Tango and Antiques in Buenos Aires

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We left Sucre on a delightful 16 hour overnight bus... the most uncomfortable bus ever (no lovely reclining seats on this bus!). Just lots of people, no toilets and a few chickens underneath the bus... the road was basically a dirt track so sleep wasn´t the easiest thing!!!

We arrived in La Quiaca - the border town with Argentina, at 4am... luckily they let us sleep on the bus until 7am. We found our wonderful bus company. Basically we were getting a bus from the border to Buenos Aires.... a 29 hour journey apparently...

To begin with we drove for about 3 minutes... before having to get off the bus to cross the border... which was a complete joke. The Argentinian immigration is useless. It took 4 hours in total of queuing up... re-queuing up.. then taking all the bags off the bus (which we´d just put on). When I got to the bag checking customs official, he asked where I was from and when I said "Inglaterra", he just waved me through!! Waste of time!!! Arghhhhhhh!!!!

Finally we were on the way... and despite a few delays (ie random police checks.... I think the police are just bored)... we made fairly good time. The food was ok and you even get offered wine on the buses!!! Only in Argentina!

After boiling in our bus for hours... we finally reached Buenos Aires...
It seems so huge after Bolivia!!!

We stayed in San Telmo. It´s a really funky little part of Buenos Aires with loads of really cool Antiques Markets and shops... its quite arty-farty but it´s really good! I love wondering round all the antique shops - there are loads of little stalls with all kinds of different things from cinema posters to handbags...

Caminito

This means "little road" - its an area in La Boca (home of Boca Juniors football club - Deigo Maradonna´s beloved club). The shipworkers who lived in this area (originally from Genoa, Italy) used leftover paint from the ships to paint their houses all the bright colours! It creates a really vibrant little neighbourhood.

Buenos Aires Microcentre

The centre of Buenos Aires is filled with streets of shops (a hell of a lot of leather shops!!!). It´s a fun place to go shopping... although the first couple of days it was absolutely peeing down!!! Then someone stole our umbrella which really peeved me!!!! Stealing an umbrella!!!!!

They have loads of places selling Tango shoes/clothes etc... I gave in... and bought myself some handmade tango shoes. They are high but they have extra padding on the toes so they are sooooo comfy!!

There is also the famous Obelisk. That road is crazy - it´s about 5 lanes wide in both directions.

We also visited the Casa Rosada. Evita and Peron gave many speeches from this balcony. On the last night we were in Buenos Aires we sort of got caught up in a Human Rights March. There were thousands of people, all with huge banners and flags. It took a while to work out what was going on.... but basically it was about Julio Lopez going missing - he´s a 77 yr old guy who was a witness/victim (?) of the Dirty War. They think about 30,000 people were killed during the Dirty War.

Recoletta

We also went to the Recoletta neighbourhood... the la-di-da area of Buenos Aires. We went to the cemetery and found Evita´s grave. I think the cemetery in Sucre was actually more interesting... it showed the differences between those with money and those without. Here it just seemed to be the resting place of those with money.

Next Step... 40 hours of bus travel to El Calafate in Patagonia!!! Wonderful!!!

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Photos

Tango Show - Lucy´s Arty Shot
I love this picture of the double bass player