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Oh dear reader, we’ve really failed you this week… We’ve had to neglect our blogging duties in favor of more seemingly pressing day-to-day affairs…
But to bring you up-to-date… The weather got cold, we caught a cold. The next day the weather warmed and we recovered… We’ve been semi-diligently attending our spanish classes. One off-site conversational session was held at the tea-room of the newly renovated Hyatt Palacio Duhau, talk about fancy pants…
The Hyatt bought the place from a wealthy family just about two years ago. Renovations commenced immediately and the result is impressive… While the dollar plummets against all major world currencies, you really can still get bang-for-your-buck here (that probably won’t last long). A tea, which includes four different polished silver vessels, costs $12 pesos, or $4 dollars, a beer is $5 dollars, all the while you’re waited on hand-and-foot in high-style.
A harpist played in the background, old ladies with old money socialized, and yours truly butchered the conversational Castellano… There couldn’t have been a more elegant setting for a Maryland/Virginia countryboy to be linguistically enriched, that’s for sure.
More to come soon, we promise…
One of our contacts here is a New Zealander involved in real estate. He reports to us that there is a phenomenon of Kiwi farmers selling off their farms in New Zealand and relocating to take-up farming in South America where the costs of land, labor, and expenses are lower.
One favored location is Uruguay. There are evidently quite a few farms for sale in Uruguay for reasonable prices. So, these Kiwi farmers relocate with their families, selling off the pricey New Zealand land and buying a functioning farm down here.
New Zealand agriculture is highly sophisticated, primarily because the government lifted all subsidies for farming and agricultural products, so Kiwi farmers were forced to compete on the world market. What happened was that they did exactly what people have to do when competing in a free-market… they worked hard, they innovated, they were efficient… or they went out of business. The result was, predictably, that New Zealand is now a world leader in agriculture, having pioneered some highly successful methods of farming…
Could there be a lesson here for other countries? In the United States big-farm subsidies have lowered prices for junk food and for food additives like high-fruitose corn syrup, which have made these items ubiquitous in the American food supply… And we would wager that this is a major contributing factor for the expanding waist-lines of the American public. A big conspiracy no doubt, no pun intended… But, this is all fodder for another post, let me get back to those innovative Kiwis and their new farms in Uruguay…
So, when the New Zealanders relocate to South America they find themselves in the midst of a new and different culture of course. One issue that our acquaintance had noted was that if a Kiwi woman worked on the farm as Kiwi women are prone to do, they find themselves sometimes ostracized by Uruguayan women who wouldn’t be caught dead socializing with someone who does manual labor, let alone do manual labor themselves…
So, this culture clash can sometimes be an issue for these immigrants from down under. One could cry foul at the lack of ‘progressiveness’ amongst these Uruguayans, but that would be a waste of time… Instead these Kiwis have opted not to stray too far from the major cities, Montevideo, Colonia, Punta del Este etc so that they can go into these cities to satisfy their social inclinations… and as long as they get a good manicure before going to any parties… no one will be the wiser that they may have sweated during the week.
Anyway, we hear that the fancy farming techniques of the New Zealanders are paying off. They are grabbing market share for certain agricultural products. This spells trouble for inefficient and mismanaged farms in the area… and could create some resentment. We, on the other hand, praise these innovations and efficiencies born of the free-market and hope that this wacky idea spreads in South America and the rest of the world.
We’ve written before about the perplexities of San Telmo… and during our time in BA we’ve visited there quite a few times, and we’ve talked to quite a few who’ve lived there… (we’re by no means experts, and as always, we won’t let that stop us from pontificating) but we still have no resolution on our feelings about the place.
Readers have asked about the barrio, and because of our own secret fascination, we feel compelled to continue ruminating about it…
What we can say is that it feels on the verge of gentrification, but it’s certainly not there yet for better or worse. It’s rumored to have the largest expat community in Buenos Aires, but we have no confirmation of that theory. We believe Palmero Viejo may out-edge San Telmo in density if not number of foreigners, but we have no evidence for that estimate either.
Real estate prices, though lower than the more established barrios of Palermo, Recoleta, Puerto Madera etc, do take into account the interest of expat investors. So it ain’t dirt cheap for BA, as it once was, but certainly cheap by world standards…
Now most Argentines we’ve talked to about San Telmo practically despise the place… they wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot pole… “It’s dangerous.” “It’s a good couple degrees colder than the other barrios.” “It’s dirty and full of poor people.” etc. Now, we’re doubtful of the temperature claim, but, in general it is pretty dirty, the people are poorer than the more upper-crust sides of town, and it does seem more dangerous, (yet we rarely hear of much happening there)…
We’ve gone there a couple times when we’ve looked around and just wanted to get the hell out. It looks really dingy. There are a bunch of sketchy looking dirt-bags hanging around… The ugly buildings that are unfortunately ubiquitous amongst the nicer ones seem to stick out to us. The shops only seem to have a bunch of useless junk. “Ugh. Take me back to Recoleta!”
But, other times we go there (the Sunday market is nice, when not too crowded) and we are really impressed. The architecture of the nice buildings just seems to stick-out to us. All the funky little shops seem so authentic, yet hip. There’s art and bohemian flavor in the air. “This is the real Buenos Aires!” we think.
The Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde phenomenon in San Telmo is pervasive for us. We never know what we’re going to get when we go…
So dear readers we leave it to you. It depends on your taste. We’re not making a move to San Telmo any time soon. But we may well be jealous if you do…
As part of our onging sincere, yet lazy, efforts to gradually immerse ourselves in Argentine culture… We’ve decided to only read the giants of Argentine literature, who we’re embarrased to say we haven’t read before, like Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Sabato, Julio Cortázar, and Aldofo Bioy Casares. [And some Márquez too, though he's not Argentine.]
So far we’ve cracked into the ‘Labyrinths’, a collection of short stories by Borges. We’ve realized that you don’t go casually flipping through a Borges story… If it’s a light, quick read you’re looking for these stories are not it…
Some of his work like ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’ takes commitment and perseverance to stay on top of what’s going on… We read the classics in college and majored in philosophy (and math). From what we’ve read so far it’s an understatement to say that Borges is extremely well read, a formidable thinker, and wordsmith… a deservably world-renowned writer… We can’t wait to dig into more of his stories…
[NOTE: We're reading these in English... We bought some English-language books this weekend from a nice little shop in San Telmo, called the Walrus. It's on Estadous-Unidos at Peru.]
Travelers voted Buenos Aires the second most desirable city to visit after Florence, Italy… While we find that an impressive coup for this south american metropolis, it’s not surprising. The longer we stay here the more we like it…
Hasta la proxima.
Back in the 60s and 70s the British invasion consisted of iconic bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Led Zepplin taking the US by storm, and rightly so…
In the 80s there was an action movie called ‘Invasion USA’ consisting of a narco-terror group sneaking into the US and their inevitable demise at the hands of Chuck Norris in his prime…
The recent forced hype surrounding the Beckhams’ relocation to LA from the UK more resembles the latter invasion rather than the former to us, but of course in a less threatening way… (and thankfully for the Beckhams, Chuck Norris is not involved, at least not yet…)
The frat-like-metrosexual-pop-futbol-star is cool out on the pitch, and his fembot-chav-contrived-popstar-wife looks the part… But are they cool enough for LA?
You bet they are!
And they’ve got the cash to buy their way in anywhere…
We admire the organizational and promotional efforts by their media team to attempt a coup in the US ‘celeb’ marketplace… It seems by all measures to be an impressive, well thought-out, mulifaceted, multimedia approach… all they have to do now is shake the perceived forcedness of the campaign…
But don’t we already have enough empty headed subjects for our empty headed media…? Do we really need to import more? Maybe so, there’s evidently room in the American celebritard consciousness… And thank goodness for that!!
Anyway, at least we can hide from it all down here way south of the border… if we really wanted to…
This post was supposed to be about self-worth, and how it doesn’t really matter what you look like as long as you enjoy life and do something productive. But we got derailed by those damn Beckhams.
It’s snowing today and really coming down… No sooner did we finish our last post about how mild the climate is than the temperature dips to historic levels and a snowstorm kicks up the likes of which hasn’t been seen in 89 years… I’m looking out the window at snow accumulating on palm trees…
The weather practically eclipsed a national holiday today, when Argentines celebrate their independence from Spain… The streets and shops were dead, which usually happens during holidays here. We had to go over to the tourist area of Recoleta for lunch. We were actually well rewarded for the decision.
At the ‘Balcony’ Steak House across from the Four Seasons we had a killer sirloin… one of the best steaks we’ve had in a while… It was 30 pesos or $10… Definitely grassfed beef, unlike the feedlot beef that Yanqui Mike recently noticed has been slowly edging into the Argentine marketplace. That would be a travesty if the famed Argentine beef would be degraded to lesser quality following the plight of the US market… But we’ll worry about that in a future post.
Signing-off from snowy BA…
The weather was excellent all week, especially considering it’s mid-winter here… It was sunny, clear, in the upper 50’s and 60’s and warmer in the sun… After lunch, we had to pry ourselves out of the outdoor cafes and back to the office on most days.
But of course when Saturday rolls around, it gets cooler and overcast… This could blow our trip to Tigre today, but we’ll see…
Overall though, the winter here in BA is extremely mild… It’s a great climate in general…
It’s no secret that they eat late here in Argentina, but for whatever reason the reality of this fact takes time to sink in…
We hold out for as long as we possibly can, till around 8:30 when the restaurants will actually let you in, and then we’re usually the first or second people there… When we finish dinner at around 9:30-10 we know that things are only just starting to pick up.
It takes some getting used to.
One secret to holding out till so late to eat is maté. We’re always impressed by the feeling of well-being after drinking maté. Also, this yerba tea helps stymie your hunger…
When we were in Salta, a gaucho who worked on the farm we visited would pretty much only drink maté throughout the day and then eat a big dinner… He was slim and trim… He inspired us to invent ‘The Gaucho Diet’, a new and exciting diet craze consisting of drinking maté, horse-back riding, spending many lonely days out under the big open sky, and wearing cool traditional outfits…
Or maybe it’s just the maté. Whatever it is the Argentines eat good food, lots of meats and carbs, things that taste good. They eat late. They do everything that Americans are not supposed to do… yet, it’s very rare to see a fat Argentine…
Today we’re standing-up the US Ambassador to Argentina… We were invited to a 4th of July party hosted by the US Embassy and the current ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne. We were invited not because of our connections to the embassy, we have none, but instead because of some Argentine business partners of our employer and their connections to the embassy. (Of course, every American expat with a pulse was probably invited to this same event.)
Anyway, we say “no thanks”!
The 4th of July celebrates US independence from Great Britain. We feel that the US government currently embodies the imperialism from which the forefathers of our country revolted. The founders were the insurgent leaders against British military might and suppression in the colonies.
The founding-fathers of the United States were intelligent, worldly, and brave men… nothing like the men who currently lead our distressed country.
We grew up a few miles from Jefferson’s Monticello, a house which he designed himself, filled with innovations invented by him and books of learning that he actually read… He traveled the world and spoke multiple languages.
After leading the colonial army to victory on the battlefield, General George Washington had to be begged to leave the farm that he had quietly returned to and become the leader of the country.
To compare any of these men to George W Bush or Dick Cheney is laughable.
No, we celebrate the 4th of July in our own way, apart from any association with the current US government.
The plot always seems to grow thicker, like the recent half pardon (which will probably become a full pardon) of Scooter Libby. Just when you think they can’t sink any lower, they find a way to do it…
It tears our soul. There’s turmoil in the soul of America and the only solution is something better… and that’s what we’ll celebrate this 4th of July, that, and how our ancestors fought like real patriots against the suppression of liberty by the establishment super-power imperialists of the day.
It goes something like this…
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands, which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [Declaration of Independence]
And on… Amen!
Happy 4th of July!!
We recently gave you a list of online resources for finding property in Buenos Aires. One of those resources is the Argentine MLS website. There’s a trick you can do to use that MLS website to quickly find additional information on any property that you might see elsewhere… This is simple but it might not be obvious.
Any listing that’s in the Argentine MLS has a code, a ‘codigo’. All of the Argentine MLS listings URLs are, for example, as follows: http://www.topinmobiliario.com/detalle.aspx?findcod=LLC797
What you can do is slap on the ‘codigo’ that you find on any other website for a property that you’re interested in and add it to the end of the typical listing URL: http://www.topinmobiliario.com/detalle.aspx?findcod=(put code here)
So if you find something on this list for instance: http://www.leporepropiedades.com.ar/SOM/vta_casas.htm
They all have a codigo (to the far right of the list), so you can plug that codigo on the end of the typical MLS URL to find more info on the listing (you can do this more conventially on the MLS website, but I prefer doing it this way) for example: SH11207
http://www.topinmobiliario.com/detalle.aspx?findcod=SH11207
Then you go straight to the listing and can get all the details on it and usually pictures as well… You can do the same thing for any ‘codigos’ that you find on any real estate websites… Doing this you can move quickly and easily through the listings.
Hope you find this helpful…
Cheers!
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