It's a wanderful life, so it is

The three biggest figures here – sometimes literally so – are Maradona, Lionel Messi and Pope Francis. Probably in that order. That makes sense as Papa Frankie was rubbish at football. There are images of them throughout the city but they are particularly prominent in the barrio known as La Boca.

This working-class neighbourhood was formed during the boom years of Argentina’s economy, in the late 19th century when thousands of immigrants (or is that ex-pats?) from Southern Europe, mainly Italy, came to the docks area to process all the exports. They brought with them an independent spirit and, in 1882, La Boca even seceded briefly from Argentina under the Genoese flag.

The Tango began here and it’s home to Boca Juniors and its passionate football fans. It has a Transporter bridge, only one of 8 in the world, which you can see in our selfie at the top of this post. The improvised and colourful nature of its architecture is due to materials and paint “liberated” from the nearby docks, best seen in the street called El Caminito. Ironically, this included the corrugated sheets and wooden panels discarded after protecting the fancy stone and marble brought from Europe to construct the beautiful buildings for the rich people in the city centre.

Most neighbourhoods in Buenos Aires are named after their local church but La Boca refers to the mouth of the estuary that used to be here before it filled with silt, killing the port and ending the trade that came through here. In recent times, the river has been cleaned and the company carrying out the work found found 75 ships and 115 cars and then sold this scrap metal to help cover their costs.

La Boca had competition from other ports in Buenos Aires, including Puerto Madero which underwent significant regeneration in the 1990s and is now the most expensive real estate in South America. It has the iconic Puente de la Mujer (Woman’s Bridge), because a number of streets in the district have women’s names and it represents a couple dancing the Tango. You be the judge.

In Leg 7 of Race Across the World Series 2, broadcast in 2020, Emon and Jamiul visited Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay. And if you already knew all that, you may have uncovered one of your specialist subjects for Mastermind. Anyway, it looked like a beautiful place on TV and I’d marked it in Google Maps in case we were ever nearby. 

Luckily for us, it’s only an hour’s ferry ride from Puerto Madero and the magnificent seven of us had booked a morning sailing. The ferry was extremely comfortable and it was a very pleasant crossing.

Our tour guide, Lourdés, was a crabbit-faced woman who concealed an magnificently dry sense of humour and she certainly knew her facts. Rio de Plata is considered to be the widest river in the world. The area changed hands 11 times – Spanish, Portuguese and Brazilian –  before becoming part of Uruguay in 1828. There are only 35,000 residents in Colonia and 2 traffic lights, with only 50 families living in the UNESCO site itself, which is tiny and very easy to navigate. 

We had a leisurely lunch which included the Chivito, the national sandwich of Uruguay, featuring a thin, tender slice of beef steak (churrasco) topped with mozzarella cheese, ham, bacon, fried eggs, lettuce, tomatoes, and mayonnaise, all squeezed into a toasted bun. It was delicious and deadly in equal measure.

Our ferry full of people all arrived en masse for the return journey and inevitably the queues were lengthy and disordered, like a human Nokia Snake game. But for us, it was just another opportunity to experience that wonderful sensation of being retired and having no real rush to be anywhere.

In our final week, we had an amazing selection of events to attend. There was a big celebration in Chinatown for the Spring Festival of the Year of the Fire Horse with traditional dances, gastronomic offerings, cultural fairs, tango, martial arts, and live shows. It was also “Carnaval” week in the run up to Ash Wednesday. And, of course, there was St. Valentine’s Day too.

True to form, we attended none of these! Truth be told, we were exhausted after enjoying all the busy days with our visitors and we were cherishing a few days of rest. But we’ve never observed Valentine’s Day and we’d been to Chinatown a few weeks earlier, so talked ourselves out of that. We did try to see a Carnaval event that was advertised as starting at 6 pm. We thought we’d be smart and turn up an hour later to let them get into the flow. Although there was some activity, it was clear that any festivities wouldn’t be starting until much, much later. Knowing the people here, maybe even after 10 pm, an hour or two before their children go to bed. 😂 

For our last week, we simply enjoyed our “we’re just living somewhere” existence so we swam in the rooftop pool, strolled around the city, shopped locally and generally chilled for the rest of our time.  It’s strange that, had we been on holiday like we were in Iguazú, we would have been out till all hours at night chasing Mardi Gras. Instead we were mostly asleep by 10.30pm.

We did get a bit of a shock when a snap General Strike was called the night before we were due to fly to Brazil. The owners of the AirBnb were fantastic though and let us stay for a couple of nights for free until we could get a rearranged flight.

We’ve had a fantastic time here. There are so many good things about BA with almost no downside. Okay, maybe the lack of cider. Or more accurately the kind of ciders we like. Maybe Brazil will have some Angry Orchard! 😋