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Published: January 15th 2012
Day 92 Wednesday 11
th January
Last night we experienced a huge argument at a café and this morning we coped one at the hotel. After breakfast and just before we headed out the couple in the room next to ours decided they would have an explosive screaming match with each other that continued into the hallway and then back into the room. From what we overheard (and we didn’t need to press our ear to the door), he wanted to head out on the town and she wanted to sleep for a few more hours. To us the solution was obvious, but it took them 10 minutes of screaming before he stormed off and left her to sleep.
After the scorching temperatures of the last week it was great that today was a lot cooler, overcast and the occasional spit of rain. It made it a lot more comfortable to walk in and it was a lot cooler on the overcrowded subway. Yesterday on the carriages I melted to a puddle before I even reached the town centre, but today it was bearable, although no less crowded. This week the Government has increased the fares for
using the metro from 1.10 pesos (27c) to 2.50 pesos (62c) and as you can imagine the price hike has been met with a lot of anger. We had read that the station ticket sellers in an act of defiance were allowing everyone to travel free for the week, but we never saw it and had to pay for our tickets. Not a big cost for us but I could imagine people using it every day on a low wage it could really hurt.
Once down in the city we thought we would continue our museum/exhibition viewing that we started yesterday when we dropped in at a showing of the photographer Bob Gruens work. We had been walking through one of the malls in the centre of town when we saw that the show of his photographs was on offer so we stopped to have a look. Bob Gruen photographed a lot of musicians and rock bands through the 1970’s and some of his most famous images are of John Lennon, The Sex Pistols, The Clash and Blondie. I am unsure if I would regard him as a great photographer, but he was at least fortunate to be able
to take photos of great people. We had wanted to see this exhibition when it was in Australia but had missed it and were now lucky enough to catch up with it in Buenos Aires. Today though I thought I would torture Michele with two museums that would test her love for me, the first one was supposedly the world’s largest collection of Beatles memorabilia. There is an old adage that you are either a Beatles fan or a Rolling Stones fan, but Shelley bucks the trend by hating both. Michele’s hatred of the Beatles is quite large so you can understand her going to this museum was a substantial act of love for me. I must admit this wasn’t one of my “must see” things to do in Buenos Aires but we could fit it in and though t it was a bit of a quirky thing to do in the city. Despite its billing as “the world’s largest collection”, it really wasn’t that big and only went to prove that this museum didn’t have a lot of competition. 97 percent of the museum was taken up with Beatles marketing paraphernalia, which made you realise that they really were
the first mega marketing exercise, and Justin Beber has a long way to go before he gets anywhere near the Beatles marketing success.
From the Beatles museum we wandered back down through the heart of B.A. and onto the second act of love from Michele to me…an arms museum. The Museo De Armas has a collection of over 2000 pistols, machine guns, swords, cannons and anything else you can use to kill someone. It is a vast collection and by far the largest I have ever seen, and had some stand out pieces like the large gatling guns, first world war German artillery and a great collection of Japanese samurai armour. The two guys running the museum were really great and although they didn’t speak English were really helpful. One of them came over and let Michele know that it would be okay for her to just rest and sit while I walked around, and I was surprised she didn’t take him up on the offer. Before leaving they took us around to their purified water fountain so we could fill our water bottle.
It was now late in the afternoon and Shelley had indulged me all day,
which worried me on what may be the pay back, but she said she actually enjoyed both, so I may have still dodged that Tango show. We got the metro back to the hotel without any dramas and tried our best on sorting out some of our finances online but discovered that our internet connection isn’t exactly perfect. Tried to use Skype a few times without much luck and then headed out for dinner. On the way home today we passed a Japanese restaurant and so decided to give it a shot. As a further change of pace we had an early dinner at 7.30, which was the first in a while. We had thought about having an Argentinian Parrilla for dinner but as we keep hearing how good the Uruguayan BBQ meat is we thought we would save ourselves to Montevideo. The Japanese food ended being sensational and made a great change from some of the rubbish I (Scott) have been eating lately. Because we had such an early dinner we decided to go for walk around the neighbourhood and we dropped in at a café for a coffee.
Day 93 Thursday 12
th January
Like yesterday our day started with our neighbours having another huge blow up. At least todays didn’t go as long and they didn’t carry on down the hall, but they still managed to raise the roof and slam their door a few times. We had a few chores planned today and the first was dropping off bags of washing. We then jumped on the Hotels computer where we could finally get the use of a printer to print off some documents. The sun has returned for us today and it was a beautiful day and we had planned on going down to the Planetarium. Shelley got the front desk of the hotel to find out the opening hours which wasn’t till the late afternoon which sort of blew a hole in our plans. We had pretty much seen everything we wanted to in Buenos Aires and decided to just relax till the late afternoon before heading out on a long walk around Palermo and then a few drinks and a feed. Went up to the roof terrace which was a great casual area that had lovely lounges where we could relax and read our books for a couple
of hours.
In the afternoon we headed down to Palermo for a look around the shops and then settled down at a bar for a few drinks. We went to move onto the Antares bar at 6 because they had an advertisement that they had a happy hour between 6 to 8. Got there at 6 wanting to make the most of it where a guy out the front sweeping explained that they weren’t open till 7. He of course couldn’t see the hypocrisy as he stood next to the huge sign advertising the 6 to 8 happy hour. Ended up back at the bar we started at and stayed there for the remainder of the night. It wasn’t what you would call a traditional watering hole and was full of a lot of tourists but most appeared to be South American tourist so it was okay. It was smelly, noisy, the food was crap and expensive but somehow it felt right as our last night in Buenos Aires. We somehow made our way back to our hotel around midnight once again.
Day 94 Friday 13
th January
We woke up a little
worse for wear after last night but thankfully we could actually sleep it off a bit. Check out wasn’t till 11 and our boat wasn’t till 3.30 so there was no real hurry, and after breakfast we could take our time packing and once again realised that we were carrying way too much around. We can now really appreciate how good a set of wheelie bags would be, rather than hoisting all our stuff onto our backs. Because we had a bit of time between check out and our boat we got the hotel to mind our bags while we walked to the Buenos Aires Botanical Gardens and found a seat under a huge Robusta Grevillia (from Australia of course) where we sat and read our books till 1.30.
Went back to the hotel and got our backpacks and got a taxi down to the port. The Buquebas terminal was large modern and the check in was similar to an airport. We check in our luggage and got our boarding pass without any hassle but when we went to get some Uruguayan currency the guy told us we would better to get the money in Montevideo. Wasn’t happy about
not getting money before we got there but went along with it thinking it would be a similar set up on the other side but unfortunately it wasn’t. Proceeded through immigration, painlessly and was on the boat within 20 minutes. The ferry was a huge alloy catamaran called Atlantic III, which I think may have been made in Australia, and also carried cars and buses. At 3.45 we finally pulled away from the wharf and made our way out of the Buenos Aires port and out onto the river plate. Initially the water was a dark brown colour and we could see the Argentinian shore to our right and the Uruguayan shore on our left, but after 2 hours we lost sight of Argentina and the water turned blue, meaning we were now out in the Atlantic.
After 3 and half hours the boat slowed and we entered the port of Montevideo. From the boat you could still see the grand old buildings that once lined the old port but are now buried behind the modern container terminals. It took a while for our boat to dock and then it was a massive push and shove to get off
and to get through customs. Despite the guy in Buenos Aires telling us we would best to change money in Montevideo, we soon discovered that there wasn’t anywhere we could. No money meant no transport to our hotel so we had to get some and had to make our way around to the nearby departures terminal where we thankfully found an ATM. We now had to once again get our head around another currency, with $1 Aus = @20 Ur pesos, so the 3000 pesos we had in our pockets was equivalent to $150 Australian dollars. On the taxi ride to our hotel we both quickly were doing the maths trying to work out what it should cost and how much to pay. Most times in this situation the taxi driver has always had a go at ripping us off but today the guy was great and gave us the ride for 100pesos ($5).
We are staying at the Esplendor Corriantes in the centre of town and we have a great room, and after dropping off our bags we went out looking for a feed. It was 8.30 Buenos Aires time which is now 9.30 Montevideo time and after
walking around the deathly deserted streets for a while we settled on a restaurant that was only 3 blocks from the hotel. The waitress was lovely helping us pick what to eat, which we had difficulties mainly because of bad lighting and bad eyesight rather than bad Spanish. Settled for the Asado, which is beef ribs and a specialty of Uruguay and it was bloody beautiful. The restaurant was near empty when we had arrived but by the time we left around midnight it was packed, which only went to prove that Uruguayan’s dine later than Argentinians.
Day 95 Saturday 14
th January
The hotel room was great but the breakfast was fairly average, but by now we understand that breakfast isn’t that important in South America, they make up for it with lunch and dinner. We got ourselves together after breakfast and then headed out onto the streets of Montevideo. We made our way to Plaza Independecia and then on down through the malls till we found the Saturday Antique markets. There were heaps of interesting stuff to see and perhaps buy but I wasn’t sure Australian customs would be
happy with my carrying a set of antique pistols into the country. And don’t worry Dad, I was keeping a sharp eye out for any Indian parts but to my utter disbelief there wasn’t even a single nut or bolt. We continued down towards the port along the malls and discovered that 98 percent of the shops were closed. We thought that most may have been closed because of it being Saturday but the bulk looked like they were CLOSED. We had expected Montevideo to be similar to Buenos Aires but it is a lot smaller and a lot quieter. This isn’t a bad thing we just hope that it isn’t a sign of bad times for the locals.
Finally made it down to the port where I wanted to photograph the remnants of the Graf Spee, but when we went to walk into the port area a guy at a gate stopped us and wouldn’t let us pass. A large passenger liner was in town and without a pass he wouldn’t let us through to the dock. Shelley was so angry because she knew I wanted to get through and we argued with the guy for a while
but he just wouldn’t budge. “Stuff him” I thought and so we wandered off till we found another gate where we could walk straight through without being challenged. Sitting in an area near the docked liner was a small area full of antique wharf machinery, ship anchors and what I had come to see, the range finder from the German pocket battleship Graf Spee. The Graf Spee had been scuttled off Montevideo in December 1939 and in 2004 an organisation had been setup to raise the wreck as a museum but all they ended up raising was the range finder. I am sure that the whole thing must have been setup as a tax dodge or a con because it was certainly an ambitious plan and predictably it showed little results. Shelley was once again happy to indulge me in my geeky hobby and allowed me the time to photograph and examine this amazing piece of history. I mean where else in the world can you see and touch a piece of a world war two German battleship.
After letting me play around with my obsession we snuck back out before anyone noticed that we shouldn’t have been there and made our way across to the Mercado Del Puerto. This is the old port market building that is filled with dozens of restaurants and bars. After hearing of this place a few years back we had made this place a “must see” on our agenda, and it certainly wasn’t a disappointment. As far as we could see, all the restaurants in the Mercado Del Puerto are Parrillas, which are basically huge BBQ meat restaurants. Each restaurant is about 6m by 6m with a counter running around the outside where you can sit and eat and in the middle is huge complex wood fired BBQ where they cook up the meat. Asado (ribs) is what Uruguay is known for but you can also get steak, lamb, pork, kidneys, intestines and just about every over type of meat here. It took us a while before choosing a restaurant and then we chose the ribs, a steak, chorizo (spicy sausage) and a blood sausage. The blood sausage was a little out of our comfort zone but it is good to push things occasionally and it ended up being a good choice. All the portions were huge and tasted fantastic and with beers only cost us 980 pesos ($50).
We then moved on to a small corner bar where we spent a couple of hours soaking up the atmosphere and sucking up all the BBQ smoke. The bar looked like a thousand years old and had a gaggle of locals sitting around getting drunk and it felt great to be just sitting back and being a part of it. As a traveller you tend to wander from one tourist site to another and it is often hard to find places that you feel are genuine examples of the country you are in and not just a tourist trap. The Mercado Del Puerto is certainly a huge tourist trap with hordes of camera totting tourists (like us) wandering around snapping at everything they see, but it also has a great local vibe about it, and this makes the place priceless. While we sat with our beers Shelley summed it up best when she said “this is the South America I came to see”.
We could have gladly sat there all afternoon drinking but that could have been really messy and so at 4 we decided to head home.
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brett
non-member comment
takes two to tango
looks like Shelleys really take some for the team with the museam visits. i reckon there could be a least one dance in it for you Scottie. i've been to a few uraguayan cook ups here & they certainly love there ribs & all (not much for the vego's). good to emerge into the culture. enjoy.