Stuck in Palermo

When we got back to Buenos Aires from Mendoza, we spent some time wandering around the botanic garden and the Japanese garden.

The view from the rooftop deck of our Palermo apartment (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A fountain in the botanic garden (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Yerba mate plants (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A giant crane in the Japanese garden (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Because the area where Buenos Aires is located has few large native plants, many larger trees were brought over from similar climates in the southern hemisphere - eucalyptus from Australia, jacaranda from South Africa (the jacaranda trees were blooming when we were in Buenos Aires, which was a really beautiful sight). There are also a lot of palm trees, which lends a slightly tropical feel to the city.

In order to get another country stamp on our passports, we took the ferry over to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay, for a day. Colonia is one of the oldest towns in Uruguay and right across the river from Buenos Aires, and there are several ferries that go back and forth every day. Luckily, we had bought our tickets for the day before the G20 shut down all of the ports in the city, so we were able to get out (and back in) to Argentina.

Colonia del Sacramento, which was passed back and forth between the Spanish and Portuguese a ridiculous number of times, has an old town center that’s designated as a UNESCO world heritage site. It’s really adorable, with colorful historic buildings, a lot of art galleries, and good food.

Cute streets and cars in Colonia (Photo/Jason Rafal)

One of the classically old streets (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The beauty of Colonia (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Colorful buildings (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The lighthouse, which was built on top of a ruin (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Jason tried the local specialty chivito, which is a sandwich with steak, ham, cheese, an egg, and condiments. It was quite good but thoroughly excessive.

After we explored the town and had lunch, we still had some time until the boat back to Argentina, so we spent some time walking along the water, sitting in trees, and taking lots of pictures of birds (that was mostly Jason).

A preening green parrot (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Another bird (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Pigeons taking flight (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The second half of our trip was highly influenced by the presence of the G20, which we learned about 6 days before the leaders of the world descended. For the two-day summit, the city shut down the trains and subways, the domestic airport, and all of the city’s central ports. When we disembarked the ferry from Uruguay on the 29th, Trump had already arrived, and customs was vastly slowed because immigrations was making handwritten lists of the names, nationalities, birthdates, and passport numbers of every individual entering the country.

On Thursday night we went to one of the classic jazz clubs in Palermo, Thelonious Club. There was a big band playing, and despite not understanding much of the commentary from the band, we had a great time sharing a bottle of Malbec and listening to the music in the intimate room. Since there were so many players, a lot of the audience was friends and family, which gave the place a cozy, welcoming feel.

The performers at Thelonious Club (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Friday, because we were not able to take a biking and kayaking tour to the Delta el Tigre, (the train to the delta was not running), we booked a tour that took a boat from Buenos Aires up the river and explored the delta area. The tour organizers had their work cut out for them to make sure the tour could run with all the road, train, and port closures - we had to meet in Recoleta in the morning, then a minibus took us to a port far enough from the city center to be open. On the way to the port, our guide told us about how porteños (residents of Buenos Aires) love the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd to an unhealthy degree, how they are heavily influenced by the heavy Italian immigration after the First World War, and how their passion for futbol is supported by 32 professional stadiums in the city.

When we arrived at the boat, the skippers congratulated our guide on making it. Then, we set sail (er, motor) into the delta. Tigre’s delta is the third-largest river delta in the world, and its canal system is extensive. The locals who live in the canals are not able to drive to and from their houses, so there is an entire boat system to support them. There are grocery store boats, taxi boats, and even pool delivery boats.

A beautiful private dock (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The house of President Sarmiento, which is weirdly encased in glass (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A bus on stilts (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A grocery boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A boat delivering a pool (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After we went through several of the main canals, the boat docked at the town of Tigre and we got out to explore. Our guide took us to the Puerto de Frutos market, which used to be a fruit market and is now a combination of artisans products and surprisingly upscale, hipster home furnishing stores. After we spent a while wandering, we drove back to Buenos Aires through San Isidro, where we got out for a few minutes to take some pictures of the rather impressive cathedral.

Approaching Tigre (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Securing the boat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A man and his dog heading out to the canals (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A three-sided mural (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A San Isidro Cathedral (Photo/Jason Rafal)

When we arrived back in the city, our guide dropped us off at El Rosedal, where we were disappointed to see that the rose garden was already closed for the G20. We walked around outside the fence anyway before heading back to our apartment to get ready to go home.

Taking pictures of hummingbirds kept Jason busy (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A dog chases geese in the park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The incredibly beautiful canopy in one of the parks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A Holocaust memorial (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An adorable collection of stores under the train tracks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Saturday, our last day in Argentina, we spent the day walking around Palermo Soho and eating. We explored Parque Centenario, which had a weekend fair happening, and sat by the fountains for a while.

The making of a mural (Photo/Jason Rafal)

In the evening, we got in a taxi with plenty of time to get to the airport, started driving, and…our driver couldn’t get on the highway. Police were blocking off the exit. Our driver, who spoke no English, made a frustrated noise and took off on the frontage road. We took frontage roads for an hour and a half, fighting the traffic from everyone else doing the same thing, and then finally came to a complete stop because the police were blocking the frontage road as well. Many people called out to our taxi driver, asking him what was going on, but he hadn’t heard anything about the highway being closed. At this point, we were getting fairly anxious about missing our flight. After we sat still for about 15 minutes, the driver started talking to the people around us again. After a few moments of our driver trying to ask us something and us not understanding, we figured out that someone had yelled over to our driver that the police had said the highway on ramp would get reopened at 9. Our flight was at 9:15, and the driver was asking if we wanted to try to take a back way and see if that would work. We enthusiastically said yes, worried that our 15 wasted minutes sitting would make the difference in catching our flight.

Our driver spent the next 15 minutes winding through side streets until we got to the very last entrance onto the only highway to the airport. And it was blocked off. We resolved ourselves to missing our flight and our driver went outside to smoke a cigarette.

After a few more minutes, we saw a huge group of police motorcycles drive past, followed by a motorcade with American flags. Trump’s motorcade had made us miss our flight.

Fifteen minutes later they reopened the road, but we only had 15 minutes before our flight at that point, and they wouldn’t check us in. We spent the next hour and a half rebooking our flights for the next day and trying to find a hotel that we could actually get to, since there were so many road closures. Eventually, we found a hotel back in Palermo, and we had an hour and a half to get there and check in.

It was a 40-minute drive back to Palermo, but the road to the airport had been closed for hours, which meant taxis hadn’t been able to get in and pick people up, which meant the taxi line was insanely long. After several minutes of waiting in line, we noticed that some people were going over to the drop-off point and hailing taxis as people got out. We went over there and I was immediately able to hail a taxi, and we ignored the traffic controller yelling and scrambled inside. We made it to our hotel with half an hour to spare, checked in, and ate some fish and chips down the street.

On our unintended bonus day, we were excited to be able to visit El Rosedal, which had reopened since the G20 ended. It was really beautiful, and I’m glad we were able to go. Between the gardens and the story we got out of out delayed flight, I think it was probably worth the very stressful six hours.

El Rosedal (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A giant bee (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Coated in pollen (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Planetario Galileo Galilei (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An adorable pair of dog friends (Photo/Jason Rafal)