Buenos Aires - Argentina 2014

Buenos Aires

So after about 26+ hrs of travelling we found ourselves at 6pm in our Hotel A&B, very centrally located in this large city of 20+ M people.  With check in out of the way, was time for a stroll and stretch legs before crashing.  Our little walk was more like a game of dodgeball, in part due to our condition plus the frenetic nature and volume of pedestrians and traffic.  The Argentineans are a little like Aussies with their jay walking by the way.

The city certainly has a European feel to it, with many wide tree lined streets, narrow streets with older style apartment buildings crammed side by side and mixes of old and art nouveau architecture everywhere.  There are also modern sections to this the city, but we spent most of our time in the older parts of town.

The city is not a clean one with plenty of paper rubbish to be seen as well as numerous footpaths with large chunks missing from leaving potholes and chunks of concrete to avoid.

So the city has the feel of one that evolved and grew through a long period of prosperity, then through recent decades in decline but is now seems to be going through a period of restoration and renewal.

The people are very friendly and warm both in how they greet each other with very European kisses on both cheeks, including a policewoman on her beat when seeing familiar locals. 

They are also helpful people as we discovered whilst walking to see the balcony Eva Peron stood on, when they assisted us in the removal of ‘mierda’ (practicing our Spanish) after we presume a pigeon had deposited a seriously large amounts of its mierda on both of us.

When we say ‘seriously’… well it felt like we were extras in a remake of The Exorcist… it was splattered on various parts of us and we’re still finding small remnants!

A few locals appeared with tissues and bottles of water, even helping to wipe some of the foul smelling mierda off us.  We did not know that so much mierda could be fired from a relatively small bird.

Parts of the city like La Boca, where many buildings are made out of corrugated iron, the locals have painted them in multiple bright colours, conveying the sense of pride and energy the people have of their city.  La Boca has a great sense of fun and enterprise with very sensuous looking couples dancing the Tango with passion whilst being watched by people,  including us, enjoying the local beer.

This sense of pride was also observed in the many monuments and statues throughout the city but we also observed this pride when walking back to our hotel one night after a day of exploring the city via the hop on/off bus.

We were almost blocked by a small crowed of people on the footpath watching someone beautifully singing ‘Don’t Cry For Me Argentina’.  This was a crowd of locals on their way home, some with shopping or suitcases in their hands, halted on their way en-masse by their song.

Buenos Aires is a city that requires time to be explored as we learned, when finding little cafes in the most interesting little lanes but unfortunately we had run out of time to do this city enough justice.