Buenos Aires

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Buenos Aires

Note:

We have been getting emails from a few people asking where the early blog entries are. There are 18 entries with photo's etc, so far. Just go back to the home page of the blog with this url:

http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/karenandmarcelaway/

Here you can go back and forth to see all our entries and there can be more than 1 page per entry - scroll to the bottom to see additional photo's etc. So if you have time have a look at our early stuff too - we hope you like it.

End of Note.


We decided to stay in BA for two weeks,(which turned into three) and have been out everyday exploring the city, sometimes in total monsoon downpours. The buses and tubes are a fraction of the London buses (22p for a single journey anywhere). There are brilliant parks, plaza's, shops shops shops, romantic rose gardens, etc...

We have found a hotel in San Telmo striaght out of the 50's with original everything; furniture, bedspreads and the walls have a rolled on paint stencil. It's a familly run affair where the grandad lets you in and out and you have to ring the outside buzzer after midnight. (making you feel like naughty teenagers) but for 12 pounds a night for a double room ensuite (with cable showing premiership football) we're happy to feel like teenagers!!

Mmm Empinadas (the Argentinian pasty) hot and freshly made from meat, cheese, corn - allsorts, from a bakery that looks like it's straight out of the 1970's handed to you in grey paper by an old woman who you just know has been making them all her life.

We also want to mention the little open fronted shops selling 'choripans'or ''morcipans': tasty sausage or blood sausage sandwiches on french bread, costing 80p are very good little snacks between meals of Parilla - trays and trays of meat which are brought to your table until you are fit to burst all for a fiver... Argentinians eat alot of meat, I wouldn't really like to see their colons!!!

Then on for a 'cortado' (machaitto) in a cafe on the square where you sit out and get confused as you could be in Paris, Barcelona, Roma or Palermo (in Sicily), only a couple dancing tango make you realise where you are.....

You walk back towards the hotel dodging the dog crap (which there is a lot of in BA unfortunately), stopping for a Quilmes stout or Bock (only sold in litre bottles and nicer than Guinness) in another cafe/bar then sit and watch as groups of people (kids as well) open up all the rubbish bags along the street to find the recyclable material - cardboard, paper, plastic and take it away on hand pulled carts off to the edges of the city to be converted into a little bit of cash. BA is so polar, it's super trendy bars, cafes and fashionable shops sit next to people with not very much.

Before entering our hotel we usually pass the time of day with Cezar; a local bookshop owner who we have become friends with. He speaks slow clear Spanish with us and is so patient.

We hadn't seen him for a couple of days and he came out to say ola with cuts on his hands. Two days before he had been attacked in his shop and his computer had been stolen. He has owned that shop for 8 years... So when we drank beer, ate delicious icecream or a hunk of foccacia outside a cafe it made us think carefully how we got our money out of our bag and where our camera was. BA is really really great but at times like most cities a little edgy.

We found a really nice cafe/restaurant that served great food just across the road from the hotel called La Esquinita, we ate there so often we were getting the royal treatment, getting served dishes not on the menu and being treated like part of the family. It was so nice we decided to buy the waitresses and the lady owner flowers on the day we left town.

Surprisingly not very many Argentinians are fat and we can't understand it as they seem to only eat meat, meat and potates and pasta. If you want to see a pretty girl or handsome guy BA is the place to go. Everyone looks like a model, Karen had to get a hair cut and Marcel shaves regularly, these Buenos Airians (portenos) are very hip.

Buenos Aires as mentioned earlier is full of shops like all cities but it seems here there are so many more of them. There are the equivalent of three or four Oxford streets full of clothes shops. All the usual labels are here but so are so many others we didn't know before.
BA and Argentina in general is very stylish and there are many more independent retailers than back at home which is much better as you can get more individual items. Unfortunately are rucksacks aren't big enough and postage is ridiculously expensive so we just window shopped in our flip-flops feeling tragically un-cool.

Where we were staying in San Telmo you could walk down certain streets and feel as though you were stepping back into the 1930's with bakeries, cafes, fruit & veg shops, hardware shops, haberdasheries, fish shops, flower shops etc.
The buildings have a faded grandeur with lots of marble surfaces and old glass fronted wooden cabinets. All the stock was held behind the counter and when bought it was wrapped in paper and sometimes string. A lovely shopping experience much different to our identikit high streets.

We Visited La Boca (meaning the mouth), a barrio where Italian immigrants first settled at the turn of the century. We caught the bus from San Telmo as it's advised not to walk around the area (that reminded us of Streatham really).

It is known to be one of the rough areas of Buenos Aires (but not the roughest) - it was a bit dodgy and we did see a mugging right in front of us just outside the BOCA stadium. Karen thought it would be best to walk on the other side of the street!

However the area is really charming, the architecture is grand and romantic and round by the docks are loads of unused warehouses and rusting ships, if you wanted to organise a free rave this would be the place to do it. So as 'touristas' we thought we should oblige and go on a BOCA Juniors stadium (known as 'La Bomboneria' or chocolate box) tour.

It was great! Marcel stood in front of a bronze life-size statue of Maradonna, tried to imitate the hand of god goal and got a few wierd looks from Argentinians. He's like a god here (we mean Maradonna, not Marcel), he has the passion!!!!!... He is everywhere and when people were having their picture taken with him, they were not smiling, they had reveretial faces - serious with their hand on their heart!!! Man he's a football player...NO!... He's so much more than that, he symbolises the Argentinian dream.

As part of the tour we got to go into the home team changing rooms, where Marcel reverentially (that word again) washed his face in the marble sink, thinking maybe Maradonna had washed his face in the same sink...or at least Tevez.

We thought the stadium was pretty small considering it holds 55,000 they must squeeze them in. We still decided to try and get a ticket to see a game though!!!

We had heard stories of people selling fake tickets and we had been warned not to wear any labelled clothes or go into the 12th man stand - the hard core supporters are crazy or should we say passionate....

Not only that but the part of stadium where we could get tickets to see the game, the visiting teams fans wee on you from the stand above... read on to see how we got on...

In Boca we also visted an art gallery called PROA, which was without comparison the best contemporary art gallery we've been to in South America (so far). There was an exhibition "Art in the Auditorium" with a film by Turkish artist Ali Kazma about Jeans manufacture in Turkey. I will never look at jeans and all those little tears, rips and faded parts in the same way again. We also watched a film by Cornelia Parker featuring Noam Chomsky - good to see some decent thought provoking political art if not rather depressing.

There are literally hundreds of galleries and museums in BA, and they come in all shapes and sizes and levels of interest. Everything seems to have a museum dedicated to it's history from prison museums and port musuems to museums of modern art and museums of football teams. Karen made her mission to visit as many as she could and spent long days walking in air-conditioned rooms full of stuff.

We did spend a nice evening with our French friends (Naiomee and Pierre who we had met a few weeks before whilst walking in the Torres del Paine in Chile), after huge amounts of meat eating for Marcel and Pierre we celebrated Pierre's marriage proposal by drinking Argentinean champagne in a plaza. We hope the wedding planning goes well.

Of course when in Buenos Aires its hard not to notice the dance phenomenon that is tango, the city is very proud of its native dance which originated with Italian men working out their frustration together before their appointment with the local 'madame'. Women were not originally involved in the dance which is odd as it is very sassy - strange those italians!

Now it is everywhere and we mean everywhere - its Carlos Gardel this and Milonga that - so of course we had to try it! We went along to a museum of tango and took a free lesson. The instructor was only Madonnna's tango partner in the Evita movie and he taught her everything she knows about tango - apparently. So now Karen's claim to fame is that she is one step removed from Madonna in dancing partners! Thankfully Marcel didn't have to get close to the wee man in tight trousers and doesn't have the same claim.
Tango definitely isn't easy and probably takes years to master and its quite a spectacle when done the by professionals - lets just say we both have a long way to go.

We hooked up with our new friend Neil who we met earlier on the stadium tour and decided to buy tickets to the match - Boca vs Argentinos Jnrs. Thinking that it wasn't a derby or any major club playing, getting tickets would be simple... Well after queuing for 3 hours in direct sunlight (the queue was more than the length of the stadium and car park) and watching the locals push in at the front we finally got our tickets.

Feeling pretty pleased with ourselves we went back home to wait for the evening kick off. Meanwhile the streets in Boca were buzzing and eventually it all kicked off in McDonalds and two people were shot. Gangs were fighting over control of the area - we don't really know what exactly but we got to the ground safely enough after a beer in a local Boca cafe.

The game itself was pretty exciting, after pushing our way through into the middle of the tier we were facing the 12th man stand and feeling the pulse of the stadium vibrating with the stamping of feet and banging drums. We managed to get into the middle of a local family - mum, dad and their teenage kids, the mother who we named Granny Ju-Ju kept placing curses on the opposition with her devil fingers and 'ztt-ztt-ztt' chants.
Maradonna was being seriously dis-respected after not selecting Boca star player Juan Roman Riquelme - this was surprising as Maradonna is THE icon of Boca - the rags to riches hero all the kids want to be.
Boca won the game with 3 goals to nothing and each time they scored the crowed surged forward and jumped up and down, shaking the stadium. The opposition fans responded by throwing cups of piss on to the unfortunate tourists and locals who didn't know about the 'tradition'. Thankfully we knew and were well under the upper tier and could be disgusted and watch the spectacle from afar.
We do have to mention that the supporters songs were really amazing, complex and emotional the fans gave it all for their team and we guess only clubs such as Liverpool or Celtic could match them in their vocal delivery.

We got back to San Telmo safely and in a local Lebanese restaurant we slumped in our seats realizing just how much of an adrenalin rush it had been. We had been pretty scared, it was intense - thank god Boca won.

There is so much to add about BA but we don't want to bore you too much and you just have to go there for yourselves - we really recommend it.

We jumped in a cab to leave BA after a hug each from Cezar and blown kisses from the ladies at La Esquinita, to begin our onward journey to the Iguazu falls and northern Argentina. However there was a brief return as Karen left her walking boots in the hotel, leaving Marcel extremely nervous and biting his nails at the Bus station counting the minutes before the the expensive luxury bus left - she made it with exactly one minute and 23 seconds to spare, phew!

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Photos

Beunos aires bear
Each country had a bear to colour in. The exhibition is travelling around the world.

UK Bear - how naff!
East meets west! A bear with a hijab - how does that represent great britain exactly??

Do you know your cuts of meat?
We do now!

Our french friends celebrating their marriage proposal.
Pierre and Noemi having a good time with Argentinian champagne

More cemetery
Loads of cats live here

Modernist library
For all you architecture buffs

Check the size of that monster
The car not Karen