BUCKING THE TREND IN BUENOS AIRES

We arrived in Buenos Aires, 'party city of South America', by boat from Uruguay with a plan to stay in a quiet hostel (where Ben could get some work done on the latest 2SB tees) and take in some culture and enjoy some relaxed drinking & eating in the evenings...... and we stuck to the plan! 

We didn't have one big night out - in fact on 2 days we went for siestas in the early evening and didn't wake up til the following morning! It was a welcome relief after some big nights in Havana, Trinidad, San Jose, Monteverde, Montezuma, San Juan Del Sur, Caye Caulker, San Cristobal, Puerto Escondido, Lima, Huacachina, Cusco, La Paz, Rurrenabaque, Santa Cruz & of course Rio (genuinely can't believe we've already ticked off all these places and more).

We went to coffee shops, art galleries, the cinema, drank fine (house) wine, ate the bloodiest steaks we've ever had, took in a fantastic tango show in the oldest cafe/bar in BA, visited the famous Recoleta Cemetery and paid our respects to Eva Peron, wandered around art fairs & antique markets and Ben got his hair 'cut' in a hairdressers for the first time since he was at school (and it only cost £1.50!).

The hostel we stayed in was called The Garden House Art Factory - a colonial building in the bohemian district of San Telmo - every room and all the common areas were covered in beautiful spray-can art and our room had an extremely comfortable bed (a rarity on this trip), a hot shower (another rarity) and a great balcony overlooking the street below. We loved our time there and it was difficult to move on from such a comfortable space.

The city itself is very unusual for South America in that it has so many European influences in its architecture, culture, food and its people. In fact, we felt like we were on a European city break. You can see influences from France, Italy, Spain, Holland & England, amongst others. It's a very easy city to spend time in and we look forward to returning some day to sample the famous nightlife. Due to time restrictions and changing our Patagonia flights to go up to Northern Chile instead (and travel to Salar De Uyuni in Bolivia which we'd missed earlier in the trip due to being ill), BA was the only part of Argentina we really saw, so we'll definitely be coming back to see the rest of this huge country at some point in the future (along with Brasil, Ecuador, Colombia & Southern Chile!)...