Buenos Aires- La Boca

We managed the bus ride today as we were heading to La Boca- simple to say! It's one of the oldest areas in Buenos Aires, rich with history and art. It was one of the main docks, and became a melting pot of working class immigrants from all over the world. It was here that Tango was born, and football is worshiped as a religion.

The streets are painted in wonderful primary colours. A homage to how it looked over a hundred years ago, when the workers from the docks would create houses from the scraps they could find, including unfinished paint pots of every colour.

Tango dancers perform in most restaurants here, initially a dance between two men, tango evolved in La Boca being ignored by the oligarchs of Recoleta until it became fashionable in Europe if course!

The end of the tour was the blue and gold stadium for the famous Boca Juniors team. Fans are proudly known as the shit shovelers, and are amongst the most feverent in the world. Playing at the stadium is supposed to be very intimidating for opposing teams. They run out of space to build stands on the east side, and so it's a solid wall- known as the 3rd fan that creates a wall of noise.

We sat down for lunch and broke our promise of austerity by ordering a mixed grill. It was still far cheaper than in the UK promise! Caught the bus back to San Telmo, and explored the streets and the market place. We stumbled across a square with tango dancers and watched for a while, then enjoyed some coffee in the local market.

In our hostel we met a lovely pair from London who have just started their 7th week traveling. Both are architects and speak fluent spanish a very handy skill that we were desperately trying to improve. They had passed a live music venue the night before, and we headed out together to this quirky venue. Small and intimate we enjoyed a jazz concert with some good beer and empenadas.Read more