Tigre, the land of the flood

After 2 hours of sleep on Saturday night, we got up and headed for the train to Tigre, a small city located on the river delta.  This place was awesome, probably one of my favorite things we've done so far.  There's a little port on the river filled with motor boats that you can pay a small fee to take anywhere you want on the many little tributaries/rivers that form a big spider web on the delta.  We took a boat up the main river for about 25-30 minutes, on which I met a man and his friend from Palm Beach, fairly close to North Passage according to him.  They were in Argentina/Chile for a few weeks for a friends birthday.  We had a good time talking about Florida and traveling.  The BC people got off at one of the millions of tiny little docks sticking out into the water.  Apparently there's normally beaches all over the place on this river, but this month has been one of the rainiest months in years as far as water volume goes, and EVERYTHING was flooded.  There were little houses and cabanas and stuff all over the land like isolated little getaways for vacationers, it was real cool.  We walked around the flooded paths on the narrow strips of brush-covered land until we found a restaurant in the shade overlooking one of the rivers.  We sat for about 2 hours eating and relaxing, all were pretty tired from the lack of sleep.

Afterward we took the same kind of boat back to the main port.  The man from Florida and his friend happened to be on it again after they traveled a bit further up the river.  There was also a girl from Boston who happened to sit right next to us and heard me say I was from BC.  I always thought the phrase "Its a small world" really was just a phrase.  We walked for a bit from the port to a place called the Puerto de Frutas, a huge outdoor marketplace.  We spend about an hour and a half walking among the hundreds of tents selling leather products, fruit, candy, soccer jerseys, furniture, posters, ice cream, and everything else you could possibly imagine.  It was real fun.

We got home around 7pm, passed out until about 915, and then headed back out.  Dave, Malcolm, and I went to a bar called The Alamo, a place opened and run by Americans, to watch to USA-Canada Olympic hockey game.  This place is American in every sense.  The waitress didnt speak any Spanish, everybody in the place was speaking English, there was something other than soccer on tv, and the menu consisted of buffalo wings, nachos, pizza, and fries.  We loved it.

Yesterday was incredible as well.  We went to the famous Recoleta cemetery where all of Argentina's national figures are buried in a small city of mausoleums.  These things are HUGE.  The "graves" are very ornate concrete houses with entire families buried inside.  We also spend a ton of time laying in the park because it was the most beautiful day I can remember, about 82 degrees, no humidity, a slight breeze, and not a cloud in the sky.  Then we went to Puerto Madero, a more modern business/restaurant district on a port, to get some dinner.

Today was our last day of Spanish class.  We're taking it easy now and then going out to celebrate tonight with a bunch of friends.  Tomorrow we have to be at the other end of the city at 930am for our visas.  Should be another fun morning.


Ill post pictures in a separate post.  Talk to you soon.