Tigre, Buenos Aires Argentina

Another popular day trip is to Tigre, which is a seperate town about 17 miles north of Buenos Aires. To get there, you take a local train from the Retiro subway station. It takes about an hour but is super cheap, like $1.50 each way cheap.

Danielle and I got off the train and walked around a little and then the smell hit us. We were walking across the river (the Parana Delta) and it was just a wall of stank that assaulted us. It smelled like a cross between rotting garbage and a backed-up toilet. Eventually, as we made our way down to the river side, we saw what it was. There were hundreds of dead and dying fish flopping around on the banks of the river and along the jetty. I have never seen anything like it before. Andth e dead ones were rotting in the sun, hence the stench from Hell.

I asked a local man who was just kind of hanging around what was happening with the fish and he said it was because of the government, that they don't care about the pollution in the waterways and that's what was killing the fish. It seemed a cop-out answer but it was all we had, so who knows?

Other people I know went there after we did and they say they didn't see any fish (and they were pretty dang noticeable). Maybe it was just an off day for Tigre?

We walked alot but there's not much of interest in the town. There's an outdoor market (which was only functioning at half capacity when we were there) but they were selling old trinkets and junk you could get anywhere.

If you walk along the river (which is a muddy brown) you will get harassed to sign up for a river cruise. We contemplated it, but it's pretty steep price wise and at that point, I think we were done with Tigre.

While I had a fun day out with a good friend, I really don't understand why people like this place. It's super popular (even Madonna and brood took a river cruise during her split with Guy Ritchie--thanks Wikipedia).

Who knew?