Southern Exposure

Wednesday, April 15

Today was every American’s favorite day, tax day. After waking up and making breakfast, I did some online banking and resolved final issues with my taxes. Inna was smart and paid her taxes before we left for the trip. The goal for today was to get to some banks downtown and figure out how to extract enough cash to cover the payment required for shipping the bikes home.

We caught the 11:50 shuttle to downtown BA and set about finding a willing bank. In Panama it had been relatively easy to do, but here in Argentina we had no luck. After standing in long lines at three different banks, only to be told we couldn’t withdraw cash beyond an ATM withdrawal limit, we were told to go to a specific Citi Bank location. We arrived 1 minute after closing at 3 pm. I envy bankers and their slacker hours of 10 am – 3 pm. It was a frustrating waste of time, and we had to go to plan B for paying, a wire transfer. It turned out that neither Inna’s nor mine bank (thanks Wells Fargo!) was set up to do wire transfers online, only in person at the bank’s branch. Plan C was having my parents do a wire transfer for us and us paying them back, which they were kind enough to do.

After all that banking joy, we rewarded ourselves with a nice lunch at the Italian restaurant Filo on San Martin street. Since it was late afternoon, the usually popular and crowded restaurant was deserted and the service was good and fast. I had a wood fired oven pizza, while Inna had a Niçoise salad. The pizza was unbelievably good, almost the perfect pizza, finally ending the streak of mediocre to crummy pizzas I had eaten on this journey. Inna enjoyed her salad with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and we left fat and happy.

With the banking and lunch sorted, we decided we would get at least one tourist activity in for the day and visit the famous Recoleta cemetery. We arrived around 5 pm, which left us an hour to look around. There isn’t a formal tour system here, just qualified and badged tour guides hanging around the front gate. After some initial confusion, I spoke with a tour guide, and were told the price of the tour was up to us to decide at the end of the tour. Hard to argue with that for a private tour.

The tour guide was a pleasant women who took us on a nice tour and having done it so many times she recommended the best angle for taking photos. The cemetery itself was very impressive, if a bit over the top. The crypts are like tiny houses packed together, with the actual coffins resting in a basement underneath. Looking through some of the windows you could see the staircase that descends into the basement, with some crypts containing as many as 60 coffins. Each crypt is considered private family property, so even if it clearly hasn’t been visited in 50 years and the glass is broken and it’s a mess, it will be left as is by the caretakers.

Some of the crypts were enormous marble monuments, unbelievable in their audacity and perhaps the vanity of those who commissioned them. Others were more stately, while some seemed to be designed as prisons rather than a resting place. Our tour guide told us some interesting stories about the resting inhabitants, and we even had one of the resident cats as an escort for a while.

We closed the place out, with our tour guide dodging the security guards closing up for the night to get us the last few pictures she thought we would like.

The sun was beginning to set, so we tried to hurry over to the giant flower sculpture, Floralis Generica, to see if we could watch it close for the night. We hustled along the busy rush hour streets and I guessed incorrectly on where to best cross the traffic. The flower closed as we were crossing the street and we missed it. Inna was very disappointed, but it was still very beautiful in the evening light and one of my favorite installations of the trip.

Fernando was working late this night, so Adela met us in front of the MALBA museum and gave us a ride home in the heavy BA traffic. Fernando joined us an hour later, and we were all treated to more fabulous cooking from Adela, this time a chicken curry. She must have read our minds as we were both desperately missing asian food and a curry was a wonderful treat for our taste buds. To top it all off, our dessert was more delicious dulce de leche ice cream to which we were now both addicted.

We spent the rest of the evening packing up. We were due at the airport by 10 am the following morning, and we were trying to send as much riding gear back with the bikes as possible to make our own flights back easier.