Buenos Aires

We walked the streets of Recoleta today and found the special art supply shop – one of only four art supply shops in Buenos Aires which is surprising considering how much art this city appears to support. The weather is softer – mild with light showers though still warm enough to continually put jacket on and off again.

There are many lovely cafe bars for resting in for coffee and snack and parts of this town are light walking through Carlton and other sections Toorak Road. This is the exclusive area with high rise apartment buildings of brick with often art deco balconies. Again it’s impressive to see the amount of wrought iron work. Every now and then a bigger will ask for donations though not so much in this area. Like everywhere the contrast is quite extreme and the sight of a mattress stashed under stairs on high on stone windowsills a give away.

After lunch we strolled down through the soft rain to the artist’s market and sat across the way outside Art Gallery to sketch the pink trees. It was a quiet day, dinner in a small Italian restaurant and home to prepare for the embarkment of MS Poesia tomorrow.

We leave Argentina tomorrow and I am left with a tiny understanding of Buenos Aires and Argentina. It’s generally a polite city; we have not encountered any negativity towards us being both foreign and having no language. The people in the street and stores are helpful and mostly trying to assist. The women are extremely thin and I wonder how this is possible by the size of the serves of food – and the menu. Perhaps instead of three meals a day they prefer one? The general custom appears to be to sleep late, rise late and dine late. Everything is open until 8, 9 or 10pm; and not open in the day until midday. There is a visible level of poverty in the streets with beggars, car attendants, cardboard collectors and stowed mattresses. It is raining now I wonder how these people fare. The beggars are not just young men – we saw old women and clearly some very desperate and sad people of all ages. The contrast between the wealthy suburbs and the poor is strong – the wealthy are new and shining while the poor more colourful and raw. That’s I suppose usual.

The new modern high rise towers are impressive. Very modern. There are wide avenues to drive contrasted with the old cobblestone narrow lanes where once trams ran and you wonder where the horse and cart and people would fit.