Return to Buenos Aires

We arrived off a twenty hour bus journey from what felt like the middle of the sun, excited to be back in beautiful Buenos Aires. There was much fun to be had! As we tramped the streets we felt the same feeling as before, loving this place! The air temperature was warmer and unfortunately the purple trees had disappeared, their blossom having turned into lush green leaves but the sun was shining and there was an almost constant summer breeze flowing passed our skin.


With our new feeling of the lightness of our beings we walked to the subte (tube) and took it up to Plaza Italia to find our hostel. As we neared we heard our names in the distance and there was Lene and Jakob across the road! So reunited with hugs we all went into the hostel, as they were staying there too. After washing the nightbus off our skin we all ventured to a little cafe that my lovely friend Simone, who lives in BA, told us about. Oui Oui in Palermo. If ever you should find yourself in Palermo Hollywood I urge you to go there. They serve such delicious food (proper food, full of goodness and love unlike other fare you find in Argentina) and the best coffee we found in the whole in the country. Also the best lemonade we have ever drunk, which has inspired me to try and make some of similar quality myself when I return and find a new home.


After filling our bellies with delicious food we booked a table at another delicious restaurant round the corner called Miranda for New Year's Eve which was the next day and headed to Recoleta cemetery. Full of catch up conversation and laughter, unfortunately Sam had a bit of an accident. As he was in mid flow he turned around and BOINK hit the side of his head on a lamp post! Styling it out he seemed okay. It wasn't until the next day (NYE) that he realised that he actually had mild concussion, bugger! That wasn't to be the only misfortune that came across his path on that day either. Whilst travelling on one of the many escalators into the subte, the escalator decided that it was hungry and that its appetite would be sated only by eating one of Sam's flip flops. Thus followed a baffling few seconds whilst Sam tried to wrench his foot out of the tightening grip of the escalator stairs and had to resort to pulling it out with his hands! Now it looks like a shark tried to eat his foot and took a chunk out of the heel! We couldn't stifle our laughter.

Recoleta cemetery is something else. It is an opulent Catholic affair filled with the mausoleums of the very rich, powerful and eminent dead of Buenos Aires. Including Eva Peron. We wandered around and soon observed to a slight point of horror that, unlike similar cemeteries such as those in Paris, you can actually see straight into them coffins and all.

So then followed a kind of weird fascination about when the coffins were placed in there. Some of them were really new, it was very eerie. Then some of the mausoleums had fallen into disrepair but the coffins still remained amongst the broken glass, rusted metal, fallen crucifixes and spider's webs.

Another thing that struck me about the place was the quality of the sculpture. I don't think I've seen such life like sculpting since Rome and Florence.

Beautiful, eerily life like figures adorned the mausoleums and led me to think that a wander around it at night might be a little too freaky.

Symbols that I had never seen before were everywhere.

There were also cats, mangy unhinged ones wandering amongst the dead as well. It was a visceral experience all in all.

The next day was New Year's Eve! We moved to our new hostel and then left for our delicious lunch. Miranda's lived up to initial experience there and we ate up really tasty food. I also drank the tastiest Pisco Sour I've ever had and we drank some delicious wine. Then Sam and I headed to a little plaza in Palermo to have a snooze on the grass in the sun and there was a man playing beautiful Spanish guitar as the breeze through the palm trees lulled us. 

A while later we had Danes and English amongst us so at 8pm we celebrated the Danish new year. We drank the rum we had carried with us since Colombia and toasted the new year by standing on our chairs and jumping into the new year Danish style. I like that! Might carry on that tradition.

Later, after abandoning my hope that we could get high up to see the city at middnight, I had heard that there was going to be fireworks at the port. So we headed down there. On the way we celebrated English new year in the Plaza de Mayo at 9pm Argentinian time.

After an amble around Puerto Madero amongst the uber rich families, the time for Argentinian new year had arrived! There were fireworks aplenty, champagne and sparkler fun to be had. All in all it was quite a tame affair though. In Argentina New Years is more a family thing with Christmas Eve taking the place of the wild and drunken times. It was pretty cool being in Buenos Aires though. Bienvenido 2012!!

On New Year's Day we decided to wander around San Telmo Market, a huge market that spread from a bright plaza filled with antique stalls and couples performing Tango right down Defensa, a long long road. The sun was shining and there was lots to look at and listen to. We saw a fantastic Tango band with the singer bearing his soul, complete with an old Argentinian man, drink in hand, feeling the pain and sorrow along with him. Fascinating. And a few couples performing Tango to the masses.

After an early night we were up on the 2nd ready to go and stay with Simone and Joe a bit further out in a  place called Triumvirato. It was so lovely of then to let us come and stay and they looked after us properly! So good to stay in their beautiful home and have some good meals and laughter together. Joe cooked us a delicious vegetable asado one night then Sam cooked up a storm as usual with a very tasty curry for seven! Joe also made us really good coffee every morning complete with a bag full of media lunas and other tasty fracturas. We were in paradise!

On our first day staying with them we decided to further explore San Telmo using a hand made calendar that Sam had bought from an artist chap at San Telmo market. He had drawn significant scenes from around the neighbourhood and fitted them together in a kind of walking tour on a map. We managed to get quite far on the tour taking photos to match the drawings. Here I am outside the oldest Tango Hall in the area.

Whilst wandering around the calendar tour we came to another old market. In here we found yet more creepy doll shops! What is the deal with this?

The day after we ventured towards the neighbourhood of La Boca. Simone had suggested that we head that way via Plaza de Mayo and the subte Line A. There was something special about the train cars on this line. They had remained virtually unchanged since the 1930s. Beautiful wooden interiors and slated wooden benches to sit on. We got off at the stop to go for some coffee in the oldest cafe in Buenos Aires, Tortoni. It was so beautiful inside, old painting adorned the tops of the walls, beautiful art deco panels and sculpted banisters twisted and turned and the cherry on top being the waiters who seemed like they were straight from when the cafe was established. I had hot apple pie and ice cream and Sam had Lomo sandwich and we both had delicious coffees.

To top it all off I was sat next to the bust of Carlos Gardel, an infamous Tango singer who awoke such passions in people, and by people I mean women, that he has reached near saint status, and upon news of his death some women actually attempted suicide.

After many warnings of how rough the neighbourhood of La Boca is we didn't venture too far into the backstreets but still managed to see daily life on the streets, the kids and their games, people sat on their stoops playing computer games, the vibrant graffiti. 

We wandered excitedly to the first home of Diego Maradona or as he is known over here ‘El Diego’, a virtual god in Argentina, Boca Juniors Stadium. It is also known as La Bombonera or The Chocolate Box and it is a fantastic place.

The pitch ends on the same line as the stadium seats start so you have a feeling of being almost on the pitch itself. Unfortunately we visited BA in their summer holidays so there were no matches for us to go to but as we were taken around in a large group and told about the stadium, we had an opportunity to all cheer and yell at the top of our voices, and just from that I could imagine the vastness of the noise that the crowd would generate at matches. They say that most players are intimidated by this stadium and it's not hard to imagine why. When a player from Boca scores the infamous doce section of the terraces goes blindly mental. They rush forwards and many jump up to the top of the metal fence waving their shirts wildly in a circle above their heads. I wish we could have seen this.

We spent a while going around the museum learning about the stadium and the players. Here's Sam 'El Diego' Rawlings...

We spent our final day in Buenos Aires running around trying to post a parcel back home. Fingers crossed it will get there! Not sure we would have even been able to do it if it hadn't been for lovely Simone coming to our rescue. Before long it was time to catch our bus to Puerto Iguazu to see the heavenly Falls.