Author: Anita Martinez Beijer

Guatemala I – Antigua

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I arrive in Guatemala on a propeller plane and head straight to Antigua. It is love at first sight with this beautiful town, with it’s cobbled stone streets, ruins and amazing colours and textiles of the Maya population. The women here wear the traditional and colourful clothing. The square-cut blouse is called huipil or güipil, the long skirts are called corte, and this is held up by a woven belt called faja. Every region has it’s own distinctive pattern and colour combinations. As a designer I go totally bonkers of delight. The vibrant colours and the intricate patterns of the textiles are so inspiring and I enjoy people watching more than ever here. I like the whole feeling of this old town with it’s beautiful buildings in Spanish baroque style, which used to be Spain’s colonial capital before it was severely destroyed by earthquakes in 1773 and the new capital was moved to a safer place, which is where Guatemala City is situated now. The town is dotted with ruins that remain from the earthquakes. …

Uruguay

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I arrive in Uruguay when the summer is starting to build up. After months of living in large cities I’m longing for the sea, beaches and nature big time. So I swiftly sidestep Montevideo when I arrive there with a ferry from Buenos Aires, and head to the bus station. The long-distance bus is packed to the rafters, but everyone is good-natured about it and in holiday mode. My destination is La Pedrera Rocha. Or more precisely, to the small settlement of San Antonio. Here I meet a vast and pristine beach with not a soul in sight, pine and eucalyptus forests and the lovely home of David and his beautiful daughters. They live in a big house that David purpose-built himself as a family home but also as a guesthouse or a posada as it’s called here. This hidden away and very private retreat is only reached by a dirt track through the forest. The house is nestled in the forest and the beach is only a short walk away. It’s made of simple but honest materials, wood …

Buenos Aires VII – Weekends

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Weekends are for socialising and the porteños, as the locals are called, love to eat out any time of the day. That said they love socialising so this isn’t only reserved  for the weekends, on the contrary. Often working days end at 7 o’clock or later so dining out is a late affair here. They also enjoy spending their leisure time in their parks and they do have some wonderful parks i Buenos Aires. Here I’m in sea of roses in El Rosedal de Palermo. This park is spread out in about 3 hectares and have some 18 000 roses planted here. Saturday and Sunday markets are also popular to visit. This is one of the best Sunday market, Feria de Artisans de Plaza Francia in Recoleta. They sell high quality craftsmanship and artisan products such as jewellery, pottery, artwork and leather goods. Pretty impressive tree in Plaza Francia. The Japanese garden or Jardín Japonés de Buenos Aires, is one of the largest Japanese gardens of its kind in the world outside Japan, set in the large Parque Tres de Febrero. Here  a zen-like …

Buenos Aires VI – San Telmo, passionate tango and faded charm

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San Telmo is the oldest part of Buenos Aires, and has it’s own ambience and faded charm. Very bohemian and very authentic. Here is where most of the passionate tango dancing takes place. At Plaza Dorrego you can se dancers show of their tango skills in daytime for the tourists. But if you want to experience the real hard-core tango it’s the milongas you have to visit. I enjoyed watching the expressive dance. Best viewed live so have a look at the film clip. Street view at Plaza Dorrego. The Sunday market in San Telmo is the largest in Buenos Aires. The centre of the feria is here at Plaza Dorrego and then it spills out on the adjoining streets many blocks away, with stalls after stalls full of antiques, trinkets, bric-a-brac and artisans wares. This is the area where you find all the antique shops. Here is one on Defensa. I find San Telmo is the most architecturally beautiful neighborhood with loads of interesting buildings. Many of them crumbling and with a lot of patina but nevertheless exquisite. …

Buenos Aires V – Eating well in Palermo

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Before I came here I rather ignorantly thought that it would be only beef on the menu. I’m pleased to say that Buenos Aires is up there with any other modern big city and have a wide range of great restaurants and healthy organic food too.  Since I stayed here for two months and on a bit of a shoestring budget I didn’t do fine dining but once in a while I enjoyed really nice meals out. Here is a selection of some of the highlights. Starting with the main photo, this is one of the times I splurged and had a delicious lunch. Uco, a fantastic restaurant on Soler, in a great setting with it’s own garden within Fierro hotel. Excellent food and excellent service! As you can see every dish was like an aesthetic and culinary dream. One of the first restaurants I visited, on recommendation, was Las Pizarras Bistro. A great little restaurant on Thames, run by the chef Rodrigo Castilla. We got talking and it ended with that I visited him and his …

Buenos Aires IV – Interior design gems

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As an interior designer I of course want to dip in to the scene and see what is on offering. There is a lot of nice interior design. Here is a pick of some of the stores I found in Palermo.  One of the coolest stores that just opened when I was living in Palermo Hollywood was Editor Market on Av. Dorrego. It’s the new hip place on the fashion and design scene. Set on three levels it houses interior design, clothing and a cafe. The interior design have in parts a distinct Scandinavian feel. The bench here is from Net. By chance I came upon the wonderful little store Enseres Bazar on El Salvador where I started talking to Barbara here in this photo, who is the sweetest of persons. Enseres is the place to go for a nice selection of cookware and accessories. I then met the owner of the store, photographer Cecilia, who kindly invited me up to the rooftop, as she was in the middle of a photo shoot in her studio there. And it …

Buenos Aires III – The ultimate cake

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The cafe culture in Buenos Aires is famous. And boy do they do this to perfection! The locals from the city of Buenos Aires, called Porteños, chat leisurely and lengthy with friends over cordados or capuchinos in the many cafes. When they are not in the heladerías, eating their beloved ice creams. The art of making ice cream came with the Italian immigrants from Italy. I must confess that I’m not a coffee drinker. So I will not gripe over the quality of coffee that so many foreigners seem to like to do. But I scoured Palermo’s cafes with an interior designer eye looking for nicely designed spaces as well as indulging in my new passion… My newly discovered passion is eating cake, chocolate cake to be precise. And to my delight I found the best chocolate cake in the world here! Hidden away in a small backyard is the loveliest of cafes, Decata, with this the best of the best delicious and mouth-watering masterpiece. That there also is a teashop called Tealosophy, a tiny plant …

Buenos Aires II – In graffiti paradise

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The first thing that hit me when I came here was the lavish amount of graffiti on the walls of the houses. Not just a bit of dabbling here and there but often complete graffiti painted houses. Imaginative and accomplished street art, they never ceased to inspire me. Talking one day to a graffiti artist, steeped as I am in the rules and regulations of Swedish bureaucracy, I asked him if it was allowed to paint a whole house as he was doing now? He just laughed and replied, ”This is Argentina. We do what we like here!” This is the end result. Quite impressive, isn’t it? Enjoy this small selection of wonderful street art in Palermo! Copyright and photo: Anita Martinez Beijer

Buenos Aires I – Palermo in my heart

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Charming, bohemian and colourful, the barrio of Palermo in Buenos Aires went straight to my heart. I spent days endlessly walking the tree-lined streets and enjoying soaking in the very special ambience of this part of the city. Buenos Aires is called Paris of Latin America, due to the large amount of immigrants from Europe in the 19th century and the culture and building styles they brought with them. The leafy streets gives much needed shade and a sense of nature in this big city. The architecture in Buenos Aires a mix of styles, eclectic to say the least, with French and Italian neoclassical, colonial, art nouveau and art deco buildings as well as Italian and French Renaissance-style palaces and of course modern high-rises. Not only influenced by European building styles as I first thought, but also complete buildings were brought here, stone by stone, sometimes complete palaces, prefabricated in Europe. Impressive. Sometimes one is unaware that, because the trees are so dense that they almost form a roof, the city continues to spread upwards. I enjoyed …

Cape Town VIII – Khayelitsha, a township

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This is Khayelitsha, a township situated on the outskirts of Cape Town. The name is Xhosa for New Home. Founded in 1985 it was one of the apartheid regime’s final attempts to enforce the Group Areas Act. Today a staggering 400 000 or more people live here today, mostly black, spread out in an area of about 45 square kilometres. Xhosa is the predominant language spoken here, but also Zulu, Afrikaans, English, Tswana, Northern Sotho, Sotho, Tsonga, Swazi, Venda, Southern Ndebele are spoken, which gives an idea of the mix of people and the influx from different areas of Africa the people have migrated from. There are more formal areas with small 2-room brick build houses, so called Mandela houses, which they started to develop after ANC came to power in 1994. The Mandela houses are mostly home to a small but growing middle class/upper working class population. And then there are the informal shacks that house around 70 percent of the inhabitants. These street-photos were taken whilst we were driving around. No spontaneous stopping and no …