The city that’d I’d only seen through the film Evita, I couldn’t wait to get to see it for myself.
17 hours on a seriously comfy bus, a huge lighting storm and a car crash, thats what we went through to get to Buenos Aires! Strangely it didn’t seem that long a journey! When we got there we found our bearings and made our way by tube to San Telmo neighbourhood. We’d actually booked things in advance and headed toArt Factory hostel, each room covered in illustrations. On arrival we clearly smelt and looked like we’d been traveling for 24hrs and the girl behind reception joked that they didn’t have space for us! Not appreciated haha she then told us we could have a double room during our stay there as thy’d had some problems with the dorm we were due to be staying in! This made us very happy! Rooms of your own were generally so far expensive things in Chile and Argentina, it wasn’t like Australia where the price of 2 dorm beds added to a similar amount! So dorms were something we’d got used to and it was very nice to have a break! We saw that there was a Boca Junior game on that evening, we’d heard great things about these matches, and was a must on our to do list, and so with no rest for the wicked we booked through the hostel 2 tickets. We got there mega early, not like the orient, turning up when the whistle blows! And got to see the stadium fill up with flags being hung over every surface. It was a great game, it was pouring with rain and the pitch was utterly waterlogged sending spray out for metres as the players ran and causing a lot less ball control! The Boca’s won 3-1 but it was the fans that were amazing to watch, their gestures, they sung the whole way through the passion was there from about an hour before kick off till the end, including those standing shirtless in the pouring rain!
The Next 2 days we did very little but go to our Spanish course and eat good steak and drink good wine! All the time dodging the torrential rain and thunderstorms! The hostel flooded again on Friday night, we were in our nice dry room while others were bucketing the water out of theirs! Minus the lack of electricity it pretty entertaining! Saturday we finally had a little dryness and took in all the central common tourist sights, the famous Pink Plaice the huge obelisk and the big streets around town. The Plaice was excellent as you got to walk around the whole building and stand on the balcony where Evita once stood. We had arranged to meet two of Alice’s friends, that night and so waited outside out hostel for them in the dry!! Instantly we could see just why Alice was friends with them both as bubbly and fun as she is. We walked around town towards the docks area and just before getting there we saw a advert being filmed for lacost, very ‘laciest’ looking models and the director was english but all the staff were argentinian so lots of translations going on, but was cool to see it being filmed, a lot of work for something pretty simple and 4 highly payed actors giggling while throwing a little bit of pink silk ribbons around!
We walked up and down the docklands area was a nice walk so just chatted and saw a brilliant sunset on the way back. I hadn’t seen a tango show before so we tried to find somewhere where we could eat and watch some without it being at a fancy over priced venue, which we did in a square in San Telmo it was really cool just a 1 couple doing some tango while we sat and drank wine and ordered food. Later there was a Flamingo show with a live group, great way to drink lots of good wine and eat steak. Chris bought a cheap torch off a street seller which got put to use blinding everyone! Guess you had to be there…! We even ordered desert, dulce de leche based of course! and a jug of sangria both went down well although I’m not so sure about the dulce de leche stuff its great but they over cover anything in it – will have to bring some home. Great evening!
The next few days resulted in us going to learn Spanish in the morning, thankfully right around the corner, then heading off to see some sights a little further away, making the most of the more usual scorching hot sunny days. We went to see Evita’s grave that was in a cemetery that was made up of huge shrines some as big as houses it was like nothing i have ever seen very odd! This was where Clare’s flip flops finally broke walking our way there, luckily for her there was a shop near by that sold a couple of havanas, the only ones in her size in grey like her friends had recently bought, very coincidental but very good as they were nice! – funny thing was Clare got very emotionally attached to her old leather ones so refused to throw them away at first until we found a nice ice cream place she finally let go haha. (putting them in a nice bin – by the cemetery!) From there we headed to the BA Design Centre which was very cool, I think Clare will always regret not buying things from there now though. Next we went to see the massive metal flower that opens in the day and closes at night it was very impressive, more than i thought it would be. That night we had, which Clare is very happy to say, the best steak we have ever had. It really was perfect no idea how we are going to eat steak back home now and appreciate it as much! The sights continued through the days with the Evita museum, heading back at night to book our next destination (we are still far from organised people). Somewhere through all this week, we changed hostels, realised we’d missed booking the flight we needed, spent a busy night replanning lots, sat up doing spanish homework, learnt all the best bits of meat in spanish and got really used to the city!
Our last day of Spanish, hard course, they somehow crammed everything we needed to learn in, how well we’ll learn it is a different matter! And we left proud recipricants of a certificate and matte cups! and a trip to post more things home that we have decided to loose the weight off, mainly Clare’s nice dresses and things that wont be of much use in South America (she was very happy about loosing 2kg!) then all we had left was our last place La Boca to see the famous colourful tourist street but somehow ended up on a bus going in precisely the opposite direction! It wasn’t meant to be and so we decided to head back and to more steak and then got to bed early for our flight South to the cold El Calafate in Patagonia.
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