La Boca

This morning we hopped on a city bus and went south to an large district called "La Boca" (which means "the mouth"). The much smaller area near the mouth of a river we wanted to see is called "El Caminito" and in olden days people working on nearby docks would build their houses from whatever was left over when ships unloaded and their cargo crates etc.were not needed. The area has some very unusual looking houses! Because it was a working class area it was relatively poor and when the work went away the district fell into extreme disrepair. An artist came there many years later and started a revitalisation which was tremendously successful. Now it is a  vibrant, touristy, extremely colourful  area which is really nice to visit (looking past the hoards of souvenir sellers of course).

The bottom photo  is "the " photo to take. Many people were lining up to take one. This location is shown on many Buenos Aires tourist brochures.

There were quite a few restaurants that had singers and tango dancers performing right out on the street. Truly wonderful to listen/watch them.

We walked all the streets that were part of the colourful area and were thinking to head back up here when we went by this spot....

...which had AMAZING smells coming from the Bar B-Q located just inside a relatively small opening (originally a driveway entrance). Turns out it opened up into a large restaurant with inside and outside tables .Well we weren't hungry but we had to step inside to have some samples of their food! It was delicious. We started with a chorizo sausage (we shared) which was great,followed by a black sausage that we hated (turned out to be a type of blood sausage which I have never liked), followed again by a steak,again shared and delicious! Because it was so hot out we had a large beer as well.

Total bill was only $32 including a great tip to the waitress as she gave us great ideas on things to do, plus instructions on which bus to catch (a better one than the one we came down on).

We walked about three blocks and came to the world famous soccer stadium that is home to the Boca Juniors team. A massive stadium, with a wildly popular team, we chose not to take a tour but I did take  a photo of a photo.

This team has been in the news as their championship series with River Plate (another Buenos Aires team) was marred by the fans from River Plate attacking the Boca team bus as it came to their stadium for the second leg of the championship two game series. The resulting injuries and obvious inability of the police to give protection from rabid fans eventually forced the game to be switched to Madrid Spain.

We caught the city bus back up to Plaza de Mayo and after watching some Bolivian dancers doing a dance in honour of a saint we walked around as usual making our way here. We walked over 10 kilometers again seeing many different streets , parks, etc and by the time we got back here in late afternoon we were bushed. We grabbed some delicious empanadas from a nearby takeout place (and we went back to buy more for tomorrow's breakfast).

Tomorrow is our last complete day here and we have another great adventure planned.