Would like to drink in my funny bar?

As great as this sounds, I hesistated to trust how hilarious this Hawker´s bar really was. Carl and I had met a another traveller from Santiago named Paulina, and she had convinced us to travel to La Boca, one of the most touristy (and potentially dangerous) areas in Buenos Aires.

We had a great time at the restaurant the night before "La Peña de Colorado" where we got to listen to some young local artists sing alternative rock versions of Andean Music. They were all quite good and we definitely enjoyed the music more than the dinner. It got really interesting after the actual show ended, and the audience started bringing out their own guitars and performing among little groups. They were all quite impressive and we felt lucky to be there listening to them.

After wandering around Palermo all afternoon and that night, we tried to find a night club at 3am (normal for that city) but our directions were a little off so we gave up and still managed to get a few hours of sleep.

The next day I decided to hit the best part of Buenos Aires, San Telmo. This is where the Tango was born and still thrives today. Carl, Paulina, and I saw wonderful grafitti on beautifully old buildings, and got to try our first cup of Mate (Argentina`s very strong green tea) It tasted great to me and I`m looking forward to having it again. After we spent some time there Paulina managed to drag us to La Boca, where of course despite everyone´s warnings we got off at the wrong spot and had to walk through the bad part of town. We thought we were following the advice of a local, but he turned out to be Colombian and decided to find his way with his nose glued to a huge GPS... I can`t imagine he still had it by the time he got out of there! However, we made it totally fine and got to walk through the overly-touristy caminato of La Boca. We had fun hanging out and we practiced our Spanish on Paulina while she practiced her English on us. We said we`d try to meet up with her when we made it to Santiago.

Overall we had a very good time in Buenos Aires and found lots of places we want to check out more when we come back.

We left with our new travelling partner Nikki and took the local overnight train (13 hours!) to Bahia Blanca. We got wind that our super cheap tickets would leave us in a very uncomfortable part of the train, so for $10 more we bumped up to first class. Still possibly one of the most decrepit trains I´ve been in (windows looked like they were shot at years ago) but the seats were comfy enough. Felt more like a roller coaster ride than a train and overall I actually had a good time (and got some sleep at well).

Not sure when I`ll update again but we`ll be taking an overnight bus to Bariloche tonight. I`ll try to post pictures if I can find a way.