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Published: September 5th 2006
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With only a couple of additional days left for us in Buenos Aires, Monday needed to include some needed gift shopping and perhaps some additional point-of-interest visits. After our always-anticipated buffet breakfast at the Marriott, we left our hotel in search of some items requested by my wife Elizabeth. Since she owns several teapots from around the World (mostly from Asia), she had asked me to look in Argentina for something unique from this country. We focused our search in the area close to Retiro, but after going into several stores selling Argentinean crafts and inquiring about teapots, they only offered blank stares back and advised us to go into this or that other specialized store. As we followed their advice, we found the stores to be kitchen-supply-stores selling the type of pots and pans that you can buy anywhere else in the World, nothing really unique Argentinean. It became clear that the only Argentinean item close to a teapot would be a mate set that we had seen already at various places during our exploration of Buenos Aires (Mate is a drink similar to tea and very popular in Argentina; it is made by adding near-boiling water to the dry
and chopped leaves of yerba mate, a plant native to South America).
To find the best establishment to buy mate sets we relied on recommendations from our book guides. Lonely Planet recommended a store that was in the general neighborhood where we were: “La Querencia” on Esmeralda Street. We headed for the address in our book and eventually found the address but a different store was located there. After verifying that we had not made a mistake we noticed that the store at the address, “El Remanso”, actually sold a wide variety of very elaborate mate gourds. The store also sold leather articles and clothing. Sergio fell in love with and purchased a fleece vest that was similar but different color to one that he bought in Paris a couple of years ago. I found a great looking leather belt that would replace one that I was wearing during our semi-rigid boat expedition under the Iguazú falls last Friday. My old belt had not taken very well the almost total water immersion experience and was falling apart at the section that goes through the buckle. For Elizabeth, I got a matching set of mate gourds with silver bombillas (metal
straws with filters in the bottom to prevent the yerba mate chopped leaves to enter the straw when you drink mate).
In last effort to find anything else similar to what Elizabeth wanted, we got a taxi and headed for San Telmo. During our last visit there, we had gone into an indoor market where various vendor stalls offered a wide variety of articles, mostly antiques. After learning about some of our travel experiences in Argentina and our interest in photography, our enterprising taxi driver offered his services to take us on a last adventure to a couple of points of interest outside of Buenos Aires the following day. Given that we needed to be at Ezeiza International Airport in time for our flight back to Atlanta, we did not believe that we would have adequate time for anything too ambitious on our last day of the trip. We took his business card just in case.
When we arrived in San Telmo, we searched for the market, but found it closed. When a local resident informed us that the market would open later, we started to explore the various other establishments in the area. We went in a
couple of them but all they had was antiques of all kinds and few of them were Argentinean articles. As we approached Dorrego Plaza, Sergio spotted a private art gallery. The various paintings visible through the store windows were of incredible quality. The three of us spent some time browsing the art inside.
Following our informal art tour, we visited Dorrego Plaza, looking for a place to eat. This time, there were no restaurant tables in the plaza itself, but in the periphery of the plaza, we found several restaurants with promising fare. We went into one that had the world’s cinema as its theme. Inside, there were posters of famous movie stars and movies and simple wooden tables and chairs. During our lunch, we asked our server if they served mate. She responded that they used to do it but was not sure if it was available then. We told her that we were visiting Argentina for the first time and we had not had the opportunity to taste this staple drink. She returned a bit later to tell us that they would accommodate our request. Sergio and Joaquín were not as adventuresome as I was. They ordered coffee with their lunch.
When my mate gourd arrived, it was almost ¾ full with dry yerba mate. Along with the gourd came a thermos full of hot water. Our server instructed me to pour the hot water on top of the yerba mate leaves until the mix almost reached the gourd’s rim. She also recommended that I add some sugar since the taste of mate can be extremely bitter to the non-initiated. I followed the server’s instructions and ventured my first sip of mate through the provided bombilla. My only problem with my first experience with mate was the rather high temperature of the drink. I have never been a person who likes to drink very hot drinks and mate was not the exception. After I waited for the temperature to subside a bit, I was actually able to appreciate the taste. Sergio and Joaquín decided to give it a try too, but they only accepted one sip each and then gave up on the whole experience. It is definitely an acquired taste, but all of the Argentineans that had told us about mate shared with us that the bitterness of the drink goes away as you experience it more (I guess it may be something similar to beer, which I remember tasting not-so-great the very first time that I tried it so many years ago). So I kept at it, adding more water as the gourd was getting dry. When we finished our meal, I had almost gone through the hot water in the thermos. I concluded that I could get very comfortable with mate if given the opportunity.
After lunch, we returned to the San Telmo market finding it open this time, but as we went through the various aisles, it became clear that we were not going to find anything else we were looking for there. Nevertheless, the wild assortment of old items and antiques in the market was still interesting to experience: there were old photographic cameras, 8mm and 16mm film cameras and projectors, phonographs, vintage military rifles, pistols and sabers, sextants, microscopes, telescopes, porcelain dolls, lamps, music boxes, pitchers, china, etc., etc.
We left San Telmo and headed back to Retiro for a quick rest at our hotel and then to continue our shopping. One other item that we wanted to acquire was Argentinean music. Florida, the pedestrian-only street near the Marriott had a number of music stores and offered our best bet to find what we were looking for. Tango music was of course in our list, but at the tango show and during our explorations in the Iguazú area, we had also enjoyed great folk music that we were eager to locate. We were not disappointed, in two different stores along Florida, Musimundo and Yazz Music, we found a good representation of Argentinean music to take home with us.
By the time we finished our shopping, it was already getting dark; we needed to allocate the rest of our stay in Buenos Aires very carefully. We wanted to use as much of the last day as possible to visit a few more places in this great city (taking advantage of our late-evening departure the following day). But to maximize our playtime, we needed to complete as much of the chore of packing this evening. Since our trip to Iguazú, our belongings were either in the room’s closet or somewhat divided among two sets of luggage: the one we left under the care of the hotel’s concierge and the one we took with us to Iguazú. It was now time to consolidate things and just have a quiet dinner and perhaps enjoy a movie in our room.
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