Buenos Aires: Part 1 (the culture)

I´m not going to lie, but our first impression of Buenos Aires could have been better. We arrived at the airport quite late, and immediately jumped into a taxi for our hostel. About 20 minutes later we arrived at the front door... and immediately the cabbie turns to us and warns us that we´ve just booked ourselves into one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in the city. Great. We headed upstairs, checked ourselves in, and proceeded to listen to the hostel owner talk for about 20 minutes about how not dangerous the area was. Fortunately we couldn´t look more like locals so we didn´t have any issues!

The next morning we decided to walk into the nearby San Telmo district which is an older neighborhood famous for it´s cafes and tango clubs... it also happens to have a fabulous street market on Sunday (which it was) that offers loads of antiques, cafes to eat at, and people dancing the tango in the square. So we spent the morning and afternoon just wandering around soaking up the atmosphere, and of course treating ourselves to a long lunch of steak and good red wine! After finally extracting ourselves from the people watching at the cafe, it was off to see a bit of the city centre before we headed down and checked out the very trendy waterfront district of Puerto Madero before calling it a day.

The next day we decided to check out the Recoleta Cemetary... well known to be the burying place of famous politicians and other celebrities most notably Eva "Evita" Peron. It´s a truly interesting place with marble mausoleums laid out in blocks with winding passageways throughout. After we´d spent a few hours there, it was off to find some lunch. We´d heard Palermo was the place to go for cool bars and restaurants, so headed in the general direction, with a fleeting stop at the botanical gardens. When we´d worn ourselves out walking, we headed back to our hostel for dinner on the very cool roof deck for dinner and drinks - albeit overlooking some of the local bums! And since we were in Buenos Aires, the place for nightlife in South America... it was only appropriate to go and see what exactly happens after midnight. We made it through 2 beers before both of us almost fell asleep at the bar... not exactly the party animals the city normally hosts!

It was off to Uruguay then... and after a few slightly hungover hours spent on a ferry, we arrived at Colonia.