EL TOUR GRANDE

The next day and last day saw us doing pretty much the same thing the day before… walkin round town and poppin by some local museos.

MJ decided to do an impromptu yoga session by the cliff…

Is the camera on? wha?

We busted out the gorilla tripod which we bought especially for this trip, finally!

We noticed they had really nice trash bins throughout the isla.

Perhaps the best thing we saw in the Colonia were these amazing ancient world maps drawn by The Portuguese and Spaniards. I”m a big fan nice shapes, and the artisan cartograpers certainly didn’t disappoint!

Is Magellan here yet? How about Christophe Columbo? When are those foo’s comin’ to fetch us?

We killed the remaining time with a leisurely late lunch and thought we’d end our visit with a nice flan con dulce de leche.

By this time we learned the difference between “monedas” (coins) and “billetas” or in Espagnoli – “dinero”, and what “effectivo” means… the bill, not “la cuenta”. In fact all Espagnish is not de same from España to Mexico to Argentina.

All in all, Colonia was a nice slow time. Montevideo it is next time!

We woke up the next day with great expectations from Colonia.

The day did not exactly start off right. You see, we have just been to Mexico where the breakfasts were amazing, Argentina was so-so, standard continental, and we expected a lot from a quaint B&B in Uruguay, but sadly, little miss Myung Jin was not happy. In fact she was a bit frumpy and went a bit mad.

Wha? This is it?

Well, at least the patio was nice ;-)

We wanted to see what the other rooms would be like, so we decided to change rooms, got a bigger one that’s more towards the front of the building, huge room, enough for three!

The rest of the day saw us wandering about aimlessly around this sleepy town. Reminded me of Toledo or Sevilla…

+cruz decided to start “Uruguay Lab” while he was in town ;-)

A local jewellery designer we met. MJ fancied the leather necklace top left.

This is one sleepy town indeed! For our own amusement, we played with the local chats.

How the locals get around – MadMax stylee…

The day ended with us watching the sun set at the local docks. There was nothin’ else we could think of doing, not out of romance but frankly for a lack of choice ;-)

In search of something more authentically America Sud, we hopped on over to Colonia del Sacramento by way of the BuqueBus ferry, which took about una hora.

Our refuge in Colonia was the quaint Posada del Lobo with its authentically antique rooms.

Meson de la Plaza was our stop for dinner and it did not disappoint! The flan was delish.

On our way out BsAs, we stopped by Plaza Dorrego to soak in some weekend antique shopping.

We loved the atmosphere and ended up chillaxin over some tapas at SAGARDI. We were down for the count, 13 to be exact!

I think it safe to say that we’ve seen and done BsAs. It’s a laid back, Euro party town – a mix of Barcelona and LA with a twist of Rio sans the architecture and indigenous diversity. The whole ethnic cleansing just did not sit too well with us. I suppose no different than what the Euros did in the good ole USA. It’s a great place to live, so relaxed. But we’ve OD’d on choice cuts of beef, then some pasta, then more cuts of beef heaven.

After our 4th day we started itching for something more authentically America Sud. So we’re thinking of making a run for the border to Montevideo, Uruguay for some displacement, or perhaps Colonia. We hear its nice there. Hopefully we find something more real…

It’s time to throw the towel in on this one.

We stumbled upon a Russian Biker whose goal it is to set a world record by riding the most miles across the earth on his bike, sure, that may not be so unique, except, he’s mute!

The very best of luck to you! We hope you set that record soon!

Damn, some human beings are amazing!

Will the real Argentinians just please stand up, please stand up.

PEACE!

Lethargic! We kept getting lazier and lazier by the minute in BsAs.

Life is too good! So we figured it’s time to move on.

We’ve spent 2-3 days getting to know BsAs, mostly on foot as it’s a very pedestrian friendly city. Walking through BsAs, one cant help but notice the sheer amount of graff dominating the walls. It’s ubiquitous. Taggers use it to display thier wares. Advertisers capitalise on its “youth reach”. Heck, I think the government may even sanction it as evident in some which have more of a PSA message…

Oh yea, and +cruz got sick of his hair so he went under the Argentinian chopping block. On his way out, he noticed a striking resemblance with the graffed clown outside the walls of the cutters, coincidence? hmmm…

Another lazy day in BA, Palermo hopping. We sauntered around Palermo Viejo, Palermo Hollywood, Palermo Cambodia (wha??? but yes you heard it right) and Palermo Soho, dodging dog poop on most street pavements. It reminded us of a more humid Venice Beach in LA, which made us feel a little too close to home.

Found a nice antique textile store called Arte Etnico Argentino on El Salvador, the “happening” street in Palermo.

Stopped by to say hi to our friend Martin, our friend from La Muria, and his wife Bettina with their daughter Sumi. We ended up borrowing a Mac computer at his newly moved in office in Palermo to do some work, well kind of, if you consider filling out a UK embassy work visa a job, which it was, took us like 4 hours!

By this time we were sick of beef. Thank god Martin, dropped us off at the Nordic gastronomia – Olsen which served us a non-meat meal in normal “Japan-sized” portions. We feel human again! not like the cows we just devoured ;-)

We find Palermo to be a pretty laid back and relaxing. In fact we don’t leave the hotel until almost 2 pm, time for lunch here. Well partially it’s because Eric’s been staying up til 2 or 3 am to making photo selects for this blog… old habits die hard!

So it was almost 4 pm by the time we got to the famed cemetary of Recoleta Cementario, which according to a local friend of mine Christian von Sanden is the “must see attraction” of BsAs. So we had to oblige…

The elite of Argentina’s conquistadors are buried here, everyone from ex presidentes and thier wives, the most famous of all being none other than the countries most iconic woman – Evita Peron.

It was not hard to find her grave. Just follow the tourists.

You could still see remnants of Evita’s spirit living in today’s society… mov.evita.

It’s wierd seeing Europeans in a South American country (please forgive me for commenting, but it struck us really odd… there’s no natives in BA) – which we soon realised why, thanks to the “Campaign of the Desert” led by the celebrated national hero – General Roca, which was a military campaign that drove out the indigenous tribes from the interior of the country. We can’t vouch for it’s validity throughout the country, but we think they succeeded within BsAs at least. Job well done?

As Olivia, the Swedish friend we met at our hotel, said… “Buenos Aires is not Argentina.”

The cemetery led us to neighbouring MALBA for a surprisingly nice contempo art exhibition from Latino Americanos. Nice stuff indeed. and its great to see a museum completely devoted to this, tho i did not realise that one of my heroes, Cy Twombly is Latin American. Maybe he spent some considerable time there.