It usually takes a lot to get me out of bed for a 5:30am start. Sadly my traditional remedies for jet lag have failed me completely, and I’m wide awake at 1:50am Buenos Aires time. This is my third visit to Buenos Aires, and ironically the shortest at two days, in preparation for departing on the National Geographic Explorer to the Falklands and South Georgia.
This morning there is a bird watching trip to the Ecological Reserve Costanera Sur, which is reclaimed land running down to the Rio del Plata, behind fashionable Puerto Madero. I am not much of a twitcher, but previous attempts to visit the reserve in respectable hours on previous trips proved futile due to cerrado inciendo (closed due to bushfire) in January 2009, a reflection of the drought that gripped Buenos Aires in the last couple of years. This visit was far more successful, on a beautiful morning in Buenos Aires, with the guidance of a team of bird watchers from Aves Argentina.
Mid-morning we are taken by bus for a short visit to La Boca, home of the famous Caminito, and Boca Juniors soccer club. It has been 4 years since my last visit to La Boca, and it seems to be far more run down than I remember – looking back at photos from that trip, everything seems newly painted, in particular the papier mache figures that decorate the corrugated iron tenements. Time for a new coat of paint!
Men of vision are pretty few and far between, but at least two of them reside in Argentina. One is the creator behind Museo Pachamama in Amaiche del Valle, in Argentina’s north east, and the other is Jorge Eckstein, the visionary force behind El Zanjon. Part archaeological site, part historic mansion, El Zanjon is a privately owned museum with a difference in San Telmo, showcasing the cellars, tunnels and underground river system characteristic of buildings of its generation in Buenos Aires.
In contrast to the efforts of Jorge Eckstein, Buenos Aires is in the grip of a garbage collection strike. At the best of times, early evening sees the streets of BA accumulate large black garbage bags for the daily collection (BA has yet to see the merits of wheelie bins), and after 3 days of strike action, BA is not a pretty picture with rubbish strewn in the gutters and across the footpaths.
