The third day in BA was a bit frustrating but it the end it all worked out. In the morning Sarah and I decided to walk to the main square to see the Casa Rosada. The Casa Rosada is the building that houses their presidential offices and the like, and yes it is actually painted bright pink. We had been told that the walk was about 20 min or so and were a bit surprised when we arrived there about 45 min later—not the worst walk in the world but also not what we were expecting. After we visited the square we walked back to the ship a different way—this way had starbucks :)—and made it there in time for lunch. After that we had planned to go to the Boca district (or the Italian district) with a large group of people. Well, two of them decided to go to a café to get tickets to a tango show so we lost them. One decided to go with another group that day. One decided that they wanted to see the Casa Rosada so they opted to take a taxi there and that left three of us.
We went to the travelers agents that were assigned to our ship and asked them which bus we should take to get to the Boca district. There were two other groups planning on heading there at some point so I heard the directions three different times and he drew on our map to show the way. Then we began the ever-constant search for coins. We tried the gas station, some local stores, the bus station, and finally random street vendors and eventually came up with enough coins for the ride. Then we followed Mr. Travel guides instructions to the bus stop. An hour and a half later we discovered that we had gotten on the bus going the wrong way. The bus driver refused to let us stay on the bus and go back, “last stop, you get off,” was all he said. Therefore we were stranded in the middle of nowhere, an hour and a half outside of BA with no coins to get a bus back. Picking a random direction we decided to start walking to see what we could find. Thankfully we happened apon a woman who spoke English and she directed us to a mall about seven blocks away that had some busses and plenty of places to try to find coins.
We walked to the mall and after several attempts were able to scrounge up enough coins for a bus ride back, oh and some ice cream :) We waited at the mall for a bus that could help us and after about half an hour gave up and headed back to were the original bus dropped us off. We got on that bus and were horrified to discover that the price had doubled in our absence and struggled to explain to the Spanish speaking bus driver that we did not know the price would double and did not have enough coins. He either understood us or got tired of attempting to understand us and just waved us on somewhat angrily, thank goodness.
Then we rode two hours to the exact opposite end of the route and FINALLY arrived in La Boca some four hours after we planned on getting there! La Boca is a really cool district as there are a few neighborhoods that are very very brightly painted. The houses and buildings are all neon green and pink and orange and blue and everything looks so happy and exciting. We walked around a bit and explored a market on the street before finding a restaurant for dinner because we were starving! They had some really good pizza and only as we were about to leave did we realize that we were in the Italian district of Argentina and that we had eaten at a German restaurant. In our defense it was the only one open but still we found it funny.
Not wanted to chance the bus again we managed to hail a taxi and took that to the nearest subway station. He kept warning us that the subway was not the safest place in the world—which we already knew and we promised him we would be careful. The subway was the best option as we did not have enough money for the taxi to take us all the way back to the port. It was actually fine and we had no problems at all with pick pockets or rude people or anything so that was good. By the time we made it back we were exhausted and basically just fell into bed haha.
Well that’s pretty much it for Argentina. I’ll try to post some or all of Uruguay later today.
~Colleen
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