Southern Exposure

Saturday, April 18

We were recommended to spend a day at the popular tourist destination Tigre, a residential and commercial district in a neighborhood on the outskirts of BA. Fernando and Adela offered to give us a ride there so we all left the house around 11:00 after breakfast.

This neighborhood sits on an island bound by three rivers that are part of the large Parana Delta. The area is dominated by lush green islands separated by rivers and waterways. Lining the banks are traditional houses on stilts set against the panorama of subtropical vegetation and deep brown colored water.

Fernando and Adela gave us a car tour around the neighborhood and dropped us off near the market to wonder on our own. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Tigre used to be the favored summer retreat of the Porteño elite, which is why the area boasts a great number of lavish mansions and English-style palatial rowing clubs. Today Tigre is a picturesque little town that mixes the flavor of its former noble grandeur with being a popular tourist destination and a weekend retreat for Porteños. It serves up the pleasure of walking and boating along the waterways, seeing the beautiful and sometimes dilapidated homes on the islands and around the riverbanks, visiting a local market/shopping district, and eating some good food.

We figured we would start exploring the place with the boat tour of the river canals. On the huge catamaran for a 2.5 hour tour only a small handful of passengers had gathered; Matt and I, two transgender male-to-females with their friend (or a lover?), a mid 50’s Argentinean couple, she was dressed so over the top that Matt asked me to never dress like that, ever!, a mid 40’s English-speaking couple, and one lonely male passenger. I can’t say I enjoyed the tour. The water in the canals is brown, it is safe and clean, but its color is dirty brown, and not very attractive and pleasing to look at. Consequently even the nicest residencies and cool looking homes, and hotels that sit around these canals and accessible only by boat, start looking not so amusing very quickly. So after seeing them for 20 minutes you get the idea and it becomes a boring boat ride. I was actually more fascinated by rusty looking old homes with an interesting character that reflected their 80 year-old history as summer retreats and private sanctuaries for wealthy portenõs and now were disintegrating with every generation.

The only worthy piece of architecture that seemed truly amusing was the house of the Argentine Liberator, San Martin, put in a huge glass box like a museum piece.

Back on the mainland, we headed to the market where we ran into Fernando and Adela who used their couple of hours to shop and eat. They helped us get the best deal on the sheep skins, of which we bought three pieces of three different varieties of hair (all in natural white), for making the butt-soft seats for the bikes. They pointed out some tasty fried pastries – the popular Latin pastries churros, which we of course opted to fill with dulce de leche – they were such a sweetly delicious treat from the market.

Fernando and Adela left, leaving us to wonder around the neighborhood by ourselves for the day. We browsed the local market for traditional Argentinean goods, like leather, accessories, guacho gear, wooden kitchenware, dulce de leche alfajores and everything in between.

After a couple of successful purchases, we headed over on to the other side of the canal harbor for a walk along Paseo Victorica, with plenty of street hang outs, restaurants and bars and some spectacular rowing clubs buildings. Tigre projected an appealing mix of faded glamour and day-trip casualness, as we strolled the riverbank contemplating the moment in the life of the Delta.

We walked a lot today and were still on the outlook for food, as the sun began to set. I really wanted to see Argentina’s first social club/casino/hotel, that closed in 1933, and was later turned into a local art museum. It was a long walk, but Matt favored trying to get there before the sun set, so we walked for another hour along the river to the end of the paseo. I was happy to see this grand sumptuous mansion up close and snap some photos.

It was already close to 7 pm, so we headed back to the Central Station where we got a cab to take us home. It was a quiet night. Fernando and Adela were hosting their friends at the house, so we mostly stayed in our room and went out to say hello to everyone before retiring to bed.