death and tango

after some errands the next morning, it was time to get down to some serious buenos aires sight seeing. i meet up with katja from my hostel, and we headed over to boca to do the requisite sightseeing. we saw the brightly colored buildings, watched some streetside tango, ate some ice cream, and watched some more tango. after somehow figuring out the buses, it was off to cementario de la recoleta, the cemetery where eva peron was finally laid to rest (i say “finally” because her body was transferred from one continent to another before finally coming to la recoleta). they say “it is cheaper to live extravagantly all your life than to be buried in rocaleta” which seems to be sadly true. the cemetery is the resting place of all of buenos aires’ rich and famous, and thus is filled with elaborate, huge tombs. no modest headstones here-- the cemetery is overflowing with mausoleums, making the place like a marble labyrinth that despite its morbid beauty is certainly someplace i wouldn’t want to remain after dark. it took us a while to track down ms evita, and after a little more wandering, we left the cemetery to explore the richy-rich neighborhood of recoleta. here are all the tree-lined streets, the posh apartments with doormen, the overpriced snooty stores. a beautiful neighborhood, but i will admit i felt a bit out of place, wearing the slowly decomposing backpacker clothes that i had been for the past 4 months. we walked east, past some parks and plazas, and had hoped to go up the torre de los ingleses (a big ben look-a-like), but found it closed. but by that time we had to take a bus back to the hostel, cause i had to shower and change before catching my second to last night bus... out to cordoba (about 700 km northwest of buenos aires)...