Buenos Aires...finally!

Well, we have made it to our last destination, our first real metropolis, Buenos Aires. This city houses 1/3 of Argntina´s population. And with basically four days left of our trip we are making the most of the city.

We arrived to BA on an overcast rainy day by plane from Salta. Terrifying plane ride, seriously. After waiting for Natalie´s bag which was literally the LAST bag off the plane, we found ourselves a taxi and through a mix of pointing, sign language, and broken spanish from Lia and Lorna made it to the San Telmo barrio of the city. This neighborhood is characterized by Antique shops (how they all stay in business we have NO idea, plus they house things such as giant macrame horses and King Tut busts). THere is also lots of graffiti, a testament to the gritty nautre of the city, and a wonderful little hostel called Nomade (we are using the word wonderful liberally).


Our first two days in BA can be descibed in four words (which Lorna's father will be happy to hear)...Walking our butts off. We probably walked 12 miles over the two days. As we walked we took in the many sights this beautiful city has to offer. The creepiest and most astounding of the sights was the Cementario de Recoleta. Recoleta is the wealthy and fancy neighborhood of Buenos Aires, and the rich spare no expense when memorializing their deceased loved ones. The monuments in this grave yard were over the top, some sporting crazy marble statues. Sadly, all the money in the world cannot buy you friends or family who will maintain your mausoleum once you are gone - some of the sites were so decrepit and broke down that there were weeds growing inside. Some of them had also clearly been vandalized. Some you could see in a witness the stacked coffins covered with decades of dust, others were solid granite. We spent about an hour wandering between the mausoleums which look like a small ghost city, entranced and spooked at the same time. In one grave, which appeared to have been sorely neglected, we even spotted a human skull...Natalie took pictures if you don´t believe us. We saw Evita´s grave and then continued our urban hike, eventually making it back to our hostel.


On Day two we took the subway to the Palermo Viejo neighboorhood...a much younger area of the city. We instantly decided we would move hostels and set off to find a new one. After consulting our lonely planet and looking into a few of the local hostels we found the perfect one. Casa Jardin - a beautiful little spot right where we wanted to be, and one that for a change does NOT have 20 year old mulleted Argetine boys playing crazy loud music at 5 am. To celebrate, we found a cute cafe, had an amazing 2 hour lunch and did what we do best- shopped.

Yesterday we decided to follow the trhongs of Argentine families celebrating their indpendence day and go to the BA zoo. For those of you that have never before been to a zoo in a foreign country, they are not the same game as those in the US. It would seem that there are few employees (and none that care to enforce the rules), booths selling buckets of anilmal food (because all animals eat the same food, obviously) and animals that are riled up and doing crazy things. Among the sites: hyped up monkeys clearly in mating season, many large cats on the prowl (including a white tiger!), blind seals with cataracts, weird little rabbit things that are free to roam the zoo, zebras that are allowed to eat "animal food" from a chute (but, NEVER are you allowed to feed the giraffe. What???)
From there we wanted to get more cultured so we stopped in at the Evita museum. We are still confused but a little more edified. We did get to see her immaculate dress collection.
Other than that, we have just been people watching, eating, reading, and popping into stores. Going out here is not really that much of an option for old ladies like us seeing as the Argetine club hoppers don´t actually leave their homes until 1:3'0 am to hit the dance floors, and 2:30 if you are super cool. We are definitely going to check out a tango show though.More later, tata for now!

Las Tres Profesoras.

ps. LORNA figured out how to make the pictures big...just giving credit where credit is due.