Port of Fruits

 

Inside the City of Tigre on the banks of the River Luján, at little more than one hour of the Great City for very easy accesses one finds this today Mall; what long ago was actually  the real port of fruits and of exchange of goods come from the islands. The place was constructed in 1933 to transport fruits and vegetables of the  island gardens.
It began to work for the year 1938; in 1983 there were inaugurated the places of the Handcrafted Fair and day after day it continues growing due to the attraction so particular that it possesses.
 

 

 Let's do a bit of history: Towards ends of the 18th century, in spontaneous form, in the river mouth of the River of The Shells, there began to be formed a hamlet that happened to be known as Port of The Shells. It was a low place, temptation of the waters in increasing, and these, they were not late in flooding it making it disappear in 1805.
Though the place was repopulated in a little time, the port was moved towards the river mouth of the creek of The Shells. Another rise of south east, that it provoked the increasing one between 19 and on June 20, 1820, one took the people with more than one hundred of his souls, and opened definitively a new fluvial course of water, transforming the insignificant little stream of the Tigre into a riverbed capable of receiving the ships that till then were doing port in the river The Shells, which the Tigre drained of his wealth.
The old river did not disappear, but it remained impracticable and his port languished, so beside having turned out to be different better, the peninsula where it was had transformed in an island.

But Tigre had born. A polemic began then between the neighbors of The Shells, supporters to the new port who were claiming a bridge for wagons on the new river to reach the new island, and the neighbors of San Fernando who were defending the artificial channel up to his village.
Once again, the neighbors of The Shells suffered a reverse, since it was decided by the construction of the channel. The neighborhood of The Shells resigned itself to constructing a veredón or terrace that was assuring the communications in all time with San Fernando and Buenos Aires. The terrace came up to the channel, in it is said whose excavation that there worked the prisoners taken in the English invasions.

The fact is that already in 1827, immediately after the war with Brazil (that had a fleet in the Plata), the government of Rivadavia prohibited ' the disembarkations for other points that it should not be those of the Conchas, Tigre and San Fernando's Channel '.
There is an interesting description of the region visited in 1828 by the French naturalist D'Orbigny, who to the return of an expedition to the Snare landed in Shells for fear of the Brazilian corsairs. "... I crossed the village of the Shells, which is for his aspect as one of these small villages from the Seine, and one extends along the river The Shells. It consists only of houses where there are expended diverse expensive and ordinary articles and drinks called for sailors, who frequent them.  A row of ships occupies the muddy banks of the river, on which the houses placed without order are placed, in the middle of gardens, forests and of flooded lands  to such a point, which the big tides of the Plata, which frequently take place, see in the need to walk in canoes from one to another house ".

 

It is of bearing in mind that seize Buenos Aires City it needed the wood and the fruits that from the islands were coming, and in this time the transportation was astride and all dirt tracks. In this environment the real Port of Fruits is born.
One accedes to it for the street Sarmiento towards the river Luján.

It possesses three wide docks.
 

In the central dock there center the boats-stores that supply the inhabitants of the islands with the most varied products, patrol boats of the Naval Prefecture Argentina and also flat-bottomed boats - freights for the transport of materials or moves towards the islands. From this dock, also, during the weekends there set sail boats of trip that offer excursions for the Delta. Still it is possible to find someone that another boat or canoe with some islero that he tempts in selling his goods in this place. Until a few years ago it was easy them to be selling oranges of the variety washington, mandarins, green apples, kinotos, pears, small peaches; since this way also vegetables of his villa and ornamental, such plants as the azalea, jazmines, hydrangeas; it was alone to lower the stairs and the purchase was effected directly of the craft, being this one the way of life of the great majority of the islanders.

In the third dock, the most wide, there unload the flat-bottomed boats or the fluvial ships rafters, who come loaded with trunks of willow, poplars, etc, from the made islands forest for the man  from the Delta and ready to be tried.

 Nowadays beautiful crafts, objects of decoration, gown, footwears, articles of leather, typical exquisitenesses of the zone, fresh and dry flowers are sold at par of fruits and vegetables in this real Walk of Purchases crammed visitors' in the weekends, being useful also to happen the day in the zone, doing purchases in the positions places or also having lunch, the classic vermouth or a coffee in several existing places of the item, as for example the café of the entry to the Port.

Port of Fruits is today a great Shopping outdoors, in family or accompanied, is the ideal place to be distended in something different and of step in one of this filling with enthusiasm with something very original for the home, between many crafts that there exist.