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)