All the Touristy Places

An extensive subway system runs through most of downtown Buenos Aires, offering rides for approximately sixty cents (US) per person.  It´s a clean, efficient system weakened only by the fact that it shuts down each night by 10:30, despite city-wide late-night proclivities.  There´s a bus system in effect as well, but buses literally require a complex sixty-page guide (sold at all news stands for around two dollars) to be understood.  I eventually buy the guide, but even still, never quite master the massive system.

The top tourist attractions in Buenos Aires, from what I gathered, are:

1. 

   Puerto Madero

   Puerto Madero – Built in the late 1800´s, the port was almost immediately rendered obselete by Puerto Nuevo (New Port), which allowed Madero to fall into dangerously impoverished disrepair.  For decades, talk of renewal of the region or its outright destruction never inspired any real action and what is now one of the most vibrant sections of the city laid dormant for close to a hundred years.  In the late 90´s, the port was finally revitalized and now houses some of the most valuable real estate in the city, as well as some of the finest (and most expensive) restaurants and lodging.

2. Recoleta - Tourists with an eye for architecture often take note of the fact that many Porteños (the nickname for people from Buenos Aires) barely notice the richly designed architecture inspired by a wide variety of European countries that makes up their city.  Thoroughly modern monoliths of architectural design shadow classic Greek designs to one side and early-20th-century Italian to the next.  Recoleta, then, houses overwhelmingly those of French design, and also is the location for the famous Recoleta Cemetary, where the body of Eva Perón is interred.
3. Palermo - Low buildings generally of Spanish design have in many cases been converted to shops and restaurants, leading to a Bohemian feel, making it popular with fairly well-to-do younger Argentinians and the tourists that visit them.  Many great restaurants, though like Puerto Madero, few of them are affordable.
4. Retiro - While not particularly known for its restaurant scene or nightlife, this part of town houses the Retiro bus station, which is one of the largest transportation hubs in Argentina.  Bus rides can be acquired here as far north as Iguazu Falls, as far south as Ushuaia, or as far west as Santiago, Chile.  The nearby Buquebus terminal offering boat rides to Uruguay can be found here as well.
5. 

   The Abasto shopping center

   Abasto – While actually a part of the Balvanera district, the Abasto shopping center and its surrounding area are typically referred to simply as Abasto now.  This is only significant because I will have an apartment here in several weeks.

6. La Boca – Settled long ago largely by Italians, their style dominates the architecture here.  The main attraction here is the Caminito, a street that in the 1950´s was one of Buenos Aires´ biggest eyesores, only to be slowly re-painted in a variety of rich pastels by a single artist, leading to a tremendous renaissance to the area.  Tourists now travel here to watch live outdoor tango dancing and music shows, and to simply enjoy the scenery.  After walking back to our hostel from here with my mother, I was told that the regions of La Boca outside of the Caminito are extremely unsafe and we´re lucky we weren´t mugged.  I didn´t share this information with my mother.
7. San Telmo – The oldest barrio (neighborhood) in Buenos Aires, San Telmo still features a number of colonial buildings and old school charm.  It also hosts one of the largest art and craft markets every Sunday, closing down several streets for the tourist-centric fair.  Basically, a great place to take moms.

My Newest Travel Buddy

¨Yance.¨

No one quite calls to you like your mother.  The combination of varying inflections, questioning, command and concern, all evoked in a single, monosyllabic abbreviation of a name.

¨I´m getting a little worried…¨

I look up at her from my laptop.

¨You haven´t given me a schedule for tomorrow yet and it´s getting dark out.  We only have another week here in the city.  I need to know we´re doing something tomorrow!¨

¨Ok.  Did we do anything today?¨ I ask.

¨Oh, I´m exhausted.  Today was wonderful!¨

¨And, I mean, have any of our days here not been equally full and awesome.¨

¨No,¨ she sighs.  ¨This has been the greatest vacation of my life. You´ve been excellent.  So so excellent.¨

¨Thanks.¨

I go back down to figuring out the next days itinerary.  It´s quite possible that I´m also checking email, facebook, sweettravelblog.com, the news and a wide variety of escapist Internet fare as well, and after perendinating my way through college, she´s not exactly without cause for concern.  But there are definitely some travel pages currently open!

I sense that she has something to say, long seconds before she speaks.

¨…but Yance?  I really am kind of worried about tomorrow…¨

After seven months of never traveling with anyone I couldn´t easily get away from for minutes, hours or days, I now find myself confronted with approximately 350 straight hours of my mother´s company.  She argues with me at times, criticizes me at others, and at still other times offers unsought after advice on dressing, eating, dating, behaving and living.  In short, she is a Mom.  She´s also one of the best travel companions I could hope for, at least in tourist-friendly environments like Buenos Aires.

The natural compulsion of a son to impress his parents ends up working to the advantage of both when he´s thrust into the role of unofficial tour guide.  While before, I´d gotten complacent with my time and my exotic locations, suddenly I find myself crafting intricate travel plans, seeing fascinating things I might´ve otherwise dismissed.  In the process of trying desperately to keep my mother well-entertained by the richness of Buenos Aires´culture, I suddenly found myself keyed in to far more of it than I might´ve experienced on my own.

Also, she flipped the bill for, like, everything.

The Tango Shows

This being Passover week and my mother being an observant Jew, her number one tourist destination is a traditional Argentinian seder.  Argentina apparently has the third largest Jewish population in the world after the United States and Israel (it´s what they tell me here, at least), so I hoped this wouldn´t be a problem.  In the mean time, her number two ¨must-see¨ was ¨A Tango Show.¨  Preferably two.

Prior to stopping over in Argentina, I had no idea what exacty this meant, though several days in town before her arrival gave me ample time for research.  Much like Samba is to Brazil, Tango is the national dance of Argentina and Buenos Aires is its heart.  After living there, I discovered many Argentinians that insisted that tango was a tourist dance that locals took no part of.  But just as often, I met porteños that had been dancing at events and at milongas for most of their lives, and insist the dance is no joke.

Tango shows are nightly performances, with loose stories built largely around the traditional dance.  In a loose sense, they are live, tango-themed versions of Step Up 2 The Streets.  In a very loose sense.

Sometimes, two male performers vie for the heart of a scantily clad woman who will likely end up dancing with both of them.  Another act might demonstrate the birth of tango in the early 20th century by railway workers.  Still another might involve a garish re-enactment of the balcony scene from Andrew Lloyd Webber´s Evita.  Heavily choreographed dance numbers are broken with live musical performances by deeply baritoned men in classic tango wear.  Typical tango shows last about two hours and dinner and wine are optional (though obviously more expensive).

For our first performance, I surprise my mom with a two-night stay at Complejo Tango, a boutique, tango-themed hostel that also houses a well-received nightly show.  From reviews, shows seem to be intimate affairs with great views from anywhere in house and plenty of audience interaction as well.  My mother´s original plan involved staying in the same hotel for the entire week, but neither of us are happy with the place, and unlike in most hostels, none of the employees speak English.

Complejo Tango is cheaper than our prior lodging, and has far more character as well.  Unfortunately, the location doesn´t offer as many night-time options for dinner and scenic strolls, which are both high up on my mom´s list of ¨Things That Are Awesome at Night.¨  We´ll stay here for two days, no more.

Dance class begins at 7:30.  My mom sits it out, and I don´t complain, as saucy tango dancing with my mother happens to be high up on my list of ¨Things I Never Really Want to Do.¨  A young Brazilian girl, Roberta (pronounced ho-BEHRcha), is here alone and is both my de facto dance partner and company for dinner during the show.  She´s here by herself for two weeks, before returning to finish her masters in International studies, and dances just incompetantly enough that we´re perfectly matched without either side feeling too gawky or unbalanced.  At class´s end, the teacher selects us to demonstrate our newly acquired dance skills, and while she doesn´t share her reasoning for having only us amongst the entire class perform, it can only imply that we were exceptional.

Roberta is living on the cheap and plans to pick up a more reasonably priced dinner outside after the show, but my mother offers to pay for her meal here.  She declines, but is willing to accept a soda on our tab.  Dinner´s fairly good, but the wine flow is bottomless and of more than passable quality (even cheap wine in Argentina is incredibly drinkable), adding to our enthusiasm at the smoothly cheorgraphed dancing taking place just feet from our seats.

The show loosely interprets the history of tango through a series of dances, representing the major period´s of tango´s history.  At one point, I´m dragged directly into the show by a wandering performer.  Later on, Roberta and I are both encouraged to take the floor, demonstrating our new moves.  It´s a lively and engaging performance and definitely my favorite of the two we saw.

La Ventana was our second option, and despite being late, we managed to secure a perfect spot just three rows back from the stage.  It´s a larger and more expensive performance, and features a variety of Argentinian music and dancing outside of traditional tango, involving pan flutes and an elaborate gaucho bola dance.  Toward the night´s end, an elaborate balcony is erected onstage while ¨Don´t Cry For Me Argentina¨ is sung passionately in Spanish.  Well done, but a bit heavy for my tastes…

Passed Over in Argentina

The Jewish Torah lists three holidays as the most important annual events: Passover (the one where you eat weird food), Yom Kippur (the one where you don´t eat at all, and Shavuot (the one no one knows).  For the eight days of Passover, Jews eat unleavened bread along with no other grains, leading to Jews all around the world spending eight days eating food that most of them find interesting enough to chow down on for three, tops.  It´s kind of like spending a week living like your unfortunate friend that´s allergic to gluten; no pastas, breads or beer for you!

Passover commences with two important meals called seders, and they´re the most important aspect of the holiday.  Non-observant Jews might snack on burgers and tacos all week with little regard for divine commandments, but still typically find themselves at at least one of the two seders, forcing their way through the 16 traditional steps to the dinner.  It´s all about the order of things (seder actually means ¨order¨), and the dinner is almost like a checklist as participants walk through a list of required Passover actions: wash hands, eat a green vegetable, tell the story of the exodus from Egypt, mix a bitter herb with the unleavened matzah, have dinner, say grace, etc.

In Argentina, much like anywhere in the world, the story might be told in another language, but the order of things is unchanged.  My mother had actually done a fairly good job of tracking down seder options for our stay here in Buenos Aires, using the help of Chabad House, a worldwide organization aimed at getting prodigal Jews fully back into the faith by making it as accessible (and in some cases, ¨fun¨) as is likely to be possible.  When the drunken Jewish guy in Paraty, Brazil, desperately wanted to ¨put tefillin on me¨ after discovering my link to the faith, it was no surprise that he was affiliated with Chabad.

Our first night was spent at the small Chabad center in Palermo.  It was mildly disorganized, but for the most part it was clean, easy to follow, served decent food and had enough English speaking guests that we had a table all to ourselves.  As such, it doesn´t make for interesting storytelling.

The second night, on the other hand, found us in a densely packed room for those that could not pay for their seder experience.  My mother would gladly have paid, but we failed to organize things in time and once Passover begins, none of the religious use their phones, making such late-to-the-game organization impossible.  As such, it appeared that we were place in the room where the poor (and homeless?) Jews of Buenos Aires showed up for a free meal.

Children darted about the room, screaming and unhindered.  A four year old girl slaps a younger child nearby, inspiring a burst of uncontrollable screaming that no one moves to address, and the younger girl shrieks like a siren in the room´s center for countless minutes, unaddressed by any of the present addresses.  A single rabbi stands at the head of the room, futilely attempting to keep order.  At times he yells louder, attempts to silence a room that participates in private conversations that have little to do with his chanting or reading, but his efforts are wasted.

Seder food is meant to be eaten in a particular order, and after the recitation of a blessing.  If the people here know this, they do not care.  As ingredients for later steps of the seder are placed on the table, they are immediately devoured by the room´s hungry, listless denizens.  Across from me, a bedraggled, heavyset older man sits, his grin missing multiple teeth.  A bowl of charoset is set before us, ostensibly for the entire table.  He immediately picks it up and starts eating directly from the bowl.

Luckily for us, he speaks some English.

¨Youuu are frommm Americaaa?¨ he asks.  His mouth is open as he chews.  His mouth is full as he talks.  The spittle flies.  Even when it doesn´t, I can´t help but imagine the wet particles filling the air between us.  When his attention is later elsewhere, my mother suggest unjokingly that he might be partially retarded.  His accent sounds more Russian than Argentinian, stretching and inflecting syllables like an extra from Fiddler on the Roof.

¨Yes,¨ I say.

¨MMmmmm!  Are there LOTS of black Jewwwws there?¨

¨Huh?  Black Jews?  Um, Sammy Davis Jr.  Only black Jew.  No mas, I think.  Wait–  Whoopi Goldberg.  Yeah, Whoopi too…¨

He pauses to take this in for a moment before his eyes light up excitedly.

¨LOUIEEE ARMSTRONG!¨ he barks.  ¨Is…  JEWWWWW???¨

The question is oddly intense, as if I will be judged by my response.  Others at the table are looking at me expectantly now.

¨No,¨ I say.  ¨No, I´m almost positive Louis Armstrong is Not a Jew.¨

He sits back in his chair, oddly satisfied with my answer.

¨Well this is easily the worst seder I have ever been to,¨ my mother says with a surprising smile.  She is, like me, perversely amused by the whole thing, though.  ¨I really hope you don´t write about this on your blog.¨

Recollecting Recoleta

Buenos Aires: ¨Safe enough to bring your mom.¨

It´s easy to have a false sense of security when you don´t get mugged, pickpocketed or scammed in any way.  I´m told the city has its dark side, too.  The villas apparently are this city´s equivalent of Rio´s favelas, and should be avoided at all cost.

¨If anyone ever offers to rent you a nice villa in Buenos Aires,¨ a local tells me over dinner, ¨get away fast!¨

But my mother and I make our way through the well-planned grid of streets with the help of a single free map given out at any of the hostels in town.  By day, we leave our hotel in Palermo heading in the general direction of Recoleta and allow ourselves to be lost.  A pink-pillared building turns out to be the Museo del Bellas Artes (Museum of Fine Arts), housing over 10,000 works of art and free to the general public.  Walking through their extensive collection of Dali, Rembrant, Monet, Rodin, Manet, Toulouse-lautrec, Cezanne, Chagall, Van Gogh, Degas, Renoir and countless others, my mother is immediately amazed by the vast collection.

¨This is as good as any museum in the United States!  Can you believe they have this many paintings in South America? All these Masters, and you know they probably never leave this museum.  We might never have seen any of these!  I never would´ve expected anything like this down here!¨  She´s nearly in shock.

It´s easy to make fun of her limited world view, but it brings into focus the uniform assumptions about South America that I myself had (and most people I talk to have)  before taking in the vast differences in culture and development that varies from country to country.  Even after researching, I inherently expected that ¨third world¨-like environment spread out across the entire continent.  And in some places, I definitely found it.

[Note: Third World.  There seems to be some confusion about this term.  Sometimes I´ve heard people say ¨this place should be second world at least...¨ or other things implying a lack of understanding.  During the Cold War, the US and her allies were considered ¨first world¨ while the communist countries made up the ¨second world.¨  All other countries not deemed important enough to be included in the conflict were then ¨third world.¨]

But the truth about Buenos Aires is that it´s about as safe and modern as any of the world´s great cities — and probably moreso than many US cities I´ve visited.  Living there for a month cleansed me of any overblown notions of the city´s perfection — poorer sections of the city definitely have their share of crime and far less control over litter — but even then, I came away feeling that Buenos Aires has a captivating energy that seems to permeate it across the board.  I´ve had too many random encounters with the kindness of her people — strangers coming up to assist me in the streets, in subway stations, at restaurants, etc — to dismiss it as coincidence.

¨Have you noticed,¨ asks my mom as we leave an heladeria (an ice cream store — these gourmet shops are on nearly every block, and all seem to do a fairly good business.  Argentinians LOVE their ice cream), ¨how nice the people that waited on us were?  How nice all the people that wait on us everywhere are?  I mean, I expect it from the waitresses at nicer restaurants, but even their fast food places.  They just all seem so happy, everywhere we go!¨

I had noticed.

My favorite restaurant, La Cabrera, was located in Palermo.  I researched ¨best Buenos Aires steaks¨ relentlessly, and it was one of the most highly recommended, with good reason.  The wait is expected to be 45 minutes, but it´s one of the better waits either of us have ever experienced as champagne is served to all those that wait outside to be called in.  Occasionally, a plate of sliced tenderloin makes its way out and we´re all given meaty toothpicks of the succulent steak to tide us over until we´re allowed inside.  The dinner can only be described as ¨epic,¨ but I´ll save my review for the next food entry.

Waiting outside, a lady walks up with her three-year old son.  As they near the cluster of expectant diners, the child hunches over and starts coughing weakly.  She bounces from person to person, tapping elbows to get attention, and as each target looks over, the child coughs and stares upwards with wounded eyes.  The game is obvious and people are visibly upset by it.  She gets nothing.  Crossing the street with the now healthy child, she appears to be yelling at him.  Buenos Aires is definitely not without its problems.

A separate day, we find ourselves several blocks from Palermo in the Recoleta district.  With the exception of La Cabrera, our favorite restaurants were all in Recoleta, and this region of town just seemed to have a uniformly welcoming vibe to it.  A large hill is covered in craft stands with a focus in leather.  My mom buys a leather bracelet, but holds back on purchasing more; you can´t go more than six blocks without running into another of these fairs, and we´ve got some long weeks of perusing still ahead of us.

Behind a wall are the tops of the variously styled mausoleums of Recoleta Cemetary.  The mish-mash of architectural styles employed from one crypt to the next somehow manage to create a consonant character across the whole of the massive cemetary.  The tremendous grid is mostly unmarked, and more than a few people have maps.  After fifteen minutes of aimless meandering, we settle upon finding the grave of the cemetary´s most famous inhabitant: Eva Perón.

It isn´t easy.  Fifteen minutes more and the assistance of of multiple map-wielding tourists and we track it down, inconspicuously located down one of the narrow alleyways of crypts.  The only thing that works in our favor is the presence of such a large cluster of tourists down what would otherwise be an unassuming line of mausoleums.  The crypt actually belongs to her family, the Duartes, and only two small plaques toward the bottom mention her entombment therein.

Other noteworthy things about the cemetary:

1. Amidst fancy, new mausoleums of the finest quality marble and other material, are those that visibly haven´t been taken care of in decades.  Glass in their entryways is often broken, and it´s clear that animals have taken residence inside.  In one case, it looked as though janitorial or cleaning supplies were being stored over the coffins.
2. Most of the bodies are stored underground.  In the few cases where doors to the mausoleums were open, steep staircases led into the darkness below where tall columns of coffins were stored above one another.
3. Cats.  This place is overrun with them in the dozens, if not in the hundreds.  Signs are erected in key locations warning that the cats are not to be fed, but it doesn´t seem as though this advice is heeded.  I asked someone why so many made this place their home and was told ¨Where do you think all the rats live..?¨

Maria Eva Duarte de Perón started life as an actress and performer, before meeting Colonel Juan Perón in 1944.  They soon married and he became President in 1946.  She became a voice of the poor and disenfranchised, speaking often on behalf of labor rights, and started the first feminist party in Argentina.  In her famous balcony speech, she spoke before two million people who screamed for her to become the country´s vice-president.  Initially she opted to take the role, though her health was rapidly declining and she ultimately died that year of cancer at the age of 33.  Immediately afterwards, Argentina´s congress declared her the ¨Spiritual Leader of the Nation,¨ and she still retains great popularity throughout the country.

Opening La Boca

We walked both to and from La Boca, which in hindsight might not have been the best idea, though I cannot once remember feeling any hints of danger.  We might have just been very lucky.  Both walks were far more boring than dangerous, as other than Caminito, La Boca (¨the mouth¨)  just didn´t seem to be that interesting a town.  Even the large market we walked through was more of a low-grade flea market than any of the others, specializing only in cheap, second-hand clothing and trinkets.

Caminito, though, stands out colorfully starkly amidst its gray surroundings like a kindergarten project that exploded outwards over several city blocks.  The streets were painted and revitalized in 1960 and have remained a popular spot for tourists ever since.  Goods at the craft stands are mostly the same in quality and appearance as what they´ve got for sale at every stand, but the artists have made this section of town their home, and it has some of the finer small galleries we´ve seen.

Restaurants do most of their business outside, along the closed off street, and each has a make-shift stage erected for live performances.  It´s not uncommon to sit at one table, watching a pair of tango dancers sultrily performing their tango act, while just thirty feet away another similar act is going on.  The slew of shows are entertaining, though the dueling tango music can at times be overwhelming.

San Telmo

It´s a few blocks off from the nearest subway exit, making a visit to the Sunday market more of a hike than other things we´ve done thus far.

¨Are you sure this is the right way?  I don´t see anything.¨  My mother isn´t too worried yet.  Just enough to voice initial concern.

¨I think so.  At least, the map says so.¨

I can see that she´s skeptical.  Several more city streets and there are some stands interspersed by rugs laid out on the street and covered in cheap jewelry.  Like every other market we´ve been to, one in four stands offers maté gourds and bombillas, the metal straws and filters used to drink the bitter, local tea.  My mother is unimpressed, and I assure her there´s more to the market than this.  I´m not sure.

Luckily there is.  The closed streets get thicker and thicker with vendors and shoppers, both tourist and local.  Bands dot the cityscape at regular intervals for maximum exposure.  My mother buys a lone classical guitarist´s cd, as well as one from a six-piece tango band with rock influences.  She´d later see music she liked more, but two cd´s was apparently her one-day music purchasing limit.  There´s enough here to kill at least two or three hours worth of time.