Day 32 - February 4, 2008 - Buenos Aires, Argentina

Buenos Aires - day 2 photo
Today we had our private guide for the 8-hour walking and public transportation tour of Buenos Aires. There were some snafus at the port to get started because there was a Costa Victoria cruise next door this morning that was embarking/disembarking passengers and the local Ground Operator Furlong apparently told RSSC's tour people that they did not want RSSC passengers at the Terminal building in that mess. So, we had our own mess here on the pier outside the gangway. That and the extra port security because of the new arrivals/departures of the 2 ships meant that our tour guide was about a half-hour late arriving and because we had been told to allow an extra fifteen minutes to get from the ship to the Terminal Building, we stood around outside for an hour before our guide appeared. Our guide was a 33-year old woman named Mercedes. (We know she is 33 because today is her birthday!) We had some problems getting out of the port area because none of the taxis inside the port gates or outside would accept the fare on the meter. They wanted $15 per person inside and $15 for the car outside. As we found taking taxis around the city during the day, this was an exorbitant markup for the privilege because we never paid more than $6-7 to get between any 2 places all day long. Evidently, the law requires local taxis to charge only set metered rates. Guess no one is policing this at the pier here! Mercedes told us she was going to report them. Good luck! The pier is not easy walking to anything so it does need to be remedied. We wound up on the H. Stern shuttle to the Marriott instead and it was a bit of a wait and in heavy traffic, but we'd have been in the traffic anyway so it was fine. During the day, we rode a city bus, A line subway, and a number of taxis. The Travel Concierge Desk and Passages had a daily listing of every 30-minutes shuttle between the Terminal Building and the Marriott Hotel at Plaza San Martin and we never did figure out if it was the same as the H. Stern shuttle. Passages had the disclaimer for only backing H. Stern each time they had the shuttle times, but it was never made clear who was footing the complimentary shuttle. That shuttle was to have run from 4:30 to 10pm yesterday on our arrival. Today it ran from 9am to 6pm and tomorrow it runs from 9am to 7pm.
So, we had a good, long day. We wandered in Centro, Palermo Chico, Palermo Soho, Recoleta, Recoleta Cemetery and we had ice cream twice and lunch at La Biela in Recoleta. Wewandered in Congresso, around Plaza de Mayo, La Boca and San Telmo. We saw the plazas of almost all the countries that had gifted them to BA. Italy, Spain, Belgium, etc. We had a good day here. It was very hot though. In the last taxi to the pier we heard that the temperature was 33C, that is about 92F and hot anywhere in the world. Mercedes assured us this was not hot yet, that we were on our way to the hot part of her country. Lordy! Anyway, don't know if it was the heat or what, but we were really glad that we had gone to the Tango show last night since we really wanted to see it danced. Everyone had talked about how you would see it everywhere, but we did not see anyone dancing in the streets! So, we would have been disappointed if we had waited to see it danced in the street. Though Clay was approached by a baudy woman in La Boca, we don't think she was really a dancer! The Subte is the oldest subway system in South America. We went through the oldest station from 1910-12. It was amazing. The cars were amazing. They were all wooden! They had old wooden seats and doors. The doors were manual. The whole thing was open air and there was an electrical attachment above the cars like the trolleys in New Orleans. The scary part was the passengers opening and closing doors at will! It got pretty crowded with standing room only in front of those doors too! The ticketing and the turnstiles are modern though. Lunch at la Biela was interesting. It had a very Viennese coffee house feeling without the cigarette smoke. It was owned by a Formula One car racing champion and the name is the word for connecting rod, a part on a car. The backs of the chairs had an outline of this part carved into them. There were car parts and photos decorating it. Debbie and Margie had pizzas since 90% of all Portenos (people who live here) are descended from Italians. Clay had a hamburguesa to get some Argentine beef! Clay had a small Quilmes today and it was a stout. It had a good taste. Mercedes heard about him ordering the big one in Ushuaia had had a good laugh over Clay drinking a liter of beer at lunch! Not sure if we noted this elsewhere, but this Rio de la Plata is 100 miles wide at the ocean and about 50 miles wide here at BA. That is just amazing. The Portenos, keep expanding BA by filling river to get more waterfront land, then of course some land loses its waterfront! Guess they have plenty of room to grow though.
Anyway, Mercedes made a comment today about Peruvians being short. That reminds us of something we did not write about here. The southern parts of both Chile and Argentina are known as Patagonia. This is attributed to some kind of mistranslation (maybe, you should Google this!). Anyway, the upshot is that perhaps Patagonia was named because some early explorer found some big human footprints and Pata gon meant big feet and hence Patagonia, land of the big foots. Clay went to use a men's room in a trailer in the Tierra del Fuego National Park in Ushuaia. He came back and told Debbie and Margie that we were definitely out of the land of the Inca and in to the land of the Patagonians. Why, was the question. Clay held his hand up to about the middle of his torso and said because the urinals here come up to about here and I never had that problem in the land of the Inca. Ha Ha. A little cultural/geographical humor.
We got back to the ship today around 6pm and we were hot and sweaty. We rehydrated, then showered and changed. Earlier there had been some talk of dinner ashore, but that was forgotten as soon as we got back. The day was over! For some reason, we were not delivered any menus last night for today. We had no idea where to eat tonight! We went down to Compass Rose and saw the menu for Latitudes was Indian. No one liked anything on the Compass Rose menu, so Debbie went in to see if we could eat in Latitudes tonight without a reservation. Finally, the answer was yes. This was our favorite menu there of the 3 we have had. We never had the Indochine. Lelani told us that it would be served again from the 11th to the 13th. All but the last night of that we will be off the ship for our Iguazu Falls trip. So, we still may not ever get that one. Dessert was still the weakest point on this menu. Our favorites are Gulab Jamon and Kulfi. They served Gajar Ka Halva, which was carrot, golden raisins and pistachio pudding served in a tuile cup with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. We did not like it!
Tomorrow, we have another long day that we wrote about here a few days ago if you want to scroll back. We have the Exclusive Day on the Pampas at an Estancia, then there is the Complimentary Event at El Zanjon that leaves the Terminal at 4:30pm and we are not sure if we can make it. Still not sure, we'll report later. We really hate to miss it. Mercedes said that the underground tunnels were really special and to do whatever we have to do to get there for that. So, we'll have to ask some more tomorrow morning of the Tour Desk people responsible about getting us back for this. We all plan to try to dress so that we could feasibly go from a day in the country on a ranch to Country Club Casual museum tour and cocktails! We won't be able to go horseback riding at the estancia because of that, but that is the best sacrifice that we can make on our own to try to make it to both events. We'll see and let you know. Wish us luck!
The ship departs at 10pm tomorrow and the next day we have a private guide in Montevideo, Uruguay. Then, mercifully, a single sea day.
Buenos Aires - day 2 photos