more bits of BA

He gets everywhere ... glad to encounter his bearded face on my walk south from the hotel this morning, down Gascon, to the amazing Basilica Maria Auxiliadora y San Carlos (I might not have known about this if Véronique hadn't posted some photos of it earlier this year - why don't guidebooks make more of it?  But many thanks to her!!).  Pope Francis was baptized here.  And it wasn't just beautiful - it was packed and cheerful; and having a very energetic service for children and their families (which of course provided the opportunity to sit and immerse oneself).  The blue ceiling with gold stars is like the wallpaper on my room when I was little - when I stood in my cot and pulled a little bit that was loose, and pulled, and pulled some more.  The Basilica was built between 1900-1910, by an Italian architect José Vespignani - this was very much at the instigation of a bunch of immigrants from Genova.

How to follow that?  Luckily, Argentinian café culture is strong, and no one seems to mind if one sits with a large cup of coffee and hops onto a Zoom meeting for an hour.

Then to the Ecoparque, a totally surreal place.  To be sure, there was lots of eco information, and I absorbed a lot about Argentinian bees.

There were little lakes, and turtles, and ducks.

But there were also abandoned, decaying structures everywhere, for this had been the city's zoo since the end of the nineteenth century, and there are 40-odd structures scattered through it, from Greek temples to a Russian Orthodox church to rustic cottages to a fortress ... it's like visiting a Worlds Fair site.  And it's also overgrown - and many of the enclosures and cages have creeper growing through them.  The animals who were fit to travel were moved out and into somewhere bigger and kinder by 2016, and only a few are left ...

apart from the mara, who are everywhere,  These are the strangest animals - I've met them somewhere (but where??) before: technically rodents, they're like goats crossed with rabbits, and about the size of a pygmy goat, and usually hang out in Patagonia.

These giraffes din't look elderly (I couldn't tell with the hippo, who was 7/8 submerged), and were happily having tea.

And then, wondrously, a puma/mountain lion, sunbathing.  P-22's Argentinian cousin!

She was incredibly beautiful, self-contained, and had a very good sized enclosure - and then there was a notice explaining that she's been rescued from being a pet - too imprinted on humans to be released - and she is a warning about how Wild Animals are emphatically not pets.

The whole ecoparque is educational, in a quiet way; useful (there's a hospital for injured wildlife); and includes dinosaur models - very Crystal Palace, but bringing home to the young that extinction can happen, and shouldn't ever be allowed to.  And yes, that is a very far from extinct mara just trotting round the corner ...