Latin America 1987-1988: La Boca

Thursday 12th May 1988

I got up early as I wanted to see the Boca Dock district of Buenos Aires before leaving the city. La Boca is a neighbourhood, or barrio of the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires. It retains a strong Italian flavour, with many of its early settlers being from the city of Genoa.

I walked down Necochea, up and down the undulating, stepped sidewalk to the dock front. This was an old dock with some rusting derelict hulks of old ships and a grand old tall ship sailing vessel. I had to wait about fifteen minutes to get a photograph of this sailing boat without the view being blocked by people or buses.

There were a lot of brightly coloured houses, many of them made from wood and corrugated zinc sheets, and mostly in an Italian style. A party of grey uniformed schoolkids ran around the artists displaying their work on the caminito, a multicoloured lane of brightly painted houses and statues.

I took a load of photographs, which would have been a lot better if it had been sunny, and walked back to the Youth Hostel on the bleak Avenida Irala alongside the railway track. I packed my gear up and sat with the other diary writers in the hostel comedor.

At midday I joined Steve, the Swiss guy who I was travelling to the Iguaçu Falls with, the Japanese bloke and a quiet Belgian guy for a steak meal in a parrillo (grill) just down the road from the Youth Hostel.

We had a good cheap bottle of red wine to aid our digestion! Next it was off to the Retiro Bus Terminal on the rickety SUBTE. We checked in our luggage, just like at an airport, and sat down to wait. We ate chocolate until the bus left promptly at 15:00 hrs.

The scenery was monotonous flat pampas and it got dark early on this cloudy afternoon so we could see nothing at all. We concentrated on trying to sleep, which was made easier by the fact that the bus was not full and we had a double seat each.