Museum, Ricoleta Flea Market

We went on a walk yesterday to the Museo Nacional do Bellas Artes, which is mostly contemporary Latin American art. They had a big exhibit of Alfredo Volpi, whom I was not familliar with but liked very much. He had a very quiet surrealist painting style with lots of pastel colors; you can do a google image search to get an idea of what he does. Good stuff.
We stopped off at the Ricoleta flea market, which frankly kicks San Telmo's ass in my opinion.
Here are some pix:

The big metal rose thing sculpture; this opens during the day and closes at night; I think its solar powered.

Asia is playing Buenos Aires! Woo!

Ricoletta flea market



There was a free concert at the flea market

There were these girls in vaguely military uniforms handing out alka-seltzer. Odd.

Garganta del Diablo clip

Here is a video clip from my camera of the largest single fall at Iguazu. It is called "Garganta del Diablo" i.e. "The Devil's Throat".

The Grand Iguazú

We got back from Iguazu this afternoon a couple hours later than we were supposed to due to some delays on the part of Aerolinas. I have lots of thoughts but basically Iguazú was nothing short of amazing, and it also seemed to be a very clean and well run park. I'm dividing this post up into several sections:

Part 1: You know where you are? You're in the Jungle, Baby!

Technically Iguazú is a sub-tropical rain forest, but it pretty much looked and felt like a jungle to us. It consists of a large flat flood plain which empties into a rather abrupt drop in the land, into the Iguazú river. This is a view from the air coming in:

Here is a panoramic view of some jungle:

This is a view of the Iguazú river. The center island is where King Kong lives.


Part 2: Around High Iguazú
Most of the park facilities are in the upper falls; that is to say, on the level with the tops of the falls. We were very impressed not only with the views and how easy it was to get around, but most especially by the clean and pristine nature of the park:

This train carried us between stations:



We rarely set foot on the ground - almost all pedestrian access is on elevated walkways

There were lots and lots of mariposas:

lizard type things:


a crocodile (or is this an alligator?):

Bunches of long nosed racoon type things:

But it was the falls themselves that were most impressive of all:

Part 3: Lower Falls
We signed up for the Gran Adventure which involved a boat ride under the falls themselves. Here we are embarking:

Approaching the falls:

After this I had to put away the camera as we passed under the falls and got very wet. Here are some pix from the climb back up afterwards though:


After this in our giddy excitement we took the train the wrong way and lost our tour group (which was finished anyway, we were just heading for the exit) as a result we got caught in a brief but heavy thunderstorm and i had to put away the camera. I did get this picture of the rainbow afterward :-)

So, now we are like full on jungle explorers. Pretty cool, eh?

On my way out the door...

We're leaving to catch our flight in just under an hour. I don't know if we'll have a chance to post again until we get back on Saturday so I thought I should post one more time this morning. We bought some more shoes at a shop called Artisnal near our appartment. I took this picture of two cats at the store cuddling:

We went dancing in the afternoon at Confitería Ideal; apparently several movies had scenes here including "The Tango Lesson" and also "Evita" (I haven't seen either of them).

This is the sky at sunset downtown...

Kae is crushing my head. I think the Argentinan diet is causing my stomache to expand :-(

Thats it for now, gotta run!

'nother milonga, travel plans

We went to another milonga last night. We didn't have change for a cab ride home (the cabbies don't like large notes) so we bought a bottle of wine and got a little drunk. As a result I forgot to use the image stabilization feature and most of the pictures didn't come out...d'oh. Here are the ones that were more or less ok:
I'm such a dork:

Free hot dogs in salsa and potato salad with the wine!

Dancing, Ben and Kae are drunk at this point.


We also went to a travel agency and made some travel plans: tomorrow we are flying to Iguazu falls for 2 nights, then next week we are going to an estancia, or contry estate resort;, for an overnight trip. Here is their web site:
http://www.santa-rita.com.ar/

I got yer waltz right here...

Kae and I made this video of our feet dancing to Leonard Cohen's "Take this Waltz". Enjoy.

Myths

1. All women here are super petite
2. The current fashion trend is trashy-chic
3. BsAs has the most plastic surgery
per capita of any city in the world
4. Tango shoes are $50 bucks (US) each
5. Everybody smokes

I'm afraid the people are just like anywhere else, it's not a very diverse crowd though. I don't remember seeing one trashy outfit yet. All women have their bra straps covered and are wearing slips. (no doubt grandma taught you how to dress.)

I've seen only one woman at a milonga that had noticable plastic surgery. All of the tango shoes that I saw, that I liked and wanted to wear cost at least $275 pesos. Maybe I need to shop more, I probably do.

The smoking ban went into effect last October. We've only been to one restaurant that had a smoking section. We don't see that many people smoking on the street. I don't know what the deal is but it seems like porteños have tried very hard to join the cult of the non-smoker.

THINGS YOU HEAR THAT ARE TRUE:

The Traffic is bad and so is the air quality.
We lucked-out by getting an apartment that is not on the street. My lungs seriously ached last week after shoe shopping downtown all day.

There is a lot Parisian Architecture
it's amazing and really beautiful.

It's pretty here:
The parks are lush, the trees are huge. The landscape design of these parks is really impressive. Along the Avenida Libertador, it looks like a glamourous set from a James Bond movie! There is gorgeous green space, huge chic silver sculptures, planes landing...uh huh...you know what I mean....

It's fancy:
OH YEAH, from the interior design to the ice cream! the architecture, the wares:clothes, shoes, linens, chocolates...way high class..(disclaimer, we are in a spendy neighborhood)