Day 16 - Buenos Aires - Caminito, Av Florida, Senor Tango

We spent the day touring two major tourist spots - El Caminito and Av Florida. Caminito is located in the Boca district which is the working-class area of Buenos Aires. All the guide books mention that you should watch where you walk and keep to the touristed spots. Even the subway doesn't run to this area so we decided to take the subway as far as San Telmo and cab it from there. The taxi was about 12 pesos and worth some peace of mind.

The small area that is El Caminito is quite pretty with the corrugated metal walls painted vibrant colours. The area is cute. This would make for a beautiful place to hang out if it weren't for the following:
- the huge number of stalls
- souvenir stores every 2 feet
- waiters on the street trying to pull you into their restaurants
- tango dancers grabbing people off the street for pictures then trying to charge them 20 pesos (we got suckered and got away with 10 pesos and a quick dash in a random direction)
- random people trying to open doors for you for change

Yeah so anyways we had lunch there about 2 blocks from the zoo mentioned above and found a little spot serving empanadas, sandwiches and Lomo (meat sandwiches). I ordered their sandwich and got thin sliced beef deep fried. The food here was good and affordable. The highlight was the Chimichurro sauce they served. My gawd this stuff is good. Spicy, tangy, herbaly. Need to pick up a bottle before we come home.

Next stop, av Florida which is what they call "the shopping area". Yeah. That's what it is. Every store you can imagine packed into both sides of this narrow street than runs for quite a distance. This place was packed with people, on a weekday no less. If you like shopping this is the place for you. This is also an area where you can really see the class divide between the uber rich Europeans and the poor poor locals. Case and point there was a lady nursing a child on the street and she was pointing to her pregnant belly asking for change. Truly truly sad. There was yet another street kid wandering in the same area asking for change. Then as you enter this doorway to this mall...you see this!

We continued on av Florida and noticed it was raining. Well considering it was 31C out I was kind of happy for some rain finally. But wait, where are the clouds?? Looking up we see...

On our way home we noted something that Argentinians had figured out about advertising that puts them way ahead of us silly Canadians. Why have cars drive by your billboard advertisement when the billboard can go to the cars? Brilliant!

Oh yeah and James this pic is for you!

written by

yungwesl on January 22, 2009 from Buenos Aires, Argentina

from the travel blog: Sandy and Wes in South America

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He, She and the most spoiled dog in the world!

I will rest easier now!

written by James Warren on January 24, 2009

dog? i guess i didn't fully understand the subtleties of the article.

written by Gord on January 28, 2009

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