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Tales from Tigre

tales-from-tigre

An hour’s journey north from the heart of Buenos Aires brought us to a place that just as easily may have been on the other side of the earth.  Gone were the miles of pavement and blaring of taxi horns.  In their place were the infinite waterways of the Tigre delta.  Raw gasoline fumes drifted through the humid air and the loud rumble of the water taxi’s vibrated under the soles of our feet as we stepped onboard. 

Instead of the overtly advertised tourist cruise, we queued up with a line of locals waiting for their river bus home that afternoon.  They piled their necessities onto the roof of the long polished wood boat; crates of eggs, jugs of drinking water, school supplies, and cartons of cigarettes all in a well practiced chaotic balance.  Kids in public school uniforms that resembled a cross between a doctor’s lab coat and a smock greeted the driver and huddled in groups for the ride home; a dynamic not unlike any other school bus.  As we wound our way further up the veiny outcrops of the delta we passed other families rowing home, four to a canoe; we tooted hello to precariously overloaded tugs ferrying logs; and saluted mothers and grandmothers waiting at the end of rickety wooden piers for the afternoon school bus to deliver their children home.  As the driver swung the boat up to each dock for no more than one or two seconds, we watched as the elderly and the young alike alighted from our water cruise with the balance of seasoned sailors and fishermen. 

Eventually, with shaking legs and trepidatious steps, we got off at the pier for Tres Bocas, our island oasis for the afternoon.  We sauntered down sidewalks lining residential waterways too small for the bus, and snapped covert photos of passing peoples motoring or rowing to and from home.   Under a trellis of draping green vines, we sat at white plastic tables where we drank cold Quilmes out of styrofoam coolers and ate a lunch of milanese.  A grey-brown cat trailed round our feet, and local dogs napped in the shade beneath our table.  The scratchy sound of delta blues tunes swayed us into a timeless daze.  Here, an hour from Buenos Aires life couldn’t be more different, but it couldn’t be any better either. 


                      

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seven-steps
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Seven Steps

It’s been said that this city is the Paris of South America.  It’s also been said that it is the “new” New York.  Both and neither are correct.   After nearly a month in Buenos Aires we gently uncovered a place with a depth, tradition, and pride that defy any comparison. 

Like all great romantic cities this place is best explored by walking its streets as aimlessly as possible.  It’s buildings are majestic, old, and wealthy; craftily hiding the torments of time.  So too, are the numbers of old ladies who take charge of this city during the day.  To start to understand what makes Buenos Aires herself, sit at any cafe at any time of day and watch the women. They’re a living version of Rene Magritte’s man in the bowler hat with his face hidden by the apple.  They all radiate with the same carefully bronzed skin.  Their quaffed hairstyles are dyed the same gold over silver. They’re purposefully poised.  However, instead of a polished red apple hiding their face, they’re all throwing the apples.  Under the St John knit sweaters and carefully stylish and sensible shoes they have sharp elbows on the bus.  Clenched fists fly in a rage at street bands who overstay and overplay their welcome too near the sanctified peace of an Argentinian Nona.  Shop in their store and they’ll grace you with a Parisian kiss on each cheek.  Attempt to hail a taxi at the same time, and one will, without mercy, upstream you faster than it can happen in New York. 

Walk deeper down her streets and you’ll find bars and cafe’s in the early evening filled with locals drinking coffee and eating a sickening amount of sweet pastries to fill the void between meat at lunch and more meat for dinner at ten or eleven PM.  Each night we drowned ourselves in what they called half sized cuts of steak. 

Afterwards we would set out in search of the night layer of Buenos Aires.  We visited bar after bar of the city’s supposed best and recommended nightlife.  We sat in gigantic Victorian chairs sipping whimsically named cocktails while a larger than life “Alice in Wonderland” worthy clock spun circles overhead.  We passed secret messages at dinner to find an escort into a too perfectly reenacted hideaway Prohibition bar.  We followed our noses through an overflowing flower shop to find a secret refrigerator door to an illusory underground mirrored tunnel.  On an acid high from the botanic biosphere above we drank from lab beakers of smoke, swirled vials of rose petals, and gaped at a giant octopus.  As wondrous as it was, we couldn’t help but feel the tinge of anticlimax.  Hadn’t we been to these bars before?  Didn’t we sneak though the same secret passage, and sip on an equally exotic elixir?  Maybe this is the new New York. 

With that realization, our flower headed high began to wear off; until one night when a friend said ‘come with me.”  We still used special keys, and spoke secret passwords to find our destination.  This time however the key was a subway card, and passwords, unintelligible local Castellano Spanish.  We found ourselves in a cross between a local community center and below ground gym.  It didn’t start until after midnight and didn’t end until after the long after dawn.  We sat at cheap tables surrounding a polished wood floor and drank fernet and cokes.  The lights dimmed ever lower.  An accordion sprang to life on stage, and then another, and then three more.  Then the strings, and finally the suede voice of the singer.   Gracefully and gradually they glided in pairs onto the dance floor; timeless old men in shimmering suits; young beautiful women in bedazzled dresses and sparkling shoes.  Those simple seven steps to the music was all it took and we were mesmerized.  They spun and twirled;  toes swept the floor and wound up around each others bodies.  Their hands barely touching each other.  Their eyes were closed and yet not one of the hundred people on the small dance floor bumped another.  They moved like every great Tango scene from every great movie, except better.  These were regular people.  They were the old ladies we walked past on the street, and the young couples we sat next to in the prohibition bar.  This is where we found the real Buenos Aires and fell in love.  Here, Argentina didn’t cry for us, we cried for Argentina. 

         
          

the-big-ice
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The Big Ice

Our glacier chase continues.  It only cost us five hours by bus, and an overly dramatized customs check that required our entire busload to stand outside slowly frosting over at the border crossing to nowhere, while rifle slinging customs agents peeled through our bags for the the singular smuggled Dole banana. 

We found ourselves in a town not much unlike the last.  Built alongside another glacial river flowing towards the end of the earth; El Calafate’s streets were lined with a familiar plethora of local (they say typical) restaurants, well aimed tourist shops, and adventure promising tour companies.   A few things were maybe a little different.  The currency symbols had changed again, which required a day or two of retraining ourselves to do the quick math when the check came.  The locals drink mate from hollowed out and decorated gourds that are both a function of tradition and individual expression.  The tourists gorge on better ice cream.  And, somewhere not far, there is the crystalline crack and slow crawl of the Big Ice we came to meet. 

For a few days, we hobbled around the town eating ice cream, resting stiff knees and stretching sore muscles; anticipating a new adventure we knew would be spectacular and expected to be thrilling; in much the same way you’d wait in line at an amusement park eating cotton candy before riding its biggest and fastest rollercoaster.  Scary with a safety net.  So we thought.

More perfect, and unseasonably clear, warm, windless blue weather graced the day of our ice trek.  After a morning of bilingual facts, figures, and admonishments to keep all hands and feet out of ice crevices, our predawn bus arrived at our glacier amusement park.  We threaded our way down metal gangplanks for our first face to face with the ice.  Just in time, as the first ray of sun crested the mountain peak, she heaved a wall of ice like the face of an apartment building into the still sleeping water at her base.  Already worth the price of admission. 

A short, and iceberg free ferry ride, brought us to the base of the behemoth where we met our guides, and guardian angels, for the day.  We hiked for some time through the empty space where the glacier and the mountain once danced together.  We marveled at her shape and spied into the cracks in her armor.  She waited patiently. 

After strapping metal teeth to our feet we took our first steps onto her heaving chest.  What looked  no different than an slick ski slope in the distance was now a field of merciless razor edged broken glass beneath us.  Our angels watched, and assessed our capability as we scaled our first rise.  “Angry monkey!  Stomping penguin!”  they would holler over their shoulders as we fumbled our way up the first curve or her rib. 

Up and in we continued, one deliberate step in front of the other, no longer walking, but dancing to the firm heartbeat of the living giant beneath our feet.  At our first plateau we left Earth for the first time.  Nothing left was familiar.  The expanse ahead of us forced our senses to recalibrate for something so foreign.  We stood atop the white blade of a ridge; each side plunging into a vacuum of electric blue endlessness.  Our angels swung their axes and chiseled a crusty path along one slope. One by one, we stomped across,  while her blue depths below begged to inhale us; and we dared to consider her proposal. Ridge after ridge it went on like this, one guide clambering ahead to scout the path that wouldn’t come to an impasse; the other hammering out footholds and securing ice picks for us to hang onto as we inched our way along steep slopes.  One misstep would have sent us down an ice luge with no end.

Eventually we crossed our last ridge to find ourselves in the middle of an ice prairie. At the center sat a blue lake so perfect that no description would be fair to its beauty.  We sat there that afternoon, dining on Snickers bars hardened by the ice, and drinking water dipped from the azul lagoon and wondered how anything after this could ever be more spectacular.  We dropped a few frozen tears for a place that we were sad to see go, even while we were still there; knowing that sooner than later it won’t exist for future generations of us.  No photo, or go pro, or drone; no TV show, or documentary, or movie;  and no drug or prose can describe what this place does to you.  Just this once, don’t look at the photos below, but go and see for yourself.                              

past-the-precipice
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Past the Precipice

The next several days trekked us through a wilderness that flipped though all four seasons in no particular order.  In the morning we’d have to cling to the side of a barren rock strewn mountain, the wind threatening to give us an extra shove over the edge.  By afternoon we’d be stomping through muddy green meadows, stripped down to shorts and t-shirts.  Every bend unveiled a new vista worthy of a full camera card of photos.  Every angle was packed full of something to see; a lake bluer than the last, a new mountain face covered in ice brighter than sunlight, or a beach covered in water polished rocks sprouted with ice crystals.  We walked through miles of burnt forrest, each tree a black and white headstone with sprigs of fresh green life growing from the ashes.  At the end of the forrest we came upon another lake.  On this lake a parade of icebergs drifted past us. 

Further up the lake as the icebergs grew larger, so too did the new sound of improvised wooden flute music undulating along in its own unfamiliar rhythm.  This took hold of us.  We were the needles slowly rippling across the surface of a vinyl record; our trail, the groove guiding us through its peaks and valleys; our sound whistling in the distance.  On the most narrow and steep section of trail we passed our flute player sitting on a barely balanced boulder on the cliff’s edge surrounded in the hazy shimmer of the music.  Once past, we never turned around to see if he really was there. 

A hilltop later, we gaped at our first view of the mammoth frozen mass that had born the bergs.  We sat on a rocky bluff that evening and watched the lights go out over the blue ice.  In the distance we could hear the crack of breaking wood bats and the bone rattling boom of thunder as the ice cast off new wedges to make their way down the floating parade. 

At night we would take refuge with other pilgrims equally over stimulated by the scenery and events of their respective days journey.  Groups would gather to warm their blistered and sore stocking feet around wood burning ovens and share the day’s stories.  Hunks of glacier ice rattled around in our cocktail glasses.  As the last of the ice melted away, two by two, we pad off to our dorms.  Tomorrow, we wake and walk to something new. 

For all the magnificence and sensory overload of this place by day, it was night that was the most overwhelming.  A few hours before dawn we stood in heavy silence beneath an endless sheet of sparkling space.  Each second, hundreds of tiny new bright pin pricks light up above us.  They drip down frozen star dust. It lands in spires on the polished beach rocks we’ll walk over tomorrow.  Some of the lights break loose and streak past us; others dilate and grow more intense; while some flash and then disappear.  We watch as this continues, waiting for the sky to rip open and catch fire.  Eventually the tips of the Torres behind us begin to flicker and glow red.  Far away, a wood flute plays.