The life of Zen attainment is not like standing on a riverbank watching the current and appreciating the water or the landscape as a witness; it is jumping into the current and becoming one with it.”

– Trevor Leggett, Judo Expert, Author

La Plata – Part of our Monday trip to La Plata turned into a venture to the river. We ran into a young drag queen whom Henry vaguely knows, who told rapturous stories about the beach at La Balandra, a municipal beach along the river, “right over along the edge of town”… he said. Thirty pesos and the equivalent kilometers outside of town found us, along with the sobrinos, at this paradise. Well, more of a municipal sponsored campground with people living in tents, or the backs of their vans, maybe fishing a bit. No sand, lots of mud, marshland, a few picnic tables. Very pretty, just not what we had planned on, and much further away. Luckily, we’d found out on arrival that there was a bus that we could take back, though in the end, we negotiated with a remis driver to run us back into town for only eighteen pesos. In the meantime, Henry and Branco splashed around in the water, Viviana and I got some sun, we snapped lots of photos, Branco did a bit of fishing (lots of pejerrey and pez barba, but not one of them more than about four inches long) with a pole he bought from the onsite bait shop for a whopping two pesos. A very relaxing day as it turned out. Chatting with a local friend online later, the comment was – “You took the kids to the nude beach????” We now know there’s another part of La Balandra… perhaps where our young drag queen friend hangs out… maybe there’s even sand.