Buenos Aires
We arrived in Argentina
in the middle of the night and had to wait around 20 minutes for a cab, so as a
tribute to Diego Maradona, we amused ourselves by playing hand ball with our
scrunched up boarding passes in the middle of the arrivals hall.
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| Metropolitan Cathedral |
On the first day
after we had a few hours’ sleep I headed out to get my hair done. I didn’t get
back to the hotel until what felt like days later as they didn’t do what I
asked so I had to basically get it done again. I am so happy that I won’t need
to bother with it until I get to the USA and am able to explain what I want in
English! We stayed close to the hotel for the rest of the day as we were
knackered from travelling and arriving in the city so late.
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| Recoleta |
It was meant to be a
tour of Recoleta,
which is a prosperous area of the city, but it was more than that. We learned
about how Buenos Aires was established, and how much of it was rebuilt in the
early 1900s marking 100 years since Argentina won independence. Much of the
architecture in the city draws comparisons with Paris or Madrid, and has a very
European feel to it. A great deal of the more colonial-type architecture we’ve
seen in other Latin American countries was knocked down.
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| Basilica de Santisimo Sacramento |
Argentina was instrumental in gaining independence for many
other South American countries, through its hero, San
Martin who was later exiled for refusing to fight for the Argentinian army
against his own people in the civil war. We learned about the conflict with the
English in the early 1980s over the Falkland
Islands, (or Islas Malvinas as they are known in Argentina) and how
Margaret Thatcher came down hard on Argentina, who lost 900 men and its whole
airforce. The guide told us how Argentina got revenge on the English in the
1986 World Cup with Maradona’s famous Hand
of God goal, and the subsequent Greatest
Goal Ever (arguable), beating the English 2-0. Our tour guide even played
that goal through a speaker for us to hear the commentators go nuts.
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| Edificio Kavanagh |
We visited a hidden church, Basilica
de Santisimo Sacramento which was completely blocked by another building, Edificio
Kavanagh. The church was built by the Anchorena
family, one of the most affluent families in the city whose mansion was on the
other side of a park, opposite the church, so they could admire it from their
home whenever they liked. The son of this family fell in love with a rich Irish
girl, Corina Kavanagh, but his parents were not too impressed and forbade him
from marrying her as she wasn’t from old money.
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| Anchorena home |
As a result, the couple split
up and Corina and her family were very hurt and offended by this. So, while the
Anchorena family went to Paris on holiday for 6 months, Corina was out for
revenge and bought the plot of land between the Anchorena’s mansion and their church,
constructing what was, at the time, the tallest building in Latin America,
completely blocking the church from view. The people of Buenos Aires liken its
shape to the middle finger, so every time the Anchorenas opened their curtains,
that’s what they’d see.
The tour continued through Recoleta, where we admired the
mansions and palaces until we reached our final stop, the Recoleta cemetery.
This is an amazing example of cemetery architecture, each crypt more elaborate
than the next.
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| Recoleta cemetery |
This cemetery is also the final resting place of heavyweight
boxer, Luis
Ángel Firpo, Napoleon Bonaparte’s illegitimate granddaughter Isabel
Walewski Colonna, and of course, Eva
Peron.
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| Luis Angel Firpo |
Buenos Aires is stunning and it’s huge and we walked miles around
the city swathed in purple Jacaranda blossom on the following day; visiting the
San
Francisco museum, which displays religious artefacts from the
past couple of hundred years, the city
museum which is tiny and showcases something different every few weeks,
(that week it was tiles) and the Tango
museum where people were having lessons and they have a weekly Tango
show.
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| Tango Museum |
Colonia del Sacramento
- Uruguay
We’d booked to go across the water to Uruguay the next day,
and we planned to spend the night in Colonia
del Sacramento. The trip on the ferry was 50km and took around an hour and
a quarter. There are 2 or 3 ferry companies but we managed to find a 40%
discount code for the
Colonia Express which cost us a total of 1800 pesos (£45) for both of us,
return. This was a really good deal in comparison with the bigger operator,
Buquebus which offered us a price of 4500 pesos (£110) for similar dates and
times.
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| Church in Colonia |
Colonia was a gorgeous UNESCO colonial (funny that) town,
with cobbled streets and lovely, well-preserved architecture influenced by
Portuguese and Spanish settlers. It poured with rain all day though, and we
were soaked to the bone with no change of clothes, but we made the most of it,
running from one tiny museum to the next.
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| View over Colonia |
We bought a ticket for 50 pesos which
allowed us entry to 7 museums
and we made it to the 4 that were open, including the municipal museum, the
Portuguese museum, the Nacarello House museum and the Museo del Azulejo (tile
museum). All of them told us about the settlers and their influence, including architecture,
furniture and art, but the municipal museum also displayed dinosaur bones and
local birds and insects.
That night we feasted on the national dish of Chivitos,
which is a huge greasy tasty plate full of thinly sliced beef with ham, cheese,
fried eggs, salad and chips, although I think it is normally eaten as a type of
sandwich in bread.
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| Chivitos |
The weather the next day was much better so we spent the
morning strolling around the town and visiting the artisanal markets in the
sunshine, before heading back to BA on the ferry. We had planned to go to the
Tango show at the Tango museum but we were starving so we stopped for some food
by the port and headed back to the hotel.
Buenos Aires again
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| Palermo market |
The next day we went to Palermo,
a trendy ‘barrio’ or area of the city where the
Eva Peron museum is. We took the metro there and walked through the
numerous parks and gardens to the museum. The actual building itself was a home
for women training to be nurses which was set up by Eva.
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| Eva Peron |
The museum was a
fantastic exhibition of Eva’s life and possessions. She was an actress from a
poor area of Argentina whose career started to take off, before she met her
future husband and future President Juan Peron and concentrated on supporting
him in his political life. She soon carved out her own political career and
used her power to help society, working with trade unions for labour rights, establishing
nursing schools and a children’s city for orphans where they received education
and went on holidays. She was loved by the people but hated by the elite,
particularly as she came from a poor background. Eva died when she was only 33
of cervical cancer. Her body was stolen and taken to Europe where it was not
returned for 16 years and on its return it was discovered that her body had
been abused and assaulted. She was finally laid to rest in Recoleta Cemetery
surrounded by her rich enemies.
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| Eva's tomb |
After the museum we spent some time walking around Palermo
and its little street markets. We stopped to buy some food in a supermarket for
a picnic and found a table in a park to eat it. We were sitting next to 3
ladies who were too busy chatting to keep an eye on their dogs and we were soon
joined by 2 of their dogs begging for food. We sneakily fed them scraps and
then one of the dogs stole a water bottle I was holding which was about half
full, and had the lid on. He sat with it between his paws and managed to gently
un-screw the lid. He then picked up the bottle between his teeth and put it in
his unsuspecting owner’s bag, still half full of water. We quickly left…
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| The Pink House |
The following day, we did another free walking tour of the
city. This tour took us round the main buildings of the city such as the pink
house or the Casa
Rosada which is the President’s offices. We learned about the economy of Argentina
which is a mess and has been over the past 80+ years due to a mixture of
recession, quantitative easing and government subsidising energy bills.
Inflation currently stands at around 20%. Wine is cheap though.
We were told about the dirty
war that took place in the 1970s, some of which was overseen by Evita’s
successor, or Juan Peron’s 3rd wife Isabel Peron, who became
President when Juan died. Isabel fell in with Jose
Lopez Rega, a former policeman who formed a death-squad called the Argentine
Anti-Communist Alliance. As was the case across many other countries around
this time, suspected political detractors were ‘disposed of’, including
academics, musicians, writers and intellectuals.
The government paid people to hunt down
dissidents and atrocities were carried out on innocent people who were made out
to be anti-establishment, just so their murderers would get paid. Pregnant
women were killed after giving birth and their children given away. Others were bound and gagged and dropped into
the ocean. There has been an ongoing effort by a group called the Mothers
of the Plaza de Mayo – mothers of some of the disappeared, seeking justice
and to reunite families. Sadly some of the children who were given away,
usually to supporters of the regime, want nothing to do with their biological
families having been brought up supporting the other side.
Sunday wouldn’t be complete in Buenos Aires without a visit
to San
Telmo market, around Plaza Dorrega and Calle Defensa stretching for more
than 1km. There we found over 200 stalls selling local products, food, drink,
bags, clothes, trinkets, pots and pans, as well as street entertainers, such as
singers, guitarists and dancers.
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| Street entertainer - San Telmo market |
Just round the corner was the Museum
of Modern Art. These places can be hit or miss for me, sometimes I am
overcome by the pretentiousness of some of the displays and this was the case for
one of the exhibitions there of an ‘out there’ woman who thought too much, and
paraded round naked.
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| Exhibit at Museum of Modern Art |
Luckily it was vindicated by a couple of other displays
including a great one of huge spider webs in a darkened room, and another of an
artist’s take on the Argentina and the US flags.
We ended up booking a Tango show at Madero
a couple of nights’ later which cost around $25 USD each for the show only. Now
I am well aware there are plenty of cheaper, more authentic ways of seeing
Tango at the numerous milongas
in the city but we can’t cope with super-late nights as we try to pack in as
much as possible during the day, so can’t afford to sleep in late, and most of
the milongas get started at around midnight.
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| Madero Tango Show |
So off we went to Madero, which is
a slick stage show at the port, on a Sunday so we got a reasonably good seat.
We couldn’t get a ticket for the Saturday show which was probably a good thing
as we probably would have ended up with worse seats. The trip included
transportation from our hotel which we didn’t actually realise when we booked.
The show itself was great; the costumes, lighting and rear projection were
fantastic, and the music and dancing were amazing.
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| Madero Tango Show |
I had to fly to Santiago for a few days for work so I left
Baby D in Buenos Aires. He squeezed in a tour of the renowned neighbourhood, Boca
and here is his first contribution to the blog!
Between 1860 and 1890 there was a wave of immigration into
Argentina and 70% of the immigrants arriving in La Boca neighbourhood were
Italian, many from Genoa. In 1882 Boca was claimed as an independent nation and
the Genoese flag was flown, but this lasted only 3 days. The houses in Boca
were built from parts of washed up timber from boats, and residents decided to
pretty them up by painting them bright colours.
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| Boca |
There wasn’t a fire brigade in
the city for a long time, until the area burnt down in the late 1800s and after
that the locals created a voluntary one – the first fire brigade in the country.
The famous football team is Boca
Juniors, whose most notable son is Diego Maradona, and there is an
interesting statue of him in the neighbourhood.
Onto Mendoza.
#buenosaires #argentina #palermobuenosaires #evita #evaperon #recoleta #tango #maderotango #santelmo
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