I had the plan of exploring the city like a local, just following my nose from one street to the other. I soon got distracted, however, by stumbling upon a beautiful palace with ornate façades and colorful tiles that had a long line of people in front of it. The sign said "Museo del Agua", although I had a hard time believing that people would be in line early in the morning to visit such a place. Turns out I was the only one interested in visiting the museum, and everyone else was there to pay their water bill. The building was the main distribution center of potable water for the city of Buenos Aires, and today is the administrative center of the water and sanitation services of the city. The amazing thing is that the elaborate palace is just a box that housed 12 enormous steel tanks, with a capacity of 70 million liters, and from which water was distributed to the original Buenos Aires by gravity! But let me do a bit of basic hydrology for you:
As I repeat to my students fairly often, the land is really a tight mosaic of watersheds, each of which drains through a single exit channel into the next water course (in this case the Río de la Plata). Buenos Aires started on the side of a low dissected mesa, within a small watershed with very low relief that drained through the Arroyo Matanzas into the Río de la Plata (the point of discharge was La Boca, which I will talk about later). From the 16th to the 18th centuries the city saw many cholera outbreaks because of the lack of proper sanitation, and in the late 19th century the municipal authorities could no longer ignore the problem and a proper sewage started to be built, and a fresh water filtration plant was built by the banks of the river (hopefully with the intake upstream of the sewage outlet). The Río de la Plata is turbid but the water is highly oxygenated and thus of very good quality, so after filtration the water would be pumped uphill to the tanks of the distributing plant and from there would be distributed to the original footprint of the city by gravity. The system started operating in 1887, and was finally taken offline in 1970. In the interim a new potable water treatment plant was built near the banks of the river, and the water is pumped to several other distribution tanks, but basically the same system is still used. The old and beautiful original plant is now a museum and administrative center, and the steel tanks have been refurbished to store thousands upon thousands of priceless engineering drawings and maps. But why was such an utilitarian water plant housed in such a magnificent building? The city was proudly stepping into the "modern" era, and floated a contract for an engineering and architectural marvel; a Belgian company won the contract, brought the building, steel framework, and tanks as a Lego set from Europe, and a wonder kid like Ronnie put it together as a monument to 19th century design.
With my newly acquired knowledge I figured the next stop should be a visit to the barrio de La Boca, which is where the docks and shipyards were located. This type of work attracted many Genovese immigrants, who called themselves Gen'ese, a term that the inhabitants of La Boca have proudly retained for themselves. It was a rough part of town in the 19th and 20th centuries, and folks build shanty towns (or conventillos) with leftover materials from the shipyards, and slapped them with leftover paint of all colors, thus creating a unique part of town. Now it is a charming tourist trap where the big passions of the Argentinians are in clear display (soccer --Messy and Maradona being the big idols--, tango, Mafalda, and horses). Being contrarian I followed the signs to the Quinquela Art School and Museum, and discovered a real jewel. Benito Quinquela Martín (1890-1977) was an artist who moved into La Boca in 1947 and spent the last 30 years of his career educating children, collecting pieces of art, and painting at the building that now bears his name. The first floor was the school, the second floor was his workshop, and the third floor was the modest apartment where he lived, with a fabulous view over the docks. For the last 30 years he used his vantage point to record, in bold contrasts and sharp spatula traces, the everyday life of La Boca, its inhabitants, its sailors, and its dock workers. Fantastic work.
Being by now very curious about the history of Buenos Aires in particular, and Argentina in general, I headed for the National History Museum, where I had a very confusing introduction to the war of independence from 1810 to 1818. José de San Martin is the acknowledged Father of the Country, but other names worth remembering are Güemes, Belgrano, and Pueyrredón (if for nothing else because some important streets are named after them). Unfortunately there wasn't much on 20th century history, so tomorrow I will have to go visit the Eva Perón Museum.
It was time to grab lunch, this time at the Bar Británico, where I enjoyed a salad with prosciutto, a delicious grilled salmon, a glass of good Malbec red wine, and a flan. Life is good.
My last hurrah for the day was to visit the Museum of Tango, which was supposed to open at 15h00 but never did. Lástima. However, while I was walking past a couple of restaurants at La Boca I saw different couples demonstrating this, the most sensuous of dances, where the dancers appear to melt into each other, only to snap apart in a second as the music jolts. Makes me want to don again my shiny dancing shoes and ... but then again tango is a team sport so there would be no point on bringing my shiny shoes out of retirement.
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