It Takes Two to Tango

Hey hey, I´m alive! Just wanted to say that I´m in transit right now. Left the refugio this morn at 5am…now in Buenos Aires for a few hours…then going to hop on a bus for some 20 hours to Iguazu.

Had a great time in Sierra la Vigilancia..beautiful place, touched by very few foreigners…but…haven´t showered in 8 days (yuck), no heat, and it was damn cold! Looking forward to a hot shower (hopefully) in Iguazu…tomorrow!!! :p

Going to hit up Munchis (ice cream..yummmm!!!) before my bus departs.

Updates later, maybe in a day or so

Lots of stories to tell, but no time.

Heading down to Sierra la Vigilancia tomorrow to go climbing for a week…will probably be off line during this time. Check back later!

Chau!
Marisa

On the way to Recoleta, one of the many monuments

Looking down one of the pathways between the mausoleums of Recoleta

Details of a plaque

Cardinal on a statue

Fancy mausoleum

Looking down the pathway

The Duarte Family mausoleum, where Evita Peròn lies at rest

Plaque for Eva Peròn on the Duarte Family mausoleum

Angel sculpture

Bronze sculpture for a mausoleum. This one really stood out because the style is very different than most of the other sculptures (most are of a classic style)

Well, I guess there *is* cheaper internet here in Iguazu! I thought I was in central Puerto Iguazu…but happens that I discovered the main area of town today. Ha!

Okay, now I have a lot to type :p

Yesterday after going to La Boca, Angie headed back on a crazy cab ride to the Plaza de Mayo. The Madres start marching at 3:30pm on every Thursday. We got there a bit late, but the were still marching. It was very interesting, to see that the atrocities of the Dirty War are still affecting the people today.

Angie said that there are two groups of Madres. One group, has accepted that their children are dead, but still march for the cause. The other group does not accept that their children are dead, even thought the know it, because to admit that they are dead is to agree to the fact that there is injustice.

But unlike I had read before, the do not march with pictures of their loved ones pinned to their clothing. They dress normally, but wear a scarf with cross stitched wording on them, and march with a large banner in front, with people following them.

After the march, the Madres move to the statue in front of the Casa Rosada to do a speech. It´s a rally, where they speak, speak out against Bush, and speak for communism. Their children were revolutionaries at the time that the were killed, so the Madres are taking up their children´s fight by the marches and speeches.

I met up with Angie and we were going to explore La Boca. We met up with Cathy, an ex attorney from Seattle, who was going to head there too, so we took a cab together. In my Footprints guide and other things I´ve read, La Boca is supposed to be dangerous. My guidebook says, ¨Do not go to La Boca alone¨ Great..so I didn´t know how bad it really was…

Our cab driver was completely insane!!! First of all, we hailed him in the middle of traffic..no one was moving, we quickly piled in. Then he gave us this huge ass lecture in Spanish about getting in on only the right side, blah blah blah, that´s how Argentians do it. He went on and on for a while. We looked at each other, snickered a bit, tried not to laugh out loud. On that cab ride, we almost knocked another cars mirror off, came so close to busses, shit, we could have gotten run over by busses a few times…needless to say, being a pedestrian in BsAs is dangerous..riding in a cab is dangerous…I don´t know what is the worse of the two!!!

We got to Caminito, a popular pedestrian area of La Boca with houses of corrugated steel brightly painted different colors. This area was not dangerous at all. There were a lot of people walking around, tourists…from Argentina and from elsewhere. La Boca seems to be an artists haven, an artist community with cobblestone streets. It faces the waterfront, an industrial looking waterfront. But this barrio has so much character to it.

We walked around Caminito, and were all enticed to tango (hey, another free lesson!). In front of a restaurant as a small band playing, and two people tangoing. The guy grabbed Cathy´s hand and took her off to tango. Then he grabbed me, and we tangoed. Cathy said I looked like I really knew what I was doing (pshaw, right!!). Then Angie asked the musicians to play salsa music, and the girl can salsa! It was a lot of fun.

We explored more of Caminito, passing by the colorful blues, yellows, pinks, reds on the walls of the houses. And the murals on the walls. Caminito is not a very large area, so we went through it pretty fast.

After that, we headed on to the Museo de Belles Artes de La Boca. It is housed inside a school, so we weren´t sure where it was at first. We walked up many stairs to posters telling of an artist who painted scenes of La Boca. We wondered if the entire exhibit was just posters at every stop in the stairs, then finally came to the top of the stairs to an exhibit hallway.

We looked around to see abstract art at first..where is this artist that they talked about in the hallways? There were several salas, with different exhibits — Mascarones of ships (the things on the front of the ship that are carved out of wood with depictions of faces or people), some abstract art, some prints, sculptures, and of that guy´s painting.

The artist´s name was Benito Quinquela Martín. The reason why he was significant..as we found on the other floor of the exhibit..was because he had lived there. They had rooms preserved with his furniture and whatnot, as well as paintings and sculptures.

Angie and I stared outside at a little patio area..wondering if we were allowed to go outside. A lady told us that we could, there´s a great view of La Boca, and a sculpture gallery outside as well. We snuck out, headed to the mirador, got a bit excited snapping pics..and wondered if we had lost Cathy. We were going to go downstairs to find her, then she was heading our way. The view is a 360 view — you can see over La Boca, the waterway that borders the barrio, and other parts of Buenos Aires.

It was about 2pm at the time we left the museum. We decided to grab some late lunch…Angie and I wanted to see the Madres march around Plaza de Mayo at 3:30pm, so we had some time to kill. We sat outdoors, enjoyed when the sun finally peaked out again, and listened to tunes of what reminded me of the Andean music I heard in Peru last year.

Yesterday evening, I sat with my roommate, Moran, in the common area. Moran is a 20 year old Israeli girl who is at the end of her 5 month trip in South America. Before she departed on her trip, she had just finished her 2 year obligatory service with the Israeli army. We talked forever at the hostel, and I learned so much from someone so much younger than me.

Her friend, Sonja, met us up at our hostel. It was Sonja´s last night on her 3 month trip…returning to Paris. So we decided to head out for a night on the town. We took a cab to Puerto Madero, the area of the city that faces the waterfront. There was a cute bar/grill that we found and hung out at. Sonja had her last Bife the Chorizo. I had a grilled chicken sandwich and a caipirinha. The 3 of us talked all night until we looked at the time and it said 2am…then called it a night.

Yesterday, I went to the Teatro Colòn to do a guided tour. I ended up doing the guided tour in English because the line was shorter. There were a couple of gringos in line. I also met a girl from Patagonia (I forget which city, but it´s a smaller one) who studied to be an English teacher and was doing the tour in English to practice her English.

The Teatro was very impressive. It´s one of the world´s largest opera houses, compared to one in Milan and in New York. We entered in the opera house at street level into an area with displays, a grand marble staircase leading up to the halls that go to the box seats. In that main area, you could look up about 4 floors to see thedomed stained glass window depicting scenes from Greek mythology. The stained glass had come from France. The floor of the area consisted of small white mosaic tiles in the repeating shapes of a fan. There was various colors of marble, imported from various parts of the world that made the columns, the base of the columns, the stairs, and the sides of the stairs.

We went upstairs, past a few free standing sculptures and sculptures of the busts of various composers chiseled into the building itself. We went through two hallways with gold leaf accented walls and murals on the ceiling. The chandeliers in these hallways were huge, holding about 200 light bulbs.

We then entered another hallway to one that leads to doors for the second floor box seats (I think), next to the presidential box suite. In the box seats is room for 6 people on antique velvet covered chairs. We saw that actors were rehersing for the Barber of Seville to start in early August.

The theater is in a horseshoe shape, with about 4 or 5 floors. At the top two floors is the standing room only area. At the bottom of the theater are many chairs. I think Natalia said that the theater is able to hold about 3,000 people. There was a fresco on the ceiling, depicting various scenes with a man in white, who is said to be a muse. And in the middle of the fresco is a huge chandelier, holding 700 light bulbs. Part of it comes down all the way, and the part that does not come down is used for actors to emulate the voice of god or noises from above (they stand in an area on top of the chandelier.

We exited the lush box seats, entered into the room where the President gets welcomed if he attends a show. A lady in vintage Renaissance style costume played the Stradavarius? for us.

The rest of the tour showed us the workings that go into the theater. We went to the basement, where all of the work is done. We saw the storage room, where 88,000 costumes are stored, some borowed from other International theaters as well as the sewing room, where the costumes are made. Dress forms were a plenty, and the tailors were working hard.

We looked into the area where shoes are made. They have about 22,000 pairs of shoes at the opera house. Some of them have about 10 inches of platform heel. Maybe I could use them 😉 We also passed by the carpentry area, a huge area where they build props for the scenes; and by the painting area, where they paint the backdrops for the scenes. Picture it as a huge school gymnasium, floor coverd with canvas. There are stairs to a platform so that the painters can view the backdrops from afar.

We saw rehersal rooms as well. The rehersal room for the children had black paint on the window so the children won´t get disrupted. We also passed by a few rehersal rooms where actors and actresses were rehersing dancing parts.

It was a great and worthwhile tour for 7 pesos (student price – a little over $2). It makes you realize that there is so much that goes into a production, and a production of a mass scale takes a large sized crew to keep it going.

Monument at Plaza San Martìn

Sculptural relief below the monument

Armed guards in front of the Falklands/Malvinas war memorial

Torre de los Ingleses

Street performer

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Forms for making shoes?

The eyes of San Telmo — eyes for dolls

A guy selling feather dusters

Tango in San Telmo with a thong hanging out

Calle de Tango