Today we traveled to Tigre, a small town outside Buenos Aires. There is a commuter train that goes there and it is incredibly inexpensive, 7 pesos per person roundtrip -- which is about 50 cents. The train moves incredibly slow and many of the locals use it -- why not it's really cheap! The train leaves from the Retiro train station which is down by the waterfront where we took the BuqueBus to Uruguay.
On the train people sell all kinds of things like, candy, ear buds and play music and of course they ask for money. The video at the bottom of this post is a recording of the audio from a person playing on the train. I put various photos from the trip to Tigre to the music.
The train ride was supposed to take about an hour but ended up taking about an hour and a half because it stopped for about a half hour and we aren't sure why. We got there about Noon and our kayak tour was scheduled for 2 pm. So we walked along the river toward the location we were to meet our kayak guides. It was an old casino that is no longer functional but is used as a museum.
All my photos are included in the video -- I didn't take alot because I was busy paddling. Our guides took us via a motor boat to a resort area where we were to start our tour.
Tigre is not only on the Tigre river but is on a delta and many homes are on a series of canals. Our kayak tour was through the canals. It was very calm and easy to paddle. The homes were raised and many had dogs that would run along the shoreline and bark as we paddled by. It seems like Venice in that way because people literally live on the canals.
We got on the train back to Buenos Aires around 5 pm and we were happy that that we got on a the first stop because we got a seat. The train car we were in probably had a capacity of 100 and I think 200 people eventually were on the train. I think we were there during rush hour on a Friday night. We were packed in like sardines.
We were exhausted from all the paddling, sun and train time but when we got back to Retiro station it too was packed with people so it was just easier to walk home instead of getting a cab. It was about a 2 mile walk. We were exhausted and hungry to say the least when we got home. So we went to dinner at a restaurant close by called "The Tea Connection." The girls and I ate there earlier in the wek and really loved it so we thought it would be good to have Jim try it. The only problem is we eat like Americans, not Argentinians. We expected to be served right away -- they take their time here and people expect it will take about 2 hours for dinner. When you are hungry and tired that is really hard!