We thought we left Europe?

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It´s 8am, the temperature has dropped and the landscape is now urban, we´ve arrived in Buenos Aires. We enter the bus station bleary eyed and stiff from our journey, we hail a cab and are soon on route to our hostel.

The hostel offers activities every day, some you have to pay for and some are free. Today there is a free walking tour which covers the immediate area, San Telmo, and discusses the recent turbulent political history. It´s very interesting but very sad at the same time. Around 30,000 people went missing during the early 80´s and these were people perceived at the time to be political dissidents by the military dictatorship in control. These people are known as the ´disappeared´ (which means they were tortured and then killed). What we didn´t realise was this was all sparked by the Cold War, each country in South America chose a side. Argentina chose to side with the US so anything socialist/communist was quashed, extremely, in this case. There are still protests that go on today, started by mothers of the missing. We saw one happening later in our stay in BA which was very touching. There is a big campaign at the moment to find children of the dissapeared, if a women was taken into custody for her beliefs but was pregnant, she was allowed to have the baby. But she would be made to disappear and the baby would be given as a gift to a military family. This happened to a about 400 children. The people of Buenos Aires are very passionate about politics and you can see why. As part of the tour we got to see the site of where a concetration camp was, it was a police building with a basement where people were taken to be interrogated before they ´disappeared´. Very sad.

We also got to see the Eva Peron museum which involved a speach from a man who was around at the time when Eva and her then president husband made so many changes that benefitted the working classes. Although it was in Spanish and was later translated for us, his passion was entrancing. If you can imagine the scene from Return of the Jedi when CP30 is telling their story to the Ewoks, then that was pretty much the scene here as he added to his speech with noises and strong arm movements (Quote: Jen Martin 2013).

The next day we went on a bike tour which is a great way to see any city. Boca was the highlight, within Boca there´s an area near the original docks where poor immigrants usually settled. It´s very unique because of it´s very bright and contrasting colours. The colours were not by choice, it´s just whatever the locals could get their hands on, usually from the dockyards. It´s still a very poor area but it´s safe as the locals value the tourism it generates. I wouldn´t say the same for the whole of Boca though, riding down the street directly outside the football stadium was an 'experience'.

We´d been tinkering with the idea of learning Spanish, it would make our journey around South and Central America a bit easier. It was difficult in Rio with us not understanding Portugese and very few people understanding English. So we ended up booking a crash course which was 3 hours a day for 3 days. Day one was really difficult, our teacher - lets call her Miss Trunchbull - spoke very little English and the lesson was conducted in about 90% Spanish. Half way through the lesson I was ready to put my dunce hat on. But day 2 and 3 were a different matter, we had different teacher who spoke very good English (she had taught English in London) so she tailered these lesson for us and what we needed for our travels. All in all a worthwhile experience for us and recommeded for anyone travelling. We can now ask basic questions but understanding answers is a different thing altogether!! Plenty of practise is going to be needed!

We wanted to spend some time in Uruguay while we were here, seeing as it´s only an hour away on the ferry. We were originally going to spend a week there but after some advise we cut this down to one night. Instead of going to Montivideo we went to the quaint little town of Colonia Del Sacramento. We managed to find somewhere with a cheap double room, ensuite bathroom and to top it off a ´wellness´ room downstairs with a hugh jacuzzi. We don´t mind staying in dorms but it´s nice to have a bit of privacy for a change. The town itself was split between oldtown and new town, the new town was pretty standard but the oldtime was very nice, cobbled streets and all that. A lot of people come here from BA to draw out US Dollars as it´s not legal in Argentina. One guy in front of us at the ATM must have done about ten transactions at $200 a time! In BA you can take Dollars to the 'Black Market', which is one of the main shopping streets with people placed all down the street saying ´cambio, cambio, cambio´. At the black market you can change your Dollars for anything between 8 and 9 Pesos, the current rate is about 5! It´s not that discrete either.

After Uruguay we visited Eva Peron´s grave, it´s in a huge graveyard with many many extravagant mausoleums. It´s a graveyard reserved for BA´s elite. It´s crazy to think that dead people have better homes than some of the cities living inhabitants. It was quite a spooky place with a lot of cats roaming around. I was expecting Eva Peron´s grave to stand out from the rest but it was just fit in with the rest of the place. The mausoleum belonged to her sister´s husband´s family. There was a mausoleum which had a statue of a women and her dog just outside, the dogs nose was shiny, the legend goes that if you rub the dogs nose it will bring you good luck. I just think about the 1000´s of people who had rubbed that dogs nose over the years. Off course we gave the nose a good rub-when in Rome (BA) and all that!

We decided our last few days in BA would be pretty chilled, apart from one major blowout... a well deserved blow out I might add! We wanted to check out Palermo, we passed this area in a cab during an unsuccessful hunt for BA´s China Town (that´s another story but seeing as I´m getting close to 1000 words we´ll save that for another time - if only we´d known what Chinatown was in Spanish). Palermo looked busy with bars and clubs so it was the place to go. We got a cab there, after trying to explain to the driver that 'we wanted to party in Palermo', I think he got the message as he took us to a busy square in Palermo. We started off in a pool hall which was playing some classic trance but after getting beaten by Jen at best out of 3, I decided it was time to move on. We went to another couple of bars and before we knew it, it was 3am in the morning. Time to go home! A good night was had.

We enjoyed our time in BA, even though we were there for about 5 to 6 days longer than expected. My only negative comment was the city seemed dirty, but according to an Argentinian, BA has always been dirty!

Things we learnt in BA,

1) Spanglish..... but you must keep practising so we dont sound like the policeman in ´allo allo´ with poor pronounciation!
2) Take advantage of the kitchens in the hostels, it´s well worth it for saving pennies.
3) I´ve got competition on the snoring front.

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Photos

Do you like to party?
All set for the night out in BA

Tired, Hungry, thirsty
Brooke street has another donkey it needs to support

Comments

[Mike wallis]

Hi
Reading through your blogs is great. You seem to be having fun and making most of it! If you don\'t mind would you put a to and from date on future blogs?