Man Made Lake

aceras de BsAs

BsAs' sidewalks are a microcosm for the city's broader aesthetic: an unpredictable and often counterintuitive blend of styles, materials and colors.  That is why I miss it so fucking bad.  Mind the dog shite though.

Buenos Aires 13

Las Cañitas
    Las Cañitas is a somewhat recently hippefied neighborhood in the north of Palermo.  Not much else to say.
    We're sad to leave to say the least.  We pretty much did everything we had planned to do, although we didn't take many photos of Belgrano.  Buenos Aires is definitely a European city.  The people are European, the food is European, the city even looks European.  Still, there is a certain chaos in the unregulated world of Latin America that seeps into life here.  We will miss it.

Buenos Aires 12

Apartment 3: Interior
    And finally, the inside of our apartment.  The bed was a gobshite, the water tasted funny and the heater took a couple days to get working (partially my fault).  On the other hand, the ceilings must have been 20 feet, the exposed brick, wood beams and red paint were beautiful, and the mass of furniture and lighting was a nice touch.  The kitchen even had a 10 or 15 foot long bench.  How cool is that?  Now we want a big bench really bad.

Buenos Aires 11

Las Villas
    The subway map has an inset for the 'premetro' line that starts at the E train's terminus.  I knew that Belgium and the Netherlands occasionally use 'premetro' to describe a light rail system that runs in a subway with the intention of eventually upgrading the system to heavy rail "metro" service.  The BsAs metro was built mostly in the first half of the 20th century so we were curious about this newer line's purpose.
    In a seemingly unrelated story, Kayt's friend in Lima told of a taxi ride to the BsAs airport that went all wrong.  The driver had recently immigrated from Russia and didn't know his way around too well.  They ended up in 'Las Villas,' which is apparently the scariest area in BsAs.  She had never seen anything so bad in Lima.
    Third paragraph should be predictable, no?  The 'premetro' light rail runs on surface streets through Las Villas, which is essentially a huge shanty town (they did, however, seem to have a fair amount of paved roads).  The defining characteristic of shanty towns is that they lack basic infrastructure like clean water, sewage, waste disposal, roads, etc, so it was quite a surprise to find ourselves on a light rail line, of all things, going through it.  Near the end of the line we came across a humungous tract of public housing: blocks and blocks of 20 story buildings, all the same shape and color, rising out of the filthy mess.  Now things were beginning to make more sense: the line was put in to bring mobility to the countless thousands of residents to the then new projects. 
    On the ride back Kayt struck up a conversation with a cop posted on board.  The line first opened in 1986 with old trolleys.  He felt that the people from the projects were good citizens but the 'low-rise area' brought an unstable element to the corridor and thus it became necessary to have police ride on every train.  He pointed out more projects being built to mitigate the shanty town problem.
    Although shocking, we found that the experience marked a noteworthy difference between Argentina and the rest of Latin America.  They invested heavily in improving the quality of life for their poorest residents who are often dismissed as non-existent in many developing countries.  The police officer was happy to talk with us about the neighborhood and his job.  When we got back to the subway station he even stepped off and told the men working the turnstiles to let us in for free.  Argentineans struck us as a very warm, welcoming people. 
    And better yet, the women look you in the eye and don't take any shit.

Buenos Aires 10

Buenos Aires 10: Boedo 
    Boedo is, thus far, the shortest and poorest neighborhood we've encountered.  The 1-3 story buildings present a hodgepodge of styles consistent with the Buenos Aires aesthetic but there's something less graceful about the mix here.  The dog shit on the crumbling sidewalk isn't particularly graceful either.  Around the Boedo subway station stores specialize in dishwashers, soda machines, sewing machines, shoe soles, belt buckles, leather and hides, and other service oriented products.  The neighborhood has a reputation for hosting Bolivian immigrants, which is consistent with what we saw.  Passing under the freeway was an interesting experience.  Most North American elevated highways are dead zones, devoid of life and investment.  Under Autopista 25 de Mayo we found a large sports complex.  There were two or three basketball/soccer courts, a bocce court and a bathroom.  They were all in use too.  It makes so much sense: the neighborhood is short on park space so why not reclaim unwanted land under the freeway?  The group of old men playing bocce under a highway was a particularly memorable scene.  Kayt offered, "This is probably what they do all day."