25th January 2012
After being all tangoed out from the night before, Auston, David and I did what was truly recommended to us by fellow backpackers. The Buenos Aires Free Walking Tour.
I urge you all to go on this, should you find yourself in BsAs, and learn all about the history, socio-economical and even the surprising side of the biggest city in South America.
We did revisit places where we actually been before but the tour guide would point out to us what we didn’t even see before. Without revealing too much what happens on the tour, I am just going to show you the pictures I took. However, Buenos Aires has 2 secrets.
1) Argentineans claim that they have the biggest and widest avenue in the world and will swell with pride when they tell you so. The secret is….it’s not the biggest and widest avenue in the world!
2) there’s only 1 house in the city centre of BsAs. Only 1 house and the rest are flats, apartments and office space.
At the end of the 3 hours, I did feel like I learnt a lot about Argentina particularly the Dirty Period when the country slid into military rule dictatorship and what happened to those who stood up to them. There’s also an emotional story in the ‘grandmothers’ where their pregnant children disappeared to prisons and never saw their family again and to this date only 53 grandchildren have been traced as the newly born children were illegally adopted by people who supported the regime.
I felt like I understood the socio-economic implications of the population that over half of it in BsAs is considered to be poor. And would do anything to make mends meet. Very sad as the country before military rule used to be the 6th largest economy in the world.
Buenos Aires Free Tours? Absolutely recommend it.
Meanwhile, enjoy the pics!
What to do now? Go check out the evening life!
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