Los Toldos and beyond, Argentina

The church above is “The Monasterio Agustino de Santa Maria” founded by Swiss monks in 1948.

Enroute to Los Toldos, the home of JT and Betty, as well as the birthplace of Eva Perón, we made a number of stops along the 6-hour drive(180 miles) to explore local towns, tourist attractions, food and ice cream stops as well as gas stops. Almost every city has a town square serving as a social and commercial meeting place in the middle, the church on one end, and retail surrounding the perimeter. Above is just one of the many churches we saw.

Our first stop enroute was to the Buenos Aires Japanese Garden. It was well maintained and peaceful, not too big and not too small, tucked in the middle of high rises, as seen in the center image. Here’s the four of us (Burt, Evelyn, Betty, JT) photo bottom-right with Betty and JT both wearing their #10 Messi Argentine football team shirts. Yes, we got to hear or watch every World Cup game played by Ecuador and Argentina. Notably, there was no car traffic on the days the teams played. As if prescient of Argentina’s World Cup win, JT and Betty bought an Argentine t-shirt for us to be delivered to JT’s young 7-month old niece in Cuenca.

One of our next stops was to an all-you-can-eat BBQ. Every kind of meat you can think of was available in huge quantities. While we were eating, everyone was watching the World Cup match between Argentina and Australia (right-center), which Argentina won, resulting in celebrations all around ! Because of the World Cup playing, most of the expected musicians did not show up, but one guitarist with a pleasant voice did (left-center).

One thing we found curious was that our car was a hybrid LPG and gas, which the locals refer to as gas and gasoline. The LPG (liquid propane) tank was pretty small with a range of 100-130 km, and we had to fill it up every two hours of driving (left-bottom). Simultaneously, there was a regular gasoline tank in these hybrid models that also took half the trunk space. When we asked why they did not just use the gasoline and have fewer stops, we were told that gas (ie LPG) was about 1/4 the cost of gasoline. Of course, every time the tank was being filled with LPG, all passengers were required to evacuate the car in the event the tank blew up, which did not leave us feeling overly safe. In addition, not all fuel stations had LPG, so sometimes we would go out of the way to find a filling station.

Our group photo (right-bottom) included our driver, Emilio, on the left, between JT and Betty.

The next day we went to an estancia, or “dude ranch.” We had a choice between riding horses or a carriage ride, and close the latter (upper-right) with a very bored carriage driver (middle-top). Betty loved the horses though, and kissed one (right-bottom). Food was again all-you-can-eat, served by waiters dressed in traditional gaucho outfits (center-bottom). Argentina is known for their meats, and this did not disappoint.

Another highlight was a visit to the museum for Eva Perón, located at the humble home where she grew up. It included a stage where Eva first performed, but mostly displayed various murals, photos, film posters and paintings of Eva.

On our drive home one afternoon, we stopped by a small town of Zavalía, which was having a local block party celebration. It was their 115th year anniversary. Pretty much the whole town turned out for the event, which ran past sunset (left-bottom) to enjoy the party together. There were several local musicians, including several children dancing. Evelyn bought a new gaucho hat from a vendor (right-bottom).

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