The Long Transit Home

Depending on how you look at it, it took us 37.5 hours or nearly six days to return home from Antarctica.

This morning we breakfasted and then disembarked the ship.  It was hard to say goodbye to some of these amazing people knowing we may never meet again.  They had shared their enthusiasm and passion with us for all things Antarctic and many of them had a huge impact on our enjoyment of this trip.  Travelling with such an intimate team has been amazing, I particularly enjoyed the staff joining us for dinner in the main Dining Room each night, you had an opportunity to really get to know them and really dive into what makes them come back each year to bring visitors to this remote part of the world.

We exited the gangway for the last time and the entire Expedition Team were lined up to wish us goodbye. Some of these guys we had only met superficially, but the zodiac guides who marvelled at the whales with us, Woody who was there to greet us on every landing site, and several of the others whom you just connected with – well it was hard to say ‘goodbye’. Ema is an amazing young woman – I really hope we meet again one day. I found we had so much in common.  Come to Australia, Ema!  <3 Weirdly, we were giving Woody hugs nearly every other day – he kept us informed and shared his seemingly boundless passion for Antarctica with us, and I was always wanting to hug him to thank him for sharing with us. Thankfully hugging the passengers isn’t against company policy. Trish and Annie. Ema crouching down to be as short as a Cross Girl.  😛 

And then – we were back at the End of the World in Ushuaia.
We found our hotel and dumped our luggage there and went for a wander about the town.  Aunty Mary and Lyn went on a tourist tram that runs around the city, while Trish and I went shopping looking for some things for the kids – but only after catching up with everyone on the free hotel wifi first of course!

Had a chat with yale, ‘Where are you now?’ he asked… shared my location for shits and giggles and it looked like this <–  God I love the Internet!

We pottered around town looking at souvenirs and mountain equipment shops until lunchtime, grabbed a small bite to eat (which in South America, always seems to mean empanadas) where we ran into – you guessed it, loads of people from the ship – before heading back to the hotel to check in properly and find our rooms.  We stayed at the Hotel Albatross which is down near the waterfront. Unfortunately, though, our rooms had even less views than last time!  C’est la vie, it’s only for one night and we spent the afternoon relaxing and finishing Trisha’s bottle of limoncello.  🙂

 

We opted for dinner at the ‘other most recommended’ restaurant in Ushuaia, La Estancia Parilla for some Argentinian BBQ – because they haven’t been feeding us enough on the ship, right?  No, not really… but I have grown rather fond of the chimichurri so off we went.
OMG – forgot about the portion sizes.  Between that and some language barrier issues, we ordered way too much food. Oh, and guess what?  We ran into more people from the ship at this restaurant too… who’d’ve thought? With full bellies and a few vinos under our belts, we wandered back down to the Hotel Albatross for our last night in South America.  Tomorrow the Dread Transit starts in earnest.

Woke up nice and early – dammit, and finalised our packing.  Argentina Aerolineas only allows 15kgs in their checked luggage and I got slugged on the way down and I was likely going to get slugged on the way back, but the others were doing their best to distribute their weight between their backpacks and their suitcase so we didn’t all incur a fee.  We breakfasted at the hotel and then checked out at 10:15am – yeah, that was as late a check out as they were willing to give us.  Thankfully they have a few lovely lounge areas where we could wait until about 11ish before we could call cabs and head to the airport.

Got to the airport without incident and almost immediately we were running into staff and other passengers from the ship – particularly Louise and Jessica (of the Toowoomba Coincidence) who seemed to follow us all the way home.  Anyway, the ‘Hurry Up and Wait’ of international travel had well and truly started and we took our first three-hour flight back to Buenos Aires.  No hidden stop-over this time so it seemed rather quick in comparison to the way down.  Oh and we even had a really happy and chatty check-in guy at the airport who didn’t charge me excess baggage. *wipes away a tear*  What a nice guy!  Oh and gotta love Argentina Aerolineas btw – your in-flight meal is a sickly sweet muesli bar thing, and there is no milk for your tea, only Coffee Mate (blergh!)…  But we were on our way.

As it happened, we had a short three-hour flight, whereupon we arrived in Buenos Aires Domestic Airport which is right in the middle of the city just about, and then we were stuck with an eight hour wait before we were scheduled to fly from EZE, Buenos Aires International (Who booked this shitty transit? Oh wait, that was me).  So we had been busy hatching plans before we went ‘Internet Dark’ on how to avoid spending what seemed like an interminably long time hanging around either one airport or the other, and we had decided upon asking Jorge if we could take him out to dinner!  Jorge was the driver that Ceri had recommended to run us to the airport when we left BA, so we had contacted him and said “Can we please book for you pick us up at the BA Domestic airport, and take us somewhere for dinner somewhere local before dropping us to the International?  If you are free, we would love for you to join us for dinner, and Ceri and his wife too if they are available.”  Yeah, it was a little cheeky, but we had plenty to gain (dinner at a local restaurant with a charming Argentinan!) and nothing to lose by asking how he felt about the plan.  😀  Jorge replied almost immediately saying it would be his pleasure, and what sort of food would we like?  😛  Score!

Here are Jorge’s contact details if you need a driver in Buenos Aires… 

I had told a few people on the ship about our transit plans to get home and they were quite impressed – Bernadette (from Holland) in particular, literally pouted and said, “I want to travel with you!”  She too had some horrid long airport layovers to deal with also.  And yes, you’re damn right we’ve done this before!  😉

Anyway, everything went to plan, Jorge met us at AEP Domestic and took us to a – you guessed it, an Argentinian BBQ place!  😀  I have no idea where in Buenos Aires this place is, but the food was fabulous and our hostess, Marinas was wonderfully welcoming.  Because we were there so early (Argentinians are rather continental with their dining hours) we pretty much had the restaurant to ourselves, and thanks to Jorge – we didn’t even have to take our bags out of the car – Marinas had blocked off a space right out front of the restaurant in readiness to give Jorge somewhere to park.

We had an incredible platter of BBQ’d meats – lamb, beef, chorizo, black pudding, and something that may have been offal or donkey (not sure).  Some wine, fresh bread and a token bit of salad and we were very happily recovered from our airline muesli bars indeed.  🙂  Sadly, dinner came to an end, and Jorge took us to EZE International airport to await our long-haul flight.  We checked in, and ran into Jessica and Louise, again.  Then found somewhere comfy to wait for our flight which was just after midnight.  The flight is much as these things always are, with extra bonus horrible thanks to the prat in front of me who reclined his seat within minutes of getting into the air, and of course, I’m still coughing from the end of the flu thing I have.  Thankfully though, we were able to wave away the horrible airline food as we had been stuffed full of wonderful BBQ meats and chimichurri goodness.

A movie or two later, and I thought I’d have a look at the live flight map (this is a big frequent traveller no-no, and should never be done – it makes the flight seem even longer than it is, if that is at all humanly possible).  But I did and discovered this:
We were headed right back to Ushuaia!  If there were direct flights we could have knocked six hours flying time off the trip!  Arggh!  We had heard that the first flight to land at Ushuaia’s international airport was from Melbourne and had come directly over the Antarctic continent – but they don’t do that route anymore – not enough call for it.  Nothing to be done but to sit back and take all the drugs.I managed to get some sleep on the plane, but won’t be admitting to how much of what medications it took to achieve that.  And eventually we arrived in Auckland.  There we had another three-hour layover (‘Hi, Jessica and Lousie, oh and Mark too) before we were to board to Brisbane.  Unfortunately, our flight was delayed by nearly an hour.  Fortunately (or perhaps miraculously) they seemed to make up most of that time in the air somehow – I’m not asking questions on that one.


We arrived somewhat bedraggled and overtired and cramped and sore in Brisbane at 10:40am on a Sunday morning and all I wanted to do was collapse in a heap.  But, you know, can’t do that – you need to get on local time as quickly as possible.  All up our transit time was roughly 37.5 hours door (in Ushuaia) to door (in Brisbane)… but then as we were going through Customs at Brisbane airport, I mentioned this to Louise, and she said, ‘Well, actually, we left our travel destination, Antarctica, six days ago, so really, it’s taken us six days to get home.”  Eww… thanks for that, Louise!  🙂

 

So home again, home again jiggety jig… until the next adventure.  <3

 

Quark Antarctica Expedition – What to Expect

When I was researching trips to Antarctica, I found some of the more nitty gritty practical stuff that I really I wanted to know, seemed conspicuously absent from the travel brochures. If I wanted to know any of the little things, I had to direct my questions to the Peregrine ‘polar experts’ and I didn’t want to be continuously bothering them with too many queries about what they might perceive are insignificant details. So I thought I would compile some info here, so I could remember it and also in case anyone searching is looking for a ‘Quark Antarctica Frequently Asked Questions’ type thing. We travelled on the Ocean Diamond in March of 2018, obviously different ships will have different amenities – these notes are based on our experiences on that ship.  If you’d like to read the ‘day to day’ activities of our trip, you can click HERE and find my travel diary of how our journey South of the Antarctic Circle went, and then just click ‘next’ to see each day.

Cabin
We didn’t get a cabin allocation until about two weeks before we were due to leave. This is an unusual experience for me as when we cruise, we usually choose our own cabin – but since we booked through a travel agent, we didn’t seem to have that option. When we finally got out ‘boarding passes’ there was a cabin number written on the travel documents, though it was in tiny print and you had to hunt for it.

Our cabin was really well appointed and quite comfortable for two. We had a larger than usual room with plenty of space to store our things. The beds are neither too soft nor too hard, so I’m a happy camper who prefers a firm mattress – of course, the rocking of the ship really helps you sleep, so the mattress is not as important as onshore stays.

There is a TV in the room which runs some documentary films and seems to have a movie channel, playing an excellent selection of favourite films, but we have been on board a week and I can’t find anything resembling a TV guide, so it’s a bit of a crap shoot if you want to plan an hour or so to relax and watch a movie. We were able to copy a movie off my laptop onto a USB and watch it through the DVD player, so that was useful.

The only issue we seem to have had with our accommodations is the air conditioning – when we got here the room was a stuffy 24C and we had to call in the AC guy to come and turn it down for us. As we were getting ready for bed, we told him we wanted it around 19C (which is a good sleeping temperature) assuming we would be able to adjust it using the thermostat for a warmer temperature in the daytime. But he seems to have set it at around 17C in here, and the thermostat isn’t working, so if we want to be warmer during the day we need to call him back every morning, and again to cool it down every night.

 

Quark Clothing – Parka and Boots

One of the first things the staff did for us was to outfit us with our Expedition parkas, which have been specially designed by Quark for Quark passengers for Antarctic and Arctic Expeditions.   They are big and bulky, with loads of pockets to hold your excess things, but they are super warm and I have found myself wearingly only a thin merino thermal layer, a long-sleeved t-shirt layer and the parka. No need for a jumper or polar fleece layer at all. Aside from being a butt-ugly bright banana yellow, they are an excellent item of clothing and have obviously evolved from years of feedback and from passengers being unprepared for the conditions here.

Over the top of all this, you will find yourself wearing your PFD (personal floatation device) every day when you are off the ship. You must wear it on the zodiacs and you will find yourself wearing it while walking around on land because wearing it is easier than carrying it. It’s a fairly slim design as life jackets go, but it’s fairly heavy and rather bulky on the back of your neck and chest. You end up walking everywhere feeling like the Michelin Man.

The Muck Boots that are lent to passengers to use while they are on their expedition are also another very sturdy and solid piece of equipment that is absolutely essential.   There is a major downside to the boots being provided on the ship though… they’re men’s boots. All of them. So ladies are being given whatever size is appropriate for their feet. In my case, I wear a ladies size AU 6 (or EU36-37) and in a men’s boot – say in Dr Marten boots – I wear a men’s size 4. Only problem is, women’s legs tend to be far more shapely than shoes made for men’s legs – men’s size 4 boot is effectively made for a ten year old boy with chicken legs. So I had to go a size up and wear a size 5, and even that was far too tight in the calves that I had to fold the boots down, rendering them less useful as waterproof boots when getting in and out of the zodiacs at landing sites. After the first day though, it rapidly became apparent that the size 5 boots, even with the height of them folded down on themselves was no good – as it was still so tight around my upper ankle that it was cutting off the circulation in my foot and starting to bruise my shin! So I had to go back and get a men’s size 6 boot. I am still wearing them folded down and even with two pairs of sole inserts in each boot, I feel like I am clambouring about in clown shoes. My feet are slipping about all over the place inside my boots and I have been ever so slighting twisting my knees every day – not good. I’ve also had to be extra careful on the rocks and ice when ashore to make sure I don’t lose my footing in these boots that are two sizes too big – they’re quite the trip hazard. So if you know you have a tiny foot and muscular calves… I’d seriously consider trying to bring your own good quality insulated waterproof boots from home. They might be expensive and may never get used much again in the future, but the stability and sureness underfoot would be worth it.

 

Food
The food has been amazing on board, with a wonderful variety and plenty of it!

An enormous buffet breakfast is served at approximately 0730-0830 in the main dining room and there are plenty of options from various breads, cereals, cold meats, smoked salmon, cheeses, eggs, bacon, sausages, hash browns, baked beans, a couple of omelette stations, tea, coffee, juices, yoghurts – the whole shebang.

Lunch is again served buffet style between 1230 and 1330 (depending on how morning land and zodiac excursions have gone). There is usually a pasta or stir-fry stations, plenty of salads and cold meats, and hot dishes that vary every day which usually include some grilled fish, and some sort of casserole option with vegetables, rice or pasta to compliment. Soups are also available at lunch, with breads, and desserts also on offer. There is a daily a la carte sandwich, hamburgers and other things available on request and the dining team do their best to help provide options for people with dietary requirements. There is also a new refreshing non-alcoholic punch to try every day.

Dinner is served in the main dining room starting from 1900-1930 after the evening debrief/recap. Dinner is a four course table service menu with appetizers and salads, a soup course (usually a choice of two soups), a main meal course (usually a fish, beef/pork option and a chicken option) followed by a desserts (usually a specialty dessert, an ice cream sundae type option, a cheese platter or a selection of fruits). Dinner is served with complimentary red or white wine – often sauvignon blanc or cabernet blends from Argentina to Italy to New Zealand. For those that don’t favour wine, beer and soft drinks and juices are also available. We are used to a cup of tea or coffee being served at the end of a meal, but for that, we needed to go to the Club to make our own.

Seating in the dining room is strictly first-come first-served, there is no reserved seating and no allocated table numbers. One of the best aspects of dining on the ship is that members of the Expedition Team will come and join a different table for dinner each night – a more interesting and well-travelled and sociable bunch you will never find.  So our dinner conversations have all been very lively and inspiring.

Internet
I could find ZERO information on Internet availability or cost prior to actually getting on the ship – even the Expedition staff who briefed us in Ushuaia were cagey about the accessibility once onboard, which is a bit shit or I would have told my family not to expect to hear from me at all for the next 14 days.

Further to that, there is considerable pressure from the Expedition Team who will encourage you to ‘disconnect’ and discover this amazing place as the first explorers would have – without the ability to connect back to The Real World™. Additionally, your fellow passengers will also loudly and proudly exclaim on the first day or so that they are going to completely disconnect for the duration as well, so there is considerable peer pressure to leave the Internet alone too.   Given that the Internet on the ship completely sucks balls, in both speed and expense, as well as actual availability – there doesn’t appear to be many people actually using it.

There are three packages available:

  • USD$35 Webmail Package : they will set you up a text only email address for use while you are on the ship.
  • USD$60 Package: Internet access of 60MB of data. Untimed but limited by data usage.
  • USD$100 Package: Internet access of 200MB of data. Untimed but limited by data usage.

None of these packages are suitable for blogging or sending lots of pictures back home but still, they might be all fine and dandy if you were 100% confident that you have NOTHING running in the background of your smartphone or iPad or laptop that was going to be refreshing or downloading or synching stuff while you were carefully trying not to use your data. It would be all too easy to jump online to chat a bit via WhatsAp or Messenger and then check your limit and find out it’s been all chewed up by something you didn’t know was running. I have decided not to buy an internet package but I have a feeling I am going to really regret that by the time we are on the Drake Passage on the homeward stretch.

 

Photo Journal
The on-board photographer who is here to give you hints and tips on how to best capture your Antarctic experience also sets up a couple of laptops on the ship and encourages passengers to share photographs. These photographs will be available to all of us at the end of the trip.

What often seems to happen with wildlife photography and when we are out in the zodiacs in particular, is that half the people on the small boats will have a great view of a particularly exciting wildlife moment and the other half of us will end up with a row of yellow jackets, or someone else’s camera protruding into our shot, or just a blurry mess as you spin around onto your knees to allow others to see. So we all get to view these amazing things, but only about half of us have the good fortune to capture those special moments of a whale breaching or of a leopard seal hurling it’s catch – so the photo journal is a really good idea and many people will participate in sharing their images. So long as you are not a professional photographer planning on making a commercial enterprise out of your photographs, I would strongly encourage people to share their best shots so we can all come away with beautiful images of our shared experiences regardless of where your seat is on the zodiac that day.

The images get compiled and are made available to passengers via a Quark website where you can go to download them once you are home. Worth noting is that the downloadable images will be in a slightly lower resolution than that which was provided by your fellow passengers. Also worth noting – once you put your images into the Photo Journal you are basically giving them to Quark; to potentially use in their advertising brochures and online web presence.  While the Photo Journal is a great resource for the passengers and is a fantastic idea for sharing your best pictures with your fellow travellers, Quark are very happily collecting amazing images for free – which doesn’t bother me, but maybe a concern for some.

Laundry
Halfway through our journey, a ‘special’ for an entire bag of laundry for USD$30 was offered to us, which we took full advantage of. The laundry bag is very generously sized if you wanted to wash jumpers or polar fleece items. The laundry list was amusing – there are pantyhose and stockings listed on the items that you may want laundered, and we couldn’t help but wonder who on earth is coming down here with pantyhose and ladies shoes!

Had we known this laundry offer would come around about mid-trip, we could probably have gotten away with a one week pack instead of packing enough clothing for two weeks – having said that nearly everyone here is wearing the same things to shore every day, and the same things to dinner every night, so it is not like a traditional cruise in that respect! Walking pants or even track pants in the dining room are passable attire.

Giftshop
There is a gift shop onboard that carries a limited range of Antarctic souvenirs, but they do have a good range of warm clothing if you find you don’t have enough layers or need a second beanie or something. I have noticed though that most of the items seem to circulate through a discount table or rack at some point – this could be because we are at the end of the season and they are trying to get rid of stock, or it could just be the way the gift shop always runs… but I’d avoid paying full price on any of the clothing items for the first few days and wait to see if any discount tables appear. The store manager also appears to have considerable discretion to discount items too.

As it happens, there is often an opportunity to send postcards from one from one of the stations along the Peninsula here. Now I haven’t sent postcards home for years, but we are in Antarctica and I’m kinda curious how long it will take, so why not? We were given about 30 minutes warning before going ashore that we would be able to send postcards at that day’s landing, so as you can imagine everyone was scrambling for the gift shop to pick up some cards – which unfortunately had heaps of cards with images of South Georgia and the Falklands and the Southern Oceans, but not many that actually had images of Antarctica or that said, ‘Antarctica’. So I’d advise getting i early and buying some postcards that say ‘Antarctica’ if you are planning on trying to send some home for fun – or better yet, pick some up in Ushuaia on spec.

Things I’m really glad I brought with me…
Merino neck warmer – I bought a cosy neck warmer at a ski shop in Whistler for about $30. So far it has proved a great investment on the zodiac cruising as you can pull it up over your face and to cover your ears when it’s cold, and it’s a lot easier to wrestle with than a scarf.

Toe warmers – we happened to pick up bulk bags of toe warmers when we were in Canada in January, and they were $9.99 for a pack of 16 pairs of toe warmers… here on board and in Ushuaia (and indeed back home in Brisbane) they are selling for about $3.00 a pair. So bulk toe warmers from Amazon or something is not a bad plan, they’re good and they really help when you are sitting still in the zodiacs for what can seem like quite a long time if you are cold. They are also useful to put in your mittens or pockets – or even attach them to electronic devices if the batteries don’t like extreme cold.

Laptop – every day we are out on the zodiacs and every day I’ve been worried about dropping my camera overboard. I have it tied to my wrist with a lanyard, so it’s unlikely, but I’m sure it happens to someone. Anyway, I’m glad I brought my laptop as I’ve been backing up my photos after every excursion – so if the camera goes over, I’ll only lose a handful of pictures, not the lot. Also, I’ve been able to write this blog even though I’m offline… which is good or I’d be so far behind I’d never catch up.

Teabags – weird as it sounds, English Breakfast tea is often thin on the ground. It’s popular as all giddy-up so it gets used up quickly and on ships sometimes seems to run out. The weird orange, chamomile, or apple cinnamon flavoured teas will still be around for the whole trip but good old English Breakfast tea bags will disappear. So I always pack a little bag – back up tea bags, raw sugar, hot chocolate sachets, chai lattes and even mushroom cup-a-soups. They don’t weigh much but can make life more pleasant – which probably says a lot about the type of traveller I am 😉

Things I wish I had brought with me…
A travel mug – there is no tea or coffee in our rooms and no room service, so to get a cuppa we need to go down to the tea and coffee station on Deck 4 and then carry it up four small flights of stairs to Deck 6. Not such a big deal, except when the ship is rocking or if there are plenty of people about. A covered travel mug would have been a good addition to my pack.

A crazy/unusual hat – even a bandana would do. It is apparently a tradition to hold an alfresco dining evening at some point throughout the expedition (weather permitting) and everyone is encouraged to wear a crazy hat. Come to think of it every cruise I’ve been on has a ‘mad hatters’ lunch or afternoon tea or something, so I probably should have been all over this one.  Instead, passengers were encouraged to get resourceful and create a fun and crazy hat from found objects around the ship. Mind you, you never seem to have a lot of spare time, so making some piece of creative headgear is not so easy.

A USB stick – I usually travel with one, but for some reason, I forgot to bring one on this trip. I mentioned earlier, the Photo Journal where people can share images they are happy to have disseminated to all passengers… if there is any particular photo you absolutely love in the ‘Photo of the Day’ or you hear people talking about someone or other’s great leopard seal feeding pic, you can copy it from the laptops during the trip to get the high-resolution version, rather than wait for the resized downloadable content. A USB is also useful to share bulk pictures or videos directly with other people you meet on the ship.

Chocolate – the Expedition Staff usually only have a few hours in town during turn around days and they tend to use that time to find free wifi spots to catch up with family and friends.  It turns out that one of the only food staples that they tend to run out of is chocolate. So if you’d like to make immediate friends with the expedition staff – bring lots of chocolate to bribe your way into their good books.  😉

Things I should have left behind…
Snacks – we brought a few snack foods on board, including cheese and crackers, because we know that the cheese and crackers thing isn’t really an Argentinian thing or an America thing for that matter. Many times I have walked into American supermarkets looking for the makings of a decent cheese plate, and found the options are severely limited. You just can’t find good charcuterie, pates, dips, and fancy cheeses in regular supermarkets the way you can in Australia. So we brought some of these sorts of snacks on board.   What we hadn’t counted on was, Gunter – our Austrian Executive Chef on board, who has the cheese and crackers and savoury snacks thing absolutely nailed down… an entire wheel of Roquefort stationed at every buffet meal; happy thought indeed.

Walking poles – One of our party brought a walking pole with her as she has long-term knee problems, and we were anticipating crossing rocky and icy terrain when ashore.  Quark provides walking poles at every landing site, so you can use theirs and not have to worry about bringing yours and putting it through the biosecurity cleaning processes.

If you happen to be reading this because you’ve stumbled on it while searching about doing a Quark Expedition and you have any questions that I might be able to provide insight on – just ask in the comments and I will do my best to answer.

 

 

Tigre Delta tour and Desnivel

One of your ‘must do’ items in Buenos Aires is apparently a tour of the Tigre Delta. Tigre is actually a separate town about 25kms north of BA, that gets it name from the ‘tigers’ (jaguars actually) that used to be hunted here.  It is accessible by bus, car, train and of course, by river boats.

Tigre has become a huge tourist destination in recent years with large resort/spa locations being built in among the rivers and canals.  Important celebrities, ‘such as Madonna, you know the Madonna?’ have been known to holiday here.

Oddly, touring the delta by river felt a lot of like doing a Florida swamp tour.  Tourists are loaded onto river craft of varying size and modernity, and are then taken powering up the Rio de la Plata (River Plate) until you reach the mouth of the delta.  From there you find yourself winding through canals and effectively peering into people’s backyards!

Each home has its own little jetty or pontoon as this is a community that thrives on its waterways.  They have mail boats, rubbish boats, supermarket boats and even ice-cream boats that service the community.  Kids get to and from school by boat. Houses are varying from grand to dilapidated, some have permanent residents and many are able to be rented as holiday destinations.  The guide on the boat mentioned that many of them are weekend homes for people who live and work in the city. In the centre of the delta is this odd house covered by a glass cube – it is the house of one, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, considered the ‘Father of Argentinian Classrooms’ or the founder of modern Argentinian education.  Built in the 1860s, the house has been placed in the glass cube to preserve it from the wind, weather and constant humidity. The area is well known for its rowers and the Argentinian Rowing Club is located in the delta… leading to the common site of crazy people out rowing at midday… without hats. Further towards the town of Tigre, you can see large marketplaces where people can come (by boat) to do larger shopping and pick up supplies. Also nearby is the famous Parque de la Costa, which is like the largest amusement park in Argentina or South America or something or other… I kinda wasn’t paying attention when he said that bit  😛   In my defence, we do live barely half an hour from a handful of theme parks, so I’m not all that interested in them. After our genteel pottering around on boats for the morning, we got to go visit the beautiful Cathedral de San Isidro which, oddly enough, is located in the centre of the small town of San Isidro.  The Cathedral was built in 1898 on the site where a cathedral had stood since the early 1700s.  As per usual for South American structures from this period (well, so it seemed from our extensive tour last year), it was designed by French architects and is built in a very aesthetically pleasing, neogothic style.  It has gorgeous stained glass windows and its spire reaches just shy of 70m tall (which is the same height as Buenos Aire’s Obelisk, don’t you know?).  It has recently undergone extensive renovations which is why the entire building looks brand new.  It is a truly lovely church. After we visited the Cathedral we had a quick stop, just long enough for a lemon gelato and then it was time to head back to Buenos Aires.  We decided to make like the Spanish for the remainder of the afternoon and have a much-needed siesta.

Now, yesterday Ceri – the loquacious Canadian – had recommended to us ‘the best local Argentinian steakhouse in Buenos Aires’ that has ‘steak so tender you can cut it with a spoon!’.  Well, this is a pretty big call and we thought it needed to be checked out – but we were so tired yesterday that we had planned on going this evening instead.

The restaurant is called Desnivel and is on Defensor Av, about a kilometre and a half from our hotel. So we decided to walk down and cab it back.  It was a nice evening for a stroll through the cobbled streets of Buenos Aires.  🙂  Everywhere you walk you can see the strong European influence – and moving through the different streets feels like going from Paris to Italy just by going over a block or two.

We stumbled onto these cute sculptures set up on a park bench – you can see these guys on souvenirs everywhere.  The little girl is called Mafalda and she is the star of a comic strip.   Mafalda, is supposed to reflect the Argentinian middle classes combined with the thoughts of the more progressive youth. She is often depicted concerned about world peace and the state of humanity and apparently has somewhat serious, but endearing attitude problems.  You see her on everything here – from aprons and stationery to mate cups and keychains. Anyway, we made it to Desnivel just as the place was opening at 7pm.  Argentines traditionally dine quite late and while we wandered into a nearly empty restuarant, the place was getting quite busy as patrons kept walking in as late as 9:30pm to 10pm.

As you enter, you get to parade past the BBQ, which smell absolutely delicious.  Ceri had told us yesterday they don’t use any spices on the meats while cooking, just a light salt rub.  Any flavours are added after the cook.

AND we saw this massive stack of sliced provolne ready to be cooked… looks like piles of wax.After we ordered some drinks – caipirinha, margartita, and pisco sours… our lump of wax came out like this – well cooked and covered in peppers, bacon, provoletta, and herbs.  Absolutely beautiful.  Add a tiny bit of chimichurri and Bob’s your uncle. After sharing some provaletta for an entre, we had steak tenderloins (what we would just call a fillet steak) that was served drowning in delicious mushroom sauce and with pomme noisettes.  None a pesky vegetable in sight at this steakhouse  😉   And Ceri was right, I have never – and I mean that literally – I have never had such tender steak in my life. Thanks to Ceri’s advice we ordered one steak between the two of us and didn’t have to be rolled out of the restaurant.The steak cut like butter and almost melted in your mouth.  It was beautifully cooked and so light and tender.  Phenomenal… we were all commenting what a shame it was we hadn’t made the effort to come last night as we would have been back for a second meal tonight as well, it was that good!

In lieu of dessert, we decided to have some limoncello… about nine shots later!

Eventually our waiter just brought over the damn bottle.  🙂
Finally, well fed and cheerful, we paid for our meal in what looks like a king’s ransom and spilled out onto the street to find a cab.

We finished the night with mojitos on the rooftop bar back at the hotel… nattering until the bar staff kicked us out!  😛  What a great night!  We will have to come back and do it again some time.

Buenos Aires Walking Tour

Today we had lined up to do a walking tour with our new friend Ceri – pronounced, ‘Kerry’, he’s a pretty cool, (and very cheeky), Canadian dude, with a Welsh name and a British accent, living in Argentina with English wife, who makes shoes for a living and does tour guiding on the side (or perhaps it’s the other way around). He’s also a photographer, an outspoken democratic socialist and speaks English, Spanish, French, and the language of ‘love’! Yes… he actually said that.  🙂   Right off the bat, we could tell Ceri was quite the character as he starting taking the piss within minutes of meeting us.  A bold move for a tour guide… I can imagine American pax love that shit..! Personally, I found him to be intelligent, genuine and charming.  So off we went to explore the city to check out the architecture, a tiny bit of history and some of his favourite spots.

A couple of blocks from the hotel, we stopped at the Embassy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, such that it was (the Empire not the Embassy).  It was built prior to WWI in a German neo-gothic style is one of Buenos Aires most imposing buildings.  It is unfortunately not open to the public and houses boring office spaces now, but apparently is really lovely inside. The sculpture surrounding the building is quite impressive with figurative motifs of the architects and people involved in the building of the structure, along with decorative motifs of owls, phoenix and other creatures in among the stonework.One of our next stops was the Parque Lezama… where we roundly ignored the statue of Pedro de Mendoza who allegedly founded the city of Buenos Aires in 1536, and went instead wandering the back streets to find a cafe.  Being Australian, Ceri thought we’d want to find ‘good coffee’.  It is apparently the one thing that Australians want when they get here and so he took us to a cafe- where we ordered one lemonade, one iced tea and one iced coffee, as I don’t drink coffee at all and none of us are big coffee drinkers. It was at this point, he questioned if we were actually Australian.

While at the markets we met the local butcher who provides all the meat for the nearby Argentinian steakhouses, a grocer and a local wine merchant, who promptly pulled out a bottle of local white wine, a Bodega-Colomé Torrontés 2016 and four glasses.  It’s roughly about 10:30am at this point, but sure why not.  The wine comes from the Calchaqui Valley and I must say, it was excellent regardless of the hour.  Our wine merchant friend didn’t try to sell us anything, just watched us raise a glass and wished us a good day.  From here we made our way towards the Casa Rosada.

Streetscapes near the Parque Lezama… Random window above the street level near Defensor – makes me feel like the repair work I need to do on my own home isn’t so desperate after all.
The streets on the way to Casa Rosada – the famous Presidential Palace, were increasingly congested with all the protesting that was going on.  The Casa Rosada was so busy and surrounded by so much construction, clumps of cruise ship tourists, traffic and chaos that I have stolen… err appropriated, a pic from Wikipedia to include here so you can actually see (and so that I will be able to remember) what the building it is supposed to look like!

We sat on some steps opposite the Palace and had a discussion about the building, and rebuilding of the Palace over the years, the state of Argentinian politics, and discussed some of the different approaches that Argentina vs Australia take to global problems.  For example on immigration – Argentina is seeing a lot of Venezuelan immigrants at the moment as a result of instability in that region and rather than take those refugees and ship them offshore to detention hellholes, the Argentinan government is expediting visas and citizenships for these people primarily because they bring skills and abilities to the country, but there’s an added benefit that it is apparently pissing off the Venezuelan government to no end.

After attempting to save the world’s global refugee crisis and failing miserably, we moved onto the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral, which was also surrounded by barricades getting ready for some social protest or other – Ceri tells us that protesting is pretty much a national Argentinian past time at this point.  That there are protests for something or other, literally every day.  It stems from many of today’s Argentinians being still very much mindful of their recent dictactorial political situation as recently as the 1980s.  We touched briefly on the Falklands War which we were informed was largely an enormous attempt at misdirection by a corrupt government to keep the populace from looking too hard at what was going on (which reinforces what we were told by the Falklanders we met in Stanley last year).

Anyway, the Cathedral is mostly known now as the home parish for the current Pope who was the Archbishop here before being elected to the Papacy.  The locals are extraordinarily proud of their Pope – and rightly so I think, he’s a vast improvement over the last few – and they talk of his humility and charity with great fondness and enthusiasm.


The Cathedral fronts directly onto the Plaza del Mayo which is a large open space often used for protesting… most notably it is the site where the ‘Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo’ congregate every Thursday as they have done since the mid-1980s. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo have been turning up protesting that they do not know what has happened to their children and the tens of thousands of people who were ‘disappeared’ between 1976 and 1983. At that time, anyone who protested against the dictatorial government would find themselves ‘disappeared’.  Protesting was outlawed and protestors were kidnapped, tortured and murdered (apparently a favoured way to get rid of political dissidents was to torture them and then to fly them over the River Plata and throw them out of planes) This state-run terrorism campaign of the military dictatorship operated between 1976 and 1983, which is when the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo organised and started to protest the disappearance of their children.  You see the very Catholic Argentinians adore and respect their mothers above all else and they knew that no Argentinians would stand idle if they saw mothers being beaten and subdued in the streets.  So the government just had to let them alone… and while protesting is now completely legal, the Mothers have refused to be silent and they continue to protest nearly 40 years on.

After this depressing stop, we went for a wander off to pop into the famous Cafe Tortoni.  The Cafe Tortoni is on the Avenida de Mayo – built in the mid-1850s by a French immigrant whose name I have forgotten, it was the place to be for Parisien expats at the end of the 19thC.  The whole street feels like you are walking down a Paris boulevard, and the cafe itself has a beautiful and elegant ‘belle epoque’ feel about it, which has attracted intellectuals and celebrities alike for over 150 years.

We stepped out of the cafe and ran smack bang into… wouldn’t you know it, a workers union protest.  It was at this point I asked Ceri if all this political engagement and protesting ever brought about tangible change to which he replied, ‘Not really, but now they have their right to protest back, they’re intent on using it.’ From here we made our way to 9 July Avenue where one of the famous Evita balconies is located as well as an enormous 70m obelisk. The Obelisco de Buenos Aires was erected in the Plaza de la República on  9 de Julio in 1936 to commemorate the quadricentennial of the foundation of the city.  It’s quite a striking monument – you can’t miss it!

After this, we hopped a taxi to take us to the Recoleta Cemetary… because, well it was getting stupid hot and it was a couple of kilometres away.

The Recoleta Cemetery is mostly known as the resting place of Evita Peron, buried under her maiden name of Duarte.  But aside from this one famous grave, the place is a photographers dream and I make no apologies for how many pics are included here of the beautiful artistry that has gone into creating the monuments to passed loved ones… the place is open-air sculpture and decorative arts musuem in its own right.

The large walled cemetery is similar to one we saw in Punta Arenas in Chile last year, but quite five times the size, and quite ten times as ostentatious in its display of wealth and status.  The mausoleums are enormous, and all the materials and workmanship would have been imported from Europe. People from many different denominations are buried here. The Argentinians are a very cosmopolitan people having come from everywhere – this appears to have been the result of a dreadful policy that encouraged the slaughter of the indigenous peoples in the past, but has created a society that knows they are all from somewhere else, so they appear to be more tolerant of one another… Ceri claims the Argentines ‘are mostly Italian and Irish descent, speaking Spanish, dressing like French and wanting to be British.’ Presidente Alfonsin’s grave site – unlike most of the tombs here, this one is open sided and not locked. The graves are rich with symbolism – from trees of life, owls of wisdom, anchors of hope and memento mori.
This is a couple who hated each other but who were forced to live out their lives together – Catholics do not divorce – so in death they chose to be buried in the family plot feet pointing towards each other and busts facing away, not side by side as most loving couples would. It’s very honest in its own way. This is a momument to a woman named Ida – a very personal homage from a grieving husband.  Ida fell from a building and this statue depicts a woman helping her into the heavens. Eva Peron’s grave – the most visited grave in the cemetery.  It is the only one covered in flowers and tokens, though compared to many of the other tombs, it is plain, simple and not particularly artistic.  Evita was a very divisive figure so it is the only place in the cemetery that is under CCTV surveillance.

Ceri photographs at the cemetery a lot and is preparing images for a book – which means he knows everyone here very well.  As we were leaving we met the security personnel who had plenty of questions for us about kangaroos and Australia’s dangerous wildlife.  They were also quite taken with our blue-eyed appearances and before you know it the mate was being offered around.  Having tried it before and remembering full well how bloody disgusting it tastes, I managed to avoid it, but this being Trisha’s first time in Argentina and being a good sport, decided to give it a go.  Her verdict: “It’s okay.”  How very politic of her.  🙂

And with that, we concluded our tour at the rooftop bar at our hotel, where we toasted with a lovely bottle of rose, and discussed more about the local culture, politics and religion. It was a very stimulating day all round and I had a wonderful time meeting Ceri.

I hope one day to see the Pope wearing some of his shoes!

La Boca

Woke up this morning bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to tackle the city with verve…! Yeah, I can’t back that up.  We all pretty much woke up bleary-eyed and feeling like wrung out dish rags.  Long-haul flights and drastic time changes will do that to you – every. single. time.  We breakfasted at the hotel and decided to jump on the HoHo (Hop-On, Hop-Off) bus to get a feel for the place with minimum effort.  We have a walking tour booked for tomorrow, so we were trying to see different parts of the city that we wouldn’t see tomorrow.  The one area that wasn’t on tomorrow’s itinerary was the bright and colourful La Boca neighbourhood, so we decided we would ride the bus there and make sure we jumped off to have a poke around.

The primary HoHo terminal in Buenos Aires just happened to be directly across the street from our hotel, so we didn’t have to go far to get our day started.  Lined up, bought some tickets and jumped on the next bus.  Unfortunately, the upper deck wasn’t covered like they usually are and there is no way I was going to spend a few hours in the midday sun, so we sat downstairs which limits your ability to view the architecture.

La Boca is a barrio that has a strong European flavour about it – having been settled quite early in the city’s history by Italian immigrants largely from the Genoa area.  It has some winding little pedestrian areas called the Caminito, where local artists are creating and selling their arts in markets and shops.  It’s well known for its colourful houses that have been built up for tourism over the last few years and it attracts a lot of visitors who are interested in tango, local art, food and culture.

The buildings here are old timber and corrugated iron construction, but they have been brightly painted by the bohemian community that lives in the area.  Other than these few very colourful streets that are decidedly touristic, the wider area is quite poor and unfortunately known to be a high crime area. It’s a very funky little barrio though and well worth checking out – with lots of markets, cafes, souvenir stores, people dancing the tango at midday, and a cool buzz about the place. Everything that stands still appears to have been painted in bright colours creating a very festive and cheerful atmosphere.  The markets are full of bright and interesting souvenirs as well, with lots of artwork and plenty of toruisty stuff.

We had a good look around, found a cafe for some overpriced lunch and watched the tango dancers strutting their stuff intently in the front of the restaurant. After that, we hopped back on the HoHo bus and head back uptown to see some more famous buildings. I’m not a big fan of HoHo buses in general – the droning of the guided audio tour tends to be a poor quality and not very engaging commentary that just about sends me to sleep, but it is a nice way to meander through a city and get a feel for a place.

We stayed on the bus until it took us full circle back to our hotel, where we all had a bit of a kip before heading out for a late tapas dinner.  We ended up at a great little tapas restaurant a few blocks from the hotel called Tancat Tasca – the food was delicious and the sangria was excellent too.

After that it was back to the hotel – we were all exhausted from doing what, I don’t know.  Probably the flight still catching up with us.