Having spent four days and three nights in Buenos Aires I’m on the move again, bussing it north to the border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay to visit Iguazu Falls. 
Buenos Aires has been great – the people, the architecture and the empanadas being the highlights! After arriving pretty early Tuesday morning I had breakfast in the hostel and headed towards the city centre on foot with Peter, a friend from college who arrived in BA four days before me, and Dev our current room mate. The sun was shining and although it was pretty cold it was very pleasant. It’s an easy city to walk around, the streets are really wide and well organised into blocks and avenues. The architecture is really sporadic – a lot of the older, stone buildings have Italian and french influences and in between these you have a lot of really tall, thin apartment blocks built in the 60s and 70s lending a sense of disorganisation to the city that I really like and which stands at odds to the well thought out layout of the streets.

We stayed around central in the morning and after grabbing an empanada – an Argentinian pastry not unlike a cornish pasty – we headed South towards La Boca, home of the Boca Juniors football club. The area around the  football stadium is brightly coloured and busy with lots of market stalls and places to eat and drink. Outside of this small bubble though the area is pretty run down. We had been advised to avoid the area at night time. On our way back to the hostel we came across a tiny, non-descript bakery on Olivarria st selling empanadas, cakes and bread. Delicious!

That evening we went out in search of a small Mexican restaurant called Che Taco near our hostel in San Telmo. The food was ok, simple and cheap. The atmosphere in the cafe was cool so we stayed for a few drinks after the food. By 10pm I was absolutely shattered so I retired to bed while the boys went to another bar called Bier Life which sells craft beers.

The hostel offers yoga classes every morning after breakfast and you give a donation based on your own travelling budget and how much you enjoy the class. On wednesday morning it was an hour of hatha yoga which I loved, especially as it was the first bit of exercise I’ve done since the race. It was nice to get some endorphins going again! After that we went on a three hour walking tour during which the guide explained Argentina’s journey to independence from Spain and how it has changed as a country ever since. It was really interesting and I must admit I never knew anything about Argentina’s history before.

That evening the hostel brought us to a Tango class in a molingo (a Tango club). The space was incredible; it was an old warehouse which was due to be demolished but the locals protested and a few of them got together to buy it and turn it into a molingo. The walls are covered with crazy art and the bar sells vegetarian food – the dream! The Tango lesson was really enjoyable. We weren’t graceful by any means but we’d grasped the steps by the end of it!

We stayed for a pizza and a drink and then decided to negotiate the city’s bus system home as the metro was closed. We obviously looked pretty lost while we were trying to find our bus stop as a local asked us which stop we needed. Luckily our host from the hostel had briefed us and we knew the word in Spanish for bus stop (collectivo) and the number 24 (viente quatro) so we managed not only to understand the woman but also respond and she pointed us in the right direction. Great success! After upsetting the bus driver by having absolutely no idea what he was asking me and just looking at him with my shoulders shrugged we managed to board the bus get back to the hostel. Lesson of the day – I really need to learn some Spanish.

More yoga Thursday morning and then hopped on a train out to Tigre which is an area North of the city that sits on the river Delta. There’s an array of islands that are only accessible by river but are home to thousands of people. We took a boat trip around the area and saw their river homes, most of which sat on stilts to avoid flooding. It is a beautiful area and I’m sure it’s very busy in the summer time but at this time of year it had a bit if a ghost town feel to it. 
For dinner we tried a tiny tapas cafe called Yauss Club on Etstados Unidos. It cost 100 pesos for three tapas which was the perfect amount of food for me and they were really tasty. After not winning a pool tournament back at the hostel I had another early night. 

Friday morning was breakfast and yoga – my new usual – and off out for another big walk of the city. I walked for an hour to get to the Cementerio de la Recoleta which houses hundreds of aristocratic graves and tombs. It was interesting to see and some of the sculptures were really beautiful. Lunch was pizza in a restaurant called El Cuartito which is a really cool spot on Talcahuano that serves deep pan pizza (the only kind you can expect to find in Buenos Aires apparently) and has a really nice old style feel to it. They were also playing The Dark Knight rises on two TV screens so I was sold before the food even arrived. 

Friday evening I boarded a bus from Buenos Aires bound for Puerto Iguazu – an 18.5 hour trip. Waterfall photos to follow soon……..!