Antarctica --still in Buenos Aires with Leuko

When we returned to the hotel we waited for Leuko to pick. us up and take us to his house in City Bell. Spent the day with his family and then traveled into City Bell for dinner. Then back to BA for the night

 Leuko's house. He was building this when we visited 12 years ago.  Now he is putting in 2 windows upstairs for the girls room to have better ventilation.. He said his next project will be building a BQ pit outside on the deck.

Leuko spent a year with us when he was 18. He is now 44. David was this age when Leuko came to us.  We are hoping one of our grandkids will exchange with Leuko's kids!

Shirt is a little big!

                                  Out for dinner. I had a little trouble reading the menu....

                                  We finished our night out with ice cream. What's not to like?
                         We say good-bye to Lucas 10 Fran 16 Guadalupe 14 and Catalina 12

Antarctica Day3 Buenos Aires

Today is the tour of Buenos Aires and our visit with Leuko who was our exchange student in 1992?  A long time ago!  we haven't seen him for 12 years when we were last here.

 

        

Our dinner cooking on the spit.

Hotel lobby 

honey for breakfast

Day 3- Jan 31th  thursday Tour of the city,  First stop was the cemetery .  This cemetery has about 5000 mausoleums  with each one able to accommodate 50-60 coffins underneath its two levels..  There are no records as to how many are buried here because the records were destroyed from a fire in 1822. The cemetery is for all people . But as you walk down the rows there are some are keep manicured  while others are unattended.  Some have  plaques on them and this is to tell of the wealth of a person- status   One of the famous ones buried here is  Eva Peron  “ Familia Duarte”. She died at 33 from cancer in 1952. She was the 2nd wife of the countries president.  Her body was brought back here in 1972 for the final time.   Another important one that was buried here was Roco,  President from 1880-1886 who like Eva is also on the 100 pesos bill.
There is a story that Eva went to Europe to sign a treaty with Germany to have the Germans come here and be hidden and to open a Swiss bank account.
We asked our guide how do you get to be buried here.  There are several ways. Your family had bought one decades ago and there is room for many, or a person can sell a plot, or third it can be taken if the taxes are not paid. But the state has to wait for five years before it can be sold.

Eva Peron

Roco"s site

Opera House

Eva Peron on this building

President's house

This mosaic is to honor the Mother's in May . They have a march every Thursday for the children that have disappeared during Argentine's dictatorship

We moved onto to the Obelisk  which was built in 1936.  President’s house is in pink paint. They say the paint was mixed with blood. Above are the gravies of many, In 1974 The government took anyone they wanted -with no reason.  Many were sent to detention halls and many were killed. Here is where they found many bones that had been buried.    In 1983 Argentina got it democracy.In the earlier time  before 1994 the president had to be a lawyer and catholic. 
One of the protests is the one for abortion.. A green handkerchiefs means ok- a blue one favors the church and the orange is separation of church and state. It is in legislator right now as to whether the woman will have the right to choose. It is feared that if abortion is accepted that it will split the country. Some other interesting facts:   the pope has not been back to Argentina since he was elected. 2 an Argentine.....
 you can buy a plane ticket and put the payments in 18 payments
.
We toured the city and went into the stadium of one of the teams..The interesting thing is that Coke is painted black and white and not red because of the team . Messi #10 . Sports are the number one thing here.  Our tour took us into the river side.  The artsy part of town called La Boca.

Our friends Chris and Deb.  They are the reason we are here!

Cleaning the harbor

Tango on the sidewalk

Some of the gang

Time to go back and see Leuko!!!

                     This blog has a mind of its own. I can't get the pictures to move side by side and the font alignment is whatever it wants to do even when I correct it. So just bare with me..

Antarctica day1

Antartica  Janurary 29th leave Boston. 30th arrive BA February 2th.

We started off the week as a very stressful week with not knowing whether David would be well enough to come. He felt his cancer was back.  After a quick trip to Boston on the Saturday, we found out that he was ok and that the cancer hadn’t spread. But I really didn’t know whether he was going till we were on our way to the train..Yea He was coming.
So here we are on our way to Buenos Aires where the gang will meet us. BA is a big city with 17 lanes of traffic.  Just one of the 23 provinces.We arrive at about 6 AM in the morning and David headed to bed. I go to get the lay of land, But after about an hour or two, I have to succumb to some Sleep. 

After a quick nap I am up and waiting to see the gang and in walks Chris and Deb  David and I had ventured out to Kentucky’s for some Empanadas to eat. When we go to pay with my money that I had changed at home, the guy said he couldn’t take the money..Why???? It turns out that the bank had given us Mexican pesos instead of Argentinian pesos... I was not too happy. Exchange rate is .375 pesos to $1 US

This is where we are going. ( I can't seem to crop this)  We came across the Drake "shake"Passage. The waves came come as high as a 15 story building.  We only had 3 to 4 stories. We stayed mostly on the Antarctica Peninsula.

Just landed Now let the fun begin! It is 5:15 AM

 Flying into Buenos Aires

The main land mark for the city.

Off to Lunch that was recommended, Kentucky's, here???
we found out very quickly that I had brought Mexican Pesos and
not the Argentine pesos..Not the right way to start..

    

          This is the RED group     Ingrid, Kathlene,Winnette,Irene,CT,Claire,Jill,and Charlene

                                     Jane, Marion,Kathy,Terry,Candy,Marylyn,Cindy, and John

                               Evelyn,David, Me Deb, Chirs, Don,Barbara, Barbara,and Connie

And our wonderful guide and leader Carlos!