Buenos Aires, Argentina (Part 2)

We arrived back in our home away from home in time for the weekends festivities. Nick had a prearranged booking at the infamous Milhouse Hostel while Sam and I returned to the more relaxed (and cheaper) PAX Hostel just a few blocks away.

Our first afternoon back was to include a graffiti tour through Palermo and neighbouring suburbs explaining the history and meaning of the many murals and stencil pieces throughout the city. The tour departed at 4.30pm which provided plenty of time as our bus from Neuquen was due at 12.30pm. This however didn't account for the bus being 2.5 hours late, which lead to an eventual rush to get to the tour on time.

The tour, operated by GraffitiMundo, lasted approximately 2.5 hours and took us to a number of sites in the area, and finished up at a graffiti-themed bar with a few drinks. I won't ramble on about the history etc as that's something for the tour to explain, but the diversity and underlying influences behind it are notable in the work.

For those interested the tour costs AR75 (all inclusive) and operates on Fridays and Wednesdays. Check out: http://www.graffitimundo.com

After a quiet night, we awoke early to head down to La Boca for a tour of the famous La Bombonera stadium, and to for a walk around the sourrounding colourful streets. Also, being a Saturday, there were plenty of markets and street performers on display. With no prior knowledge of what was involved we foolishly chose the museum and stadium tour package for AR35. Although informative, the tour was not worth the price of admission, and the museum was entirely in Spanish, well beyond my basic knowledge of the language. My tip: do the 'express tour' for AR20 which let's you tour the stadium by yourself. Better yet, try and score tickets to one of the games.

That evening we tried for the second time to head to Pacha. Learning from our previous mistakes with the Christopher Lawrence night (refer: Buenos Aires part 1 post), we arrived early to avoid disappointment. AR60 seemed a bit steep at first but it came with a free drink and is still pretty cheap for a club of this calibre back home. Although the club was at limited capacity when we entered the main room filled up quickly and subsequently the outdoor terrace area where we ended up spending most of the evening. The toilet-to-patron ratio was a bit of a circus with queues stretching into the front foyer for most of the night (even for the guys). Although being a predominantly house brand, it seems the Buenos Aires club has reinvented itself with most of the music being techno, after hosting trance DJ Christopher Lawrence two weeks prior. The outdoor terrace served as an ideal place to party the night away and eventually watch the sunrise with planes landing low overhead at the adjacent Jorge Newbery airport. For those looking to attend, be warned that the cheapest drinks available are AR20 each which is for woeful cans of Budweiser.

This served as less than ideal preparation for the next day in which we planned to awake early, head down to River Plate stadium and purchase some ticket for the 3pm game (we didn't really want to pay for the AR250 gringo package as attending the games isn't as hard as te hostels make them seem). Sleeping in till 1.30pm quickly put an end to this plan and we ventured down to the San Telmo street markets. All sorts of crafts were on offer, from antiques to handmade shoes (made on the spot!!) at reasonably cheap prices. The best buy turned out to be handmade leather wallets of varying sizes for wallets of varying sizes for AR25.

To bid farewell to Buenos Aires on the final evening I again indulged in the 400g steak. It still amazes me that you can get a meal of this size and quality for the equivilent of AU7.

We made a strategic change to the itinerary and booked a bus to Mendoza, with Cordoba to follow so as to make it easier to get to Salta after that. In retrospect it made no difference but we went with it anyway. Our 'cama VIP' package again hosted wifi. This time it actually worked. Nick highlighted the point that in a country where you can't flush toilet paper that you can send emails from a moving bus on a motorway. Hmmm...