EL EDIFICIO DE LOS PAVOS REALES

is the name of our B&B in Buenos Aires. 

When you translate this step-by-step, it is shown as “The Building of the Real Turkeys.”  However, Pavos Reales together mean “Peacocks,” which is the correct meaning.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.  Sunday is the final day on board, or I should say the final hours, since we’re designated to hit the gangway at 8:15 a.m.  We packed our big suitcases last night, and the ship elves made off with them from outside our door sometime after midnight.  They were affixed with the tags the ship had printed out per our response to their inquiry (no last day tour, departing on our own at a later date), so we put our faith in the “system” and hoped to find them at the terminal.  We got up early enough to make one last assault on the breakfast bar, and ate enough to tide us over until dinner, let alone lunch.  Fetched our carry-on bags, a last look around the room, and we were off.  Buses took us from the ship on the 15 minute ride to the terminal, wending our way through the very active cargo port (even on a Sunday).  At the terminal, hundreds of bags were lined up in rows according to the color-coded and alphanumeric designations assigned by the ship.  In no time at all we walked directly to the right row and voila, or more appropriately, aqui es!  The customs and immigration work had all been done by the ship, so all we had to do was to pull and haul our gear out to the waiting clutches of the taxi coordinator, or, as I like to call him, El Fagin, leader of the merry band of taxi thieves.  He and they seemed to be the only show in town, and it appeared to be a well organized procedure to match passengers with appropriate drivers/vehicles.  For a price.  We had only 2-3 miles to go to our B&B.  I had printed out a map showing its location and its address.  For this we were charged, up front, $120.  No, not $US120.  In both Chile and Argentina, pesos are designated with the $ sign, so this was 120 pesos.  At about 4.3 Argentine pesos to the buck, that’s about $28.  That seemed high, but we didn’t see any freelance options.  Turns out it was pure banditry.  When we took a cab to the airport at the end of our stay, a trip of about 30 miles and several tolls, it was only 150 pesos.  So, welcome to Buenos Aires;  pickpockets come in all guises.

The guy at least drove safely and directly to our building, and we dumped our bags on the sidewalk in front of El Edificio de los Pavos Reales, named for the ornamental peacock carvings on the front.  Unfortunately, as you can see by the picture above, a large tree smack in front of the place obscures all of the artwork from the street.  Some of it is visible from the sidewalk but, frankly, making out the peacocks is an exercise in squinty sight and imagination.  The hand points to the best-defined one (head left, sweeping tail right).

Our access door was not the glass ones to the right of Loni, but rather the very heavy portcullis entry directly behind her.  Virtually all the residential doorways we saw sported similar formidable bars and gates.  Once inside (Kevin came down to let us in; afterwards we carried a set of skeleton keys for this entry and for the apartment door), you have a choice of a genuine original 1912 cage elevator or a spiral staircase.  Having lived part (6 months) of my early life (age 6) in the then-not-so-new Hotel Envoy in downtown Chicago, which ran a similar elevator that kept trapping me between floors, old phobias made this an easy choice.  Besides, climbing stairs is good for you.  The ancient keys were a gas, but I can’t see that they provide a lot of security.  What could be easier to duplicate?

When we showed up, it was only about 9:30 a.m.  We walked in on the four guests from the previous night, eating breakfast, two of whom were to embark our ship that afternoon to take the same cruise in reverse.  Kevin, the proprietor, had us stow our bags in the foyer, asked if we were hungry (uh, no, not after cleaning out the ship’s larder), then suggested we might want to get a start on strolling around until noon or so, when he’d have the room ready.  We took off, thinking a walk to a park might be nice.  This entailed walking further along the street fronting the B&B, Avenida Rivadavia, which turned out to be one of the focal streets of the city.  All of the streets that transect it change their names at Rivadavia, and it is ground zero for the numbering system as well.  We didn’t figure this out until the next day, when we kept getting confused about the street names.  The confusion is compounded by the fact that many of the principal intersections lack any streetname signage at all.

We immediately felt comfortable walking this neighborhood, called the “Once” (eleven) District.  There was a lot of foot traffic, including many families (it was a Sunday), and nobody paid us any attention.  We quickly confirmed a fact stressed in our Lonely Planet guidebook:  BA is perhaps the dog-crappiest city on the planet.  Unlike pristine (again, as we were told, since we didn’t get there) Santiago, nobody seems to clean up dog droppings in BA.  They are everywhere.  You MUST keep at least one eye down on the pavement in front of you as you walk, as it is a constant tango with the forces of feces.  Naturally, I wanted to photograph some of the more, ah, colorful displays, but Loni nixed that idea.  You’ll just have to imagine the worst.  We didn’t notice much of this yesterday in the City Center area, but out here in the regular residential neighborhoods it is a real problem.  There’s lots of other trash and junk on the sidewalks as well.  Folks just seem to ignore it, but it was an eyesore to us.  We walked about two miles and came to the Parque de Centenario, where we found a convenient bench and plopped down to observe the passers-by, 

and this exercise class that was really going to town.  We sat there for at least a half hour, and they never stopped, although the leaders changed.

Traveler tip: major parks have bathrooms, thank goodness.  We left to make our way back, and discovered another fact about life in BA:  pedestrians have no rights whatsoever.  Cars actually speed up coming towards you, honking their horns all the while.  If you have the “walk” sign you still don’t have the right of way if a car wants to turn through the crosswalk in front of you.  More than once we felt like matadors, waiting for the “ole’s” to ring out as we did veronicas with turning cars.  We made it safely back to our home-away-from-home for the next three nights.  We think we really made the right choice.  The interior retains all of its 1912 woodwork and features, like the 15 foot ceilings and the 12 foot curved doorways, crown moldings, and wood floors.  We felt we’d stepped back in time.

Loni’s sitting in the parlor under the stained-glass peacock; the front bedroom, which has a balcony area behind those railings, is over her shoulder;  our bedroom is the top right, and the courtyard outside our door.

At left, looking into the dining room through it’s curved dooway from the patio (entry to our room on the right);  the dining room (with some pictures waiting to be hung), and the foyer.

Another view of our room which, as you can see, was not very large, but it was quite comfortable.  We had the whole suite of rooms to use, so the tight bedroom quarters were just fine.  The bathroom, fortunately, was not 1912 vintage, and everything worked just fine, with plenty of hot water, although we didn’t try the jacuzzi. 

We got unpacked and settled in, and I checked emails for the first time in two weeks.  Nothing of note, which was good.  Amazing how you can forget all about the e-world when you don’t have it available, and not miss it a bit.  We just kicked back and enjoyed the quiet until dinner time.  Neither of us had slept well our last night on the ship, so it was good just to veg.

We weren’t particularly hungry, so a pizza sounded good, especially as it was only 5:00.  BA, like Spain, is a late-eating city.  People don’t show up in restaurants until about 9:30, and they don’t get filled until well after 10.  But, it is quite common to have a snack (usually a sweet one) in the late afternoon, so we wouldn’t be the only ones wherever we went.  Our morning wander showed us that the Italian influence is just as strong in BA as it is in LA, and we saw lots of pizzerias.  A nice looking one was just a block away, so we headed to Sanchez y Sanchez, home of the never-smiling waiter.  Most waiters in BA are unionized, with stable pay and benefits.  Tips are pretty much fixed at 10%, so there’s little incentive to turn on the charm, especially with gringos who can’t speak a lick of Spanish.  The menu we got did have English subtitles, so we at least knew what we were ordering.  We got a prosciutto, some sort of cheese, and a ton of arugula leaves.  I also thought I was ordering two beers, but he brought instead a mammoth bottle of Heineken and two glasses.  It was perfect.  Our first day on our own in Puerto Nuestra Senora Santa Maria del Buen Aire.  We toasted, finished our pizza, and dragged our tired bones back to the B&B and . . .

the screaming kid.  (. . . to be continued)

DON’T CRY FOR ME, ARGENTINA

We again pulled into port in the early pre-dawn, so we were docked in Buenos Aires by the time we got up.  Like Montevideo, the cruise ships tie up at the commercial piers shared with the freighters, so our view from the deck was of a distant BA skyline over the tanks, warehouses, and boxcars.

BA is huge and sprawls like Los Angeles.  13 million people are in the greater BA area.  In the latter half of the 19th century, soaring agricultural exports funneled a lot of money into BA, resulting in elaborate mansions, public buildings, and wide, Parisian-style boulevards.  We hadn’t set up any formal tours, so shank’s mare would be our method of getting around.  The ship docked Saturday morning, but we would get one more night on board before having to disembark early Sunday.  Our location out in the industrial dock boonies meant a rather long bus ride to the terminal where we could get started.  Once there, we were offered a free shuttle bus into the heart of town.  Can’t resist free, so we hopped on.  The gimmick was that it dropped us off right in front of the sponsoring high-end jewelry store, with friendly greeters to usher everyone inside.  We could resist that, and set out down Calle Florida, the main pedestrian-mall shopping street in the city center.  It was a mixture of modern store-fronts and classic buildings.  It also had hordes of tourist police, just like Montevideo.  I sensed one young guy maneuvering behind me, whirled around, and caught him with a guilty-as-hell look before he did an about-face and disappeared.

One of the openings along the Calle turned out to be the entrance into a high-end fancy shopping center, the Galleria Pacifico, that would have been right at home in Paris, including its prices.  We did a lot of window shopping, but no buying.  No bargains here.

Calle Florida runs about 12 blocks and ends near the main square in the city center, Plaza Mayo, ground zero for centuries of protests.  Originally named Fortress Plaza when laid out in 1580, it acquired its present name after the date Buenos Aires declared independence from Spain – May 25, 1810.

The entire east side of the Plaza is taken up by the Casa Rosada (Pink House), the presidential palace where Juan and Eva Peron used to hold their balcony showtimes for the assembled masses.  Madonna crooned from here in the movie, “Evita.”

You will note the tall iron fence surrounding the Palace.  This, of course, is not unlike the fence surrounding our White House.  What is peculiar to BA, however, is that similar fences, or high walls, surround almost all of the public parks and gathering places throughout the city.  You can’t just walk into a park;  you have to circumnavigate the thing to find the one entrance that is open.  That can take a lot of walking.  This is, I’m sure, a remnant of BA/Argentina’s tumultuous past where limiting/controlling access to potential demonstration sites was a government priority.  Anyway, the Palace was hosting an outdoor display of photographs taken over the years by the official presidential photographer.  U.S. – Argentina relations are rather rocky at times, perhaps explaining the choice of the photo of Dubbya, which I love.  This probably dates from his visit in 2005 during the Summit of the Americas.

The woman with the scepter and the man clapping are the Kirchners, Cristina and Nestor.  Nestor, a native of Patagonia, was elected president in 2003 as the antidote to a long series of dishonest BA politicians and disastrous economic policies (the country was dead broke in 2002, banks were open only 6 days all year, people hid what money they had under mattresses, and half the population was below the official poverty line), and he was largely up to the task.  He negotiated debt refinancing with the IMF, actually paid it off in 2006, addressed the human rights violations of the prior military dictatorship, and guided economic growth; but he also presided over rampant inflation, a belligerent foreign policy (cozied up with Hugo Chavez), and a growing rift between rich and poor.  He stepped aside in 2007, in favor of Cristina’s succession as president.  She has proved popular with the masses (Evita II?), not so much with running the ship of state.  “Official” inflation persists at 25%, probably higher in reality.  Nestor was supposed to step back in as president in 2011, but died of a heart attack in 2010, leaving Cristina to run again without his guidance.  She won!  Now she’s pandering to national pride by stirring up the Falkland Islands imbroglio (in Argentina, they’re always referred to as the Malvinas, and woe betides any foreigner who utters the “F” word). 

Also along the Plaza Mayo is the huge 1827 Cathedral Metropolitana,

which also houses the tomb of Argentina’s most revered hero of independence, General Jose de San Martin, protected by flanking honor guards.  We thought the mosaic tile floors were particularly handsome.

One of the diagonal streets that branches off from the Plaza Mayo is Roque Saenz Pena,

which offers a view of the Obelisco, dedicated in 1936 on the 400th anniversary of the first Spanish settlement on the Rio de la Plata.  It is supposed to symbolize BA much like the Eiffel Tower does Paris or the Washington Monument does D.C.  It sits in the middle of the biggest (widest) street in BA, Avenue 9 de Julio.  Soccer fans circle the Obelisco following particularly important national team victories, and it is ground zero for measuring E/W and N/S distances from the city center.  There are seven lanes in each direction on the Avenue.

By this time, we were walked out, and headed back to the ship to get a late lunch (already paid for, so . . .), ignoring the smells and displays emanating from the local parrillas (steak houses).

After lunch, we spent the rest of the afternoon packing and tagging our bags.  We would have to put them outside our door before 11:00 pm.  They get picked up, sorted, and routed according to your tags.  Most all flights to the States leave at night from BA’s airport, and the ship kicks everyone off before 9:00 a.m., so it offers day-long tours (tango, lunch, gauchos) for those that are going home the same day.  They get the tour and are delivered, with their bags, to the airport at the end of the day.  It’s a good way to get there without hassle.  We, however, were staying on an additional three days in BA at a B&B, so our bags were delivered to the port terminal, where we would pick them up and fend for ourselves.  Since this was the last night on board ship, the kitchen went all out, offering lobster tails, surf & turf, etc.  They did a great job.  Afterwards, there was a final gathering in the theatre for a farewell to representative members of the crew, with well-deserved applause.

Based on our experience, we can wholeheartedly recommend the Celebrity Line, and won’t hesitate to book a future cruise with them if the itinerary is right.

Now, just where is that B&B located?

URUGUAY, EVENTUALLY

After leaving Puerto Madryn, we were to have a day at sea before calling at Punta Del Este, Uruguay.  We didn’t do much other than lounge about, participating in a couple of trivia contests, winning one, reading and eating.  After a good night’s sleep, we awoke to find the ship parked well out in a bay, whitecaps on the water and a good wind blowing.  Punta Del Este was stretched out along the shore, but we weren’t getting any closer.  The port authority had closed the harbor due to unsafe conditions.  This was not a docking stop, and we would have had to use the tenders to get to the pier.  Due to the rough seas and winds, that wasn’t going to be possible.  PDE is the Cannes of South America, a luxury playground for the yachting set and upscale resort vacationers.  It has only 10,000 year-round residents, but gets a half million tourists between December and March.  It might have been nice to see, but it was not to be.  The captain moved us further out, and idled around for the rest of the day, hoping that things would change.  They didn’t, so we moved out to sea to await our passage up the Rio de la Plata to Montevideo.  We couldn’t just go in early, as the docks are tightly scheduled.  So, another day of lazing about at sea, forcing oneself to eat round the clock just to assuage the disappointment.  Life is tough, man.

We got up early the next morning as the ship was eerily quiet.  We had docked in the pre-dawn and the engines were shut down.  I went topside to check out our first view of Montevideo.  Unfortunately, the sun was not quite up and our dock is right smack in the midst of a very busy commercial port, with cranes, containers, the navy, and other cruisers all around.

We had signed on for a walking tour of the city, but it wasn’t scheduled to leave until 1:30, so we grabbed some breakfast and set out on our own.  We could walk into the city from the dock, passing the local welcome sign and the Uruguayan flag on the way out.

We did quite a bit of wandering, to get an idea of what everyday areas looked like.  But first we had to traipse up the tourist streets that started at the dock area.  Montevideo has a bit of a problem with pickpockets, so there are “tourist police” everywhere in their lime-green vests. 

Most of the older areas of the city have a Spanish colonial genteel decay feeling to them, serviceable to be sure, but quite run-down in appearance.  I thought the Coke ads were classic.

In 1811, Uruguay rebelled against Spanish rule, and gained independence in 1828.  Waves of immigrants flooded in, primarily from Spain and Italy.  Unfortunately, the country went through much strife, civil war, foreign intervention, failed governments, Marxist movements, military coups and juntas.  It wasn’t until 1985 that civilian rule was restored under a Constitutional Republic system.  Today, Montevideo has a little over 1.5 million residents, and has the usual European plazas, parks, fountains, and monuments to national heroes, and a few main boulevards, like this view down the Avenida 18 de Julio.

The picture at the right, below, shows the only remaining vestige of the original citadel wall and gates that surrounded the early city, the Puerta de la Ciudadela, built in 1746.

Here’s what it looked like back in the day.  The old city is built on a peninsula.

In the background of the gate picture is one of the oddest buildings I’ve ever seen, with the turrets bulging out over the main tower.  This is the Palacio Salvo, erected by a wealthy merchant back in 1925, and then the tallest building in South America.  It was intended as a hotel, but never used for that purpose, instead serving as an office building and apartments.  It sits on one edge of the main Plaza Independencia.  Apparently it had lavish external decorative metalwork, all of which was stripped off and sold many years ago.

Another unusual bit of architecture was this building sporting the London-Paris wording with its construction date.  I haven’t been able to find out the what and why of this one.  At one point there was some English influence here, but I haven’t read about any significant French presence.

We’d walked a few miles and it was getting time for lunch, and we had to be back at the ship to pick up our organized tour, so we headed off in what I thought was the most direct route back to the pier.  Well, it was, sort of.  It also took us through some rather mean streets with precious few other people about.  Just the type of place they always tell you to avoid.  We didn’t encounter any problems, and soon were back at the gates to the pier.

We had a nice lunch, I changed the battery in the camera, and we went back down on the pier where there were a number of buses ready to take the walking tour folks out.  I think we got lucky, because the guide on our bus was Enrique, a dapper guy of indeterminate age, with a droll humor and passion for his country. 

The bus didn’t take us far, just a ways out of the dock area, and we started the walk.  One of the first stops was back at the Plaza Independencia, where was situated the old and new seats of government.  On the left is the former National Government Office (1830-1972), with the new government building on the right.  The old one wins, hands down.

While we were standing around the plaza, this protest demonstration got underway.  There wasn’t much to it, just a bit of chanting and a solitary drum beating, mostly young people.  After a short while, they just broke up and milled about.  Enrique said he couldn’t understand what they had to protest about – the government apparently is extremely left-wing and caters to just these sorts of folks.  He suspects they just wanted an excuse to take the afternoon off.

A very neat place Enrique (below, left) took us to was a former mansion – the Palacio Taranco – built in 1910 for the Ortiz de Taranco family, that has been turned into a Museum of Decorative Arts.

The interior is quite nice, to say the least, with an array of fine furniture including Louis XV and XVI pieces.  In 1925, the future Edward VIII stayed here as it was better than anything the government had to offer, and in 1987 Pope John Paul II visited to celebrate the 1979 Treaty of Montevideo, signed in this room, which established a peace process between Argentina and Chile.

Besides all the pretty things to see, we were treated to an authentic tango exhibition on the courtyard terrace.  I say “authentic,” because these two were old enough to have invented the dance.  They were elegant, smooth, and romantic.  We were pretty amazed afterwards to find out that she was 78 and he was 80!

Actually, this was the only tango we saw.  We didn’t bother seeking any out when we were in Buenos Aires.  It’s nice, but . . .

After the Palacio, we wandered over to check out the Cathedral Metropolitana, built in 1790.  We had to wade through the usual alms seekers on the steps, but the interior was beautiful.  I think I liked it most because it was so very bright and airy.  We were pretty amazed to learn that what looked like white marble all over was actually a cunningly painted finish.  Even up close you couldn’t tell.

Coming out of the church, Enrique turned us loose in this large leafy square

which, of course, contained vendor stalls for all sorts of knickknacks and junk. 

Our last stop was at the Teatro Solis, the main performance hall for music, dance, and theatre.  The main portion was completed in 1856, and newer wings in 1885.  Our young guide was incredibly, ah, charming.  Yeah, that’s it, charming.  Safe description.

We liked Montevideo.  The people were friendly (except for the pickpockets, who got some of our shipmates), and the city had a liveable scale to it.  It also seemed less expensive than Chile or Argentina.  That said, it’s not really a destination tourist spot on its own, only in conjunction with a junket like we’re on. 

Mae’r Gymraeg yn dod! Puerto Madryn.

After a day at sea, we pulled into our first Atlantic port at Puerto Madryn, Argentina, a speck of a town of about 60,000 in the remote region of Patagonia.

In the mid-1800’s, the government of Argentina had laid claim to a vast amount of land in Patagonia, but had no one to settle it.  At the same time, in Wales, Welshmen were upset at the encroachment of English language and culture upon their ancient tongue and traditions.  In late May of 1865, a small band of 153 settlers, few of whom had ever been out of their own villages, boarded the beat-up clipper ship “Mimosa” at Liverpool and left everything they had ever known to sail to a new world.  They had cobblers, miners, blacksmiths, bakers, and preachers but, apparently, not a farmer among them!  They had a difficult two month journey, made more so by the tyrannical captain who denied them access to the fresh air and sunlight of the main deck.  They sailed into Gulfo Nuevo on July 27, and named their new home for Sir Thomas Duncombe Love Jones-Parry, their Baron of Madryn, northwest Wales.

The city has a large aluminum industry, but is a center for tourism for the Patagonian coast, with penguin and sea lion colonies a couple of hours away.  Not big on foot-high penguins, and having plenty of sea lions in California, we opted to stay in PM and just wander the city.  It has a very nice sandy beach that stretches for miles, and a colorful central downtown area.  Although it was sunny, it wasn’t exactly sunbathing weather, and virtually no one was taking in the rays.

There’s not a lot to the town.  We did find a colorful fruit and veggie market, but most of the streets looked like they could have been plucked from any town in California’s Central Valley.  They had the same look, except for the glimpses of ocean.

I did note that the RV industry is thriving, and hooray for a rather dilapidated example of my favorite jalopy, which looks like its suspension is stuck on a permanent rake. 

About the only thing of note to do in PM is the local “Oceanographic and Natural Sciences Museum,” housed in a neo-classical house that was built by one of the early settlers.  It had a few curiosities and interesting displays and, best of all, was free that day.  It also had a rather unnerving spiral staircase up the tower, with treads that seemed not to have any visible support except where they came out of the wall.

We saw no restaurants that had any appeal, and I wished we had sprung for one of the tours that went inland to some of the Welsh villages that dot the area, like Trelew, Rawson, and Gaiman.  They offered a visit to a Welsh tea shoppe, which might have been nice.  Apparently, the Welsh spoken in these small towns is considered to be the purest form of the language, and folks from Wales travel here to study it and refresh their speech.  We didn’t hear anything but Spanish in PM.  We made our way back to the bus pickup area.  The ship does get to dock in this port, but at a remote pier out by the aluminum plant, about a 15 minute bus trip into the town center.

We queued up for this bus, which promptly closed its doors after discharging its passengers and pulled away empty.  I think those folks in shorts and T’s are Canadians from northern Alberta. 

Had to wait another ten minutes or so for the next one to arrive, which did haul us back to the ship, just in time for a stint at the design-it-yourself pasta bar!  Mmmmm.  Bow ties, mushrooms, and veggies.  I’ll spare you the desserts.

We went on deck later on to watch us pull out.  The captain supervises things from his flying bridge, with the dock workers casting off the huge hawsers.  They throw them in the drink and the ship’s capstans winch them aboard.  The side thrusters move us sideways away from the dock, and we’re underway.

As we moved out into the bay, I noticed a small speck furiously smashing its way through the waves, coming at us from the dock.

This turned out to be the pilot boat, coming out to retrieve the port’s pilot from our ship.  That little sucker was tunneling into those waves.  I don’t think any of Loni’s seasickness remedies would have worked on board that thing.  Once we got to the proper location, the ship stopped, the pilot boat came along side, and the harbor pilot jumped down to it.  I missed that moment, but he was pretty nimble.

Off they went back to the pier, we picked up steam, and farewell Puerto Madryn!