Last Days in Buenos Aires

After we got back to the ship from our Field Lab on Monday, we quickly got our back packs, hailed a taxi and were off to our hotel.  It was located on the diagonal street of Saenz Pena, very near the Obelisco and the calle 9 de Julio.  Nice old hotel with a good view of the street below! 

 

There is a garbage workers strike in the city and so one sees lots of piled up garbage.  Incredibly, people from the slums sort through the garbage looking for things to salvage.  I suppose it's a very low tech way of recycling.  We heard that the BA city government has outlawed this form of recycling because it doesn't want tourists to see poor people on the streets.  Barry took this picture from our hotel window.

We rested up a bit and went out to find dinner.  We walked down to Corrientes and ate at El Palacio de la Papa Frita – a place we had enjoyed over 30 years ago.  It seemed a little run down like much of BA does, but the food was still good.  Their wonderful puffed potatoes were just as good as we remembered!

 

The next morning we walked across the street for a typical breakfast – Barry greatly enjoyed his coffee and Jayne had a great omelet.  We were off in search of some sort of bicycle clothing that would represent Argentina – have much walking we found one!

 Along the way we went into the Cathedral, which is very beautiful.  

General San Martin, the "father" of independent Argentina is buried there and families were taking pictures of the children with the soldiers guarding his tomb.

We saw the justice building and all the kiosks that were selling law books for the public!  We found a poster of an asado that we bought!  More walking and we found lunch in a small bar/café – Barry finally found his morsilla or blood sausage and Jayne had a very nice salad!! 

We went into the Colon to see if we could get a tour – saw a very good price for the tour only to find out that was the cost for locals and it was 4 times that for us so we did not go – would have been about $25 for each of us!   

We walked down and found the main UMC on Corrientes but found it would not be open until after 2. So we went back to the room to give us and my ankle a rest. 

 

Barry went back out around 3 and returned to the church where he learned that they have a government funded program that gives shelter to 100 plus homeless folks during the afternoon.  He also found someone who called Aldo Echegoyen and arranged for him to meet us for dinner tonight!   Aldo was District Superintendent in Buenos Aires when we were here thirty years ago. He was Barry's primary contact in the Methodist Church and helped arrange many of his visits to human rights organizations, youth camps, and Methodist missions around Argentina.  We had hoped to see him on Monday, but he was out of the city.  We were very pleased to finally make contact with him

Barry came back and we rest until 8:30 – we could hear tango music from our window and Barry saw a sign at the obelisk demanding their naval ship back that is still being held in Ghana!

Aldo met us and we walked back to Corrientes for dinner – back to another famous restaurant for dinner – La Estancia.  We have pictures of the front of the restaurant from 30 years ago that look exactly the same!  The food was ok – nothing special. We shared a meat platter for 2 for the three of us.  Also had salad and fries.  No dessert for tonight!

 Good visit with Aldo he is so active for a man 84 years old and looks great! Still on Jayne for not speaking Spanish! He had just returned from the Chaco where he was working on finalizing a project that will give over 800 families of the Toba group their official titles to their property!  They are fighting to control their land as Monsanto tries to buy up more of it for growing genetically modified soybeans.  He also told us stories of traveling to Cuba with several newly elected bishops from both the United Methodist and independent Methodist churches in Latin America.  Fidel Castor heard they were there and ask to meet with them.  They had a 3-hour meeting and Aldo requested they end in prayer, which Fidel agreed to. It was wonderful seeing him so active and hearing his stories.

 

We got up late after a late night of watching election returns, had the breakfast in the hotel – very good and reasonable.  Then we took off to find SERPAJ the office founded by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.  We were hoping they could lead us to his prints.  We did not find the prints but were given the name from a print there that may lead us to them yet.

 We walked around a bit more and stumbled into a mall and found a tourist stand that had many things that were from the area of Salta – we bought much there!  Left still in search of ice cream – which we never found – so our quick lunch was empanadas from a stand in the underground subway connector walkway! Tasty – the best we had according to Barry!

 We went back to the room to rest a few minutes and then off to the Buquebus – ferry to Montevideo!  Traffic was bad – but we got there in plenty of time and went through customs and waited in a nice comfortable lounge for boarding time.  We ran unexpectedly into Terry Bangs, a communications professor on the ship who had also stayed behind for more time in BA.  Together we had a pleasant journey across the Rio de la Plata to Montevideo.