Buenos Aires

10th of October to 18th of October

Welcome to Argentina

Last post left you at the ferry between Colonia de Sacramento (Uruguay) and Buenos Aires. At the Buenos Aires ferry port we disembarked and were passing security. All of the sudden, I got stopped because my bread bag with broken egg shells in it looked suspicious. So we promptly handed them over to security 🤣.

Then we picked up our bags and got a bus to our Air BNB apartment. Our apartment was in good shape, and the owner was very friendly. The elevator was a bit scary and would take off as soon as we closed the door 🚀. We had a small balcony, on the 8th floor and were surrounded by leaves 🌿🍃. Unfortunately our room was right above the dog park and the dogs wouldn’t be quiet! 🐕🐩🐕‍🦺 And it’s from dusk till dawn! First barks before 6am, last wooffs after 12am!! We later discovered an infestation of cacarachas 🪳🤢.

Big and beautiful

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina. The city has a population of 3.1 million and its wider urban area houses 16.7 million people. This makes it the twentieth largest metropolitan area in the world.

It is known for its European architecture and rich cultural life. In the 19th century, lots of immigrants from all over the world came to the city, and later spread out around the country. This makes Buenos Aires a giant melting pot where several cultures live together. They speak a dialect ‘Rioplatense Spanish’ and are called ‘Porteños’ as a lot of their history is based on the port at the Rio de la Plata (one of the biggest rivers). Therefore Buenos Aires is considered one of the most diverse cities of the Americas.

We asked wiki where the name Buenos Aires comes from and the story goes:

At the foundation of Buenos Aires, Spanish sailors arrived in the Rio de la Plata giving thanks to the blessings of “Santa Maria de los Buenos Aires” (Holy Mary of the Good Winds) who they believed had given them the good winds to reach that coast.

So, first the Spaniards arrived in 1536, they settled in the San Telmo area. They were chased away by the indigenous people, but later resettled in 1580. They fought with the British in 1800 and onwards. They joined forces with the indigenous groups and gained independence in 1816.

The period from 1880 to 1930 sounds like a golden age for Buenos Aires. It was a leading destination for immigrants from Europe, particularly Italy and Spain. It was growing fast and ranked itself alongside the major European capitals as the place to be.

Sights to be seen

The next day we did one of our walk-all-over-town and see-as-much-as-you-can trips:

Plaza de Mayo

The Plaza de Mayo is a huge public square surrounded by impressive buildings, like the Bank of Argentina, and the ones I will describe below.

One of the most famous buildings is the Casa Rosada, the presidential palace, overlooking the plaza. From the balcony, Evita Perron made her famous speach. And it was where a lot of the movie Evita was filmed.

There was also a Mothers of Plaza de Mayo memorial. Which is a sad story. At the end of the 1970’ies there was a president, Jorge Rafael Videla, that made lots of changes to Argentina. People who disagreed with his decisions would mysteriously disappear. Never to be seen again. The relatives wanted to know what happened to all the men that went missing, but the President tried to silence them. So the mothers, sisters and daughters joined together to get the public’s attention. They would not have their sons forgotten. To this day they still don’t know what happened to the missing people…

In the middle of the square it had a tall pillar with Athena on the top.

The Metropolitan cathedral looks like a Greek temple on the outside, but is a cathedral, with lots of detailed work inside. I like the coloured glass windows, the huge floors with tiny mosaics, the high ceilings, the wood work and mom explained about the stages of the cross.

The Plaza de Mayo also has the Cabildo. This is the governors mansion. It is an enormous building with so many details.

Buenos Aires has a lot of wide streets allowing traffic to be spread out. The big buildings and broad avenues are from 2 construction booms: In 1880 to 1930 (also the underground system was built then), and from 1945 to 1980. We liked all the tall trees that grow on the sides of the street.

And just like other big cities, Buenos Aires has got a lot of homeless people. In the Cathedral there was a monument to the Saint of homeless and poor people!

Obelisco

From Plaza de Mayo we walked to the Obelisco. This is placed in the middle of one of the broadest roads in the world. It has 7 lanes on each side!!

Teatro colon

We arrived too early so it wasn’t open yet. There were many impressive buildings around it and we saw a woman feeding her pigeon army.

El Ateneo

This is a theater turned into a huge bookstore 🤤(soooo many books!!!). The Balconies and alcoves for the rich and famous were turned into little reading corners.

La Recoleta

This suburb has a famous cemetery. It is a very popular tourist destination because it shows different architecture from different times. It has Evita’s grave. The cemetery is huge.

But you have to pay for entry. It looked busy and crowded, and we had already walked around the entire perimeter in search of the entrance, so we were no longer in the mood for it.

We did go to the Recoleta Saturday artisan market where we saw interesting art work. We also saw a young couple performing a tango.

From there we continued to the Museo Bellas Artes which had “free entry” but there were ‘thank you for your contribution machines’ 🙄.

We walked on to the different parks in that area. We saw the Floralis Generica, which is a metal ‘flower’ that looked more like a satellite dish. In all fairness, a notice board said it was being repaired. But I do have a hard time understanding contemporary art.

Mafalda craze

Next day we had Spanish rock on the bus and we were basically the only passengers! We went to plaza de Mafalda (a very popular comic series, about an Argentine 6 year old girl, Mafalda who is too wise for her age and tries to make the world a better place (click link for more info). Scattered around the plaza where 3 Mafalda characters statues, but we only found 2.

There was also a huge Sunday market, the San Telmo Street Market. A lot of the stalls were selling Mafalda merchandise. Apart from that, there were a few metal arts, very original chess games, a lady specializing in old pins, homemade Barbie clothes, lots of dog and cat outfits (as usual), mate cups, straws and holders, sweets and crochet. We also saw orange peel boxes. Amazing!!

But then it started raining and we were all sick with colds so we had lunch and went home.

Flea Market Palermo

When the rain got less we went for another walk and took the bus to Palermo. Where a covered Flea market was taking place. It was full of old stuff piled up, antique cupboards, crystal chandeliers, old dolls, it goes on and on. Even Mafalda! Interesting was that you can buy antiques and bring them to the workshop (carpentry, reupholstery, painter) under the same roof.

More twine

Seeing that it was dad’s turn to be sniffling and dripping snot, mom volunteered to crochet him a cowl. Uh oh mom wanted crochet twine again! We walked around looking for crochet twine shops only to find everyone was a wholesaler!

But we did make a wonderful discovery: Mostaza is like the McDonald’s of South America. And it has conos (ice cream on cones) that were less than a dollar each!!!🍦🍦🍦

Soccer craze

After a while we gave up and took a bus to La Boca and La Caminita, both very popular tourist destinations. La Caminita is renown for its colorful buildings, while La Boca is just a riverside port that has a tiny market selling overly touristic items. That’s where a bunch of school field trips go to (of course on the same day as us!!😩). This area is home to Club Atlético Boca Juniors with the big Estadio la Bombonera. So all the tourist shops also sell soccer things and you see the faces of famous Argentine soccer players Maradona and Messi everywhere.

There were also some buildings that were turned into Conventillos. This is a name given to huge houses where rich people fled from during the yellow fever outbreaks. Their abandoned houses were later subdivided between different families.

Apart from soccer, we also saw statues of the pope. He visited Argentina twice and attracted huge crowds.

Full train

The Train to Mar del Plata we wanted to take was full so we had to stay an extra night.

The morning before we left we had to move out of our apartment and we had to walk a couple of blocks down to another apartment where we would stay for our last night. This place was close to the Palacio de Justitia.

When we arrived we left our bags in the apartment and hit the road for our last day in Buenos Aires.

Ecopark

Then we caught the bus to the Buenos Aires Ecoparque. It is a 18 hectare area in the Palermo area of Buenos Aires. It was a zoo from 1888 to 2016 that had a total of 2,500 animals. The city shut down the zoo because of its cruelty towards its animals, and relocated most of the animals to nature reserves. But some had to stay because they either were too old or had injuries from the zoo’s mistreatment. In 2018 it reopened as an ecopark where most of the animals roam freely (the others don’t because they’re rather large…). They have wildlife rehabilitation and repopulation programs. The old animal lodgings of the zoo have been reconstructed and claimed ‘historical heritage’. It has reopened, but wasn’t finished with the reconstruction so it had free entry (we’re not complaining!!!)

We saw lots of animals like a giraffe, a hippo, cabbage munching beavers, old buffalo cows, lovingly licking lemurs, shy peacocks, tapirs, ducks & geese and more.

My favorites where the Maras animal we’ve never even heard of before. This looks like a mix of a capybara (IQ and facial features), baby kangaroo, tiny antelope kind of thing. They’re really cute and not afraid of humans. At first we thought they were special, but we soon discovered there where hundreds of them. Literally every where, in every enclosure!!!!

And a puma with a very heart warming story. They saved him from people who were keeping him as a pet. But old habits die hard and he still acted like a house cat does: an early morning stretch followed by a proper sharpen-my-nails-on-the-log-scratch. MY CAPO REINCARNATED 😭😭😭😭💔, I got so homesick. What we did notice was that there weren’t any Maras in the Puma’s enclosure. I wonder why….🧐.