Buenos Aires, the Beautiful Capital of Argentina

Posted by Karin-Marijke Vis Aug 10, 2009

When we landed on this continent in January 2007, we were lucky to have friends who lived in Buenos Aires and who opened their home to accommodate us for five weeks. Our friends introduced us to the Argentinean way of life: eating lots of meat, preferably barbecued, which in Argentina is called an "asado"; drinking "mate", a type of herbal tea which seems to replenish the minerals and vitamins the Argentineans lack because they hardly eat vegetables [compared to Europeans]. It was a big change after three years in Asia, where meat was scarce and we lived on vegetables. Probably the hardest adjustment was having dinner at ten or eleven at night, an hour at which we prefer to be in bed. It also quickly taught us why the Argentineans don't fancy a decent breakfast.

Capital Federal – the economic and financial heart of Argentina

We fell for Buenos Aires the moment we set foot downtown. We would stroll along the streets and lively neighbourhoods of Palermo and San Telmo for hours on end. The tall apartment buildings that line the streets are reminiscent of Paris, with tiny balconies that are sometimes brightened up with colourful geraniums or other flowering plants.

The financial and economic centre of Buenos Aires is most tangible in the area called Microcentro, where, among others, the banking area is situated. Business people run around in finely cut suits and perfect haircuts. Shoes are brightly polished and the women’s purses always match their outfits. Even though we are far from sloppily dressed travellers, our outfits screamed only one message: "foreign travellers". Whereas in Asia our white skin gave us away, here our way of dressing did.

The last step of our car shipment

Soon after our arrival in 2007, we went through the bureaucratic rigmarole at the port of Buenos Aires to liberate our Land Cruiser from its container in which it had survived the forty-day journey from Malaysia to Buenos Aires. Our shipping company was most cooperative and taking care of the red-tape took us three days, which we considered not too bad compared to some stories we had heard about car shipments. We were happy to have our home on four wheels back and got ready to hit the roads again.

Goodbye Argentina?

After two and a half years we're back in Buenos Aires, for the third time. We still love it, we still wander the streets as if we're here for the first time. We visit some lesser-known churches, have an authentic Argentinian lunch in a convent, and stand in awe once more at the city's oldest cemetery "Recoleta". After our first two visits to Buenos Aires we were convinced that we'd leave Argentina to head north. We didn't succeed – Argentina holds us in her grip. The paradox is that we love to travel, to be on the road, but that we also love to meet people, foreigners and locals alike, and to spend time with them. When we get back to a region, we're bound to have made friends there and take our time to visit them again. It seems hard to break through the circle of our Argentineans friends, we keep going back to them.

We have now entered Argentina for the fourteenth time. Maybe it's a miracle, or we are lucky that border officials haven't become suspicious yet about so many entries in such a short period of time [even more so when considering that due to an administrative mistake, our Land Cruiser is now registered with Afghanistan as country of origin instead of the Netherlands]. We have spent about one and a half years in this country, leaving Argentina in between to visit its neighbouring countries several times as well. Again we have the intention of going north, to finally leave Argentina, to head for Brazil – albeit with a stop in Paraguay, to visit [again] a friend. Will we succeed this time?