Buenos Aires, Argentina

Buenos Aires, Argentina

28th September – 2nd October 2017

Sharing a dorm with other people definitely has its disadvantages, such as alarms going off super early. However, when Katie’s went off at 4.15, I just rolled over and went back to sleep until mine went off at 4.30 – I know it doesn’t sound like much, but 15 minutes makes a massive difference at that time of day. I got up and dressed and packed up my things, despite Jack telling me off for turning the bathroom light on. We were all ready for 4.58, so we set off over the bumpy road back out of the Estancia, 720km down the road to Buenos Aires.

After about half an hour, we made it back onto normal roads and as it was so early and still so dark, we all fell back to sleep for a couple of hours. We had our first break just after 8, but that was just a toilet stop.

We carried on driving a little further, until we reached a petrol station about an hour and a half down the road. We had another break there while Yana was refuelled before carrying back on the road to Buenos Aires. I slept most of the journey because it was the quickest way to pass some time and I did have to get up at 4.30.

Just after 12.20, we arrived in a place called Rosario, for lunch. There was a shopping centre with a few fast food places and a supermarket and a couple of shops, so we all got off the truck and went inside; we had until 1 for lunch. Most people went to McDonald’s but I went in the supermarket to buy some bits. The food in McDonald’s took that long to be served, that we had until 1.10 instead, so I just sat and waited with everyone else while they ate.

When we got back to the truck, Lars was already on the truck. We got on and he said that when he came back the padlock wasn’t on the door and wondered if we had seen it. At first I thought he was just going to give us a telling off for not locking up properly but then I remembered that I was last off and I definitely locked up and Sabrina and William could vouch for me. I very quickly realised that he wasn’t telling us off but was telling us to check for our things because he thought someone had been on the truck. He was right and between us we had lost quite a bit of stuff: we first noticed Jack’s iPad and external battery pack had gone from the table, I checked my bag and was relieved that all my cameras were still in it but then realised my laptop had been taken, which was also on the table. Sara’s whole bag had been taken from the cab which had her laptop, speakers, games console, battery pack and other bits in, Lars had his laptop taken from his bag and Joe’s camera had been taken, but not his mac laptop. It was strange what they chose over other things because both Katie and Sabrina had their kindles on the table but they were still there and they didn’t take Jack’s GoPro which was next to his other stuff.

Sara and Lars tried their best for us to try and get some stuff back. First of all, they went for a walk around the streets to see if anything had been dropped but didn’t see anything. Then they were approached by someone in a car who seemed to have a lot of information for us about who would have taken our stuff and said he knew how we could get it all back for 500 dollars. We didn’t feel very comfortable at first but Sara and Lars said that they would go with this man and only hand the money over once they had seen our things. The man wouldn’t take Sara and Lars with him, they had to hand him the cash and he would go and get our stuff. Obviously they weren’t stupid enough to do that but they did try to speak to some other dodgy looking people in a car who the first man had talked about – they denied all knowledge, so that thread of hope was cut short.

Next, they tried speaking to a security guard of a firm on the street where we were parked and a couple who were sat in their car on the same street as us, but no one saw anything. They went into the shopping centre where we had been but their cameras didn’t stretch outside their car park. Our last attempt before going to the police was for Jack to use the ‘Find my phone’ app to locate his iPad but when he connected to the app, the iPad was offline, so we were out of options.

We drove round to the police station and Sara and Lars went in to report it while we stayed in the truck. They came back with a report for us to have if we needed and were very apologetic, even though it was not their fault. I wasn’t so upset about the laptop itself, and most of the photos on it are still on my cameras, so that’s lucky, it’s the frustration of having typed a week’s worth of blogs on there and not having them backed up and the inconvenience of having to buy a new laptop to back everything up again, but it could have been worse.

We finally left the dump that was Rosario just after 4, so three hours later than planned, and still had 300km to go to get to Buenos Aires so we knew it was going to be a late one. It also didn’t help that I needed the toilet but I was too scared to ask because we were so far behind schedule already.

At around 5.30, we came to a standstill on the motorway. This didn’t help my need for the toilet but I didn’t complain because we were already having a challenging day; eventually I got up and had to have a wee behind the truck tyres because I was too desperate and we weren’t moving anywhere. To try and pass some time, we got the cards out and played a few rounds, until we got bored of that too.

At 7.45, over two hours after we originally stopped and nearly fifteen hours after we left the estancia, we finally got moving again. We drove past an overturned lorry and carried on to Buenos Aires, in the pitch black, still with 220km to go – a day that was already going to be long was just getting longer by the minute.

We stopped at a service station about 45 minutes after setting off again so that we could have a proper toilet stop and get some snacks for dinner if we wanted because everywhere would be shut when we eventually got to Buenos Aires. At 8.50, we set off with 167km to go.

Back on the truck, most people started to fall asleep: it was dark outside and it was getting late. When I woke up, we had just arrived into the city centre of Buenos Aires. It was very pretty and it kind of reminded me of a smaller and less chaotic version of New York. We finally pulled up outside of our hotel at 11 – 18 hours after leaving the estancia. We were all very tired!

After unloading the truck, the man behind the reception desk sorted out our rooms and we all disappeared to bed for the night. Lars didn’t give us any information about the city, like he normally would, because we were all too tired and would have probably forgot the next day. It was nice to be back in a proper bed, with just me and Sabrina in the room again.

After a cold night’s sleep (the room was huge and ceilings were so high, so there wasn’t much to keep the heat in), I woke up just after 7. I lay in bed for a while which was nice, before getting up just after 8 to shower and get ready for the day. We all met at breakfast at 9 so that Lars could give us a little briefing and some information about Buenos Aires itself. For most of us, we only had one thing on our agenda for the day and it was to replace all of the things that were stolen in Rosario.

At around 10.30, we all met in the reception area to head to a shopping mall that we had researched. Sara had met someone on Tinder, who apparently used to live in Buenos Aires, so he knew the area quite well and he came with us for the day. Although he said he knew the area well, he didn’t take us in the right direction at first, despite me checking a map and saying we were walking in the wrong direction. We eventually found the shopping mall and split up to look for the different things that we needed; me, Sabrina Katie and Jack stuck together though because me and Jack were after the same sort of thing.

After a few hours of looking around different shops and comparing prices and weighing up our options, we both settled for new laptops from the same shop. I felt a bit uneasy buying a new laptop from a different country but I was told it could be set up in English and I knew the make ‘HP’ so I thought I may as well go for it – I didn’t have many other options.

We all met up again for lunch and went to the food court. I got a sandwich and a drink before we split up again. Half of the group were finished with their shopping and went back to the hotel, while the four of us carried on looking around the shops; Katie and Sabrina wanted to look at clothes and me and Jack wanted new cases for our laptops.

Once we had finished in the mall, we walked back to the hotel. On the way, we stopped in a few phone shops and enquired about getting our screens fixed: mine had just given up working in some places and while I was on a spending spree I thought I may as well try and get it fixed, and Katie’s screen was cracked. Quite close to the hotel, we found a shop which was offering to do it relatively cheap compared to other South American places I have previously tried. I always knew it would be a risk getting it fixed in another country but it was getting very difficult to use, so I thought I may as well go for it.

After I was all sorted out electronically, we walked back to the hotel around 5ish. It was a long day to say that we were just shopping to replace stuff and we weren’t being tourists.

Back at the hotel, I tried to set up my laptop and get myself organised but I could only seem to get the laptop to show up the Spanish language and it didn’t seem to want to download the English language. Even though me and Sabrina tired and tried (and Sabrina can speak Spanish), we could not get the language to change to English and it was very frustrating. On a slightly more positive note, my phone screen was working again, but the touch on my home button had stopped working – just my luck. It is manageable though, it just means I have to type my password in every time which is annoying but not as annoying as the screen was.

Time passed very quickly in the room and before we knew it, it was 7.30 and we had to meet in reception for dinner. We weren’t having a goodbye dinner on this leg because no one was leaving, so there wasn’t much point. Earlier in the day, Lars had met two of the new people, so invited them along for dinner too which was nice for them to meet us a little earlier than normal. I wasn’t particularly hungry when it came to ordering food, so me and Sabrina shared a chicken sandwich and chips. When the food arrived, I was glad I shared it because it was very boring and not very nice – it was literally a piece of chicken on a bread roll, no salad or sauces or anything to excite it at all. Because the meal was so boring, I treated myself to a dessert; I had chocolate brownie with ice cream and dulche de leche – it was so good!

So good!

After dinner, we went back to the hotel. I tried to carry on messing with my laptop but I was just getting more and more frustrated, so I ended up giving up and going to bed.

My sleep on the second night was much better because I had found a duvet in the room that I threw on over the top of my blankets. I slept that well, that it was my alarm that woke me at 8. We had decided to get up early again because we wanted breakfast and time to get ready before we were heading out to do a walking tour. Before breakfast, I decided to hand wash some of my clothes in the sink; I rinsed them out that hard that I blistered my thumb on my right hand and my finger on my left hand and they were very painful blisters.

At 9, we all went for breakfast. I liked the breakfast in the Buenos Aires hotel because there were cakes on offer! Not the healthiest of breakfasts but tasty.

After breakfast, me and Sabrina walked back to the phone shop to see if they could fix the touch button that they had broken. Annoyingly, the shop was shut at the weekend and as our only free days left were Saturday and Sunday, I couldn’t get it fixed. It’s a good job the problem was manageable and I always knew there would be a risk taking it to be fixed in a backstreet shop, so I couldn’t complain too much. We walked back to the hotel to meet everyone who wanted to do the walking tour at 10.30, so we could all walk up together for it to start at 11.

We got to the square a little early, so we had to wait about 10 minutes for the guide to arrive. The woman that arrived to show us around Buenos Aires was called Himena; she was from Buenos Aires and had lived there all her life, so she was full of useful information. The tour was mostly about politics – which didn’t really interest me – and history – which I did find very interesting.

Buenos Aires is 202 kilometres squared and has a population of 13 million people. Most of the architecture is inspired by the Europeans because in the 20th century, there was a big Italian immigration into the city.

In 1810, there was a revolution in Argentina and they made their first local government. It took a few years to become fully established but in 1816, the Argentineans signed an independence document from the Spanish. In the square where we met to start the tour, there is a large monument that represents this independence. There is a woman on top holding a scroll which represents the republic hold the independence act. There are also women farming which represents the massive agricultural side of Argentina and there are condors to represent the Andes mountains which run down the west of the country. The fountain and the water represent the river that runs by Buenos Aires and the fence around is there to protect the monument from vandalism.

We walked around the back of the monument to see the National Congress building. It took them forty years to build it, from 1906 – 1946 and the final piece that they put on was a statue at the very top. It is behind the national flag and weighs more than 20 tonnes. It is a statue of a woman ‘La Republica’ – the same as in the other monument – riding four horses, to represent the freedom. The top of the National Congress building is made of copper which has tarnished to the green colour over time and exposure to air. The black doors in the centre of the building are only opened once or twice a year when the president goes to the building; every day worked just use the side doors. Himena told us a little bit about Evita, who was an actress and then married a politician who became the president, so she became the First Lady in 1946. Before she was the First Lady, women in Argentina weren’t allowed to vote; she managed to change this and by 1951 they could and the percentage of voters nationally, rose. Due to her work, one of the rooms in the National Congress building was dedicated to her and decorated accordingly.

When we were stood facing the National Congress building, we could look to the right and see a building called El Molino (windmill) on the corner. The building is currently covered in scaffolding as it is at risk of falling down. It was originally a theatre but they are now trying to restore it and make it into a museum, but this will take time.

El Molino

Next, we went to kilometre 0 in Buenos Aires. This is the origin point of all the road signs in the region, so when we are driving along and see a sign that says 273km, for example, that means we are 273km from the point we were stood at on the tour – this really interested me because I always wondered what those signs on the road meant. Himena told us a little bit about the map here. She said that Buenos Aires is a flat city with pretty much a grid shape, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to get lost – I’m sure I could test that. The road that we were stood next to, Rivadavia, split the city in two: north and south. We were stood just in the south at that time. All of the streets that cross Rivadavia, going from north to south, change names as the cross the street. The numbers of the buildings start at 0 at Rivadavia and as they get further away, they go up and the number of the building tells you how many metres away from Rivadavia you are, so if the building is number 1000, you are 1km away from Rivadavia.

We saw the ‘Thinking Sculpture’ by the 0km mark which is one of only three in the world, all of which were made with the same mould apparently. Himena said that people from Buenos Aires like to think that they are the best at everything, so they will always brag about being the biggest or tallest or widest something in the world.

We started to walk down Avenida de Mayo, which is the street that separates the National Congress building the Pink House, fourteen blocks down, where the president works. As we were walking down, we had a look at the beautiful buildings which were built by very rich people. Apparently, people of high society were told that it was mandatory for them to take a trip to Europe at least once a year. Because this was the beginning of the 20th Century, the only way to get to Europe was by boat: the boat would take one month to get there and one month to get back. As the journey itself was so long, they would typically spend around three months there, so make the most of it. When they would return, they would bring back inspiration and materials to help them to build their new buildings in Argentina.

Part way down the street, we saw the Palacio Barolo building. When it was built in 1923, it was the tallest building in South America at only 100m tall. The building was inspired by a series of poems written by Dante Alighieri in the Divine Comedy; the first book to be written in Italian in the 1300s. Due to really liking this book, apparently, two wealthy men from Buenos Aires decided to build the Barolo building to rescue Dante Alighieri from Europe during the First World War, because they thought that Europe was going to be completely destroyed – I’m not sure if Himena got confused during this part of the story though because Dante had died years before. The building had 22 floors, with 22 rooms on each floor, because there are 22 verses in the poems. Each room is unique to show the uniqueness of each of the verses in the poem. The building is split into three sections because there are three different sections to the story in the poem: there is the first floor and the basement which represents hell, then the middle floors represent purgatory and the top represents heaven, with a lighthouse for God. You can see these sections by looking at the design on the outside too. Sadly, for the Argentineans, Dante never came to Buenos Aires, as Europe was never destroyed, so he stayed in Italy where his body remains today – which makes sense.

Walking further down Avenida de Mayo, we came to Avenida 9 de Julio, which crossed over Avenida de Mayo. The street was built in 1916 and when it was built, it was the widest street in the world, at 140m wide. Although there is now a wider street than this in Brazil, at 250m wide, people from Buenos Aires still brag about Avenida 9 de Julio being the widest in the world because they hope that people won’t know about Brazil. When the street was made, they had to knock down all of the buildings on it, besides the Embassy building, which we couldn’t see from where we were, and a white building with a tribute to Evita on it. On one side of the building, there is an image of Evita giving a political speech, this is facing the north side of the city, which is the political side of the city (where we were) and on the south side of the building is a fairy-tale image of Evita to give the poorer side of the city something to hope for.

Getting closer to the main square, where the Pink House was, we stopped off to look at Café Tortoni. Built in 1858, it is the oldest and most famous café in Buenos Aires and is a café where they have many tango performances in the evening. Himena told us that we wouldn’t find any locals inside because it is a very touristic place but they have tried to keep the inside looking like it did when it was first built. We didn’t have time to go in during the walking tour, but I did want to return later. Himena also taught us some hand signals that locals will use when ordering a coffee, but these didn’t apply to me as I don’t drink coffee. She said if someone wants an Espresso, they will hold their fingers close together to show a small drink. If they want milk, they will make a cutting action with their fingers and if they want a normal size cup of coffee, which is known as a tall drink, they make a backwards D shape with their fingers.

After getting caught slightly in a street festival thing, we arrived at the main square. It used to the centre of the city, where things happened. In 1810 when the revolution happened, people went onto the streets and started a government. Their government building was called El Cabildo and still sits on the square now. Every month or so, when there is a big demonstration in the city, the building gets covered in graffiti and it has to be repainted white. Apparently, there are protests of processions or demonstrations multiple times a week in Buenos Aires.

Street Festival
Plaza de Mayo
El Cabildo

We walked to just outside of the gates for the Pink House and looked at the bandanas that are painted on the floor. The bandanas are for the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, basically for the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, which is the main square. The story behind the bandanas is that the military were kidnapping people from Buenos Aires who were in unions and activist groups. They would either put them in a detention prison, which was different from a regular prison, or they would murder them. The people that were murdered, were disposed of completely, mainly by being carried in planes over the middle of the ocean and dropped off, never to be found, sometimes still alive. In April 1977, women whose sons and daughters had been taken decided to speak out, as they couldn’t find their children and the police weren’t helping them. They carried out a demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo and would walk around the statue in the centre (which is where the painted bandanas are). Demonstrations of large groups were illegal then, so the fourteen women that were there, split themselves into groups of three and carried on protesting around the monument because this was the legal way. While they were there, they could spy on the military too. The military were eventually caught as stories were investigated through the mothers, when they were put on trial.

The second meaning of the bandanas on the floor, is Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo – the grandmothers of the plaza. This is because some of the women who were kidnapped originally, were pregnant and when they gave birth, the babies were either stolen, sold or kept by the military who raised them as their own. Years down the line, the abuelas put an advert out on the television and on radio stations saying that if you were born between those years and not sure about your identity then you could come forward and they would help you find where you came from. Out of 400 missing babies, 122 were identified and reunited with their families, thanks to the grandmothers.

Monument in the centre of the square

Our final stop in square was La Casa Rosada – the Pink House. Although it is the presidents house, it is not where the president lives; he lives in a house in the suburbs, about the 40km away from the city.

 

In December 2001, there was a huge financial crisis in Buenos Aires. This crisis led to people only being able to take 300 pesos (£150) out of their own accounts a day and many of their savings were converted between pesos and dollars, making them lose about 15%. Because of all of this, people came to the Pink House and the president got scared. They were banging on the door and climbing up the walls, so the president called for the helicopter to come and collect him and he flew out over all the people and quit on the spot. Over the next ten days, Argentina had five presidents to try and solve the problems. There are now multiple fences up around the house and another fence half way down the square so that when there are protests today, people can’t get too close to the house.

The Pink House isn’t a symmetrical building. The small part on the right, is the old part of the building and they built the left part, as its own building, as a post office building later. It was decided in the end that the buildings should be joined together as one, as it made more sense, so they built an arch between the two buildings.

On the final side of the square was a building that looked like a Greek building, inspired by the Parthenon. It was actually the most Catholic church in Buenos Aires and is where the Pope used to say mass, before he was the Pope. There are twelve columns for the twelve apostles and there is an eternal flame burning on the right-hand side.

The final stop on the tour, was the obelisk. The obelisk was built in 1936 and is the main icon and symbol in Buenos Aires. It is 67 metres tall and no other building on the same street as it, is allowed to be taller.

When we were standing looking at the obelisk, we were told to look for the nearest house. Considering we were in a business and commercialised area, I didn’t know where to look, but when we looked up, we could see a house sat on top of one of the office blocks. The house was built in 1927 by a man who worked in the offices below. He built himself the house because he lived in the suburbs and it was too far for him to travel to work every day, so he thought if he built a house there it would make things easier. After he left the house, the building was still used as a house for some years but it is now used as offices.

The house on top of the offices

The walking tour finished at 2, which was a little but too long for me, as I had other things on my mind, like fixing my phone and laptop. As soon as the tour finished, I went straight back to the hotel, to drop off my cameras and pick up my laptop. I walked back to the shopping mall with my laptop, stopping at the phone shop on the way to see if it was open, but it wasn’t so I gave up. It only took me half an hour to get to the mall because I power walked.

At the mall, I went straight to the computer store to sort my laptop out. Luckily, there was a man that spoke English, so I didn’t have to worry about communicating. They took my laptop from me and told me it could be an hour, which I was expecting. I wandered around for a bit, before going back. When I got there, it wasn’t ready, so they asked for half an hour more. I didn’t mind because if they were going to sort it out for me, I would have waited all day. I went away again but when I came back and it still wasn’t ready, I decided to just sit there and wait.

While I was sat in the shop, the men charged my phone for me and chatted to me to keep me busy. After about ten minutes, one of them asked me if I wanted them to just give me a new laptop and hope that that one worked. I didn’t mind either way, so they got a new one from the back and set it up for me there and then and installed all that I needed, so I was ready to go.

On my way back, I realised that I had left the receipt in the old box, so I went back for it just in case. I finally arrived back at the hotel at 5.50, just in time for the welcome meeting at 6.

During the meeting, we officially met the three, new passenger, Jessie, Courtenay and Steven and the new crew trainee, Adam. Lars went over all of the essential information before telling us our new cook groups because we had to sort out shopping the next day. There were three cook groups, with Char, Katie and William as chefs. I was put in William’s group with Jack and Jessie and we had to buy for one lunch in a couple of days.

After the meeting, there was a tiny bit of time to chill, before we went for dinner at 7.30. It was out first full group dinner and we went to a restaurant a few blocks down the road from the hotel. I order pasta ravioli in a cheesy sauce and it was quite nice, I was happy with my choice.

Once everyone had finished eating and had paid up, some people went out for drinks. I decided that I would much rather go back to the hotel to try and set my laptop up some more and try and get some sleep after all the stress of the electronics.

After another cosy sleep, I was able to have a lie in and relax on my last full day in the capital. The new cook groups were going shopping for the first couple of drive days, but William had said that I didn’t have to go because it didn’t need us all to pick up some bits for a lunch. I still woke up relatively early but lay in bed for a while until Sabrina was ready for breakfast, then I threw some clothes on and went with her; she was going shopping with her cook group, so she had to be ready. Breakfast was the same again which was okay because it tasted good but it wasn’t the healthiest.

After breakfast, Sabrina went out shopping and I took the time to get myself showered and ready for the day. They were out shopping longer than I expected but I took the time to mess on my new laptop, now that it was in English.

Everyone got back from shopping just after 11 and we went out pretty much straight away. We started walking towards the Sunday market, which is apparently the best market around because it is full on antiques, hand made crafts and souvenirs. On the way there, I realised that I had left my Polaroid camera in the safe – because we were being extra vigilant – so I went back to get it on my own, because I needed my daily Polaroid.

I had my camera and was back at the main square quite quickly, but I was following Lars’ instructions and took the first right off the square to find the market where I was meeting the others. I started walking down the street anyway, thinking that the market might be a bit further down but as I got quite a few blocks down, I realised I was on the wrong street and I needed to be one street over, so cut across. I ended up right in the middle of the market and decided to walk back up towards the main square because I guessed that the others wouldn’t have made it that far down the markets yet and I knew they would be looking for me. I wouldn’t have minded wandering on my own for a day but I thought that the others might have been waiting and I didn’t want to slow their day down even more. It’s a good job I went back up and it’s a good job I walked at quite a pace because they were waiting for me and had walked slowly waiting for me to catch up and were about to go back up to look for me in the square.

Once we were all back together, we slowly walked through the market, looking at all the stalls. It was a very busy market and there was lots going on, so it did take us a while to get through it all. Luckily I managed to find my patches which was good. Part way down, Sabrina and William split off from us to go for a lunch date, as the rest of us weren’t hungry yet, we carried on down the market. We made it to Plaza Dorrego which seemed to be the end of the market and Char and Aaron left us here as they had to get back to the hotel before they were getting picked up for the football match that afternoon.

Chimichurri Tasting
Busy Market

As we were almost half way there, me, Katie, Courtenay and Jessie decided to carry on walking to Boca. We had heard about it through different people and were told it was worth a visit because of the beautiful coloured buildings. After waking a few blocks, we felt like we were getting into dodgier areas of town, although it wasn’t the part that Lars had scribbled out on his map and told us not to go to, so we figured we would be okay. The walk felt a lot longer than it looked on the map but we soon saw the football stadium on the left, so guessed it wouldn’t be much further from there. We kept on going, checking the maps, and eventually found the colourful streets of Boca. Although the surrounding areas looked very empty and dodgy, the area itself was very pretty and I’m glad we made it there.

Boca Stadium

Once we arrived in the centre, we found a cafe for lunch and got a table. I ordered a sausage sandwich which was very tasty and we ordered chips to share between the four of us. While we were sat there, we have some live music and a live tango show. The show started off outside originally but there weren’t any tables left out there; as soon as the rain came down, the dancers came inside, so that was good for us. We sat and ate lunch while the dancers danced around us and the rain calmed down.

After lunch, we carried on walking through the colourful streets of Boca, taking photos and looking on markets stalls at the souvenirs. As the rain had died down, and we knew where we were going, we decided to walk back to the centre of the city and it took us half the time.

As we reached the main square, on the way back up, we hit a massive protest that was going on; im not sure what it was about but there were lots of people. We were literally sucked straight into it and we were stuck. Katie led the way and battle me through the crowds, that literally filled the square. It took us a while but we managed to work our way around the edges of the square, back on to Avenida de Mayo, but even that was jam packed full of people. We carried on battling through because it was our best way out. At the next side street, Courtenay and Jessie decided to turn down that and detour back to the hotel but me and Katie wanted to stay on the main street because we wanted to pop in to Cafe Tortoni for a drink and a look around.

After we finished battling our way through the crowds, we had one more block to walk to get to the cafe. When we got there, there was a queue outside. At first, we didn’t know whether the queue was for the cafe or tickets for the tango, but we decided to line up anyway. We were only lining up for about 10 minutes before we were at the door and we were invited inside to a table.

Inside the cafe, it was so beautiful. You could tell that that they have tried to keep the original decor and work hard to keep the high standards. We sat down and looked through the menu at all the different options. After much deliberation and time looking at the cake cabinet, we decided to go for a submarino drink each and Katie got a gigantic piece of lemon cake, which I tried and it was very good. I loved that the submarino drink came with a chocolate piece shaped like a submarine. I dropped mine in my hot milk and it melted pretty quickly and tasted so good!

Beautiful décor
Submarino
When you ask a waiter to take your photo

We left the café and as we stepped outside, the protest seemed to be heading back up the Avenida towards where we were, so we nearly got caught in it for the second time in a couple of hours. We walked quickly though, so managed to escape it, in time to reach the snack shop. We shopped for a few snacks, before walking back to the hotel.

Back at the hotel, I had some much needed relaxation time and tried to pack and catch up on a few bits. I didn’t want any dinner because we had such a late lunch, I was still full, so I stayed in the room and used the time wisely. Katie came and joined us as one point because Jack had gone to the football with some of the others and she was lonely. I stayed in the room for the rest of the night and once everything was packed, ready for an early start, I fell asleep.

Buenos Aires is a beautiful city, and I would have loved to have had some more time to relax a little more and wander around to see a little more. Although I feel like I spent the first two days in a complete panic and stress trying to catch up with things after the break in, I loved the third day and I felt like a proper tourist. I just wish I could have had more days like this, so it just means that I will have to come back one day and see it all again! For now, it is time for a bush camp, on the way to Brazil.

To travel is to live, Katie x

3 Replies to “Buenos Aires, Argentina”

  1. What a fascinating city….Evita and Pope Francis ! Wow. Loved all the interesting buildings. Lots of love grandma and gangxxxx

  2. Definitely want to go to BA now! It looks so lively and vibrant, and really interesting. Great blog!! 😘Xxx

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