Buenos Aires

Back to the big city. Back to the ocean. Back to vacation.

We decided to treat our week in Buenos Aires like a mini vacation. Travelling has been to much work and stress, so now its time to kick out feet back and relax! In all seriousness, after this we have a grueling (by design!) month ahead, and some time to make sure we escape burn out is a good thing. Plus, this is our first international tourist destination in well over a month. There’s lots to do here!

We arrived on the emptiest overnight bus we have had this trip on the morning of the federal run off election. Massa vs Milei, the old guard vs the radical new ideas. This election was apparently the most consequential they have had in a long time, with Milei championing the idea of dollarization (Dollarization is switching the main currency from Argentine Peso to USD. Argentina has grappled with 130% inflation over the last year. Massa was the economy minister over that time, and many Argentines see him as the orchestrator of the problem). Argentina has been grappling with massive debt and inflation, and Milei’s radical ideas are the way out, or at least that’s what the people believe.

The election was hardly noticeable in the city though, at least to our virgin eyes.

We started our self guided tour at the San Telmo market. This overpriced market has all sorts of lunch options like empanada’s. It’s one of those markets that is on every tourist “must do,” list, which are always good fun to enjoy the atmosphere, then you go elsewhere for food. We almost escaped unscathed (the chocolate shop got us). It was noticeable here how the background chatter was mostly in English.

Right outside was the Sunday San Telmo antiques market. Again, a standard antique fair. Lots of old cool looking crap. A good amount of small furniture, bubble TV’s, jewelry the rest. The standard flea We then did the long market to the Plaza Mayor. A long street (at least 10 blocks) of all sorts of handicrafts, stickers and clothes. We poked around, and made it to the plaza.

Buenos Aires has a very European feel to it. The downtown area is filled with massive stone buildings. We did your standard tourist big monument circuit, hitting up the presidential palace, congress, the obelisk, among other massive national buildings. Everything in Buenos Aires is huge. The streets are big, the buildings are massive, the whole thing just feels grand on a scale we havn’t really seen before.

We then circled back to the hostel, checked in, had a nap, and went out to explore again.

This time we went towards the water. Buenos Aires is on an ocean after all. We passed more massive impressive buildings, including and Engineering Faculty, before making it to some sort of developed island.

This island had a totally different vibe than the mainland. Very much like Vancouver. Massive skyscrapers pierced the sightlines. The canal was lined on either side with massive boardwalks with restaurants, and all sorts of food options. Massive harbor cranes everywhere. Bridges too. Just inland on the island were some beautifully manicured parks. Well laid out paths sliced through grassy patches and carefully placed trees and shrubs. We stumbled upon a public group tango session in a amphitheater type courtyard, and stayed to watch a song or two. There was an impromptu concert along the boardwalk by some buskers who really knew what they were doing, with a massive jungle behind them. It was a really great evening exploring this section of the city but unfortunately, we did not see the ocean. Lying between us and the Atlantic was a massive biological reserve, the jungle backdrop for the buskers. Another day.

We retired to the hostel for the evening.

The entire week in Buenos Aires we slept in, and after our first night was no exception. We got in to a morning habit of going to the grocery store across the street, picking up some fresh bread and beef, and making ourselves steak sandwiches with the chimichurri spice we picked up near Salta. We met our dormmate Ryan in the morning as well. He had just come from California, and was on no sleep. Thus, he was perfect to join us to our adventure of La Boca.

La Boca is the is neighborhood that breathes football. Their team, CFBJ (Boca Juniors Capital Federal) recently loss the Copa America, which we saw the aftermath of in Salta. The colours are blue and yellow, and as a result the rest of the neighborhood is too. The stadium towers over all of the small apartments. Diego Maradona played for Boca in 81-82, purchasing him from Argentinos for $4mUSD and selling him to Barcelona for a record $5mUSD a year later.

At the end of the neighborhood, along the river lies Caminito, a small colorful touristy street. Many balconies have statues, the most common being Lionel Messi holding the world cup. Maradona with the cup was second. There were some grandmas and stuff too. Ryan was some good conversation for the journey, fully running on adrenaline. He’s travelled a lot in Asia, providing good insight for us. The neighborhood was very busy. Lots of tourists taking taxi’s here from all over the city to check it out. We had just walked.

We went for an overpriced dinner to San Jose Café. Overpriced dinners were sort of a theme in Buenos Aires. None were fantastic, but they were all good.

Throughout our week we did a lot of planning for our future. Flights, timelines, coordinating with friends for visits. We spent most of the next day planning, before heading to Chinatown for some dinner.

Public transportation in Buenos Aires is super easy to use. The metro is cheap and goes everywhere quickly. Overland trains get you farther out. Buses are everywhere and go everywhere. Nothing runs late, even though the city does. Buenos Aires also comes with many other helpful transportation tools. Crosswalks are set back form the intersection in certain places to allow for lots of cars to turn and not block traffic behind waiting for pedestrians. The streets are almost all one way, so there’s no pesky left turns across traffic.

Chinatown was great too. A nice little strip of restaurants and street food was placed below the overland train. We got some dumping’s, soup and noodles, lychee drink, a steam bun, more dumplings. It was a great time. We checked out the Asian food grocery stores. Cam had a moment in there, staring at the 5kg bag of frozen dumplings, and looking at me with bambi eyes, as if she was asking me for permission to purchase them and ship them back to Canada. We had a good time looking at the spices and everything else though. The live eel tub, as always, was weird.

We then went to our second stadium. River Plate, where most major national football events are hosted. Many concerts as well, which was our occasion. Roger Waters, of Pink Floyd fame, was playing that night. So we got some last minute front standing room tickets. We got there early. The logistics again were brilliant. There are designated separate entrances into the stadium depending on your section. There are free water and medic stations that are highlighted at the start. One for each section. It was super easy to get in and out, no lines at all.

The opener was a really fantastic rock trio named Eruca Sativa. If you like bass guitar, this is the band for you.

Finally Roger came on. Pink Floyd concerts were known for their stellar visuals, and this concert would be no different. He started with Comfortably Numb, dressed as a doctor with a patient. Four major screens took up the majority of the stage, with the rest of the band behind him, broadcasting teal coloured cityscapes. After a musical interlude, Another Brick in the Wall 1,2 and 3 were played in succession.

This is where the political nature of the show took over. Roger Waters is famously outspoken in his beliefs. He has historically been the centre of controversy for his pro-Palestine views. The wall had a bunch of anti-war messaging throughout it playing on the massive screen. The rest of the show had a lot of political songs and imagery as well. This includes videos of cops beating civilians while listing police brutality deaths during “The Powers that Be,” and listing the war crimes of each American president since Reagan during “The Bravery Being out of Range.” He sang a song about the 2018 Saudi air strike in Dahyan that killed 40 kids in Yemen (The Bar), and against nuclear war (Two Suns in the Sunset). Pro-choice messaging played through some interludes. There was also basic stuff, a scrolling “We stand for _____ rights,” with a rotating cast of rights. Trans rights, human rights, reproductive rights, Yemeni rights, Palestinian rights, among others. (Nobody cheered when Palestinian came on the board, but did for everything else). All of this was surplus to the standard political fair of Pink Floyd tunes of dancing citizens as sheep, and dancing cops as pigs, (Sheep, Us and Them, and most everything else).

The music was great too. These dudes know how to rock. Roger himself is singing and moving very well, much healthier than your standard 80 year old rock star. Another Brick in the Wall and Sheep went really hard. Overall, it was a fantastic show to be a part of.

Another interesting Argentine logistic is when people faint in the crowd. While we were watching Roger, four people fainted in our area, one even on Cam. And each time, the crowd cleared some space, someone elevated the downed persons legs, and the rest would turn on their flashlights on their phones. This was the signal to the medical staff to come over, and they helped whoever was down. This trick we are bringing home with us.

Getting back to the hostel was another story though. Remember when we said that public transit doesn’t run late? Yeah. This is how we found out. At midnight, 10km from the hostel. I have no idea where the entire stadium was walking to after. Cause we walked to a bus station, waited 20 minutes with 100 other people, and then got tired and hailed an expensive cab back.

It was park day the next day. We checked out lots of parks. The botanical gardens, the zoo, the rose garden, the big flower in the lake. They were all very pretty. The rose garden especially was lovely. The zoo was a surprise though. We thought it was just a garden. Then all of a sudden, just like Lyon, there were animals. We saw a tapir, some monkeys, a capybaral, a bunch of peacocks and mara’s (a rabbit like thing), among your standard elephants and giraffes. Some of these cages were a little small, like for the hippos.

Buenos Aires has a lot of green spaces, and everyone likes hanging out in them. So do we. They are always busy with people vibing. They are all very well manicured.

We had another show in the evening. This time, tango! We arrived to the tango bar with our reservation, and we were seated in the overcrowded restaurant. The restaurant was shaped like an L, with the stage at the corner, giving two front stages that performers had to grapple with. People were sat directly next to each other as well. Dinner was okay, but the show was fantastic.

The show was wonderful though. There were two singer and eight dancers, among the quartet of the band. Each dance had some sort of story told through it. We couldn’t catch a lot of them though. The dance made for a wonderful evening of music and movement.

The neighbourhood of Palmero was next on our destination bucket list. This neighbourhood is known as restaurant central in Buenos Aires. So like in Chinatown, we restaurant hopped for our food. We had a really good chorizo sandwich at one place, and some sushi at another. This was again another lovely neighborhood to explore. There hasn’t been a miss yet in Buenos Aires. The whole city is really pretty. The streets here were quaint and full of life.

In the middle of it all was an antique fair. A large warehouse (some sort of vehicle storage previously), was filled with different vendors selling all sorts of old stuff. The halls were lined with really nice furniture, which you could bid on. A little restoration, and some of these pieces would go for a lot of money. Little shops all had their specialties. Lighting shops, movie lighting, records, chairs, whatever it was, it was there. We wandered this hall for a good half hour or so, imagining all of the DIY projects that we could undertake here.

We also checked out a fancy bookstore this day. An old theatre had been repurposed as a bookstore. The interior was very lovely. The old stage had been repurposed as a café. The main seating floor was a sea of bookshelves. The wings up the side each had a rack themselves. We set up shop in the cookbook section for a while, learning the secrets of Patagonian Asado. Apparently, you don’t salt your steaks meaty bits before cooking. It draws out all of the moisture. Just the fatty bits, for the same reason.

For the evening, we had a tango lesson at the hostel. Camila came in, and us with four other couples learned the basics. It was very different than Cordoba. Essentially, we have to feel the flow of the music and step to it. And you have to be very rigid in your movements. We struggled with myself making good leading movements, and Cam listening to the movements and not doing her own thing. We will get better!

Finally our big day arrived. The Biological Reserve. We would see the ocean.

The walk here was quite lovely. The paths were very wide, with trees and other dense vegetation on the sides. Every once in a while, an iguana would pop its head out and rest on the path, to much delight of passers by. The sound of birds was everywhere here, and even though we weren’t really trying, we saw some lovely flying creatures.

The ocean was cool. Surprisingly to us, it was brown. I guess this is the result of the sediments that pour in form the Tigre delta, just to the north. Sailboats could be seen in the distance, along with massive container ships and one cruise boat.

Our final day in Buenos Aires was spent relaxing. I guess Saturday nights are super expensive for hotels in the city, so we poshed out and used my hotel points on a place with a pool. Cam had a great time poolin’. It’s all she had talked about for two weeks.

This city is our favourite of the trip so far. Everywhere we went the people were kind and friendly. The city is kept quite clean. Its easy to get wherever you need to go, and everything is close to you. The parks are fantastic, and everywhere. There’s always activities to do, and the concert situation is fantastic. In the week we were here, Taylor Swift, Roger Waters and the Red Hot Chili Peppers all played shows.

So that’s Buenos Aires, and our little vacation in the middle of travelling. It has been a pretty low key last few weeks in Argentina, but that’s all about to ramp up now. We have a 5am flight, and then a month of total adventure after that. The fun is over, or, it has just started. Either way, we will see you there!