Posts Tagged museum
Pink is the Best
I’m in Medellin, working on obliterating any traces of Castellano that I may have learned. A typical day:
1] Wake up at Camila’s lovely little apartment, eat a delicious breakfast cooked by either lovely, kind Camila or her lovely, hospitable mom. And feel a little guilty.
2] Loll around for an hour or two, obsessively checking Facebook and slowly working on personal hygiene tasks.
3] Work my way out into the sunlight. Walk to the Metro station down the hill from Envigado, take the spotlessly efficient Metro to Parque Berrio.
4] Eat a 6,000 peso lunch (which sounds expensive, but it’s really only three dollars) before heading over to the Museo Antioquia, which houses lots of Colonial and Colombian art, as well as a huge collection of Botero artwork. And has like 40 fat sculptures directly outside, which are funny and a little grotesque.
5] Jump on my new favorite friend, the Metro, to go check out the MAMM. But arrive there to find that it’s inexplicably closed.
6] So meet up with the Met to ride the crazy huge well-engineered gondola portion of the public transportation system up the hill to the allegedly dangerous little barrio of Santo Domingo, now home to a beautiful modern library bequeathed by the nation of Spain. To wander around a little bit and meet a super-charming technological librarian and speak some halting English.
7] Get kicked out of the library’s computer lab (because it was closing) and running in a downpour down the super-modern handicapped ramp. And falling on my knees in a super-radical rockstar slide in the deluge and ripping a rockstar hole in my jeans and getting some rockstar blood all over myself. And feeling pretty not-rockstar as the little kids were laughing at me and I boarded the fantastic futuristic gondola all wet and bloody.
8] To go back down the hill and eat a really bad expensive sushi roll in Parque LLeras that was not fried in tempura batter, but some kind of corn meal, which does not work well with the Japanese food.
9] Before jumping back on the M and taking my Camino Verde bus back to my perfect apartment and loll around a bit more before welcoming Camila back home from her 14 (or so) hour day at the fancy restaurant.
Other, less common occurrences:
Cirque de Soleil was in town for Los Juegos Sudamericanas and Camila mentioned that I ought to go. When we stopped by a hostel in Parque Lleras to grab a map, she happened to know someone that worked there that somehow had access to (maybe a bit below the board) entrance to the inauguration show. So there was some rapid discourse in a language that I now don’t understand at all on many cellular telephones, and I was told to show up at a certain place at a certain time. Which I did and waited around a couple hours with some super sweet college kids for some shady guy to arrive out of the crowd with dubious access to the show. Which he never did, so I followed the college kids to a nearby bar where I was forced to drink an undisclosed amount of aguardiente and danced really poorly/sweatily with a kind/patient young woman who put up with me even though I have as much rhythm as a, well, a WASP-y white guy from a cold climate.
The college kids:
A delicious meal at Camila’s very fancy restaurant at which I chatted amiably with Rob (from California), her boss and the head chef, and ate one of the best meals of my life, all explained in lurid detail by them both. Was wowed.
Night at the disco with Camila and her very special friends, pretending that Cami is European to the poor drunk Colombian guy (self-proclaimed nickname “the body”) and dancing like a little kid before meeting Pink (not the Pink) and being forced to say some very nasty things in a language I don’t understand and joining in the cleverly written song, Pink is the Best.
Also:
Medellin is Canada. But warm. And the people are more attractive. Everything is clean and modern and attractive. The citizenry is incredibly kind and gregarious and just, well, nice. I feel safer in Medellin (rightly or no) than I’ve felt anywhere outside Patagonia in the last seven months. It’s more Canada than Canada. Is this what Scandanavia is like?
I’ve gone to the aquarium and the botanical gardens and another museum and another museum and a big fancy market and a big fancy mall and another big fancy mall. And the movies, twice.
I walk a lot. And it’s hilly and warm. I’m getting a little sweaty. But people are so nice, they never mention it.
Time in Prison, Hammocks
Posted by Delaney in Argentina, Puerto Madryn, Ushuaia on December 14th, 2009
As you saw in the last post, I found the sign at the end of the world. Fellow travelers had told me that there wasn’t much to do in Ushuaia so I only gave myself one full day there; I’m glad I did, as it was a bit rainy and the activites there were mini-versions of stuff that I’d already done (mountains, a little glacier), or was planning to see later (whales, sea lions). But I really did have fun going to the converted wilderness-prison-cum-museum. The plaster of paris mannequins were just delightful, and there were portions of the prison that hadn’t yet been fixed up and so were still dirty and damp and full of holes and prison stink, which was cool.
The long walk:
Also, I stayed in Ushuaia at a place called Freestyle Hostel, which was nice (and caro) except for the one reception dude who was a totally disinterested snowboarder lifty-type guy. And the nice-looking hotelish bathrooms smelled like some very old sweat socks. But Rasta Max’s kindness (and haircut – guess what kind!) totally made up for it. I also ran into Laura again (for at least the fourth time on my trip down South), so it was nice to see her again before she went back to San Diego.
4:30 the next morning I arrived grumpy and hungry at the Ushuaia bus terminal (actually a parking lot next to a gas station) to find the bus to Puerto Madryn. It was a long ride, longer than one might expect after looking at a map, but the roads down there are circuitious and one has to find one’s way around channels and mountains and whatnot. In all, I think that it took around 30 hours (with an incredibly uneventful stop in Rio Gallegos).
But Puerto Madryn was totally worth it. I expected another small tourist town with dozens of parka stores, and was very happily surprised to find a large tourist town in the middle of an incredibly gorgeous spell of warm weather with a long beach spanning the entire town. There were even some crazy kids swimming in the ocean, and I managed to take my shoes off and walk along the shore a bit. It was exciting, and unexpected, to find myself in a city that looked a lot more like coastal Florida than Antarctica, so I was happy. And I stayed at a great place called El Gaulicho in Puerto Madryn with a friendly staff, good rooms, a big kitchen, lots of friendly travellers, and a cute little courtyard with two(!) hammocks. I really could have stayed there for a week, but I think I’d better get traveling if I’m really going to make it to Santiago before Christmas.
Puerto Madryn, suprisingly:
Oh, and I went on a whale-elephant seal-sea lion-penguin tour, on which we also saw lots of maras (which are kind of like rabbits/dogs) and more guanacos.
But the whales were definitely the best part. I caught the very tail end (so to speak) of the whale watching season, so there evidently weren’t many left in the harbor to see, but the moment our super-sized Zodiac came within 50 meters of the one pair we did track down, the baby started jumping out of the water like a lunatic. It breached seven or eight times before its mom came over, jumped out of the water herself, and calmed baby down. I also managed to find myself pretty much the best spot on the boat, standing in the bow with a railing to hold on to and the guide’s girlfriend (also a biologist, I think) telling me exactly what was going on the whole time and how lucky we were to see that kind of stuff so late in the season. Not that you can tell from my pictures, of course, but I’m ok with that. I’ve got it all up here (point at head). And then I partook in the communal asado at the hostel, during which I drank just a smidge too much vino.
The next day I got up, ate free breakfast, and promptly fell asleep in the hammock. And then I went to the EcoCentro, which was a well-produced marine ecology museum and a great way to spend some time on a rainy afternoon (which is what it turned into), and fell asleep on a cushy couch in the upstairs library while waiting for a squall to pass. I needed some sleep, evidently.
Ahora, Estoy Turista
Posted by Delaney in Argentina, Buenos Aires on September 29th, 2009
Above: The Fortabat
I’ve been a turista lately, going to museums and seeing sights. Last week I went to the Coleccion de Arte Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat, which is a long name; I think that people here just call it the Fortabat. This is a museum that Sonja and Katharina had told me about it and said that they’d enjoyed their visit, but suggested that I might not appreciate it because it’s “just art, mostly painting” and there were no explosions or anything to keep my attention. I was, of course, offended and once I found my way there I studied each piece for agonizing amounts of time, starting in the 17th century and working my way toward the present day, looking for subtle changes in technique and use of light through the centuries. I did this, of course, to prove to myself that I am not a Philistine and that we norteamericanos don’t always need explosions to be captivated. It was a beautiful building and and extensive collection, but seriously, it was pretty boring.
Above: The MALBA
But! The next day I went to the MALBA and realized that yes, I do love art and can be amazed and intrigued and yes, inspired by sculpture and painting and architecture and saying such-and-such is art even though in any other context it would just be a chair or a greenhouse or a canvas painted all the same color. It was great, and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Buenos Aires. And I went on Miercoles, so it only cost 5 pesos, which is like US$1.50.
I also recently went on a Buenos Aires City Bus Tour with Rebekah and Julie and a young woman named Linda, who is unsurprisingly from Germany. I’ve not got much to say about it, honestly. It seems like something that would have been really cool to go to the moment I got to the city, just to get a good overview of the highlights, but I’d already seen every single place the bus took us through, plus many more. It was a beautiful day, though, and sitting on the roof of a bus being driven around on a gorgeous day is a decent way to pass some time. Here are a few bus-tour-y photos:
I ran a bit. I meant to do 22 miles on Monday and had measured out an appropriate route, but missed a turn somewhere and ran a bit extra when I should have turned around at a certain street. I ended up only going about a mile and a half extra, but after a point, a mile and a half can mean quite a bit. My longest run here in Buenos Aires up to then had been 20 miles, and I ended up running 23.5 miles that day. However, I’m beginning to think that if I had a support van (like Dean Karnazes sometimes does) feeding me nutritious foods and keeping me hydrated (and providing bano services), I might be able to run indefinitely. The things that I always worry about while running are not exhaustion or how much my feet hurt (which really, they do), but if I’m going to get sick from dehydration or if I ate enough of the right kind of food beforehand to keep me going. And el bano, seriously. Public facilities are few and far between in Buenos Aires; I’ve had a couple of close calls.
We also went to the Metropolitan Cathedral. ‘Nuff said:
Chau.
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- Delaney on Pink is the Best
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