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Lesson learned - When you travel to a new country by bus, change some money beforehand. At least if you are hungry, haha. Bus trip from Foz do Iguazu started at 13.00 during the day. We were prepared with some snacks and drinks, but the plan was to buy food on our way. There was only one problem; we didn't find any place to change money so we had no Argentinean pesos.
The bus trip went quite smoothly with all the border crossings and other things. This time they even showed us movies in the bus. First movie "I am number four" - Action movie and the volume was totally like that and after that they showed us TWICE a movie called Super 8. I learned a lot of Spanish while watching the movies - "Dios mio!" and "Mierda!" were amazingly common, haha. Dios mio totally became our favorite phrase.
We were getting quite hungry in the evening when the sun set and there were absolutely no places to stop on the road. People were getting frustrated. Finally after five hours of endless driving we arrived to a Shell gas station. First things first, we went to ask the shop keeper do they accept cards (in Spanish to make sure he understands) as a payment and we were thrilled to hear that they do. We spent about 10 minutes trying to decide which one of the bad options we choose. After making the devastating decision we walked to the counter to pay. "Only cash, only cash". I think I don't have to tell the rest of the story… Not so happy customers this time. Oh well, some crackers left in the bus and then it was time to sleep.
We slept really well in the bus, even though it was REALLY cold. We arrived in Buenos Aires 1,5 hours late and saw that people were starting the independence day celebrations. First thing to do at the station was to find an ATM and get money. Things are not always as easy as you would think. We found ATMs but they were all out of money. Nice lady at the tourist information explained us, that there is not any money left because of the long weekend. Awesome!
There is always a solution and this time we walked to a huge five star hotel with money exchange. Finally we had money and the journey to our hostel started. Funny coincidences again, when we heard that the metro was free to support the celebrations, haha.
Three whole days in Buenos Aires have gone really fast. We have visited all the main areas, seen all the big sights, met lots of nice people and enjoyed the atmosphere of BA and Argentina. Pictures tell much more, but architecture in this city is interesting, and the areas differ a lot. Just walking from the center to La Boca, which is the famous are of colorful houses and the home stadium of La Boca Juniors football team showed us how fast the surroundings change. That was also the first time we saw really poor people living on the streets. Scary and sad. The poorest people seemed to have huge amount of animals… No idea why.
La Boca was really beautiful area and I loved the colors used there. Other really interesting place to visit was the cemetery of Recoleta, where also one of the most famous Argentineans, Eva Peron is buried. The cemetery was totally different from any other cemeteries I have visited. The tombs were huge "houses" or temples made of marble, stone etc. There were tombs of all sizes and designs, but almost all of them had a locked door and the family name above it. The most terrifying feature of the graves was that when you actually looked inside, you saw all the coffins. That was spooky. It was so awful to think that the corpses are so close and if you just open the coffin you see them…. The whole cemetery was like a small city with narrow streets. Lonely Planet suggested following the crowds to find Eva Peron's grave, but this time there were no crowds. Finding the right grave took a while, but it was really fascinating to wander around in the cemetery. The only difference comparing to other graves with Eva Peron's was that it was full of flowers.
This trip has definitely not been any party trip etc, but now after 1,5 weeks of travelling we decided to participate in a pub crawl. The event was made mainly for tourists, but also locals were welcome. The tour was really fun and the people working there made everything work really well. We visited 3 bars and ended up in a night club that was open the whole night. We met earlier in the evening a group of four Brazilian girls at our hostel and we spent the evening with them.
Comparing to Brazil, Argentina seemed to be cheaper, but not as much as I expected. Buying food from supermarket was cheap so we made food at the hostel few times. We saw definitely more poorness in Argentina than in Brazil, but the reason for that might also be in the areas we were visiting. The biggest difference between the countries was maybe the crazy amount of people walking everywhere in Buenos Aires at night. In Rio we walked outside only in the evening after dinner, but the streets were quite empty. Argentina totally had a culture where you go to eat and party really late. That you understood already from advertisements where events started at 1am or 2am. In Finland the parties might stop already at that time, haha.
Buenos Aires was a really nice place and gave a good overview of Argentina and its culture. BA is a lively city, what we were able to witness following even a manifestation. Someday we will definitely go back and explore even more. This is not a good bye to Argentina, only to BA. We'll be back in a week!
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