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Published: November 26th 2011
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Day 18 - Buenos Aires
We went down for breakfast, and were slightly disappointed with the choice. As for the coffee, it was undrinkable, as the water has that limey flavour. Over breakfast we consulted the map and guide book to decide which places we wanted to visit. Whilst there are a lot of places you can visit, it depends on what interest you have.
I suppose on the "not to be missed" list is the cemetary where all the famous politicians, generals and presidents are buried. We walked on what was a hot day, to the Cementerio de la Recoleta, and were greeted at the entrance by a lady selling maps of the vaults - creepy i know. The proceeds go towards the upkeep of the cemetary which has been in use since the mid 19th century. There are 1400 vaults at the cemetary, some of which are more elaberate than others, with obelisks, pyramids and ornate ironwork. The map takes you on a route round the cemetary to see some of the more prominent vaults, some are because of who they are, others because of the style of the vault. You could peer into them as many
had glass doors, and see that many generations of the same family were buried in the same vault. The main attraction is the vault of Eva Peron's family where she lies embalmed, which to be honest is quite a simple one - black, and has flowers that visitors have left. We also saw maintenance being carried out on some of the vaults, including a couple that looked like that they were being "recycled" - perhaps the family had stopped paying for the upkeep. When we had done the "tour", we went and sat outside to plan the route to the next destination. We were amazed to be passed by a number of professional dog walkers, each of which had at least 8 dogs of various sizes, all with leads attached to a belt that the walker was wearing, we only sat there for 5mins and must have been passed by no less than 6 or 7 dog walkers.
Next stop on the whistle stop tour was to a sculpture of a flower "Floralis Generica". Designed by an Argentinian sculptor Eduardo Catalono, the aluminium and steel flower blooms at 8am and closes it's petals at dusk. It's really pretty, absolutely
huge and has water surrounding it's base.
Our next stop was the Jardin Japones, a gift from the Japanese community when the current Emperor came to visit as Crown Prince. The pools had some of the largest koi carp we had ever seen, some of which we hiding under the shade of the bridges, and some jumping out of the water. It was very nice and peaceful, except for the school children on visits looking into the ponds.
We then thought we should go to the main steet in Buenos Aires - Avenida 9 de Julio, at 140m wide and 12 lanes wide! When the project started to build this avenue in 1937, thousands of people were displaced, and in fact it was only completed in 1980. El Obelisco commemorates the 400th anniversary of the capitals founding, and it is where rallies and protests occur. There was some sort of protest going on, but nothing significant.
We walked back to the shopping centre armed with Russ' passport to exchange some Chilean pesos into Argentinian, and looking at the map and guide book made a decision to try and go to Uruguay the following day. We went to
the booking office close to the shopping centre and took a numbered ticket like at a meat counter and waited our turn. When we eventually got seen, we couldn't book the trip as they needed both passport numbers - another thing the guide forgot to tell us.
We went back to the hotel and upto the business centre and logging on we asked the hotel to help us complete the booking on line instead, translating the spanish for us, as there was no english page. Just at the last moment, as we had entered the payment details, it registered an error and we assumed that the booking had failed. It was only when Russ checked our email account, we saw they had sent the boarding passes to us, and the booking had gone through. We printed them out at the business centre, as well as checking in on line for the flight from Buenos Aires to Madrid the following night.
That night we decided to return to the square at San Telmo, walking this time via the docklands area of Puerto Maderno where there are a lot of restuarants and bars. This is a nice area, but does
not really have a lot of atmosphere, and a bridge that is supposed to represent a male and female tango dancer (couldn'yt see it ourselves)! As we walked along, we noticed that there were a lot of people going through the rubbish that had been put out for collection, which was not nice to see, but is part of this being a capital city where there is extreme poverty as well as more well to do areas.
At the square at San Telmo, we were enticed into a bar by the promise of a free tango show. This sounded just like what we were looking for, rather than the contrived and expensive show that the rest of the group had chosen to go to. We sat in the bar waiting, as the group set up, and there was a singer, a small group and finally a pair of dancers. We had no idea whether they were any good or not, but it was certainly more raw and had atmosphere and we had a good view. At least to the untrained eye after a few Cervezas (beers) we decided they were pretty decent, but perhaps not as good as we
imagined the ones to be on the professional trips.
Well after midnight, we caught a taxi back to the hotel, knowing that we had an early start in the morning to check out and catch the boat to Uruguay.
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