TheBanyanTree: Mi Buenos Aires Querido

[Bobby Drummond]

We left Lima and hugged the Peruvian and then northern Chilean coastlines for hundreds of miles, turned "left" to cross the continent, with the driest desert on earth below us.  The Atacama was clearly visible through the jet's windows. It lay spread out before us with its landscape much more varied than I anticipated.  It was Mars without the craters.

It turned dark before I could take in any decent vistas of the backbone of the Andes.  Disgusted that we left so late, I secretly wished that in the coming flight from Montevideo to Santiago we might be afforded some views of the Andes' higher peaks.

We touched down at the Buenos Aires airport well after dark and made the long trip to downtown and on to the hotel.  Ten blocks from Puerto Madero we were.  We walked past the Casa Rosada and down to Puerto Madero, ate, and then bar-hopped our way back to the hotel, stopping at nearly every open place that served Quilmes beer.

The highlight of the stay in Buenos Aires though was the boat ride up the Delta the next day. From a marina in the Tigre area of Buenos Aires we worked our way up the Rio de la Plata and its Delta.  We then entered the mouth of the Parana, motored up its milk-chocolate-colored waters a while longer, ate Argentinian beef and blood sausages, and shared a bottle of wine at a riverside restaurant.  From there we cruised back down the river and anchored mid-river, among hundreds of yachts, taking in the postcard worthy view of Buenos Aires in stunningly great weather, admiring the blazing sunset behind us and sharing pan dulce and sipping mate through a bombilla (yierba mate tea).

On the way back from the river to the hotel we stopped to see the statue of Carlos Gardel near the Abasto shopping center.  After reading about him in "A Salty Piece of Land" by Jimmy Buffet and having researched him, seeing his statue was special. My favorite Gardel song is "Por una Cabeza" (if you've ever seen "Scent of a Woman" you should know it)

And yes, even after all these many, many years it's truer than ever,

 Cada dia canta mejor Carlos Gardel.


"I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina at the age of two and a half."
Carlos Gardel


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