I haven't written since my trip to the gym doctor, so I'll try and do an update on our recent activities. Like most cities (not in America), Buenos Aires has a plethora of markets. The commerce conducted in these markets include many offering your standard tourist crapola, while others have genuinely interesting artwork, and others with "useful" household items or normal food bought by everyday citizens. Our first market was last sunday next to the Recoletta Cemetery. Recoleta is probably the nicest, wealthiest area of the city. Picture 74th and Madison avenue with snooty Argentinians in lieu of snooty new yorkers. The Recoleta cemetery is an above ground mausoleum filled cemetery with many famous deceased Argentines most notably Eva Peron. The market here was pretty huge, beginning around this insane tree and winding down and around several streets and small squares.
Overall what I liked best about this market was that the open squares were filled with bands or musicians and a crowd of people genuinely listening to them and politely clapping after each song. These guys were playing a sort of reggae ska sound that is pretty popular down here.
The next market we attacked with our hard earned tourist dollars was the San Isidro market. San Isidro is a town about 30 mins north of BA that feels like a mix between wealthy older Spanish colonial influences and modern California wealthy yuppie influences. Their market was based across from their church in town. We drove up with Jorge and his friend and driver Martine. Annie decided it was so cold in Buenos Aires (remember its winter here) she NEEDED to have alpaca socks (clearly they will come in handy in Bali...). These things are truly soft and if i didn't worry about my ego being bruised, I might wear my wife's socks tho. In the same day, we visited the Tigre market. Tigre is a town on the river that is another 15 mins or so north of San Isidoro. This was a huge multi complex sprawling market where anyone could buy desks, fruit, and the more traditional items.
San Isidro market in the distance with the church in top left. Alpaca socks nowhere to be found.
Finally, on Sunday we cruised through the San Telmo market. San Telmo is a part of town that is clearly "up and coming" but still rough in some areas, but has already been so gentrified that we head more english spoken in our few hours walking here than most of the rest of the time in BA combined. This market was like an odd cross between a tourist market and some show lot. On one end of the market there were kids just setting up their own blankets selling some odd wares they created, while others pushed coolers through the streets selling home made pan relleno, burritos, veggie burritos, and empanadas.
San Telmo market was huuuuge and stretched for maybe 15 - 20 blocks.
Got any extras brahs?
Finally, a note on mate. I know I have seen the phrase yerba mate, but previously I guess was not cool enough to drink it. Yerba mate is a tea drank here and its not unusual at any of the aforementioned markets to find groups of people (young to old), sitting in a circle sipping and passing a mate gourd. They take their mate drinking very seriously here and all rules must be strictly adhered too otherwise you might receive scornful looks from locals disparaging us naive americanos. Basically, the hollowed out fruit is about 2/3s filled with the yerba leaves and then a combination of a small amount of cold water and hot water is added allowing the leaves inside to "tea". Since you are potentially drinking straight leaves, you drink through a bombilla (fancy ass straw) that acts to filter out any of the leaves goo as nobody here has thought of tea bags. Anyhow, its passed and drank around as a communal activity like smoking a hookah opposed to a solo cup of tea. The strong tea is similar to drinking a stiff cup of coffee without any acidity or jittery-ness that comes with too much coffee. I see more mate being consumed by this household as the south american leg continues.
Sip, Sip, Pass
Off to Uruguay tomorrow for a day.
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