It is 3:55 o clock in the morning and we are waiting for our flight from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Lima, Peru. I am half asleep but will do my best to catch up with our diary as we still owe you a travel report from Buenos Aires.
After Johannesburg with 10 million and Istanbul with around 14 million people we visited yet another mega city, the Ciudad de Buenos Aires in Argentina with 15 million inhabitants.
A lot of people told us to rather go to Patagonia or elswhere in the countryside because two weeks of only Buenos Aires would be too long and too boring. Well, let us tell you this - we could have easily stayed a third week as we found the city, its vibrant life and everything else that it has to offer more than interesting and entertaining!
When we arrived in Bs As as the locals like to abbreviate the name of the city, we were greeted by the finest Autum weather possible. Bs As lies in the Southern Hemisphere so we travelled from Spring time in Istanbul straight to Autum in Argentina. Yes, we kind of lost the summer on the way but this turned out to be great timing because it gets very hot and humid during summer in BsAs. Instead, we still had lots of sunshine with lovely clear blue skies and a comfortable temperature of around 20 degrees C. Bright yellow and red leaved trees as we know from our Northern European Autum combined with lush green plantation of palm trees full of small green and red parrots and other colourful birds happily tweeting and chirping into the sunset over the River La Plata.
We had found a beautiful apartment (with a great big gas fire cooker:-) that we shared with a girl from Columbia who was training to become a professional cook. Right in the vibrant and central part of San Telmo and walking distance to the River, the city center and almost everything else that we wanted to see or do. And walking we did! On our first day, we picked up a city map of BsAs and decided to take a Spaziergang (stroll) down to the old habour of Puerto Madero and along the Ecological Nature and Bird Reserve by the River Plata, a large area of protected marsh land covered with reeds and bush. Bearing in mind that BsAs is twice the size of London and 30 times Bremen:-), the distances are somewhat different and we ended up walking nonstop from 9am to sunset (6pm). By the time we came back home, we were tired but continued talking long into the night about all the great things that we had seen and encountered that day. And it was decided then and there that we would carry on walking and do Buenos Aires by foot.
What followed was a fantastic journey through various different areas of the city, from the rather poor and rough La Boca with its world famous football club Boca Juniors to the affluent Palermo where streets are lined with trendy shops and bars. Our neighbourhood San Telmo also had a lot to offer and one highlight was the old San Telmo market, a mix of vegetables and fruits, butchers, antique and second hand stalls, and a small bistro selling freshly cooked produce from the market. Another suprise was the San Telmo street market that we discovered one Sunday morning. As we left the house to go for yet another walk, we bumped right into some street vendors and artists, the market had started literally in front of our door and went on for 2 miles down the road. A lot of handcrafted decorational articles, musicians, street artists, artisan food, students and old ladies alike baking cakes and cookies at home and selling them from trays tied to their waist. And of course on every street corner a big wood fired BBQ with the finest beef cuts sizzling away; an Argentinian weekend tradition.
On our final weekend, we took a train and went an hour north of BsAs to the small harbour city of Tigre. The city itself isnt that interesting, however it is the gateway and ferry port to the Parana Delta. There, the two grand rivers Rio Parana und Rio Uruguay meet and form a vast river delta of over 14000 square kilometres (320km long and up to 60km wide). It has thousands of natural canals, rivers, creeks, and islands where native wildlife and river people live a peaceful life away from the big city. As with most such attractions, the big tourist boats offering day trips through the delta were packed with people and we knew this wasnt what we wanted. Instead, we managed to find a local Argentinian who grew up on the river islands and was more than happy share his family history :-) and his favourite places with us. So, we went to a small boat jetty where little wooden canal barges take river people from their islands to the mainland and back. As our Spanish is a little rusty (if not to say pretty bad:-) we just grabbed the adventurous opportunity by the neck and jumped on one of the canal barges, not knowing where it would go. We clearly were the only foreign Gringos on board, which was a good sign. As we went on a fantastic boat ride through the myriads of waterways, the rivers became smaller and narrower with every turn we made. None of the big tourist boats would have been able to take us there. The further we went, the more people left the boat so we decided to get off as well and explore an island by foot. No cars, no shops, no noise, just forest, green river banks, little wooden houses and people in canoes and rowing boats. What a wonderful day we had and a perfect ending to a perfect stay in Buenos Aires.
So, here is what we liked best about Buenos Aires:
- Almost everything from markets to graffiti to young people playing football on the street to old people sitting on the corner with a glass of wine in one hand and a cigar in the other
- Open air BBQs, outdoor eating culture and Argentinian Beef, the best we had so far by far! British and US Beef have just been demoted to 2nd and 3rd place, sorry chaps.
- Nicole loves Argentinian red wine from the Malbeq Region. I'm not a wine person but have to admit the odd drop of vino tinto here and there wasnt too bad ;-)
- Tango meetings every night. Friends and strangers meet on small piazzas or streets and dance and chat and have a good time.
- The bus drivers. Taking a bus is like a roller coaster ride at 100 miles per hour. Every bus driver thinks his bus is a Ferrari and races other buses, preferably to rock music from ACDC that they play at full volume over the bus loudspeaker system. If you dont hold on tight, you get thrown around from front to back. Great fun if you have a seat and watch bags and laptops flying around, people involuntarily hugging each other as they try and stay on both feet, swearing loudly. Hahaha just the thought of it makes me laugh out loud:-))
And what we did not like at all:
- A lot of grumpy faces :-(( We think people from Buenos Aires have lost the ability to smile
- Dumping household rubbish everywhere. How and why the hell do you take a big screen television 3 miles into a protected nature reserve and throw it in a river?
- The bus drivers, when you are not in a bus! Pedestrians have no rights at all, and if you see a bus approaching you better run to get out of its way.
Overall we had a fantastic time and can highly recommend this lively city and its surrounding countryside to anybody traveling to South America.
The link with more photos of Buenos Aires is in our previous post
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