40 Days & 40 Nights in South America: Day 17 - Touring Buenos Aires

Due to the extremely late night dinner, we got to sleep after 2AM and slept until almost 9AM. It took most of the morning to take a leisurely breakfast and get ready for the day. First stop was the Recoleta Cemetary, about 2 blocks away. Unsurprisingly, it was full of dead people. And all the mausoleums were way over the top, some older, some newer, but all quite grand - though a few were in a state of neglect and disrepair. The famous cemeteries in New Orleans were nothing compared to this. Next we found the tourist office near the apartment, and here we got our first total ripoff since coming to South America. The 48 hour bus pass was listed at ARS $160, but the ticket person charged us ARS $380 (nearly US$50) for two and shoved a pile of papers at us. We discovered later that they had sold each of us an official government tourist discount card for ARS$60 (US$9). This card is good for discounts on stuff we didn't want at places we didn't care to go until the end of May. So the only agency that has been successful in ripping us off (so far) was the Argentine government. I guess now we really know what it's like to be Argentines. Oh well...

We rode the bus for nearly 3.5 hours, sitting in the open-air top deck and getting some good photos of places we had been (walking) in the past few days plus several places we wanted to go. Even at US$50 this turned out to be a good deal, as we were safely removed from some areas that looked pretty seedy. The only drawback was the temperature. Yesterday was 70F and sunny, while today was about 50F and slightly overcast. After 3 hours we were pretty miserable, but the warm lower level was full. We passed stop after stop with mobs of shivering people wanting to get on. Finally we saw a stop in the sunlight and got off. After warming up with some cappucinos and checking emails, we got back on for one more stop, then walked a few blocks to the apartment. In between there were hundreds of police setting up barricades to block off an area, including the streets. We had no idea what was up, and chose not to ask. One block before the apartment we found a nice bar that made us some really decent caiprinhas and a pizza for cheap - which was good since the tourist agency had really reduced my cash reserves that I had on me. Back to the apartment to relax and crash. I will let the photos do the rest of the communicating...