Buenos Aires. I have been really looking forward to getting to Buenos Aires for a long time and it certainly hasn´t dissapointed. BA has a distinctly European feel about it and has provided me with lots to do both day and night.
Casa Rosada (Presidential Palace) and the balcony on which Eva Peron gave her famous speech (and from which Madonna sang ¨Don´t Cry For Me Argentina¨).By chance, lots of people I had met throughout my trip happened to be in Buenos Aires the same time as me so I had to meet lots of people for meals and nights out and it was definitely nice to have people I already knew here to hang out with. The people in my hostel here were fine, I was just not really up for dealing with the usual new traveler friend thing at this point in my trip. You´d be surprised how old it gets having to answer the same questions multiple times a day (Where are you from? How long have you been traveling for? How much longer do you have left? Where have you been traveling? Where are you headed next? What do you do back home?). Although these questions are great ways to break the ice with people, after 6 months of answering them (and I´ll admit it, asking them) they make me want to vomit.
Buenos Aires has lots of really interesting street art.
Anyways, Buenos Aires is home to one of the coolest bookstores I´ve been to. El Ateneo has several branches throughout the city, but one of them was built inside an old theater. The seats have been removed and replaced with bookshelves, which also line the balconies. A couple of the balconies have couches for reading and there is a cafe on the stage. Really great place.
I feel like I always say this, but I really enjoyed walking around Buenos Aires. It has really great architecture and is a very pleasant city to see on foot. On one of my many wandering escapades, I came across the famous Recoleta Cemetery, the final resting place for some of BA´s wealthiest families. The most famous person here would definitely have to be Eva Peron, famous first lady of Argentina in the late 40´s.
One day after visiting the Museo de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Museum) I stumbled upon a Dia de la Tierra (Earth Day) music festival and ended up spending most of my evening there listening to Argentine rock music, watching the sun set over Recoleta and sitting underneath a giant steel flower. One of the great things of wandering with no real itinerary is that I usually always stumble upon something really great that I otherwise would not have sought out.
My hostel in BA was in the neighborhood known as San Telmo. This area is a very artsy area and is home to lots of old tango bars and antique shops. It is famous for its Sunday antiques market in the main San Telmo plaza. Although it was certainly a sight to see, there was just a whole lot of crap for sale that really looked like it needed to just be thrown away. Not my cup of tea I suppose.
Another thing that really wasn´t my cup of tea was La Boca, a working class neighborhood that is very famous for its soccer team (Boca Juniors) and its brightly colored buildings. The main tourist drag near the river certainly has very brightly colored buildings, but it was so touristy I left after only a few minutes. It reminded me of being back in Ecuador or Peru where I was constantly harassed to come into restaurants or pay money to take a picture with someone or buy some piece of junk that I really don´t want. All of that was on top of the buses loaded with lots of old people that kept showing up. The brightly colored buildings are supposed to be remnants of the days when the homes were all constructed of sheet metal and painted with whatever paint could be found near the boats on the river. Most of La Boca however is not like this however and the little two street tourist drag definitely does not give a true picture of what life in La Boca is like, it was more like the Disneyland version of things.
One of the most emotional things that I had seen all trip came as quite a surprise to me. The Madres de los Desaparecidos (Mothers of the Disappeared) march in front of the presidential palace every Thursday, and have been doing so every Thursday for 31 years. These women are mothers of people who disappeared during Argentina´s ¨Dirty War¨ in the 1970´s and early 80´s. Political dissidents and other people deemed to be potentially dangerous to the military regime were kidnapped and disappeared. Many were tortured and it is estimated that over 30,000 people were secretly executed during this time. The Mothers originally marched in hopes that the Argentine government would fully account for what happened to those who disappeared during this time and fully prosecute all of those who had a hand in the kidnappings and executions. It is only within the last couple of years that the Argentine government has begun to be very open about this part of its history and has begun to be very proactive in finding and prosecuting individuals responsible for kidnappings and executions. Today the group is happy with what the government has been doing and while they still march for their sons and daughters who disappeared, they also now march for other social issues. Thinking about every one of these old women who had had a son or daughter kidnapped and executed, never knowing what exactly happened to them, was a very emotional experience.
Buenos Aires treated me very well. It is truly a great city and I am already very anxious to return. Now I am off to the airport and my flight back to the US. Can you really believe that it has been 6 months already?
Nearly every main square and main street in Argentina is named San Martin. He basically kicked the Spanish out of big parts of South America and I finally got to see his tomb in BA. Certainly a big hero here.
