Buenos Totally Worthwhile

Upon our arrival at the Portal del Sur hostel that would be our home in Buenos Aires for a week, we went through the usual checking in routine of filling in a few forms and making small talk with the guy behind the desk. Upon hearing we were from Manchester, we got the usual flicker of interest from the guy behind the desk that is then normally followed by the words "Manchester United" or "David Beckham" (which we were still getting last year when in Nepal despite the fact that he had been in Madrid for nearly three years at that point - I guess he'll always be associated with Manchester to some degree). This time however, we got a response I've never heard before, what the guy behind the desk really wanted to know when he heard we were from Manchester was "What do you think of Liam Gallaghar?"

In a way, the entire city if Buenos Aires was like that, it always offered something a little different to what you expected. The city itself feels like a very modern capital, with huge new skyscraper office blocks, very lively shopping district, and an energetic pace, but it also has some wonderful old buildings and huge parks and is keen to still highlight it´s history. We stayed in a great hostel in the north of the San Telmo region of the city. It was only a few blocks from the Casa Rosada and so was very close to many of the tourist attractions - we were a little early to check in when we arrived so left our bags in the left luggage and went on a walking tour of the city taking us along Avenida De Mayo, and then north to the Recoleta region of the city where we visited the cemetary where Evita is buried. The cemetary is something else that is slightly different, rather than being buried underground, the bodies are kept in tombs that are above ground and all very decorative, almost minature versions of some of the old large town houses that you find in Recoleta itself. After visiting the cemetary, we the made our way back towards the city centre, stopping on the way for a coffee and a sandwich, but also then being tempted into a brownie and ice cream desert that was delicious (we very quickly found out that finding fantatsic food at great prices was not going to be a problem in this city!). We took in a few more of the parks and the torre ingles (English Tower) which is a mintaure version of Big Ben and then turned south again to return to our hostel in San Telmo.

The hostel, like many of the buildings in the San Telmo region was an old mansion house that had been converted. The mansions here have been converted into shops, bars, restaurants, apartments, and even multi storey car parks! I don´t think any of them remain as privately owned mansions. We managed to spend some time exploring San Telmo which is a lovely part of the city along with taking time to visit La Boca (only the touristy part as advised it´s not a good idea to go off the beaten track down there) which was very lively with bright colourful buildings, couples tango dancing in the street and even a Diego Maradonna look-a-like posing for pictures. I resisted the tempation to ask the look-a-like if he´d mind having a picture taken of me standing on his right hand!

Buenos Aires, however, also has it´s downside. We visited the Palermo region which is supposed to be one of the nicer parts of town but it seemed quite run down, and the zoo there wasn´t nice at all, with most of the animals kept in what appeared to be very poor conditions. I wouldn´t let that put anyone off visiting the city of course, in fact I´d highly recommend that everyone visit as we enjoyed it so much, but at least visiting places like that helped show that, like most places, Buenos Aires is not perfect - which after a few days in the city centre eating fantastic food, visiting great places, and relaxing on our hostel rooftop in 30 degree sunshine we easily could have thought that it was!

Overall, as mentioned, I´d recommend everyone to visit Buenos Aires, it is a fantatsic city with lots to see and do, with a few nice differences such as tango classes and milongas and of course, factastic food! Oh, and if our experience is anything to go by, coming just before Christmas could prove beneficial as the weather is fantastic, but also, there are a lot of bargins to be had in the shopping district here - much better to be buying presents in the Buenos Aires sunshine than fighting the crowds in the Trafford Centre back home!

However, we now have to move on, I´m now sat at a computer in El Calafete following our 36 hour bus journey to Rio Gallegos followed immediately by another 5 hour bus trip to get to this small town near the bottom of Argentina and the Moreno Glacier - not a journey we´re recommend - pay the extra and fly instead! We´ll be posting another update after we´ve visited the glacier and crossed the border into Chile. It was hard to swap our nice room in San Telmo for the uncomfortable seat of a Via TAC bus, but I think, in the end, we were ready to get out of the city and back to the great outdoors. Before leaving the hostel though, I did manage to have one more conversation with the guy behind the desk (never did find out his name though), and he was telling me about his trip to Liverpool and how he liked a lot of the bands from there. I told him about another up and coming band from that city called The Joy Vegas and showed him there site which has a few songs on (for anyone who doesn´t know about them, go to http://www.myspace.com/thejoyvegas), he really enjoyed their music and began downloading a few songs whilst telling me how he hoped to go back to Liverpool at some point in the future. Although Liverpool is a great city, I couldn´t help but think he had it the right way round, it would be nice to visit Liverpool on holiday, but spend a lot more time in the fantastic city of Buenos Aires!

Steve