South America and Antarctica
Exploring Buenos Aires
We had a pretty full day today, trying to pack as much of Buenos Aires in as possible.
We decided to postpone breakfast So we could get to the Recoleta Cemetery before the crowds arrived. This cemetery contains the graves of many notable Argentines, including Eva Perón, various presidents of Argentina, Nobel Prize winners, and many significant military personnel. We hired a guide to take us around so we knew what we were looking at. Our guide was very knowledgeable and shared a lot of details with us.


By the time we finished the tour of the Recoleta Cemetery, breakfast at the hotel had ended. However, the staff graciously showed us to a table and allowed us to sit and enjoy a full breakfast even though it was nearly lunchtime!



We decided that the most efficient way to see the parts of the city that we hadn’t yet seen was to get on the city bus that allowed us to get on and off as we pleased. Since a full lap of the city by the bus took three hours we decided to just stay on and see what we could. We got a good feel for the different neighbourhoods and the architecture of the city but getting decent photos from the bus proved a bit difficult.




We got off the bus near our hotel and then decided to catch a cab back to the neighbourhood of San Telmo. We headed straight for Plaza Dorrego, where we watched wonderful dancers dance the Tango (which originated in Buenos Aires). We really enjoyed the spectacle, as did the crowd that gathered to watch and cheer them on.

Our next stop was a hat shop, where we each bought a nice hat. We kidded ourselves that we now looked like locals! After our hat shopping we headed back to the market for a nice dinner of pinchos (a traditional snack of meat and vegetables cooked on a skewer, and whose name translates to “spike” in Spanish) and empanadas (a sort of baked turnover with different fillings, whose name comes from a Spanish word that translates to “embreaded”).


After dinner we walked the length of the market in San Telmo, which was nearly 2km along a single street. We then hopped in a cab and headed back to the hotel.
We are now looking at packing our suitcases again, in preparation for our 5:45am departure tomorrow morning for the airport to catch our flight to El Calafate, Patagonia.
