La Boca's Secret - RexyEdventures

26th January 2013

After a long day exploring Buenos Aires thanks to the free walking tour, we slept in a bit. Visiting a craft market nearby, we enjoyed just being in the clamour of the place and after David bought a few things, we wanted to go to La Boca.

La Boca, the birthplace of tango, is an old district in Bs As and it had been recommended to me by my fellow backpackers I met last year. Just grab a bus they said and you’ll find out why. So we did grab a bus that pointed to La Boca.

After an hour of riding through Bs As, we arrived in the terminal for La Boca and we wanted to go to Caminito, a sidewalk in La Boca for tourists. Only that after consulting the map, we were right on the other side of La Boca. I had heard that it was a dodgy place and you should stick to tourist streets. But we were the only people on this road and we needed to walk 1km to get to the tourist streets. It looked okay but as we turned into some streets, we would be extremely tense as some of the buildings looked done in with burnt marks, smashed windows and stray dogs growling nearby. And oh, the cold stares some people peeked out from inside. Were we going to be robbed?

Luckily, we spied a police car further down the road and several policemen approached us and asked where we were going. They told us we were in the wrong place and we shouldn’t be here as we looked like tourists. Escorting us and pointing the way to the tourists streets, we were very glad to have made it without getting robbed. Why the bus had to stop there, we don’t know why as many other buses went straight to the tourist streets.

Even after that tense ordeal, we were absolutely delighted to have found this little gem. I’ll let the pictures do the talking. Great food, great tango shows and very cute buildings is all I’ll say 🙂