Hola, La Boca! Adios, Buenos Aires!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

On our last day in BA, we caught a bus near our apartment and took it to the end of the line to visit La Boca. This area is the original port of Buenos Aires (since successively replaced by two others) and became home to much of the immigrant population, especially Italians.

Much of the area is pretty sketchy, but several streets have been revitalized by artists, retailers, and restaurateurs eager to welcome tourists. The pride of the neighborhood is the Boca Juniors, a wildly popular futbol team, and the area sits in the shadow of their large stadium. The team’s blue and yellow colors and likenesses of their superhero, Maradona, are everywhere to be seen. Several streets, around what is known as El Caminito, are lined with brightly colored buildings, many of them sided with sheets of corrugated zinc. This is a salute to the origins of the neighborhood, when the poor immigrant populations “borrowed” whatever leftover paint incoming ships might have carried. When we wandered just a few blocks beyond El Caminito, Tom was warned by a policewoman to guard his camera.

We took a circuitous local bus route back to our neighborhood, Recoleta, passing many of the sights we’ve seen during our visit here, and some off-the-beaten tourist track neighborhoods, as well. We stopped to take in the ornately decorated Palacio de las Aguas Corrientes, Palace of Running Water, the block-square building which once housed giant water tanks for the city. We did not venture in to see its museum of faucets and urinals!!

En route back to our apartment, we picked up a lunch of delicious empanadas to eat there before finishing up our packing; and late this afternoon, we’ll head to the airport or an evening flight. Our journey will take us to Miami and LA before we reach Phoenix tomorrow afternoon – sort of like today’s winding bus ride!

This has been a wonderful trip, full of varied sights, tastes, and cultures; thanks for traveling with us again. Where shall we go next?!?