The Water Museum and the History of Sanitation, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This is also known as El Palacio de las Aguas Corrients, or the Palace of Running Water, and it is spectacularly beautiful inside and out. In the mid-19th century, Buenos Aires was experiencing massive population growth and several epidemics, including cholera and yellow fever. So the city decided to fix the water supply. It took 7 years to build, finiahws in 1894, and it contains 12 water tanks (provided by a Belgian firm) with a total capacity of 72 million liters of water. The style of this building is quite eclectic and is yet another example of the upper classes of Argentina fancying everything European. Almost everything was pre-fabricated in Europe. There are over 300,000 tiles making up the exterior of the building, each individually numbered to enable easy placement. In addition to being a water and plumbing museum, it is also where you go to pay your water bill.

Benito Quinquela Martín Museum

Benito Quinquela Martín was a painter of ports. This arts museum in the heart of La Boca was donated to the city by the artist--he is the man responsible for the bright colours of La Boca neighbourhood. His intention was to create an educational and cultural centre in the neighbourhood. As I learned from reading a biography of the city, Buenos Aires did not have an exceptional port. The river is too shallow and it was never the thriving port of other Latin American cities--but because of the enormous wealth coming out of Potosi in the form of silver, there was money to be made and and the port thrived despite it's failings. The museum's collection is representative of the history of Argentine art and features several key figurative artists working from the late 19th century to the present day. It houses the largest collection of Quinquela Martín’s oil paintings and etchings in existence, all completed between 1922 and 1967. There’s also a unique collection of ship figureheads, and, on the terrace, a display of Argentine figurative sculptures. Temporary exhibitions are held in the Sívori room, and on the third floor, the Casa Museo Benito Quinquela Martín exhibits some of the artist's personal possessions.

Crizia, Buenos Aires, Argentina

We had some spectacular food on a recent trip to Argentina, and this was my favorite meal. While Argentinian beef is world reknowned, it really isn't my thing, and what you might forget in all the hype about the parilla grill, the gaucho, and the grasslands is that it has hundreds of miles of coastline. This restaurant is all about things that come out of the water. Owner-chef Gabriel Oggero works with small-scale independent producers, fishermen and farmers in order to source the very best seasonal ingredients (the restaurant also has its own rooftop city garden). Oysters are a particular speciality and fish-lovers will delight in a menu which is completely focused on seafood and shellfish.

I live in a very land-locked place, so having a dozen small plates of this kind is amazing to me, and then there is the presentation--there is an emphasis on natural things, with stones and wood featuring prominently as the vehicle for each dish, and then the ceramic plates and bowls are impressively gorgeous as well. The attention to detail is special, and I would definitely return here should we be in Buenos Aires in the future. As a bonus, it was a few minute walk from our hotel, where I would also return.

Mishiguene Restaurate, Buenos Aires, Argentina

This was our first dinner in Argentina and it was a very good start to an excellent food trip. We arrived at opening time--8:30 at night--and were the only ones in the place. I do struggle with that in general, and combat it by having a late lunch instead of dinner, and that has been a good strategy as I age, having the heaviest, and sometimes the only, meal of the day a bit earlier, so that by the time I am settling down to sleep the meal is well on it's way in the digestive cycle. The thing about cultures that start dinner so late is that no one is going to bed before midnight and often not until the wee hours of the morning, and that is just not how we roll. Unless there is a 6 hour time difference and then it it perfect. We can essentially stay on our time, less jet lag in both directions. Argentina is both an overnight flight to get there and a minimal time difference, so let's just say I was not at my best. The food is both Ashkenazy and Sephardic cuisine that revives the flavours of traditional Jewish food from a contemporary perspective. These revive Jerusalem-trained chef Tomás Kalika’s childhood recollections and his quest for food that imprints an immigrant population on the history of a place--these are his words and high goals. One of Mishiguene’s signature dishes is Pastrón, a beef prime rib cured for ten days with salt, herbs and spices, which is then smoked over wood embers for four hours, and steam-cooked for a further fourteen--it was the only dish that did not wow us--everything else was great.

Crizia, Buenos Aires, Argentina

On a recent trip to Buenos Aires we found it to be a city with a lot of excellent dining options. It was not an inexpensive city, and this is not a bargain, but it is a good value for visitors from Europe and the United States. We had the all seafood tasting menu, which is a favorite of mine. The seafood is sourced from all over Argentina's vast coastline, and the raw ingredients were spectacular. Equally impressive was what the chef did with them, dishes that highlighted the qulity of the seafood but also added or boosted it's natural flavor. What I think of as the add ons--the bread and the dessert--were good. The bread was spectacular, one with flavorful wheat and cultured butter and the other with flavorful corn. The desserts were very restrained, to the point where a dessert person might be disappointed, but for me it meant I didn't leave overwhelmingly full. I would 100% recommend this restaurant and would go back on a return trip.

Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here by Jonathan Blitzer

This is a sweeping, all-inclusive investigative reporter style book about Central America, immigration, and the United States. While politicians in general and the GOP especially characterize this as a problem at best and a humanitarian crisis at worst that is of Central America's making, the truth is that we are the alpha and the omega of the issue. We are the beginning because we have chronically interfered in the politics, the government, and the economics of Central America and then we are the end because much of what is driving violence in the region is drugs and those drugs are coming to the United States, and then also because we are seen as the promised land, where all will be solved, and as we know that is truly never the case. Only Fox News makes the life of the immigrant seem unduly idle and rewarded, and that is solely for the purposes of fanning the flames of fury against brown skinned people, not that they believe it to be true. The story is overly long and complex, and perhaps by necessity, so is this book. The tentacles of United States businesses in Central America is so widespread as to be hard to believe. "How did this happen" would be a reasonable question that is largely not answered and too big for the scope of the book, which is already sweeping. Unfortunately sometimes the most important message, which is that the Trump administration with the white supremacist Steven Miller at the helm, did unspeakable things to immigrant families for money, political power, and probably no small amount of sadistic pleasure, and at some point, we need to really try to fix the enormous problem that we have no small part in creating rather than pointing fingers of blame elsewhere, and have the expectation that it will only marginally improve because we have made such a mess of it.

Española-Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Española is the southernmost of the Galapagos Islands and is also one of the oldest. Geologists estimate it is about four million years old. Española is a classic shield volcano, created from a single caldera in the center of the island. Over thousands of years, the island slowly moved away from the Galapagos hot spot where it was formed and the volcano became extinct. Erosion began to occur, eventually resulting in one of the flattest islands in the archipelago with one of the lowest elevations. Because Española is one of the most isolated islands in Galapagos, it has a large number of endemic species — the Española mockingbird, the Española lava lizard, and the waved albatross, to name a few. The mockingbird is quite charming, having a very long bill that it uses to bust into things to eat, very little need to fly so it mostly hops from place to place, and a very charming nature—one came and ate flies, which were ubiquitous, right off our legs in a gentle and adorable manner.

Waved Albatrosses are the largest birds in Galapagos. They are remarkable birds, standing nearly 1 m high with wingspans of 2 to 2.5 m and living up to 40 years. Every year the entire world’s population of adult Waved Albatrosses returns to Española during the nesting season, from April to December. The nesting site is the only one in the world, and it was closed to visiting due to bird flu being reported on several islands.

Santa Cruz, Galapagos, Ecuador

Los Gemelos (the twin craters) Long ago when Santa Cruz island was an active volcano, lava flowed freely from the highlands summit down to the coast. Lava tunnels (or tubes) and magma chambers form when the top level of lava is slow moving and solidifies, while the lava below continues to flow. The result is a hollow chamber or tube, covered over by a thin layer of solidified lava. In the case of Los Gemelos, the fragile lava surface caved in due to erosion or tectonic shifts. When the chamber roof collapsed it revealed these huge sink holes. An impressive eight of the thirteen Darwin Finch species can be spotted here. The differences between finches is quite subtle; look for differences in color, beak size, body size and behavior to correctly identify them. We mostly did not go to that level.

Bellavista Lava Tunnel. This is the largest lava tube I have ever been in. As you descend into the tunnels via stairs, you quickly lose sight of the sun and enter the darkness. Even though they have lights hung throughout. you still have limited visibility. My spouse spotted two barn owls in the gloom, but mostly it is just a very cool place to hike through.

Darwin Center, Santa Cruz, Galapagos Ecuador

The Charles Darwin Research Center was created in 1960 by an international committee in order to promote research, conservation, and education in the Galapagos Islands.erIn In addition to the exhibition center, the tortoise rearing house and the adult tortoise house, provide opportunities for visitors to observe the 11 subspecies of tortoises up close. In the rearing house, hatchlings and young tortoises are nurtured until they can be released, at about four years of age, to their home islands. Nearly 2000 young tortoises have been released so far.

Tortoises that cannot be released back into the wild find their home in the adult tortoise house, an area with several different enclosures for the education and protection of tortoises from each subspecies. Handling the tortoises is prohibited, but this is a great place to get close up photos of the tortoises feeding on cacti and snoozing by the artificial pond.

Giant Tortoises, Santa Cruz, Galapagos, Ecuador

Santa Cruz is the second-largest island in Galapagos and it hosts the second largest population of the second-largest dome-shaped giant tortoise. Giant tortoises have traditionally been known to forage on the western slopes of the island, which is typically wetter and more densely vegetated. Humans followed a similar pattern when they settled in Santa Cruz, choosing the tortoises’ natural areas to do farming and cattle ranching. The Galapagos National Park, however, came in not long after and set aside 97% of the land surface and established it as a protected area, leaving 3% for settlers to carry on with their lives and daily activities.

But tortoises ignored this human decree and continued migrating annually to the wet highlands in order to feed on grass – right there on the very properties that were set aside for the colonists! So, on Santa Cruz Island, if you want to see giant tortoises, you must visit a cattle ranch! Tortoises like it better there, especially during this time of year. In the end, cattle ranchers lost their territorial battle yet realized tortoises brought no harm to their economy, in fact, they actually improved it.

Post Office, Floreana, Galápagos, Ecuador

Floreana is the site of the first “post office”, established in 1793, and it was a pit stop for 18th-century whalers traversing the oceans. After months, or even years, on the job, the homesick seamen came up with an ingenious system of getting letters to their families. They erected a barrel on Floreana Island and left their mail for sailors on passing ships to deliver. The first mention of the post office appears in the Journal of a Cruise, Captain David Porter’s account of his 1813 trip to the Galápagos, according to a timeline crafted by John Woram, author of Charles Darwin Slept Here. In his book, Porter recalls a crew member returning with papers “taken from a box which he found nailed to a pot, over which was a black sign, on which was painted Hathaway’s Postoffice.”

Twenty-five years later, another explorer documented the practice of bottling notes and leaving them to be taken back to America by fishing vessels. Those same fishermen “would never fail, before their departure, to touch at this island to take on a supply of tortoises.” The consumption of giant sea tortoises during this period is one of the reasons why Charles Darwin found none left on Floreana Island when he arrived in 1835. One of our postcards, the only one addressed to us, was delivered about 2 weeks after we got home, in our mailbox, no stamp!

Floreana Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Floreana was the first island to be colonized by Ecuadorians in 1832. It was a penal colony that didn’t last long because of the lack of fresh water. A fish canning plant was established there by Norwegian immigrants in 1924; it lasted only a couple of years. A few years later, Friedrich Ritter, a German doctor, arrived with his female companion Dore Strauch, who suffered from multiple sclerosis. A doctor of holistic medicine, Ritter removed all of his teeth and took with him stainless-steel dentures to avoid any dental complications. Together, they set up a very successful garden and lived off the land.

A pregnant Margret Wittmer arrived in 1932, with her husband Heinz and her step-son Harry. They built a house and also established an agricultural lifestyle before giving birth to their son Rolf, the first person to be born in Galapagos. He established the Tip Top fleet of yachts to bring tours to the islands, and we were on one of those boats. Floreana is most well-known for being the site of several mysterious disappearances in the 1930s—the one receiving the most attention being that of a supposed Austrian baroness, who had arrived shortly after the Wittmers with her three servants, and was quite imperious in her treatment of any and all. So more a question of who murdered her rather than why it happened. A finger was pointed at the Wittmers, but she denies any part in it in her book, published in 1962, and there was no one alive to refure her story. Coincidence? Probably. Several copies of her book Floreana were on the boat we were on, and for others, it is available on Hoopla.

Urbina Bay, Isabela Island, Galápagos, Ecuador

Giant tortoises! The giant tortoise is an iconic species from the Galápagos and is only found on these islands. They are the largest living tortoise in the world. It used to be four islands. On June 24, 2012, the world-famous giant tortoise affectionately known as “Lonesome George” passed away. He was the last surviving land tortoise from Pinta Island, one of the northern islands in the Galápagos. Thought to be 100 years old, Lonesome George lived at the Charles Darwin Research Station since he was found in 1971. For more than three decades, the Galápagos National Park tried to save the Pinta subspecies by finding George a mate. Unfortunately they did not succeed. Sadly with Lonesome George’s passing, there will be no more Pinta Island tortoises.

Urbina Bay is one of the youngest features in the Galápagos. It was mainly formed in 1954, when a sudden uplift of the land raised the seabed by over 5 metres, and pushed the coastline over 1 km further away. This has resulted in the astonishing site of heads of coral stranded far from the water. Exposed to the air and elements, the coral heads are rapidly deteriorating and are one of the sights of the Galápagos that won't be around for much longer.

Tagus Cove and Elizabeth Bay, Isabela Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Tagus Cove is located on the Northwestern coast of Isabela. It is a historical site visited by Charles Darwin in 1835, where graffiti has been carved into the rock walls by visitors over the past centuries; this happened just before the Galapagos National Park was established in 1959-1960. This cove was a hideout for whalers and pirates, as it is protected by the surf and is also a perfect place to anchor. The name of the site dates back to 1814 when it was visited by a British ship, The Tagus, which had anchored there in search of giant tortoises to be used as food supply on the boat.

he Galapagos penguin is one of the smallest penguins in the world and is endemic to the Galapagos Islands. It is the most northerly occurring penguin species, nesting entirely in the tropics, with some colonies living on the northern tip of Isabela north of the equator. They are closely related to the African, Humboldt and Magellanic penguins, all of which are burrow-dwelling. As there is no soft peat in which to burrow on the Galapagos Islands, Galapagos penguins instead live in caves and crevices in the coastal lava. They, like all penguins, are adorable to watch and you can occasionally swim along side them.

Here we have the full view of the flightless cormorant! It is not only the heaviest cormorant species, but also the only one out of 29 species which cannot fly. They are therefore confined to the lava shoreline and beaches of Isabela and Fernandina. They have stunted wings that are one third the size of the wingspan they would require to fly.

Fernandina Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Fernandina is the westernmost island in the Galapagos Islands, the third largest and youngest of the islands, less than one million years old. It is the most volcanically active and sits at the center of the hot spot that created the Galapagos Islands. It first appeared on the navigational charts and crude map produced by the British buccaneer Ambrose Cowley in 1684. He named it Narborough Island in honor of Sir John Narborough, an English naval commander of the 17th century. Its Spanish name, Fernandina, was given to honor King Fernando of Spain, who sponsored the voyage of Christopher Columbus. The island is most famous for its continuing series of volcanic eruptions. Many of the early visitors to the archipelago commented on dramatic changes in the landscape, smoking craters, and actual eruptions. The most famous of these is the description of a violent eruption in 1825 by Benjamin Morrell, the captain of the New York-based schooner Tartar. Another important historical event was the discovery and collection in 1906 by Rollo Beck of the California Academy of Sciences Expedition of the only giant tortoise ever found on Fernandina.

There is a lot of shore life on this island, but the highlight is the massive groups of marine iguanas that can be found gathering on the black lava rock onshore or swimming and eating in the ocean nearby. The California Academy of Sciences houses the largest collection of specimens brought back from the Galapagos, most notably a finch collection so significant that it continues to help modern-day researchers answer scientific questions.

Miskay, Quito, Ecuador

My dad died recently, this is the first holiday without him and it really has me thinking. One thing is that I wish I had told him exactly what I am grateful about that he and my mom taught me, but I am going to be writing a lot about it, I fear. So here is where I start. My parents love food and love travel and my recent trip to Ecuador was walking in the footsteps of a trip they took when they were my age, and this was my first meal there, at a restaurant that serves native Quechuan food. He would have loved this ceviche, which we have vowed to try to replicate at home, at least the shrimp one (there is also octopus and a fish one pictured here), but we never got the chance.

I think he would also have enjoyed the traditional Ecuadorian side dish that is served with ceviche--popcorn, corn nuts, and plantain chips! So good. I traveled south of the American border with my parents on a number of occasions and came away with a love of the food and the urge to be able to speak to people. At the time I did not think of it as the language of conquerors, which it is, but the silver lining is that often it is a second language for both of us, which makes it easier for me to keep up.

Santiago Island, Galapagos, Ecuador

Santiago, originally named James Island after England’s King James II, was the second of the Galápagos Islands visited by Charles Darwin. The Beagle arrived there on October 5, 1835. There they found a party of Spaniards who had come from Charles Island to dry fish and salt tortoise meat. About 6 mi inland they discovered two men living in a hovel, who were employed catching tortoises. Santiago had long been a source of water, wood, and tortoises for buccaneers and whalers, as well as Captain Porter of the USS Essex from 1812-1814.

Everyone has heard of Darwin's finches, but it was the mockingbird that convinced Darwin that evolution was at work in the molding of species on our planet. Darwin's plant collections were all clearly marked and documented, as Henslow had taught him. But Darwin did not always record the exact island where he found each Galápagos bird. "It never occurred to me, that the productions of islands only a few miles apart, and placed under the same physical conditions, would be dissimilar." Too late, he realized that many organisms were unique to each island-a fact confirmed by his mockingbird specimens. Darwin sorely regretted the lost opportunity to do a systematic study of each island, writing, "It is the fate of every voyager, when he has just discovered what object in any place is more particularly worthy of his attention, to be hurried from it."

Bartolomé Island, Galápagos, Ecuador

Bartolomé Island was named after Sir Bartholomew James Sulivan, a friend of Charles Darwin who served as principal surveyor and second-lieutenant aboard the HMS Beagle. Bartolomé is a barren islet in Sullivan Bay to the east of Santiago Island. Bartolomé is home to a distinctive and recognizable site of the archipelago: Pinnacle Rock. Pinnacle Rock, a volcanic cone, was formed when magma was expelled from an underwater volcano; the sea cooled the hot lava, which then exploded, only to come together and form this huge rock made up of many thin layers of basalt. You may recognize Pinnacle Rock from the 2003 movie “Master and Commander.”

The Galapagos Penguins, the second smallest penguin species in the world, have established a small breeding colony in a cave behind Pinnacle Rock. In 1982, these creatures suffered a massive decline during El Niño when the overall population in Galapagos declined from nearly 15,000 to fewer than 500 birds and they have been slow to recover. The most recent cause of concern came in July 2008 when a Plasmodium parasite species was found in Galapagos Penguins. Researchers are worried that this parasite could potentially lead to avian malaria.

This lava is so uncomfortable. Pahoehoe lava is a type of basaltic lava that is smooth and thicker (higher viscosity) than aa lava. In Hawaiian, pahoehoe means smooth, unbroken lava. It creates interesting shapes and natural sculptures across the landscape. As it flows a skin or crust forms on the top layer which then gives way allowing another flow – which forms a skin, and so on.

North Seymour Island, Galápagos, Ecuador

Named after the English nobleman Lord Hugh Seymour, North Seymour was formed by a series of uplifts of submarine lava along with Baltra (also called South Seymour) and the northeastern part of Santa Cruz, resulting in flat plateaus. In the early 1930s, members of the Hancock Expeditions moved approximately 70 land iguanas from Baltra Island to North Seymour in order to provide better conditions for their survival, as introduced goats were destroying the habitat on Baltra and contributing to their declining population. Land iguanas are not native to North Seymour Island.

The trail on North Seymour includes a loop that goes along the coast then veers inland, providing visitors with ample opportunity to observe the largest colony of magnificent frigatebirds in Galápagos, blue-footed boobies, and land iguanas, shore birds, as well as sea lions and marine iguanas along the coast.

So many babies!! We were never again so close to nestsm and so many of them. It is very close to the airport, and a wonderful first day introduction to the islands.

The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner

This book won the Pulitzer Prize the year that it was published, which was almost 30 years ago. It is a book about two biologists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, who were studying rapid changes in the birds on the Galápagos Islands, where Darwin observed the same creatures in the 1830s. The Grants, along with their investigative team, spent decades capturing ground finches on Daphne Major, banding them, taking measurements and blood samples, and then observing their mating (amongst several other features). They were able to see adaptive change happen almost literally before their eyes, putting what Darwin hypothesized happened into very specific time, place, and reason as to why finches change, flourish, and flounder over the course of years, not millennia. Throughout the book, Weiner jumps effortlessly from Darwin’s world to that of the Grants. He is able to juxtapose the two experiences both in Galapagos and back at their respective homes perfectly, highlighting both their methods of research in various, yet specific, ways. This is a great peak at evolution in action, even if you are not about to go to the Galapagos to see it for yourself.