¡Bienvenido en Buenos Aires!
Having been awakened pre-dawn to the onboard breakfast, we eventually rolled into Retiro, BA's central bus station. It's big, probably at least as big as Sao Paulo's, and fairly manic. We had to get across this, then past the train station (also called Retiro) to reach the subte (underground) station, which would send us in the direction of our hostel. Unfortunately, on the way we were hit by one of the more famous of the scams perpetrated in BA - some of the less-pleasant locals squirted us with some kind of mixture (in the guidebooks, they mention it's often mustard or some kind of white liquid designed to look like bird-shit, though this looked a bit more like vomit). Knowing about this, I told Ross to ignore the gentlemen gathered around us wafting their noses and pointing at our bags and keep moving - it's all designed to make you stop to try and clean up, or better yet take your bags off, at which point they either grab the bags or an accomplice goes for your pockets while you're distracted. So we made it onto the subte ok, but with this horrible mixture down our sides and on our bags. Lovely welcome to the city.
Still, the subway was clean, fast and easy to navigate (and cheap - less than 25p for a single), and got us easily to the Avenida de Mayo stop. This lies at the junction of the Avenida de Mayo (May Avenue) and the Avenida Nueve de Julio (9th July Avenue), which commemorate (I think) the May Revolution that started independence from Spain, and the date on which that independence was recognised - I'm more sure on the former than the latter of those. The Avenida de Mayo runs from the Casa Rosada and the Plaza de Mayo in front of it to the Congreso. The Pink House, as it is universally known, is the residence of the President of the Republic, and the Congress is the seat of the legislature - it always makes me faintly amused that one of the most macho of the Latino cultures has its President living in the Pink House. The Avenida de 9 Julio, on the other hand, runs at right angles to this across the western side of the city centre, and is often reckoned to be the widest street in the world - there's something like 3 lanes in each direction down the central Avenida itself, and another couple on either side of this, separated by flanking grass reservations, each of them a one-way street. A few blocks north of this intersection, 9 de Julio intersects with a couple of other major roads at the Plaza de Republica, which is centred on the giant Obelisco which was erected to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city.
Why the geography lesson, you may ask? Well, it's one of the ways to try and convey the feeling of the city. By contrast with Rio, which is squeezed between Guanabara Bay and the Atlantic and surrounding hills, and Sao Paulo which, as far as I could gather from my brief transit, basically just sprawls, Buenos Aires is more laid out, classically designed, and done so on a grand scale. Those who call it the Paris of Latin America are not too far off the mark, though at times it also reminds me of both Berlin and Barcelona. The more southerly clime also means that the temperature is closer to northern European comfort levels (the lowest it's been since I've been here was about 15 degrees at night, up to about 30 during the day), the humidity's relatively low, and the daylight hours in late summer last until easily after 8pm. In short, the city is attractive, has a lovely climate, and is better set up for the traveller than almost anywhere in South America. Yes, I think I'm in love.
At any rate, appreciation of many of the finer points of this were not immediately obvious when I trudged up to the door of the Milhouse hostel that Saturday morning, travel-stained and something-else-stained as well. The Milhouse is just around the corner from the subte stop, and has built up a reputation as one of the loudest of the "party hostels" on the BA scene. Having had the place recommended by people along the way, I'd decided to try giving one of the party hostels a go, as I'd largely been staying in more chilled-out places. Check-in passed relatively painlessly, though unsurprisingly there weren't any beds free to check in to yet - this would have to wait until around 2pm. It was not yet 9am. It turned out that Ross had actually booked nto Milhouse's newer sister hostel, the Milhouse Avenue, which is up on Ave de Mayo itself, so this is where we parted ways. I headed downstairs to the bathrooms, where I proceeded to start cleaning my city welcome from my clothing and pack. Whilst it looks like it's coming out of the former relatively easily, I was most annoyed that my assailant had managed to get the stuff all over the flag patches on my pack, and the China one is still slightly icky now, days later, so I spent probably the better part of an hour blearily wiping down my bag.
After this, I went to go and check my e-mails and see if I had heard yet from Ana, my Argentine friend from my stay in Floripa. This turned out to be slightly easier said than done. Argentine hostels generally allow free internet access to guests, but the flip-side of this is that the machines are normally pretty slow and not very numerous, and don't generally have things like CD or DVD drives or Skype headphones or anything. In Milhouse's case, this amounted to 3 nigh-on prehistoric computers to serve the whole hostel, so queues and frustration were often the order of the day when checking mails in-house. Still, it was whilst checking mails that I ended chatting with Aina, a Danish girl staying at the hostel, sparked by her asking for help finding a question mark on the keyboard.
This is not actually as silly as it sounds. South American computers generally have Spanish-language (or Portuguese in Brasil, but the principle's the same) keyboards on which quite a few of the key functions are changed around or moved. What made it confusing here is that Milhouse's machines have Spanish keyboards but are set up as English-language machines, so the computer recognises the keyboards as English, meaning the keys do what they would in English, and not what they are labelled as. So if you know our keyboard layout and can type without looking at the keys, you can use them fine, but if you have to look for anything, it almost certainly won't be where it looks like it should be. And if you're used to, say, a Danish language keyboard then you can probably see how this gets more confusing still.
At any rate, this fortuitous exchange led to the two of us heading off in the afternoon to look around La Boca. This is one of the old harbourside districts of BA, the name literally meaning "the mouth", and has historically been a working-class district that often played home to immigrant communities, most noticeably that of the Italians who arrived during the 19th Century. It is, however, famous these days largely for two things - the brightly painted street of Caminito, which verges on being an outdoor art show, and its football team, Boca Juniors, the alma mater of Diego Armando Maradona and "Argentina's favourite sporting bad-boys". Our interest was in the former, it not being football season here yet, and this necessitated getting a bus to the centre of La Boca, the outlying areas being firmly in the "not safe to walk alone" category - indeed, even in Caminito most guides recommend having someone else with you, and this had prompted Aina's enquiry whether I wished to go along with her. Getting a bus involved rather more of a challenge, though, as this requires having change.
Particularly since the economic crisis of the early 2000s, change is a rare commodity in Argentina. The persistent rumours are that people are actually melting it down to get the base metals, which are regarded as a safer investment in case the economy goes bang again. Be that as it may, getting anything smaller than a 2-peso note (ie coins) can be tricky. Even shops and supermarkets and the like regularly say "no tenemos cambio", and certainly you won't get any without buying something. Unfortunately, the buses, due to the machines used to pay for tickets, can only be paid for with coins. This is due to change soon, with the introduction of a payment card system, but until then, everyone hoards what change they have in case they need to take a bus. At any rate, once we got on the trusty number 64 bus, it was dead easy to get to La Boca, as all we had to do was stay on to the last stop.
Once there, we headed over towards Caminito, trying to avoid the throngs of touts for the restaurants in the area. It should be noted that these were active slightly mroe than usual as it was the weekend, and many of the restaurants had free Tango demonstrations for dinners. However, given that neither of us was that hungry as yet, and that these places were obviously set up to separate tourists from dollars as efficiently as possible, we decided to pass on by and just keep exploring the surrounding streets. These yielded up photo opportunities aplenty, due to the brightly coloured wood and corrugated iron housing, with blue and yellow (Boca Juniors' colours) particularly prominent, but also scarlets, greens, purples, oranges and more. When the hunger pangs finally struck, we found a nice little shady cafe right at the edge of the tourist area and just watched the street-life for a bit.
That evening we went in search of that Argentine staple, a steak dinner. The receptionist at the hostel had recommended a place called El Desnivel. I've since found that just about every person and guidebook going recommends this as the budget choice in this part of town. What our receptionist was unaware, though, was that it was temporarily closed for refurbishment. So we wandered around a little and eventually went back to a little place around the corner called La Casa, where we indulged in a bit of steak and wine. Now, as those who've had the (mis)fortune of drinking with me may recall, I'm not generally a fan of red wine, however, I am growing to like the stuff over here. Unlike, say, Australia, Argentina doesn't seem to feel the need to oak its wine like crazy to build up strong "peppery" tastes, being quite happy to have quite smooth, easy-drinking reds. That evening, we had a bottle of Vasco Viejo, which literally translates as "old cow" I think. I doubt it wins any awards, but was quite pleasant accompanying our steaks, and at less than 3 quid a bottle in a restaurant, you can't really argue too much. 4 quid for a big steak dinner is not bad either, and both of us went away pretty pleased with our dining.
The only downside was that we had to hurry a bit, as I had arranged to meet Kita and Catriona, two friends from Ilha Grande, at about 8:30, and it was already almost that time when we finished eating, and we had to skedaddle across town. Luckily, this being Argentina, they weren't in that much of a hurry anyway, so we met up, had a drink at a roadside cafe/restaurant, then ended up going up to their hostel, which rather nicely has a roof terrace. This quick drink turned into a few more (though we did avoid joining the group from their hostel who were off to try and participate in "drunken archery" at a bar, which sounds to me like A Bad Idea...), with the participation of several more Aussies and a pair of Canadians called John Patrick and Sean Patrick (who were delighted to have another Patrick around as well, even if my middle name isn't John) and in the end Aina and I rocked back to the Milhouse around 2ish, at which point she went to bed and I had one more beer and ended up in an extended discussion on Scottish history. As you do.
Still, the subway was clean, fast and easy to navigate (and cheap - less than 25p for a single), and got us easily to the Avenida de Mayo stop. This lies at the junction of the Avenida de Mayo (May Avenue) and the Avenida Nueve de Julio (9th July Avenue), which commemorate (I think) the May Revolution that started independence from Spain, and the date on which that independence was recognised - I'm more sure on the former than the latter of those. The Avenida de Mayo runs from the Casa Rosada and the Plaza de Mayo in front of it to the Congreso. The Pink House, as it is universally known, is the residence of the President of the Republic, and the Congress is the seat of the legislature - it always makes me faintly amused that one of the most macho of the Latino cultures has its President living in the Pink House. The Avenida de 9 Julio, on the other hand, runs at right angles to this across the western side of the city centre, and is often reckoned to be the widest street in the world - there's something like 3 lanes in each direction down the central Avenida itself, and another couple on either side of this, separated by flanking grass reservations, each of them a one-way street. A few blocks north of this intersection, 9 de Julio intersects with a couple of other major roads at the Plaza de Republica, which is centred on the giant Obelisco which was erected to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city.
Why the geography lesson, you may ask? Well, it's one of the ways to try and convey the feeling of the city. By contrast with Rio, which is squeezed between Guanabara Bay and the Atlantic and surrounding hills, and Sao Paulo which, as far as I could gather from my brief transit, basically just sprawls, Buenos Aires is more laid out, classically designed, and done so on a grand scale. Those who call it the Paris of Latin America are not too far off the mark, though at times it also reminds me of both Berlin and Barcelona. The more southerly clime also means that the temperature is closer to northern European comfort levels (the lowest it's been since I've been here was about 15 degrees at night, up to about 30 during the day), the humidity's relatively low, and the daylight hours in late summer last until easily after 8pm. In short, the city is attractive, has a lovely climate, and is better set up for the traveller than almost anywhere in South America. Yes, I think I'm in love.
At any rate, appreciation of many of the finer points of this were not immediately obvious when I trudged up to the door of the Milhouse hostel that Saturday morning, travel-stained and something-else-stained as well. The Milhouse is just around the corner from the subte stop, and has built up a reputation as one of the loudest of the "party hostels" on the BA scene. Having had the place recommended by people along the way, I'd decided to try giving one of the party hostels a go, as I'd largely been staying in more chilled-out places. Check-in passed relatively painlessly, though unsurprisingly there weren't any beds free to check in to yet - this would have to wait until around 2pm. It was not yet 9am. It turned out that Ross had actually booked nto Milhouse's newer sister hostel, the Milhouse Avenue, which is up on Ave de Mayo itself, so this is where we parted ways. I headed downstairs to the bathrooms, where I proceeded to start cleaning my city welcome from my clothing and pack. Whilst it looks like it's coming out of the former relatively easily, I was most annoyed that my assailant had managed to get the stuff all over the flag patches on my pack, and the China one is still slightly icky now, days later, so I spent probably the better part of an hour blearily wiping down my bag.
After this, I went to go and check my e-mails and see if I had heard yet from Ana, my Argentine friend from my stay in Floripa. This turned out to be slightly easier said than done. Argentine hostels generally allow free internet access to guests, but the flip-side of this is that the machines are normally pretty slow and not very numerous, and don't generally have things like CD or DVD drives or Skype headphones or anything. In Milhouse's case, this amounted to 3 nigh-on prehistoric computers to serve the whole hostel, so queues and frustration were often the order of the day when checking mails in-house. Still, it was whilst checking mails that I ended chatting with Aina, a Danish girl staying at the hostel, sparked by her asking for help finding a question mark on the keyboard.
This is not actually as silly as it sounds. South American computers generally have Spanish-language (or Portuguese in Brasil, but the principle's the same) keyboards on which quite a few of the key functions are changed around or moved. What made it confusing here is that Milhouse's machines have Spanish keyboards but are set up as English-language machines, so the computer recognises the keyboards as English, meaning the keys do what they would in English, and not what they are labelled as. So if you know our keyboard layout and can type without looking at the keys, you can use them fine, but if you have to look for anything, it almost certainly won't be where it looks like it should be. And if you're used to, say, a Danish language keyboard then you can probably see how this gets more confusing still.
At any rate, this fortuitous exchange led to the two of us heading off in the afternoon to look around La Boca. This is one of the old harbourside districts of BA, the name literally meaning "the mouth", and has historically been a working-class district that often played home to immigrant communities, most noticeably that of the Italians who arrived during the 19th Century. It is, however, famous these days largely for two things - the brightly painted street of Caminito, which verges on being an outdoor art show, and its football team, Boca Juniors, the alma mater of Diego Armando Maradona and "Argentina's favourite sporting bad-boys". Our interest was in the former, it not being football season here yet, and this necessitated getting a bus to the centre of La Boca, the outlying areas being firmly in the "not safe to walk alone" category - indeed, even in Caminito most guides recommend having someone else with you, and this had prompted Aina's enquiry whether I wished to go along with her. Getting a bus involved rather more of a challenge, though, as this requires having change.
Particularly since the economic crisis of the early 2000s, change is a rare commodity in Argentina. The persistent rumours are that people are actually melting it down to get the base metals, which are regarded as a safer investment in case the economy goes bang again. Be that as it may, getting anything smaller than a 2-peso note (ie coins) can be tricky. Even shops and supermarkets and the like regularly say "no tenemos cambio", and certainly you won't get any without buying something. Unfortunately, the buses, due to the machines used to pay for tickets, can only be paid for with coins. This is due to change soon, with the introduction of a payment card system, but until then, everyone hoards what change they have in case they need to take a bus. At any rate, once we got on the trusty number 64 bus, it was dead easy to get to La Boca, as all we had to do was stay on to the last stop.
Once there, we headed over towards Caminito, trying to avoid the throngs of touts for the restaurants in the area. It should be noted that these were active slightly mroe than usual as it was the weekend, and many of the restaurants had free Tango demonstrations for dinners. However, given that neither of us was that hungry as yet, and that these places were obviously set up to separate tourists from dollars as efficiently as possible, we decided to pass on by and just keep exploring the surrounding streets. These yielded up photo opportunities aplenty, due to the brightly coloured wood and corrugated iron housing, with blue and yellow (Boca Juniors' colours) particularly prominent, but also scarlets, greens, purples, oranges and more. When the hunger pangs finally struck, we found a nice little shady cafe right at the edge of the tourist area and just watched the street-life for a bit.
That evening we went in search of that Argentine staple, a steak dinner. The receptionist at the hostel had recommended a place called El Desnivel. I've since found that just about every person and guidebook going recommends this as the budget choice in this part of town. What our receptionist was unaware, though, was that it was temporarily closed for refurbishment. So we wandered around a little and eventually went back to a little place around the corner called La Casa, where we indulged in a bit of steak and wine. Now, as those who've had the (mis)fortune of drinking with me may recall, I'm not generally a fan of red wine, however, I am growing to like the stuff over here. Unlike, say, Australia, Argentina doesn't seem to feel the need to oak its wine like crazy to build up strong "peppery" tastes, being quite happy to have quite smooth, easy-drinking reds. That evening, we had a bottle of Vasco Viejo, which literally translates as "old cow" I think. I doubt it wins any awards, but was quite pleasant accompanying our steaks, and at less than 3 quid a bottle in a restaurant, you can't really argue too much. 4 quid for a big steak dinner is not bad either, and both of us went away pretty pleased with our dining.
The only downside was that we had to hurry a bit, as I had arranged to meet Kita and Catriona, two friends from Ilha Grande, at about 8:30, and it was already almost that time when we finished eating, and we had to skedaddle across town. Luckily, this being Argentina, they weren't in that much of a hurry anyway, so we met up, had a drink at a roadside cafe/restaurant, then ended up going up to their hostel, which rather nicely has a roof terrace. This quick drink turned into a few more (though we did avoid joining the group from their hostel who were off to try and participate in "drunken archery" at a bar, which sounds to me like A Bad Idea...), with the participation of several more Aussies and a pair of Canadians called John Patrick and Sean Patrick (who were delighted to have another Patrick around as well, even if my middle name isn't John) and in the end Aina and I rocked back to the Milhouse around 2ish, at which point she went to bed and I had one more beer and ended up in an extended discussion on Scottish history. As you do.
posted by Pat at 12:00 pm
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