Malecón - Cozumel

On the last days of December 2021 my nephew Georgito O’Reilly took me to the Costanera in Buenos Aires. Argentines like to be different from other Spanish speaking countries so they use or invent new words. Consider that the very legal black market US Dollar is called El dollar blue.

La Costanera - Dec 2021

In Caribbean and Mexican Spanish there is a lovely word malecón which is about a boulevard that follows a coastline (usually the sea or ocean) where people can go for pleasant walks. I did so in the Veracruz Malecón the first few months of my marriage to Rosemary. But we also had a nice walk with our two daughters in the Mexican island of Cozumel which was the first landfall by a Spaniared, Juan de Grijalva in 1518. A year later Hernán Cortes landed there to start his conquest of Mexico. 

Malecón - Veracruz 1968

 Cozumel Malecón 

Tossing and turning - Veracruz 1968 

Veracruz & Captain Robert E. Lee

Argentines call the most famous of their malecones La Costanera. When I was in the Argentine Navy in 1965, the US Navy personnel I worked with in the US Naval Advisory Group, liked to go there on weekends and warm evenings. On that Costanera there were little establishments, some on wheels, that served delicious asados and the now famous choripán which is an Argentine chorizo inside a French loaf.

La Costanera - Río de la Plata

When Georgito told me we were going to La Costanera I did not expect to see most of little eating places gone and replace by many very good restaurnants. And La Costanera has been beautifully redone and in one end they have moved the statue of Christopher Columbus that had been taken down close to the Secretaría de Guerra on Paséo Colón in downtown Buenos Aires. I mentioned to Georgito that when Rosemary and I had passed by the Secretaría de Guerra (of war) in 2019, the name had been changed to Palacio de la Paz (of peace).

At a very good restaurant Georgito and I dined very well and consumed a whole bottle of white Torrontés wine. I was left with the ganas (the desire) to have enjoyed a lowly choripán.

Georgito O'Reilly Dec 2021

I could not tell Georgito how walking on La Costanera brought me memories of walking hand in hand with my Rosemary before she got pregnant, and after, in1968 in Veracruz warm evenings on that Jarocho (another lovely word “from Veracruz”).