Love That Dirty Water!
The benefit of global warming – winter days that are 35 degrees above the normal temperature.
Our second weekend in Buenos Aires was about 40 degrees warmer than the first. Gone were the sweatshirts, long underwear and gloves. It was time to enjoy summer.
We decided to visit Tigre, a summertime hotspot for porteños. Just a short train ride from the city, Tigre is sometimes called the Venice of Argentina by locals. While that is disputable, it is pretty nice.
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During peak season (or unseasonably warm winter days), people flee the city for the quaint, but busy, town of Tigre. There is a small amusement park, casino, art museum and numerous outdoor activities.
Tigre is where a small part of the Delta divides into many canals that can been enjoyed by a peaceful boat ride along the river. For the locals, it´s their mode of transportation to their cottage. For tourists, they use the boats to take them to their summer rentals or upriver to a restaurant or park for a day-long picnic and parrilla (barbeque with lots and lots and lots of meat).
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We started our trip to Tigre early Saturday morning. We caught the train shortly after 10am, after the second stop, a couple guys got on that were obviously on their way home from the bar. Inside the packed train, the drunk man was leaning on us and trying to engage us in a slurred conversation. Things improved drastically once he got off.
We arrived in Tigre and caught a local taxi boat rather than the touristy catamaran. As we headed up the river, our capitan would essential back up to a dock so that people could get off at their home. It was an impressive site to watch the captain back up a 50 foot boat with no direct line of site without a second attempt and without smashing the dock. We decided not to get off, but just enjoy the ride and the narrow passage ways further into the Delta. We arrived back in Tigre about 3 hours later – grabbed a bite to eat and walked along the boardwalk to the Art Museum. The Art Museum is in an impressive old mansion that was once a gentlemen’s club, then casino, before becoming the Art Musuem. It was a much more peaceful ride home.
