JohnS did some exploring of the city, taking in a historical walking tour while JG visited the the 64 story, 300 metres high Gran Torre Santiago providing panoramic views of the city and beyond. The suggestion is that this represents the growing economy of the country. Certainly in the section of the city we were staying in, Avenue Manquehue, the shopping mall, the extensive apartment developments and the people around, all seemed to give the air of prosperity.
We only had two days and for my part I was recovering from the altitude, so was a bit out of it for the first day, so plans to head over to Valparaiso had to be left for another time. It’s about a one hour drive to the coast and renting a car would have been the most cost and time effective way of doing so.
Then it was back to the airport for the return to Buenos Aires for the final two days of the trip. This time the apartment was in the Junín area of the city. A very comfortable location, although here the restaurants and bars were more spread out. As it was only a short Uber ride to Recoletta, an area we already knew well, we frequented this for both breakfast and dinner.
Our plan for the last evening was to head over to La Boca, to buy some souvenirs, eat some good food and listen to some good street music. We had a flavour of all this when we initially visited on our last stay in the city. We headed over at around 6pm only to find the once hive of activity, was completely deserted. It was only then that we understood that the famous La Boca, closes up around 4pm in the afternoon. If only JohnS had read his Lonely Planet guide a little more closely we might have avoided such a disappointment.
Back to the airport the following morning to check in for the long flight back to England and ready to fly.
A stop of about one hour in Rio to change air crew and then on to Heathrow overnight where, much to our surprise, immigration was a breeze, just the bags took for ever to arrive – swings and roundabouts at airports as it ever was….
A couple of tips on booking Ubers to get around: be sure to accurately provide the drop off that you want. On a couple of occasions, we have given a location that we thought was near where we wanted to go and found out that we were dropped off several blocks away. The Uber driver cannot change the drop off once the booking is made. We were OK on those occasions as on one we knew the area sufficiently well and on the other occasion we had a working internet to follow Google maps. However, you might not be so lucky and could end up in a tricky situation.
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