It's early Sunday morning, I'm in a beach town, and it's cloudy and cold. Ironic? (Alanis this is your cue) Maybe, but let's focus on the fact that I'm in a beach town! Mar del Plata, to be more precise. It's a resort town south of Buenos Aires, where a lot of the porteños go for summer vacays. Luckily, I'm hitting it before the high season and at the end of a weekend, so it shouldn't be as crowded as it will be in a couple weeks.
But backtrack for a second and talk about earlier this week. Since my last post, I've done a bit more adventuring. Thursday was a pretty normal day, and I spent a good chunk of time figuring out what my plans would be for the time between then and Wednesday, the day of Lívia's farewell. It was another national holiday, this time for La Inmaculada Concepción de María (Mary's Immaculate Conception), and so all the government offices were closed...meaning I tried but failed at buying a train ticket for coming here. Oh well, I told myself, it'll work out, and it did. That evening I went to Crossfit with Troy, one of my roomies. I'd heard about it many times, both from the guys here and from friends back home, and I was in desperate need of some physical activity. I fully expected it to kick my butt, and it did. In the best way possible. There are two trainers that do it every day, named Percy and Max, and as far as I know they're both from the States. It only costs ten pesos per session, which is way cheaper than going to a gym where they make you pay a monthly membership, and I think once you'd gone for a while you could just remember the workouts and do them on your own. None of the moves are complicated, it's just the way they string them together and push you hard that make Crossfit what it is. You can fully expect me to have remembered exactly what we did that day and be repeating it every day that I can. My muscles are still sore and it's been a couple days. Inner athlete satisfied.
Friday I made my first venture out of Buenos Aires, to a town called Tigre about twenty miles north of the capital. It's situated on the Delta Paraná, where the river splits into many different smaller channels and creates a network of islands that can only be accessed by boat. I went with Jess, a fellow CELTee, and we took an hour train ride for a peso to get there. It was crowded on the train, since Friday was also a national holiday (called a bridge holiday, connecting the real holiday on Thursday to the weekend) and lots of porteños were looking to escape from the city just like we were. The city doesn't ever stop between the train station and Tigre, so when we first got off the train at our destination I felt like we'd never left Buenos Aires. However, walking around I quickly realized that everything had a more laid-back feel to it. Jess and I wandered over to where the boats launch for tours of the area, but overwhelmed with options and feeling hungry, we opted to look for lunch before choosing one. We found a nice air-conditioned cafe (we arrived at 1 pm so it was hot outside) and sat for a nice slow meal and some cheesecake for dessert.
We asked our waitress if she could recommend a tour or a boat to us, and she said they were all pretty much the same in price and quality. Armed with this information, we headed back to the dock and talked to a couple kiosks before finding a tour that suited our needs: 35 pesos, hour and a half in length, leaving in five minutes. We went on a lancha, or a long covered wooden boat, instead of a catamaran (a huge two-story monstrosity), which I liked better. As we sailed along, the tour guide told us various things about what we saw. As we got farther and farther from town, I felt instantly more and more relaxed. I was honestly amazed by the way that people had houses on the waterfront with docks, just like we might have driveways. Addresses were house numbers and the name of the river. And everyone was wearing swimsuits, lounging in hammocks or lawn chairs or swimming in the cool water or doing any other number of relaxing things. I finally understood why it was such a popular spot for long weekend getaways...if you could rent out one of those houses for a few days, it would feel like paradise, completely disconnected from the bustling city life. There were even some islands with beaches that you could take a water colectivo to and spend your day lounging in the sun and sand. Ahhh.
After our tour was over, Jess and I wandered around the waterfront a bit more, and found a bench in the sun where we sat and enjoyed some cherries. There was a wide walkway along both sides of the river, with plenty of grassy space in the middle of it, dotted with lots of people on blankets sharing mate and taking siestas. We watched them for a while, and saw one guy get pooped on by a bird. Bummer for him, but funny for us, and for the two girls he was with; they insisted on taking a picture of it before helping him clean up, and were shaking with laughter so much so that they couldn't hold the camera still. Around 5:45 we noticed a mass exodus of people leaving the park, and we figured there must be a train coming soon, so we got up and followed them. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later we were moving back towards the city, albeit somewhat reluctantly. We had to stand again on the way back, but this time it wasn't quite as crowded, and the rocking of the train lulled me into an even sleepier state than I'd already been in. I got back home fully prepared to take a nap, but the guys got back not long after I did, so the nap never happened. Still, I had an easy night, watching an episode of Human Planet with Robin, Mike, and Troy. (By the way, if you've not heard of Human Planet, look it up right now. It's made by the BBC in the same style as Blue Planet and Planet Earth, but it's about the crazy and incredible ways that humans interact with nature, instead of just documenting the nature itself.)
Yesterday was the official inauguration of the Presidenta, Cristina Kirchner, who was reelected a few weeks ago to her second term in office. As a result, the Avenida de Mayo, all the way from the Casa Rosada to the Congreso, was blocked off and full of festive supporters, sporting banners, t-shirts, and drums to celebrate the Presidenta. I went to the Congreso, or Congress building, where she was giving a speech to the crowds amassed there, and there I was met with a bit of a conundrum. She won in the election with 54 percent of the vote, which is a good majority. Yet most of the Argentines I've talked to up to this point (Greta and our CELTA students) don't like her. Her speech yesterday focused a lot on the economy and how stong it's become since 2001, and how she's helped to reduce the amount of foreign debt to only eight percent, big corporations are lessening their hold on the GNP, and she's ''not the president of the corporations, but she's the president of the people, of the forty million people who call Argentina home.'' This sounds good, right? So why don't people like her? Time to investigate.
But that will come later. After I tired of being in the hot sun listening to the political hoopla, I took the subte down to the train station to see about buying a ticket for Mar del Plata. I half expected them to be sold out, since it is a popular destination, but lo and behold, I got what I wanted without a problem. Mission accomplished, I headed home, and arrived just in time. Mike and Willie were cooking brunch, and included myself and our friend Kristin in the meal. The final result was reminiscent of that big bowl of food I got at the market in Cusco: rice, potatoes, tomatoes, beans, eggs, avocado, and hot sauce. It was a real mountain of food, and oh so delicious. After cleaning up the meal, we headed to a nearby park for a little bit of chill time before heading back home at six to watch the futbol match between Barcelona and Real Madrid. It was a big game in many ways, because of a good rivalry and the closeness of the two teams' standings in the Champion's League in Europe. It just so happened that all of us there are Barça fans, so we had a great time watching our team win 3-1. The goals were all good, and the passing...wow. In short, it was two hours well spent, but as soon as it was over I had to finish packing and get going. I stopped at Kate and Aminah's apartment for a reunion and yummy dinner, which Aminah's boyfriend Massimo cooked for us (Kate likes to call him their live-in Italian chef, since he's staying with them while he's here and he is, after all, Italiano). It was sweet and too short, but we promised to meet up again when I get back to town next week.
I left theirs in a hurry to catch the subte. I'm never sure how late the last train will run, and in this case I had quite a lot of ground to cover before they stopped running. Worst case scenario, I could've taken a pricey taxi, but luckily it didn't come to that. I arrived at the train station with a little time to spare, and got settled in my seat before we pulled out on our way to Mar del Plata at 11:05 pm. The seat next to me was empty, so throughout the night I tried a variety of sleeping positions in an effort to get comfy. It turned cold during the night and I think we went through some rain, so between the change in temperature and the not-very-successful attempt at finding a comfortable way to sleep, I didn't catch more than a few winks together. We pulled into the station here at 5:30, and I walked the nineteen blocks to my hostel. The exercise was nice, and I felt it was early to be knocking on their door at 5:30 in the morning. Not that 6, when I did actually knock on the door, is much better, but so far they've been very accommodating. Of course, the bed I have reserved is currently occupied, because it's been a busy weekend, so I'm here waiting for breakfast so I can fill my tank and venture down to the seaside. Hopefully the sun comes out in the meantime...then we'll be in business.
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