Buenos Aires, Argentina

After an amazing few days in Puerto Madryn, now one of our favourite places in the whole world, going to the big bad city of Buenos Aires was always going to be a downer, but it had to be done. Our night bus was pretty good, although sadly it was an older bus than the one was had taken previously and first class was actually more uncomfortable than second had been on the newer bus, well that sucked.  We did however get to play bingo which was fast and furious and in Spanish, so we may well have won but we spent so long trying to decipher some of the numbers that we missed at least 6 and may well have missed out on a bottle of champagne, damn. The great thing about BA is that it is well served by the metro system or Subte, so we hopped aboard and made our way to our hostel.  Sadly we didn’t receive the best of welcomes at the wonderful Circus Hostel, who told us that they had cancelled our booking as our card had been declined, but they still had our room and proceeded to charge us $30 more to rebook it, not impressed.  Our impression of this hostel went down and down and down as we had sleepless night after sleepless night as idiots stayed up all night making a racket outside our room, the wifi was about as stable as a unicorn on a unicycle and the breakfast room was scented with the smell of overflowing toilets.  Needless to say the tripadvisor reviews we had read about this hostel were inaccurate, very very inaccurate. Buenos Aires was a beautiful city and we walked miles and miles and miles on free walking tours to see the best of it.  We had intended to go to a tango show, but the prices were exorbitant and the reviews poor so we decided to pass. An interesting feature of BA is that when you are on the main highstreet there are literally hundreds of people on the infamous Florida Street all shouting ‘cambio, cambio’, these cries are coming from the unofficial money changers in search of the tourist dollar.  Interestingly there are two exchange rates for the Argentinian Peso, the standard one and the blue one.  The Blue rate is the street corner rate which technically is official in its own right and it is the rate that you get if you change dollars with one of these cambio people rather than just withdrawing money from a cash machine.  The difference in the rates was immense, the standard rate was $1 – 9 pesos and the Blue rate was $1 – 13 pesos.  Thankfully we had met plenty of other backpackers who had warned us to take dollars to change as this saved us a small fortune.  Dollars are technically banned in Argentina, for decades the Argentinian economy has been in turmoil, from currency changes, to zeros being dropped from the peso to 200% inflation making the value of the peso worthless.  To combat the problems with the Peso rate Argentinians started to convert all their savings and cash into dollars to protect the value, this quickly lead to there being no more dollars in the countries reserves.  The Peso is still unstable and these cambio money changers are the answer for both tourists and locals alike to benefit.  We thankfully had changed the majority of our dollars in El Calafate in a ski shop that offered the blue rate and in Puerto Madryn where we were taken into a back room of s strange glazier shop.  Both of these exchanges were preferable to the side streets and stairwells of BA.  Stories of tourists being ripped off were rife as the actual Peso notes are problematic for locals let alone tourists.  The highest denomination of note is 100 pesos, around $8 so if you are changing a few hundred dollars you are going to get a lot of notes to check.  There are currently 4 different variations of the 100 peso note which just adds to the problem, some tourists have even unwittingly changed their entire holiday fund for the non-existent 500 peso note!  The other thing to remember is to spend every last penny of pesos as outside of Argentina they are worthless and pretty unchangeable. Anyway back to the city, we took two walking tours and got a good feel for the city as a whole, it has some pretty spectacular architecture, graffiti and history. On our first walking tour we went to the Plaza de Mayo, the main city square which is the home to the famous presidential building known as the Pink House, this is the building where Eva Peron famously made her address from the balcony.  Eva Peron is a legend in Argentinian history and is still loved by the masses today.  The second wife of president Juan Peron and the First Lady from 1946 until her untimely death in 1952, known more affectionately as Evita, Eva Peron launched the Eva Peron Foundantion and set about raising funds for the poor in Argentina, in the late 1940’s she had amassed over US$200 million.  The foundation employed construction workers, priests, bought sewing machines, shoes, built homes hospitals and even an entire community named Evita City which still exists today.  Evita was considered a saint by her followers and dedicated her entire life to her foundation.  She was also a feminist who fought for woman’s suffrage and thanks to Evitas work in 1947 women in Argentina were able to vote.   Evita died from cancer in June 1952.  The city mourned her death like no  other before her, the streets were filled with people who wanted one last glance of her body, the city ran out of flowers as the mountains of tributes were laid in the streets.  There was no question, every man, woman and child in Argentina loved Evita. Plans for a grand memorial were being hatched when in 1955 Juan Peron was overthrown as president during a Military Coup and he along with Evita’s body vanished….. you are going to have to wait a little bit to hear what happened next! So back to Plaza De Mayo and we are stood on a small circular piece of pavement which has white painting that looks a little bit like a hood… this is the sign for the Mothers of Plaza De Mayo.  I had never heard of these women but listening to our guide had us all on the brink of tears.  These amazing women formed a union in 1977 after the Dirty War, when from 1974 to 1983 the Argentinian military and security forces hunted down and killed left-wing guerrillas, political dissidents, and anyone believed to be associated with socialism. The Mothers united in their hunt to find their missing children met in Plaza De Mayo every week and in a loop hole in the law that restricted any gatherings of people they walked silently in a circle to fight their cause.  The symbol that still marks the street is a headscarf that the mothers wore, which was originally their babies nappy cotton.  The government tried to cover up the Mothers and labelled them as ‘Las Locas’ the mad women and soon the mothers themselves began to disappear and bodies started to wash up on BA’s beaches.  It is now known that if any of the mothers were pregnant when they were taken they were held until they gave birth and were then murdered and their children were illegally adopted into military families.  It is estimated that 30,000 people went missing during the Dirty War and around 500 of those are the children of murdered mothers who were adopted illegally. In 1983 when constitutional government was re-established the mothers began their investigations and with geneticists from the US collated as much information about the missing as they could and began to collate a DNA database so in the future any relatedness could be confirmed with 99.9% accuracy.  In 2000 the Grandmothers group had been established to follow on from the work of the mothers and an identity Archive was set up as the missing children would now be adults and this gave them an avenue to contact if they believed there was something amiss about their birth parents.  By 2008 97 grandchildren had been discovered through the efforts of the Mothers and Grandmothers.  This year a girl in her thirties approached the database and after testing was confirmed to be a mis
sing child and it is anticipated that many more are likely to be found due to the never ending quest of these amazingly brave women. A dark, dark piece of Argentinian history, but something that fascinated me and I hope you also find interesting. So now back on our tour and back to Evita, we were headed to the infamous La Recoleta Cemetery where all the rich and famous of Argentina are laid to rest.  This cemetery is considered the most amazing to visit in South America and whilst it was pretty special, I have to say that Sucre Cemetery for me was that bit more beautiful and special, but no trip to BA is complete without a visit. So back to Evita, it was a mystery where her body was between 1955 and 1971 but it is claimed that she was in the dining room of Juan Peron’s Spanish Home.  In 1973 Juan Peron came out of exile and returned to Argentina to once again resume his presidency.  He died in office in 1974 and his third wife who succeeded him and went on to become the first female president in the western hemisphere arranged for Evita’s body to be returned to Argentina and she was buried alongside Juan Peron in the family crypt in La Recoleta Cemetery.  You would expect this crypt to be one of the most incredible in the place, but it is not, it is however more or less the only crypt that has fresh flowers demonstrating the ongoing love of Evita.  It is also claimed that the Argentinian Government went to such elaborate measures to protect the body of Evita, that this tomb could survive a nuclear attack! So there we go, it seems that every city we visit just turns out to be a big depressing history lesson, but BA was a beautiful and fascinating city, just one that you need a fat wallet to really explore and enjoy the overpriced attractions on offer. Onwards we have just a short 1 hour ferry across the water to our next Country, one not many people bother to visit, all the more reason for us to go there, next stop Colonia Del Sacramento in Uruguay.

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