Bill Morton
On Travel
Buenos Aires — It’s not a trip. It’s a sabbatical. And we are not alone.
After two and a half weeks of our six weeks exploring the city and nightlife of Buenos Aires and the wine and lake regions of Argentina’s Andes, we are surely not alone.
We have encountered Mercer Island entrepreneur Frank Mandarano, here for a month to test the waters of a potential winter retreat from Puget Sound’s rains. Frank has built one of his careers around high-end Italian racing and show cars — Maseratis and Ferraris and the like — and Argentinians share his passion for cars, and many share his heritage roots.
Frank was an amazing and fun friend for us to have in Buenos Aires. He has taken tour groups over to Italy for a number of years and has a gift for making himself understood in foreign places without knowing the language. Unlike us, who booked our month-long condo over the Internet, Frank booked a short stay in a condo, while he found better ones at half the price for the balance of his month here, thus avoiding the pricey middle man.
Another Mercer Islander, Cal Knight, of Swedish Health Systems, passed through Buenos Aires coming and going to do some serious brown trout fishing on the Tierra del Fuego tip of the continent.
Brian, a tennis-playing attorney from Olympia, is in Argentina for a month as well. Brian wonders if he could buy into a horse ranch in the Pampas or, better yet, in Mendoza’s wine valleys. Brian, a middle-aged divorcee, finds Argentine women to be as intriguing as its wines. Women here, he announces over a glass of Malbec, are much freer to be women than in the United States. They like themselves, their bodies, their style. I have no evidence to argue with Brian.
Gavin Sullivan, a graduate of Shorecrest High, the University of Washington, and a former Fulbright Scholar, is here with his new bride Shadia. They are both in their late 20s — a handsome pair. Shadia, a drop-dead beauty from Santa Marta, Columbia, talked Gavin into coming to Buenos Aires so that she could get a master’s degree from the University of Buenos Aires, a nearly free university and the best public higher education in South America. Gavin is a stringer for a number of publications including the Financial Times. With South America as his beat, Buenos Aires is a great place to be. Cheap too, Gavin points out, since his clients pay American wage scales.
With the U.S. dollar a cruel joke when compared to the high-flying Euro these days, Argentina and its sisters, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, have become the hot ticket for those hoping to avoid nasty North American winters and still have a taste of classy Latin culture.
The dollar definitely goes further in the Paris of Latin America. Good steak dinners, including wine and tips, come in under $25 per person, and often half of that. And sit-down lunches and dinners are always served on fresh linen. As for the steak, I’ve had a couple that were a little tough, maybe one in five, but never without taste. Argentina’s “parilla” (barbecued beef, pork and lamb) restaurants are uniformly delicious.
Taxis take you 15 minutes across town for $3 to $5, great prices, and every taxi has an easy-to-read meter. Zero dickering, zero confusion. Buses do it for less than 50 cents. And one thing I LOVE about Argentinians — they queue up for buses, even if there are only two waiting. Very civilized.
Good wines are ridiculously inexpensive. A glass will be $3, and that glass is full. A bottle of the best in the house tops out at $25.
American movies play all day long at the air-conditioned Cineplex. We have a condo in an urban neighborhood (barrio), and in the next block the Village Cinema has 15 screens, where the price is $5.50 for adults but drops to $3.50 on Wednesdays. The seats and leg room are equal to those at Lincoln Square in Bellevue, and the restrooms are as nice as Lincoln Square’s.
Our private Spanish lessons (found in an International Herald Tribune ad), when our excellent and enthusiastic teacher Frederico comes to our condo, cost $10 for an hourly session.
Architecture buffs like me will delight in the number of buildings that catch the glory of turn-of-the-last-century Argentine spirit, which is based precisely on the best of grand Parisian building design of the era. Every block has at least one building of mansard slate rooflines, black wrought iron balconies, white limestone blocks, oak doors with brass knockers, wedding cake swirls over the windows and dormers, and statues in the foyer. They are as good as anything I’ve seen in Paris.
Lest you think I’m on the Argentina Tourism Board payroll, there are a few turnoffs for this gringo. Buenos Aires’ location at the massive mouth of the Rio de la Plata is no bonus. The water is a sickening reddish-brown, and swimming is dangerous due to pollution. Swimmable beaches are down the coast at Mar del Plata (three hours by bus) or across in Uruguay at Punta del Este (four hours by boat and bus) or an air flight away.
Crime is a problem. Judy and I foiled an attempted mugging as we walked next to a main boulevard between museums. On another night with our Spanish teacher, we were shaken down by a hood who offered to watch Federico’s Fiat while we dined. Federico paid. Had he not, his car would have been “keyed,” he assured us. And virtually every store and business, large or small, has security guards, during business hours — lots of them. The nice boutique stores are always locked during business hours and require ringing a bell to be given entrance.
Another frustration for us has been Argentina’s design sensitivities. Leather stores are everywhere, but they mostly sell slight variations of the same thing. Anything approaching Japanese minimalism or Scandinavian sleekness is hard to find. Judy shopped 20 leather clothing shops before she found one carrying leather skirts. Jackets are everywhere, but leather pants and skirts are not a fashion mode here.
In the same vein, Argentine chefs seem to lack imagination when it comes to dishes. You get meat, but sauces, spices or rubs are a concept that hasn’t yet visited the Pampa country. Which is even more the case when it comes to salad dressings. It’s a rare B.A. restaurant, even at the high end, which offers anything beyond oil and vinegar.
And, finally, the weather. Yes, you get blue skies in the Argentine summers, January through March. You also get oppressive sticky heat that mirrors Charleston, S.C., or Washington, D.C., in the summer. Fortunately, our neighborhood of Recoleta and nearby Palermo have shade trees, parks and upscale air-conditioned stores. And the waiters don’t look at us weirdly when we ask for ice with our agua con gas or Coke Lites.
Bill Morton can be reached at www.secondhalf.net.
If you go:
Getting there: We flew American Airlines from Sea-Tac to Buenos Aires. American has an easy 12:30 p.m. flight to Chicago, with a restful two-hour layover to switch planes for the overnight 12-hour flight down. Departing at 8 p.m. and arriving at 11 the next morning seemed to work great as we slept most of the way down.
Returning, the American flight departs at 9:30 in the evening and drops us at home at 10:15 the following morning.
Short Stays: There are four top hotels in town, and I’ve visited them all. The two to choose from are the very central Four Seasons and the historic Hotel Alvear. The other two, The Faena Hotel and Universe and the Marriott Plaza Hotel not only didn’t impress me, but were a big turn-off. The Marriott is an embarrassment, and that comes from former Corporate retirees and “gold card” members. A “dump” according to two that I chatted with. The Faena is about hip-ness, rap music, looking good and service too taken with itself to care.
The Four Seasons delivers perfection, focusing on exceeding expectations. We appreciated its modern rooms and bathrooms, its outdoor pool and work-out spa area, its complimentary hour-and-a-half-long Tango show on Saturday nights, and its fairly priced Le Mistral restaurant. Within two blocks of the Four Seasons front door are 15 other top-drawer restaurants to choose from.
The touch of class that really made the Four Seasons a sweet introduction to Buenos Aires is the historic 1916 mansion that is part of the property. With its seven suites and five banquet rooms, all with windows, floorings, paintings and fireplaces imported from France, this is the Four Seasons home to visiting heads of state and rock groups when they visit Buenos Aires. Madonna rented the whole mansion when she came here to make Evita.
The other worthy historic hotel in town, the Alvear, is old-school to the core. The rooms are smaller, and it has no pool. But it reeks Olde Argentina in its heyday.
