Message Stick

Life was obviously going a little too well here and we were bought back down to earth on Tuesday when my  wallet was stolen by a pick-pocket on the underground.  It was a pretty low point in an otherwise fantastic time in Buenos Aires.  Despite the annoyance of losing, money, cards and our traveller’s street cred we are both fine and determined not to be taken again.

On a more positive note however our last week in BA has been very full, cramming in all the final sights and restaurants we’d not managed before.  The colourful buildings you can see below are in Caminito, an old dock where the workers used leftover paints from the shipyards to decorate their houses.  Slightly less colourful was Recolata cemetery, the final resting place of Evita and a freaky place full of coffins and cats. There is a lot of one-upmanship going on between family mausoleums resulting in some incredible and grotesque tombs. The place is like a maze and we wouldn’t fancy being there after dark!

Back in San Telmo we fell in love with the antique soda Siphons sold at the flea markets and although possibly the most impractical thing to send home we just had to have one.  Likewise with a painting we commissioned from the talented young artist Gustavo Ferrari. It says ‘My Beloved Buenos Aires’.

We leave our lovely apartment in the morning and head off to Uruguay for a brief visit before returning to Argentina to kick start our round-the-world adventure with a journey south to the very cold Patagonia. We’re going to miss a lot about this place; the amazing restaurants, Spanish lessons with Gustavo and his cat Benita, late night rubbish sifters, subte salesman, our favourite cafe with it’s perfect empanadas, submarinos, dinner at midnight and bottle after bottle of malbec. We won’t miss the national drink ‘Mate’ so much! The bar has been set high for the rest of South America and we can’t wait to start exploring.