Date of Entry:  April 12th- 29th 2016

Date of Writing:  June 28th 2016,  My Amazing Loft,  Sao Paulo, Brazil

I apologize for the radio silence over the past weeks.I’ve been very busy, and very happy in Sao Paulo Brazil. But more on that later. After a whirlwind 2.5 months in Patagonia and Antarctica I’m feeling tired, and once I get to Buenos Aires I realize I won’t be moving on quickly.

This is going to be a hard entry to write as I ended up spending almost three weeks in Buenos aires but truth be told I did limited touristy things and took very few photos during this time. So we’ll focus on a few highlights and in another post I’ll detail some recommendations of how to best spend your time in buenos aires.

Last time I was in Buenos Aires I elected to stay in San Telmo but this time around I’ve chosen a different neighbourhood, the more modern and westernized palermo at Art Factory Hostel to enjoy some of the many amenities living in a big city again has to offer.  Buenos aires has excellent international food, a very active nightlife, and tons of tourist attractions. (see my Highlights of Buenos Aires post coming soon.)

The hostel is a home run, very social without being too much of a party hostel and in a great location in Palermo right near some amazing restaurants.  I spend the three week in Buenos aires mainly making friends and hanging out around the hostel, as well as meeting friends I met in Patagonia like Ellie several times but I do do some touristy things.

More than anything though In Buenos Aires, especially at the hostel I meet countless awesome people and I figure that’s the best way to organize this post.

In my first week or so I’ll just summarize but I spend an evening rapping at the hostel for people including a birthday rap for Tara from England and also get the chance to play tennis at an indoor club against a swiss guy who insists he is not roger federer but I’m pretty sure he was. After all he almost beat me.  Truth be told I loved playing tennis again and for the first time it was on a clay court. No real competitive sports is one of the few sacrifices that bug me about the constant travel.

The first person I do anything worthy of pictures or writing about though is Jenna, a lovely girl from Germany who is just starting a 5 week trip in south america and is about to celebrate her birthday here.  After promising to buy her some birthday Alfajores (an Argentinean sweet usually made of cookies, dulce de leche and chocolate)  we decide to head out onto one of the two standard walking tours offered in buenos aires. These tours are free, but tips are very expected, and they’re not something i do a lot of.  Usually only in cases like today when I’m with someone cool and decide to tag along with them.

The tour is alright but nothing too special though I do learn a lot about the history of Buenos Aires as well as our guides thoughts on his countries current political problems.   I also learn about a building built with dimensions from Dante;s inferno and it’s twin in Uruguay and see the second version of Rodin’s The thinker which is cool.  My one criticism of the tour though is that for a walking tour there’s a lot more standing than walking. Luckily Jenna and I are getting along very well.

Jenna and I enjoy each other’s company so much that we agree to hang out together for her last couple of days in buenos aires before she heads off to Iguazu (Man I’m jealous).  The next day is sunday so we decide to head back into the center of town for the world famous San Telmo craft market.  Though I foolishly keep my camera tucked away as we wander through very crowded streets with a group of people, Jenna and I eventually losing them and being blown away by a band performing on the street called Toni Montana.  We dance in the street for almost an hour and buy several cd’s before finally moving on and I’m so impressed I end up going to and having an amazing time at the band’s cd release party at a small local rock club which is just an awesome night out, especially since me and my friend Brahm who I first met in El Chalten are the only non locals there.  Check outToni Montana here:

We then decide we’re not tired yet and decide to chance some streets with a bad reputation to walk to La Boca,  Argentina’s most colourful district.  It’s the middle of the day and finally I take out my camera as the ill reputed streets feel pretty safe and we find this weird guardian posted at the edge of a hauntingly empty park.

A few minutes later and a few questions to some locals with their thick porteno accents and we arrive to the postcard streets of la boca.  I can only imagine how this place would look on a sunny day, because even under the greyest skies imaginable the neighbourhood  has a colourful and vibrant feeling though it is also immensely touristy.  We wander the streets for a while then find a charming little restaurant with a courtyard to enjoy a drink and some cake, which is delicious. Then we’re on our way back, walking all the way back to where the walking tour ended the day before and hopping on the metro back to palermo.

We spend the evening together with Sam from england and share a nice meal and some long conversations before calling it a night.  Tomorrow Jenna leaves for Iguazu falls and I have to admit I feel tempted to follow. Not just because the falls are awesome, but so is Jenna.

The next morning we wake up and take a decent walk from the hostel through one of Buenos Aires’ busiest commercial street searching for El Ateneo, a bookstore housed in what was once a glorious theatre.  It is probably the most beautiful bookstore I’ve ever seen, though Jenna and I can’t help wishing it was a library instead.  Still if you want to feel classy head there and grab a coffee and a piece of cake in the cafe where the stage used to be while being surrounded by literature.

Later that day I barely manage to resist following Jenna up to Iguazu, saying goodbye to her at the bus station and heading back to the hostel quite sad to say goodbye to such a good friend.  Sometimes travelling sucks guys, but the good thing is, there’s always more good experiences and lots of new friends just around the corner.

A few days later I head to Fuerza Bruta with Ellie, a performance art show that has seen iterations of it performed all around the world.  I’m skeptical, as I usually am of performance art, but Jenna had gone before we got to know each other and swears it’s a must see, so there I am, beside Argentina’s legendary cemetery, in a warehouse like space waiting for the show to kick off.

Words can’t really capture what it was, but imagine pure and completely released energy for 80 minutes and maybe you’ll come close.  Without a doubt it was the best physical performance art i’ve seen, and I highly recommend it to anyone in Buenos Aires.  And I’m sure Ellie would too.  Here’s a video of the show.

Just a few quiet days in Buenos Aires later I meet someone this blog will get to know quite well.  Another German, this one from a tiny village in Bavaria, her name is Lydia and she is amazing. I’m relaxing in the hostel common room watching the nfl draft and somehow against all plans end up entering a conversation with her and a few others.

We end up talking of most of the night and decide to spend the next day together going to hopefully check out some museums in San Telmo, something I’m ashamed to say I’ve not bothered doing in Buenos Aires yet.  Of course as is often the way with travelling our plans get scrapped when we leave the metro near the centre of the city and find it filled to the brim with a bubbling cauldron of protesters from just about every union imaginable.  We didn’t get the message but today everything is shut down for this protest, and firecrackers and flare guns dominate the soundscape as people parade through the narrow street to the frantic drums of attempted revolution.  I love south America sometimes, because if something is wrong the sheer number of people who turn up to try to do something about it is impressive, and while there’s lots of anger under it, the people all exhibit a shared love of both their country and the people around them, so despite the frantic and crazed atmosphere I never felt even the slightest bit under threat.

Still I’m impressed by Lydia as she by no means seems eager to escape the protest wandering through it and photographing it with me as we both chat to lots of protesters, all very friendly and most asking for photos and wondering if we’re some kind of press.  As the afternoon wears on the protesters seem to get drunker and drunker one man eventually telling me in broken and very slurred english his face inches from mine and his hand with a firm grip on the back of my neck that the heart of Argentina is it’s people, and we need to respect the heart of such a great nation.

It’s a fantastic one of a kind day and I’ve had so much fun that when we finally leave the massive protest one behind and Lydia goes to buy her ferry ticket to uruguay for the next day I say why not and book one with her.  It’s the route I’d been planning to go, just a few days before my plans called for.  It’s the great thing about travelling alone long term, schedule’s change all the time and you owe no one but yourself an explanation.

So that net morning we close the door on my time in Buenos Aires, a huge city which really has started to feel like a home of sorts.  I miss the incredible landscapes and serenity of Patagonia deeply, but I was also immensely happy in BA and will hold it close to my heart.

The next three weeks I’ll be travelling at hyper speed to keep up with Lydia who is in the last three weeks of an 8 month trip through south america including a really amazing internship of sorts at the Goethe institute in La Paz Bolivia.  Together we’ll explore Uruguay and Southern Brazil and have three weeks of great adventures, which I hope one day we’ll pick up on again. Lydia also has a blog at http://www.zweihundertvierundvierzig.tumblr.com/  but she’s been lazy since she got home and stopped writing. Doesn’t that make everyone angry?!  I know it enrages me.  More blogs from Uruguay coming soon.