Post by Ella. La Boca (“ the mouth”), one of the oldest barrios in Buenos Aires, sits at the mouth of the Matanza River. Ages ago it was a busy port but as ships grew in size, the small port of La Boca grew quiet. Now there is only a cleaning project. Come back in a couple of of years and perhaps some flora and fauna will be inhabiting the place.
This was our second day in Argentina and still feeling somewhat disoriented, we Ubered south from our place in Recoleta to the lively and colorful barrio of La Boca for a walking tour. The meeting point was at the corner of Magallanes and Caminito right next to Cachafaz shop. You couldn’t miss the place. People were lined up to take photos of themselves on the patio entrance situated underneath a balcony where a mannequin of a victorious Messi stood poised and adored by the Argentine public.
Our guide, Marianna was a native born Argentine with an Italian father. This explained her animated hand gestures she said. We walked quickly to the river side to learn about the history of the port town and La Boca native artist / philanthropist Benito Quinquela Martín (1890 – 1977). This is the guy largely responsible for the bright shades of La Boca.
As we dove into the center of the neighborhood, the streets were choked with tons of young people dressed in blue and yellow jerseys. There was a futbol match today at the stadium La Bombanera, between La Boca Juniors and their arch rivals Riverplate. The fervor was palpable.
One of my favorite stories of the day was about two Italian teens who, in 1905, founded the locally revered futbol (soccer) team La Boca Juniors. Juniors because it was a team of teens back then. When facing the challenge of picking their team colors, they so happened to be standing at the riverside watching a Swedish ship sail in. Problem solved. The two boys adopted the colors of the Swedish flag, blue and yellow (well, gold really).
After the tour, we had a pizza for lunch and watched a couple of tango dancers perform on the street. Wait, pizza? I’d heard the Argentine version of pizza was quite spectacular. This one was, well, meh.
We wandered over to the Museo Benito Quinquela Martín to peruse his paintings, use the nicely clean restrooms, and enjoy the views from the rooftop.
There was a little bit of craziness trying to get an Uber back to our place. We had walked a few blocks away from the center as streets were being blocked off in anticipation of the start of the futbol match. The first driver we connected with texted that he was 50 meters north at the next intersection, could we get there? We momentarily forgot we were in the Southern hemisphere and walked south whereupon he texted we’d gone the wrong direction and cancelled us. Okay then. Luckily, three minutes later, Uber connected us to another driver with a happy ending. Back in our neighborhood, we decided to close out the afternoon with ice cream at Freddos. Yummy.
It’s Easter and you buried the lede! I googled Cachafaz. Yum.
About walking north: Google maps and Apple maps show with north going up. Is that also true in the Southern hemisphere? Or is south up?
North is still up and south is down on the map. Because north is still north. But the sun makes an arc in northern sky instead of the southern sky.
It must be amazing to swap seasons and swap sun arcs so abruptly.
Amazing and befuddling at first 🤷🏼♀️
Feliz Cumpleanos, Grubb !
Feliz Aniversario, to both of you!
Gracias!
Pity you didn’t see the match—the big one in Argie. Happy April 1–anniversary and celebration of Grubb’s entry into the world, without which we’d all be dimmer.
We are off to a small local match tonight. What better way to celebrate than in the crush of an Argentine futbol game?!