Drinking: café or vino?

Buenos Aires is a strange city. I really didn't like it the first two days I was here; could have been the fact that we were again victims of the stupid "throw crap on tourist" scam. This time we were just sitting on a park bench waiting for a walking tour to start. It was a ring of three people- one to ask us a question and figure out that we didn't speak Spanish, one to spray us, and then one to offer the tissues. They didn't get anything, but again, this was the beginning of the day so we got to be covered in the foul smelling goo for many more hours. With our mood greatly deminished, we were about to just say "adios" to the walking tour, when Robby spotted a different walking tour. Turns out that the tour we were waiting for did not operate on Sundays, yea us. Luckily this random tour let us join them for the last half of their tour where we learned a little history on the Mothers of the Disappeared (MOTD).

In the 80's, Argentina was under a dictatorship and the people didn't like their rights being stomped on, so they protested. The evil dictator was not about his citizens uprising, so he made the most prominent and loudest protesters vanish. Soon mothers realized that their sons and daughter were not coming home at night. Even children, some as young as one, were disappearing off the streets. It started off subtle, but soon the Mothers went to Mayo Square, the main city square (in front of the Presidental Palace), to ask for answers on where their children were. When they got to the square they realized they were not alone in their plight, as 100's of mothers were gathered, all begging for answers. Now this was a bit of an issue for them as a law was passed that no large groups of people could stand together.

Since the Mothers were smart, they formed lines of two people stacked behind each other, that circled the square. Everyday they came to ask where their children were, but sadly they never received any official answers. To this day, the MOTD march every Wednesday in the square; they're still looking for answers, but more importantly, they do not want the government, or the people, to forget what happened. Over the years it was discovered that the young children of the loudest protestors were kidnapped and given to family's of the military to be raised on the right path and mass graves/torture sites have been uncovered (which sadly only accounts for about 2% of the missing). 

Enough with the sad, after the walking tour ended, we met a lovely British/Canadian couple that introduced us to the Buenos Aires transit system. They paid our way to ride 4 blocks on the bus to San Telmo. The buses come fairly frequently, but even though there are assigned stops, you still need to flag your bus down to have it stop. On Sundays in San Telmo, there is an amazing street market that spans about 10 blocks. It's lively, colorful, and loud. Buenos Aires is a strange city because a lot of the buildings look closed- with darkened windows, metal garage door window shutters on the housing units, and shop doors that you need to be buzzed through. You would think that only about 2-3 million people live here instead of 10 million. Probably a great city for an apocalypse or zombie movie to be filmed. 

Anyhow, San Telmo was streaming with people browsing the street stalls and weaving in and out of the little shops. I discovered a small coffee shop inside the old antique market where I had my first Agentinean coffee. I'm pretty sure it's Nescafé mixed with warm cow's milk and if you are adventurous enough, you can try the espresso, which will put instant hair on your chest. I'm fairly certain I will have to go cold turkey while I'm here and I don't know if I can handle that. Maybe I'll just drink more wine.

For the evening Robby and I went to a beautiful tango show performed inside a 1930's looking music club. The dancers did a few different tango dances to various eras of music accompanied by a live band. We were served a descent dinner with a bottle of wine and a glass of champagne. Not sure if being tipsy helped, but the show was entertaining and the dancers made me want to dance, but there's no way my legs will do what theirs did- they're very flexible and I'm pretty sure, double jointed in places. Oh well, I guess I'll be content watching and drinking Malbec.

So to everyone reading, I raise my glass and bid you all good night. Until the next entry!