Thursday, October 29, 2009

adiós américa del sur

Buenos Aires did her best to make me dislike her.

Arriving from Sydney late in the evening 6 weeks ago I had to get a taxi from the airport and it was pissing down with rain. Really heavily.

The next morning I woke and it was still raining. And it was cold.

So was the next day.

The following morning I left for the domestic airport to fly to Iguacu Falls. It was a clear sunny day.

About a week later I returned to BA from Uruguay and guess what?

Yup...raining again.

And so - another 4 weeks passed while I communed with Big Heads, cramponned most of the way up an active volcano, and hiked amongst glaciers and mountains, until it was time to return to Buenos Aires before leaving for home.

You may recall from an earlier post that I was delayed in El Calafate for 10 hours which meant I missed all afternoon and evening in BA. I finally arriving back there at 2am.

Would you be surprised to hear that it had poured with torrential rain for over 6 hours that day in BA? I wasn't.

I awoke the next morning for my final full day and to my absolute surprise it was hot and sunny with nary a cloud in the sky.

So I set off early and walked around the streets of Buenos Aires for the entire day, getting a bit of colour and catching up with Recoleta and Palermo (the zushy parts of town)

I spent a little while in the Recoleta cemetery - an extraordinary place with over the top crypts and mausoleums. I was surprised to see just how plain and understated Eva "Evita" Peron's crypt was. Simple and unadorned except for a couple of small brass plaques.

Very tasteful.

And so, in the dying rays of my last days sojourn in South America, I warmed a little to that heaving metropolis and looked a little more kindly upon her and the charms she deigned to show me all but briefly.

And so I headed home.


paint your wagon


evita was here


recoleta cemetery


recoleta cemetery


recoleta cemetery


ba graffiti




picket fence


fence abstract

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