There’s a small, sad, plastic Christmas tree on the way into Jumbo, our local supermarket, and although the market stalls are selling decorations, it’s 30 degrees in the shade; I just wasn’t feeling it.  Until we went to Tierra Santa. It sits on the north coast under the flight path of BA national airport, with couples on garden chairs with cold boxes sitting in the shade enjoying the sea breeze on the road side opposite, the place empty except for us and a few Argentinian families. We went there to chortle and snigger at the plastic animations,but as we toiled up a steep hill there are three bodies hanging from crucifixes, gambling Roman soldiers slouched on surrounding rocks , and women with their arms raised imploringly at their dying mens’ feet, all plastic statues. The broiling heat, just as there would have been two thousand years ago, the silence, and the suffering, stop  us in our smirking tracks. A nativity scene playing Handels Messiah, and giraffes, elephants and lions creaking out onto the stage for the creation, Adam and Eve eventually appearing with their nether regions covered in green polythene holly and artfully arranged hair, is quite joyful though. I may be an atheist, but I love all choral music, especially this stuff, and I am in heaven. The reason we were there was to see the hourly resurrection, and it doesn’t disappoint, although perhaps you had to be there. 

 

 Although I can’t deny how much I love the sun, in the galleries  we have visited all over Buenos Aires I am drawn to the winter paintings; bleak leafless landscapes that remind me of what we are coming home to, Brueghel’s transplanted census to snowy Holland, Paris in the winter rain, I love them all. But there is one artist I have never heard of called Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida whose paintings are just so evocative of light and the beach on a summer’s day you can almost hear the kids’ shrieks of joy, the horses grunts as they haul boats out of the sea, the waves lapping at the sand, that would make the most ardent winterphile yearn for summer.

 

Joaquin Sorolla.

Yellow fever drives out the rich.

    The cobbled streets, bougainvillea tumbling from metal balconies and bars on every corner make San Telmo feel like 19th century Paris, when the rich people living there fled with just the clothes they were wearing as yellow fever swept in, leaving their fully-furnished houses to be divided up into low rent tenements. There’s a small central raised square where couples tango before passing around their hat and a central market selling slabs of tortilla sliced from huge yellow potato-studded motherships made the night before.

San Telmo

The disappeared.

We were not sure if visiting the Remembrance Centre might be a form of dark tourism, peering at dimly lit attic spaces, freezing in winter and stifling in summer, where poor souls spent their final days before being anaesthetised and turfed like rubbish into the Rio de la Plata on so-called death flights.  But then we came across  the “mothers of plaza de mayo” walk in around the pyramid in front of the red house, the equivalent of the Houses of Parliament in the UK.  They have done this every Thursday at 3.30pm since 1977. They wear white headscarves, and movingly, there are only three or so women left, in wheelchairs fronting a large crowd who walk slowly chanting the names of the 30,000 or so people who “disappeared”. The Remembrance Centre lies in the far West of BA, and was formerly one of over 750 clandestine detention, torture and extermination centres in Argentina between 1976-83 when the military dictatorship ruled. In addition Milai, the president in waiting, has denied the numbers of people involved, and his running mate, president, Victoria Villa Rruel, and presumably next Vice-president, is an outspoken apologist for the Junta. All good reasons to go and bear witness ourselves, I feel.

The March of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo

Our flat’s an old warehouse.

Our flat is in a converted warehouse in Puerto Madero, on the east side of San Telmo. This area used to be the first port in BA, but fell into disuse for 90 years until cleaned-up and gentrified. Between us and the river Plata is a huge eco wetland that has been left to re-wild.

We see a Tiger Heron, and loads of birds we have yet to id.

 

A day trip to Uruguay

One day this week we crossed the Rio de la Plata, so-called because the Spanish enticed immigrants with the promise of silver = “Plata”, that no-one ever found. Reminiscent of a trip from Lymington to Yarmouth, but with customs, we’d been warned the food in Uruguay might be bland, but we stuck with spag Bol, and as always, it came good. Colonia had a chilled, laid back green leafy vibe that made us kick ourselves for not bringing  our binocs because the birds were crazy in their variety. There really wasn’t much to do there after lunch, as we and pretty much all the day trippers on our ferry could be found in Colonia’s’ every nook and cranny lolling about on patches of grass, slabs of beach and benches in the park waiting for the 6 o’clock ferry back.

 

Another death defying day in paradise.

 The only way to see Tigre, an area of hundreds of small islands a 30 minutes train ride north of central Buenos Aires, is by Kayak, a blog I found tells me, as you cannot walk between the islands. What I hadn’t bargained on was the kayaks being proper sea going ones with splash hoods and the stability of a three-legged giraffe. We set off with Adrianne and her assistant, a retired armed police officer, reassuring if we get mugged by gun-toting kayak robbers, and head straight into the main thoroughfare where the wash is huge and the chances of flipping 180 degrees feel high. I fear my fib to our guide that we know how to kayak will now lead to our deaths by drowning, and fess up so that I get a quick lesson in what to do if I capsize. To be fair we have pootled up and down Beaulieu river a few times, and even owned a blow up double kayak which I seem to recall went round in circles and ended up gathering mould by the side of the house. We paddle like maniacs across this M1 of rivers and are relieved to arrive in a series of much smaller, calmer tributaries. The places hidden in the greenery vary from stunning glasshouses to one roomed beach houses, all on stilts as they regularly flood. There’s a  shopping barge that brings vital supples, a rubbish barge that takes your refuge hung from the end of the jetty, and it must be magical at night, although a mossie heaven no doubt. 

  

Tara for now

Well, this is over and out for this trip. Things I’ve learnt are – I really don’t need many clothes, even in cold weather, I can make do with a very limited repetoire, and wow does it make life easy. I have hardly any eyelashes left from the dreadful make up remover here. But they’ll grow back. I feel my pants should get some kind of medal having lasted this long and not being that saggy in the gusset – I think they even have another trip in them!  I haven’t lost that many things since the last list, the most annoying is my headphone case, no doubt still languishing under the chair on a bus somewhere, and a second pair of sunglasses that lasted 24 hours – lucky I never spend much on them for that reason. 

  The things that have been life savers:

1. A phone with 5G. I actually don’t think we could have done this trip without one of us having access to google maps etc all of the time. 
2. Squalling babies? Brazillian families who don’t stop talking at all on a 12 hour bus trip? Someone, somewhere, watching their videos on full volume? Noise cancelling headphones.
3. Ear plugs. There is not always another bedroom to retreat to when the snoring reaches 4 million decibels. Note that sentence has no subject. 
4. Our fanny packs, as the yanks fondly call them. I fully attribute having one to not losing my phone and credit cards, and they are difficult if not impossible to pickpocket.
5. A charge free account like Starling. We discovered rather late in the day that using a debit card gave us a rate close to that on the black market.
6. Photocopies of our passports. You practically can’t breathe here without knowing your passport number, in fact people have been stupified that we couldn’t reel it off by heart. 
7. A plug I bought Clive online that has three adapters that worked in Chile, and Argentina, but also has loads of inlets for USB’s and stuff. 
8. A power pack. Great when everything’s dying, there are no plugs and I am at a vital point in my book/on netflix with god knows how many hours of limbo ahead.
9. Having US dollar bills in big denominations. 
10. A magnifying mirror and tweezers, obviously.

   So home we go, to the rain, cold, friends, and family, the last two of which I have really, really missed.