Visiting Argentina – Part I Monday, 16 August 2010 08:57 Written by Florencia Giner

This article is meant to be the first of a series of articles about my home country. I’m doing this because of a request I received from my friend Marta, who is planning to visit the country soon and also because this is a fantastic excuse I get for new topics for my blog articles.

First I would like to clarify a few items (and get it out of the way) that seem to cause troubles on some people (at least this has been my personal experience):

1) Rio de Janeiro is a city in Brazil (you know the home country of super hot ‘Victoria Secret’ model – Giselle Bundchen) and not a city in Argentina, although if you want to go to Rio it is not that far from Argentina just north a couple of hours by plane, so yes it is in the ‘neighborhood’.

2) The official language of my home country is Spanish, I know this one causes lots of troubles on people (who knows why) but I swear we don’t speak Portuguese and we never did, really.

3) Does ‘Argentinean’ Spanish sound the same as ‘Spanish’ Spanish? NO, you can distinguish a Spaniard from an Argentinean from a kilometer. Yes, the ‘proper’ language is always the same but the accent, the slang and localisms are very, very different. If you want me to go even deeper, within the country we got different accents depending of what province you are coming from.

4) Who is the King of Argentina? Somebody asked me this one long time ago (and became a family joke), my father thought it was hilarious and said I should have said the ‘my father’ is the king or Argentina and I’m the crown Princess. Reality check, we never had a King, although during colonial times we were under the ruling of the King of Spain (until 1816 when we became independent) and at that time we had a Viceroy who was the King’s representative in the colonies.

5) Argentina is NOT in the ‘rainforest’ or a rainforest country. If you look in the map we are WAY too south from the Equator line therefore we don’t have ‘tropical’ weather. The closest thing to tropical we get are some of the provinces in the north-east (near the Brazilian border) they have sub-tropical weather, meaning there is a winter season (mild) and also there is a ‘dry’ season opposite to the ‘tropics’ where rains all year around with pretty much no temperature changes. All this means that we don’t produce things like bananas (we get them from Ecuador), coffee (we get most of our coffee from our neighbor Brazil and sometimes from Colombia – the best coffee in the world if you ask me), or any of those ‘tropical’ fruits like mangoes, papayas, passion fruit, durian, etc, etc, etc. I think the most ‘tropical’ fruit that we are producing these days are Kiwis. In the other hand you can get great apples, pears (in my home province, Rio Negro) as well as grapes, plums, apricots and peaches in provinces like Mendoza.

If you look in the map again, we are at the same latitude as Australia (south of the Equator) and we even have sheep like Australia in the Patagonia region (southern provinces of the country) although way less than the Aussies. In addition, because of our position in the globe and together with Chile (our neighbor country to the West) we have snow and great ski in winter in the Andes Mountains (the only two countries in South America).

6) Last but not least, if you are planning to visit Argentina during Christmas time, you better bring your pretty party dresses and your golden sandals, because if you haven’t figure it out by now we are in the Southern Hemisphere which means Christmas & New Year’s are in summer and you will be dancing your ‘bones’ off until 6 in the morning.

HOW TO GET TO ARGENTINA?

If you are planning to go to Argentina, don’t stress out about how to get there, you got 99.8 % changes that you will be arriving to Buenos Aires. Argentina is not a big country in terms of population as a matter of fact we got only 39.8 million, and 3 major metropolitan areas: Buenos Aires (12.5 million), Cordoba (3 million) and Rosario (2.9 million), and the ‘rest’ of the people are distributed in a fairly large territory in not so big cities and towns. Bottom line we have ONLY one truly ‘International’ Airport: “Ministro Pistarini Airport” (in honor of some dude who was “Minister’ of something way back when). I swear I doubt that there is one person in the country that knows who the heck Mr. Pistarini was (well probably his mom). You must know that locals call this Airport ‘EZEIZA’ because is located near the town of Ezeiza (40 minutes outside Buenos Aires). If you are taking a taxi, just say ‘Ezeiza please’. We also have another Airport for domestic flights, this one is conveniently located very close to downtown (next to the river) and is called Jorge Newbery Airport.

Now going to the cold facts, Buenos Aires is 19,631 kilometers OR 12,198 miles from Shanghai which means is like in the other side of the planet, isn’t it? Well pretty much.

If time means something we got a time difference with Buenos Aires of 11 hours and unfortunately NO direct flights from Shanghai. So how you get there?, well you have pretty much direct flights from all the biggest capitals of the world like New York, Madrid, Paris, Miami, or London (as well as Dubai and Johannesburg), so to get there you will need to go ‘somewhere else’ first to catch a plane. Don’t worry, it should only take you like 1.5 days between plane changes to get there and ‘if’ you survive the ride, I promise you it will be fun!!!

Now, to finish this article and before you land in Buenos Aires, I would like to leave you with a little more info.

First, you shall know that Argentineans are NOT all that popular among their fellow South American neighbors. The ‘claim’ is that Argentineans are very ‘arrogant’ people, which his SO NOT TRUE, we are just fabulous and you know how people are: they can’t forgive you for that. LOL.  

Second, the people from Buenos Aires city (Buenos Aires is a city and a province, but we will talk about this in further detail in our next article) are known as ‘porteños’ (the word comes from ‘puerto’ that means ‘harbor’ in Spanish) so basically means ‘people from the harbor’. Anyhow, the ‘porteños’ are considered ‘arrogant’ by the people from the ‘interior’- meaning the rest of the country (which is how they call ‘us’). So if you are visiting one of the provinces and you see people wrinkling their nose while talking about the ‘porteños’, you will know why.

Third, futbol or football (soccer) is a passion in my home country and there are 2 major national teams: Boca Juniors (Boca) and River Plate (River) and you either like Boca or you like River, trust me people will ask you what team you go for so you better have a favorite.

So you know more about your teams: Boca Juniors team was created in the ultra famous neighborhood of ‘La Boca’, a neighborhood next to the Buenos Aires harbor. The story goes that when a group of young harbor workers were playing football, they decided to create a real team and they ‘borrowed’ the colors of the Swedish flag for the team colors. Turns out, at that time there was a Swedish ship in the harbor and they saw the flag that they used as an inspiration.

No matter you are a big football fan or not, I will say that you should experience (if you get the chance) a football game between the big rivals Boca Juniors & River Plate and for this there is no better place that the Boca Juniors team Stadium, popularly known as ‘La Bombonera’ (literal translation is ‘The Chocolate Box’), probably called this way because of its shape?

If you decide to join this team, these are some of the few nicknames they have: Los Xeneizes (The Genoese), La Mitad Más Uno (Half Plus One), La Azul y Oro (The Blue and Gold), Los Bosteros (The Manure Handlers), El Rey de Copas (The King of Trophies).

Now if you decide to join the ‘enemy’ and you decide to cheer for River Plate, these are few facts that you should know.

This team, same as Boca Juniors was created at the beginning of the 1900’s. The name ‘River Plate’ is the English name for the ‘Rio de la Plata’. ‘Rio de la Plata’ is the huge river/ estuary that separate Argentina from Uruguay and as a matter of fact, the city of Buenos Aires sits next to it.

The story goes that in the club's early days, one of the club founders observed sailors playing football games in the port of Buenos Aires next to crates marked "The River Plate", hence the club name.

This team and its fans have also several nicknames - Los Millonarios (The Millionaires), El Millo (The Millio[naire]),  La Banda Roja (The Red Stripe). Probably the most famous is ‘The Millionaires’.

This club also has its own stadium nicknamed ‘El Monumental’ (‘The Monumental’), but if you ask me I rather go to see a game in ‘The Chocolate Box’!!! What about you?

Don’t miss next article about Buenos Aires. Coming Soon!!