The colorful sights and sounds of La Boca
I met up with Angie and we were going to explore La Boca. We met up with Cathy, an ex attorney from Seattle, who was going to head there too, so we took a cab together. In my Footprints guide and other things I´ve read, La Boca is supposed to be dangerous. My guidebook says, ¨Do not go to La Boca alone¨ Great..so I didn´t know how bad it really was…
Our cab driver was completely insane!!! First of all, we hailed him in the middle of traffic..no one was moving, we quickly piled in. Then he gave us this huge ass lecture in Spanish about getting in on only the right side, blah blah blah, that´s how Argentians do it. He went on and on for a while. We looked at each other, snickered a bit, tried not to laugh out loud. On that cab ride, we almost knocked another cars mirror off, came so close to busses, shit, we could have gotten run over by busses a few times…needless to say, being a pedestrian in BsAs is dangerous..riding in a cab is dangerous…I don´t know what is the worse of the two!!!
We got to Caminito, a popular pedestrian area of La Boca with houses of corrugated steel brightly painted different colors. This area was not dangerous at all. There were a lot of people walking around, tourists…from Argentina and from elsewhere. La Boca seems to be an artists haven, an artist community with cobblestone streets. It faces the waterfront, an industrial looking waterfront. But this barrio has so much character to it.
We walked around Caminito, and were all enticed to tango (hey, another free lesson!). In front of a restaurant as a small band playing, and two people tangoing. The guy grabbed Cathy´s hand and took her off to tango. Then he grabbed me, and we tangoed. Cathy said I looked like I really knew what I was doing (pshaw, right!!). Then Angie asked the musicians to play salsa music, and the girl can salsa! It was a lot of fun.
We explored more of Caminito, passing by the colorful blues, yellows, pinks, reds on the walls of the houses. And the murals on the walls. Caminito is not a very large area, so we went through it pretty fast.
After that, we headed on to the Museo de Belles Artes de La Boca. It is housed inside a school, so we weren´t sure where it was at first. We walked up many stairs to posters telling of an artist who painted scenes of La Boca. We wondered if the entire exhibit was just posters at every stop in the stairs, then finally came to the top of the stairs to an exhibit hallway.
We looked around to see abstract art at first..where is this artist that they talked about in the hallways? There were several salas, with different exhibits — Mascarones of ships (the things on the front of the ship that are carved out of wood with depictions of faces or people), some abstract art, some prints, sculptures, and of that guy´s painting.
The artist´s name was Benito Quinquela Martín. The reason why he was significant..as we found on the other floor of the exhibit..was because he had lived there. They had rooms preserved with his furniture and whatnot, as well as paintings and sculptures.
Angie and I stared outside at a little patio area..wondering if we were allowed to go outside. A lady told us that we could, there´s a great view of La Boca, and a sculpture gallery outside as well. We snuck out, headed to the mirador, got a bit excited snapping pics..and wondered if we had lost Cathy. We were going to go downstairs to find her, then she was heading our way. The view is a 360 view — you can see over La Boca, the waterway that borders the barrio, and other parts of Buenos Aires.
It was about 2pm at the time we left the museum. We decided to grab some late lunch…Angie and I wanted to see the Madres march around Plaza de Mayo at 3:30pm, so we had some time to kill. We sat outdoors, enjoyed when the sun finally peaked out again, and listened to tunes of what reminded me of the Andean music I heard in Peru last year.
Tags: Buenos Aires, Travel
Marisa