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Today we took an excursion around Buenos Aires. After the trip to Iguazu yesterday we thought it best to take a more relaxing approach to seeing the area. It is an amazingly large and impressive city. We were off at 8:30 and saw the highlights of the city from our comfortable coach. They took us to the central city area with many historical buildings, the Presidential Palace and the Metropolitan Cathedral where the “the national hero of Argentina” – General San Martin, who led Argentina in their revolution from Spain in 1821, is buried.
The next stop was the Recoleta Cemetary, where Eva Peron “Evita” is buried. This was a very impressive cemetery (even more so than the one we saw in Punta Arenas). Here there were massive above-ground tombs, many done in Gothic or Roman style, and there were a LOT of them. It was quite a spectacle. Evita is buried in her family’s tomb – and while it wasn’t as spectacular as some of the other tombs it is still widely visited (we had to wait in line for 10 minutes to get to it) and people still leaves flowers in her remembrance.
On our way to our next step they drove us around some residential neighborhoods and then took us to the River Tigre where we boarded a large cruising yacht that took us through the islands that make up the Tigre delta area. The islands were formed from thousands of years of sediment collecting at in this delta area. There are said to be around 5,000 islands but not all of them inhabitable. The primary islands we saw were very nice with a variety of housing types and everyone with a boat dock! There are no bridges connecting the islands so you have to have your own boat or take the boat taxis to get around. They also have a mail boat and even a grocery store boat!
We stopped at a restaurant on one of the islands and had a nice lunch of Argentinean beef and some local wine. After lunch we were back on the boat and heading out to the main waterway by the city and eventually back to the pier close to where our ship was docked. We were lucky the weather was very nice and the water was calm. We were then picked up by another bus and brought to the port area where we climbed it…yes, another bus…and were back on the ship about 8 hours after we left.
Another long day…but there is a lot to see here and we don’t know when we will be back so better to try and get it all in. Tomorrow we are back in Uruguay at the resort city of Punta Del Este.
Buenos Aires Picture Gallery: http://travelwithdm.smugmug.com/Travel/South-America/Buenos-Aires-Feb-18-2010/25177077_vz2pvH#!i=2065028256&k=rxJPTPs