Inland, and some 113km northwest of Buenos Aires is the charming town of
SAN ANTONIO DE ARECO ; if you visit only one pampa town during your stay in Argentina, this is the one to head for. The town is the recognized centre of pampa tradition with a popular gaucho festival, the
Día de la Tradición , held in November, some highly respected artisans, and an extremely attractive and unusually well-preserved town centre. San Antonio also has a prestigious literary connection: the town was the setting for Ricardo Güiraldes' Argentinian classic,
Don Segundo Sombra (1926), one of the first novels to celebrate the gaucho - previously regarded as a undesirable outlaw - as a symbol of national values.
The town's only real sights are a couple of museums. The most important of these, the heavily promoted Museo Gauchesco Ricardo Güiraldes, is actually a little disappointing, though it makes up for its rather run-of-the-mill collection with a spectacular collection of paintings by the Uruguayan artist, Pedro Figari. But what really makes San Antonio memorable is the harmonious architectural character of the town's centre; all cobbled streets and faded Italianate and colonial facades punctuated by elaborate wrought-iron grilles and delicately arching lamps. Another plus is the town's setting, on the banks of a tranquil river, the Río Areco. The riverside area is a popular picnicking spot and also has a number of attractive campsites.
Despite its modestly promoted status as a tourist destination, San Antonio has retained a surprisingly authentic feel. You may not find the town full of galloping gauchos outside the annual festival, but you still have a good chance of spotting estancia workers on horseback, sporting traditional berets and rakishly knotted scarves, or of coming across paisanos propping up the bar of a traditional establishment such as the Boliche de Bessonart .
The town's traditional gaucho atmosphere also extends to the surrounding area, where you will find some of Argentina's most famous estancias, offering a luxurious accommodation option to staying in Areco itself
The TownAreco's main square, the Plaza Ruiz de Arellano , lies some six blocks west of the bus terminals. It is named after José Ruiz de Arellano, whose estancia stood on the site now occupied by the town and who built San Antonio's founding chapel, the Iglesia Parroquial San Antonio de Padua, on the south side of the square. The original chapel, a simple adobe construction, was declared a parish church in 1730, and was rebuilt in 1792 and then again in 1870 in keeping with its growing importance. Of no great architectural note, the current version is nonetheless a pleasingly simple white construction, with clear Italian influences. The exterior is dominated by a sculpture of San Antonio himself, who stands within a niche clad with blue and white tiles which echo those of the church's small bell-shaped dome. Among the elegant fin de siècle residences that flank the square, is the Italianate municipalidad , to the north; originally a private residence it is painted a particularly delicate version of the pink that characterizes so many of Areco's buildings. On the northwest corner of the square stands a typically colonial two-storeyed construction known as the Casa de los Martínez , after the noted local family who once inhabited it. The building's handsome but rather plain green and white exterior is dominated by the original railings of a balcony which runs all the way around the first floor.
Heading west along the town's main drag, Segundo Sombra, will bring you to two buildings which have played an important role in the town's traditional social life. The first of these, the Boliche de Bessonart , on the corner of Segundo Sombra and Zapiola, is a rather dilapidated two-storeyed grocery store whose crumbling plaster work is steadily exposing the brickwork below. It's not for its architectural merit that the building is known, however, but for being San Antonio's most traditional meeting place: every evening at around 6.30pm a huddle of paisanos are to be found propping up the makeshift bar for a vermouth, a tradition which goes back to the time of Don Segundo Sombra, who was a regular customer, and beyond. A couple of blocks away, on the corner of Laplacette and Bolívar - follow Segundo Sombra one block out of town and then turn left into Bolívar - is the Quinta Guerrico , a typical early nineteenth-century construction with sturdy brick and adobe walls and a fine trellis-like iron balcony running along its first floor. The Quinta was built by Manuel José de Guerrico, grandfather of Ricardo Güiraldes, and the man who introduced the steam engine to Argentina. It was the scene of the first celebrations of the Día de la Tradición in the 1930s and was used, in 1969, as the backdrop for various scenes of the film version of Don Segundo Sombra . Just opposite the Quinta, you'll find one of Areco's most enjoyable restaurants, the Almacén de Ramos Generales .
A block north of Plaza Ruiz de Arellano, along Valentin Alsina, is the Centro Cultural Usina Vieja (Mon-Fri 9am-3.45pm, Sat & Sun 10am-5pm; free). The restored building originally housed Areco's first electrical generator and has been declared a national industrial monument. Now housing a cultural centre the building also contains the Museo de la Ciudad , an eclectic collection - mainly supplied through local donations - of everyday items, from clothing to record players and even the town's old telephone switchboard; an exhibition of the works of local artisans; plus occasional temporary exhibitions, focusing mainly on subjects related to rural Argentine life. The permanent exhibit most likely to catch your eye is the huge metal sculpture La Cautiva by the local artist Perera: a startling but extremely accomplished work in which the traditional subject matter - a gaucho on horseback carrying away a young woman - sits uneasily with the work's almost aggressively modern execution, all exploding angles and pierced volumes.
Beyond the cultural centre, wide Calle Zerboni separates the town centre from the grassy banks of the Río Areco, popular for picnics and asados during good weather. Though most of San Antonio lies on the south side of the river, there is a small block of five by five streets to the north, which is connected with to rest of the town at its east and west extremities by two bridges. If you are travelling by car, you must cross via the Puente Gabino Tapia , to the right, but if you are on foot, cross straight over the simple brick Puente Viejo , which begins at the foot of M. Moreno, two blocks west of Alsina and leads to the Parque Criollo and the Museo Gauchesco Ricardo Güiraldes.
The rather scrubby Parque Criollo is less a park than a kind of exhibition ground, used during the Día de la Tradición as the setting for the main displays of gaucho skills. It also houses the Museo Gauchesco Ricardo Güiraldes (Mon & Wed-Sun 11am-5pm; $2). The entrance to the park and the museum is via the Pulpería La Blanqueada , once a staging post on the old Camino Real, which linked Buenos Aires with Alto Perú, and the setting for the first encounter between Fabio, the young hero of Güiraldes' novel, and his mentor, Don Segundo Sombra. The pulpería was closed in the 1930s but its original features have been retained, including the traditional bars which separated the owner from his customers - only trusted regulars were allowed access to the interior of the pulpería. The museum itself is a short distance away across the park. Housed in a rather drab 1930s reproduction of an old estancia, the collection is somewhat confused and mixes gaucho paraphernalia - mate gourds, silverware and boleadoras - with objects deemed to be interesting largely because of their famous owners - General Rosas' bed, W.H. Hudson's books, and so on. However, this all fades into insignificance next to the fantastic collection of works by Pedro Figari, a Uruguayan artist who settled in Buenos Aires in 1921 and worked with Güiraldes, one of the first people to appreciate Figari's talent, on the literary journal Martín Fierro . Figari was best known, though, for his dreamlike and deceptively primitive portrayals of gauchos, candombe (Afro-Brazilian religious rituals) and the distinctive urban and rural landscapes of the pampa. His paintings, with their characteristic intense blue skies and flat mottled surfaces, seem to capture perfectly the almost hypnotic quality of the pampa landscape. The museum shop , close to the pulpería, is worth a visit for its small but superior collection of souvenirs, including local crafts, and a good selection of books including a criollo recipe book and an excellent illustrated history of the town.
