Buenos Aires

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Arriving fresh from our first experience of cama and our longest bus to date from Puerto Iguacu (20hours) we ran into our first taste of tipping culture in Argentina. A guy actually wanted a tip for lifting our bags out of the luggage compartment. We feigned ignorance and got out of it this time. We set off to find the local bus we needed to take to reach our hostel, Tercero del Sur, in San Telmo (a traditional bohemian area, very pretty and safe). This proved more challenging than we first thought. We wandered just outside the bus station looking at bus signs for the number 152 but only finding every other number between 150 and 160. We spotted a gendarmeria and thought we would try our luck with Spanish (it couldn´t be worse than our Portugese). After 30 seconds of insanely fast speech and a few hand gestures, we nodded dumbly and set off the general direction she seemed to point first. Luckily we ran into the tourist information office and the lady there spoke good English. She told us that the local buses in Buenos Aires only take coins ( the hostel hadn´t warned us of this in their general directions) so we headed off to the Metro. If we are given the choice we choose Metro everytime. En route however we spotted a fully official and licensed seller of Ray Ban sunglasses. I had lost my sunglasses in a hostel in Florianopolis so for the amazing price of AR$35 (approx 3 pounds) I was the proud owner of my first pair of Ray Bans. Alex had her doubts. The metro was really easy to use and cost AR$3 per person for a single. The nearest Metro was 7 blocks from the hostel but it was easy enough to navigate.

It was a Sunday which meant the renowned San Telmo flea market on. Hundreds of stalls of antiques, vintage goods and handcrafted products were on sale. Alex was in her element perusing the stands, alas we had no money nor space on our bags yet to bring it all home. This was all just on the road just outside our hostel so having dumped our bags we mosied along, all the while on the hunt for ATMs. We only found one which was for Itau bank and so we couldn't use it with our foreign cards. We strolled along a little longer and came across a small courtyard where a local band were playing and a large barbecue was smoking. We spent some of the little cash we had on a delicious choripan - a spiced, grilled sausage in a fresh baguette roll. You could also load it up with a spicy, homemade salsa and salad. With limited luck on the cash machine front, we asked in a tour agency office who directed us to a bank we were able to use, not too far away. We withdrew enough money to pay for the room and for a football tour we had booked on to.

A quick note on the Argentinian currency whilst we were there. It had collapsed at the end of January 2014 and the bank exchange between sterling and peso was 13. We weren't sure what Caxton would use and other travellers along the way had a myriad of different suggestions of ways to get a better rate. A black or 'blue market' exists in Argentina where they find US dollars highly desirable. Avenida Florida was awash with people saying cambio (change) every 10 seconds. With the number of people offering to change dollars at a better rate and the number of times you hear the word cambio you quickly realise ignoring them is the best strategy. We had opted to use a web based service called Azimo which was recommended by other travellers and after some research seemed a safe bet. We got AR$16 to 1GBP and had to use a bank transfer, but the idea was you picked it up in cash from a specific location. The place was closed on the Monday due to bank holiday but the next day we picked it up fine and actually walked around the city for the rest of the day with AR$8,000 in our backpack. It was fine.

Back to the football tour. I was super excited (Alex considerably less so and her reason wasn't unreasonable). The tour cost AR$800 each (not a small amount) and supposedly offered us a transfer to and from the stadium, typical food and drink and a seated ticket to the match. We were picked up by a guy closing resembling Captain Jack Sparrow, took a taxi to another hostel to pick up others and walked to a further couple of hostels to bring the number in our party to around 25. The 'transfer' to the stadium was the Metro. First joke. The typical drink was a 500ml bottle we got to choose from a supermarket, second joke. The typical food to be fair was choripan, which was good. We had this from a burger stand a few hundred metres walk from the stadium but then had to wait around because they had 1 less ticket than people. Third joke. The match we were due to see was River Plate vs. Lanús. The atmosphere was building outside the stadium with all the River fans walking down a wide road to the stadium, where the police in riot gear checked each person and looked in bags. We then went to the wrong gate about 10 minutes before the match was due to kick off so by the time we had got to the right gate and waited in a long queue, the match was underway. This part of the 'tour' was the biggest joke. The ticket we had was not for the safer seated area it was for the terraces with the Ultras. The fans that bleed River and are penned in by 10 plus high fences topped with barbed wire. The ticket cost AR$80. The atmosphere was incredible to be fair and we had no trouble with camera out etc. When everyone in the stadium jumped up and down together we were sure the floor was moving. River won 2-0 and the second goal was a real highlight. The fans went mental, climbing the fences, screaming, chanting and jumping around. Some had even climbed to the top of the barbed wire fences and stood with red flares. For me seeing a football game in South America was something I wanted to do as soon as we booked the trip so in that respect it wasn't a let down but the 'tour' itself was pretty poor.

The 2nd day we went on our own walking tour, Lonely Planet was our guide. Our hostel was 20 mins walk away from Plaza de Mayo and the weather was beautiful, 25 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. We saw the protests being assembled in Plaza de Mayo and the police preparing with water cannons as well. We wandered past the pink presidential palace with a huge Argentinian flag outside, the Banco de Argentina and stumbled across the Buenos Aires Cathedral. The cathedral was incredible. Obviously cathedrals are supposed to be imposing and breathtaking but this was something else. We hadn't really expected it because from the outside it looks like an old fashioned bank with large pillars and no obvious steeple. We walked into the classic cathedral with huge pillars and ceilings, but it wasn't only the size that was impressive. The painted ceilings, gleaming gold altar, artwork and masoleums made it my favourite cathedral I've been to.

We then strolled to one of Buenos Aires' top tourist attractions, Recoleta cemetary. It is one of the strangest places either of us has ever been. The place is like a town, the graves like mini churches lining narrow streets. The wealthy and powerful try to better each other even after death and the graves became more elaborate the more we walked around. We saw Eva Peron's grave and other leading political figures.

En route to the cemetery we stopped at a small individual coffee shop for lunch (we had seen loads of chains that seemed quite pricey). We had a sandwich each, shared an empanada (delicious meat filled pasty) and some 'diet' cheesecake. The 'diet' cheesecake was down to my poor ordering skills and was apalling. With 2 coffees it cost us AR$130, still cheaper than anywhere else we had seen. We were learning that BA was quite an expensive city.

The third day was another stunning day weather wise. Unfortunately it didn't live up to the previous 2 days in terms of sightseeing, but was good nonetheless. We hoped to visit the National museum, however it's only open from Wed-Sun. It was Tuesday. We then ventured to Mercado de San Telmo which was pretty disappointing. Most of the stalls were closed up, it had nothing on Sao Paulo's market. I bought a River Plate football shirt with Cavenaghi 9 on the back (Alex thought he was fat and lazy, even though he's the captain and scored when we saw them). We booked the bus to Puerto Madryn for the next day at the bus terminal (AR$775 each, 20 hours, semi-cama) from there we hopped on the Subte (metro) to the suburb of Palermo for a wander around the huge parks. A picnic by the lake was really nice, the sandwiches from Carrefour were amusingly floppy and rubbish, what did we expect. A bike would have been useful to see all of the park space, but as we didn't have one we settled on a visit to the tranquil Japanese gardens.

Luckily it was only on the last night we encounted our first cockroach at the hostel. He buzzed around the common area, which is where we were forced to spend the evening as our roommate had some strange sleeping patterns. Left the next morning to join the rush hour madness on the Metro and a bus to Puerto Madryn and hopefully Orcas intentionally beaching themselves to catch seals.

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