Pain Below the Equator

by Scott Skipper

the pertinent pages because we expected a fight was brewing with the travel agency.

  The croissants seemed to rally her sufficiently to visit the Cabildo which was fairly disappointing. We paid our respects to the bones of San Martín inside the cathedral and left in quest of lunch. Sandy was weak from hunger, heat and viruses when we stumbled onto La Parrlaccia that we thought was the same place we had had the excellent antipasto after the city tour. It was La Parrlaccia, but it was not the same place. There are two restaurants of the same name and management within a couple blocks of each other. Go figure an Argentinean. Their rabas were inferior, but Sandy enjoyed her smoked salmon. I was happy to find they served Bombay Sapphire.

  We dawdled the remainder of the day in the Treblinka and ventured to the Café Asturias promptly at nine for the Paella Valenciana which was excellent. By nine-thirty the place was packed.

  January 30, 2010 Buenos Aires:

  Lacking a better idea, and to satisfy Sandy’s desire to photograph a giant aluminum sculpture of a flower that opens and closes by means of hydraulic cylinders that we were shown on the city tour, we took the subway to Palermo and wandered about. The wandering was completely without redeeming value, and we were hard pressed to find any place for lunch. In Buenos Aires one can only find restaurants when not hungry. At one point in desperation I asked a man who I took to be the supervisor of the bus drivers where the good restaurants were. He didn’t respond. I have concluded that they are xenophobic. To teach them a lesson, they should all have to ask directions in New York.

  As aforementioned, it took a long time to find a place to have lunch. During the quest we were quite amused to observe a blind orthodox Jew with a long grey beard and a gorgeous sable hat being led across the street by a boy. It was stiflingly hot and steamy from rain during the night, and we were dumbstruck by this guy’s need for a fur hat. The thing must have cost as much as the Pope’s. But I digress, we took lunch in a nondescript restaurant, the first we found that offered tablecloths—not that they helped—and as soon as we regained the street we flagged a cab for the trip to the big flower. The driver was sympathetic about the detour and even engaged in a little conversation though I found his accent and the speed of his questions hard to follow.

  The maid was threatening to clean the room when we made the Treblinka, so we left again to find a café near the Plaza Congreso. The afternoon was overcast with a fresh breeze which we enjoyed very much. For dinner we returned to Museo del Jamón and were in agreement that it is the best place that we ate in Buenos Aires.

  January 31, 2010 Buenos Aires:

  The boat awaits but I feel compelled to bash the Tribeca in a comprehensive way. In previous tirades the insensitivity of the check-in, the failure of the shower, and the problematic toilet have been addressed, but one must also be made aware of the lack of wash cloths or a bath mat; the fact of having to stretch one little cube of soap for nine days; the occasional lack of toilet paper, and the truly horrible sheets. The sheets—God damn the sheets. The bed was king sized but the sheets were from another universe. They did not fit well in width, and they did not fit at all in length. The mattress was bereft of a mattress pad, which seemed to be asking for trouble to the untrained eye, but the pressing problem was one of friction. If you rolled toward the center of the bed the sides of the sheet was pulled from being tucked beneath the mattress so when you rolled back you were on scratchy mattress fabric. If you moved your feet or head, the bottom of the sheet rode upward because it was short-sheeted from the start.

  No sensible person should voluntarily stay at the Tribeca.

  Argentina in general? I am not sure. For nine days I was ready to paint Argentineans with the New Yorker brush, and throw in for good measure a condemnation of their accent and figures of speech. The modismos notwithstanding, the people of Buenos Aires seem to me to be completely uninterested in strangers if not somewhat rude; however, after an hour on board the Norwegian Sun I began to miss Buenos Aires, especially their food and their wine.

  The embarkation process was a cattle drive that occupied us from 12:30 until 2:30, so naturally the first thing we wanted, after a drink, was lunch. The cruise literature told us that we could eat anytime we wanted. What it neglected to mention was the fact that having a choice of what to eat was not a universally available option. It also became obvious very soon that if we wanted anything threatening to be good, we were out of luck. At nine o’clock the restaurant that we chose made us wait for thirty minutes although it didn’t seem especially busy. However, for all their faults, they served a decent pork chop.

  February 1, 2010 Montevideo:

  Sunrise found us docked at Montevideo. Its old sector—I'm not sure there is a new sector—is a charming little area completely overrun by tourists from the cruise ships that arrive daily, and this softens the locals to the presence of foreigners. They have a perennial market on the pedestrian malls where much antique silver is hawked. One of Montevideo’s claims to fame—possibly its only—is the scuttling of the Graf Spee in 1939 after being attacked by British cruisers. A few recovered pieces of it are on display in the port. Norwegian Cruise Line’s literature made reference to a Graf Spee museum, but it, according to a local bookseller, doesn’t exist and it does not appear on the city maps.

  I was forced to buy a watch in Montevideo because the stem of mine went flying across the airplane when I adjusted it to Buenos Aires time. It was simply impossible to maneuver multiple time zones without missing connections not being able to change my watch. The first store we found with watches displayed in the window was managed by a large woman with a huge emerald ring. She told me that the watch I selected was a good Japanese brand, but before she removed it the little sticker on the back said “made in China”. It cost me thirty dollars, but keeps fair time and is easily adjusted.

  On the matter of the name Montevideo, I was unable to learn how the place came to be called 'Video Mountain'.

  February 2&3, 2010 Puerto Madryn:

  It took two days to sail from Montevideo to Puerto Madryn, a city of about sixty-thousand at the end of a gulf where the wind blows incessantly. The time at sea gave us ample opportunity to experience the ineptitude of the service staff on the Norwegian Sun. The problem seems to be not enough dining venues and too much untrained staff that don’t care if you live or die because their tips are extracted from the customer automatically. There are three restaurants where one can eat with the fare included in the price of passage. There are five restaurants where the deluded passenger could eat if he were willing to pay a hefty cover charge. The steakhouse and Japanese restaurants charge $25.00 a head just to enter, and of course the wine and cocktails are on par with U.S. prices. They even charge for Pepsi—no Coke. The sushi bar, French and Italian restaurants charge $15.00, $20.00 and $10.00 per head respectively. We refused to pay the up charge in an act of defiance that was, of course, completely unknown to anyone, so we do not know if the food or service was any better than in the three restaurants we frequented. Of the three that are in the “free” domain, one is small and the maître d’ will make you wait half an hour even though there are empty tables, and if you try to make a reservation, he will claim that the place is fully booked. When confronted he maintained that this is because the kitchen is small, but the food arrives on the table before the “wine steward” can remove the screw top. No matter where one eats the food is mediocre when it arrives correctly which it seldom does. In front of the exercise room on the day of departure was a dry erase board advising that the average cruiser gains 10-14 pounds. This is patently impossible given the size of the portions. Timing is the other great lack among the polyglot staff. All cold dishes were prepared before leaving Buenos Aires and arrive on the table in seconds. Subsequent requests may be stacked on top or come sometime tomorrow afternoon. When ordering wine, expect temporal chaos.

  The excursion we booked at Puerto Madryn took us to a nature preserve on a windy peninsula that looked a great deal like lower Baja California. We saw
Magellanic burrowing penguins, sea lions and elephant seals although all the elephant seals were all female and not very exciting. The big males were at sea packing on blubber.

  February 4, 2010 Falklands:

  The passage to the Falklands was on the crests of thirty foot swells. Sandy did not do well. She had to stay in the open air to keep the propensity to heave under control. The result of this was severe sunburn at pool side where the volume of post middle age flesh was more massive than at the colony of elephant seals on the Peninsula Valdes. Alone at a truly miserable excuse for a dinner I was asked by a server if I was sailing alone. I told her no, but later reflected on the idea as I surveyed the dining room full of middle aged couples, very few families, some gay couples, and one or two pairs of apparently widowed dowagers. Any single person who found himself on the fourth day of this trip would have surely dived from the highest railing.

  February 5, 2010 Falklands:

  Port Stanley, Falkland Islands is colorful. Almost the entire population of about 2400 live in the houses with brightly painted corrugated