Month: March 2009

Just outside of the Buenos Aires megapolis, an area of 13 million inhabitants, the endless apartment buildings disappear. So does the Parisian architecture, the ice cream shops, the fancy stores. It’s all replaced with endless open space, the land of the gauchos. Or at least it used to be. Now it’s not, because as we learned on our “Dia del Campo,” or day trip to an estancia in the pampas, there are no more gauchos in the country. Apparently Argentinian president Sarmiento decided that all the gauchos were lazy good-for-nothings and pretty much killed them all off. Not a nice thing for him to do. But in the end maybe a good business move.

Because as we all know real cowboys don’t really care for city folk, aren’t very civilized, and don’t exactly consider themselves tourist attractions. If they were still roaming the pampas, rounding up (or stealing, depends on who you talk to) cattle and living their freestyling lives, there wouldn’t be a place for bus loads of tourists to go and pretend to be cowboys for a day. And that my friends would be a true shame.

On our BA Free Tour of Recoleta (just as excellent as the Center Tour), our guide Sol asked us what the most touristy thing we’d done in BA was, and I didn’t even have to think two seconds before responding “Dia del Campo.” It involved a tour bus, a guide that spoke into a microphone, a song and dance show, a 20-minute horse ride…

We had wanted to get out of the city and experience a bit of the country life, but we didn’t have the time to go too far from the city or to stay for an extended period on an estancia, so we did what millions of BA tourists do–a day trip to an estancia wehre they pretty much play cowboy. It was cheesy. It was silly. I wouldn’t particularly recommend it. But, you know what? I had fun anyways. The empanadas were delicious. The lunch was abundant. The horses were friendly. The riders were skilled. The other guests were friendly and fun. And watching Jeff and my parents dance (though not together) was just plain awesome.

Since the Argentinian economic collapse of 2001, Buenos Aires has had a reputation as a great bargain for travelers. Despite the fact that eight years have passed since the collapse, the reputation has remained, though the reality of the situation is that Buenos Aires is no longer the bargain basement of cities. The collapse, while sending large numbers of the country’s citizens plummetting into poverty, acted as a calling card for millions of tourists…and the money they brought with them. As a result, the low prices slowly began to climb as hotels and restaurants filled. Now, prices are no longer as jawdroppingly low as they once were. A double room at a hostel will set you back at least $20 a person and a double at a decent hotel is hard to find below $70. Dinner is likely to cost about $10. And tango shows can cost as much as a Las Vegas or Broadway show.

But before all you budget travelers cross Buenos Aires from the list, let me tell you that it’s really still quite the great deal. Dinner might be $10, but you’ll get a really amazing (and huge!) steak (or two!) for that bit of dinero. Hostels and hotels might not be cheap, but if you’re staying for at least a week, you can rent an entire apartment for two people for about $35 dollars per night. And as for things to do, many of the city’s highlights are free or inexpensive. In an earlier post, I highlighted the Free BA Tours, but that’s just the beginning.

You could also spend a day at the Hipodromo, as we did on our first Monday in town. As a Kentucky native, horse racing is in my blood, and with my parents in town, I couldn’t pass up a chance for us to see the ponies run in a different country. We found that admission to the track, which was conveniently located in the Palermo neighborhood (where our apartment was), was free, and bets could be placed for as little as one peso (about 28 U.S. cents). Though I’m not quite sure we ever figured out exactly how to read the board, and though the Hipodromo doesn’t hold a candle up to Churchill Downs, we still had a great time, cheering on our picks while standing so close to the track that we probably could have reached out and touched the horses. Only two things could have made it better: 1) A winning bet and 2) Racing hippos.

A fun and inexpensive way to fill another day is with a trip to Tigre, the delta town just 35 kilometers from Buenos Aires. It’s easily reached via commuter train, with a roundtrip ticket costing a whopping 2.70 pesos. Once there, you can check out the fruit market (though go early, because much of it shuts down before its posted closing time of 6 p.m.) and take a stroll along the river, past fancy rowing clubs, nice houses, and plenty of cafes and restaurants. Of course, to really experience the delta you need to hop abroad a boat. Don’t worry, you won’t be hurting for options. There’s everything from pricey lunch cruises aboard giant boats to the wooden boat public launches. A 17 peso ticket will take you half-hour down the river on the public launch to the island community of Tres Bocas. There’s not much to do there besides circumnavigate the small island on foot, but the boat ride itself is worth the trip, as it’s a very scenic environment.

What else? Well there’s the Museo Nacional Belles Artes, BA’s fine arts museum, which is completely free, as are the tours of the Congress and the Casa Rosa (the President’s office). There’s the Eco Reserve, another completely free site, that’s great for a stroll or a bike ride, with the chance of spotting birds, butterflies, lizards, and other wildlife while practically downtown.

And of course, there are the many fascinating neighborhoods each with their own highlights—the Sunday market in San Telmo, the many parks of Recoleta and Palermo, and the colorful Caminita area of La Boca, for starters.

Though there are plenty of things to spend your money on in Buenos Aires (and many of them well-worth it), you don’t have to empty your wallet to have a good time. It’s a city for all budgets, a city for all tastes, a city that you definitely ought to put on your list.

But there are free tours of Buenos Aires, and quality-wise they are about on par with the steak. In other words, they are pretty damn awesome.

I wasn’t expecting that. When Jeff, while surfing the Internet for things to do in Buenos Aires, announced that he’d found a free tour of the city, I scoffed. There had to be a catch. Free…but only if we stayed at a certain hotel. Free…but boring as sin. Free…but we had to listen to a two-hour presentation on kitchenware first. But no, Jeff assured me, there was no catch, and to top it off, there were all kinds of glowing reviews of the tours on the Internet. Hmmm.

Though I was still a bit skeptical, we (Jeff, my parents, and I) decided to go ahead and give the tour a shot, since, well, we had nothing to lose. If it wasn’t any good, we’d just wander away from the group and declare our trip over. So at 11 a.m., we made our way to Plaza del Congresso where we met our tour-leader Gaston, a young local with impecable English thanks to a few years in the U.S., and a big group of other English-speaking travelers (from the U.S., Canada, Ireland, England, Australia, and South Africa). Our tour was to be of the central downtown area of Buenos Aires and was scheduled to last 2.5 hours. As Jeff and I had already been in the city for four days, many of the sites were ones we’d already seen, but as my parents had just arrived the day before, it was all new to them.

In the end, we all had a great time. We saw the main sites of the city center—the Casa Rosada, the Congress, the Obelisk, and other buildings of interesting historical and/or architectural interest—and learned the requisite facts and figures about them.

But what made the tour really notable wasn’t the fact that it covered all the standard tour sites for free, but that it included all of them plus more. The highlight of the tour was the insight it gave into the culture of Buenos Aires. We learned things on our tour that we didn’t find in our guidebook and almost certainly wouldn’t have learned on an official tour that we paid for.

For instance:
*The reason coins are so darn hard to come by is that the bus companies, which only take coins, hoard them and then sell them on the black market.

*All the seemingly random lines you see throughout the city are lines of job applicants. Oddly enough the only other thing people line up for are buses.

*Private insurance covers one plastic surgery a year. No wonder people here are so attractive!

*Over 60% of Argentina’s population lives below the poverty line.

*While officials give the inflation rate as less than 1%, it’s actually over 10%.

*To become an Argentinian citizen, you must only live in the country for two years.

Any question, any curiosity, we had, Gaston answered. He was both incredibly knowledgeable and completely entertaining. And in the end, I’m pretty sure he made more money than he would have if the tour had had a price, as we all tipped well and then dispersed to explore the city closer on our own (with his tips on what was worth more time and what wasn’t, as well as with his phone number in hand in case, as he said, we wanted any advice on things to do or places to go). And now I feel obligated to spread the word…if you want a great tour of Buenos Aires check out BA Free Tours. You’ll definitely get your money’s worth.

(In addition to the city center tour, they also offer a tour of Recoleta, which we plan to take on Tuesday. I expect it to be just as good, but I’ll be sure to update to let you know.)