Cheryl´s 3 month Journey to South America: Buenos Aires

17-20 August - Buenos Aires, Argentina

From Puerto Iguazu I flew to Buenos Aires with my LAN voucher that I got when my flight from Arequipa to Cusco was overbooked back in June. It was great because otherwise it would be a 20 hour bus ride. I shared a cab to and from the airport with a Swedish guy that had the same flight and whose hostel was around the corner from mine. We ended up having lunch at a parilla (so much food) and walking around the city that afternoon.

We stumbled upon La Casa Rosa (Spanish for "The Pink House"), officially known as the Casa de Gobierno ("Government House") or Palacio Presidencial ("The Presidential Palace"). This is where Evita addressed large crowds from that famous balcony. We saw a long line of people getting in so we decided to see what all the fuss was about and ended up taking a tour inside.

Inside Casa Rosa:

That night I saw a drum show called La Bomba de Tiempo with some people from the hostel. It was a really good show. But there were these stupid American girls that thought they owned the space and were really rude and annoying. I got into a little argument with one of them. The Aussies I was with told me those were the kind of girls that gave Americans a bad name.

The next day I did more walking around the city. Mostly Avenida Florida, a pedestrian street with a lot of shopping. At night I saw a tango show. We had a free tango lesson and had dinner. At my table I met Cecila who was ironically from New Jersey. She had been studying tango for about 6-8 months and even took some classes at Battista Dance Studio in Hackensack where my Dad takes lessons. Small world. The tango show was amazing. Tango is so sensual and emotional. It made me want to take lessons. I took a lot of video, but it seems blogger doesn't like the big video files to be uploaded so I put up a short one.

Tango Show

The next day I walked everywhere in Buenos Aires. I mean everywhere, and Buenos Aires is huge. Bigger than New York I think. There are 12 million people that live there. They have some of the widest streets in the world. One had something like 12 lanes.

Here is Puerto Madero, a somewhat new district in Buenos Aires. There were tons of nice restaurants along the waterfront including a TGIFridays and Hooters.

La Recoleta Cemetery was located in the Recoleta neighborhood. It has the graves of the most influential people of Argentina - writers, presidents, and just wealthy people. The cemetery contains many elaborate marble mausoleums, decorated with statues, in a wide variety of architectural styles. The entire cemetery is laid out in sections like city blocks, with wide tree-lined main walkways branching into sidewalks filled with mausoleums. The most famous person buried there was Eva Peron. However, Evita's grave was the most disappointing. It wasn't as grand or as ornate as some of the other ones.

Here is Biblioteca Nacional (National Library). It was built in the location of the presidential residence where Juan Domingo Perón and his late wife Evita lived.

Floralis Genérica was this big metal sculpture of a flower that closed at night.

Colorful buildings in the Palermo neighborhood.

For my last day I hung out with Tessa and Sanne. I had originally said goodbye to them In Iguazu. They went to Rosario before coming to Buenos Aires. We weren't sure if we'd see each other in Buenos Aires or not but we did. We spent my last day in South America at Caminito Street in La Boca. There were a lot of little shops and restaurants with live tango performances and flamenco also (well it may have been paso doble or something like that. Not really sure).