Buenos Aires, January 11 and 12

January 11 – We were up early to catch our flight to Buenos Aires and meet the rest of our group. Alex led us on a short orientation walk, and recommended a lunch restaurant that turned out to be SO  ridiculously slow that we barely had time to finish before we  met rest of group and headed to dinner. Not only were they slow, but they messed up our order and that of the two of our fellow travelers, Linda and Karen. Then when we got the bill, a $3 per person ‘table charge’ was added along with a note saying the tip was not included. I rarely stiff a waitress, but I made an exception for this one.

Dinner was at La Antigua Tasca de los Cuchilleros – a very old building with an interesting/funny history about escaping thru a tunnel told by the proprietor.

Entertainment at dinner: story telling

Banyan tree in a Recoletta park, near Evita's tomb.

January 12 – Today we had our tour of Buenos Aires, much of which we had seen in 2007 when we spent the day here on the way home from Antarctica. It was kind of cool to actually recognize stuff instead of feeling totally immersed in something new. From our hotel in the Retiro district, we walked to nearby Recoleta  and visited Evita’s tomb. We also learned that the Argentinians are having currency challenges: recently, it became difficult if not impossible to convert Argentine pesos to other currencies, so the interest in US dollars is pretty high. We found a place that exchanged dollars at a 6.2 to 1 ratio, instead of the 4.75-1 ratio we got from the credit card companies. Some places ONLY take pesos, but we exchanged little and wished we had brought more dollars.

We drove past the stadium of the Boca Juniors, a very popular team – the sod on the field was being replaced and we watched people come along an take chunks of the old sod home with them. We spent some time walking in La Boca, a section of town there that was very colorful because the people (mostly immigrants)  scavenged whatever stray paint and building materials they could find and were pretty exuberant in their use of color. We also saw a lot of squatters building tall skinny brick buildings wherever they could. We ended at Mayo (for the month) Square. This is next to the Presidential building where Evita made speeches, and also the site of demonstrations by mothers and grandmothers whose children went missing during the military dictatorship of the 70s. 

La Boca area --both ramshackle and very colorful

Jim in front of the presidential building. Evita's speeches were given from the balcony to the right of his hat.

We walked back toward the hotel, stopping at Galleria Pacifico for lunch and shopping. We were treated to a tango lesson (neither of us is particularly talented dance-wise) and went to the small grocery store next to the hotel to pick up snacks for dinner. I checked out an inexpensive half bottle of wine, which was unbelievably bad. After two sips, I dumped it out.