I haven’t talked about money much on this blog. In general we tend to travel cheap so we can spend more on seeing the sights. This often has the odd effect of making small towns more expensive than big cities – the farther out in the wild we are, the more likely it is we have to pay more for national parks and excursions. In big cities, while housing and food may be more expensive, finding ways to spend our time is much less so.
The reason I bring this up is that I track our spending on a daily and weekly basis. In this past week in Buenos Aires we’ve spent less money in a seven-day period than we have since we were in Bolivia. That was unexpected. Then again we’ve been staying in small apartments, eating out as little as possible, using Buenos Aires’s very inexpensive public transit system, and going to free (or cheap) attractions as much as we can.
By the time we leave Monday evening we’ll have spent ten days and nine nights in Buenos Aires. That’s a little less time than we spent in Santiago, the last comparable city, but we decided back then that perhaps two weeks was too much time in one place. As in all of northern Argentina, “hostels” don’t seem to be a thing here so we’ve rented apartments instead. We only booked three nights at the first one with the option to extend if we liked it. After the roaches came out to play that first night, it was pretty clear we’d be moving on.
The second apartment we landed in was much better, despite being tiny beyond belief. The beds, which can double as couches, fold down from cabinets on the wall and can be folded back up to create more space when not in use. The kitchen (with a tiny sink and one working burner) is in a closet, hidden from view when not being used. The result is that despite the space being small, the use of space is flexible. And while there’s not much in terms of storage area, at least the one available shelf isn’t crowded with useless knickknacks like some other places we’ve been.
Survival need #2 after shelter is food. The first thing we did after dropping our luggage was to eat a real breakfast. The “breakfast” provided by Argentinian hotels has consisted mainly of toast, tea, and nothing else. When we’ve had our own fridge (and occasional stove) we’ve added eggs to that mix, or lots and lots of cereal. Down the block from our first apartment, though, was a real French café with a mouthwatering Brunch For Two. We bought groceries immediately after to cover us for the next day or two, but oh my gosh that real European-style breakfast was a welcome surprise.
And so, fed and rested, we set out to explore the city. In a week, we’ve barely even scratched it. Buenos Aires is enormous. Fifteen million people live in the metro area, fully a third of the population of the entire country. You can get around most anywhere by using the bus and subway. Each ride costs between $15 and $17 ARS (less than 50¢ US) but travel times can be long. In Santiago it felt like it took us at least half an hour to get anywhere. In Buenos Aires, it’s more like an hour to an hour and a half – and that’s not if you get on a train going the wrong direction or waste time at a stop for a route that isn’t running.
(Fun fact: Even though Argentina is a right-side-drive country, the subway lines in Buenos Aires run on the left, ensuring that you will end up on the wrong side of the station at least once, even after you get the hang of it.)
So that’s life in the city for the tourist passing through. In the interest of travel bloggery, here’s a rundown of where we’ve been:
Centro
We ended up here twice, once on purpose (to meet someone from CouchSurfing) and once by accident (looking for a pharmacy and a working ATM). Not much to recommend about the area – it’s just a maze of narrow streets, old buildings, and shopping. The main skyline feature of Centro is the Obelisk that dominates the wide Avenida 9 de Julio. Neither time we were there did I bother taking a picture so the one above is courtesy of Wikipedia. Some things, like the Eiffel Tower, have been photographed enough already, don’tcha think?
Tigre
Our first touristy excursion was to take a train all the way back out of town to the community of Tigre on the delta of the Luján River, a tributary of the Rio de la Plata, and buy a boat tour. Tigre had been hyped to us by folks online, but when we got on the water we realized that the delta region was no different from any other river along the American Gulf Coast – full of private camps, docks, and motorboats. The tour recording went on about the architecture of the buildings and the way of life of the people who lived there, but to me it was just like boating around the Tickfaw or the Amite back home in southern Louisiana. Given that getting there, taking the tour, and getting back took up nearly the whole day, in hindsight it wasn’t the best use of our time.
El Ateneo “Grand Splendid”
This, on the other hand, was much more enjoyable, though we didn’t stay long. Just a few blocks from our first apartment was El Ateneo, an old theater that had been converted into a magnificent bookstore. We’ve seen bookstores everywhere in South America – they’re as common as gas stations in the U.S. – but this one beats them all by far. If I could read more Spanish beyond menus and street signs I could have browsed the shelves all night.
Recoleta Cemetery
Of course we went and saw dead people. The cemetery in the neighborhood of Recoleta isn’t colorful, but it showcases some beautiful design, sculpture, and stonework in its many mausoleums. Lea spent the time fascinated by the high quality and variety of stone used in the tombs’ construction. Personally, I was appalled at how little effort Buenos Aires’s vampires are putting into hiding their resting places. The tombs had windows where you could look right in and see the coffins, locks on the doors for easy egress, and spiderwebs right out of a vintage Dracula movie. I suggested that Lea and I come back at night with a hammer and some stakes so that she could chip off pieces of granite, gabbro, labradorite, etc, and I could take care of the cemetery’s other problem.
Chinatown and Koreatown
Every city in the world may have a Chinatown, but Buenos Aires is the first we’ve come across in South America that’s real. Lima’s sure looked like a Chinatown, just without any actual Asians. Santiago had an area of Chinese knickknack shops and real Asian groceries, but we never made it to a hub of authentic Chinese restaurants. Buenos Aires finally provided, but that’s not what we got excited about.
Because Buenos Aires also has a Korean district in the neighborhood of Flores. Lea and I love Korean food but we weren’t expecting to come across it again until we returned to Atlanta. But whaddaya know, there’s a whole community right here in Argentina.
Korea Town isn’t the bustling hub of tourism that Chinatown is. In fact, we were warned not to go to Flores at night. During the afternoon, nearly every business in the neighborhood was closed except for a handful of restaurants. The one we were looking for was Una Cancion Coreana and it was everything we’d hoped for. Banchan with kimchi, bibimbap, and Korean BBQ steak and squid – my kind of surf and turf. We got there right as lunch was wrapping up and probably looked like we hadn’t eaten for months with the way we stuffed ourselves.
The Art Scene
It’s bad when you’ve seen so many art museums that you can’t bear to look at another painting. I haven’t quite reached that point yet but Lea definitely has. Nevertheless we took a trip to the Museum of Fine Arts which has an excellent collection including many of the classical masters. At present it houses an exhibit of sculptures by Rodin, but it also has at least one painting each by Monet, Van Gogh, and Rembrandt (plus legions of their contemporaries).
Even better was the walking tour we took of the street art in the Palermo SoHo neighborhood. The tour was in English, as most of the tourists were European. The walk was over two hours (in fact, Lea and I bailed before the end) but in it we learned a lot about the street art movement in Buenos Aires, the significance of many of the images, and the fact that much of the street art in town is done with the permission of the local building owners and the city of Buenos Aires itself – especially for the giant murals done on commission.
Back To Nature
For a break from the relentless concrete of the city, we went to both the Costanera Sur Ecological Reserve and the Carlos Thays Botanical Garden. The garden wasn’t that far from our second apartment, so it was an easy morning stroll through the hot, though shady, park. It’s not the right time of year for much to be in bloom except in the butterfly garden, but the paths were pleasant to walk through and there was a nice variety of interesting trees.
As for the Ecological Reserve, we waited too late in the week and too late in the day to visit. It’s home to many species of birds and other wildlife, but temperatures have been steadily climbing since we arrived. By the time we got to the reserve, it was far too hot for birds, lizards, or humans, and everything was in hiding except for pigeons and doves. Nevertheless, the Costanera Sur did afford us our first view of the Atlantic since our cold, cold morning in Comodoro Rivadavia (which was more Antarctic than Atlantic).
Tango In the Night
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Tango is a big deal in Buenos Aires. It’s one of their main exports, to tell the truth. We got to see an Argentinian tango show at the Rialto in Atlanta, and you can pay good money to watch tango and eat dinner at one of the many theaters here in the city. If you’re cheapskates like us and don’t want to pay good money, you can look for one of the free “tango in the park” shows. We found out about one on Sunday evenings at Plaza Dorrego in the neighborhood of San Telmo, so we went to check it out:
The show was basically a handful of professional dancers who would try to persuade members of the audience to strut their stuff on the dance floor, and would then put on a short presentation of their own. There weren’t the crowds of locals dancing that we’d been hoping for, just a bunch of tourists like ourselves watching with their cellphones.
And Then This Happened:
Off To Uruguay
Tonight we get back on the bus for the border crossing to Uruguay and eventually Montevideo. We’ll have a whole day left in Buenos Aires, so assuming we don’t get continuously rained on (as Weather Channel is threatening) we may head down to the artsy neighborhood of La Boca and then back up to Chinatown. Who knows? The last thing I want is to spend more time than we need to in the Retiro Bus Terminal, one of the nastiest I’ve seen on this voyage.
Next week I’ll be reporting from a sunny beach somewhere on the eastern side of Uruguay. For the record, here’s a map of the course we charted through Argentina. It’s been a long, long road, and with Brazil still to come it’s going to get even longer.
