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| Buenos Aires enjoys perfectly dry and sunny spring weather. The dog walkers are out again with their charges in tow (or tows), restaurants and bars have moved chairs and tables back onto (cracked) sidewalks - and life goes on... |
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| Legal maximum number of dogs per walker and walk - eight. Sometimes they sneak in one more little one. The dogs love it. They wear a little basket over their muzzles for the first walk with strange companions - just in case - but after that, the whole bunch becomes friends forever. Many dog owners who take their dogs out personally seem to think that pooping and scooping is better left to the 'professionals' or the rain, whatever comes first. Hence Buenos Aires is graced with 70,000 pounds of dog poop every day - fines do not make a difference as there is no one around to enforce any doggie rules. City Government maintains, that the poop quantity rises year after year, as citizens prefer larger and larger dogs...hmmmm.... |
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| Beautiful items are still hand crafted and sold for incredible reasonable prices. Shops and Boutiques are stacked with original designer clothes and adornments at similar cost - to the lucky visitor with US $ backing. Local economy is such, that many of the less well off/ citizens make just do with food from one payday to the next. Salaries don't increase with inflation.... |
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| However, Portenos are resilient. A Folklorico house party gathers Chacarera and Zamba dancers, all bringing home made food and a bottle of wine and enjoy dancing under a full moon or on a genuine 'antique' wooden floor of an equally antique mansion in Flores |
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| Lovely to see tango professionals, usually decked out in fancy clothes and performing to a Milonga audience, visiting friends and putting on a little private entertainment - never mind that the bailarina is six months pregnant. |
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| Riding home late on one of the new (1 Year) old subway trains on Linea A...it is empty at 10 p.m., but Buskers still entertain the few passengers aboard. Here a band of four youngsters, playing guitars, harmonicas and singing a few songs between stations |
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| Meanwhile in the Pampas, the flat lands around Buenos Aires City, are still battling floods which seem to refuse to abate. Waters are not receding since eight days, the situation is desperate out there. Neighbours helping neighbours (if they don't rob each other when their respective houses had to be abandoned). Not much other help except local fire departments, who have their own problems finding 'gomons' rubber rafts, rescuing people from rooftops and getting around to rescuing dogs (80 of them in San Antonio de Areco alone) who sit on various roofs without food or water since days. Water, food, diapers, milk is being collected at strategic places in Buenos Aires to alleviate the wide spread suffering in the Province of Buenos Aires. Hospitals barely function, some only with a light of cell phones, medicines run out, people are brought in via home made raft. |
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| Here in Palermo, the district of Buenos Aires where I live, a small reminder of Victoria back on Vancouver Island. This little Café is called 'Victoria Brown' obviously an allusion to the Queen and her admiring Scottish protector. |
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| Main street in one of the affected towns in the Province of Buenos Aires |
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| This man was not going to be rescued unless his two dogs were rescued with him....he lost the rest of his belongings. |
