Argentina in My Eyes - Buenos Aires

Seriously, where does Argentina hide the sun?

I have never ever visited Buenos Aires on a sunny day. I admit I have only been there four times, maybe five, but seriously I begin to wonder if it is ever sunny. It makes a difference you know--I suspect that my friends who love Buenos Aires get some sun in a nice city with a little of the European feel, great food, wide boulevards and ease of getting there. It's only a 2 1/2 hour flight from São Paulo.

Buenos Aires is an enticing city, even in the rain. Beautiful buildings. Great food. A lovely shopping center, an extraordinary opera house. And BA was the only place where the people understood my mangled Portugnol which I dragged out from my days as a Miami resident. Ushuaia and El Calafate residents only looked at me blankly. 

Please no one ask me the name of this beautiful shopping center. I just don't know.

Yet somehow Buenos Aires always makes me sad: is it the rain that always follows me? We had spectacular weather in Ushuaia and El Calafate but BA to me has always been grey.

It is a tough comparison between Argentina and Brazil. But I do think that Brazil wins on playfulness and fun and out-and-out joy. You want to have a beer with most Brazilians. Maybe not Argentinians. I always remember this debate on George W. vs Kerry. Who would you rather have a beer with? Of course W. is not having any beer but you get the point. 

And Argentina has just wonderful wine, but isn't so hot on marketing it. I volunteer to single-handedly market the cute Saurus wine that was named for the Argentinasaurus they found while digging out the winery foundation. They can pay me in pinot noir.

Now I know that Brazil is special on treatment of kids. Brazilians love kids. Kids can do no wrong. There is a good side to this and a bad side (the part where my kids think that they really do no wrong). I'm sticking to good. In Argentina, they got frowned at as they walked from side to side on sidewalks, got shushed in the glacier museum, and got no special treatment or smiles. One twin hit a shop window lightly with a glove and a woman came running out of the shop and yelled at him "NO! No puedes something-or-other." And I stared at her shocked and responded "no." And she looked at me as if I had another head and went back in. My kid was stunned into silence for a short while. Oh, okay, 30 seconds. I bought him an Argentina hat at the next shop. He loves Messi and that is why he will always love Argentina.

So here is my advice to Argentina: be more playful. Things are going to hell but you might as well "enjoy" it. We had one very positive interaction in Buenos Aires at a wonderful little restaurant near our hotel. I'll tripadvisor it and then post the link here. Il Fratello. The waiter was fun and asked us where we were visiting, and interacted with the kids and it was all lovely.

Il Fratello. Decorated like a 50s joint, but great food and nice people.

The other really fun interaction was with Felipe.  Felipe was a beautiful black and gold German Shepherd that I could just kick myself for not photographing. He hung out at the sushi place where we stopped at in Ushuaia. He let my kids hug the stuffing out of him. He had a lot of stuffing--it's cold there. Actually the friendliest Argentinians are the dogs--El Calafate has a serious stray dog issue as in there are tons of them. And all came up and greeted us and walked with us for a few blocks before giving up and trying another person. One twin of course wanted to adopt one. Or two. Or ten.

Some of my best friends are Argentinian. So I do like them. Maybe I like the ex-pat ones best. I don't know. I don't feel Argentina in my soul. They do have one hell of a beautiful Patagonia region though. More on that tomorrow.

Flying the Argentinian skies - Argentina

Waiting for my plane in El Calafate

So you might have noticed that I've been gone the last week. I admit to succumbing to a last hurrah around South America. Specifically the part frequently called "El Fin del Mundo" or end of the world. As a few t-shirts said, I prefer to think of it as the Beginning of the World--the wildly beautiful Patagonia including Ushuaia and El Calafate. 

I will try to contain myself about the place as after all, this is a blog about Brazil. And I am in the last week (!!) of my year-long challenge of daily posts. Can hardly write it all about the land of Messi and Cristina, right? But of course, I will have to indulge in just a little bit of comparison with my adopted country of Brazil.

First of all, Aerolineas Argentinas, their now nationalized airline is muuuuuch better than it used to be. I used to be afraid of getting on those old planes. Now, they have nicer planes than many US airlines (hello US ScAirways!). They don't have movies on the backs of seats (a huge disappointment to the 7 year olds) except on the Embraer 190s, one of which we took from São Paulo to Buenos Aires. That is a nice plane. I would like to congratulate all ITA graduates for being anyhow associated with that plane.  BH will like that. He is an ITA graduate. He might have associated with someone who built that plane.

Second of all, still on the Aerolineas subject, there are two other quirks that made me laugh. One, if you are on a national flight, you had better get there two hours in advance, because if they have everyone there early, they simply take off early. Yes, true story. On Wednesday, we had a 5:25 am flight from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia and we were at the airport at 3:30 am. They loaded us on at 4:30 am and we were in the air by 4:45. Now that was an efficient boarding process--literally loaded on, sat down, and the plane pushed back. Love. Happened in Ushuaia and El Calafate too. So word to the wise: your actual flight time means nothing. Be early.

The other part of the Aerolineas subject is the clapping. When the plane landed in all national airports, the entire plane broke into loud and steady applause. My kids were craning their heads to see what had happened that everyone was so enthusiastic. Were people so surprised that they had landed another flight or is it like the good old days of flying when people were genuinely impressed and appreciative of the fact that a couple of regular guys had once again brought 240 people from 0 to 35,000 feet and then back again? I stopped to think about this one a bit. It is a truly amazing thing, this flying. I say "Yay Argentinians" for reminding me of this.

Ushuaia-Argentine Malvinas airport. Yes, we get your point, Argentina

My final thoughts on the flying portion of my trip is that Wow! Does Argentina know how to build an airport! (also they need to get over the "loss" of the Malvinas, but that's a subject for another day). In Ushuaia, the gorgeous terminal was built (another one had existed on site) in 1995, and kicks the butt of any small airport (Ushuaia population: 70,000) anywhere. Seriously. And free wi-fi.  And that's without throwing in the views from the airplane window (see below).
 

El Calafate International (I kid you not) Airport

In El Calafate, things are even nicer: that airport was built only in year 2000 and designed by an Uruguayan. Is that relevant? Why not? El Calafate is a town of 6,000 residents, maybe 8,000 counting all the stray dogs now that the tourism there is taking off. Their airport was used by 400,000 people during 2007 (source: Wikipedia). Wow! Dear Argentina, please send your airport terminal engineers to Fortaleza where our World Cup visitors will experience a canvas terminal.Oh, all right, that is totally unfair: Fortaleza has about double the passengers and has a pretty nice main terminal. And a canvas one. 

One more view of Ushuaia's airport - WOW!

Okay, so I've rambled on about the airline and airports long enough. If you all will give me license, I'm gonna yap more about Argentina tomorrow and maybe Thursday. Then I'm going to sum up my year of living daily posts. And then I'm taking Mother's Day off. And then I'll be back, but probably not daily. I've got a household to move and not enough time.