Tigre- biking and kayaking

Wednesday I spent at COPA working on my History of US paper, which my tutor read and told me was great. Then I had Borges class. Then I went to a café with Blythe…we discovered another internet café.

Thursday I had two classes and then came home and basically napped (I was supposed to be working on my art history paper….i can’t get into it….i would much rather write another history paper).

Friday, I woke up to the sound of rain hitting the porch roof of the apartment below us. I called COPA to see if we were still going to Tigre (about 45 min north). Daniel, my favorite COPA staffer, answered and in a very peppy voice (esp because it was 9 AM), told me of course you’re still going to Tigre! So I headed to the Torre de Los Ingleses/Retiro to meet up with our guides and pick up my bicycle. By the time my colectivo got there it had stopped raining. I bumped into another COPA girl on the colectivo and we talked about how we couldn’t remember the last time we were on a bike (this seemed to be very common even though we chose to go on this bicycle excursion). We took a train to La Lucila which is in the suburb of Vincente Lopez. From there we rode for about 2-3 hours (stopping and taking breaks). We rode through nice neighborhoods and slummy areas (which weren’t really that slummy). All of these suburbs are right along the river. It’s the widest river in the world (or so they claim, but as I’ve come to learn, Argentine’s will claim just about anything. Its also a very disgusting looking brown river which makes the Hudson look swimmable.

Sandra was the first to fall off her bike which was a very hilarious fall (she was perfectly fine). She was trying to turn onto this stone path thing on the side of a ditch. She went too slowly and turned to much, started heading down the ditch (on the bike), the bike came out from under her and she wound up with her (helmeted) head below her knees. She was perfectly fine…no scrapes or anything and is very mad that I did not take a picture of her. From there we went out to a lookout area where we could see the city. Then we went to another lookout area and had snacks and mate. Mate started in northern Argentina with the Guraní people. When the Jesuits came they found the Guaraní drinking herbs our of gourds and basically stole the tradition. What you do is, take herbs (special herbs from the mate plant) and put them in a gourd called a mate. You pour hot water (not boiling) in and drink it from a special straw what has a strainer on the bottom. The custom is that one person drinks a gourd full (this isn’t very much) and passes it on to the next person who drinks one and then passes it on. Yes, its somewhat germy, you basically share the same straw with up to 20 people (one of my friends was in a class where they passed around one mate for the whole class. Its not super common in Buenos Aires (actually its more common in Uruguay, but don’t tell the Argentines that because it started here). Also, in Paraguay and Brasil, they drink it cold and sometimes put juice in it. Its super bitter, but I kinda like it. There are all these rules that go along with how to politely drink mate and what to say to the server and stuff…its somewhat complicated.

We continued to ride along the river until we got to San Isidro where we saw the cathedral and where the rich people live (and the view they have of the lovely brown river). We kept riding through San Fernando until we got to Tigre (we left the train at about 11:30 and go to Tigre for lunch at 3ish). We went to the Puerto de Frutas (fruit port) where they used to bring in fruits to the city and ate sandwiches there. Then we rode through Tigre (saw the Parque de la Costa, the closest roller coasters to the city) and went on to our Kayak place.

So Sandra and I in a Kayak was rather hilarious...mostly cause we got the bum kayak…our steering mechanism was missing….which meant we had to steer with our oars…which the instructors neglected to teach us when we were on dry land. So now were in this river thing where all the tourist boats (big) and boys crew teams are. We’re trying desperately to not hit any boats (we hit the stone walls several times). I started saying things like, “we want to hit that boat on the left side, cause I can work us out of that…if we hit on the right, we’re stuck between the boat and the wall…ok, push left.” Then we almost hit one of the stone supports for the car bridge and we screamed, which made these guys on the bank crack up (we pretty much did the same thing on the way back, even though we tried really hard to miss the bridge). We make it out of the stone wall part and have to cross the bigger river…which of course starts to pull us down stream. We make it into the other small river (it was like crossing the street). We are clearly the last kayak and the instructors had to wait for us….which was somewhat embarrassing. We finally explain to one of them that we keep heading right (aka into the river bank) and she realizes that’s because our rudder is stuck in the position for turning right…so it wasn’t just us. We had to work against this, so we were super tired and couldn’t figure out how everyone else was finding this so much easier than us. So now, we get going and 5 feet later its time to turn around. Sandra started to really get the whole left right steering thing and I was the stupid one. We crashed into a lot of other kayaks (like the bike guides…and alex and brandon’s boat like 5 times).

We finally got back to the Kayak place (we were the first boat in the water and the last boat out). At least we weren’t Alex and Brandon, who had to pour the bathtub out of their boat (I really don’t know how they didn’t sink…they had so much water in their boat). The river was so gross. It smelled and was full of garbage. Thank god we didn’t fall in it…I had sort of prepared myself for falling in. I really though we would, but we didn’t. after that, we went to the bathroom/put shoes back on/drank some water and then….got back on the damn bicycles…which was very bad. Luckily we just had to ride to the bridge (about 5 blocks away) and cross to the train station. We got back on the train and headed to Buenos Aires. By the time I got home it was 8:30 PM and I was exhausted…my shoulders and crotch were also screaming at me in plain…a lot of pain. My host mom and I ate dinner and I went to bed.

Saturday I woke up and worked on my paper. Then I thought about going to the movies and went to Steve’s house where we decided to go back to my house and work on our papers/midterms…so practical. Saturday night I went to dinner with the girls. We went to TGI Fridays which was horribly tacky and expensive, but they did have pretty good fajitas (which is hard to come by here – considering most food here is exactly the same everywhere).

Sunday, I woke up and watched West Wing (thanks to Blythe for lending me all of her seasons 1 and 2). Then I went to the outdoor market at San Telmo, which is a sort of artsy barrio in the southern side of the city. Most of the fair is antiques (literally antiques, mostly junk), but there are some other stands which are jewelry and art stuff. It was absolutely packed with tourists and I think I heard more people speaking English than Spanish. Afterwards I walked to the theater Colón to try to get tickets to take a tour. I had actually got there too late so I’ll have to do it some other day. I went home to finish working on my midterm. Sunday was Mother’s Day here so we had the daughter and grandchildren over. They brought Lola, the yellow lab (yay!). getting Lola into the apartment was a challenge because they could only use the service elevator which stops ½ a floor away (in the stairwell). Getting the dog up the ½ flight of steps was nearly impossible…the dog is afraid of everything including changes in floor surfaces, electrical wires, and apparently stairs. My host mom had spent all week preparing this meat dish which was sliced cold meat (it needed days to cool properly) with a sauce of mayonnaise, mustard and egg with crumbled hardboiled egg on top. Honestly it wasn’t worth the weeks wait, but whatever. Then we had Chinese food, which was really just noodles with chicken and veggies…no rice (there was bread), no soup, no wings (I really miss wings, Chinese restaurants here don’t have wings). After that my host mom had prepared a scavenger hunt for the 8 year old grandson. Yes, this was mother’s day, but she hand whipped cream for her granddaughter (who didn’t really want it), made a dish she makes once a year, and designed a scavenger hunt all over the house for her grandson (and bought him this trading cards to be prizes). The dinner was fun and tiring.

Monday, I woke up to four messages from steve (steve my friend here, not the one from tufts) saying he was awake and wanted to go to a café to study or something…I put that off until noonish. We went to the café where I sat on the internet for three hours and had a fantastic salad (which is pretty much an oxymoron here). Then we went to steve’s house because my computer died (they don’t believe in outlets in cafes or pretty much anywhere here). Then I went to the movies and saw The Wind that Blew the Barley (I think that was what it was called)…it won the Cannes film festival. Its about Ireland in the 1920s and Irish and British fighting…it was really sad, but good. Then we went and had more Chinese food (twice in two days is amazing!!). next we went to burger king because amy wanted soft serve ice cream and then I walked home and watched more west wing before going to bed.

Tuesday was another working on the paper day for me. Spent most of the day at COPA, went to a café with Blythe. Watched some TV. Edited my paper some more. Slept…forgot about pilates…oops!

Wednesday was yet another day at COPA…starting to get sick of going there.