Two of my favorite places in the world are on the water. One, a place that I have only been to once, but persists as my computer background is a beach in the north of Israel called Akziv. It sits in the ruins of an old fort of an indiscernible age, the structure of which stretches out to a barrier that runs through the Mediterranean, creating a kind of tidal pool.
I slept on the beach there, and that night witnessed a truly magnificent sunset, the beauty of which was only magnified when viewed through an ancient stone arch. The sight of the sun setting over the Mediterranean, with a lone fisherman standing on the far barrier of the tidal pool is what I witness anytime I feel isolated in cyber space.
The other place is a beach on a small pond in southern New Hampshire. The Camp Tevya beach on Lake Potanipo holds countless memories, and has shown its beauty both through its summer sunsets and summer storms. I have sat on that beach many times either witnessing the simple beauty of nature or the fierce force of it.
My love of that beach only grew last year, working as a boating counselor on it. At the end of every day, we had to string all the boats together and lock them up for the night. As the sun hung lazily over the edge of the trees on the far side of the lake, I worked up a sweat dragging the boats through the sand and over the water. When I finished, I would sprint into the lake and swim out to a red buoy that bobbed a bit in the distance.
Now that I have told you about my two favorite places in the world, let me tell you about my least favorite. A place that I sorta despise. It also happens to be on the water.
La Boca is one of the most emblematic parts of Buenos Aires and Argentina as a whole. It started as a fishing village, built around the port, habituated by swarthy Italian immigrant stereotypes. In a similar sense to the cobblestone streets of Palermo Viejo, it was somewhere where a knife fight or adventure laid a block away. All of this took place under the brilliant sheen of colorfully painted buildings, painted with the leftover blues, reds, yellows, and greens from boats at dock.
These colors are what created the first attraction to the neighborhood and the color palate for the tourist’s Buenos Aires. Signs with various locations, such as Pipi Room, or Tango Bar, are painted in Spanish in colors that reflect the scheme of La Boca. And yes, I do intend on buying one of these for my room back at SigEp.
Today, most of La Boca is one of the worse slums in Argentina. During all of those safety talks and written explicitly in all of the guidebooks of the city, it is written in capital letters, DO NOT LEAVE THE TOURIST AREA OF LA BOCA.
Riding the bus down to La Boca, I started to notice the colors of buildings around me take on the stereotypical colorful hues. However, upon closer examination I noticed that the yellow was the yellow of corrugated scrap metal, acting as a wall, as opposed to whimsical Latino sensibilities.
The bus dropped us off at the beginning of Caminito, a two block street that serves as the heart of tourist La Boca. What I saw in front of me seemed ripped straight out of the World Exposition part of Epcot in Disney World.
The iconic street corner at the beginning of Caminito was occupied by Havana, a Starbuck’s like-coffee chain. Every other store entrance was to a gift shop that sold Argentina key chains, soccer jerseys, cheaply made tango apparel, and other items that served as the Argentine equivalent to that crap you buy right at the harbor when you disembark from a cruise ship to a Caribbean island.
Right when we stepped foot off the bus, we were accosted by people handing out fliers. People flyer in all parts of the city, but step down if you ignore them, or refuse. Some of the La Boca flierers stuck with us for the duration of our trip up Caminito, trying to stuff fliers into our hands, eventually admitting that they were getting paid to talk to us.
Any entrance that wasn’t a tourist shop was a restaurant with the same menu, serving the same staples you can find anywhere else in the city, but with jacked up prices. Each place also had their own outside Tango exhibition of people wearing stereotypical clothes that our instructors from several nights prior wouldn’t be caught dead in.
The buildings were colorful, but no longer inhabited by fearsome fishermen such as Hector (that’s a Destinos reference for all those who remember it). Rather they were inhabited by devices of the tourism sector.
As we moved further down the street, restaurant owners continued to be pushy in insisting that we stop at their places. One random man kept following one of my friends, insisting that she marry him, and then insisting that he’s a world-famous painter or something.
We eventually found a place to eat that was mildly agreeable. The chorpian came at a rather affordable price, even if it was without chimichuri. As I sat, the other denizens of La Boca started to come up to me. They weren’t pestering, and I even welcomed their presence. They laid down at my feet, played with each other, moved around as if they had total ownership of the street, and sniffed each other’s butts.
The stray dogs of the neighborhood were probably the only thing that won me over as either remotely authentic or charming. What do I mean won me over, I was in love with the strays that ran around our table.
We continued through the Caminito area a little further until we found ourselves becoming more aggressively pestered (by people, not dogs), and the buildings were getting less colorful. At the end of Caminito, one looks both ways down the street and can understand them aggressiveness of the vendors from earlier. Conditions are bad here. We walk into their neighborhood with pockets of pesos and fists full of dollars. We come searching for an authentic experience, and they’re all too happy to provide what we perceive to be La Boca, the La Boca of history sanitized and made safe for the American dollar. Thirty pesos buys you a cheap sandwich, a Quilmes, a bit of a tango show, and most importantly “atmosphere”. It buys them a way to survive.
What we don’t see is a real atmosphere, a place that still persists as a slum, pure and simple.
While waiting for the bus, I walked up to the water’s edge and looked down. It was clogged with trash.
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