So, take a look at my first app-based travel guide to Buenos Aires.

It’s amazing what you an get for a .99 cents, especially in Buenos Aires. And, hey, if you don’t want the app then go spend those a buck on a cup of coffee over at my favorite place: Bar Británico.

The app Buenos Aires in 4 Days is available on the iTunes app store.

That’s not really the kind of thing I want to spend my money on…but on the topic of Nazis in Argentina, I do recommend The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron’s Argentina

Okay, I’m trying to keep my posts to a fairly low word count…saving you, dear reader, precious reading time. So, my next odd encounter will be posted tomorrow.

The amount you know about something beforehand certainly impacts your experience. But does it enhance or hinder your experience?

Likewise, what about the ways we experience a place, a city such as Buenos Aires?

Obviously the parallels are not the same. But I’m curious as to what type of reading, what type of learning experience, enhances our travels? And what type of reading actually hinders our experience?

Every visit to Recoleta Cemetery reveals a tomb, a statue, a plaque that I’ve not seen before. Just visiting the cemetery in the morning rather than afternoon creates an entirely different experience, the way the light enhances a stained glass window or throws shadows along the walkways. But every time I talk to Robert I learn even more about the cemetery and see details that I never noticed.

Robert has done a very nice map that provides an excellent tour of Recoleta Cemetery. Now, he’s gone even further and created what I think is the definite guide to Recoleta Cemetery: AfterLife, Documenting Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

Not only is it the best way to learn about Recoleta Cemetery but, as Robert says, it’s a “new way of looking at Buenos Aires” since so much of the city’s, even the country’s, history is contained within that cemetery.

You’ve researched the trip, planned the itinerary, booked the reservations, and now you’re ready for the onslaught: a week or two of rushing around trying to see as much as possible in a limited time. Hurry down to breakfast, hop in the van, snap those photos, first this side, then the other, walk around some centuries old church, then off to lunch followed by an afternoon of more fun. At some point you say to yourself, “I’m going to need a vacation after this vacation.”

But what is the point? Why did you take this trip? Somehow, I doubt if most travelers can really answer those questions. Sure, there are the obvious responses: I want to visit South America, to see another part of the world, to experience another culture. But what does that really mean?

Okay, so now you’re back home with your memories and photos but what stays with you from the trip, what made it worthwhile? Perhaps it’s just the memory, the process of remembering, acquiring some sense of another place.

For a long time I’ve had a personal slogan that life is about creating memories. If travel provides a set of memories, then what can we do to make those experiences more meaningful?

Having a well-informed guide can reveal a dimension to a city that you might not otherwise encounter. Or, perhaps that guide comes in the form of a book or audio walking tour. My fifth trip to New Orleans was actually my favorite. I went on a walking tour of the cemeteries near the French Quarter (not sure why I hadn’t done that before), but the best part were simply the self-guided walks using Randolph Delehanty’s Ultimate Guide to New Orleans.

Tour groups are other options, particularly for those not comfortable with independent travel. My first trip to Europe, a week after high school graduation, was one of those whirlwind tours of 5 countries in 9 days! Still, it was an introduction that left me with a lot of memories, especially a strong desire to revisit Amsterdam. (Why did Amsterdam make such an impression on an 18 year-old boy?)

Of course, there are guides who are not so good and tour groups that herd you around like cattle.

Perhaps the most memorable experiences are those that are unexpected, even the small moments that stay with us. Maybe it’s not about seeing the sights but about appreciating a place; but that’s a vague term. In thinking of my own future travels, I’ve started to ask myself, “What do I want to get out of this trip?” And without falling back simply on a list of places to visits, sights to see, I find it a hard question to answer.

In late summer 2001, while I was living in South Beach, a young French couple rented a room in my house for a month. One day Adrian was looking over my bookshelves, particularly my large collection of travel books, when he said to Melanie, “Jeff must travel a lot.”

At that point, I felt that I had to speak up and tell the truth. “No, I don’t travel much at all. I just buy a lot of guidebooks.”

Guidebooks have been my first purchase when thinking about traveling somewhere. Since there’s hardly anywhere I don’t want to go, I buy guidebooks even in anticipation of a trip decades away. Paging through a travel guide is a form of entertainment, an attempt to satisfy that curiosity about the world.

I think my very first guidebook purchase was sometime around the age of 12. I remember being at Walden Books at Rivergate mall just north of Nashville and getting that slim, green Michelin Guide to Paris. I didn’t make it to Paris until I was 18 but I vividly recall tracing the walks along the maps and learning about the Musée de Cluny; I was a strange boy.

What I enjoy about guidebooks are the descriptions of places, the contextual info. I skip all those pages about transport, lodging, and food. Sometimes, that means I’m skipping three-fourths of the book. Those are practicalities that arise in a different phase of travel planning. Yet, those details – updated by diligent, poorly paid souls slogging from hostel to hotel – are the essence of the guidebook. So, I’ve found myself seeking out other sources to prepare me for my travels or my fantasies of setting foot someday on a distant soil.

I like to learn. I like to learn about the world. Is that a passion?

As a librarian, I had easy access to a large research collection. For a trip to India, I read William Dalyrmple’s City of Djinns and Bamber Gascoigne’s The Great Moghuls. I even found an enchanting book, Sadhus: Holy Men of India by Dolf Hartsuiker, that I obtained through interlibrary loan. That combination, along with a few other resources, really enhanced my experience riding on the back of a rickshaw along the jammed, narrow streets of Old Delhi. Rather than thinking about the pain in my backside from sitting on a bouncing narrow bench, mental images from my readings of India’s astonishing history mixed with the living culture moving all around me.

But most people don’t have access to research collections or would even known which books to read if they did. Guidebooks often do a very good job of referring readers to other books and that’s one of my favorite features of guidebooks. But who has time to read the best 40 books on Malaysia or even the best three?

The Internet offers lots of sources but, again, it’s time-consuming to filter through all the travel sites that are simply fronts for booking reservations. For each good blog such as Travelvice or Life on the Tibetan Plateau, there is a deluge of travel blogs with photos of Uncle Joe smiling over his steak at Cabaña Las Lilas.

There surely will be the emergence of even more Net-based resources that will help people prepare for a more enriching experience during their travels. But, the question is how will those resources be structured? How will they differ from and enhance existing resources available to travelers? How will they go beyond the limited coverage that can fit into a guidebook but also not be overwhelming?

Why do we travel? Why do we have that desire, that yearning, to visit far away places?

What is it about our lives that we seek to fulfill elsewhere? Perhaps, it’s as simple as a curiosity about the world.

We’re faced with the appealing belief that there is more to life than the everyday encounters in our hometown, no matter how large. Tourists view Buenos Aires as an exotic destination, though porteños may twitch their noses, wondering why so many foreigners come here. Likewise, the curious porteño fills pulled elsewhere, possibly the very humdrum towns that we’ve gladly left behind. We all want to go somewhere else.

If travel is not about curiosity, experiencing a different culture, learning more about the world (and possibly ourselves), then is it nothing more than checking off a list of accomplishments – been there, done that?

For some, (many, most?), travel may manifest itself in that competitive breed of list checkers. But I would like to think that we have a deeper sense of purpose, even if our actions don’t always reveal that core. Yet, why do most travelers learn so little about the places they visit? Are they just not that curious? Do they not know what questions to ask, how to learn?

International travel costs thousands of dollars. If we pay that much for an experience, should it not damn well be life enhancing?

How should we prepare ourselves for encountering a distant part of the globe? How do we learn about a culture, a society, a place that is not ours?

In our travels how do we best engage our curiosity about the world?

See a previous post about real estate in San Telmo for a stencil on the same topic.

Meanwhile, also spotted in San Telmo was this scribble on a wall along Defensa with the reminder: Let’s treat the tourists well.

Even though they were here for 17 days we still didn’t have a chance to do a lot of the things I had planned. It reminded me of the superficial nature of tourism, that as a tourist you only scratch the surface of a city. Here’s a little summary of their visit:

Day 1: Arrive early morning in Buenos Aires on LAN flight from Miami. Spend day wandering around San Telmo, visiting several churches and Plaza de Mayo.

Day 2: Take the free city tour by bus around Buenos Aires. The tour wasn’t very good but it ended in Belgrano so we had we a good lunch in Barrio Chino. Actually, the bus trip back to San Telmo on the 29 was a much better tour of the city.

Day 3: A day of fog and walking…wandered around Puerto Madero, saw a good exhibition of Molina Campos works at UCA, walked around the microcentro. Since it was Thursday we headed to Plaza de Mayo to see the Madres. Then pizza for lunch followed by a stroll down Av de Mayo to Congreso. After that it was a hike over to Abasto where I left the girls on their own to do some shopping while I attended a book reading group. Afterwards we took the subte back to San Telmo. This was a long day.

Day 4: Recoleta cemetery, then over to Bellas Artes, then over to see the Flower, then the 17 bus home.

Day 5: I collapse with the flu! The girls spend the day in San Telmo.

Day 6: I stay in bed while everyone else heads out on Sunday to the Feria de Mataderos.

Day 7: I remain ill, so the girls explore La Boca then take a taxi over to do some shopping on Florida street and explore Plaza San Martín.

Day 8: This was a Tuesday and I have forgotten what happened this day, probably more shopping and exploring by the girls on their own. My flu is slowly getting better.

Day 9: The girls go to the zoo with Ceci’s mom. (I’m still under the weather). They really liked the zoo.

Day 10: I stay home resting while the girls go shopping in Once with Ceci. In the evening they go to a folclore concert with Ceci’s parents.

Day 11: The girls take the ferry to Colonia for a day trip. I stay home resting for the weekend.

Day 12: I’ve recovered from the flu and we board the bus to Iguazu Falls.

Day 13: Arrive in Iguazu, spend the afternoon exploring the Argentine side of the park.

Day 14: A full day in the Argentine side of the park at Iguazu Falls.

Day 15: Take a bus over to the Brazil side of the park, view the wonderful panorama of the falls from the Brazil side, then head back across the border, then board the bus for the overnight trip back to Buenos Aires.

Day 16: Arrive back in Buenos Aires, a rainy day so we just stay home resting. Late in the afternoon, while I’m sleeping, the girls head out and visit the national history museum next to Parque Lezama.

Day 17: The final day. It’s sunny, thankfully. We hop on the 39 and I take them to El Ateneo on Santa Fe, then we walk around Recoleta, wandering down Av Alvear seeing the fancy buildings, then cross over 9 de Julio. Visit the Isaac Fernandez Blanco museum, wander around Plaza San Martín, stroll down Florida street, cross Plaza de Mayo, then walk down Defensa back home. Have a late lunch at a restaurant next to Parque Lezama then it’s time to take the taxi to Ezeiza. Traffic to EZE is horrible but we make it on time and they fly off to the U.S.

It was a fun trip. It was the first time that my sister or the twins had ever been outside of the U.S. They seemed to have really enjoyed it. I wish I didn’t get sick but they managed fine on their own. Fortunately, I recovered enough to go to Iguazu with them. Their visit reminded me just how much there is to do in Buenos Aires.

The drawback to Dunamar is that it’s located right next to the horrible beach town of Claromecó, which has a lovely name but is rather blah. But, Claromecó has a wonderful lighthouse.

I’ve been to the top of many lighthouses and have always enjoyed them. But, somehow, the wide, open nature of the spiral staircase in this particular lighthouse really affected my vertigo and I had to backtrack my way down before getting to the top. There’s also an incredible echo within the lighthouse. That stairway is beautiful but not for those with a fear of heights.

And here’s the house that we rented in Dunamar for less than 100 pesos a night (off-season rates).

A shocking discovery

Walking along the beach at dusk one evening we came across something that really startled us. In the distance we saw an object in the surf. At first, I thought it was a person or a dog but as we got closer we didn’t see it anymore. So, we figured it was nothing or we hoped that it was nothing since we didn’t see either man or animal get out of the water and onto the beach.

Then we saw it again, bobbing in the waves. It looked, initially, like a black garbage bag but one that was really large. We stared at it for a few seconds. My imagination ran away. What large item could be in this garbage bag? Honestly, the thought that came to me: a body. Then the bag started moving. For just a second, the thought came to my mind that the person was alive. I felt like I was in some opening scene of CSI. Then, with relief, we realized that it was a seal or something. Turns out that it was really fun to watch the fellow move along the shoreline. He would catch the waves and surf towards the beach then swim back out.

Later, walking along the beach, we see this huge object on the horizon. We get closer and closer, thinking that it’s another sea animal but this one wasn’t moving. We were afraid that he was dead, having beached himself. But then he got up and walked a few steps before collapsing again. We inched closer for a better view.

Back in Dunamar, someone told us that it was a lobo marino. That translates to sea wolf but I think these animals are known sea lions in English. The photo doesn’t really give a good sense as to the massive size of this fellow…think small car.

Down in Peninsula Valdés you expect to see all sorts of things like this but I didn’t expect it this far up the coast. Last year we didn’t see anything of the sort around Dunamar. But this year was an enjoyable surprise.

Finally, here’s another sunset to close out this post. There are a couple of more interesting things I’ve learned on the trip that I’ll share later.