Buenos Aires Part 2

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We are so proud of ourselves, on Saturday we have managed to get caught up in a political demonstration against the government and later that afternoon, got ourselves lost in a dangerous part of town. Actually it wasn´t really our fault, we are blaming the public transport system and the bus driver for our predicament. We asked him to tell us when we reached our designated stop, which was meant to be La Boca. However, he must have been too preoccupied listening to a soccer match being loudly broadcast on the radio. Dom and I were thinking, ´This is strange Im sure it was only meant to be a 10 minute trip´. The next thing we know we are at leat 5km away from where we wanted to be, the bus is stalled in a traffic jam, in a very dodgy, run down part of town, surrounded by banner waving locals, complete with marching bands and a bit of attitude. It was looking a bit volatile for a while.

Luckily for us the bus driver realised his mistake and flagged down a bus stuck in the traffic jam but pointed in the opposite direction. He leant out the window and jabbered away to his fellow driver. He indicated we could get on the other bus and that would drop us off in La Boca. We managed to squeeze in between the two busses and climb aboard. I tell you if I was any bigger than a size 10 I would not of have been able to manage it.

Our new bus driver managed to get us to La Boca without further incident. Maybe that was because rather than listening to soccer he was listening to an assortment of modern music Argentine style and sharing it with the whole bus.

La Boca is also a rough part of town and it apparently has some touristy type things that I wanted to see. We were warned to stay away from certain parts for health reasons......mainly so we didn´t get beaten to a pulp and robbed of all our wordly possessions. However, our bus driver kindly dropped us off in the wrong part of town. When we couldn´t work out where we were, we wandered into the local deli for directions. The owner was a nice old guy and basically told us to catch the next bus bus out of town because of the local bad elements. He reinforced this when Dom wasn´t looking by holding an imaginary gun to his throat and pulling the trigger. 2 dead gringos is not an ideal scenario, so I grabbed Dom and went outside to the bus stop which was coincentally out the front of his shop and flagged down the first available bus to the safety of San Telmo.

Undeterred, we decided to roll the dice and return to La Boca on Sunday, this time by Taxi. Lesson learn´t by us I think. The taxi driver was named Gustavo and was brilliant, he knew exactly where to take us and what to see. We went to the La Boca soccer stadium where the famous Maradona used to play, he moved along some very dodgy looking locals who Gustavo said would have rolled us if he wasn´t there. I tended to agree with his astute observation. He waited for us whilst we visted the nearby soccer merchandise shops. He then took us to El Caminito part of La Boca and waited for us again whilst we wandered around the outlandishly bright coloured houses, visited the shops full of souvenirs, tango dancers and more of those famous steak houses the Argentines call Parillas. I took a quick Tango lesson....and yes I have the photos to prove it. Now if only I could work out how to upload the photos to the blog......its not that easy for a relative techno phobe, but I will continue to try. All in all Gustavo was with us for about 2 hours and only charged us 63 pesos for his time, which roughly equates to less than $20 Aus. The service was so good we have booked him tomorrow to take us to the Airport.

After La Boca we went to the famous San Telmo flea markets. They did not disappoint. There were market stalls for as far as the eye could see, stretching at least 2-3km down one of the major streets and on most side streets too. They were selling foods, antiques, crafts, art, pretty much anything. I had visions of bulging suitcases, but Dom demonstrated remarkable restraint, knowing that we would have to carry it around in her luggage for the next 6 weeks. In the end all she bought was an Alpaca jumper. It probably helped that she knows our intinery, we are returning to Buenos Aires at the end of November which will be good for Dom, but not so good for the wallet.

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