Eye of the Tigre

Sorry folks, I really did try to post this last night but this website was giving me fits.....

Today my brother and I decided to take a day trip to Tigre.  Tigre is about 35 km north of Buenos Aires and is interesting because it is a unique habitat and geographic formation.  Tigre is the delta at the confluence of several inland rivers.  This delta is also referred to as an alluvial fan-- I remember hearing this term during my elementary school map making years.  Good thing I retained absolutely none of the pertinent information about it.  The network of rivers is the third largest in the world after the Nile and the Amazon.

Getting there was a story in and of itself-- trains, planes, and automobiles.  Okay, maybe just the Subte, the commuter rail, a hokey electric train, and then a boat.  I am still surprised by how little customer service seems to mean here-- there are no signs for anything and no one seems to go out of their way to tell you that are waiting in the right place or walking in the right direction.  I really shouldn't complain-- it all means better language acquisition for me.

[My brother on one of the many trains we took]

The town of Tigre is reminsicent, on a very small scale, of sad seaside resorts like Brighton, England and Bray, Ireland.  There is an amusement park and a destitute looking casino.

We took a boat tour of the river network and islands.  There are about 9,000 year round inhabitants of Tigre and many seasonal visitors.  We saw beach clubs, mini resorts, and areas of grouped rental cabins.  There are no roads or vehicles on the islands, so all travel is done by boat.  There are a lot of motor boats but also quite a few sculls.  Tigre is the home of rowing in Argentina.  There are still many rowing clubs along the shores of the rivers.

[Sculls waiting to be used]

[Summer camp, Tigre style]

The boat tour was nothing short of hilarious.  Several tour groups boarded our vessel.  A guy named Jose gave a bilingual tour as we floated along.  There were French people, Chinese men, and a group of Colombians.  And they were all HORRIBLY behaved-- talking through the whole guided tour, falling over each other to take silly pictures and barely complying when the crew asked them to sit down.  Quad and I, needless to say, enjoyed their bad behavior almost as much as the tour.



Jose, the tour guide, front and center



[Some of the bad actors]

And for you foodies out there, here's a picture of the dinner Quad ate on Monday night.  We later noticed that all of the other customers who ordered this meal split it among two or three people:

[Before]

[After]

[My modest tamale nortena]

This meal, which included Quad's obscene steak explosion, empanadas, my tamale, and a half liter of wine was AR$108-- USD $27.

The great scientific count: We'll put it an even 30....