It was a pretty representative day of hitching, with one lift who explained all the rock greats of Argentina and fed us delicious pasta, and another in which C ended up in the back of a pick-up (it's not legal here, but we spent so much time in them this year) for our final ride into Rosario, while the driver told J about being Bolivian in Argentina (think being Mexican in the US). We even got dropped off only a few blocks from our Couchsurf's house in Rosario.
Rosario is built on the enormous Paraná River and the location where Belgrano raised the Argentine flag for the first time during the war of independence. There is a giant memorial to this which offered great views over the city and river
and since we were there for the 25th May, which celebrates the outbreak of the war of independence in 1810 and the constitution of 1819, there were numerous speeches, parades, but also concerts for people to tango to:
which was interesting to see people young and old, well-dressed and casual dancing in the shade of the monument. Despite it's fame abroad, tango has a very working-class immigrant background, it was only when it became fashionable in France that the Argentine ruling classes embraced it and promoted it.
The 25th of May is also a day when people eat locro, a hearty stew of white corn, smoked chorizo, beef, and veg like squash and onions. Our couchsurf made up a batch which was really nice. We also enjoyed an asado (BBQ) with him as well with ludicrous amounts of meat from various animals. We sat out on the terrace as it was a lovely day and had nice chats in Spanish about all kinds of Argentine history and politics.
We caught the train around midnight and got a surprising amount of sleep, though were momentarily disorientated by the feeling we were moving west instead of east, but it all worked out in the end. We entered the sprawl of Buenos Aires passing through numerous villas (semi-legal slums, subject to flooding, though we discovered quite a lot of the city is) which made a huge contrast with the opulent areas often only a street away.
We've stayed here with a friend of a friend who has been working on his PhD here for nearly a year. This is really great as it has allowed us to relax a lot, enjoy chilling out and chatting about things deeper than the who we are where we're from. It also meant that in addition to the obvious sites to visit, we were exposed to some of the more politically radical parts of the city.
We stocked up on books in Spanish since they were cheaper here (not as cheap as Bolivia of course, but we wouldn't have appreciated lugging them the last 10,000 km or so) than they would be in the UK. We got some latin american authors like Mario Vargos Llosa and others less from here like Rosa Luxemburg.
We went to a couple of graveyards. The one in Recoleta is very famous and houses the aristocracy of the city and Eva "Evita" Peron, though apparently some of the better families resent her presence there. It is one of the top tourist attractions in the city and very grand. The other is in Chacarita and features tombs no less dramatic
but is also where ordinary people are buried (many in morgue-like stacks that descend for three levels beneath the ground) and popular heroes of football or tango. Juan Peron is also in there somewhere but he never was as popular as Evita anyway.
On the note of the Peróns, we also visited the Evita museum. Juan Perón became a political power in Argentina around the end of WWII and with his wife, the actress Eva Duarte founded the nationalistic social movement known as Peronism. It's seems to be a kind of corporatism, but it's hard to say because these days in Argentina almost anyone can (does, and seems to want and need to) refer to their ideas as Peronist. Leaving aside the politics, he's a creepy looking guy. Wiki him and you'll see.
We've also been in art museums, the traditional Belles Artes and the museum of Latin American art with more modern pieces, the museum of external debt which made an effort to explain Argentina's economic history, and another museum of currency and economy which had lots of interesting old banking machines and old money like 20 cent notes or 1,000,000 pesos from 1981.
Other than that we've explored the city, which is huge and busy, feeling much more like London or other European cities than like, say, La Paz, trawling bookshops and enjoying a night out with our host and some friends at a bar decorated with antique cameras and antique Argentine men playing jazz.
Last night was our anniversary, so we used this excuse to spend a bit more money on a meal than usual, and tried a restaurant promising to be Argentine but not steak. They specialise in cazuelas, a kind of stew, which we enjoyed a lot, along with a bottle of Aberdeen Angus wine mostly because the name entertains us, being from where we are from.
We have one more day left and are going to see some films at a radical social centre tonight before tomorrow we get on the plane to head home. Probably needless to say it feels very strange. Some things we will miss and some we are glad to see the back of. It doesn't feel like so long since we left.
