On being a tour guide for six days in Buenos Aires.....

I now have a new great appreciation for tour guides....Sister, brother in law, and niece came for their first trip to Buenos Aires for 6 days only.  I had a great time researching all the things I wanted to show them, made lots of lists, time tables and calendars.  I thought I had it all figured out, except some things turned out to be closed, or I hadn't figured in transport times, or how tired our feet or brains got, or contingency plans for the one day it rained....Here are some of the highlights of last week:

The double decker tour bus leaves from Florida and Avenida Roque Saenz Pena every hour.  You can get off and back on at stops all over the city.  I thought this might be boring for me because I had walked all the areas it covered, but being high up and not having to watch your step gave a whole new perspective, as did the audio guide, in the language of your choice.  Be sure and check out how well your head set works before the tour starts as some had bad connections.

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The Recoletta Cemetery-again, I had spent lots of time here before, but it is so varied and vast that I was again wowed.. an encapsulated mish mash of architecture, sculpture and history...  It's like peeking into people's living rooms at times....each plot tells a different story... 

Some are fancy, some filled with decorations and paraphernalia, others long neglected... 

We took a bus ride out to Temaiken, a bio reserve that was far more amazing than I thought it would be...Tuesdays its half price (25 pesos).  Each area was more spectacular than the last...(I thought this guy's knees were pretty cool)

But the best thing of last week was a night at The Pale Blue Door.  London set designer Tony Hornecker 

and his crew came into town a month ago and set up an amazing unique space in an abandoned San Telmo old mansion, gave us a great meal and outrageous entertainment....they served some of the food via buckets on a rope and pulley system....

and the featured entertainer had multiple costume changes, danced like crazy and got the whole restaurant doing greek dancing by the end....The group just left Buenos Aires and will set up new dinners in Toyko, Berlin, New York, and maybe your town...check it out via Tony Hornecker or The Pale Blue Door web searches.

Art shot for this week is of a three D painting I was captivated with in one of the galleries on Esmerelda street...

And your food shot for the week was taken in a Chinese restaurant near the British Ambassador's residence at a luncheon of rowdy expats....

Our new digs in Montserrat, Buenos Aires

New friends Tony and Umberto bought this 100 year old apartment a few years ago, and have been fixing it up ever since.  They just finished the remodeling and were kind enough to rent it to us for the six months they will spend in their other home in Costa Rica.   Pretty fancy for us Oregon bohemians, but we are adjusting....

I think Dave's almost finished sculpture finally has the right setting.  He has been hauling this piece around for more years than I have known him.  He has strapped it on the back of motorcycles... and when he decided to bring it down here, I thought for sure the airlines or customs would not allow it.   He wrapped it up with his golf clubs in white plastic and tied the whole thing with lots of rope.   It really did look just like an Egyptian mummy... it was the talk of every airport we lugged it through. and even brought smiles to the customs agents.  

Dave is in heaven with this fancy kitchen....

Here's the evening view down to our street.  this particular building, probably 30 years older than where we live, has these strange, not gargoyle, things sitting on the balcony rails.  better picture of those guys later.  but, the rain that falls on the balconies runs down to the street through little critters that seem to be beagle puppies.  i'm just going to have to get closer.  when the doors, windows are open, it seems that the ceilings are 18 - 20 feet tall.  yes, i'd live there, but, we do have 1500 feet to wander around in here, and, did you look at the photo of the kitchen?  nuff sed

 

  and the apartment across from us

There are six apartments in the building, and everyone has use of the roof top terrace...Here is a shot from the terrace looking down on the places in the interior of the block next to ours....Montserrat is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Buenos Aires, and over the years, people have added on apartments in what used to be their interior courtyards, making interesting hodgepodges of dwellings...

and a bigger view from the roof...

And here's your food shot of the week...our favorite new neighborhood restaurant..."Prosciutto," on the corner of Salta and Venezuela...great Italian food, and as the name implies, famous for their many varieties of Prosciutto..you can see them all hanging over the bar...

And last of all, your art for the week...a painting I just finished that I have been working on, off and on, for over a year....based on photos of friends...note that it is painted on a fine reed window shade so it can be rolled up...in the tradition of Japanese scrolls....

The end of our adventure...

Every coffee table book of Argentina includes a pic of Mount Fitz Roy in Chalten right near Calafate, so I will too  (especially as it took me 3 days to get it due to obscuring clouds and rain)..

Time to head home...We passed through tourist haven Bariloche on the way back north, with Dave's nose for great bars finding this little hip hostel (Hostel Patanuk) on the lake shore tucked between the high rise hotels....

From Bariloche, we took our first plane ride of the trip... I am kinda proud of going the overland way for most of this journey...Paul Theroux's sentiments regarding a slow approach to destinations does hold true (although I did whine a bit after a 12 hour bus ride or two).

Here's the lake of Bariloche with the Andes and Chile fading in the distance...

and bam! after the lake ...flat brown for miles.  But brown is so boring I had to tweak colors just a bit..

so after an hour of brown, we came into Perito Moreno and Los Antiguos...

They have water from a big lake that is channeled to each farm plot...the area is famous for its fruits and berries, and every plot was surrounded by Lombardy poplars to cut down the constant WIND..

We liked hanging out in Los Antiguos after all the glitz of Bariloche and Calafate..People seemed to have a good time doing their thing without alot of tourists to cater to.

And they had great carefully prepared food too.

Guachito Gil

I kept noticing tiny little shrine-like buildings along the roadways down south and figured they were honoring people who had died there in auto accidents....

 

 But then I started noting that some were painted red and had red flags ...some had piles of bottles, other strange stuff piled around them.  So I started asking locals I met and found that these red places were all about Guachito Gil  (Cowboy Bob?)...Each person I asked seemed to have a different story about who Guachito Gil was....a young boy who was studying to be a priest and got killed trying to save a child, a young cowboy who got killed by a jealous husband..a pious cowboy who is a saint now and grants cures and wishes....One very fashionable woman sniffed and said all that Guachito Gil stuff was superstitious and she didn't like it one little bit (too pagan for her?).  For little ole me raised watered down Presbyterian, it all seemed spooky, strange, and quite touching....all the thought put into these little spots in the wilderness.

  

 

 

I still don't get the cigerettes, coke, full bottles of wine, etc....are they offerings or a tradeoff?  "I will quit drinking coke and smoking cigerettes if you grant me this wish"?

If anyone out there knows more about Guachito Gil, adds some comments please!