Day 17 saw the completion of our Patagonian side-quest. We levelled up our walking skills pretty solidly through triumph, and our beer-ordering skills through failure. So back to the airport it was for us, to catch our flight back to Buenos Aires. We keep getting to the airport and also arriving from the airport at our accommodation too early, mostly because of all the posts I’d read online about lines at Argentine airports being horrendous due to inefficiency and frequent strikes. As this has so far turned out to be a falsehood, I now present a list of other stuff about Buenos Aires I’ve read in guidebooks and online which have turned out to not be correct:
- “Buenos Aires is dangerous, and you will get mugged” - undoubtedly it does happen, but then I’ve also had friends who have been mugged back in Auckland. I’m writing this on our last day in Buenos Aires, and we did not once feel unsafe due to lurking strangers, despite having walked through some supposedly slightly sketchy areas. Obviously, normal common sense still applies with regards to watching your belongings, as it does at home
- “Don’t pull out your phone in public, as you’ll look like a tourist and therefore get mugged” - seriously, it’s 2017. Everyone has a smartphone. Half the people I see in the street in Buenos Aires are walking around chatting or taking selfies on their phones, and sometimes even both at the same time. Tourists do not stand out because of phone usage
- “People dress really elegantly and conservatively, so if you wear shorts and a t-shirt you’ll look like a tourist and get mugged” - like in any large city, there are huge numbers of nicely dressed people, especially on work days. However, like in any city, there are plenty of locals that don’t give a crap about fashion and wander around in slobby shorts and singlets in the 30+ degree weather. Older people do tend to dress a bit more conservatively (so many sharply dressed elderly gentlemen around, it’s adorable!), younger people tend to dress pretty similarly to young people in any “westernised” country - mini skirts and crop tops aplenty
- “It’s a big city, most people will speak English” - no they really don’t. We’re getting pretty good at miming. Plenty of English speakers are around, but in a city of 15 million people, they get diluted out. Nevertheless, every time someone has told me they speak only “un poco” English, their English has been multitudes better than my crappy Spanish.
However, one thing all the guidebook say is that Argentine steak is great, and this is most definitely the truth. The lovely woman that owns the Airbnb apartment we’re currently staying in left us a list of restaurants she recommended, and we tried out one nearby for dinner. This long-time favourite of locals and tourists alike serves up some seriously delicious steaks at an awesome price. I got a juicy bife de chorizo (the best cut, according to most) the size of my face for about $18AUD and managed to somehow fit most of it in my belly, to the horror of the ladies at the table next to us. One day, I’ll go vegetarian, but that day is not happening in Argentina, due equally to deliciousness and logistics - vege options I’ve seen in most restaurants consist of mozzarella pizza, a side of potatoes, or the dessert. Jeremy got some other meat thing and although that was flavoursome, he was secretly full of steakless sadness.
Om nom nom. Please excuse the face, it's the only one I have. Not shown: the side salad which took up an entire salad bowl
Day 18 saw us take full advantage of the washing machine in our apartment. So much washing of dust-laden clothes happened. We also thoroughly cleansed nature from our persons in this cute as bathroom.
Yay cute wall tiling!
Look at that good Jeremy doing the cleaning
Excuse the messiness of the bed, it's too comfortable not to sprawl all over
Too many sitting surfaces for 2 people means we end up putting our crap all over everything
As our new apartment was super close to Puerto Madero, we decided to go for a wander around this upmarket port area in search of lunch. All the restaurants in the “waterfront” kind of area cost a bit much than we were willing to pay, but thankfully we came across the choripan motherload a few streets away from the glam. A long stretch of street just outside the huge Constanera Sur ecological reserve just east of Puerto Madero is lined with a huge number of food trucks grilling up sausages, burgers, and steaks. You can get a choripan for 25-50 pesos ($2-4AUD), and the best thing about these truck is that they usually have a big selection of accompaniments that you can sandwich into your bun - pickles, chillies, chimmichuri, even salads. Cheap lunch, sorted!
Some famous bridge thing in Puerto Madero
Jeremy's OTT choripan onto which he put every condiment available
Look at that Jeremy melting in the sun. That green stuff stretching into the distance behind him is pond vegetation, not grass
Energised by power-sausage, we spent a horrible couple of hours dying of heat stroke while eyeing up various birds and other wildlife in the Constanera Sur reserve. For a place with so much nature, there is surprisingly little shade. We did get to see some cute fluffies (some sort of guinea pig?), a cool slithery (big lizard thing!), and neat floppies (so many birds! Some might say too many…) though.
The huuuuuge Rio de la Plata on the other side of the reserve. Uruguay is somewhere in the distance, too far away to see
Fluffies!
Slithery!
Weird pink duck with rogue coke bottle
Then we went “home” to our apartment to die a blissful air conditioned death. The end.
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