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Published: August 10th 2008
Well Buenos Aires has come and gone (for now)!
Here´s a rough breakdown of the trip so far:
Day before we left:
Received a phone call from Aerolineas Argentinas, the plane will be delayed 7 hours. Tim quite quickly cracked the shits.
Day 1:
Arrived at the airport at 14:30 to find out our plane was delayed by a further 4 hours. Gotta love SA airlines. Anyway, skipped oversize baggage issues previously met with US flight attendents and proceeded to the bar!
Boarded our Aerolineas flight and to find to our horror that:
A- We were making a stop in Auckland with an hours stopover
B- There´s no inflight entertainment or BOOZE with Aerolineas!!!???
mental note- DO NOT fly Aerolineas again
Luckily I had loaded my trusty ipod with lots of pirated movies, so we survived. That is until The Dark Knight finished 5 minutes early because my battery ran out :-S
We finally arrived in BA and were pleasantly surprised to clear customs quickly and easily. One thing you notice very quickly about south americans is they are really really easy going people, but never in a hurry to get anything done.
Our taxi dropped us at our bed & breakfast on the corner of Cabrera and Serrano and we were greeted with a blank door. We weren´t about to let our cabby take off and I was starting to fret about where the hell our accommodation was. I should mention it´s 1:30am and about 5 degrees.
It turns out we were in the right place, and a weary Marcelo opened the door for us after we rang the door bell about 3 times. Once we were all settled in, it was time to check out the town.
2am is early in the night for Argentinians, so it was easy to find a place to eat and drink at that time. Our first stop was a local brewhouse with about 8 different brews to tried. Danyane pulled up a pint and I had the 8 beer tasting plate. Moved on to find something to eat and drink- $5AUS and I had a litre Heineken in hand and Danyane got a bottle of wine for not much more. As we´d stepped off a 14 hour flight, we decided to call it a night at 3am.
Day 2
We made our way up at about 10am to find breakfast provided. By breakfast, I mean cold, burnt toast (seems to be the standard the world over). Tried what I thought to be Nutella to discover the SA´s spread straight caramel on their toast!!! Heaven.
We decided to walk the streets and check out some of th local museums, but found most things can be pretty hard to find. We found the building where Evita spoke from the balcony to the public and also a massive famous Cathedral with the remains of Argentina´s historical figures.
A siesta is part off daily life here, so we headed back for a nap.
At 6, we got picked up for thefootball- we were off to see Argentinos Jrs V San Lorenzo. The futbol is absolutely incredible over here. The fans are sick for it and the atmosphere is pretty intimidating. The fans shout obscenities across the pitch well more than an hour before kick off. The drums and singing start and when the cannons exploded with paper confetti, everyone goes mad. First disappointment, no beer sold at the football. Also, when it ended, we had to wait until all the away fans departed and had been cleared out of the area before we could leave.
We stopped for dinner on our way back at a grill house and after being told it could be a 30 minute wait, they fed us champagne until our table was ready.
After dinner, we called it early (about 1am) because we were pretty knackered and wanted to go out big on Thursday night.
Day 3
Day 3 was a shopping day. Imported stuff here is pretty expensive, however locally made stuff is pretty dirt cheap but still good quality. Finished up with lunch and a Quilmes (local beer) before deciding to head back for our siesta.
The entertainment for Wednesday night was a visit to a traditional Tango bar. This wasn´t one of the tourist trap shows they rope people in for, but a club for locals and spanish tourists who dance Tango. It was a great night with some fantastic dancers, but there was no hope of us getting up as it was serious Milangos only.
After this wrapped up at about 2 am, we decided to head out to a club that had been recommended to us. The queue was about 100m long out the front and I was dying of thirst. Luckily a man (parading to be coffee vendor) came past selling beers. I didn´t realise this was illegal, and since I thought I was starting to get good with my spanish, I yelled out ¨Dos cerveza, por favour!¨. This brought a couple of dirty looks from the locals and a not-so-subtle nudge from Danyane.
Into the club and it turned out tobe a super club with very poor poor music. On top of that, they have a strang system for purchasing booze- you have to queue up in one line and pay for the number of drinks. They then give you your tickets and you have to go to another bar to get served. This slows down the rate of consumption big time and not what an aussie traveller wants. Danyane managed to sneak us in to the VIP section upstairs which was slightly less crowded , but a similar system. We made some friends who were able to speak english through having just watched movies and listening to songs in english. They proceeded to tell me Australia would cop a pasting in the olympic football against Argentina on Sunday morning. We left the club about 5:30am and decided to call it a night.
Day 4
Our last day in BA this time around, and I managed to drag us out of bed after only 4 hours sleep. We headed off to an art gallery in Recoleta that was in theory the cutting edge of SA art. As it turns out, most of th art was Mexican and was very graphic and violent. Obviously from years of gang and police oppression, people have a lot to express through this art, however probably not the best choice on a queasy stomach.
We found a sculpture of a big metal flower (attached in pictures) that opens and closes with sunrise and sunset. that was pretty cool.
We left there for La Boca, probably the most famous district in BA. This is what I had expected BA to be like, having seen many photos of the coloured buildings previously. La Boca was a lot of fun but you need to keep your wits about you as everyone is out to try and rip you off. From a picture with a Maradonna look-alike which cost me 10 pesos, to us getting dragged into a restaurant for a poor meal that cost us double anything we´d eaten previously, we got stung in a small way.
Later, after our siesta, we headed out to BA´s Hippodromo (or horse race course). It was a magnificent course to rival any Australian venues. Once again, no beer ( geezus) however we could still have a punt. It seems that tapping your nose is a universal sign in any language when making a bet and I managed to lay 10 pesos on without resorting to my poor spanish. I started a whole lot of bicep slapping when my horse, number 1, crossed the line first. At the weigh in, the race steward declared that number 7 had crossed first- he must have been blind mixing up the 1 and 7 like that! Dinner then bed, airport at 4am.
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Aerolinias Argentinias
sorry guys, i really should have given you the warning about them... however without the alcohol and entertainment, i actually got one of the best sleeps i've ever had on a long haul!