Southern Exposure

Friday, April 17

After spending a full day at the cargo terminal yesterday, our plan for today was to reward ourselves with some fun tourist activities. We had planned to visit MALBA (Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires), the rose garden, and do some shopping.

We slept in till 10 am and skipped breakfast in order to catch an earlier shuttle into downtown. While we waited for the shuttle outside the neighborhood gate, we saw a dog walker holding 10 or more dogs on a leash. These professional dog walkers, called Paseaperros, are a characteristic sight of BA, they not only walk the prized pedigree dogs on weekdays, they also brush and groom them and look out for signs of ill-health. We were delighted to see our cutsie barrel-shaped mutt Rovi among the neighborhood’s premium breeds. While the other dogs were giving the paseaperro a hard time, Rovi was walking calmly paying little attention to the surrounding dog squabble.

Matt and I had a fun time imagining a conversation among the high-class neighborhood dogs when Rovi entered their social circle for the first time. Rovi was a street dog until Peppa hit her with a car, and feeling guilty brought her home, where Adela and Fernando nursed her back to perfect health and adopted her as their permanent pet. Rovi had a Cinderella story, and as we imagined she was probably looked down upon and teased for not being “one of them” by the snooty neighborhood dogs when she joined their close knit elite circle for the daily walks. But nothing could disturb the peace and enthusiasm of our modest Rovi. She went from rags to riches and knew exactly how lucky she was to be a part of Fernando and Adela’s household.

The shuttle dropped us off downtown where we took a quick taxi ride to MALBA. The modern glass-fronted building of the museum was perfectly matched by the three-story atrium with spacious and airy galleries inside.

Peppa told us they had a great cafe at the museum, which is where we decided to have lunch. We chose to sit outside on the patio, enjoyed our fancy sandwiches and watched people and the world go by.

The museum’s collection, focused solely on Latin American art arranged in a chronological order from 1910 to the present, was the best and smartest collection of modern Latin American art I have seen so far. I particularly enjoyed the interactive material installations that could be switched on and off,

the whimsical surrealist sculptures,

the wooden benches with their curly slats spreading over the museum walls like grapevines,

and of course paintings by such Latin American heavyweights as Frida Khalo, Diego Rivera, Joaquin Torres-Garcia, and Antonio Berni among others. The MALBA museum had a great gift shop, but I restrained myself from buying there because I knew we had a lot of gift and personal shopping ahead of us.

After the museum we walked to the rose garden. I was amazed at the number of parks and gardens in BA. This was such a beautiful and calm place to escape the daily commotion of city life. The rose garden featured a great variety of roses from large fragrant blooms to small decorative bushes.

It was a pleasure to walk around there, albeit the fact that I was attacked by mosquitos and begged Matt to flee the garden after six huge itchy bubbles turned up on my arms and legs. Matt had not had a single bite.

It was time for us to do some shopping. Mainly, we wanted to research the kind of traditional things we could get as gifts for friends and family and may be find something special for ourselves. Some of the things we noted but not yet bought were a leather wine bottle holder we have seen used at the estancia and Fernando and Adela’s house, gaucho leather boots for Matt, awesomely comfortable leather sleepers, and the famous Argentinean alfajores, the soft sandwich cookies layered with dulce de leche and covered in chocolate. I admit, we became quite the addicts of the famous Havana Alfajores during our stay in BA.

Before catching the shuttle home we stopped at an upscale gaucho boutique recommended by Fernando and Adela where I purchased a pair of summer khaki-type gaucho pants called bombachas that everyone wore at the estancia. They looked quite quite on me.

I have to pinpoint a strange fashion fad popular with young women in BA. They fancy these “Vanilla Ice”-type pants with low crotch design, so it looks like they are carrying a bunch of s..t in their pants. There is nothing even remotely sexy about these pants. They look even more foolish than Uggs worn with mini skirts (if that look can be beaten!), but somehow they are the hottest trend among the fashion impaired BA gals. Go figure.

We caught the shuttle back to the house where Fernando and Adela were waiting for us as we were invited to go to their friends’ home for a birthday party. We cleaned up and the four of us headed to the friends’ residence. It was a grown up party, most men and women hung out in separate parts of the house in circles, while we carved out a small circle for ourselves and were being entertained and tried to entertain our new friends as we savored the asado of beef and chorizo served on tiny hamburger buns which tasted great. After singing the birthday song (I was asked to sing in Russian) and being treated to three varieties of dessert, we were invited to look at an antique car of one of the hosts’ neighbors. It looked like a British roadster and indeed was produced in Argentina from the parts of British and American race cars in the 1940’s. It was a total hoot to hear it roar.

It was a long and eventful day, and we were ready to hit the bed as soon as we got home. Mumy came to visit us in the bedroom, but despite my pleading of staying with us overnight, she left as soon as the lights went off. We’ve heard from Adela and Fernando that she goes on neighborhood patrols at night, and sometimes comes back with a mouse or a bat as her gift.