Day 90 : Buenos Aires

After a 13.5 hour bus ride, I arrived in the capital of Argentina – Buenos Aires (BA)!  Aliang had informed me that he had arrived in BA a few days ago, and we agreed to meet up when I got in. 

So after settling down, I contacted him and coincidentally realised that we were staying fairly close to each other and thus agreed to meet up nearby at 11.30am, before proceeding to explore parts of BA.

I haven’t read up much about BA before arriving, so Aliang suggested that we head towards Recoleta, which is supposed to be the upmarket and most expensive part of the city, boasting many museums, large green spaces and 1st class restaurants.

(Some scenes of Recoleta)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other key touristy site was the cemetery.  I would never have imagine that a cemetery could be such a popular place for visiting!  And it turned out to be my highlight of the Recoleta area too! 

The moment we walked in, we found ALOT of people in the grounds and suddenly I felt rather small around the graves.  Most of the graves are a few metres tall, some with elaborate sculptures and designs and extremely grand.  It houses a number of rich and famous personalities as well as politicians. 

 

We walked through the blocks and rows of graves for the next half an hour and while we were walking, we were approached by two foreigners who spoke to us in English and asked “Do you know where is Eva”?

We knew that they were referring to someone’s grave, but it sounded very strange to me as the question was phrased as if they were on close terms with Eva and was still alive, and as if we were suppose to know who Eva was. 

So we told them we do not know, and decided to head back to the entrance where there was a listing with the names of graves and its location to find out who this person was.  There was only 1 listing which had the word “Eva” in it – “Duarte de Peron, Maria Eva”. 

We started getting curious as we hear people around us at the listing trying to find “Eva” too, yet we were still clueless who she was so we decided to look for her grave with the coordinates found on the listing.

When we found it, we finally knew why!  Eva Peron – the infamous celebrity and politician of Argentina who did much for the country, and whom the musical “Evita” (Don’t cry for me Argentina…) is based on.

There were many people at her grave, admiring the plagues on it and taking photos with her grave, and of course we were no exception!