Coney Island of Buenos Aires

After breakfast, we checked out, stored our bags, and headed out to Tigre, a small town an hour and a half from Buenos Aires. We read that many portenos (local Buenos Aires residents) love going to Tigre on the weekends, and this was indeed true. The train ride out to the town was packed with locals. And we quickly found out why. Tigre is where our ferry from Colonial del Sacramento dropped us off so it is a town with access to the river and the Delta de Parana. It is kayaking, rowing, boat house club town. And it is a serious hobby of those that come out here. All along the river there are docks with tracks leading to the boat clubs (that cross the road) so that moving the row boats from the boat house to the river and back is easily done. All day we saw people go up and down the river in kayaks, row boats and small speed boats.

If you're not part of the water culture, you're then in Tigre for the amusement park filled with roller coasters and up-turning rides, or you're there for the market. After walking along the river for a little bit, we followed the crowds away from the river, not quite sure where we were going. We figured there must be something to see since a lot of people were headed in the same direction. we arrived at the Mercado de Frutas, but no longer only sells fruits and vegetables. The mercado took over number warehouses along the docks and turned them into artisan markets. You can find practically anything for you home here, from rattan furniture, kitchen and bath ware, to decorative elements like dried and fake flowers and wall decorations. There are also a lot of other kinds of crafts and gourmet food items. We wandered a bit before we got hungry so we at our leftover cheese, bread, crackers and pickled vegetables before hitting the rest of the shops. It seemed like it would never end! We found a gift or two and then it was the afternoon so we took a break and had an ice cream snack before heading back to the river and walked along the other side. We watched the rowers and was still amazed at how strong the boating culture is. We sort of equated Tigre as the same idea as going to Coney Island for the day on the weekend.

We headed back to Buenos Aires and noted that passengers rely heavily on the people who sell goods. There are a number of people, usually men who walk up and down subway cars and train cars selling all sorts of goods to the passengers, anything from socks, candy, stickers to portable sewing machines and thumb drives. The seller makes a presentation to the passengers, describing the good he is selling and describes the good qualities of it, how it is used and why you need it. Then he passes it out to those who are interested in examining it closely and then makes a second round to collect money or collect the good if someone decides not to purchase it. We found this fascinating. This is actually a competitive business we decided. Each seller has to decide what to sell, how to sell it and based on the prices of each item, determined that it was pretty lucrative. The sellers all know each other and even are friends with the train operators. They seem to have a courtesy culture where if one seller is in one car peddling his goods, another seller won't try to sell his good at the same time.

When we got back to Buenos Aires we found a place for dinner in the Barrio Norte/Palermo neighborhood. Ching Jen had a delicious casserole of rice, mushrooms and cheese and Jon had six different kinds of empanadas. We went back to the hostel to gather our bags and headed to the airport. We have to spend the night at the airport since we have an early flight to Ushuaia.