. We took the ferry across the channel from Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, and landed in the middle of busy BA. The ferry was pretty big, and reminded Ivan of the ferries that cross to Vancouver island. We crossed the channel in a short hour.!

After stepping out of the harbor, just the short walk to the taxi had our clothes plastered to us. The taxi driver said it would be cooler today (only 35 degrees!), which was still stifling. We chose to stay in the Tango Hostel, which didn't have any Tango in it, but it had a fun enough vibe - if stifling hot at all hours of the day.

*so we don't have to repeat ourselves, just assume that if we are inside or outside, irregardless of time of day, we are sweating profusely and drinking 4 liters of water/hour. It was between 38 and 42 degrees on most days..!*

Our first day in the city we walked the street bazaar of barrio San Telmo, which was about 15-20 blocks of street vendors selling antiques, crafts, artwork, and all the things that gets Kristin very, very excited. After arriving at the hostel Kristin was jumping with excitement that we would have a couple hours to peruse the street fair (of course Ivan was equally overjoyed!!). During our time we discovered Ivan fancied shopping a bit more than Kristin because he ended up purchasing a very stylish leather cowboy hat and a new knife. Where Kristin only purchased a small Christmas gift to bring home. The street fair lead us to the Plaza de Mayo, which has centuries of history. We were very lucky to get a tour of the Casa Rosada and see the presidential offices and anterooms. The interior was beautiful, and still a very functional part of the government. Unfortunately we missed the mother's of the Disappeared, who march every Thursday around the Plaza de Mayo dressed in white with photo's of their missing loved ones. After the tour, Kristin dragged Ivan through some more street shopping, and by 9:00 we made it to our oven of a hostel for a small dinner and some fruit.

San Telmo's Famous Sunday Market

Giddy Up! This Cowboy is ready for BA!

Casa Rosada

By the end of the day Ivan (yet again!) had lobster feet!

The Presidential Office

Our second day in BA we walked to the famous barrio Recoleta, which has the Recoleta cemetary, or dead people shrines for the super-wealthy. We both decided it was a beautiful cemetery, but it wouldn't be our preferred style of resting place... The cemetery has blocks, much like a city, with many unique and often over-the-top shrines. Like most cemetery's, the epitaphs were very optimistic impressions of the people inside the marble boxes, but it was pretty cool seeing different presidential, aristocratic, and ecclesiastical shrines. The black marble radiated the sun, so we decided to catch a cab to a popular mall nearby to escape the heat. We ended up seeing a movie called Unthinkable, not the best film, but a great way to enjoy some AC and cheap popcorn! After the film we walked to the obelisk and the congressional building, both emblematic sites of the old city. Ivan loved the architecture of the massive congressional building, which he thought was much more impressive than our own white house (blasphemer??)... We noticed that many of the buildings had seen better days, but they were still majestic in their own way - even though they constantly dripped AC condensation on us.!

La Recoleta Cemetery

Peeking in

The Obelisk

The Famous Congressional Building

The next couple days we toured different barrios of the city. A memorable one was La Boca, which is the Harlem of BA. The poorer barrio has the richest culture of the city, and is the birthplace of the sensual and passionate Tango. It also has some of the goofiest buildings, which are all painted with the colors of the rainbow. It was over-fun with tourists, but still a fun place to cruz around. Supposedly it transforms at night and is very sketchy, but during the day it was very lively with Tango shows, live bands, and lots of artists selling their touristy wares. Of course, La Boca is also famous for its soccer stadium, where fans make crazed American Football fans look like tame puppies... The arena isn't very big, but it packs the people in, has cheap and bottomless kegs of Quilmes beer, and many of the fans bring their noisemakers, facepaint, flags, oh and the other noisemakers: guns.... We talked to some tourists that went to a futbal game, and they both said it was an unforgettable experience, because they were sure it was thier last experience... Just make sure you cheer at the right times.!!

La Boca, que lindo!

rebel.

We also splurged on a Tango show in a prestigious night club. The show had an option for dinner, but we decided to eat dinner at a cozy cafe beforehand and then enjoy the show with our own (included!!) bottle of wine and empanadas. The show was incredible!! The band was very talented, and the dancers were equally gifted. The show was 2 hours of Tango, singing, and even folkloric pieces. We had heard that Tango is "vertical lovemaking," which is a very apt description - with kicking and maybe even some clawing in between.. The dancers all had fantastic costumes which complemented their coordinated movements. Our favorite part of the show was during the flokloric section, where the muscians played a charango, zampona, cow-hide drum, and a guitar. On top of their wonderful music, a gaucho came out with boots, pampero pants, and a giant belt. The best part of his routine were two different strings with a ball attached to the end of each one. These he swung around in fast repetition and dizzying patterns, and then started to strike the floor while stomping his heels with the beat. The percussion that came out of these 2 swinging strings and his heels was jaw dropping. It reminded Kristin of her tap-dancing days, but on steroids. All in all, it was an unforgettable evening with great music, beautiful dancing, wine, singing, and clapping. Definitely a must-see when in BA!! After the show we were going to continue the night at a local Tango club, however big foot Ivan stubbed his foot earlier that day and claimed he wouldn't be able to dance...(good excuse, huh?!)

Surprise! We actually were the feature dancers of the show! Imagine that, two gringo's stealing the show!

After 4 nights of losing 5-10 pounds of body fluids to relentless sweating, we decided to celebrate the New Year in Nechochea, a city perched on 72km of beachfront. While it is hot here as well, the ocean is beautiful, and the air is fresh, and the waves are the best in all of Argentina (just no swell yet....). Feliz Ano Nuevo! And a Happy, Health, and Prosperous year to everyone!
We will be back to BA in March, once the heat settles down!

Uruguay (not "ur-a-gay")

After a quick and painless border crossing from Argentina, Uruguay maintained its laidback attitude for the 8 nights we were there. Seventeen hours of bus rides and transfers deposited us in Montevideo, were we found a small hotel in the middle of the city. 1.4 million of the 3.5 million people of Uruguay live in this capital city. Though we were only there for a day, it proved to be a beautiful and fairly mellow colonial city with baroque architecture and lots of limestone walls/sidewalks. We walked by the congressional building and got to see soldiers all dressed up in there fancy uniforms taking down the blue and white flag, with a trumpet dictating the folding and marching. The next afternoon we caught a bus to La Paloma, which is directly on the Atlantic on the the eastern side of the country.

La Paloma was a super mellow beach town that lived on the sand. Locals were laid back and were all about getting work over with (or postponing it) so they could lay on the scorching hot sand. Our little hostal was basically on the beach, and had a very fun sleepy environment. After a fresh breakfast of fruit and mermelade covered baguette, we would usually just curl up to a book, go to the beach, siesta, take a walk around town, take a cold shower, and reapeat all of the above as necessary... Quite a nice way to spend our 'xmas break!'

Shreddin the gnar

Evoloution

During our stay, a friendly neighbor of the hostal drove us out to the Rocha Laguna, which was a large freshwater lagoon with a whole lot of crabs and riparian life. We got to frolic on the dunes around it that divided it from the sea. Of course, the neighbor was carrying his termo and mate (We found that Uruguayans imbibe the mate tea more than any other culture, and in all likelihood have thermos-elbo--much like the tennis-elbow, but caused by always having a thermos in the crook of the arm). We also got to see the remote neighboring towns that support themselves by fishing and harvesting eucalyptus trees for timber. Though it can't compare to the Pacific, there are waves here. Don't tell any Americans, but this would be the place to retire!!

Stand back!!

Kristin had to make a call to Bank of America, and after several minutes, she finally got through to customer support. Trying to explain she was out of the country "in Uruguay," the mid-western sounding representative was incredulous and asked, "is that a country or something?!" Controlling our laughter, she patiently repeated that she was in Uruguay. "ah! so its called ur-a-gay. Um, can you spell that for me?" By now the entire hostal was in complete stitches, and we could barely answer him. Not the nicest thing to do to the guy, but he kinda asked for it! ;)

After 5 days in the restful La Paloma, we caught a slow bus across the tiny Holland-sized country to Colonia del Sacramento, which is the oldest city of the country. We stayed in a small bed and breakfast style hostel with a very matronly and friendly owner, Maria Teresa. Colonia has a fascinating history of Jesuits, pirates, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italian, and many other influences. The town has retained a lot of these previous cultures, and is quite the friendly mixing-pot. On Christmas Eve we had a big lunch downtown, and then found a moto-rental place that rented a small scooter for $15.00 for 3 hours. We got to see a lot of the small city mounted on this noisy gas-spitting vacuum cleaner. It was the perfect day to toot around, since most people were on vacation with their famalies or BBQing an Asado, or hanging out on the beach. After we felt our butts had had enough vacuum vibration, we split up to get 'useful' gifts for each other as Christmas gifts in the small downtown.

Matando los munchies!!

Christmas morning was very relaxing with coffee, books, and fruit; then we exchanged our small gifts. Ivan got some schmancy writing pens, a Uruguayan flag, some dark chocolate (a real treat here), a traditional alfajore cookie and toothbrushes. Kristin got a nice leather wallet to replace the infuriatingly small and awkward money pouch that had Ivan's fingers in a knot several times. She also got a bombillo straw and some alfajore cookies (which Ivan ended up eating anyways...). All useful stuff that should be easy to carry!! After some calls home we did some walking around town, and a lot of relaxing.

High rollers (divide by 20...)

Christmas dinner

Uruguay was a great way to recuperate from the intense traveling we did in Northern Argentina! On December 26th we caught the ferry across the bay to Buenos Aires into Dante's porteno inferno! BA blog coming soon..!

Esteros del Ibera and Rincon del Socorro

On December 14^th we arrived at the Rincon del Socorro, another beautiful property owned by the Tompkins. This beautiful Estancia shares a space with some of the most stunning and well-preserved wetland habitat in the world. We immediately fell in love with he wild space, and wished we could have stayed for more time! The staff was very informative and a lot of fun, and jobs and opportunities here were almost as diverse as the habitat around us.

Some history: 3.2 million acres in the upper basin of the Corriente River, the Esteros del Ibera Nature Reserve protects one of the largest freshwater wetlands in Argentina. Inside the reserve is Ibera Provincial Park, covering 1.2 million acres. This area protects species of wildlife that have been previously targeted by hunters. This conservation area is reinforced with 370,000 acres of private land purchased by The Conservation Land Trust (CLT), and fully protects the natural wonders inside. Rincon del Socorro is privately owned, but allows visitors to stay at the hostel. This giant reserve is home to more than 500 vertebrate species and more than 4,000 native plant species.

Rincon del Socorro

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The most rewarding and eye-opening portions of our stay on the Ibera were the excursions we did into the marshland. Even just outside of the Estancia compound we immediately encountered vibrant and profuse amounts of wildlife all intermingling together in a very complete and balanced food web. On our first nature walk we saw hundreds of Capybara rodents hopping into mud holes, chewing grass, carrying their young on their hairy backs, and generally effecting a very lazy and content attitude. In the sky, trees, and brush we saw birds of every shape, size, color, and biological purpose; some were huge birds of prey, while others darted around eating mosquitoes and bugs, but most were on branches or reeds happily chirping to the gawking gringos walking by. Foxes darted into bushes after giving us curious looks over their shoulders, and viscachas (small rodents – a fatter version of a prairie dog) hopped around on their mounded communities chattering away with squeaks and grunts. Perhaps the most impressive site was the Marsh Deer, which was about the size of an elk and had a rack of horns to match. Walking back to the compound, we encountered an armadillo digging his burrow right in the middle of the road, and it actually looked offended about our interruption! The flora and fauna is in a pristine balance here, a perfection and unity of nature that neither of us have seen for quite a long time.

The fragility of this beautiful habitat was made all the more apparent when looking over the fence at the heavyset hooved beasts munching and compacting the ground into a monotonous wasteland. Much like the western United States, the ubiquitous cow is turning beautiful habitat into an inhospitable moonscape. It was depressing to think how many wild animals were being displaced and sacrificed for the abrasive herbivore. Looking at the two sides of the fence we were both stunned by how much of an affect poor land management has on the environment. Though Ivan started to go into one of his introspective angry activist moods about how much he hates cows, he was shown portions of land bought by CLT (Conservation Land Trust – part of the Tompkins conservation movement) that has had the cows removed and is being allowed the chance to heal itself. The land was making a remarkable recovery and gave hope that even abusive cattle ranching wouldn’t mar the landscape forever. CLT still has a portion of land with cattle, which they are using for a ‘control’ in an experiment to compare the affects of continued cattle raising versus damaged land left alone. However, even more exciting than land given a chance to recover, was being shown a future restoration site were the earth will be pushed back into its natural contours and restored with native plants.

Another restorative activity we did was to shadow Jamil, a wildlife biologist working on his PhD. His goal is to reintroduce the Giant Anteater back into the Ibera marsh, where it has been absent for quite some time. We walked through several squishy areas with a radio sensor trying to find the elusive ant vacuum, however it was found a day later in a much farther location (a good thing too since there is a better chance of it mating there!). Jamil uses several remote cameras to monitor their activity, radio collars, and even tranquilizer guns to sedate the animal for tests. We had an eventful afternoon practicing with the tranq-gun, which is amazingly accurate and adjustable.

Out in the field enjoying the sunshine as we track for the Anteaters

Ivan practicing his skills with a tranquilizer gun for the next day's adventure to put a tracking collar around a baby Anteater

Kristin had the best shot/aim when practicing with the blow-dart tranquilizer!! Kristin mastered this skill of having large amounts of air in ones lungs and blowing out quickly from her 9 years of playing the clarinet! :)

Another fantastic outing was spending the day with Sebastian, who is in charge of exotic specie removal (ie: weeds, pigs, axis deer, water buffalo, and other invasive species), as well as control burns and plant restorations. He took us to the Laguna Ibera, a large lake inundated with amazing wildlife. A local at one of the CLT campsites took us around in a small boat to get up-close and personal with alligators, birds, fish, capybaras, deer, and many other kinds of flora and fauna. We got to see 2 species of alligator, which were sunning themselves with one sneaky eye open for potential prey. After an amazing tour of the Laguna, we headed down the road to the visitors center to see some informative exhibits about the riparian habitat, as well as a short nature trail that had some howler monkeys (didn’t see any though…). It was great talking with Sebastian and hearing about the different and wide-ranging challenges of managing thousands of hectares of land. He was really impressed with Kristin’s soil science degree, and Ivan’s dabbling in restoration ecology. He has promised to visit us in the states, and may even stay for a while to learn English and more on restoration management.

Today we are leaving this beautiful Estanica and heading back to Mercedes to begin our journey into Uruguay where we plan on spending Christmas and the next 10 or so days.