TravBuddy.com: Buenos Aires Travel Blogs and Reviews

Tango and I

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 10:33:20 PST

Buenos Aires, Argentina>, Oct 11, 2008

On Wednesday I ended up playing football on astroturf at a football club in San Telmo, one of the older districts of BA. This was my first attempt at exercise for some time, but I will need to do much more if I´m going to be in good hiking form on the Inca Trail in January.

On Thursday I finally managed to see La Boca, the working class but very vibrantly coloured barrio of Buenos Aires that opens out onto the port at the end of the famous street Caminito. This is where all the buildings are brightly painted in all the primary colours.

It´s also the home of Boca Juniors, Argentina´s most famous football club and I found the stadium tour to be very informative and it was all in spanish so impressed I understood so much. Incidently, I just got tickets to see River Plate play Boca in the SuperClasico derby of Buenos Aires on the 19th October. Hooray, it´s going to be an awesome spectacle, on and off the pitch.

On Saturday, I went for a wander around in the name of research for the boat trip to Uruguay. I had heard that Tigre, a town on the estuary of the Plata river and favourite weekend destination of Porteños (residents of BA) is linked by ferry to Carmelo in Uruguay and that the boat ride is cheaper and more picturesque than the other crossings. Unfortunately, there was no space on this route for a few days, so I wandered along past the rowing and yachting clubs and then went back to Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires to get a ticket to Colonia.

In the evening I went with some friends to a Tango night. It started with us having a 40 minute lesson, which initially was similar to learning salsa but quickly got much harder and I never really got to grips with it. I was happy to go for a delicious 3 course meal (steak, very rare and delicious) and let the pros show how it´s done in an excellent show.