Buenos Aires, Part III
Yes, we’re still here, in Buenos Aires. Y que Bueno, ¿no?
We saw most of the classic sights weeks ago, but in a port city of 12 million there will always be something, somewhere, someone new.
On a bus, a walk, a sit in the park, our Buenos Aires is and can be many things. High heels and fashion traipsing down tiled sidewalks, then an old woman carrying her grandson´s skateboard for him. Pizza, pasta, pizza, pasta, empanadas, bife de chorizo, pastries, helado! A mohawk, a blind man being helped to his door by a stranger, clouds quickly rolling overhead from the enormous river that you can’t see from here, though it’s quite near.
The association of women with white scarves wrapped around their chins who demonstrate in the plaza every week, demanding justice for their children and others who disappeared here in the 1970s. Abandoned architectural gems with trees and vines springing from all of their cracks. Our favorite cafe, with tables on the stage of an ancient theatre, the three balconies of audience likewise converted into a beautiful bookstore.
Pigeons, chinese grocery stores, loose sidewalk tiles that squirt up old rain water (or something else?) if you step on them wrong. Church spires that look Spanish, iron-balconied apartment buildings that look Parisian, and McDonalds that sadly look like everywhere, anywhere (and Starbucks is said to be coming).
Poodles, pit bulls, googledy-eyed pekinese, and all that they leave behind on the sidewalk. A woman helping her little boy pee into a planter in the business district. Parks and trails that have challenged Lewis to build up to 12 mile runs, past crowds drumming and dancing for carnaval, and packs of wild dogs. The fabulous climbing gym where they all know our friend Regan, who used to live down here (poco loco, they say).
Parks that are more old and more beautiful than many natural forests, their trees forming cool canopied shelter from the hot sun over circles of friends sharing mate, old men playing cards and chess, couples kissing unabashedly and whole-heartedly on benches. The balcony from which Eva and Juan Perón used to shout. Buildings with never-repaired bullet holes from… when?
The gorgeous, historic Palacio Duhau, an old palace that has been converted into a Hyatt Hotel, where you can get away with lounging away a hot afternoon in the beautiful salons, the grandeur, the air conditioning. The trees that suddenly distinguished themselves from the rest by bursting into blooms of pink poinsettia-like flowers, painting the parks for the end of summer.
So many pregnant women, everywhere! A roller-blading pizza deliveryman, a row of scooters than will bring ice cream to your door. Green parrots flocking in the park, 10 song birds hanging in a cage above a random sidewalk, with no owner in sight. A film shoot, complete with artificial rain over women with umbrellas. Or another, where we step over cables and equipment, then past horse-drawn carriages and actors dressed for the 19th century.
Enormous lines of riot police to deal with the parade of union protesters taking over a street (again). Tango dancers prancing and lunging for tourists. Kids smoking and laughing in a doorway. Theater district, book district, bohemian barrio, business district, ritzy neighborhoods with palaces that are still inhabited by whom?
Graffiti and stencils beside professionally painted street art beside concert posters. An old woman who feeds dozens of neighborhood cats every evening, and the doorman who knows everyone’s name on our block. A violinist passionately whittling away at our subway transfer, we listen until the doors of our train shut to the beautiful sounds.
This has been the background–no, let’s say the foreground. The setting. As we pass through it all, we are trying to form some semblance of a life within it. We volunteer several times a week at L.I.F.E. Argentina, which stands for ¡Luchemos por una Infancia Feliz y con Esparanza! or, ‘We fight for a happy childhood with hope!’ We usually work with a bunch of beautiful kids in one of several community centers/soup kitchens in some of the city’s outer suburbs, playing or working on their homework, organizing clothes donations, etc. It gives us a better impression of the city and of Argentina, of her diversity, her challenges, her reality, both beautiful and hard.
Lewis also spends some time at Red Humanista (the Humanist Movement), an international organization that promotes nonviolence and non-discrimination. It’s a great forum in which to discuss the faces of violence in our lives (not just physical, but economic, psychological, sexual, etc), but it’s also simply a safe place for teens or any member of the community to hang out and talk in the evenings. And I just began doing some volunteer research for an organization called Global Hand in Hong Kong, of all places, through the United Nations Online Volunteers.
We lazily settled into the humble hostel we first came upon in December, in a small historic home in the San Telmo barrio, owned by a kind couple who have a never-ending patience for our Spanish. It’s small enough that it feels almost like home for a while, and it’s also a crossroads for plenty of interesting travelers who are beginning or ending trips of all shapes and sizes. Next week we may move to a small rented apartment, a last big bang in the city before we head home (yes, there are now tickets looming on the horizon).
We have met all sorts of fun people at The English Group, a dozen Argentine friends who have met for years in a cafe to speak English together on Friday nights. They welcome the practice of talking to native speakers, and we welcome the opportunity to meet a variety of locals (porteños, as citizens of Buenos Aires call themselves) and hear about their life in our own language, for once. It has also given us the opportunity to hang out at other times and practice our Spanish with patient listeners–who also happen to be fascinating people.
We have twice had the pleasure of exploring the museum-esque home of our friend Pablo from the group, where he introduces us to ’70s music videos like ELO and Abba, or shows us his never-ending array of antique clocks, ancient audio-visual equipment, ´50s TV sets (anything with buttons, he says on his blog) that he refurbishes until they work like new. On the side, he is kind enough to trade his impeccable English for our shabby Spanish over dinner. It’s also come to be a weekly Sunday event that we have lunch with Theo, the cute little Peruvian lady who sells garlic on the street in our neighborhood, and sometimes her family if she wants to share us with them.
When Amanda went home at the end of January, we were alone for the first time in a very long time… Since September we had had all of these wonderful, much-loved friends and family flying in almost weekly! So, as wonderful as that was, it has also been nice to get back to being just Christy and Lewis, at last.
And ahhh, the familiarity of a place. We have missed it, ever since our last long stops in southern Ecuador. To be less spectator, more participant. If not quite insider, at least outsider with one foot in the door. We haven’t blended in I suppose, but maybe we clash less with the background this month.
Valizas y Punta del Diablo, Uruguay
I will be honest and say that, before this year, I would have been hard pressed to locate Uruguay on a map. During these months tracking our journey down the South American continent, I mastered its basic geography (a small coastal country between Argentina and Brazil) but knew little to nothing about it. It has been one of those countries that pulls up no pictures, symbols, or news headlines in my mind–what would it look like, feel like, be like? No idea. It was simply a name on the map next to many others.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, our friend Amanda flew in to Buenos Aires. I have been blessed to have Amanda in my life for over 10 years, since we were roommates at CCU and then downtown for a few years. We have known one another since we could hardly call ourselves adults, and into our unpredictable, whimsical, happy and hard 20s. She is one of only a few friends who was around when Lewis and I bridged from friendship to dating to marriage, and who really knows both sides of us Shannon-Smirls. And though she and I are quite different in many ways, our differences have allowed us to learn from, encourage, and laugh at one another uniquely.
Amanda came seeking beaches, primarily, and after a couple of humid Buenos Aires heat waves this month, that sounded perfectly reasonable to us. Thus, along with half of Argentina on their summer vacation, we took a ferry across the enormous Rio de La Plata to Uruguay (pronounced, roughly, ‘Ooh-roo-gooAY’).
Compared to the other countries we have explored, there is relatively little helpful information online or in our guidebook in regards to maneuvering transportation, eating, and sleeping along the Atlantic coast in Uruguay. We arrived with a few names of beach towns, nothing more. To find oneself in such a situation (where are we going and will it be worth it?) feels adventurous and free just off the boat, tinged with frustration and nervousness when you have been wandering all day. There was, yes, one night sleeping on the beach for lack of options (to be later woken by drunken kids playing with flaming cardboard by our side). And the weekend realization that we were completely out of money, and the only ATM within an hour’s drive was empty (with Banks closed until Monday). But the rewards for our guesses, discomforts, and blind wanderings were great. We spent our week in two distinct beach towns that were everything we could have asked for and more. Furthermore, we were reminded that being surprised at a delightful finding is often worth the awkward unknown you had ahead of time.
In the first half of our week we found Barra de Valizas, a tiny village where the dirt roads run straight into the dunes of a long, white beach scattered with haphazard huts and cabins. It was a small enough place to see horse-drawn carts and cows in the streets, and there were few houses with electricity or more plumbing than a pump water system. At night the town was mostly candlelit, especially along the beach, and even in restaurants and on the streets, where dozens and dozens of blankets were laid out with artisan creations beside homemade lanterns.
The beach and the town were a sea of hippies–every shade of hippie there is. Do you prefer dirty, dready, happy, juggling, fire-juggling, stylish, drumming, freaky, or rasta? Everywhere we looked were different styles of clothes and types of art, every street corner and stretch of beach had a different group of friends sharing yerba mate and maybe a guitar or a puppy, and the rhythms of drum circles played every night from different parts of town. Actually most of the local culture during the summer appears to be overshadowed by these visiting crowds from Montevideo or Buenos Aires, the number of which must outnumber the normal population 2 to 1.
After shopping for beach huts in varying states of disrepair, creativeness, cleanliness, and price, we decided that we were going to spend the majority of our time on the beach or in the little cafe we fell in love with, anyways. So we settled on setting up our tent in the “campsite,” a backyard full of dozens of tents as close together as can be. Except for one night of inexplicable shouting passersby, we found we were able to sleep just fine after the water, sun, and tummies full of fresh sea food wore us out. I should also note that it was in Valizas that we at last found the best pastry this side of the equator. Should you go there, there is only one bakery, and you will find that every morning they have a fresh pan of the perfect cross between torta y factura (un pastel), con ¡montones de crema pastalera y pocas manzanas, también!
We followed advice that sent us to Punta del Diablo next, a slightly larger, though still small, fishing village smattered with funky beach houses and tiny cabañas. This time our campsite was in the spacious backyard of a small hostel, with hammocks hanging from big shade trees, and even a puppy and a kitten, to boot. The coast there was all green hills of pine trees descending to grassy dunes on beach after beach, each a half moon with a rocky point on each end. In town was the popular shore where you could set up in the sand beside a colorful fishing boat for some shade, backed by restaurants and shops right on the sand. A short hike through the dunes brought us to the next beach over, a long, wide stretch with fast, overlapping waves crashing in. The amount of sun we got the first couple of days exhausted us, so on our last, perfect beach day we ended up building a shelter of branches and leaves to shade us as we lounged, reading and eating sandwiches and peaches. On our last night we splurged on dinner as a big yellow moon rose over the ocean, and in the morning we we were on a bus back west.
On the way out of Uruguay we visited the charming pueblo of Colonia del Sacramento, full of colorful colonial architecture and cobblestone, before watching an unreal sunset and hopping on a ferry back to Argentina. Ah, and lest a forget, there was also an unforgetable taxi ride that night to our hostel, with disco balls hanging from the rear-view, blue lights on the dash, and a middle-aged driver shouting along with the music, flashing his light-up key chain in our faces to the beat, waving his arms frantically as we all danced to classic country and 80s music together. The perfect end to an eccentric beach week.
Our last days with Amanda were spent back in Buenos Aires, enjoying the helado (ice cream) she and Lewis share an addiction for, eating the best Tiramisu on earth, walking miles and miles, and drinking many cups of coffee, many rounds of mate. I hope that we sent her home well-loved and encouraged, which is how she left us. We saw much and did much, but the sights and experiences were only the perfect background for the conversations that make us friends, about life, the world, and ourselves.
Buenos Aires, Argentina II
December did not much feel like a holiday season to us, in the usual way at least. In another way, though, it was more festive that Christmas could ever be: What better way to spend any month than to celebrate well with so many whom we love so much? First with our old friends and recent traveling companions on their departure–Joel, then Phil. Next, to meet up with family–from both sides, at that!–and to share life throughout so great a city. It was hard to believe it was Christmas, but it was a special month, nevertheless.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
On a world map, it seems to me that the distance between Ushuaia at the bottom of the continent and up here in Buenos Aires is roughly the same as that between Denver and New York City. We broke up the 48 hours of busing between the two as best we could. When we headed north from southern Argentina with Phil, he had a flight out of Buenos Aires only a short week later. We all wanted his last days in this journey to be distinct, and also truly Argentine. Our last stop up the coast was in 2 smaller towns that lay across a pretty, tree-lined river from one another: Viedma and Carmen de Patagones.
I think it was the simplicity and Argentine normalcy that we enjoyed most in this area. Though lovely places, these towns lacked a central novelty to draw the flow of tourists their way. To us, a lack of other tourists and overdone tourist attractions is an enticing novelty in itself. People were happy, open, kind. And they were surprised to see us, which is always fun. This was the first time we could feel summer’s arrival in full. Suddenly there were strawberries and dark red cherries for sale in every fruteria, and the warm night air was swarming with hundreds of large dragon flies (libèlulas) on our first night there. (I don’t know why, but they almost entirely disappeared the following day).
Our days were spent at the local riverside swimming spot watching kids and dogs jump into the water, groups of friends sharing mate and sun. We crossed from town to town in the tiny tugboat-like ferry, and talked to locals about American TV shows we’ve never seen, or about their lives on this Atlantic coast. We took a local bus through flat brown fields with ostrich-like rheas running every here and there, arriving shortly at a beach backed by brown cliffs flocked by thousands of loud, green parrots. We walked several kilometers on the hot sand to watch a couple of elephant seals and several hundred sea lions bellowing and lumbering about. In the water they were fast and graceful, on land, awkward and heavy. As far as I can tell, they spend the majority of their days sticking their noses straight up towards the sun.
The few weeks since that lovely time have been a hurricane of departures, greetings, feelings, and oh, that flurry-frantic-fun city of Buenos Aires. On Phil’s last full day with us, we rode bicycles through a hundred streets, some charming, some terrifying, to see the city block by block. We reflected on what had been and what was to come, laughing, dining, sipping mate in a happy little park. We knew relatively little of Phil before he met us here for this 2+ month extravaganza. He has encouraged us enormously in his head-long dive into Spanish (which got him incredibly far in so short a time). He and Joel both made us think, feel, and laugh in new ways. They are each such unique men in their intelligence, kindness, and embrace of the world. Their company made our trip more reflective, more interesting, and more silly. I suppose our friendship with them, then, adds those things to our lives as well, doesn’t it? They are much missed already.
You may have heard about the shootings in Colorado in December, one of which occurred at a missions organization and school called Youth With a Mission, or YWAM. I mentioned in my last post that my brother Daniel is associated with YWAM, and narrowly missed the recent incident at this base, where he was scheduled to teach the following day. Some of the students who had been on the base during the incident had been planning their outreach trip to Argentina, intending to leave the following week. They indeed arrived in the capital the same week that we did, and in a random series of events, my brother joined them to teach and add extra support. Suddenly, bizarrely, my brother and I were able to meet up in the middle of Buenos Aires and marvel at the strange circumstances that lead to this wonderful early Christmas present! We were able to spend several days together, catching up on life, on family, on what it is to be Christy and Daniel, brother and sister. Lewis and I were so thankful for the time, and so blessed to be able to hear about Dan’s adventures of late, and to show him a bit of our nomadic life, too, before seeing him off to make it back for Christmas with my parents.
Very late on Christmas Eve, Lewis’s Mom Gemma and Aunt Gina arrived to meet us in the gorgeous home in the Palermo Viejo neighborhood that we got to share for a couple of weeks. With them, Lewis and I were able to experience a side of Buenos Aires we never would have been able to, otherwise. There were indulgent meals, new wines, funky galleries, small museums, and antique shops. In braving the heat wave, we became acquainted with dozens of taxi drivers, taking refuge in their air conditioning as they maneuvered us through the city. We also took full advantage of (and fell in love with) our air conditioned refuge. Gemma had found a rental condo in which we could live like kings, one of those places you usually only see in magazines. It was full of art and architectural details, all exposed beams, stained glass, and tall windows onto open patios. If you would like to get a small glimpse of how spoiled we were, click here.
And here we are in January, in 2008 at that. Lewis and I are on our own again, although we are soon to return to Buenos Aires to pick up our dear friend Amanda. Supposedly we will all be whisking ourselves off to the beaches of Uruguay together. For now we have attempted to escape the heat by heading to Villa General Belgrano, close to the city fo Còrdoba. The heat has evidently followed us, though, and although this small, green town was historically settled by Germans, it is now apparently settled by hundreds of Argentine tourists. Still, our campsite has a pool, shady trees, and a hill-top breeze, and we have discovered that when you’re really, really hot, that is about all that anyone could need to be happy.
