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Published: March 3rd 2010
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Well no one can accuse Harry and I of doing things by halves after our decision for our first bus journey to be a lengthy 34 hours straight from Sao Paulo to Buenos Aires in Argentina. To be truthful it sounds far worse than it actually was with fulling reclining bed-seats we slept fine. The only complaint would be directed at whoever decided on the film choices, there are only so many hours of Jackie Chan a girl can endure!! The journey also presented the first foodie challenge for fussy eaters extraordinaire that we are, but as a free meal was impossible to pass up we tried to tuck in, it was some sort of maize sludge and tiny morsels of what I assume were chicken. I passed with flying colours, Harry not so much!
Anyway thats more than enough about the journey....
The first point to make about BA is that is all about the night...and all night. Locals dont eat til late, 9pm-10pm, then bar until hitting clubs at about 2am and falling home 5-6am! Thankfully we had had a bit of training for it in Rio over Carnaval. We were staying the duration of our trip
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street art - La Boca at Milhouse hostel - THE party hostel in BA. Many evenings we would try and make an executive decision to have a night off but to no avail, we just got sucked into the madness that is milhouse. To be honest the nights are a bit of a blur, I had alot of fun but it wasnt a uniquely South American experience at all, in fact one night we ended up at a DnB night we could not have been more un-local - they are very much not into that kind of music here! I can´t really explain the nights out very well, but I had an absolutely amazing time and met some awesome people.
BA is such a beautiful city, apart from the people (more on that later!) it feels very much like any European city. It is full of gorgeous buildings on wide avenues, with small parks and squares full of drink sellers, and stalls where you can buy and rent books for your lunchtime read, all very civilised.I think we may have become a little care-free but we had no qualms walking back from nearby clubs at 5am in the morning! The other marvelous aspect to
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Recoleta Cemetary it all is how cheap everything is - a pack of 20 fags costs less than a pound, might as well pay you to smoke! Even though our tourist activities were largely restricted to afternoons we still managed to see all the sights in our time there, not without getting lost though! In our hangover state one day we managed to wander over an hour in the wrong direction while trying to find the docklands area before realising something was very wrong! We got to see Congresso and parliament which would never have seen otherwise so these things definitely happen for a reason. Personally I wasn´t too fussed by the docklands area anyway, it´s that sterile business area that any big city has, with American chain restaurants lining the shores, we could have been anywhere and definitely not South America! Places like working-class and rough La Boca hold much more fascination for me, the Caminito is the artist district in La Boca with beautiful and brightly coloured buildings, street art, tango dancers, markets, and artists´s stalls selling painting lining the streets. The only, and fairly substancial downside, is it is hugely touristy. The cemetary in Recoleta was a fascinating visit
as well - the dead are not buried under ground but rather put into family vaults that are like miniture palaces in some cases, it is like a city in small form with streets in between all the graves. The wealthier the family the grander the building, as Recoleta is a very wealthy area it is supposed to be the most impressive cemetary in Argentina. Evita´s grave is also within the cemetary - though we were all slightly underwelmed by it and were expecting it be much more prominent and grand. We enjoyed wandering around the district Recoleta, young Argentine men in suits is a very welcome and pleasing picture on the eye! At the end of the street we were staying there is Casa Rosa - the pink house - the presidential palace. In front sits plaza de Mayo which was full of protest placards saying things like ´The falklands will be Argentine´as much as I wanted to take photos I thought being obvioulsy English it probably wouldn´t go down too well! While we were in BA there were a number of protests about the falklands, its obviously still an emotive issue here. Protesting styles are hilarious - on
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Recoleta Cemetary one occasion a man was just stood in the middle of traffic ranting into a microphone with a small group around him, the traffic just has to deal with it, the police do nothing. Avenida de Julio is apparently the widest avenue in the worlds - all the 16 lanes and the protesters just wandered onto with their drums and banners and closed it to traffic, and everyone else just has to deal with it. They definitely like to protest as loudly as possible here.
After Brazil, it hit us imediately how different it was. As soon as we arrived it was ´welcome to latin america´. Everywhere we walk you get ridiculous amounts of attention, men make kissing noises, comments, harry has been called ´guerita´ ( little blonde girl!) the entire time, men will just stop in front of you and perve with no subtlety whatsoever, the older they are the worse it is, or obviously take photos of you on their phone, evn the supposedly respectable policemen wolf-whistled at us. I guess we´ll get used to it, it just feels a bit full-on at the moment! Subtelty is an adjective you would never you to describe anyone here
at all, they make no effort to hide they fact they might be talking about you even if you make it very obvious that you know and understand whats going on!
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Claire
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Great read and I love the photies.