Argentina- Buenos Aires (50 Shades of Bread)

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One thing Brazil spoilt us on was how friendly the people are. Argentina although friendly, are a little more cautious of you to start off with. Brazilians, have to be some of the friendliest people in the world. In Puerto Iguazu- the town closest to Iguazu Falls on the Argentinian side we were called gringos by a beggar (ahh gringos- he said), pretty funny. Even on the bus our server although friendly was quite blunt when I asked him if there was any vegetarian food- in my best Spanish of course. The answer we got was a straightforward ‘no’ and on buses it is expected to tip someone for simply putting your luggage on the bus. If you don’t, something Brazil and Bolivia don’t expect they will practically shout at you.

We also noticed that the breakfasts had changed from our usual fruit, breads, cheeses even chocolate cake for breakfast to simply just bread, mostly toast bread and that was it! Occasionally you got orange juice too. In fact everywhere you go- even eating places it is often bread- lots of pizzas are currently being consumed here.

Buenos Aires was very much like a European city in a way, with architecture similar to that of Spain or Germany with a city style quite like London or Berlin. The river front reminded us of Salford Quays or the Albert Dock in Liverpool with a mix of old and new architecture and waterfront bars/ restaurants. The city is very easy to get around with the metro system that will take you to most places for around 22p per trip, anywhere on the metro system. A big difference to London’s overpriced cramped underground, but not quite as nice as Rio’s spacious underground trains.

We wandered around the main square Plaza de Mayo (May square) and down to the University quarter via the river on our first evening. The main square- complete with government house, a brightly coloured reddy pink colour that the square looks towards, was where Eva Peron and Peron did their famous speech from the balcony, once Peron was released from jail. Whilst we were in the square we checked out the cathedral then navigated our way through to the river. Classically for Argentina they don’t really do signposts, so it is very important to have google maps up and running so you can at least spot where you are before you end up lost in a place. We ended up near the University and wandered into a grand University building. It was impressive to see so many politically active students campaigning about one thing or another. Often walking around places here you would see graffiti campaigning to legalise abortion or talking about how Monsanto are killing people (Monsanto genicido) and the University was no exception. Plaza de Mayo has many protests in the centre and pretty much everyday there is some sort of protest. We stopped for dinner at a restaurant that used to be an old garage- we got lots of bread here too. We also tried a local Argentinian traditional dessert dulce do leche, which is creamy caramel. This can also be consumed for breakfast as we found out.

Breakfast at our hotel consisted of just bread, but with dulce do leche spread as well. We then headed for what turned out to be very much an Evita Peron day- seeing her grave in the cemetery. This place was certainly not a place you wanted to be in at night. Coffins here are stored in little houses and not necessarily underground as we discovered. They were extremely odd, where Argentinas rich families could build a small building to put their dead in then morn for them in a special room either where the coffins were or just above them. We then bumped into my friend again from school and someone from our hostel in Ilha Grande. We then headed to Palmero to see the Eva Peron museum after some traditional Argentinian milanesa, a fried burger like thing, for lunch. Sadly the museum was pretty poor and although in a special building formerly used by one of her many foundations, to help people, the museum didn’t really have that much information about her, except for what she did when she met Peron. It did make me think that maybe the musical- Evita had been a little too critical of her and how she got to be where she was, but at the same time, this museum was all too positive about what they did. Lots of initiatives sounded amazing, however it is unclear exactly how they managed to afford all the great schemes that the Peron’s brought into Argentina. After that we headed to catch up with Andrew and Alex again at their hotel, before they headed off to Uruguay the next day.

For us our following day was spent in Palermo to see the Japanese garden and Latin American art museum, both were impressive and the art museum had some very fascinating pictures that not even some of the staff could describe. For me personally I like it when an artist explains why they drew that picture or what it means to them. It is like an artist who writes a song, almost every time a musician will explain what their influence was for a song, for me artists should also be able to do this, otherwise it sort of becomes meaningless. Everyone depicts songs and art differently and that is fine but there is normally something that gave them an influence and I wish more galleries would have this information or ask the artist what was it that influenced them to draw a certain picture.

After this we needed some food. Argentinians however don’t eat till later. The earliest most places open is 8pm, with clubs often not opening till midnight and people going at around 2am! Fortunately we found a pretty empty food place that seemed to be serving, although we were the only people there until just before 8 when others arrived. We ended up having dessert in a lovely little café called Tea Connection, which ironically had run out of tea!

The following day, we had to change hotels to a different one, as we wanted to stay longer, sadly our second hotel wasn’t as nice as our first, with breakfast being only 2 slices of bread this time and the staff being a bit more abrupt than was necessary, but you win some and lose some. After checking in, we headed to a veggie restaurant- yes veggie in Argentina!!! It was a pay by weight scheme, something we discovered in Sao Paulo. After eating our weight in veg, we headed through a protest in Plaza de Mayo- you kind of got used to them at this stage, although this one was setting off fireworks randomly in the crowd- very safe. Then down to our tango lesson. We wanted to try something new and this was the perfect place- tango in Buenos Aires. The class was run by an Argentinian woman and her partner an Irish guy- it helped with the English translation at least. Tango is a really fascinating dance and relies on the woman to push away from the man as the man leads the dance. It is quite creative as the man usually is the one to dictates the moves. We thought we were getting pretty good at it although when we watched ourselves back on a video it looked like two old people ballroom dancing after a hip replacement! I don’t think we will be tango champions after our hour and a half tango lesson, but it was still pretty awesome.

Our last full day in BA was spent visiting La Boca, an old part of town that requires a bus you randomly find on the street to take you down. This part of town is recommended that tourists strictly stay in the tourist areas. There once was a big port here that has since closed and the area has become very deprived and dilapidated. Impressively though the locals there have decorated their houses, set up restaurants and tango shows and really spruced some of the streets up to attract tourists to visit and it has worked. Although the surroundings are poor the main streets are vibrant and colourful and they are certainly trying to create an income after the shipping collapsed in the area. Even the buses that take you down are decorated like a 1950’s American diner. I wondered if something like this would help places such as Salford improve its image.

We then headed to theatre colon, one of the most traditional theatres around here with its impressive architecture and then on to an art museum complete with Monet, Van Gogh’s and a couple of Picasso’s too. In this neighbourhood there is also the Buenos Aires Hard Rock café, not quite as good as Europe or American hard rocks but fine for a much needed burger and fries.

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