Our second bike tour of Buenos Aires took us to the Southern side of the city, it was a slightly longer tour than out first at around 20km as the different districts were more spread out however it was just as interesting. The tour included a lunch stop in La Boca (see above), today this colourful district is a classic tourist trap but back in the late 19th century was a destination for millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia, particularly from the Italian region of Liguria (the place has more pizza than empanadas) The area is so staunchly Italian that it's tried to secede (unsuccessfully) from Argentina on several occasions, in 1882, 1923 and 1986. Being close to the docks it has all the trappings of that kind of place, i.e. cheap housing, sketchy bars, street crime and a primarily working class population, however it's also famous for the Tango and football, two religions here that seem to allow people to escape from their otherwise tough everyday lives. Yes, that's Messi holding the world cup on the balcony of the bar in the photo above, he's everywhere in Argentina and has supplanted Maradona (who came from La Boca) as a figurehead for the culture there.
There's a football stadium (La Bombonera) right in the middle of La Boca (see above) and it's home to Boca Juniors one of the premier teams in South America and the home of Diego Maradona (he of "hand of god" fame) someone who is still revered in this part of town. I couldn't help thinking that their stadium looked like a branch of Ikea, apparently there was some Swedish flag involvement in it's colour scheme!
Further round the tour we saw the "Pink Palace" (Casa Rosada) famous for the balcony on which Eva Peron addressed crowds of supporters back in the day (see below)
On our last night in BA we decided to have a swanky meal at our hotel and after an interesting chat with a really nice Dutch sommelier I settled on this bottle of Malbec (above) from a high altitude vineyard in Salta, which seemed fitting after we'd visited the city earlier in the trip. It was delicious, so intense, a fitting bookend to some great wine discoveries over the few weeks that we'd been on the continent.
The next day we awoke to another blue sky day and, after some coffee and pastries and with some sadness, we headed to the airport and too our flight home. We had to fly via Rio again and as the photo below shows the airport dealt with this duel destination conundrum by listing the flight twice, once for Rio and again for Heathrow (never seen that before?)
Anyway the flight itself, although long, was fairly uneventful and we arrived into London on a misty and cold morning, we were sad to be leaving the Southern Hemisphere with it's awesome landscapes and it's blue skies but also pleased to be home.
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