Big Buzz In Buenos Aires

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Buenos Aires (BA) absolutely rocks! Its got class, fresh air (well good for a capital city anyway!), awesome colonial architecture, fascinating history with some class A characters such as Evita and Peron, lots of good looking people and its dirt cheap (thanks to the currency crash in 2001)! As South America goes I understand from other travellers that its the most westernised of them all. That being said, as with all metropolises there is those that have and those that have not, and there is also alot of poverty in parts of BA, mostly in the 30 villas (shanty towns) that are dotted around town. On the whole I felt pretty safe and there is a huge police presence in all the nice parts of town, including the microcentre (the centre of town).

For a country thats was going through serious economic termoil 5 years ago when the Argentinian Peso lost 75% of its value, BA seems to be going places fast. Theres a lot of development going on and new dockland area that has been regenerated and is being inhabited by multi-nationals in big glass buildings, a bit like a mini Canary Wharf in London. However, from talking to various locals it seems that there is as much corruption as there ever has been, and that it is not unusual for the police to conveniently leave a plaza when a crime is about to take place there!

The city oozes culture, they love their tango and there are street performances all over the place in San Telmo (one of the old parts of the city), they are nuts about football (like most countries in S America) and I was gutted not to get the chance to go to a game as they mostly seem to play on weekends. The architecture is fantastic and there are some fantastic palaces, theatres, museums and monuments. If you like shopping you would not be disappointed at all, all the big swanky brands are here and its cheap. You could by a Christian Dior suit for about £150 (I couldn´t say whether CD makes a good suit or not!) Zara have oppened a couple of stores here and taken off massively.

The Argentinians enjoy a good steak, as do I, so I treated myself to most expensive steak I could find in town (40 pesos = £7 !) at a swanky restaurant called El Trapeche which was recommended by a colleague in Sydney. While it was very good indeed, it was not as good as the Aussie steaks I´ve had!

In addition to building the Argentinian railway system, the English kindly built a mini Big Ben clock tower for the Argentinians about 80 odd years ago. There is now a fair bit of graffiti around the base of it slagging off the Brits for retaining ownership of the Falkland Islands or the Islas Malvinas as the locals call them. Interestingly the memorial to the Argentinian soldiers killed in the war is just across from the British built tower.

I was staying in a very nice part of town called Palermo Viejo in a lovely boutiquey hotel called Cypress In which I would recommend to any visitors.

I stayed an extra day in BA than I had planned to as I was waiting for DHL to deliver my emegency credit card as two of my others had been stolen. It arrived 2 minutes before I had to jump in the taxi to head off to the airport to catch a plane to Posadas in far North East Argentina.

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Photos

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Tango Time!

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National Congress Building

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