Buenos Aires, a city far away from Europe but with a Mediterranean style, with an impressive architecture, a mix of houses and majestic buildings.
It has many different neighborhoods, all of them different, from La Boca with their colorful houses and their humble people till Palermo with their beautiful shops with hipster style.
Something really characteristic of the city is the “fileteado”, manual painting style using a lot of colors and symmetries. They create a piece of art out of every average object. That discipline was declared a Patrimony of the Humanity in 2015. Nothing to discuss, it deserves it!
Another thing that makes me fall in love was the nature, the flora and fauna, I discovered trees and flowers that I have ever seen in my whole life. Watching animals in their own habitat is also amazing! For that reason I truly recommended the visit of “Reserva ecologica Costanera Sur” or to sit in some park under the trees and observe…
“El cartoneo” it’s another thing that I have seen for the first time here. “ El cartonero” is the person who works picking up cartoons from streets, garbage or shops and brings it to a recycle place. It’s a respectable job done by poor people giving them money to live. The problem is that sometimes they don’t use a small trolley, instate, they use horses which suffer a lot. Imagine if that people don’t have enough money for themselves, how could be possible that the horses are in a good condition… it’s very sad.
It’s also sad to see the poorness of a part of the population, causing of problems, roberies and delinquency. We have been here like 10 days and we haven’t seen any conflict but it’s true that you can feel the insecurity. A lot of shops or markets remind closed with a front cage during the day, in other ones you have to ring the bell and they will let you in, in the buildings the interphone is not working and if you have a friend visiting you, you have to go downstairs and personally open the door… That measures instead of give more safety to the city produce the opposite effect, in my opinion. And also makes me ask a lot of questions, how bad was the situation few years ago? How afraid are the people here? And why?
There are a lot of political opinions and explanations, the most of the people is divided in “peronismo” or “kidchnerismo”, in my opinion no one of them had help the people or had solve the most important problem, the devalue of the own currency (Argentinian Peso). The peso is always devaluing and reaches his worse moment in 2001 when the people lost the half of their money for one day to another. That generate a big insecurity, and no one wants anymore to have pesos, the people want to have USA dollars, and no one trust the banks, and the people store the money at home, and that generate also more robberies … it’s a big circle, a never ending story….
Thanks to Ana and Carlos who help us to understand the live in Buenos Aires.
Cordoba, was the second city we visit and is the second biggest city in Argentina. For us it was a relaxing city compared to Buenos Aires. The architecture is also very rich, who says that Argentina doesn’t have history?! You can find very old church like “Iglesia Catedral” (1573) or the church “Iglesia del Sagrado Corazón” also called “Iglesia de los padres Capuchinos” (1943) or modern architecture like the bridge “Puente del Bicentenareo” and the area of the new Government house (2011).
“El paseo de las pulgas” was one of the things I like the most, is a artisans market that takes place every weekend, it’s a very beautiful place where you can take a walk, admire the art with recycling objects, buy some second hand staff… In the surroundings there are a lot of bars and restaurants with very good atmosphere.
During the days we spent in Cordoba we did also a couple of day trips. Once to Alta Gracia to swim on the river, perfect place to chat with friends and drink fernet with coke, the typical drink of the summer. Another time we meet Maru and Martin (old friends from our trip in Thailand) and they invite us to their house in the middle of the forest close to “Unquillo”. We ate “asado” a delicious barbecue mix of beef and pork.
So, we like Cordoba very much and the best was that we feel like at home, we could rest and start to chilling and that all because of Ceci and Negro (old big friends) that host us in their home and make us participate of their traditions and culture. I love mate since then! 🙂
The last city was Rio Cuarto, we travel there to see the rally Dakar. In the hotel where we were staying we meet Cecilia and Oscar, a couple that also wanted to see the rally and very kindly toke us to the view point in Alpacorral. We wake up really early and we had to wait a lot till approx. at 14h the first motorcycle came, drove by Joan Barreda (who would had won the Dakar if he wouldn’t have been penalize). The rest of the day was all the time motorcycles, quads, cars… and the best moment of the day was when the first truck came driven by the Russian Nicolaev and makes us vibrate!
