Buenos Aires, Argentina, January 2012

We arrive in Buenos Aires after another 24hour bus journey which is almost as luxurious as our previous trip. It's sad to say that sometimes we enjoy the bus trips in Argentina so much that we often don't want to get off them - yes, they are that good.

We hop in a taxi at the bus terminal, and give the driver our hostels address. We are slightly more weary about being ripped off in the big cities and we negotiate a reasonable enough tariff before getting in. We are on our merry way, and about 1km from our destination a kaput like noise stops the vehicle in the middle of a busy highway. After little attempt from the driver to fix the problem, we are kicked out & told to walk the rest of the way. 1km is not far, but with backpacks and a 24 hr bus journey on our backs I am one angry lady!

Our time in Buenos Aires, like our time in most of the big cities, is often spent enjoying the more 'social' aspect of traveling. It's so hard not to get sucked into the craic of drinking with all the newly accumulated hostel friends and it is 3days before we actually get out and explore Buenos Aires properly.

Palermo District

 This cute little shop was in the Palermo district and oh it's so worth it to visit this area! There are so many unusual little boutique clothing stores run by local designers and cafes and restaurants and in its streets the Argentinian atmosphere of LIFE and fun and dance sweeps you up and carries you away into the night!

Buenos Aires Zoo

Some kind of Beaver?

Words can't explain! This is where a description in English would come in handy...

Can't bate a good stare!

 These guys were hilarious, there was about 20 of them in one green area - all staring in the same direction, and if one of them turned their heads, they all did. This is the kind of entertainment I'm talkin about!

I love this guy!

This makes me sad :( (or teenage translation; totes gives me the sads)

Goat-y goodness!

A pigmy hippo!

What's all the buhleedin shoutin about?

Oh! But to have a cat!

On Thursdays there's a huge market in San Telmo which takes up all of it's cobble stone side streets, you can buy all sorts of anything, my biggest want was a mate cup! Everyone in Argentina drinks Mate, a green leafed tea which is drank from a gourd, usually handmade from wood, using a metal straw with a filter attached to its end. We are addicted to this stuff! It's so so good, we even started doing the Argentinian thing and bringing flasks of hot water on all our bus journeys so we can make it. Yum Yum!

The world's most amazing buskers!

There was literally hundreds of people dancing in the streets to this music - it was amazing. Argentinians are so free and passionate, everyone is dancing and singing and they don't give a crap who's watching. It was so liberating and impossible not to get swept up in the atmosphere!

Evita's Palace

B.A. Botanical Gardens

Random Puppet show...with cleavage?!

 I love the idea of a good old fashioned Puppet show - I didn't know these still existed! This was a rehearsal so we were able to watch in the Botanical Gardens for free.

World's biggest tree!

 This was in the Modern art museum, I managed to get this photo just before security came to tell me off. It really was so amazing though - the wood is all one piece and the squiggly bit tangles up and around 3 floors! This is a project for you Dad! I want one of these in my mansion!

Such a beautiful library - once an opera theatre, this place was so hard to leave!

Recoleta Cemetery

Recoleta Cemetery, in the Recoleta district, is one of the most bizarre places I have ever been. The cemetery boasts Argentina's political and social great's, each individually housed in a luxurious tomb reminiscent of the kind afforded to the Egyptian kings and princes. 

Each tomb has it's own grand entrance, equipped with alter, candles and two storey deluxe for the dead inhabitant. Evita is buried here, her tomb the most popular of all with the tourists. Hundreds and hundreds of tombs are bulit here, so many that a map is given to tourists at the entrance, its occupancy exclusive only to Argentina's most elite dead people.

At first this whole experience is pretty jaw dropping, it is clear from the marble and gold plated shrines that an awful lot of money has been spent on burying these people, and the more we saw the more sickening and macabre it became.

Evita's tombstone / tomb

Apparently good ole Irish Father Fahy did something for Argentina, whatever he did must've been worthwhile if he got a statue, and, a bit of gold on the name stone.

It goes on forever in corridors of graves - very very easy to get lost in this place!