Next Stop: Unknown

 

I guess eventually we had to end up in Buenos Aires. It’s the biggest city in Argentina by far, and tourists roll in and out of there daily on their way from one destination or another. We landed in BA from El Calafate, by plane. Our only domestic flight on this leg of our journey so far!

We didn’t really have an action plan for BA but had heard that we couldn’t miss their famous cemetery, nor a tango show. So, first order of business was to do a sight seeing tour of the city. Usually I loath these things. I always feel like I’m going to be stuck with a group of old people (sorry, Gram, but you aren’t really old in spirit!) and by being in a big group I’ll miss out on the real feel of things. But, BA’s tour is rated the #2 attraction in the city so I thought eh, I’d give it a try. Plus, our knees were still killing us after our treks through Patagonia. The tour was fun – we road a double decker bus that buzzed around the city with regular stops at all the main attractions. They have these silly headphones that narrate the sites in your choice of eight different languages. Anyone speak Russian? 

We took these shot of the obelisk from the top of the bus. It’s not an especially inspiring photo, but she’s it’s such an quintessential shot we had to include it.

Next stop was the Recoletta neighborhood for their famous cemetery. The Argentinean elite get buried in style: above ground, in a family shrine, and decked out with sculptures. We walked through looking at the graves of past presidents, Eva Peron (former first lady, radio personality and most beloved by her people, for those who don’t know), famous doctors and some guy who their international airport is named after. Here are a few photos from Buffy’s Land.

As the bus drove from site to site we saw tons of broken down cars on the road – old Volkswagons and Fiats were particularly prevalent. This old car kept our attention though. Looks like it’s been there a while right, so why is the guy looking in the trunk? Well, that’s where he keeps his beer cold of course! There was a cooler in the trunk and the guy pulled out a liter of beer seconds later.

Are we in Redmond or Bellevue? Nope still Buenos Aires. Looks just like their Washington State buildings, huh except for this one has a snazzy outdoor patio mid-way up. You can just pick out the tiny people on the bottom right if you squint. Anyone looking to move to a warmer climate?

Our most colorful stop on the double-decker bus was La Boca neighborhood. We aren’t really sure why this neighborhood is so famous. But during our travels we gleamed that they have a well known soccer team, that the neighborhood was originally founded by immigrant factory workers, that the buildings are really colorful, and that it isn’t safe to go out in the neighborhood at night. Even during the day time there were loads of police trolling about. I’m never sure if the presence of police is supposed to make me feel comforted or not. The neighborhood was very photographic though and it served up some awesome barbeque.

I know Argentina is famous for steak, but I really can’t get enough of their pollo (chicken). It’s hard to find, seems I’m the only one who appreciates just how good it is here. Maybe it’s all the mayonnaise they put on everything that makes it yummy!

After spending a day doing tourist things, we had to dedicate a day to camera maintenance. Lucas had really mucked his camera up early in our trip. He’d gotten dust on the sensor somehow, then gotten it even dirtier when he tried to clean it. So we dragged ourselves all around the city in the 80 to 90 degree weather, going to first this camera store and then that one. A guy a one place would tell us to check another secret place up on the 7th store of a residential building. This happened several times. The first of these ‘secret places’ seemed like they knew what they were doing and they agreed to clean Lucas’ camera. Unfortunately, their version of clean didn’t actually involve any cleaning, so the camera came back in nearly the same condition as it was before.

Eventually we found a place that did the trick, but that was only after several mis-attempts and one pick pocketing misadventure on the subte (subway). Fortunately, the pick pocketer didn’t get anything more than a credit card (which we canceled) and a driver’s license (that doesn’t them do much good in Argentina anyways).

To lift our spirits on our last night we treated ourselves to a tango dinner show. It was pricey, but we thought “Hey, what the heck. Everyone says it’s one of those must dos, so it has to be good!” And it definitely was. Complejo Tango is where we went, for anyone planning a trip to BA. The show took us tango through the years, from 1900 to the present. Each dance had the actors/dancers in different period costumes and they acted out mini-skits while they danced to live music.

       

Buenos Aires is one of those places you could spend a month and never see it all.  Unfortunately, we don’t have that much time, so it’s on to the next stop for us!