It’s been awhile since I spent a day up in Tigre and the last time was on a Monday and we found that all the museums that we wanted to drop in on were closed – should have thought of that in advance, it’s the standard here in Argentina. I’m going to leave the meal I had for another post as it’s part of another round of parrilladas de pescados y mariscos – seafood mixed grills.

It was a really pretty day.

A reminder that the river water isn’t for drinking, just in case something moved you to scoop up some of that brown liquid.

My plan was to head for the art museum, which I keep hearing great things about, and I’d checked out their facebook page and all looked well for a Sunday afternoon… unfortunately, had I gone to their regular website I’d have found out that they closed in early February for a complete remodeling (this is a pretty new museum to have the need to shutdown for already almost two months of remodeling). So, still haven’t been. But, the Naval Museum and the Mate Museum were open….

The National Naval Museum is located along the riverfront in the “old” section of town, right along Paseo Victoria at #602, a short walk from the central docks. Entrance is a mere 7 pesos. It’s a fairly large building with half a dozen galleries, each dedicated to different aspects of the world afloat. It’s not all navy vessels and memorabilia, much of it is related to the world of travel on the high seas or local waterways, some of it ancient history, long before Argentina was a country.

But, there are a whole lot of ship models, from large to small, and many of them related to the current and past Argentine navy.

But, some to pleasure craft, old and new.

These attractive and colorful gems would be, perhaps, more interesting if they weren’t all explosive devices….

I decided to wander on to the privately run mate museum, a little more up my usual alley.

Being private the Museo del Mate is a little more expensive, 15 pesos to enter a small converted home that is dedicated to the art of growing, preparing and drinking yerba mate. Right by the central docks at Lavalle 289, one nice thing about the museum is that it starts with a roughly 15 minute talk by one of the guides who takes you through the history of mate growing and drinking. The talk is in Spanish, I don’t know if they have available English speaking guides, given that their website doesn’t have an English option I’m guessing not. It was actually a pretty fascinating talk.

After the talk you’re left to wander on your own through a couple of small rooms lined with bags of yerba, various mate cups of one sort or another, and other accouterments to the whole process. After about another 15 minutes the guide will come in and start a video in a small theater room, an eight minute presentation on the growing and processing of the herb produced by some sort of yerba council or other – the video is subtitled in English, though, not very well, in fact, much of it seems like someone sat down in front of something like google translate and stuck in the whole eight minute talk and hoped for the best, plus a lot of misspellings and typos. Ah well, you can get the gist of it from watching what they’re doing on the video.

And just in case you thought you needed some sort of traditional gourd that’s been properly treated in order to drink the stuff, apparently soldiers in the Argentine army don’t get, understandably, to carry along their mate sets when in the field, so they improvise.

I finished off the day with a proper ice cream treat at Delta Helados, right near to the museum, the chocolate brownie ice cream was okay, but the apple pie ice cream atop was absolutely killer – great idea! Thinking of combining it with my cheddar cinnamon gelato in some fashion….