Buenos Aires was the first stop on our South American adventure last week. The hostel was in a good central location so we were able to explore a lot just by walking around.
The city itself is very modern and much less poor than I was expecting — although we stayed mostly in the center, I’m sure there are more ghetto parts. The street vendors were far less aggressive than in Peru, Mexico, and even Europe. Drivers obeyed the traffic signals to an extent I’d never seen in Latin America. It was about as laid back as a place can be for being home to 13 million people. (Granted we didn’t experience a weekday rush-hour!)
Open parks and plazas, wide sidewalks, and pedestrian-only streets made it easy to walk around. After dark, parts felt kind of sketchy but we usually had on our wine-blinders at that point anyway. Here are some interesting tidbits we learned during our short time in BA.
- If their Congress building looks familiar, it’s because it was modeled after ours:
- Their subway system, originally built in 1913, was the first of it’s kind in the Southern Hemisphere. After hearing a friend’s story of getting pickpocketed on board, we did not ride.
- The official list of airport transportation options includes remises (private car), taxis, illegal taxis, airport shuttles, and public buses. Our taxi driver seemed pretty legal but hard to say.
- Croissants are very popular breakfast items, but they’re called medialunas (half-moons) to spite the French.
- Buenos Aires is home to the widest street in the world. We lost count of the lanes, but it was something like 20 counting both directions. Imagine downtown Atlanta, where I-75 and I-85 come together, except make it a surface street. It takes 4 crosswalks to get across, and is marked by an obelisk monument in the center.
- The famous Recoleta cemetary is unlike any cemetary you’ve ever been to. Instead of grassy fields with tombstones, it is a mini city with tiny streets and elaborate mausoleums built as the final resting places for Argentina’s rich and famous. Some of these marble monuments are roughly on the same scale as studio apartments or even small churches. Most are very well maintained but some had some good spooky cemetary cobwebs.
After Buenos Aires, it was off to Puerto Iguazu, home of the world-famous Iguazu Falls.
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Tags: Travel
