Moving North, While Remembering South - Carlos Thays, Park Designer

If all goes right, we’ll be in Anchorage tomorrow.

Transition is that time where you brain adjusts from one environment to another.  I’m still, for instance, ready to say Buen Día and gracias and quiero.   I’m still looking at the dinner bill and computing it in pesos and dollars.  Invisible  membranes reach out from my brain to the many wonderful people we met.  How are they doing?  Feeling their love and sending back mine.

I'm  trying to hold onto Argentina and Chile as long as I can.  To be, at least partially there, as I slide through LA reality and into Anchorage reality.   I looked through my pictures to find some that never got posted, but should.  I’ve got two particular pictures of trees.

Which brought up the name Carlos Thays.  It shows up on streets and in parks all over Argentina.  But until now I haven’t looked him up.  I knew he had designed parks.    From his Wikipedia page:

"Born Jules Charles Thays in Paris, France in 1849,^[2] Carlos Thays arrived in Argentina in 1889,^[2] after he was recommended by Jean Alphand to Argentine pioneer Miguel Crisol, who contracted Thays to design Sarmiento Park in Córdoba.^[1] During     his time in Córdoba Thays became infatuated with the young country and decided to spend the rest of his life in Argentina. After moving to Buenos Aires he was named the city's Director of Parks & Walkways in 1891.^[2] This position gave him significant influence over the design of the city's open spaces, and his legacy is still strongly felt in the city's  open spaces today."

Here's the Parque San Martín, in Mendoza.  I just couldn't keep walking without pulling out my camera, the vision was so striking.

And yes, this is a Thays designed park.  We walked over to this park our first morning of our first visit to Mendoza.  (Mendoza was located perfectly to be our starting point for San Juan and then Santiago and back.)  And I was struck by how beautiful the trees were and how they were located just perfectly.  Here are two pictures from that morning in the park.  Mostly, I was chasing all the birds with my telephoto lens - not very successfully - but I couldn't help notice the trees.

I don't know if Thays designed the landscaping for this river that flows through downtown Córdoba, but he did design Sarmiento Park in Córdoba, so if he's not directly responsible for these trees, I'm sure it's his influence.

One of Thays' largest undertakings was the Parque Tres de Febrero,[2] a sweeping area of open land covering several square kilometers filled with thousands of trees, flowers, many fountains, and monuments in the barrio of Palermo.


Well we stayed in Palermo when we first arrived in Buenos Aires and I was struck by the trees there too.  Here are a couple of pictures from there.

The Wikipedia page doesn't say anything about Thays visiting Santiago, but I'm guessing, from the parks we saw in downtown Santiago, that his influence reached there as well.

Travel and Leisure has pictures of some of his parks and more about him as well.  I posted a little on the Rose Garden earlier.  He also did the Botanical Garden which we walked around, but never got in - it was closing one time and on our last day, a Monday, it was closed too.