In between coffee and ice cream breaks this week, there were actually a few tourist attractions that I wanted to see: The Cementario de la Recoleta and Caminito in La Boca most specifically.

Because I loved the street and graffiti art tour that I did during my first few days here, I decided to sign up for another one of their tours, this time on the south side of city. This is where the area of La Boca is. I had been told that parts of La Boca could be rough and not to stray from the few touristy streets…but I wasn’t at all expecting just how touristy this area was. La Boca is a poor barrio on the Rio de la Plata, but it’s become famous because of it’s colorful buildings. Benito Quinquela, an important Argentine painter, lived in this neighborhood and is the reason for this brightly colored alleyway, Caminitos, which has become the aforementioned tourist attraction. As soon as you arrive you are greeted by tango dancers and other performers, street artists, cartoonists, etc. I really liked seeing the alleyway but was bummed to see how built up it has become for tourists. Glad I went but if you’re in BA don’t expect to spend too much time here!

    

The street art tour met up at Caminitos and took us to areas we would never go to on foot alone as tourists. The southside has some amazing murals, most painted with political messages and meanings behind them. This area also houses the largest mural in the world painted by one artist – a mural that most locals will never even see because of its dodgy location. Many of the artists who I had become familiar with on my last tour also had pieces that we visited in this part of the city, so it was cool to see multiple works by some. Here were some of my favorites:

    

At the end of our tour, we drove on Pasaje Lanin, a few blocks of a street in another Southside barrio where murals were painted by one artist who lived there, and then glass tiles were placed on the murals to keep the colorful designs intact. This transformed a gray urban space into very colorful, lively art.

 

The cemetery was the other place I kept hearing I had to visit. I was mostly going because it felt like something you have to do while you’re here, but once I arrived I quickly understood why everyone was so passionate about it…beyond the fact that Eva Peron is buried here. This cemetery is all above ground – it’s a little village of tombs. There are a wide variety of mausoleums, typically one per family, different shapes, sizes, styles, materials. It’s almost like an outdoor art museum of sorts. It was raining while I was there so that added a little bit of an eeriness, but overall I was just enthralled by what I was walking through. Some of the family mausoleums are in utter disrepair – weeds growing all around, dust, rusted metal, broken glass – whereas others look attended to often. Some have paintings hanging inside and are large enough where you could go pay tribute and sit inside with your family, while others are more like small windows. The variety was just so interesting to me – it honestly had me wondering ‘what would [I] like on my tombstone’ ;). But seriously, I couldn’t help but feel like each family was expressing something about themselves through their mausoleums. It was all just fascinating to me – I couldn’t stop taking pictures and I could definitely have continued doing so if not for the rain.

                   

My time in BA is coming to a close. I’m so happy I was able to see and do everything that I did while here. Flying back this weekend, but will be posting about the end of my trip early next week.

Have a good weekend!