BA is simply Bloody Awesome!

After about 40 hours on the bus going through some pretty barren, desolate landscape, we finally made it to the big smoke - Buenos Aires. We arrived at Retiro bus station which is so massive it's almost like an airport terminal - there are 75 platforms and about 200 ticket booths, and thousands of people. Needless to say, we made a quick escape.

Public transport in BA is really good. They have a subway system and millions of public buses, all for ridiculously cheap - the subway costs about 25 cents regardless of how far you travel, and the bus is only slightly more. The only drawback with the buses is that you have to pay with coins, and there is a serious shortage of one peso coins in the whole country so people guard them with their life. No coins = no travel unless you have a pre-paid card.

BA is a great city and we both liked it a lot more than Santiago. It's one of those places you could see yourself living (not that we're going to). The hostel we stayed at was recommended by a mate (thanks Jimmy) and it was in an area called San Telmo which is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in BA and is also the bohemian part of the city with an artesan market every Sunday. It's popular for its colonial architecture, art galleries, antique stores, pubs and restaurants so there was always plenty of people around, both tourists and locals. 

One of the things we wanted to check out was the ecological reserve which covers a massive 865 acres. It was about a 30min walk from San Telmo, across the river and through a nice area called Puerto Madero.  However, when we got there we discovered it's closed on Mondays. Of course. Never fear, there was a consolation prize in store for us that soon made us get over our disappointment.

Lined up one after another along the path around the outside of the reserve are endless parilla food carts which serve meat, meat and more meat.  Things like choripan (chorizo on bread), hamburgers and our personal favourite, bondiola. We walked almost to the end of the line before choosing a cart called Mi Sueno (My Dream), and man did we choose well. The bondiola is a foot long piece of french bread filled with slices of juicy barbequed beef, which you are then free to load up with the multitude of salads and condiments on offer. 

All for just over $3. It totally shits all over Subway, I can tell you that much. It was so good in fact that we went to the very same cart three days in a row to eat the exact same thing.  Talk about loyal customers!

A popular tourist spot is in the neighbourhood of La Boca, where there is a pedestrian street called Caminito with bright multi-coloured houses.  A lot of Italian immigrants settled in this neigbourhood and worked in the port, and one of their old traditions was to paint the outside of their homes with the leftover paint from the shipyard as nothing else was available or affordable. Who knew this would end up being a major tourist hotspot?  

There's also a debate that tango music was born in this neighbourhood, so there are lots of street performers, tango dancers and musicians entertaining the throngs of tourists. Another drawcard in La Boca is La Bombonera stadium which is home to the Boca Juniors, one of the world's best known football (soccer) clubs. We didn't make it there though. There's a lot of scaremongering about tourists visiting La Boca, as it's known to be a poor and dangerous neighbourhood. Tourists are therefore warned not to stray from the Caminito area or to take a direct route to the stadium.  They also say to get a taxi there and back, but we took a local bus and found it perfectly safe. We wouldn't walk around at night or go wandering around the suburban streets, but that's just common sense which is the case with so many things while travelling - if you believed everything that was written you'd never go anywhere or do anything for fear of being robbed, murdered or kidnapped by druglords and that's no way to live.

Another morning we did a walking tour of the city, which took in some of the main streets and sights in the downtown area.  We met near the Congress building and of course there was not one, but two separate protests going on, complete with sound bombs.  The Argentinians love a good protest and apparently there's one pretty much every day.  Good on them, because at least they're passionate and it seems to get things done in a lot of cases. Our tour guide had perfect English which made it a lot easier, but she was so happy and enthusiastic you could be forgiven for thinking she'd stolen some Ritalin off her little brother that morning. Unfortunately the weather was pretty shit that day, so it was raining off and on for the entire 2.5 hours.  Of course most people were dressed for 30 degree weather, so it was a bit bloody cold at times. It didn't stop us doing the tour though, so we still managed to see everything. 

 

Congress building

La Casa Rosada

The main sights of the city we saw were the Casa Rosada (Pink House - and yes, it's actually pink), which is the presidential palace.  Not that the president actually lives there.  It's probably most famous for the balcony scene from the movie Evita. Good old Madonna stealing the show from the president and years of history. Casa Rosada is located in Plaza de Mayo, which was another stop on the tour. It's the main square in downtown BA and is also a hotspot for protests, including the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo. Since 1977 they've gathered there every week with signs and pictures of their children who were 'disappeared' by the military during the military dictatorship. Their symbol of a headscarf is painted in a circle around the plaza, so they've still got a large presence. 

After the walking tour we met up with Kayla, who had also made the epic bus ride up from Punta Arenas. We had all good intentions of going back to the ecological reserve, but the rain pissed all over that plan. So, we did the only natural alternative - went to the pub.

We also visited Recoleta Cemetery, which is where many famous Argentinians are buried, including Eva Peron.  It's like a little town with tree-lined main walkways and street after street of elaborate mausoleums.  A lot are made out of marble, and at times it looked like we were walking down a high end shopping street, not a cemetery. There are over 4,500 vaults so maps are available to navigate around the cemetery, but of course we chose to just roam randomly.  Despite being quite small and inconspicuous and down a side lane, we still managed to find Eva Peron's grave - the large group of Japanese tourists snapping pics was a bit of a give away.  

Evita's grave

Hangin with Happy Feet in Patagonia

After debating how far south we were going to go in South America, we'd ruled out Ushuaia in Argentina as we'd been told by a few travellers not to bother as it was expensive and not worth the long bus ride. Besides, most people only bother going there to say they've been to the southern most town in the world. What those poor ignorant people don't realise, however, is that there's a place in Chile called Puerto Williams that's further south than Ushuaia. So they can only say they almost went to the southern most point in the world. Idiots. We decided we'd go as far as Punta Arenas, Chile, before making the massive trek back up to Buenos Aires.

There's not really much to do in Punta Arenas except for visiting the penguin colonies or doing some duty free shopping in a ridiculously massive shopping zone. Like good tourists, we opted for the penguin colony. There are a couple to choose from, but we wanted to go to the main one, Monumento Natural Los Pinguinos, which is on Magdalena Island in the Strait of Magellan. Because of bad weather we had to wait 2 days to book our ferry trip out to the island, but it was well worth the wait. The ferry left at 5pm and we had brilliant sunshine for the first time in the 3 days we'd been there.  It took about 2.5 hours on the ferry, and just as we were approaching the island you could see little flashes of black and white swimming around in the water. We had an hour to walk around the island, getting up close and personal with the cute little buggers. The walkway is roped off, but the penguins often walk across the path in front of you, so you can get a real good look at them. There are about 60,000 breeding pairs of the Magellanic penguin on the island, and we even spotted some little chicks hiding out in their nests with protective mums and dads. There are only so many photos you can take of penguins though, so an hour was enough to get some good shots. 

Having checked out the penguins and drunk some Chilean red wine (only top shelf of course - 1.5 litres for about $4), we were ready to leave Punta Arenas for the epic bus ride up to Buenos Aires.