Our final days in Buenos Aires - La Boca, A big flower, and one more night on the town

As our time in Buenos Aires was starting to wind down we had done most of the typical tourist things we wanted to do but had saved one, touring through the working class neighbourhood of La Boca. Since it is notorious as being a pretty rough neighbourhood that you need to stick to the main streets while walking in we decided to take the walking tour offered by our hostel to see the area. Little did we know when we were getting ready to leave that morning that we were actually going to see another must see sight while in Argentina - A protest. Filled with military tanks, water canons and tear gas. 
As we all headed our with our tour guide, a cute little Argentinian girl, and headed up to the main street 9 de Julio right around from our hostel we stumbled upon a massive and violent protest underway. By the time we got to the intersection the army was already there with tanks trying to break up the protest and the protesters had started to throw rocks, bricks etc at the police and army. Our guide quickly got our group to tour around and quickly head back to the hostel, but Kait and I, along with many others could not resist trying to snap a few quick shots before heading back. The boys were not to keen on this idea and were telling us to leave now. The army had already started to us the water cannons on the protesters and very quickly it turned to tear gas. Now we were not directly in the spray since we did not actually go into the protest (we wanted pics but were not stupid), but tear gas spreads FAST. Within seconds on the spray going on the protesters everyone on this very, very busy street started running. Even those just there going about their daily business. It was about 2 blocks for us to get safely back into the hostel but the tear gas lingered all the way there so most of us on the tour were suffering the effects.  Just as Jonny was about to go wash his burning eyes out with water there was a girl there checking in who had just finished her stint in the Israeli army who told us the worse thing you can do is put water on it as it spreads the tear gas.  Finally after about 30mins the effects started to go away. 

the scene as we arrived at the intersection

protesters set up in the intersection 

The army rolling in

police getting things under control 

After 2 more attempts to leave for our walking tour only to be pushed back because of the protest the police finally got the crowd contained and we were able to leave and catch our bus to La Boca. La Boca is a really cool area where all the houses are painted different colours. The story goes that given the neighbourhoods history as the main port in Buenos Aires, which has now been moved to Puerto Madera, it was where most immigrants arrived way back in the day. Since most of them where very poor, and this was (and still is) a very poor working class area, people did not have money to get paint for their houses so they used to ask the ships for whatever spare paint they had so they could paint, even if they had to use multiple colours. Over time they have chosen to maintain this tradition and use even more bright and vibrant colours. Our walking tour also included a tour inside the Bombaniero, La Boca Juniors stadium. It was pretty amazing to see the place in the daylight without the hoards of screaming hooligans. It was also amazing to hear the history of the team, which has been in La Boca since the '20s or '30s and hear about how much passion the people of La Boca and B.A in general have for the team. It is really crazy how die-hard they are for their team. 

approaching La Boca stadium

the field from the inside

attempting to jump over like the hooligans do

colourful art in La Boca

Since tourists have to stick to a couple of main blocks, there are lots of tourist things to see on those blocks, people doing the tango for money, stands selling souvenirs, little paintings that you can stick your head in to take pics, cafes offering local favorites, etc. Jonny and I broke away from the tour for a bit and sat down to share a Milanese Sandwich. Something that we had discovered when we were here earlier in the week before the soccer game. After a few hours in La Boca the group headed back to the hostel. 

Soccer spirit even on the doors

Colourful scenes in La Boca

Typical place in La Boca

La Caminito - Tourist centre of La Boca 

Tango in La Boca

Jonny and Talia trying our best Tango moves

Since today was valentine's day we Jonny and I decided to go out for dinner just the two of us and we headed back to Palermo. We decided not to go for the traditional steak dinner that you would normally do while in Argentina since we have already done that a few times and found this amazing Indian fusion place called Quimbombo. Just earlier that day Jonny had been saying how much he was craving hummus and falafel - both of which they had on the menu! We dinned, shared another bottle of Mendoza wine and headed home. By this point the temperature in B.A had creep up to the near 40's and we had zero air conditioning in our 8 bed door so I decided to take to sleeping on the floor directly under the fan. 


The next day was pretty much our last day in B.A since we had booked an overnight bus to Iguazu falls leave the next afternoon so we decided we were going to take full advantage and get one more night out on the town in before leaving. Since we had learned over our time in B.A that if you want to have any chance of lasting the night you had to take it easy during the day Jonny and decided to do that. We spent the day doing one more walk through Recoletta. We went to check out this old theatre that had been converted into a book store - very beautiful. And then we went to check out the massive metal flower that an artist had donated to the city. The flower was in a great park so we spend a few hours there just reading and napping in the shade before heading home to get ready for the night out. 

inside the theatre transformed into a library

View from the stacks

the law school building before you get to the flower

first view of the flower

Flower from another perspective

Jonny and Cedric reading in the park

one last stop at the flower

Our plan for our last night was the same as the first, hit the hostel party until 2am and then club Kika afterwards. But this time we knew how to pace ourselves to make it so around midnight we got ready and headed down to the hostel bar, grabbed a few vodka redbulls and watched the dance floor make-outs commence. Around 230 we headed to Kika - this is the kind of club that we typically would not be caught dead in while in Toronto, two dance floors, overpriced drinks, strobe lights, etc - but when in Rome.  The music was not so great for the first little while and after a couple drinks we were going to start heading  back when when our new fav South American song came on! Some spanish song by Micheal Telo so we spend another half hour tearing up the dance floor. By this point Jonny and turned into Jombie (the drunk zombie version of himself) so we hopped in a cab home. The cabbie, although he did not speak any English quickly took a liking to us and joined into our cab dance party, that jonny was falling asleep during because he was Jombied so our cabbied came up with these lyrics, that he kept repeating to a techno beat "Jonny, Jonny What the Fuck, Jonny what the fuck" so we all joined in of course keeping up the techno beats. We made this guy drop us off at Ryko's for one last Pancho stop before we all hit the bed. And I hit the floor again. It was so damn hot there!
Buenos Aires you definitely showed us a great time........ Until we meet again.