City of Good Air

I feel a sense of combined satisfaction, elation and sadness as the plane takes-off from Ushuaia’s over-sized airport on the first leg on my way back to a northern hemisphere winter, after two months’ journeying metaphorically and literally now turning my back on the sun.

El Fin del Mundo becomes submerged beneath a tide of dense, low cloud swallowing the dramatic black peaks I’ve come to recognize. Cloud dogs the flight all the way along the coast to Buenos Aires, save a small, transparent patch that allows a brief view of the distinctive geography of the whale-watching mecca of the Peninsula Valdes.

Departing Ushuaia - El Fin del Mundo

A slight climate shock follows as I arrive in the city’s warm, humid world of palm trees and other exotica. I’ve swapped a sub-Antarctic fractal landscape of mountains and tortuous coastlines for the regimented, angular urbanity of Buenos Aires.

I have only three more nights before my journey ends and I leave for home, family and Christmas. My immediate priorities, in order, are a hot bath, a grand dinner and a long sleep.

Afterwards, and as Christmas is just around the corner, I’m minded to stock up on appropriately Latino presents for the family, so set off on a walk. My hotel is only five minutes’ walk from the Casa Rosada (the Pink House) – a splendid pink building that is the seat of the government and houses the President’s offices outside which, in the Plaza de Mayo, temporary raked seating is being dismantled after the inauguration (or, re-inauguration) of the new President – Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. The Plaza is dominated not only by the Pink House, but also by a huge flag of Argentina flapping gracefully behind a towering Christmas tree incongruously backed by palms.

Casa Rosada

Argentine Christmas

I like exploring so I saunter along the streets of central Buenos Aires for two days just to see what is around the next corner and in a vain attempt to find a book on Patagonian geology – you would think such an important part of the psyche of Argentine-Chilean culture and economy – oil, gas, coal, dinosaurs, volcanoes, earthquakes, glaciers – would be straight-forward. Alas, I tried eight good bookshops – no such book exists (if you know differently, please point me in the right direction!).

Negotiating one corner I tangentially join a political street protest – Argentine-style, with rhythmic drums and pan-pipes – the protestors sporting white and blue clothing. Paranoid I remember the internet travel advice to avoid political protests in case they turn ugly, so I dodge through the column half-expecting to be clobbered by a tear gas canister before being baton-charged or turned inside-out by a water cannon. I make it through, unscathed and relieved. From the street-side I pick-up one of the leaflets being distributed by the throng; it explains that they are the Sanitary Workers Association of Argentina. President Kirchner, just give them what they ask for – the alternatives are just too horrendous to contemplate!

Christmas is coming, and shop-window scenes of reindeers in snow and red-faced Santas complete with boots and hats, don’t chime with the high-twenties heat, while in the centre of the pedestrianized street, in the shade of young trees, street vendors display their wares –fine hand-crafter artefacts sit awkwardly alongside bizarre, head-banging cuddly toys. I don’t stop for fear of eliciting hard-to-escape and potentially expensive interest! Desperately trying not to catch the eye of the Captain Jack Sparrow mime artist atop a crudely painted treasure chest, I almost topple the nine-foot Santa on stilts looming over me. I slip into a bookshop on the pretence of searching for geology books – and watch only his legs pass by the shop window. I rest my over-heating brain.

Venturing out again, now in a more relaxed frame of mind, I decide on a mission to acquire family Christmas presents and enter the Galerias Pacifico Shopping Centre. Under its Sistine Chapel-esque ceiling I come face-to-face with a four-storey, conical Christmas tree quivering as waves of lurid colour pass over it with a real-life Santa in his grotto at its foot.

I have a rest on a park bench in the dappled shade of the feathery-leaved trees of the Plaza San Martin. I reflect on Buenos Aires: this city is certainly Latino, but its architecture expresses 1940’s Chicago with a Parisian twist and garnish of palm trees and parakeets. After some minutes I detect a light drizzle, but there are no clouds to be seen. Then, from an appropriate angle, I discern sap micro-droplets drifting down from the tree tops, presumably having passed first through an aphid or two!

Plaza San Martin

Rested, I head for the city water-front via the Torre de los Ingleses (the Tower of the English), so called because it was completed in 1916 by Buenos Aires’ English residents as a gift to Argentina to celebrate the country’s 1810 revolution, and symbolises friendship and the broad European influence of the city. After the Falklands War, the tower was renamed the Monument Tower and the square in which it sits was renamed the Plaza Fuerza Aérea Argentina (Argentine Air Force Square) from the Plaza Británica (British Square).

Torre de los Ingleses/ Monument Tower

The estuary of the River de la Plata demarks the north-east border of Buenos Aires and Argentina. On the water-front I pass navy ships and square-rigged sailing ships and the buildings that administered immigration into the country from the Old World. There’s a ferry port to transport travellers to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo – tempting, but now no time! The main warehouse district and docks are a combination of modern, high shiny buildings shimmering in the setting sun, opposite the dock-side, red-brick warehouses restored to fine eateries, pedestrian ways and the dinosaur-skeletons of spruced up old dockside cranes. Here, inadvertently, I have stepped into the restoration of an urban landscape where the geology is man-made and the ecology present by kind invitation. The restoration drivers seem to be cultural – tangibly based on preserving a sense of place and offering new opportunities for residents and visitors for recreation, hospitality-related jobs and residential areas, attracting people to stay in a place with the original purpose of high volume transit.

On the waterfront

On the dockside

It’s evening on the final night of my Chasing the Sun adventure. I climb the stairs to the roof of my downtown hotel. It’s not a classic sunset, but the modern water-front architecture weaves the mellow light into a synergy of nature and artifice, the moment made special by the brief illumination of a humming bird on a pot plant, here, six floors up in the urban jungle.



Downtown BA and my last sunset



My food obsession and the occasion determine an almost ritualistic, final slap-up meal in the excellent restaurant-cum-wine cellar of my hotel. I settle for the quintessential tastes of Argentina – an asado (roast lamb) accompanied by a bottle of rich, velvety Malbec. I am served by a fine waiter in a white apron and a black tie with the hair, facial structure and moustache of Borat.

As I sign-off on my journey all the elements seem to fit as I contemplate the extraordinary experiences and challenges of the last two months. I don’t think I am now the same person that set out on this journey; I feel inspired and, armed with new knowledge and motivation, am ready to try my best to “make a difference” – but I am also ready for home and my beautiful family – just in time for Christmas.

Over the last few months I have tried to share some of my travel experiences through this blog. I hope you have enjoyed reading it and, in some way, being a part of it. This blog is primarily concerned with the travel element of my journey. The landscape restoration projects that I visited and the related key learnings and conclusions from my journey are described in a separate report entitled, “Exploring World Class Landscape Restoration”. This will be available to download on my next blog posting in the near future. In the meantime, if you would like me to send you a pdf of the reduced image version of the report, please contact me at petewa@btinternet.com.

Finally, I am currently writing a book of the whole experience that includes more of the fascinating stories of the people I met and the places I visited, combined with the story of the journey, threaded through with the uplifting examples of people working hard to improve their world. Let me if you want a copy – it should be available in a year to 18 months.

In the meantime: Cheers!