Day 13 - 17: Buenos Aires - Our Difficult Tango
- Vik Leann
- Oct 22, 2015
- 7 min read
August 26 - 30, 2015
Our longest bus ride yet lands us in Buenos Aires: a city we first reserved the most number of days for in South America. Argentinians are famous for Tango and beef mainly but also have some notable names, like: Che Guevara, Carlos Gardel (Tango), Eva Peron (aka Evita), Diego Maradona, and of course now Pope Francisco and Lionel Messi. Brimming with life, culture and food, Buenos Aires deserved the amount of days we gave it, but not without some controversy.
the famous Argentinian comic character Mafalda welcomes us to Argentina
We couchsurfed again this time. Our host was Natalia, a young single mum to an 11 year old son, and 2 cats Smish and Moon. She was a lawyer, and was rather animated and very friendly and welcoming, but not without some some issues as we realised along the way. They lived in an apartment in the puerrydon area which is also the Jewish neighbourhood of the city. Buenos Aires streets are mostly squares, with buildings packed side to side facing outwards, so most building entrances arent easy to find. Like most of the others, it was an old building with no security guards, unlike the ones in Brazil. The owners had the key to the main door on the ground floor and they were careful who they opened the door for. We had to press her doorbell every time we returned to wait for her to open the door for us as she had only one key. Which otherwise seems we had to leave with her in the morning, and return only after she came back at night. Her house also had no flooring (broken tiles and cracked cement), which she blamed the building management for, of which we still do not understand why it can't be solved.
​​us and our host Natalia and her son
Smish the cat and Vik
She gave us one of the only 2 rooms in her place (her son slept in her room), and supplied us with an inflatable mattress and 2 inflatable pillows. We knocked out early when we realised we weren't gonna get any WiFi in her apartment. DAY 1 We kickstarted our city exploration as usual with a free walking tour. Starting off in Teatro Colon, our guide who sang us songs with his guitar on the tour walked us through the city, focusing mainly on architecture, some stories and key moments such as the Jewish embassy bombing. As you can tell, we dont remember much from the tour. Vik couldn't really hear him and we probably didn't find him too interesting other than his songs. Quite frankly, we were underwhelmed.
Buenos Aires Free Walking Tour
We ended in Recoleta (an elaborate cemetery of mausoleums) and decided to fulfil Vik's quest of Macdonalds in every country. We also took this chance to get a SIM card at the shopping mall. We rounded up the day with a visit to the museum of fine arts arts (free, with a respectable collection of European and Argentinian artwork), checked out the rather ugly florianis generalis, and headed back.
Florianis Generalis
DAY 2 The plan was to head to Evita Museum, grab a good lunch in Palermo, buy our ticket at the ferry terminal for colonial del Sacramento, visit plaza San Martin and its surrounding historic buildings, and walk down the famed avenida 9 de Julio to to check out cafe tortoni, the palacio, and hopefully reach the congress on time for a free guided tour. We pretty much did everything as planned. What didn't go as planned were: 1. We were an hour too early for the Evita museum (opens at 11), so we walked around and found Volta ice cream, which had awesome WiFi such that Vik could Skype his parents. BTW, the museum was small (Eva Peron died at a young age) but concisely described her life and positive influence. 2. Vik underestimated the walking distance to the ferry terminal. 3. Cafe tortoni was full when we arrived and Leann was pretty tired with all the walking. 4. We skipped congress and headed back earlier. An important point to note was that lunch was at Don Julio where Leann claims that her medium-rare tenderloin (lomo) was the best steak she ever had.
DAY 3 We headed to Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay as recommended by Lonely Planet. It was a town with a long history of battles between the Spanish and Portuguese, who first claimed the land in 1680. The town changed hands numerous times through war and lame treaties until the Spanish took control for good in 1777. After the Uruguayan independence, its old historic quarter which had a mix of different colonial styles was given UNESCO World Heritage status in 1995. It is now a well-known getaway for the portinos in Buenos Aires who own many houses there, and is supposedly famed for its colorful buildings and cobblestone streets.
What a day trip this was. We never felt more cheated. The place was anything but interesting. The place was anything but beautiful. To make things clear, we spent a total of 6hrs for both ways on the slow ferry, and completed the town in 1hr. We even paid an additional sum for the world's most boring sightseeing bus tour. In other words, the place was pretty much a total waste of time and money (A$1,642.59 ~ SG160) ; a sad excuse by LP to include it as a top 15 experience just because Uruguay had no other entry. Vik also lost his kindle on the ferry. The day was officially made the worst of our entire trip when our host locked us out of the apartment; cold, shivering, penniless, and vulnerable for 4 hours till 330am. This was despite us taking a cab because the metro closed at 10pm; letting Natalia know early that we would be delayed, calling her 47 times, pressing her doorbell 1000+ times. We gave her the benefit of doubt, but she never apologised, and came up with some sad excuse that her phone had no battery (the line went through all 47 times) and that she waited for us till 12+am before she fell asleep. We tested the doorbell after and were sure that it worked perfectly, which meant she went into her room to sleep despite knowing that we would be arriving in less than 15mins from her last whatsapp message to us. We decided not to call her bluff as we were just glad to be safe and warm, plus we still had 2 more nights with her. DAY 4 After a difficult night, we decided to take it slow and woke up later. Since it was also a weekend, it also meant that Natalia was at home and we did not need to get out of the house during her working hours. After getting more pesos (our highest rate of 15 per USD!), we grabbed some empanadas and coffee and went to Congress with the hope of getting the free guided tour in English and realised they changed all their timings. Hence, we visited the home of tango: cafe tortoni, and then returned for a guided tour..in Spanish! Lucky for us there was a simple brochure, and there was another guy that occasionally tried to explain some parts in English.
inside the Congress
We ended the night with dinner at Siga la Vaca (don't go there even though it's popular with the locals), a buffet at the docks area with Natalia and her son. The meats weren't that good, though the salad bar was, and drinks were free flow. In the end, Natalia never offered to pay her share, and I paid for them both. As if Buenos Aires couldn't get any worse, we walked 45 mins to the bus stop and waited for the bus that never came, trying our best to stay positive. Total time taken after dinner to reach home = 2.5hrs.
DAY 5 We headed early to El Caminito in la Boca, as we heard Sunday was the best time to visit. Although Natalia gave us the wrong directions once again :( and we wasted an hour heading the opposite direction, la Boca marked the start to our best day in Buenos Aires. We thoroughly enjoyed walking through the colourful streets adorned with badly designed celebrity statues, souvenir shops and basking tango dancers. We even bought a piece of art work for our future house.
Us at the beginning of El Caminito
​Vik is not bad huh?
​ We proceed to San Telmo and witnessed an unbelievable weekend market full of stalls selling all kinds of stuff, most of which aren't repeated! We bought some handmade unique origami jewellery, stopped by a microbrewery, and then moved on to the Chinatown of Buenos Aires (supposedly with Natalia who changed her mind again) where we still could not find our sambal! But we still managed to find fresh soya milk from an asian shop and bought some asian flavoured instant noodles to stock up for our Torres del Paine trip. Happy with our purchases, we headed back and cooked the remaining pork with our curry paste for dinner.
We bade goodbye to Natalia, Uri and our difficult relationship with Buenos Aires the following morning for our flight to El Calafate. Our tips: - Don't bother with Colonia del Sacramento - Check the cafe tortoni website for their schedule of tango performances. It's a small performance stage but much cheaper than the huge shows
- Go to Don Julio for the best steak in Buenos Aires. But we heard that La Cabrera is really good too - Reserve your Sundays for La Boca, El Caminito and San Telmo
- Movistar sucks. Consider other Telcom Companies like Claro for your SIM card
- Chinatown is not worth going, unless you really want to buy some Taiwanese/Korean instant noodles which are ridiculously priced
-Try this walking tour instead, we heard that it's quite good: http://www.bafreetour.com/english-home