Buenos Aires

Arrival

After all of the trials and tribulations we faced with transport in Bariloche, we’re relieved to arrive early and hail a taxi via Cabify to our Airbnb in BA (Uber has still locked us out). The traffic is insane for a Sunday night and we arrive at our accommodation just before 11pm. We were a bit desperate for a place to stay due to the flight cancellation so we’ve ended up in a ‘Private Room’ rather than a flat to ourselves. It’s very basic and a bit dingy with a group of homeless people getting drunk outside on a mattress in an alcove reeking of urine! BA is also around 30 degrees, a stark change from the cold air of Bariloche. The flat is ‘muy caloroso’ (very hot) but at least we have an industrial size fan to cool us down.

At least it had electricity?

What shall we do in BA… steak?

This morning we’ll move across town to our original Airbnb booking. On the way I’ve found the oldest cafe in BA, opened in 1838 and decorated in a traditional French style. Typically, there is a queue a mile long so we have to skip past it and hop on a bus (using our now over-charged Sube card) to the Palermo Hollywood district. So named because they have a lot of tv and film studios in the area…

We check-in to our new digs and it is chalk and cheese compared to what we were in before. Stylish, modern, clean and best of all a great aircon unit.

We head across the road to a cafe where they serve medialuna, an Argentinian take on the croissant, stuffed with ham and cheese. Two of these and a coffee for less than £1, yes please.

Just as I polish this delicious snack off, Gustavo sneaks up on us, a Latin American arriving early takes us by surprise! Gustavo is an old colleague and friend of Diana (Alex’s Mum) who has very kindly offered to take us out for lunch. After introducing ourselves, we soon agree that the best pastime in Argentina is to eat. Briefly discussing options, we quickly arrive at the conclusion that it has to be steak. We hop into his car and drive a short way to the Palermo Soho district, this time getting it’s name from the boutique shops. Gustavo takes us to Lo De Jesús and we have a wonderful meal of empanadas, grilled cheese, two cuts of steak, provencal chips, mixed salad and of course, a bottle of red wine. Over lunch we discuss history, politics, culture, sports and family. It’s really nice to spend time with a local porteño who can tell us things as they are and provide tips for what to do.

One such tip is to get ice cream, so the next place we head is to Luciano’s ice cream parlour, a couple of streets away. We devour delicious Italian ice cream and chat some more. Parting ways with Gustavo we go back to our flat and crash out for a snooze, all that eating is hard work.

A night on the town

After a nap and a refresh, we have a drink on our balcony overlooking the city and a beautiful sunset unfolds before us.

After dark, we head out into the local area to check out the night-life. On the way we peek through the door of a bar called Festival and are drawn in by the plants, candles and bright lights inside.

Believe it or not we’re a bit bored of beer or wine so decide to try some cocktails instead! Food whizzes past our table and we can’t resist the urge, we order some tacos and broken potatoes to share.

As we head further into town, we’re surprised to see a giant mural of Messi (not unusual), the Pope and a random guy in the middle that we joke looks like Conan O’Brien the American TV host. A later Google reveals it is a new piece of street art and it seemingly is Conan! If anyone can tell us why, we’d love to know.

We reach the Plaza Serrano, it’s full of bars offering cheap drinks and pumping out heavy bass music. Feeling like we’re a bit old for the local clientele, we continue further and reach the Backroom bar. This is more of our vibe. We try a few more cocktails, all of which have around 6-8 ingredients each. They’re not the best we’ve had but the atmosphere is lovely and we stay here until the early hours.

The Grand Tour

We haven’t done a walking tour since Santiago almost a month ago, time to get back on that band wagon. This one is by far the biggest group we’ve been in, I reckon it’s around 30 people for the English tour! The city was founded in 1580 by the Spanish to prevent the Portuguese advancing any further than their territory in modern day Brasil. Originally, the city was not a beautiful destination like it is today. Around 1830, the city was rebuilt and was designed based on European capital cities. With heavy influences of French and Spanish architecture. The food here is inspired by the Italian immigrants and there are many pizza restaurants and ice cream parlours.

A primary school, just off the main square:

The opera house:

The palace of justice:

Old and new:

We learn that at one time, one third of the population were white European, one third were indigenous and one third black, due to slavery. Over time, many immigrants from Europe arrived peaking at 7 million, of those, 4 million stayed. There is a synagogue on the edge of the main plaza, symbolizing the large Jewish population in the city (the seventh largest diaspora in the world, the third in the Americas).

Next, we stop by a magnificent palace built in a French style, there are many of these in the city. They were traditionally used to home affluent families but are now used for military buildings, filming locations, cafes, hotels and restaurants. Only one is still used as a private residence which we’ll see later.

Nearby is a huge statue of San Martin who is a hero in Argentina and Chile. Much like Bolivar starting in the North in Venezuela, San Martín started in the South with the purpose of liberating South America from Spanish rule. His target was the important Spanish base in Peru and he devised an impressive military plan to cross the Andes into Chile and attack them from the South. The statue to him is now surrounded by a huge metal fence to prevent thieves stealing the bronze from the statue!

We walk through a beautiful park designed by a French architect who helped beautify the city to entice workers, choosing a variety of trees that would bloom at different times of year. We are lucky enough to be there for the jacaranda blooms.

As we walk to the other side of the park, we spot a towering skyscraper looking like something more akin to a building off New York’s Central Park. Behind this huge monolith is a small church. There’s a tale that the owner of the huge palace we saw before built this church so that she could see it everyday from her huge home years before. Her son fell in love with a wealthy Irish heiress who was not part of the Argentine aristocracy and the mother forced her son to choose between family and marriage. He chose family. The rejected young woman commissioned this huge tower to be built to block the mother’s beloved view of her church. The inspiration was the skyscrapers of New York. Maybe she just really liked the style. Or maybe, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Many monuments were donated to BA from Europe and one of the biggest is from England. Previously known as the ‘The English Tower’ it is now known as the ‘Monumental Tower’ due to the Falklands war. We’re told the Argentinian government (the military junta) at the time was unpopular amidst another difficult economic situation. They believed declaring they would liberate the Falklands would win them some popularity and they were right. They did not think the Brits would resist as hard as they did and they would simply force their hand as the UK was also in a difficult economic situation with an unpopular government. Thatcher of course had other ideas and forced the Navy to go and defend the Falklands. Sadly, 649 Argentinians and 255 British soldiers lost their lives for the sake of political posturing. There is a memorial dedicated to the Argentinian losses here, placed right in-front of the former English Tower. After the short war, the Plaza de Inglés was renamed the ‘Plaza of the Argentine Air Force’…

We have a brief pit stop at a cafe where we refuel on empanadas and pastries to get us through the rest of the tour. The next stop is the remains of a bomb site where one of two large terrorist attacks took place in the city in the nineties. Their target here was a Jewish embassy where a suicide bomber in a truck laden with explosives killed 29 people. A similar attack a couple of years later killed 85 people at a Jewish community center.

Our penultimate stop is a bit more cheerful. Here are three of those palaces mentioned earlier. One is the private residence, one is a Hyatt hotel and the other was donated to the Vatican by a religious lady in her will. See if you can tell which is which…

Our final stop is under a gigantic gomero (rubber) tree, one of many brought over from Australia in the 1800’s. Next to this area is the Recolleta cemetery where the wealthy families of BA are buried, you can take a tour or walk around for a fee. However, we have other less affluent areas to see and I refuse to pay £7 to look at some fancy graves…

Football Mad

We take a couple of buses across to the Boca (river mouth) area at the edge of the city. Slightly deterred by a large red zone of ‘dangerous area’ on Google maps, we head for the small blue ‘safe area’ covering the tourist part. There are murals, statues, grafitti, shirts, photoshoot opportunities, mugs, fridge magnets and basically anything you can fit a face or a name on worshipping Messi and to a lesser extent, Maradonna. These two footballing titans are worshipped like deities in Argentina but especially in this part of BA. The area is beautifully coloured and there are dozens of shops selling all sorts of merchandise, street performers and eateries.

We head a little bit into the red zone (sorry Mum) to get a glimpse of the Boca Juniors stadium. Boca and River Plate (also based in BA) are probably the two biggest clubs in Argentina. I know more of Boca due to a number of ex-United players being in their current team. Sadly it’s off-season and we won’t be able to catch a game!

An Overdue Reunion

In the evening, Alex’s friend Daniel drives up to BA to spend some time with us at our Airbnb. We should have stayed with Daniel in La Plata but sadly our plans had to change due to the flight cancellation in Bariloche. Luckily we’re still able to meet him on this trip! Alex used to work with Daniel in a hostel in Lima and they have not seen each other since 2013. He’s kindly brought us homemade empanadas and a special bottle of red wine from a vineyard where his Dad owns a line of the vineyard. The bottle even has his dad’s signature on it! We have a good chat about all sorts of topics and it’s nice to see Alex and Daniel reminisce of their time in Peru and still getting on great even after a 10 year gap! We order some pizza and chat away until around 11pm when Daniel has to leave to drive home.

Departure Day

We drop our bags at a luggage storage shop and head out for a final leg of the city. We take a walk around another lush green park full of Jacaranda.

Then head to a place mentioned on the walking tour. It’s an old theatre that has been converted into a book store and the stage is now a cafe, brilliant!

What else is there to do for our last lunch in Argentina than have more steak (sorry Pachamama). Another wonderful meal in a parilla with an overwhelming amount of beef and hand-cut chips we just manage to finish off.

After collecting our luggage we take a bus to the airport where the sky resembles a scene from Stranger Things.

Argentina has ticked many boxes for us both, stunning scenery, amazing hiking/biking and the food and wine has been on another level. I dare say we’ll have to come back to visit the Northern region to cover Mendoza and Iguaza falls and finally enjoy an asado (all day BBQ) with Daniel in La Plata…

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Adventure – surviving the danger zone of La Boca (we were fine really, even if we did get some funny looks), trying to get fugazetta, and sadly failing (next time!)

Excitement – getting to the sanctuary of our second Airbnb, meeting up with Daniel, feeling like we were just on holiday and enjoying some normality of eating out, having cocktails, and chats with good company

Trauma – the first Airbnb, beggars can’t be choosers! Getting to the pizza place and realising we can’t pay on card and we don’t have cash on us (they kindly let us take the pizzas with us and return!). Being eaten alive by mosquitos in BA airport waiting for our 4:38am flight. Queuing up for check-in (with a staff member even waving us through) and being told at the counter we weren’t able to do so for another 3 hours and would have to re-queue.