Yes, you read that right, our time in Buenos Aires is up. But we just go here! We haven’t even gone to La Pharmacie yet to try their provoleta con verdura a la parilla and I want to go back to Morelia for another pizza fix (pizza from the grill, ultra thin and loaded with toppings). Let alone all the museums and shops and barrios that we haven’t visited yet. There’s no two ways about it – we just have to come back. Especially since most of last week we’ve had torrential rains and we couldn’t do much in the way of touristing. But when the rain let up for a day we did manage to go to Tigre, a small town about 30km north of Buenos Aires, built on the Paraná delta.
Because it sits smack in the middle of the delta, boat is the best form of transportation in the area. The popular thing to do is to buy a ticket for a boat ride from one of the restaurants which means the regular taxi boat will take you to the restaurant (for a hefty surcharge), drop you off for lunch and then pick you up again a couple of hours later. Since there really isn’t much else to do in Tigre, this is how most tourists spend their day in Tigre.

We chose the Gato Blanco restaurant because it was far down the river and we wanted to see as much as possible. Most houses along the way were just regular small holiday shacks but some people really let their creativity run wild, especially on their jetties. This one housed a very normal looking home in the back but it’s all about the first impression. Just look at that tower!

We also passed the local supermarket:

And finally made it to the Gato Blanco for lunch. Really a very pleasant spot and full of pensioners which is always a good sign in a restaurant. (This has been scientifically proven by us after many years of study – the number of customers over the age of 70 is directly proportional to the quality of the food.)

After we’d been dropped off again in Tigre town, we took a stroll along the river:

The monument to the heroic rowers with the Marina Regatta rowing club in the back. Can you tell rowing’s a big deal in this town?

And ended up at the (apparently) only other tourist attraction, the grandly titled Naval Museum of the Nation. There was a big jumble of exhibits in the museum ranging from maritime oil paintings to modern fighter planes and a baby whale preserved in a jar. Also, a giant tide computing machine:

But now our time is really up in Bs As and our trails are leading south. First stop: Isla Valdes, a little peninsula off the north-eastern coast of Patagonia about 1000km south of Buenos Aires. We’ll spend a couple of days there to see some wildlife and have some proper scones and tea. (The area was settled by the Welsh in the late 1800’s and nowadays there are still plenty of tea shops around, serving cucumber sandwiches, scones and Earl Grey tea.) After that we’re going even further south to El Calafate and surroundings so stay tuned for news from Patagonia!