Leaving Argentina–December 7, 2023

Last night at 9 PM we flew out of Buenos Aires. Our flight just now landed in Atlanta at 4:39 AM this morning and now we are sitting on the tarmac waiting for customs to open at 5:15. A month is a long time to be gone, so it will be nice to get home. This will be my last installment for this trip, so I hope you have enjoyed my slog, I mean blog. And it’s not really a slog, but it is hard to write some days.

We had to leave the ship first thing yesterday morning, so out of desperation we took another bus tour just to kill some time. I’m not sure we were really up for it, but it beat the alternative of sitting in a holding room at the Michelangelo Restaurant for hours on end. I talked to some people last night at the airport who did that and they said it was crowded and miserable. It was raining off and on all day, so I feel a bit bedraggled. Not a good feeling when you are on a 10 hour flight.

Our tour was called something about barrios, but I really didn’t get why. Barrios means neighborhoods, so I guess it was just a fancy name for driving aimlessly around the city. Actually, we stopped at a cafe, a market, a restaurant and a book store. I wasn’t sure why we stopped at both a cafe and a restaurant. The cafe served rolls and coffee and the restaurant was another huge buffet with a lot of meat (again). I am over buffets, so I just had some desert. In the La Boca Barrio we saw some more tango dancers in front of a restaurant, so I guess that’s a big thing here.

It also seemed odd to stop at a book store, but it wasn’t just any old book store. It was actually an old theater converted into a bookstore called El Ateneo Grand Splendid, and is quite famous. National Geographic named it the most beautiful bookstore in the world in 2019, and I must say I have never been in such an elegant bookstore. It was built in 1919 with three ornately decorated balconies hugging the back wall of a 1,050-seat auditorium. It’s decked out with gilded statues, marble columns and a ceiling mural celebrating the end of World War I.

We met a nice 84 year old woman today named Marge who came on this cruise by herself. I thought it was pretty amazing that she undertook this type of a trip alone. We talked at lunch and she said she wanted to see the world while she is still able. You have to admire her for that.

The subjects we heard the most about in Buenos Aires on our tours were regarding soccer, inflation, the new president and Eva Peron. They are fanatics about soccer, not happy with inflation, and cautiously optimistic about the new president doing something about the inflation.

I thought the most interesting part of their spiels was about Eva Peron. I am oversimplifying the story, but Eva was quite popular with the people because she helped the poor. So when she died at the age of 33 on July 26, 1952 of cervical cancer, there was major mourning for her loss across Argentina. Juan Peron had Eva’s body embalmed and her blood replaced with glycerine so it could be displayed in public. It was displayed publicly for two years and then Juan Peron was overthrown in a military coup. He fled the country and was unable to secure the body. The new authorities removed Evita’s body from display, and its whereabouts was a mystery for 16 years. The military regime didn’t like it that Eva was so popular, so they banned Peronism and no one was allowed to even speak her name. In 1971, a new government discovered that Evita’s body was buried in a crypt in Milan, Italy, under the name “María Maggi.” It’s a complicated story, but her body was finally returned to Argentina in 1973. She was at last buried in her family’s crypt in 1976, 24 years after she died. There’s more to the story, but as our guide Pablo said a couple of days ago, it’s pretty creepy.