Sunday, December 21st
Buenos Aires, Argentina
It is called the "Paris of South America," and we were eagerly anticipating our visit to Buenos Aires. Founded by the Spaniards in the late 16th century, the city today is the continent's second-largest metropolitan area (behind Sao Paulo, Brazil) and the second most-visited city in Latin America, trailing only Mexico City. Renowned for its architecture and cultural life, Buenos Aires has the highest concentration of theaters in the world, and recently it gained further renown when its Roman Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, was elevated to the papacy as Francis, the first pope from the Americas.
A light rain greeted us upon arrival, which was discouraging for many of our fellow passengers who had booked morning excursions. We had decided to take a city tour on Monday, as we would be disembarking the ship that morning and the tour would drop us off at the airport for our evening flight back to the States. So, we relaxed on board after a nice breakfast and sure enough, the skies cleared by noon.
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| We quickly found out that Argentines are proud of many things, including their native Pope, Francis... |
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| ...and soccer, which they follow as passionately as we do our NFL... |
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| ...and their sensuous native dance, the tango. |
The tango would be the focus of our first venture into Buenos Aires. We went ashore after lunch and spent some time in a cafe, using their Wifi, before boarding a tour bus that took us around the city and finally to a tango school, opened on this Sunday specially for our group. We would get an introductory lesson in the tango, and it was quite a lesson.
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| The immediate view of the port wasn't much, but beyond it, Buenos Aires awaited us. |
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| Casa Rosada, the Pink House, is Argentina's version of the White House. |
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| Plaza de Mayo, May Square, is where the Argentine revolution against Spain began in 1810. In recent decades it has often been a scene of sometimes-violent political protests. This weekend some veterans of the Falklands War were camped out, demanding payment of their pensions. |
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| La Ventana, our tango school, is one of the most prominent in Buenos Aires. |
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| The club's interior is right out of the 1940s. |
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| Our instructors were very, very good. |
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Sue and I passed our "test" with flying colors, the only couple able to do the dance error-free.
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Our guide told us some of the history of the tango. It first gained prominence in this part of Argentina, along with Uruguay, in the 1890s. Within a decade or so it had spread to North America and Europe, and it dominated Argentine culture in the mid-war years, led by the charismatic "King of the Tango," Carlos Gardel. Born in France in 1890, Gardel was a singer, dancer and actor. One of his most famous songs was "The Day That You Love Me," and you can hear it here. We had never heard of Gardel, but when you see photos of him and hear his voice, it's easy to see why Argentines were crazy about him then and revere his memory today, 80 years after his tragic death in a plane crash in Colombia.
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| Carlos Gardel could sing, dance the tango and rock a fedora. |
After our lesson we bused back to the port and boarded the ship. It was time to start packing, always an event we approach with mixed feelings on a cruise. We were getting anxious to go home, and yet we knew we would miss the ship and everybody we'd met. Certainly we would miss this terrific weather.
There was one last buffet on the pool deck, and the Journey let it all hang out for this one.
After dinner we repaired to our cabin to finish packing. Bags have to be outside your cabin door by 10 or 11pm on the night before disembarkation, so we planned ahead. Since our tour would drop us at the airport, we had changes of clothes at the tops of our suitcases so we could get ready for the flight before checking the bags. We passed on the final show of the cruise, another performance by Bruce Parker on the pool deck, and hit the hay early. Tomorrow would be a big day.
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Monday, December 22nd
Buenos Aires and the pampas
Today would prove that it is really better to leave the best for last. Some of our fellow passengers had morning or afternoon flights; a few of them would go into the city and rent a room for the day at a hotel, but many wound up spending the day at the airport. Since our flight wasn't until 9pm, we had booked a tour of the city and a trip to an estancia, an Argentine ranch.
Although we had seen some of the city the previous day, our new tour and guide were even better. In addition to seeing the sights, she filled us in on some interesting facts about life in Argentina and its capital.
Earlier in the cruise, veteran travelers had advised us to pay cash, in US dollars, while ashore in Argentina in order to get a more favorable rate of exchange. The official rate was 8.5 pesos per dollar, but by using cash we might get 11 or 12. That sounded good to us, so we came prepared. Argentina's inflation rate is an astounding 40%, so they were anxious to get hard currency in the form of Yankee dollars.
The economy has made things pretty tight here. When our guide answered some questions about local prices, the answers drew gasps from many of us Americans. Real estate is very expensive and lending rates are about 20%. So, most residents here rent apartments, and they tend to be small: about 600-800 square feet, and pricey: about 4,000 pesos per square meter, which converts roughly to $41 per square foot, if you want to purchase one. Renting the place runs about $700 per month. Public education is free all the way through college, and so is health care. That costs money, of course, and so Argentines pay high taxes: their income tax rate pushes 35% and they pay a 21% national sales tax on everything except, oddly enough, books. Gasoline costs about $5.70 per gallon. The average salary? About 130,000 pesos per year, which is a little over $15,000 at the official exchange rate.
Argentina's political history has been volatile, and like most of South and Central America there have been upheavals that have installed military dictatorships. The most recent return to civilian rule here had occurred in 1983, a year after Argentina's disastrous war with Great Britain over the disputed Falkland Islands. Argentines are still upset about that, but they prefer to remember an earlier era with fondness. That would be the time of Evita.
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The official portrait of President Juan Peron and his wife, Evita, 1948.
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In all the tumultuous history of Argentina, there has never been anyone like Evita, before or since. The illegitimate daughter of a wealthy rancher, Eva Duarte had become a well-known and well-paid radio and movie actress when she met Army Colonel Juan Peron in 1944. A rising power in the government, Peron was entranced with the young woman who was half his age. They married in 1945; Peron became president a year later and named his wife head of the Ministry of Health. Citing her own humble beginnings, Evita appealed directly to the people to support her husband's programs. Some say she was influential in gaining women the right to vote in 1947. Others had different views of her, then and now. Among other things she was accused of funneling money from the Society of Benevolence, which as First Lady she headed, into secret Swiss bank accounts.
Without question, though, she worked tirelessly for the poor of Argentina and was instrumental in building support for her husband from among the lower classes, unions and women, and she achieved a level of popularity herself that some compared to sainthood. She intended to become Peron's vice president upon his re-election in 1952, an intention that was not welcomed by Peron's opponents within the military and bureaucracy, but she was struck down by cervical cancer, passing away in July 1952 at the age of 33. Her funeral drew millions of mourners, night and day, for two weeks.
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| The main thoroughfare of Buenos Aires, Avenue 9 de Julio, is the widest in the world. |
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| The Obelisk, built to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the city's founding. Beyond and to its right, the radio building featuring Evita's likeness from one of her many impassioned broadcasts. |
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| Teatro Colon, the opera house, is considered one of the best concert venues in the world. |
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| We got another trip around Plaza de Mayo, with the Pink House in the background. |
No trip to Buenos Aires is complete without a visit to La Recoleta Cemetery, one of the most famous in the world. Not necessarily because of who's buried here, although Evita is in the Duarte family crypt, but because of the mausoleums.
The cemetery covers 14 acres and contains 4,691 vaults. Most are quite small, containing only one casket, but other family members are interred in underground vaults beneath the mausoleum. When a family member passes on, his or her casket gets the above-ground slot and its predecessor goes underground. Several past presidents of Argentina are buried here, along with many prominent artists and scientists. Oddly enough, Juan Peron is not here, and for a long time after her death, Evita was not here, either. More about them later.
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| Walking through Recoleta is an eerie experience. It's rather pleasant, but you're surrounded by the dead. |
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| Almost all the mausoleums are very ornately carved. |
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| The most numerous living residents of Recoleta are feral cats. |
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| In many of the mausoleums, the most recently departed are on display. |
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| The Duarte family crypt. Evita is here, underground. |
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| The tomb of Liliana Crociati de Szaszak, who died in 1970 at age 26, in an avalanche in Austria. The tomb was designed by her mother in Neo-Gothic style, unlike most other tombs here. The plaque has a poem, written by her father in Italian. Her hand rests on the head of her dog, Sabu. Both statues are in green bronze by the sculptor Wieredoval Viladrich. |
So, what happened to Juan Peron and his beloved Evita? After her death, Peron announced plans to build a memorial in her honor, a statue of a man representing the descamisados, the workers and poor whom she had championed. It was to be larger than the Statue of LIberty and in the base would be a glass-enclosed crypt containing Evita's embalmed body, a la Lenin in Moscow. For two years, her body was on display in her office building while the monument was being built. But in 1955, Peron was overthrown by the military and fled to Spain, leaving Evita behind.
The ruling junta canceled the monument, removed Evita's body from display and declared that photos of the former president and his wife could not be shown, even privately, and their names could not be spoken. Sixteen years later, in 1971, the military finally revealed that her body had been interred in Milan, Italy, under a false name. A lot of wild stories were tossed around, involving wax copies, disfigurement of the corpse and other things a little too gruesome to mention here, but Juan Peron had the body disinterred and moved to his home-in-exile in Spain, where he and his new wife, Isabel, a grade-school dropout and former nightclub dancer 35 years his junior, kept the body on a platform near the dining room table.
Juan Peron returned to Argentina from exile in 1973 and became president, with Isabel as his vice-president. He died in 1974 and was succeeded by Isabel, who became the first female president in the Western Hemisphere. She had Evita's body returned from Spain, displayed it for awhile next to their common husband, and then it was interred for good in the Duarte crypt in Recoleta, where it remains to this day. The government went to some lengths to make the crypt secure, so much so that it is said it could survive a nuclear attack.
As for Juan Peron, he was buried in another Buenos Aires cemetery, La Chacarita. But that wasn't the end of the story for Juan. In 1987, tomb raiders desecrated the crypt, stealing his cap and sword and severing his hands with an electric saw. They demanded a ransom of $8 million. It was never paid, and the hands are still missing. Peron's body was finally moved in 2006 to a new, and presumably more secure, crypt at his summer residence in the suburb of San Vicente. As for Isabel, her short term in office was beset by economic and political problems that led to violence and, eventually, another military coup that removed her from power in March 1976. She went back to Spain but was indicted by an Argentine court in 2007 on charges that she engineered the disappearance of a political rival while in office. Spain, however, refused to extradite her.
And you thought American politics was volatile.
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| More than 60 years after her death, Evita is still remembered fondly by most Argentines. |
We had one more stop in Buenos Aires, to the neighborhood known as La Boca. One of the city's 49 barrios, La Boca was settled by Italian immigrants in the late 19th century and for a short time actually seceded from Argentina. Today it is a colorful place with artists, restaurants and, of course, the tango. It is also the home of one of Argentina's most successful soccer teams, Club Atletico Boca Juniors, who play in a modern, 49,000-seat stadium known as La Bombanera, "the chocolate box." We enjoyed a stroll through the streets of La Boca and found that our US dollars were very welcomed and we got a very favorable rate of exchange.
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| On the balcony, three Argentine icons: soccer star Diego Maradona, Evita Peron, and Carlos Gardel. |
It had been a busy morning, but our day was far from over. After touring La Boca, we boarded our modern tour bus and headed west, out of the city to the famous pampas, the South American plains that extend from Argentina through Uruguay into southern Brazil. About 2/3 the size of the American Great Plains, the pampas sport very few trees, some unusual animal and bird species such as the rhea, related to the ostrich, and the Argentine cattle industry, which has been a mainstay of the country's economy for nearly 200 years. Argentines like their beef; they are the 2nd-largest per capita consumers of beef in the world, trailing only Hong Kong (the US is fifth), and the 11th-largest exporter of beef (we are 4th, behind Brazil, India and Australia). Argentine beef is well-regarded around the world for its quality, and we would soon find out that was indeed true.
We had a ride of about two hours on modern highways, which included a sampling of Argentine tea, called mate (pronounced mah-tay). Many Argentines carry their mate with them; it is mixed in a small gourd with hot water carried in a thermos, and sipped through a metal straw called a bombilla. It's high in caffeine and so is popular in the morning. It is considered poor etiquette to stir the mate, and also to wipe the bombilla before sharing it. Argentine per capita tea consumption is about 11 pounds per year; we Americans drink about the same amount of coffee.
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| A typical Argentine mate drink. |
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| At the gas station where we stopped, an Argentine traveler fills up her thermos with hot water for her mate. |
Once we got off the freeway onto a two-lane highway, we occasionally saw little shrines along the road. Our guide explained they were indeed shrines, to Gauchito Gil, a legendary Argentine gaucho from the 19th century who has become a folk hero. Travelers ask Gil for safe passage along the roads.
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| A typical shrine to Gauchito Gil, from argentinaindependent.com. |
When we entered the grounds of La Candelaria Estancia, we were greeted by a real Argentine gaucho. In North America we call them cowboys, and down here the gaucho is just as much a cultural icon as the cowboy is to us.
The ranch was founded in the mid-19th century by a Buenos Aires pharmacist, Don Orestes Pineiro, and his brother. Don Orestes named the estate after his wife, Candelaria Del Marmol. They built a French-style mansion and surrounded it with over 600 carefully-landscaped acres of woods and lawns.
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| The pampas, with Argentine cattle, look a lot like what we have up in Kansas and Nebraska. |
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| A gaucho greets our bus upon arrival at the estancia. |
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| La Candelaria Estancia. |
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| As impressive as the mansion was, the grounds were even better. |
After touring the mansion and the grounds, we were escorted to a large, open-air dining area and served a sumptuous lunch that included several varieties of Argentine beef, and then a show featuring native dancers and gauchos.
No visit to an Argentine estancia would be complete without a display of horsemanship. The folklore of the Argentine gaucho, as noted above, is very similar to that of the American cowboy. Modern Argentines look back on the gaucho era and admire him for his ability to literally pick up and move on whenever he wanted. Like our cowboys, the gauchos prided themselves on refusing to be tied down to one piece of land, one ranch, or even a family. So when a 21st-century Argentine says, "Vamos el campo," translated as "Let's head for the country," he is saying he's getting tired of his structured life and wants to get back to the gaucho days, at least for awhile. As Americans who really enjoy visiting our own West, we understand completely.
La Candelaria's gauchos demonstrated a couple of common gaucho tests of skill, such as la corrida de sortija, the ring race. A woman's ring is suspended from a crossbeam and hangs about 10 feet above the ground. The gauchos charge toward the ring, each carrying a sharpened stick not much thicker than a pencil. Going full tilt, the gaucho must try to catch the ring with his stick. He then presents the ring to the woman he favors.
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| Our gauchos ride the criollo, the native Argentine horse breed. Descended from Andalusians brought here by the Spaniards in 1535, the criollo are a bit smaller than our horses but they are hardy, intelligent and fast. |
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| After the ring race, a daring member of our group volunteered to ride a gaucho "sled." |
It had been a wonderful day, but even wonderful days come to an end. We boarded our coach and headed back to Buenos Aires. All of us were scheduled to fly home this evening, so we were dropped off at Ezeiza International Airport. Sue and I changed into our traveling clothes, reluctantly packing away our light summer duds for heavier pants and shirts as we prepared for our arrival in the far, frozen north. We had one last treat, though: Sue had arranged for us to spend our time this evening in the VIP lounge.
We boarded our Delta flight and very soon the lights of Buenos Aires were below us. We settled in with a late onboard dinner and a movie. My choice was Jersey Boys, the Clint Eastwood-directed picture about the '60s pop group The Four Seasons. It was a fine way to end the trip.
***
Tuesday, December 23rd
To Minneapolis and home
After the movie we slept, and the next thing we knew we were only an hour or so out from Atlanta. After a short layover we were aloft for our final leg, to Minneapolis. After more than a week of sunny skies and temps in the upper 70s and low 80s, it was a shock to land in Minnesota where we were greeted by gray skies and a high that would stay blow freezing. We had left our winter coats back in our car, but fortunately the Park n Fly shuttle was waiting for us. Before long we were back in our own rig and heading for Wisconsin and home.
Our first visit to South America was already in the past, but there will definitely be another one in our future. It's a big continent, and there's so much more for us to explore.
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| Vuelva pronto! |
It is called the "Paris of South America," and we were eagerly anticipating our visit to Buenos Aires. Founded by the Spaniards in the late 16th century, the city today is the continent's second-largest metropolitan area (behind Sao Paulo, Brazil) and the second most-visited city in Latin America, trailing only Mexico City. Renowned for its architecture and cultural life, Buenos Aires has the highest concentration of theaters in the world, and recently it gained further renown when its Roman Catholic archbishop, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, was elevated to the papacy as Francis, the first pope from the Americas. 
