Buenos Aires is a really great walking town, but as noted earlier you have to watch your step. In addition to certain excretory hazards, what you really have to watch for is the cars, and even worse the buses.
The main problem is corners -- drivers here try to avoid slowing down at corners, so the cut them really, really tight. You're waiting to cross the street, and a bus barrels around the corner, inches away. When you first get here it's really startling, and even after having been here a long time I'm still surprised at how fast they take corners.
Another thing they do, especially in the incredibly narrow streets of the MicroCentro, is drive inches away from the curb. This can be scary. Sidewalks are really narrow down there, and you can just barely get by someone walking in the opposite direction. So you are at risk of falling off the curb, but meanwhile there's a car or a bus barreling along inches away from the curb.
Seriously, I wonder if people get killed. Meanwhile, if you come to BA -- watch your step!
Monday, January 15, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
New Year's Eve
Interestingly, New Year's Eve was more calm on the street than Christmas Eve. I asked someone about this, and she said that here in BA people typically spend Christmas Eve with their friends, and New Year's Eve with their family. So, weirdly, NewYear's Eve is the family holiday.
But still there was some good action in the street. There were some fireworks -- nothing hugely explosive like on Christmas, more pretty fireworks like the following:
Less fun, but more ethereally beautiful, are the paper lanterns that they light and launch. We saw one flying overhead on Christmas, but people were lighting lots of them on New Year's Eve. The following pic doesn't really show the lantern, but it shows how many people were standing around out on the street at 12:10 or so on January 1:
The next picture shows the paper lantern being lit. These are really simple devices -- just paper, with some sort of very lightweight frame, something that lets them place a small candle in the center. So they light the candle, and the lantern basically turns into a hot air balloon -- the hot air from the candle burning is enough to launch the lantern. The lantern lifts up very gently, and then rises to about, oh, 50-75 feet, and kind of floats along on the breeze. It's really quite lovely. I tried to get pictures of the lanterns floating overhead, but they were too small and blurry. So here's a picture of people lighting and preparing to launch a lantern:
Now, you might think, sounds risky -- a candle in the middle of a paper lantern. How is it that the paper doesn't just catch on fire. Well, guess what -- sometimes it does. But since this is Argentina, and they have a definitely more blase' attitude about risk than the gringos, no one gets too worried. In fact they seem to enjoy the spectacle:
This last picture is good to see in the larger size -- you can see how much everyone is enjoying the spectacle. As always, click on the small pic to see a larger one.
In all, it was quite the lovely spectacle, people lighting and launching these paper lanterns. Much sweeter than the homemade pipe bombs that people were lighting and tossing into the street on Christmas Eve!
But still there was some good action in the street. There were some fireworks -- nothing hugely explosive like on Christmas, more pretty fireworks like the following:
Less fun, but more ethereally beautiful, are the paper lanterns that they light and launch. We saw one flying overhead on Christmas, but people were lighting lots of them on New Year's Eve. The following pic doesn't really show the lantern, but it shows how many people were standing around out on the street at 12:10 or so on January 1:
The next picture shows the paper lantern being lit. These are really simple devices -- just paper, with some sort of very lightweight frame, something that lets them place a small candle in the center. So they light the candle, and the lantern basically turns into a hot air balloon -- the hot air from the candle burning is enough to launch the lantern. The lantern lifts up very gently, and then rises to about, oh, 50-75 feet, and kind of floats along on the breeze. It's really quite lovely. I tried to get pictures of the lanterns floating overhead, but they were too small and blurry. So here's a picture of people lighting and preparing to launch a lantern:
Now, you might think, sounds risky -- a candle in the middle of a paper lantern. How is it that the paper doesn't just catch on fire. Well, guess what -- sometimes it does. But since this is Argentina, and they have a definitely more blase' attitude about risk than the gringos, no one gets too worried. In fact they seem to enjoy the spectacle:
This last picture is good to see in the larger size -- you can see how much everyone is enjoying the spectacle. As always, click on the small pic to see a larger one.
In all, it was quite the lovely spectacle, people lighting and launching these paper lanterns. Much sweeter than the homemade pipe bombs that people were lighting and tossing into the street on Christmas Eve!
Watch your step!
I haven't been posting as frequently as I would like, and I realize it's because I keep waiting for good pictures to use. But every post doesn't require pictures. And in fact here's one where pictures would probably be, let's say, unwelcome. Because what I want to talk about here, briefly, is dog shit.
Let's just say there's lots of it here. And so, watch your step. My second day here this trip I totally skidded on a big pile. It wasn't pretty. And at least two or three times since, even though I'm keeping an eye out, I've had to look for a puddle to rinse off the bottom of my flip flop. Hard to believe it, but I guess New York was just like this not that long ago. And Paris and London and wherever else. But eventually people in these cities got used to picking up their dog's "solid waste."
It's just another kind of pollution, I guess. The richer a country gets, the more it starts cleaning up after itself. And eventually that includes the dog crap. Visitors to BA be warned -- Argentina is not that rich yet.
Let's just say there's lots of it here. And so, watch your step. My second day here this trip I totally skidded on a big pile. It wasn't pretty. And at least two or three times since, even though I'm keeping an eye out, I've had to look for a puddle to rinse off the bottom of my flip flop. Hard to believe it, but I guess New York was just like this not that long ago. And Paris and London and wherever else. But eventually people in these cities got used to picking up their dog's "solid waste."
It's just another kind of pollution, I guess. The richer a country gets, the more it starts cleaning up after itself. And eventually that includes the dog crap. Visitors to BA be warned -- Argentina is not that rich yet.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)