Buenos Aires Tour With Small Start Up

Our host when we first came to Buenos Aires, Carolina, and her friend Belen have a small business for helping people who visit Buenos Aires and Argentina.  I wouldn’t call it a travel agency or a tour company - it’s more personal than that.  It’s like having a friend in Buenos Aires who will do what is necessary to help you make your trip perfect - even if you don’t even know what you want to do.  

And when we left Buenos Aires a couple of weeks ago, we agreed on a tour of some places we’d missed earlier.  

For yesterday’s tour we jumped into the car and drove to La Boca, one of the oldest parts of Buenos Aires.  

La Boca is the home of La Bombonera stadium, the home of Buenos Aires’ football (soccer) team - Boca Juniors.  This was, and still is, a poor neighborhood.  Lots of port workers lived and worked here.          

 These are low rise living space  compared to the more affluent neighborhoods.  This was the neighborhood that the tango was created in the brothels.






 



And this is part of the famous stadium.  Part of the scoreboard is on the upper right.

And you can see the shape of the stadium better here on the left.  There’s a line for people waiting to tour the museum and stadium.  

There are also lots of tourist shops here.  

Then we walked down to the key streets that lure tourists to La Boca and to the museum created by the famous artist Benito Quelquena Martìn.  

This sign was pointed out as an example of the kind of script that dominated this area in the past.  And then I started noticing it everywhere.

 This one below shows the building above in the past.  The date on it says 1959.  Well before it became a tourist destination.   The picture was in the artist Martín’s museum

    

Martin’s home is at the top of the museum with great views of the port - where he did a lot of his paintings - as well as of Buenos Aires. 

  

These two photos go together.  They’re from the roof of the museum and show the area.  (You can see the colorful  narrow house in the upper right of the picture above and then going to the left of the picture you get to the port.  That loop in the water is made up of recycled plastic bottles and is being used for some sort of water recovery program, but I didn’t get the details.  There are some water plants growing on the right side.

Benito Quinquela Martin is in this picture - I assumed he’s the one on the left.  The picture is from 1909.

And below is one of his pictures of workers in the port.  First a close-up, and then you can see the whole picture below it.   You can learn more about him at this Wikipedia page.  He was an orphan and adopted when he was 8.

 

I was going crazy with my camera - everything was begging to be photographed.  

I  think this is getting to be a very long post, so I’ll end here and  break up the day into two posts.  But here’s a link to ChoiceBuenosAires - the website Carolina and Belin are working on to help publicize their business.  As you can see, it’s a work in progress still.  But we can vouch for these two women’s ability help visitors to Buenos Aires make the best use of their time here.  

More Cordoba and French Bike Riders

Here are some more Cordoba shots from the Free Tour as well as a few others.

The building in the middle was pointed out as the narrowest building in South America -  3 meters at the widest.  It had to do with land issues.  It’s got some businesses and apartments.

These folks were standing there, but the tour moved on before I could find out exactly who they were and why they were there.  Are these Anonymous supporters?  Don’t know.

The cabildo is the government building.  It was in a back section of this building wh ere the  detention and torture center was located.

This is the Museo de Marques de Sobremonte. It’s an old building you can find out more (with video) here.

This is a much newer apartment (I think) building we passed a few times.

This is  Paseo de Buen Pastor and  was once, as  described by Lonely Planet  ‘a combined chapel, monastery, and women’s prison.’  That sounds like a strange and suspicious combination of institutions.  Today, though it is a community center with lots of activities for people of all ages.


Below are the leftovers of the tour who had lunch together at the place the tour guide recommended.  It turned out to be us two US folks and four French folks.  The two on the right were wrapping up a year long bike trip that started in Calgary and took them to LA down the west coast.  From there they flew to Ecuador and biked down to Argentina.  They were on their last leg - to Buenos Aires.  They met the two French women, who are studying civil (I think) engineering in Argentina for five months., on the tour.

  

 That’s enough for now.  We’re in the Cordoba airport waiting for our last inside Argentina flight - to Buenos Aires.  We were supposed to leave at 5;m, but the flight is delayed to 6:35pm now.   We’ll have three more full days in Argentina, then we fly back to LA for a couple of days before finally making it home.  I’m ready for an Alaskan vacation.  When we left I told people that while I hated to leave Alaska in the summer, I didn’t wish them rain or a bad summer at all.  But I certainly wasn’t wishing them the record high temperatures and fire  smoke, or the failed veto override.

Though reading the Alaskan complaints about the heat reminded me of how Alaskans scoff at Outsiders who complain about the cold.  True Alaskans should be able to handle heat as well as cold without whining.  (I know, easy for me to say, I wasn’t there.).

Cathedrals, Bank Lines, The Disappeared And Their Killers

I really owe you more than pictures, but it’s hard keeping track of and sorting out my impressions and what I’ve been told.  People I see on the streets - what they look like, what they wear, their constant cell phone use - look exactly like the people I see in the US.  Pizza and hamburguesas and beer are among the most popular foods here in Cordoba. But these folks live among buildings that, in a few cases, go back to the 1500s.  They walk down narrow streets with little shops on every block - at least in this neighborhood - with fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, and a few other items, that are right next to bakeries with all sorts of decadent sweets.  There’s history here (not counting the original people prior to European conquest) that makes even the US east coast seem young.

Argentina has free health care and free higher education.

US citizens have a way of feeling superior to the rest of the world, but there’s more to culture than military superiority.  Of course, this is what I’ve discovered every time I’ve been to a new (for me) part of the world.  People are people.  And everywhere you go there are very smart, sophisticated people.  People with great common sense and wisdom.  And there are jerks.  When we were surveyed at the airport by someone from a tourism agency, we were asked to rate a number of things.  I asked if we were going to be asked about the people.  No, we weren’t.  Well, I said, you should ask us.  The people were absolutely the best part of our trip.  Tolerant of my terrible Spanish and always wanting to know “De desde son?”  Where are you from?  And Alaska always elicits a smile and ‘frio.’

That said, here are the pictures.  These are two days old.  We walked up to Plaza San Martin, the center of Córdoba, Argentina’s second largest city.  While we were at the Museum of Memories, a group came in with a guide speaking in English and when we listened in we got invited to join.  It’s a company that puts on free tours - it’s up to you to decide what to pay the guide.  The group was mostly Spanish speakers and the English speakers got a much shorter version.  And two dropped out during the two hour plus tour, leaving just us.

But first here’s a picture from our 8th floor balcony.  Airbnb had a two bedroom apartment  for under $50 a night.  It’s by far the most spacious place we’ve stayed.  Well, the Buenos Aires homestay was bigger, but we didn’t have it to ourselves.            

  

I couldn’t pass up the shadows - also from the balcony.

 

This is the inside of the main Cathedral on Plaza San Martin.  If you’ve been reading the blog lately, you’ve  heard this name before.  San Martin, someone said, was the George Washington of Argentina.  But he was more than that.  Besides getting Argentina free from Spain, he did the same in Chile.  Then passed the torch to Simon Bolivar in Peru.

Here’s a view of the plaza. It’s much warmer here in central Argentina.  Up to about 70˚F in the afternoon.

    

Here’s the cathedral from the plaza.

Construction of the Cathedral began in 1582 according to Wikipedia and it was finished in 1709.  For the historically challenged, the Mayflower got to North America in 1620 and George Washington was born in 1732.

If you look closely below, you can see a long line of people at the bank.  We’ve seen shorter lines before and asked.  Someone suggested about a Friday lineup that people were getting money out for the weekend and wanted to get their money in case the ATMs ran out of money over the weekend.  In this case, it was Tuesday after a holiday weekend.  (This is here because it was on the way to Plaza San Martin.)

 

The Museum of the Memories is in a former detention and torture center from the 1970s when the government rounded up suspected opponents.


The Free Tour guide (in the red in the center) said about 30,000 people disappeared.  Tortured to death, shot, and others were  thrown out of airplanes over the ocean.  Children were kidnapped and given to other families.  I knew some of this.  Netflix has The Official Story up - well it’s here in Spanish without English subtitles.  It’s about this period.

 I was going to save this museum for a post all its own, but I have so many backed up photos I should just put it up.  It’s a chilling account.  30,000 people is a tiny fraction of the population.  But if it’s your son or daughter or husband, it’s everything.  And all the relatives and friends and acquaintances of 30,000 people is enough to spread terror among millions of others that they will be next.  Sort of like undocumented Americans waiting for ICE to knock on their doors.
 
Buzzfeed reported in May that over 52,000 people were being held in ICE detention centers.  The vast majority of these are decent, innocent people fleeing violence in their own countries.  But the Trump administration is full of heartless people who easily rationalize the evil they are doing.  Here is a picture of some of their Argentinian colleagues from the 70s and 80s.

.  The guide mentioned that the detention center that houses the museum is right next to the cathedral and part of the cabildo - the main government building of the province.  Both were complicit.  

Here are a few more memories.

This giant (5 or 6 feet high) fingerprint is made up of names of the disappeared. There were several more such fingerprints on the wall.    

A courtyard in the detention center.

A poster about one of the young women who disappeared.

Another victim.

And interrogation room, I think.

The difference between what happened in Chile and what’s happening today is great.  We still have enough accountability that people aren’t being actively and intentionally  tortured or thrown out of airplanes into the ocean.  But it’s not because some of the people in charge wouldn’t do those things if they could.  They did it at Guantanamo.  We still have some safeguards.  But being locked up indefinitely without adequate food and, bad sanitary conditions, having your kids separated from you, is all pretty terrifying by itself.  We’re watching the cold-bloodedness of Mike Dunleavy in action.  He would have gone along with the men in the picture above.  And I’m guessing the 22 legislators who went to Wasilla and refused to vote to override the vetoes  have moral compasses that don’t recognize evil either.         

      

Crossing The Andes Again, This Time As The Sun Sets. Aconcagua?

Here are some pictures as we leave Santiago and fly back to Mendoza.  We were greeted like old friends by Alberto as we return once again to the Hotel Bohemia.  And we have a morning flight to Córdoba tomorrow.  So just a few pictures.



             

And then, presumably, we were in the Argentina side of the mountains.  When we did the ‘mountain tour’ a week or so ago (don’t think I got around to posting it) we got up into the snow.  In fact it was snowing.  If it had been clear, we would have seen Mt. Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere.  But we didn’t.  So I’m guessing the peak in the next picture could be Aconcagua.  Alberto thinks it could be (and he’s climbed to the top twice over five attempts.). Or maybe he just wants me to feel good.

I also looked on line for pictures to see if there were similarities.  Here’s a picture of Aconcagua from  Unico.

I’m not sure you can enlarge my picture  enough to see the dip on top that’s similar to the picture below it.

I’d also note, that flying over the Andes is a bit like flying over the Chugach as you leave Anchorage, but the mountains look a lot different.  I’m trying to figure out why.  There’s not as much snow.  They seem more jagged.

From Allende And Horse Statues, To Great Sunset Over Mapocho River

Some pictures from our walking history tour in central Santiago.  Airbnb gives local guides the opportunity to offer their tours on the Airbnb website.  They’re reasonably priced and you get a small group - in our case yesterday, three - and a guide.  We were scheduled for 3 hours, but we went longer.

There was a lot of information packed in and I didn’t catch - let alone remember it all.  Our guide was definitely an Allende fan and echoed economic concerns that we heard in Argentina.  He said Argentines think Chile is doing much better than Argentina.  But Argentina has free health care and higher education.  Chile has neither.  And while I thought the prices in Argentina were high (except for local products, like wine, and locally grown food, prices in Chile are higher.  And people, Pablo told us aren’t getting raises to keep up with the prices.

Here’s the entrance to our Airbnb.  It’s the red door in the middle.  It leads to a hallway.   

 

We have a tiny studio.  Entry, kitchen and bath downstairs and a loft upstairs with the bed.  It’s $ 34 a night, which is reasonable.  But for some reason, my iPad isn’t keeping cookies for sites I vis  i t  frequently so  I am constantly logging in.  But Airbnb wanted me to v erify who I was by getting a code from my cell phone.  But I’ve replaced my US sim card with an Argen tine sim card for t he trip so I can’t retrieve the code.  Once they gave me the option of sending it to my email.  But no l onger.  So I was cut off for a day.  Can’t contact my host, can’t make new reservations, can’t book a tour.  I  finally got their attention (leaving notes in the help? Box when I couldn’t use the code  and tweeting them.  And I got back on.  But less than 24 hours later I’m in the same fix.  We have a reservation in  Cordoba, but I don’t know the address and can’t contact the host.  And I can’t contact my host now to see if we can leave our suitcases here after checkout tomorrow so we don’t have to drag them  around town.

Turns out we’re in a district that’s sort of like Venice Beach - lots of murals, free spirits, bars, late night clubs.  But we’re also close to things in central Santiago.  But finding a grocery to get eggs fto make  breakfast yesterday, or even eat breakfast was hard.  We ended up at Fuente Aleman.  German Fountain.  It turned out later on the tour it was just across the street from a large fountain that the  Germans who were given land  in Southern Chile in the mid 19th Century  gave to Santiago (or Chile) at the 100th Anniversary of Chile’s independence.  (I think that’s right.)




It turned out that basically this was a grilled beef sandwich restaurant.  J was game, but the BBQ we had in San Juan was well beyond my annual meat quota.  I got a meat sandwich without the meet, but with avocado and tomato.  It was ok, but cost the same.  It was about $15 for the two sandwiches.  But what was unique was the waitresses who took orders, cooked the orders in the middle - that’s number 11, our waitress, next to the pile of meet for J’s sandwich.  (It could all have been for one sandwich, I don’t imagine.). And then they serve us.  They don’t take the money though, that’s for the cashier whose head you can see in back between the two at the grill.  But our waitress, who seemed a bit dour, did eventually ask where we were from.  Alaska is a great place to be from.  Most people haven’t met anyone from Alaska, but they know it’s cold.  I have to tell them this week that it was about 30˚C in Alaska.  That messes with their stereotypes.

We took the subway a couple of stops, because we were having trouble keeping to the path to where we were supposed to meet the guide.  It was only a little over a mile, but we were making a lot of wrong turns and backtracking, and I didn’t want to be late.    Early on the tour we got to this square in front of the (former?) presidential palace. Allende shot himself near one of the second story windows as the army was closing in.  The guide said to avoid torture and death by the army.  These two young women were out protesting the lack of progress against climate change.   The Trump sign said something about not believing in climate change.

To put these two women in perspective, here’s another view of the plaza.

The two women are on one side and four police are on the other.

The next photo is from where I took the picture above - the statue of President Allende.
And that’s our guide Pablo.  I can’t get into Airbnb to say what a great job he did.

[I don’t want to complain again, but the wifi is slow and cuts out regularly, my iPad problems with blogger continue,  and now I keep getting messages that blogger can’t save this post.  That means if that doesn’t clear up, I can’t post it either in the end.  And everything I’m typing could disappear.  So I’m going to stop now and see if I can fix this and post at least this much.  Each post takes me three or four times as long as it should to get up.].  [I guess it was just an internet interruption]

Here’s our guide Pablo in front of the statue of President Allende.

 Anchorage has three to five thousand foot mountains as a constant backdrop.  Santiago has four thousand meter mountains as a back drop.  That’s about 12,000 feet.  And they’re just as close as the Chugach.  But in Anchorage to get dramatic mountains in the background shots, you need to use a telephoto lens.  Not in Santiago.  Though normally the air is clearer in Anchorage - but from what I hear about forest fires, that’s not the case now.

This photo is of a rather cryptic mural of Gabriela Mistral  who is according to Wikipedia the first Latin American author to win a Nobel Prize. 

Only two more pictures (I’m leaving some out) and this torturous post will be done.  Next is a cultural center and these are some teenagers playing with light sabres.

And finally the sunset over the river Mapocho.

If there are odd spaces here and there, it’s because I need to hit the space key to be able to navigate blogger on my iPad.  Sorry.