:: Buenos Aires Weekly ::

Only 30km from the entrance to Los Glaciares National Park, the footbridge area of the Perito Moreno Glacier will offer spectacular views. Every view point along the footbridge offers different view of the glacier.

Click on the image to go to the photos gallery:

The Perito Moreno Glacier is a glacier located in the Los Glaciares National Park in the south west of Santa Cruz province, Argentina. It is one of the most important tourist attractions in the Argentine Patagonia.

Click on the image to go to the photos gallery:

The best way to see the Upsala and Spegazzini Glaciers is to go on a cruise around the glaciers. You leave from Puerto Bandera and navigates on the Lago Argentino [Argentino Lake]. Then you embark on the brazo norte to reach brazo Upsala towards the Upsala glacier and later go down to the brazo Spegazzini to see the glacier of the same name.

Click on the image to go to the photos gallery:

The city’s portal came up with this cute article about Florida street. Originally in Spanish, I tried to come up with a decent translation. Text and photos are from Estrella Herrera.

Although it is known for its vertiginous atmosphere:

Florida street has a secret:

Behind the accelerated motion of thousands of passers-by:

Another Florida is hiding:

It’s not about the “pedestrian street” that waves of enthusiastic tourists trample on:

Nor the workers who filled the street during their morning journey to the office:

It’s when the passers-by are taken away leaving only the shadow of their passing:

Then Florida can rest:

Like when someone closes his eyes to let go into a deep dream:

Florida lets down one blind after the other and rests:

To discover this other facet of our Florida is necessary to take her by surprise:

And get up very early and discover while it’s still dawn:

Even when Florida is calm and quiet, the street’s never completely alone: a flower shop goes along with her:

And allows that anyone in love gets a bunch of colorful flowers any time of the day:

Slowly the passers-by are arriving:

The first in opening their doors are the newspapers stands, offering the latest news:

Among those who come and go, someone stops in front of a window:

Which until a few minutes ago was hiding their mannequins:

Among the passers-by, an accordionist adds music in the Buenos Aires morning:

When hours before silence prevailed:

The other Florida, contrasts of a street we all know:

But that has still a lot to show us and surprise us with:

A month after the interview we gave to La Nacion, the article got published in yesterday edition, March 7th. Early morning, I noticed the flow of entries to my blog coming from lanacion.com. At that point, I understood. The article got published. It’s impressive to see all the comments that rose from the article!! I almost feel like, just because of what I said, it awoken a torment of comments from Porteños, some blaming what I said, others supporting what I said, some others blaming the government, some blaming others for their comments, etc, etc…

Just so it is understood, it is fairly difficult (I believe) to transcript a 2 hour-conversation with the journalist from La Nacion into a small size article.  We literally kept on talking over a recording device, while the journalist kept on writing, making it look like she’ll never stop. As Jackson said in his blog, we talked a lot about the GOOD things of Buenos Aires, what we enjoy, what we like, and it is true that in the article all of what’s been said is barely perceivable.

What I like best here: the people - that has been understood I believe. Their quality - cariñoso(a)s, acogedoro(a)s, simpatico(a)s, amables, … I like that at anytime of the day, Buenos Aires bursts of energy. It’s electrifying almost. I love the smalls streets, full of green, looking at how one house looks different than the next, everything’s different, so charming. Strolling each barrio is lovely, one equally different than another. I would say that Buenos Aires is not a beautiful at first sight, but that once you get to meet its people, walk its streets, discover its habits/culture, then at that point you’ll start discovering the true nature of the city.

The negative aspects of what I find in the city, I almost feel like, are the only things that came out of the article, so to speak. Some blamed me for criticizing how dirty was the city, explaining that I should first look at my own country/Paris before I criticize others. First of all, I never pretended Paris was a cleaning model. I got the chance to travel a lot, and to me and sadly Buenos Aires is a very dirty city compared to others I’ve been to. The city deserves more than having dogs poops everywhere, and piles of trashes, or trashes literally torn apart in the street. Come one now! I mean this is one of the most modern city in South America, why can’t its government improve, take measures to make this city cleaner. Is that difficult to do? People reading the article took this personally, but this is for your government to take responsibility and make things better. Of course a little also has to come from the people. Hey I witnessed that often people would rather trash their stuff on the street/subway platform, rather than reach the nearest public trash bin that’s only meters away! Why? Once some pleople start doing that, it’d be a good improvement already.

I was reading lately that Argentina fell in the tourism ranking. Last year the country ranked 58, this year it went down to rank number 65. The recurrent causes are security, cleanliness, facilities/infrastructure, transportation and prices.  I agree with at least 3, cleanliness / infrastructure / prices.

Anyhow, even with its imperfections, Buenos Aires is an interesting city, worth spending time visiting, discovering. It has lots to offer. But more than that, the biggest asset of Argentina is undoubtedly the nature, the landscape. I had the chance to visit the north of Argentina, I loved it! Patagonia is precious!! Really all of this is spectacular.

And thanks to all of you who sent me nice comments via my blog and/or by emails :=)

Saludos.

Karine.

Check out the following link to take a tour of Buenos Aires in a 360 degree panoramic view of the city. Pretty cool!

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His name’s Thomas Locke Hobbs, an American living in Buenos Aires, who previously traveled in other parts of the world. He has 2 websites. His personal site: http://www.thomaslockehobbs.com/ and the site I wanted to introduce today: Buenos Aires Photographer - Big Photos of Buenos Aires. As the title says, Thomas posts big photos of the city, very much immersing the viewer in the authentic Buenos Aires, from wall posters to inside the subway world, Thomas’s pictures cover all aspects of Buenos Aires’s landscape. A very interesting blog if you want to discover the genuine Buenos Aires.

While I’m spending some vacations in France, I saw this commercial in a local newspaper. It always surprises me to see how the Che Guevara’s image is used widly around the world. In this case, they used it for promoting a ski resort in the Pyrenees [mountains between Spain and France]. It does say something like: “Freedom at the end of the ski.” They also used the ski resort white symbol on what looks like the Che’s hat. None of this makes sense to me. What do you think?

I finally took time to put together this photos gallery of Mar del Plata, where we spent a few days last October. Click the image to access the gallery.

To my surprise, my other blog, Buenos Aires daily, is listed #18 in this ranking of the T-List (Travel related Blogs). The T-list is based according to the Technorati ranking.

Here’s the complete list of sites listed in the T-List: Sortable T-List.