Puerto Madero

Well, what should we do today?  That is becoming a morning mantra here in our BA apartment.  Now that we know how to use the bus, I looked at the map and said that maybe we should bus over to Puerto Madero and check it out and have almuerzo (lunch).

Let me digress a little about taking the bus.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, we bought our SUBE card which allows you to put money on it and just flash it in front of a scanner on the bus.  There are about 95 different bus companies operating about 140 routes in Buenos Aires.  Every bus company has its own colors which helps one to identify the bus you want when it is coming down the street.  We bought the little guide which has a unique system for finding out which bus or buses you need to take to get from point A to point B with little street maps and grids in small print.  I also discovered a terrific web site where you put a point on the map where you are starting and a second point on the map where you want to go.  It brings up all bus routes that you can take to get there and back.  Unfortunately, I can't take it along on the journey so we have to memorize it before we leave.

The fare varies somewhat depending on how far you are going but we are finding out that a fare of 1.6 pesos gets us where we are going so you simply tell the bus driver "uno sesenta" and flash your card in front of the scanner and it deducts the amount.  It also shows on a screen how much is left on your card.  Quite high tech!  Our biggest issue is that we know what our destination is going to be but we're not sure how to tell when we get there if we've never been there before.  I look at the map before we leave so we have kind of an idea but no bus stops are announced and the bus does not stop at every bus stop unless someone is flagging it down or someone on the bus buzzes that he wants to get off at the next stop.  And, to further muddy the waters, there are different bus stop locations for the different routes along the same way and they can be in the middle of the block and not in every block.  

So, off we go on the 61 bus - no problem there.  From the map we noticed that it kind of circles behind Casa Rosada and we get off soon after that on Avenida Belgrano.  So, we got up from our seats and went to the exit doors (you cannot exit at front) and I asked the woman standing there who looked like she was going to get off if it was the street we wanted and she said yes.  Good job!  

Puerto Madero is a newly developed area along the Rio Plata - the big wide river by Buenos Aires (we are not on the beach).  It used to be all warehouses for shipping - it is considered a port.  Now there are new high rises and a river walk with fancy - pricey restaurants and shops.  We walked all along the riverfront to the north - came across the Frigata Saramiento, which was an old Argentine Navy training sailing ship which served from the late 1800's until about 1960.  It is now a museum and we dropped in for only 2 pesos each. It turned out to be quite interesting and a break from the sun beating down on us.  Afterwards we walked across the river on an artistic pedestrian bridge called Puente de la Mujer.  There were more pricey restaurants and shops and we came to a harbor area for fancy yachts.  We checked out various restaurant menus and decided that everything was over priced so walked back to the real world and found a more modest restaurant for our lunch.  We were very ready to sit down in air conditioning with a cold beer and a nice fish filet with mashed potatoes at the Plaza Roma restaurant - all locals there - we like that. 

For our reverse bus trip, we were starting somewhere other than where we got off the bus so pulled out our handy GuiaT and calculated that we could get home on a 62 bus.  It took a while to show up but it got us pretty close to home sweet home.  It was another successful little adventure for us old farts.  It was getting really warm in the sun and we were happy to be back home.  

We were not too impressed with Puerto Madero - certainly glad we didn't rent an apartment there because it's just a lot of tall modern apartment and office buildings and not much else other than expensive restaurants and expensive shops.Probably it livens up at night but we're not much into night life.  Night life for us is having some wine and a snack at home - watching a little TV and going to bed.  Oh well.  

I wonder what we will do tomorrow?