Being a Tourist Part 3

Today's Being a Tourist blog post is brought to you with the help of our sponsor....the ghetto! Many of you may be confused.....so was I. Where do I even begin for this one?? Well I guess the beginning. Originally, this post was going to be dedicated to the lovely part of Buenos Aires that you always see the pictures of online. The cute little colorful houses right by the water....how lovely right?


Well here is what they don't tell you about those pictures. All of those cute little colorful houses are actually located in a part of Buenos Aires known as La Boca. When I first arrived here in Buenos Aires I told my contact at Connect-123 that I wanted to see those houses and she told me, "Okay well if you go there be careful....it's really our not-nice-area." I didn't think much of it honestly because I've been to a lot of not-nice-areas in my life between Boston and New Bedford so I was going to go see the pretty houses anyways and get you all some good pictures. I am not a complete moron though, when someone says an area is dangerous I do take proper precautions (sort of).


I decided I would take someone who had already visited the pretty houses. Now to keep this person's privacy safe I will not name them, however she is the only other person who I have posted a picture of here in Argentina....hint hint nudge nudge.....anyway she is a great person, cute, blonde, funny, but what I failed to know about her is she is absolutely TERRIBLE with directions and buses.


Now for a quick recount of my day. It started out well enough, we both met for breakfast, which here in Argentina is always a cup of coffee and some toast (perfect for me!) and then headed out. The first thing we did, at her knowledge was get on the 39 bus. Easy enough. We got on the bus and proceeded to ride it for quite some time. I asked if it seemed like we were going in the right direction and was assured by my friend that yes it was correct it just takes some time. And then the bus stopped at a station/parking space and the driver politely told us that we had to get off as this was the last stop and the bus was staying there. We got off the bus, me assuming we were there, my friend with a slight look of concern. Apparently we were not in the right place. Apparently, we had taken the bus in the wrong direction for so long that we reached the opposite end of where we were supposed to be going. But that's not all folks.....we also didn't know where a bus stop for the same bus going in the other direction was. Perfect right?


At this point I figured, whatever stuff happens so we searched for a bus stop for the bus going in the other direction and after walking for about 20 minutes found one and got on. At this point we were sure we were going in the right direction and knew we had quite the long bus ride ahead of us. The bus continued to drive farther and farther and farther until we reached the area of Buenos Aires known as La Boca.


Now for a brief explanation of La Boca. Literally the name translates to the mouth and many ignorant tourists probably assume it is a cute neighborhood resembling a South American type of Vineyard Gingerbread house neighborhood. This is a GROSS mischaracterization. In reality La Boca is a cross between Lower Roxbury and the part of a tropical island beyond the resort where tourists are frowned upon venturing out into. I would love to say that the two blocks of houses with colors is redeeming however, I never found those houses so.....I guess we should continue with the story of my adventure.

As we were heading into La Boca I turned to my friend and asked if she knew when to get off and if things looked familiar.....she said, "Ummmm sort of, I'm sure I'll know it when I see it." Not even 5 minutes after this conversation the bus driver pulled the bus into a warehouse and informed us that this was the end of the line and this bus was stopping here for the night."GREAT!!! AMAZING!!!" I thought. We got out of the bus in the middle of La Boca and looked around. I had no idea where to go and neither did my friend. She however, remembered walking by the water to find the houses so that's what we decided to do, head for the water. It actually didn't seem that bad. There actually seemed to be a bike path that sort of went along the river's edge. I mean if you ignored the gangs of people who had parked there cars and were drinking shirtless and carrying on it was just fine, almost. Here are two pictures of the path we were on.....funny thing is this actually wasn't a path at all, it was a road that cars drove on so every once in a while we did have to make way for a car that always tended to slow down a little too much as it drove by us.




I do not have a lot of pictures of the neighborhood of La Boca because I thought it would be a bad idea to walk through brandishing my camera as a flag that I was indeed a tourist....I mean besides my blonde friend and our attire. We then approached a bridge....neither of us had remembered crossing a bridge to arrive in the ghetto, however there was a sign that pointed to Buenos Aires in that direction and it seemed as if the other side of the bridge was probably a lot safe than where we were at that point.....so across the bridge we went. Then all of a sudden as we tried to find a bus to take us back home (having finally given up any hope of finding the pretty houses) the neighborhood seemed just as bad as it had before....in fact it may have been worse in some respects....now people were clearly staring at us and several attempted to talk to us and ask us questions. Then I saw what I thought might be a point of salvation....a Carrefour superstore. I had the idea to just duck in there to figure out where we should go because no one would rob us inside a store. When we got in the store we both immediately felt safer and figured out a plan to get home.....either a cab or a bus with a number we recognized. I also looked for an iron. Two reasons: 1. My mother has been bugging me to buy one since coming here and 2. I figured if we had an iron if someone did try to rob us I could just hit them with the iron.....I know not the most reasonable plan I've ever had so I guess it's a good thing that we didn't get robbed and the Carrefour didn't have an iron for sale.


After leaving the store we headed back toward the bridge and were then faced with a choice, go back to where we started or head down into the neighborhoods we though were safer. Naturally we sided with safety and began walking. Suddenly the neighborhoods weren't nearly as sketchy looking. I felt I could take my camera out and take pictures actually. Unfortunately there was only one thing really worthy of a picture, a pretty wooden carved picture. So here that is...

We continued walking for quite some time....probably around an hour or so....until we came upon the saving grace of the day.....


Did you know that made PIZZA-IN-A-CONE!!!????!!!!????? Genius.....pure and simple GENIUS!!! I now have a new become a millionaire plan....open one of these in Boston and get all the drunk college kids to buy some on the way home at night.....smart, I think so! But I digress, this restaurant seemed quite nice. They have them all around Argentina apparently, according to the sign displaying the businesses history. It is delicious....basically what they do is wrap pizza crust into a cone shape, then they fill it with cheese and whatever toppings you might want. I took lots of pictures! No worries if you can't conceptualize it....just keep reading. Even better than the pizza cones was that I got 5 points....what are the points for??? Well they are not imaginary and they do matter....if you get 25 pts. you get a free cone, 45 is two free cones, and 55 is, well you get it. Anyway this, like a bucket of KFC in Lower Roxbury, makes the trip into dangerous territory totally worth it!

 
I was really REALLY Excited about the 5 points!!! Leave me alone...it was the highlight of my day 

Those were the two lovely workers who made my pizza cones!

The pizza cones themselves....mmmmmmmm.....soooooo goood!

This is a close-up of the sign behind the cashier...I took it because....well I mean look at it, especially the middle picture. Do you see how she is eating the pizza cone?? I'm telling you drunk college kids would LOVE these....I'm thinking a Boston franchise is coming soon.

So while eating my pizza cones I completely forgot that we were lost in the middle of a not so great neighborhood. Many people are probably wondering why we didn't at this point just ask for directions....well truth be told I don't know the exact reason. I think part of it was that by asking for directions you immediately label yourself as a tourist and put a target on you as a tourist. Some part of me was hoping that so long as I kept my mouth shut I look enough like an Argentina that everyone would leave us alone...this of course is ridiculous because we were clearly lost and did not belong...but hindsight is 20/20 I guess.


At this point we decide the 17 is the bus that will get us home. So we get on a 17 tell the bus driver where we are heading in order to pay and he tells us that we are on the wrong bus and that we need to take the bus in the other direction. This of course is easier said than done. We now have to get off the bus cross four lanes of traffic and wait yet again at the bus stop for the right bus. Perfect, right? Finally the 17 comes and we get on...this time sure we are going in the right direction and ready to finally get home. We have now been just trying to get home for probably 4-5 hours....we were both exhausted. After about 20 minutes on the bus seats finally were available for us to sit in which was nice. We then sat down and began rehashing the day as we began to notice street names that we both knew. Then just as had happened two other times that day, the bus stopped and the driver informed us that we must get off...at a station neither one of us recognized in a part of the city neither one of us recognized either. at this point we both began laughing uncontrollably.....I mean people thought we were crazy we were laughing so hard for no apparent reason. 


As we looked around we noticed we had gotten off at what appeared to be some sort of fair. There was a man doing a puppet show that the hordes of people seemed to find quite amusing. Meanwhile my eyes were peeled for anything resembling a bar. I needed a drink. Now I know that you shouldn't drink when stressed out, and drinking is bad for you, but you know what sometimes all you want/need is a drink. So we found an outdoors bar and we each got a drink. I got some sort of frozen daiquiri that came in a glass so large I can only describe it as a large glass bowl. PERFECT! I sucked it down in probably 10 minutes....which is only relevant because the process of getting a place to sit, placing an order, and actually getting the drink probably took 30 minutes. At this point the sun started going down and my friend and I both decided it was probably time we figure out where we were and how to get home.


At this point I spotted the tops of some mausoleums.....that's right folks, somehow we went from the ghetto of La Boca to Recoleta Cemetery. Sometimes I think my life is just a sick joke. Anyway, I knew exactly how to get home from there so we decided to walk around the fair for a little while. It is funny though that they had a huge craft fair right outside of the cemetery. Honestly the whole time I was expecting it to be part of some act.....like some actor dressed as Jesus was going to come and tip over all the tables screaming about getting out of his father's house as some sort of live-Catholic-Stage-Art, but it never happened. The rest of the story is actually pretty uneventful...sorry....but I did take some pictures so we'll end with them.

This was the puppet show...it seemed like it was a show for kids, but I'm pretty sure the jokes he was telling were definitely adult oriented so I'm not exactly sure.

This was the second time we saw this scene that day. The first time however, people were living beneath those types of tents not selling crappy touristy gift underneath them....but in both places tourist were getting ripped off so maybe they have more in common than I first thought.

Being a Tourist Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 in my Being a Tourist series. Anyone who has traveled to Buenos Aires will likely be able to tell you about the two places you must visit in the city. This is because every Porteño you speak to will say the same two places. First is 9 de Julio followed by the Recoleta Cemetery. It's pretty obvious why 9 de Julio is so important.....there are a ton of monuments, government buildings, the Casa Rosada, and the list just goes on and on. However, many people may be thinking why on Earth is a cemetery really the second place of interest for people in a huge city like Buenos Aires. Honestly I couldn't figure it out myself but then I went. And now I understand.


The next few paragraphs are going to focus on a little bit of history yet again, because I guess secretly I have always wanted to be a history teacher like a large majority of my friends and even one of my cousins. If history bores you or you have no interest in expanding your intellectual prowess beyond what you already think you know feel free to again skip to the pictures below the line of yellow asterisks.


So what is sooooooo important about this freaking cemetery?? Well first off let me say it is not really that big a place...I mean Riverside cemetery in Fairhaven is easily bigger area wise than the entire Recoleta Cemetery, however I would like to bet that there are probably 2-3X the number of people in the Recoleta Cemetery that are in Riverside. This is because Recoleta cemetery is not a grassy place with a bunch of headstones, its a metropolis of mausoleums towering one right next to the other holding between 10-20 dead relatives in each site.


And now the history lesson begins. I think two things are probably the main contributing factors to the creation of a place like Recoleta Cemetery. One is that Buenos Aires (and Argentina as a country) have historically been dominated by Catholicism. And if there is one thing I can tell you about Catholics its that they love being buried together. This of course is completely anecdotal unless you count the giant catacombs in Rome, the mausoleums throughout the Catholic dominated countries, and the fact that I think a large majority of my family will be buried within 50 ft of each at Riverside cemetery. But I digress, the Catholicism within Buenos Aires clearly placed a great emphasis on the need for a proper burial blessed by the Church. The other contributing factor to the creation of a colossal city of catacombs is the amount of money these people had. The names of the families that reside in this cemetery are well known throughout the Latin American world for being in charge of governments, militaries, universities, and so on. Honestly, its as if each family was attempting to prove their rank of importance by how big, grand, or over-the-top (in some instances) they could make their mausoleum.


Now as I said there would be a small history lesson involved. The above paragraph was not it! Sorry....anyways the real history lesson comes in with why I was actually a little excited to visit the cemetery. This is the final burial place of Eva Duarte. For those of you who don't understand that let me re-phrase....Its where EVITA is buried!


Okay so again maybe not exciting to everyone, but to me it was fascinating and here's why. Long and short of why Eva is so important to Argentine history is because she came from nothing, became arguably the most important woman in Argentine history, and fought to create a middle class in the country. Now add on to this the fact that she may or may not have slept to the top, been a bit over the top in her own personal spending when she was in power, and that people in Argentina (specifically the descamisados) LOVED her. And I'm not talking the way we love our President. Uh uh.....I'm talking the way I love Kennedy family or the way middle aged white women like Oprah. Get it yet? But that isn't even the best part of the story.


Eva was married to Juan Perón. They were basically the leaders of their own party which was named after them. Eva was the rallier and Juan was the political figure head. The next part of this story is what I have heard since coming here to Argentina...and it gets good....trust me. So Eva died while Juan was in office, but before she could be buried in a cemetery alongside the Descamisados (literally the shirtless, but basically the poor folk she came from) there was a coup. Juan was kicked out of power and the new ruler shipped Eva's body out of the country. He was petrified that her grave site among the people he wanted to oppress would become a rallying point and he would be screwed....so off to Italy under a fake name her body went. Juan fled, I think to Paraguay and eventually to Spain. Still no one knew, except for the government that Eva resided in Italy, until the early 70's when it was finally revealed that she was hidden away in catacomb in Milan.


At this point the story gets a little weird. Juan Perón, married to his 3rd wife has Eva's body flown to Spain and displays it in his house. Yea...seriously.....I don't know about you, but I'm thinking someone needs to learn to let go and if I was the third wife I would definitely be a little peeved....but to each his own I guess.


Eventually, in 1973, Juan returned to Argentina and became the President once more. He died in office and his third wife actually took over as the first female President in the Western Hemisphere. But the story isn't over. Juan's third wife had Eva's body flown back to Argentina and displayed alongside her husband's for a brief period before she was able to bury them properly. Oddly enough she had Eva buried within Recoleta cemetery among the very people in Argentina that she fought her entire life against and who absolutely hated her. To make sure her body was safe certain measures were taken including some trap doors, fake coffins, and lots of locks. Unfortunately, Isabel (Juan's third wife) didn't have all of those measures in place to protect her husband's body. So shortly after his burial his grave was broken into and his hands were cut off. Now for those of you who are cultured and sophisticated, I am sure you have seen the movie Evita with Madonna playing Eva and understand the significance. For those of you who don't get it keep reading my blog eventually I will post something entitled my Evita moment....then you'll get it.
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Okay now even if you hate history....that's some jacked up crap right??? Great story if you ask me....anyway.....here are the pictures....commentary per usual:

This is the wall around the cemetery. You can
actually see the tops of some of the monuments
from the street outside and from the mall...
So if while you're shopping you want to check on
the dead you need only peak out the window.

Clearly this is not a cemetery. However, this is what is
right next to the wall on the right here. I thought
I would try to recreate the dichotomy for you....I think I failed
But you get the point.

Part of the entrance....like I said for my history readers...a very Catholic country.

The Entrance...there is a guy at the front who asks for a donation and like a dumb tourist I thought it was for the whole cemetery.....turns out he's not from the cemetery at all. And the pamphlet he gives you is not a map. Even though he draws on it and tells you where certain graves are....it is only educational material on AIDs, which I found interesting, but it didn't help me find anything....at all..

  

This is actually inside of the cemetery. What looks like building on  either side are not nice shops....unless you're looking to buy a dead person, but I'm pretty sure that's frowned upon.

The next few are just to show you how ornate the actually mausoleums and monuments are....they rival anything here in the US that I have ever seen. Its really quite incredible.

This one had 20 people above ground.....yea a lot of people

This one sort of reminded me of the entrance to church...

Okay now this one was just amazing! Notice in the lower left corner the statue of the mother breast feeding one of her children while holding the other one. This angel, which because of the landscaping, appears to be standing on a tree. and bust of the head of the family that rests at the very top. Now add all of this to the fact that the natural rock that appears in the lower right corner of the picture is simply part of the rock that this entire scene was carved out of and you get why this one was just incredible.

This one is to again just show you how it really resembles a small
shopping area in the city, but it is in fact just a small,
cozy city street of mausoleums.

Now time for the reason I was excited to go....EVA PERÓN......................

Just so everyone knows.....eventually this is how you find Evita's grave.....apparently there is always somewhat of a crowd.

   

                                               

                                                                    All of those flowers....are fresh and real....crazy....

I'm going to end this post with some pictures of some of the angels that I took. I realize I have made quite a few jokes in this post and you know I don't really want to go to hell for being completely inappropriate so....hopefully the angels act as some sort of penance...

   

Okay....I couldn't help it....this is the only grave keeper I saw for the whole place though.....so in a way he's sort of like an angel right??? Whatever....I guess I should probably buy some sunscreen.