January 5, 2013
Having spent a scant twenty-four hours in B.A. I am an unreliable source, but still will say it is an amazing city, especially on the crystal-clear, sunny, uncharacteristically non-humid, eighty-degree day we just spent there.
The topography along the huge estuary that is the Plata River is flat, flat, flat; so the city and is spreading its tentacles everywhere. Each area has its own feel and look. La Boca, the old port, has the look of West Africa, the origin of many of its forced immigrants who came to the New World enslaved. There are many two-story frame houses with neon-bright colors; colors that are often different floor to floor and window to window. These are broken up by huge public spaces such as the Boca Stadium, ground zero for soccer addicts, i.e. all Argentinians.
This is our third visit, and still the scale and beauty of the administrative “downtown” is impressive; and here the strongest influence is clearly European. The main boulevard is fourteen lanes wide, and columns abound on the facades of ministries and public buildings, with sprinklings of deep-shaded public parks. On our first visit (with a Pan Am thirty-day pass to see as much of South America as you could fit in) our hotel was in this area. I’ll never forget the shock of ironed linen sheets on our bed!
This time our small hotel was in an area they are calling the new “Soho,” with huge plane trees forming a canopy outside our window, shops and restaurants on the ground level and apartments above. Everywhere you see outdoor shutters, which keep out the sun in summer (now) and let it in in the winter.
After an endless day we went to a tango show, which seems to be first stop on the tourista schedule, but bagged it when two-thirds of our nine-person party were so seriously asleep they threatened to pitch over the balcony headfirst into the orchestra!
The Argentinian character seems to me to be the ideal Anglo-Latin cross – enough Anglo to organize things and enough Latin warmth to make them an appealing, responsive people.
I’ll end with an incident that shows how considerate and helpful Argentinians are. In a still sleep-deprived funk I left my (Patagonia!!) fuzzy jacket on the back of the seat in the airport when we got on the plane we are on now. I realized it as I got to our seats and doubled back to the stewardess to tell her. She made as much effort to find it as if it had been hers, and was very apologetic when it was not found. When we got to Bariloche a phone call revealed that it turned out to have been gathered up in a security sweep and will be held until we come back through B.A. – pretty impressive. On to Bariloche!
