Lazy like...

This morning we wondered down to San Telmo, one of the old areas in the centre of BA which has 19th century architecture, little shops and galaries, a food and antiques market and, on Sunday, a craft market. Some of the stuff was good, more craft than tat, although we can´t buy anything because even with our enhanced Business Class baggage allowance, our cases already weigh too much. Still, we listened to some tango and had a nice lunch at a little corner cafe. This afternoon we may go to the cinema. Apparently, unlike in Spain where all English language films are dubbed into Spanish by the same 5 or 6 actors, so you never actually get to hear the real voices, here in South America you get voz original and subtitles, reflecting the fact that each country has its own form of Spanish and therefore it would be impossible to dub across the board.

We have been thinking about the economy here and everyone we speak to is very dispondant about the future, although we read in the local paper this morning that many Argentinians are returning from Spain, either under their own steam or through a repatriation package organised by the Zapatero Government so I guess it´s not much better anywhere else. BA of course has always been a city of contrasts. Yesterday we walked through the Retiro district (named after the Madrid park) which is the area that the rich moved to in order to be as far away as they could from the river after the outbreak of yellow fever in 1870. There are an amazing number of palaces or mansions, mostly of French design, including one modeled on the Louvre (!), which were built in the final decade of the 19th century or the first decade of the 20th and which now mostly serve as hotels or government buildings, although one of the nicest ones is the French Embassy (we Brits have a concrete bunker!). At the same time, there was obviously a great deal of poverty and one of our projects this week is to see if we can find the Museum of Immigration.

These days, we have been told, there are more Bentleys in BA than in London, and from what we can tell, Barrio Norte, Recoleta and parts of Palermo are pretty swanky. However, we see a lot of people sleeping in the streets and some of the shanty towns, known as Villas, are very depressing. There is one, for example just on the outskirts of La Boca district and the start of Puerto Modero, the fashionable restaurant and apartment and loft area by the river (It made us think of our apartment in King Edwards Wharf!). This is the extreme, of course, but we have also been told that a teacher here would earn about 400 pounds a month. Given that you can buy (we are told) quite a nice apartment for beteen 100,000 and 300,00 pounds this probably isn´t very much. However, what brought the situation home to me was when I realised that a shoe shop near our hotel was offering 6 instalment payments on shoes costing about 50 pounds a pair maximum. This is in a business area so the clientele are probably in work and we are not, therefore talking about really poor people.

Tomorrow we are going to try and walk to the recalimed park on the river...more to follow