Mi Buenos Aires Querido (first time)

Me and La Malfada in San Telmo

So after only seeing the bus terminal on my last visit to Buenos Aires, I was super excited to finally visit the city that everyone raves about! Luckily for me I was on the same flight from Maracaibo to Caracas with Adriana and Mario (from Venezuela but living in Buenos Aires) and from Caracas we also travelled with Henry (from Venezuela but living in Toronto and visiting his sister in Buenos Aires). Our flight from Caracas to Buenos Aires was delayed for four hours so we got a meal voucher (of an unspecified amount) to spend at the famous El Budare airport cafe on food. Of course, we all filled up on our favourite Venezuelan food which is not available in Argentina – arepas, cachapas, queso blanco, queso de mano, pabellon etc. The arepa I bought came with about a kilo of queso de mano – increible!

My favourite cafe in San Telmo

Cafe con leche y media lunas in San Telmo

Adriana and Mario were also my excellent hosts in Buenos Aires and I stayed with them in their lovely, colourful apartment in San Telmo, which is quite a traditional neighbourhood in terms of buildings, markets etc. Mario recommended a lovely little cafe that I went to for breakfast most days – cafe con leche y tres media lunas (a typical Porteno breakfast of milky coffee and croissants). It was on the corner of a typical little square and was nicely old-fashioned with graffiti scratched into the walls. Ironically, it was opposite a Starbucks!

Adriana and Mario took me to see loads of great places in Buenos Aires, such as the cemetery in Recoletta. It was a beautiful place with amazing architecture but we didn’t manage to find Evita’s grave. We also ate amazing italian food down by the port and the best curry in South America in San Telmo (although for me it was weird to be asked if I wanted my curry spicy – of course, shouldn’t it always be??!!). We also visited a couple of exhibitions, la Casa Rosada and visited La Boca, El Caminito, La Bombonera (Boca Juniors stadium), the markets, the beach (in the park) and visited friends and drank nice beer. With some help from Adriana and my little transport guide I was soon hopping around Buenos Aires on the public bus system (cheap and it pretty much goes everywhere you need it to, 24 hours a day) visiting the japanese gardens, galleries, more ice-cream shops and generally exploring the streets and neighbourhoods.

View back to the city from the japanese garden

La Casa Rosada

I love a good football stadium tour so I went back to the Bombonera to visit the museum and take a tour of the stadium. The museum explained the history of the club and included lots of memorabilia (and of course, a photo of Maradona at every available opportunity…). The tour group was mainly Brazilian tourists and a couple of Argentinians on holiday, so the tour guide found it quite funny that a Liverpool supporting English woman was interested in the tour. The stadium is nicknamed ‘ the chocolate box’ because of its compact shape with steep sides – even though it holds almost 50,000 fans when full. We got to visit the various stands and behind the scenes while the guide made lots of Argentina versus Brazil jokes (mainly Maradona and Messi versus Pele jokes). It was a lot of fun and I was disappointed that I’d arrived in Argentina later than planned and was here during the break in the football season. I think the atmosphere at a Boca match must be amazing!

La Bombonera

El Diego

Inside La Bombonera

La Boca

As I mentioned before though, getting change for anything in Argentina is a nightmare and until fairly recently the colectivos (public buses) only accepted small coins. There was even a black market for buying small coins where you would have to buy them for more than face value, just to be able to travel on the bus. Fortunately, this silly system has been replaced with an Oyster style travel card called SUBE. Seems like a great idea until you realise how difficult it is to get one of these cards and then you realise why so many people are still using coins. The SUBE card itself is free but you can only get them from the post office. Doesn’t seem like a problem until the post office tells you that their SUBE computer system isn’t working (and hasn’t been for the last 10 days and they don’t know when it will be working again) and can’t give you a card. Doesn’t seem like a problem (again) until they tell you that the ONLY place you can get a card is from the post office. Everything in Buenos Aires had been so easy that I almost forgot I was in South America, and this reminded me again where I was. I remembered me and Adriana saw a bus/office issuing SUBE cards outside the Casa Rosada, so I went to investigate. I was told that they wouldn’t issue cards to short stay visitors so a few little white lies, a false address and a false mobile number later I was the proud owner of a SUBE card and no longer had to worry about getting stranded in the middle of the night trying to get home without any change.

The colourful streets of La Boca

I have to say that originally I was sceptical as to whether I would like Buenos Aires. I felt I’d had enough of big cities, I wasn’t that keen on Argentina in general at this stage, I hadn’t really had very nice food, and I didn’t get excited when everyone told me that Buenos Aires was very European (I can go to Europe on my doorstep for that). Thanks to Adriana, Mario and all the other Maracuchos in Buenos Aires though, I had a great time and loved the city! I couldn’t wait to return for a few more days at the end of my trip after going up to Iguazu and the north-east of Argentina.