Argentina Tour, "Fulbright" style: Stop II Mar del Plata

I arrived in Mar del Plata and fellow Fulbrighter Maja Petersen’s apartment on Wednesday evening. Mar del Plata (MdP) is a beach town whose population apparently doubles in the summer months with vacationers of all ages. Obviously I wasn't arriving in high season. Nonetheless, I was excited to enjoy some ocean landscapes for a couple days despite the fact that it was rather (ok, really) cold in various moments as we weathered the dead of winter on the coast. Not to worry, though, as Maja was ready to show off the best of MdP. Wednesday evening after my arrival we ventured out to get some dinner and saw a typical Argentine peatonal…after the afternoon’s rainstorm. For those who might not know, a peatonal is a pedestrian-only street and one which is almost always deserted if there is/has been any type of rain. Some things just don’t vary much from city to city. The peatonal in Resistencia is just as eerily abandoned after a rainstorm as this one that we encountered in MdP on Wednesday evening.

Thursday morning we started first with a visit to the city’s water tower.  There are truly some great views to be had at the top of this tower that can claim 88.4 meters (about 96 yards) as its height and a total water capacity of 13.5 million liters (about 3,566,323 gallons), stored in its two cisterns and an elevated tank. It serves the greater part of the central city’s water needs. An old-school, but smooth elevator ride to the top made our visit that much more memorable; you know what I’m talking about, the elevators that don’t raise or lower until you manually close the inside gate.

Majestic, castle-like water tower in MdP.

View from the water tower's look-out terrace toward the ocean.

Our second stop of the day was the port where Mar del Plata’s infamous sea lion, or lobo, colony lives. Over 800 in number and all males, according to Lonely Planet, these fascinating creatures put on a real show for my visit (yes, I believe they did all the following especially because I was there visiting MdP). Names are interesting; lobo translates directly to “wolf” in English. I imagine this comes from the lobos’ tendency to raise and hold their faces toward the sky, just as a wolf does when it howls.  The first section of the port that we visited is where the great majority of the fishing boats dock. Here, we saw a few lobos lounging as well as a few stray dogs prancing around, and then the real entertainment began. A few of the dogs ganged up on one lobo and were barking at him at a dangerously close distance. While I’m not entirely sure why, these dogs seemed to want to attack the lobo’s fins. Their torture of the lobo seemed to be a type of game for the dogs. The scene was rather unreal, both in terms of what was happening between the lobos and the dogs and how unbelievably close Maja and I were to all the action. I could go on describing the scene at the port but I think I’ll just let this video that I recorded speak for itself.

 

We walked a bit farther down the port to where a larger group of lobos proved slightly less entertaining but, nonetheless, pretty astounding to observe. While I took only one collegiate biology course, I imagine that these creatures would be fascinating to study. After we had our fill of watching in awe and taking pictures, Maja and I headed back up from the outermost reaches of the port to eat a late lunch, appropriately some fried and seasoned calamari and a mix of seafood with rice. We walked around the city a bit more to end our day and spent a chill evening in Maja’s apartment for dinner.

Friday's adventures were highlighted by a visit to the two institutions where Maja works. The first of these was the city university. MdP's university was similar to that of Sam Kalish’s in La Plata in many ways, especially regarding visible student political activism in the graffiti found on walls, stairs, floors and anyplace in between. Fascinating though, was the history that Maja shared about her university with me. Like many other [ugly] buildings that you might be able to guess were constructed in the 70’s, this complex had numerous rooms with wall-to-wall windows. (Anyone familiar with Denison's campus, think Shephardson Hall style and you'd be close.) Maybe less obvious to folks from the U.S., though, might be the reason(s) for the excessive windows at the university. Apparently, these windows, both externally and on classroom doors, as well as significant half-inch cracks built into classroom walls, served the military dictatorship well to ensure that secret meetings of an anti-government nature were not taking place here. Rather amusing to me were the signs on the front lawn of the university that instructed people to not walk on the grass and throw their garbage in the trash cans. Obviously I was not amused in the sense that these would be ridiculous requests of any institution, I found highly entertaining the clear results from people not following the signs' instructions...

Intense graffiti/wall art in the university

Maja in front of the super confusing directory for classes and offices

Crack built into the wall through which you can see and hear what is going on in the classroom on the other side.

"Do you use me?" I wish I'd taken a picture of the rest of this university's yard which was littered with all kinds of trash.

Shortly thereafter Maja and I also visited the language institute, a branch facility of the city university, where she has helped in a few language classes with people of all ages. I never quite figured out how this institute works as Maja told me that it is a part of the city university, a public institution that provides free education in line with national policy, but that the students there do have to pay a small monthly fee for their classes, as someone would have to do at a private institution. Class fees were less for students of the university, but each student at the institute did have to pay tuition. Still pondering that one... 

After our visits to the institutions, Maja and I grabbed a late lunch and strolled a bit more along the ocean before I eventually headed for the bus station. And thus continues my Argentine Fulbright tour as I boarded a bus for Córdoba's little town of Villa Maria to visit Miss Jennifer Dooper (with plans shortly thereafter to also visit Grant Berry in Córdoba's Río Cuarto).