Mi Querido San Clemente

We’ve just returned to Buenos Aires, from San Clemente del Tuyu, our favorite beach town on the Atlantic coast. We spent a wonderful 2 weeks with our friends Carlos and Marisa at their campground. As the summer season started to end this past week, they had more time to take us fishing, although we never caught as many as we did that first time. Most of the time the weather was hot and humid and there were a few days with late afternoon thunderstorms (but don’t worry, our little tent held up just fine!).

The beach campgrounds here are not quite like the one’s at home. They are kind of like parking lots with trees, it’s actually quite nice. Families set up brightly colored tents, string up clothes lines to hang towels and bathing suits on and sit listening to the radio or playing cards and drinking mate. Kids run around playing soccer or sword fighting with sticks. There are no campfires, but there are communal bar-b-ques where people gather in the evenings to socialize and cook dinner. Speaking of bar-b-ques, under the watchful eye of Carlos, Martin became an accomplished “asador” (the man who mans the grill) and cooked us some excellent meat one night.

The city of San Clemente del Tuyu is a lot like our San Clemente at home. It is a laid back little town, and although it’s main industry is summer tourism, the people who work and live there have known each other for years. Like we mentioned in the last post, the main street is full of shops and restaurants (including a great little place that made super-delicious home-made pasta – we went 4 times!), and at night, it has a strange carnival-like atmosphere. They close the streets to car traffic, and the restaurants expand their tables into the street to accommodate the massive amount of people. Each block has a little lot with a few shady-looking carnival rides and games, with flashing lights and music. People dressed in suits of various children’s characters walk around (we saw Sponge Bob, Spider Man, Barney and an unidentified pig wearing a vest). The popcorn and hot-dog vendors of the beach turn into cotton candy and candy apple vendors, and the stores sell cans of foam for kids to spray at each other. The fire-department gives rides on its truck (in order to make a little extra money for their station) and there is a bus decorated with Christmas lights to look like a pirate ship. Although it was a little strange, it was fun to walk around.

We did spend one day at another beach town, Pinamar, a 2 hour bus-ride away. It was a much more up-scale area than San Clemente del Tuyu. It had lots of beach clubs with bars and cabanas, and we spent the day lying in the sun and drinking gancia (a local alcohol they mix with soda and lemon). Although the fancy sea-food restaurant was nice (so nice we nearly missed our bus home) we still preferred to be with Carlos and Marisa. They are excellent cooks, and we enjoyed every meal and learned a lot from them. We not only cooked on the parrilla, but also in their cast-iron paella pan (made from old farm-equipment) and their adobe oven. But mostly, we enjoyed their wonderful hospitality, and friendship.