History of our BA neighbourhood in one picture
03 Monday Nov 2014
Posted Home, Images, West Buenos Aires
in03 Monday Nov 2014
Posted Home, Images, West Buenos Aires
in08 Saturday Mar 2014
Posted Buenos Aires institutions, Images, Travel
inRecoleta Cemetery is drenched, its narrow alleyways slick with rain. I walk through the melancholy heart of the place under dripping leaves, fluorescent-green against the grey sky. A loose, lace-cracked window swings in the soft wind. A visitor in rustling yellow passes me, cursing his sodden map under his breath, then all is silent, everything is still and the faint hum of traffic melts and disintegrates under the raindrops.
Recoleta Cemetery is one of the most-visited spots in Buenos Aires but today it seems deserted. Some people wouldn’t set foot in a cemetery on their travels whatever the weather but this one is different. For this cemetery only a true gothic-grey drizzle will do.
Recoleta Cemetery in the genteel Buenos Aires neighbourhood of the same name is the final resting place of a Who’s Who of Argentine society. Recoleta’s living citizens are posh and well-groomed, so it’s no surprise its cemetery provides those that passed away with prime afterlife real estate. The tombs are status symbols reserved for the wealthiest and the most well-connected figures in the country.
Much of the cemetery’s attraction is as an outdoor art gallery. Gothic is next to Art Deco, Neo-Classic stacked on top of Art Nouveau. Plus, this art gallery is in the form of a mini-city. The towering gates open onto an expansive plaza. Named streets are lined with apartment-sized tombs. None of the resting places are understated; all are elaborately carved and decorated, many with protective stone angels peering down through the gloom. Others have their doors ajar. Cats hide behind iron railings and chase cemetery mice across the black marble.
A map shows you the locations of the most famous graves but paper is useless in this weather. A lost tourist asks me where to find Evita, and I direct him to take the second left, walk two blocks, and Evita is on the right. I follow behind him and watch as a line of visitors files past Recoleta’s most famous resident. Her tomb is slippery black marble and flowers cling to its fortified exterior. Many people come here just to see Eva Perón’s resting place but the cemetery is also home to presidents, military leaders, poets and scientists.
And a few ghosts. Every cemetery needs a ghostly resident or two and Recoleta doesn’t disappoint. Take the urban legend surrounding the 15-year-old Luz María García Velloso. Her tomb is close to the cemetery’s entrance. The story goes that a man walking past the cemetery encounters a young woman dressed in white. They go to a nearby bar and when leaving the girl gets cold and asks to borrow the man’s jacket. For some reason the girl takes the jacket with her when the evening is over. The man calls the number she gave him the next day to get the jacket back but her mother tells him the poor girl died several years ago. He goes to the cemetery because he can’t believe the story and sees – gasp! – his jacket draped over the girl’s tomb.
As I slosh through the puddles to the exit a funeral procession passes by at the end of the alleyway. The scene seems unreal, somehow staged. It’s easy to forget that Recoleta is still in use. On the way out I look up. The tombs are dark and shadowy against the white and grey office buildings that tower outside the walls, and the light from the billboards doesn’t reach inside. A pink-grey city sky wraps the outside world and the cemetery as one, promising more and more rain.
18 Friday Jan 2013
It’s been a while since I was last on here and I can immediately see I have a minor obsession with the weather. The last post was about the spring, and here I am talking about summer weather in BA. Well, it’s probably because I’m British. It is indeed a British trait to talk about the climate on any given occasion, which is why “what’s the weather like in BA?” is at the top of my frequently asked questions list.
Looking out over the city from the ecological reserve
It’s mid-January and the temperature hovers between 30 and 32 degrees C; it’s been like this for about a week and that’s pretty normal for a BA summer. We walk slowly, shut doors to keep the air-conditioned cool in the rooms we use most. The cat goes three paces then has to have a little lie-down, stretched like a floppy soft toy across the tile floor. On the other hand the dogs seem to want to lie, panting, in the sun. Errands are confined to the late afternoon. Evenings are warm and close but not overbearing, and we can still sleep (barring any power cuts, which is another BA story…)
A largely deserted city street in high summer
Also normal for January and the rest of the summer months: rain. The general pattern seems to be a building heat over four to five days that results in a heavy rain storm, usually with thunder and lightning, that floods our garden for a little bit and brings the temperatures down. Only for them to rise again with the sun the next day…
The garden green after a rainstorm
This spring/ summer, freak weather events include a scorching stretch of weeks in November, temperature into the 40s on Christmas Eve and downpours heavy even by BA standards that brought waist-high floodwater to parts of the capital.
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It’s hard to imagine winter, which does get chilly here, when the view now is bright blue sky and lush green vegetation, with a warm breeze and a heavy, languid heat. And it is even more difficult to imagine England now, on the other side of the world, with its polar opposite weather. Here’s England today, as a bit of a contrast.
10 Monday Sep 2012
Taken on the ferry from Punta Gorda in Belize to Puerto Barrios in Guatemala – startlingly still water and a perfect blue sky
My destination – a tiny jungle cabin at Finca Tatin on the Rio Dulce, Guatemala
26 Sunday Aug 2012
07 Wednesday Mar 2012
07 Wednesday Mar 2012