The old "La Boca" waterfront neighborhood of Buenos Aires

We had heard about and seen the luxurious Argentine buses with seats that almost recline to beds with great service, including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There is no transportation like this in the US. We decided to travel in such a coach from southern Argentina to Buenos Aires, 2 nights, 1 day, about 3000km. We were not disappointed in the food or the comfort. There were even vegetarian options!! We were also treated to 4 movies (only one in English with Spanish subtitles). We emerged from this cocoon a bit tired and bedraggled (biking is so much more energizing), and headed for our hostel in the Buenos Aires’ Theatre District

Buenos Aires is a huge, modern city with snarling traffic and great grey tall buildings lining the streets. It has enormous parks and monuments, the widest avenue in the world – 9^th de Julio (David’s birthday street), grand old Victorian architecture (some people refer to the city as the “Paris of Latin America” because of the architecture) and a lively mass of business people, shoppers, tourists, school kids, city workers filling the downtown streets throughout the day and into the evening. (Many people smoke and one is never far from the whiff of tobacco…different from other places we have been)

We toured the city on bikes on a beautiful sunny Sunday. First we dodged joggers, walkers and cyclists in the wetlands park near the shore. Then we visited the pink office building of the president, the Casa Rosada, where we stood on the same balcony Eva Peron gave her speeches to her adoring public. Finally we just wandered around the city finding street fairs, musicians, dancers, chess players, families, tourists, lovers, skaters, skate boarders, laughing girls, picnicers. On sunny Sundays, it seems everybody is out of doors enjoying the weather, the parks, and each other. This great gathering of people in the central park on Sundays is one thing I will miss about South America.

Rodin's "The Thinker" & David "The reCyclist"

Busy bike trail through wetlands along Buenos Aires' waterfront.

David’s view on flying:

I was alarmed at how tired and worn the bikes looked when I took them apart to pack in boxes for the flight to Cape Town, my first airplane flight this trip. Stuck in rush hour traffic on the way to the airport I thought: “ Maybe we should have taken the earlier airport shuttle?”. We arrived almost two hours early, there was no line for check-in at the Malaysia Airlines counter, and we checked our bikes with no extra charge (Julie paid $300 to take her bike to Panama City). Then the Malaysia Airlines clerk said “Do you have a return ticket for departing South Africa?” “No, we’ll be departing South Africa on bicycles”. But South Afica requires that you have a return ticket before entering the country, and Malaysia Airlines wouldn’t let us board the plane without one. So with no time to waste we found an internet cafe and bought tickets on South Africa Airlines from Durban to Maputo, Mozambique for $654, tickets we had no plan to use. (We did get it all refunded later except for the $21.98 Orbitz fee.)  Though Malaysia’s service was excellent ( free drinks, free meals, free movies) I do not like the stress of flying.

While assembling the bikes in the Cape Town terminal, a white South African said “ You aren’t going to bike into the city, are you?” (It is only 25 km). When he left, a black taxi driver said “ All white South Africans are afraid to travel through the townships. You shouldn’t have any problem”. And we didn’t.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 at 12:08 and is filed under David's Blog, Julie's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.