Hola from ´barbaro´ Buenos Aires

Hi guys! Its official, the Pat and Jas World Tour blog site is world famous! I was checking the comments today and i saw one in spanish! I think it said some thing along the lines of the author doesn´t know what he´s talking about (after i bagged Santiago as being a dump)...either that or it said he loves it and reads it every night before he goes to bed (and twice on sundays)! I´m thinking it might be the former but then my spanish is still muchos ´bado´...although we did figure out what cool was in spanish (we think it might be barbaro)!

Back to the main topic of this post...buenos aires! Very cool place...a very big place with lots of stuff to do and see...the pollution is what you would expect from a city with 13 million population but still surprisingly clean, lots of parkland, regularly cleaning of the streets and we even see birds (something we didn´t really see too much of in Santiago except on top of the hill where the virgin mary statue was).

We spent the first two nights near the main street (Ave de Mayo) where most of the older traditional buildings are...one end has the ´government house´ and the other end (Plaza de Mayo - towards the wharf) appears to be predominantly occupied by the banks.


A shot from Ave de Mayo.


Government house.


Plaza de Mayo - near the wharf.

The last two nights we thought we would spend with fellow backpackers and stayed in a couple of places in San Telmo...very artsy crowd not unlike Leederville/Subi with a fantastic sunday market selling antiques and nick-nacks....this is known as the tango area with a lot restaurants and bars putting on shows and live bands...a lot of backpackers stay here because its cheap (20 to 30 pesos a night or around 9 to 12 dollars aussie) and it is one of the oldest parts of BA with cobble stone streets through the heart of it!


Sunday markets in San Telmo - we stayed in a hostel on this alley just on the left-hand side.


A free tango show at the San Telmo sunday markets - apparently home of Tango in BA. For some reason the male tango dancers in the street shows are always older gentlemen and the female dancers are usually young and quite attractive (usually!).


Sunday markets again - just wall to wall!

Other places we´ve been to include:

Barrio Chinos (or Chinatown) where we decided to check out due to an insane craving for rice (arrozo)...chinese food is pretty bad in BA with everything either too salty or too oily...i´ll never complain about sweet and sour pork in Australia again!

Palermo which is divided by locals into Soho and Hollywood and is where the local yuppies go to hang out for a drink, food and shopping. We thought we´ld check it out and have a sunday session there but we´ve realised that times we go out are the same times as the families and oldies...the ´young´ and barbaros crowds START at 2am...much too late for these two oldies!

Florida Ave is the longest street shopping mall i´ve ever seen...i lost count of how many mcdonalds and leather good stores we saw.....just packed with people during the day and night you sort of just need to go with the flow and not make any sudden turns (especially with a backpack on)...apologies to all the argentines i took out!

Recoleta is where the cemetery and museum is. The cemetery is a pretty popular tourist attraction as morbid as that sounds but the cemetery is full of family crypts for the who´s who of argentina. The most popular resident is none other than Evita Peron, perhaps one of the most famous women in the world. We ended up taking a few snaps, said a quick prayer and high tailed it out of there. Not even the bravest PJWT traveller can avoid getting the heebie-jeebies! =)


One of many beautifully crafted crypts in the Recoleta cemetery.


Evita Peron´s final resting place - which interestingly enough isn´t in the Peron family crypt.

After seeing all these places in BA we thought it might be nice to get out of the city for a while and go some where in the country. Which in all fairness to our much maligned Chilean readers is probably where the continent´s true beauty lies. So in a slight detour to the PJWT itinerary we decided to take off to see the majestic Iguazu falls where this post is proudly brought to you from. A one and a half hour flight from BA, Puerto Iguazu is the Argentine side of the falls which is also bordered by Brazil and Paraguay!

Hope you are all doing well and catch you next time amigos (same PJWT time, same PJWT channel)!