Spence & Gayle's Family Blog: Argentina and Some Miscellaneous

I just got back from a week long business trip to Argentina. We also have a few random shots to share from this month so far. So here we go. First up, some street Tango from Calle Florida, not far from my Sheraton Libertador Hotel on the corner of Cordoba Av. and Maipu.

Lots of people, and consequently lots of activities on Florida street. Shops open until late, restaurants, street musicians, and tango. Above is a clip of some of the tango dancing.

I left Logan on a Saturday morning for a mid-day flight to Atlanta. Then I flew all night to Buenos Aires, landing around 8:00 a.m. I was able to get to my hotel, shower and change, and walk about 1.5 miles to the nearest chapel in time to catch the last part of Sunday School and the Sacrament meeting. I stayed after for a baptismal service (see above). The elder baptizing is from Chile, his companion on the right is from Honduras.

View in one direction from my hotel room. The water to the left in the back is Rio de La Plata.

Looking another direction from my room.

The obelisco on 9 de Julio Avenue, downtown Buenos Aires.

The Galerias Pacifico shopping center is very upscale and always impresses me with its museum like artwork and quality. They already had their Christmas tree up. Note the ceilings.

This is the outside of the Pacifico shopping center. It's right on Cordoba and Florida, a block from the hotel.

This is Salomé, who works for Innova Biotech, our distributor in Argentina. She's holding up a sample product for Laboratorios Roemmer's, one of our customers in the area. If you look carefully, you can see my reflection in the mirror as I'm taking the photo. We're obviously about to enter a "clean room" area.

This clock tower is about 3 or 4 blocks from my hotel. I shot this and the following photos from a meeting room atop another Sheraton Hotel (convention center) nearby.

Looking down at some of the port and railway system nearby. A bank building is off to the right. If you following the road just above the railways, you soon come to a very upscale marina area (sailboats, restaurants, etc.).

El Puente de La Mujer (The Bridge of the Woman) at the marina area I mention above.

More towers near the marina. That's a Hilton Hotel just past the yacht.

My hotel (The Sheraton Libertador) is within a 10 minute walk of the Casa Rosada (Pink House), which is the equivalent of the White House - except that Cristina Kirchner (current leftist president of Argentina, and wife of now dead former president) does not actually live there. My hotel is probably so named because San Martin, the liberator of much of South America, has a statue (also in the photo, left of center) here. The building to the left with bluish lighting is the Federal Bank.

And that's me at the San Martin statue.

One of the customers we visited was actually 500 kilometers away, in Santa Fe, Argentina. It was a good 5 1/2 hour drive. We drove up, ate lunch, made the visit, and drove back. Long day! Here is a pedestrian street downtown in Santa Fe.

The customer, Zelltech, is affiliated with a university, so we had our meeting in an office in a university building. Here's the view out the back window of the office. I don't know the river name.

As named in the lower left, this is a wall poster hanging in PharmADN. It proudly states that they are the first production plant for monoclonal antibodies in South America. What's significant is that they chose to show our (Thermo Fisher) product in use in the photo.

One of the older, nicer sections of Buenos Aires is Palermo. So a couple of times I jogged that way and carried my iPhone along. I got a vacationing Brazilian couple to take this shot of me. This is a famous sculpture that originally used solar power to open up during the day and close at night. Apparently it stays open all the time now.

A silhouette of one of countless statues in the city.

I had the very good fortune to be in Buenos Aires in the springtime right when the jacaranda trees (and boy are there a lot of them) were blossoming. When the blossoms fall it makes amazing purple ground coverage.

Gayle and I recently had on nearly matching outfits, so we had someone photograph us after church.

We wanted to show the nice design on the bottom of Gayle's dress too.

We raked up umteen piles of leaves, and Jared also had to get them off his yard. Here he's playing with his nieces in a pile that's awaiting Logan City for pickup.