Buenos Aires

Got to Buenos Aires after sweating buckets for 17hours on a long sleepless bus from Mendoza. Met Joe, Ric's mate who's flown here from Australia, and checked into Milhouse, another party hostel. And here's what we did:

Recoleta Cementery

Thought it was a bit weird going to visit a cementery but then again Recoleta isn't a normal cementery. It's and exclusive cementery for the rich and famous of Buenos Aires and the graves are not graves, they are huge monumental shrines adorned with statues, stained glass windows, giant Jesus' on the cross and elaborately decorated doors. The dead in Recoleta live better than a lot of South Americans that are still living! Saw Evita's tomb, it was quite unimpressive.

Bomba del Tiempo

Me and Ric went to see Bomba del Tiempo and it was one of my favourite nights out of the whole trip. Its a group of musicians who play all sorts of percussion instruments live inside an old factory, they were absolutely amazing. One guy stands at the front and conducts it all using random hand gestures and its completely spontaneous and improvised. They had guest artists on too, a guy on keyboards, a singer and a rapper. Music was awesome, had a little dance, loved it!

La Boca

Did a walking tour of La Boca, the neighbourhood where all the immigrants first settled, and home to Boca Juniors football club. We saw the stadium and the football museum, instead of visiting the museum we spent most of our time counting up our pennies in the stands so that we could buy hangover curing hot dogs, which suited me fine as I'm not that interested in Maradona anyway! Apparently the fans are slightly uncivilised and like to throw bleach at each other. The tour was really good, the guide told us loads about the history of the area and the people, as well as what the plans are for the future. She said it used to be a really prosperous area but the government closed down the dock and moved all the factories to the north because they were poluting the river, so now the area is really run down and full of crack heads and criminals - sounds like Salford. All the buildings are painted bright colours and its because the streets used to flood in the rainy season and they had to repaint using the paint left over from the boats in the port.

Palmero 400 grams of Steak

Palmero is one of the nicer areas of Buenos Aires, full of parks, zoos and trendy shops. We went to the park, then to the main plaza that was full of bars and restaurants. For tea we went to La Cabrera for happy hour! Its known to be the best steak house in the city, well posh, and as we went at 7 o'clock, just as it opened, everything was half price! We all had 100 peso steaks and a 130 peso bottle of red wine and got 50%. Our steaks were the biggest cuts of meat I have ever seen. They were 400 grams of perfectly cooked cow, accompanied with 15 little pots of random garnishes, salads and sauces. AMAZING. And it only came to about a tenner each.

Puerto Madero

Salford Quays in Argentina. Glass high rise appartments, fancy restaurant and pricey bars. Went on an old boat museum about the Argentinian navy, wandered along the waterside and had an orange juice on a terrace in the sun.

Tango

Tango was invented in Buenos aires, by the immigrants in La Boca. It was the forbidden dance of prostitutes. We went on a tango evening; dance lesson, 3 course meal, unlimited booze and a show. It was brilliant. The class was really funny, we learnt the 8 basic steps and how to do "tango face". The food was great, we drank far too much and the show was amazing. 

In conclusion...

Liked BA a lot. Really nice capital, buildings are impressive. Its expensive and the weather hasn't been great.

Favourite Person

Old Scottish guy called Dave who we met in the cementery and who stalked us for the rest of the week, turning up at our dorm room when we were all hungover in bed and trying to make plans with us.