[ Mar.2018 ] We went through the waterways on the Delta where the Parana River merges with La Plata River in the suburbs of Buenos Aires in Argentina on the sight seeing boat for about one hour.
Within the Delta, according to our guide, Elisabet, there are thousands of small islands and people live there relying on their boats, similar to people in Venezia in Italy.
But many of the houses nowadays are the second houses for rich people in Buenos Aires to spend their weekends.
Every house has a pier and when they need to buy something, they put a sign out, so that the ‘supermarket’ boat carrying foods, household goods, propane gas and so on would stop by.
There is no gas supply on the islands, so propane gas bottles are used.
As for water, they use the filtrated river water for their toilets and showers, but for cooking, they must use bottled mineral water.
These waterways sometimes flood.
That is not because of the tide, but because of the direction of the winds.
And that is why many of the houses are have raised flooring.
It
is OK to live there just for the weekends, but to live there permanently is very difficult, so we saw many ruins and the signs for sale.
The water there was shallow and some of the houses had artificial beach.
Many of the piers have a name board and that name cannot be changed even though you can rebuild the houses, because the names are the addresses.
Our sightseeing boat was full of people.
That is because it was a weekend, but apparently during the week it is empty on Delta.
The businesses around here rely on the weekend turnout, so the good weather on the weekends is very important for them, Elisabet told us.
Indeed, the atmosphere was very light and relaxed with people enjoying the weekend, though I was expecting somewhat wilder.
I told a social network friend of mine who lives in Buenos Aires that I went to the Delta, she wrote back “The Delta is really nice. You are lucky”, so it seems to be considered as the oasis for the citizens of Buenos Aires.
By the way, while we were sailing, we saw some couples on rowing boats and most of the rowers were women while men were just sitting doing nothing.
According to Elisabet, that is because rowing is thought to be a good exercise for women.
After
getting off the boat, it was lunch time.
Elisabet took us to a lovely restaurant on the river called Il Novo Maria del Lujan.
We had hams and Carpaccio for the starter to share and I had a very tender stewed pork.
My husband had a dish of Gnocchi with mushroom sauce.
The Malbec wine here was very good, too.
After lunch we went up to the museum we had seen from the boat to take some photos, though we did not go in.
It is a gorgeous building built as a hotel and a casino in 1912.
