Pain Below the Equator

January 24, 2010 Iguasu:

  Sunday we revisited the upper and lower viewing levels by ourselves, and took more pictures to be sure we had it covered. After lunch we were taken to airport which was a cue to tip the guide. The airport, which seemed idyllic on arriving, on departing, appeared to be run by the Keystone Nazis. Of course we were late, but Julia, the Buenos Aires greeter, was on hand to collect her next tip.

  At the Treblinka, I went straight to the desk clerk, the same who had jotted a notation about the faulty shower, and inquired about it. He assured me with easy confidence that it had been fixed. I corrected him about ten minutes later. Being Sunday afternoon it surprised me that he seized a two-way radio and discussed it with someone. A few minutes later the slightly wizened head-of-housekeeping with the missing tooth arrived to survey the situation. To her credit she cut through red tape and ordered me to follow her across the mezzanine to a vacant room. I worried that she was either going to shoot me or offer me sex in exchange for silence, but she offered the room instead. So we moved to larger, more sumptuous quarters. Sumptuous in that there was a white beanbag chair stuck into a corner. Also, there was the toilet. It ran continually and the tank did not refill. It was not like American toilets that can be fixed by shaking the handle or lifting the tank lid and playing with the flapper. No, this one had a button in the middle of the tank lid, so you had to unscrew it to get access to the works. I really had no spleen for taking this to the desk clerk. It seemed both cruel and futile. We passed the night flushing by buddy system; i.e., I was Sandy’s buddy who would follow after, remove the lid and make it flush. In the morning I reassembled it with the intention of letting it run as a clear demonstration of the problem, but the gremlins had departed and the damned thing worked. It still ran if you didn’t have just the right touch on the flush button, but usually only in the middle of the night.

  At dinner time we returned to Museo del Jamón and found it even better than before.

  January 25, 2010 Buenos Aires:

  Our plan was to walk to the Plaza de Mayo, along the waterfront and end in San Telmo for lunch. Plaza de Mayo was surprisingly near the hotel and I was puzzled by the security, or lack thereof, at the Casa Rosada, which is the seat of government. There is a crude fence crossing the plaza in front of the big pink building, but it only extends a few feet into the street and everyone, including us walked around it to approach the Argentinean equivalent of the White House. A stout iron fence encircles the place which I originally mistook for the Cabildo, but there are no visible guards and nobody could be seen on the grounds. It was Monday and I thought perhaps government was closed on Monday which sounds like a good idea for the United States.

  Reaching the waterfront ultimately proved impossible. The street that parallels the river is distanced from the water by a dike, then a marsh, then an ecological preserve. The area had the look of faded glory and was filthy with litter. San Telmo was many blocks inland and the midday sun was getting fairly brutal. Trying to keep to the shade we sought main streets hoping to find a restaurant row to no avail. In San Telmo I guess they're too busy tangoing to eat. We were all the way back to Avenida 9 de Julio before we found a modern bar for lunch. We dined with businessmen and women, and I confronted the mysterious befe de chorizo which haunts most menus. Why the word “chorizo” is attached to this dish I’ll never know. It is simply a butterfly cut piece of meat, probably the equivalent of a New York steak. It was accompanied by a guanación that I hoped I could parley into some green vegetables, but all the waiter would allow was fries or mashed. The olives I tried to add predictably never came, and the local gin with local tonic was enough to make me swear off the stuff.

  The walking tour was in the range of five miles and I found a new blister on shedding my shoes.

  For dinner Sunday we tried Il Buco next to Museo del Jamón. The food was excellent though the prices were higher.

 

  January 26, 2010 Buenos Aires:

  We took a bus tour of the city’s points of interest and were surprised to find so few. The greeter, Julia, had covered them in the short ride from the downtown airport to the Tribeca. The tour guide was ebullient and spoke clearly and loudly. She added some flesh to the carcass of Buenos Aires and generally made the trip worthwhile although I came away convinced that the denizens are way too fixated on Eva and Juan Peron. We passed on the opportunity to buy portraits of ourselves pasted onto the bodies of tango dancers, although Sandy looked pretty hot. We bailed from the bus on a restaurant row that we would have seen the previous day, when we were hot and ravenous, had we simply turned right instead of left, and there we had an excellent antipasto at the La Parrolaccia.

  Sandy rested in the afternoon and I made excursions abroad for water and Benadryl for my congested querida. We managed to wait until eight before going to dinner and were rewarded to find Café Hispano actually open at that obscene hour. I indulged my passion for pulpo and Sandy had two pounds of salmon of which she ate a few ounces. Really, it was an enormous piece of fish. I tried, but could not finish it.

  January 28, 2010 Buenos Aires:

  Sandy rallied sufficiently from the cold she caught on the plane to visit the cemetery. We are somewhat notoriously known for spending vacations in cemeteries, so I feel confident when I say that this is a world-class cemetery. Never have I seen so much marble and bronze in one place. The caskets in the crypts with silver fittings and fresh linen shrouds are on display through beveled glass, under white marble altars decorated with silver and brass candelabras. There is much good sculpture and meticulous care juxtaposed with decayed tombs having the coffins exposed to the elements and abuse. There is no evidence of abuse to the adornos, however—huge bronze ornaments that could be removed with a crowbar are everywhere, and I did not note what I took to be evidence of decorations or fittings having been removed. In Los Angeles the place would be stripped clean overnight. The earliest dates were from the mid-nineteenth century. Many names were prefixed with titles, usually “General”.

  The visit ended with the unusual incident of a girl running from a narrow aisle crying. Security guards came with urgency, and soon a crowd gathered around a couple of police. Another girl shouted pointing to the camera being carried by a dumpy, balding, middle-aged guide. The police began to search him, and soon marched him to a secluded spot with the crowd in tow. For us it was the signal that we were late for lunch.

  By 5:45 the maid had not come. I complained at the front desk, and again at 6:45. The girl at the desk then asked if I still wanted maid service at such a late hour. Well, it was hard to decide. We had no toilet paper and the towels were wet and wadded into a large ball on the floor. About thirty minutes later the same long suffering head-of-housekeeping who had solved the shower problem arrived with a flourish and cleaned the room herself.

  Sandy felt worse as the evening progressed toward the earliest permissible dinner hour. She decided not get out of bed and sent me to dine alone. There were a few occupied tables at the Café Asturias when I arrived. It was brightly lit with a couple dozen hams and bacalaos hanging over the bar. The typically enormous menu took several minutes to navigate, and I vacillated between swordfish and something else when I spotted angulas. The waitress didn’t know what they were until I pointed to the listing which admittedly was sub-labeled “when available”. She disappeared into the kitchen and when she returned she had a can with a yellowed cardboard sleeve that showed a close-up photo of the wormy little delights. The can was ancient but by then I felt committed, so I feigned delight, and added creamed collards to the order. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect what came next. (For the benefit of the uninitiated angulas are baby eels which are served in a bowl of hot olive oil infused with garlic.) She brought the angulas to the table in the can on a serving tray, turned them onto a bed of raw onions and tomato, and set them onto a plate with a spoon and fork which she used as tongs. She seemed so pleased with herself I could only beam and pretend that I thought it was great. They were mealy.


  About that time two American couples were seated beside me. One man thought he could speak a little Spanish and was reading the menu to his companions completely in error. My waitress greeted them. He said something she did not understand, and he responded with frustration because she could not speak English. I overheard him tell his wife, who chided him for being rude, that he wasn’t going to let the waitress ruin his dinner just because she didn’t speak English. A few minutes later she moved the asshole to the section of an unfortunate waitress who did speak English. I thanked her for getting him away from me.

  January 29, 2010 Buenos Aires:

  On Friday morning Sandy was still too ill to attend the breakfast buffet. I nibbled the ham and cheese while I read the news on the television ticker from Machu Picchu concerning the recent flood. The focus of the news was on the repatriation of the seven-hundred odd Argentinos stranded at Aguas Calientes and did not address the condition of the place. I took Sandy a tray of croissants and watermelon and went to the newsstand for a copy of the paper which we examined in depth and saved