In the mid 19th century La Boca became home to both Spanish and Italian immigrants who came there in the economic the boom of the 1800's. They worked in the many meat processing and packing factories that set up in La Boca and shipped out Argentina's beef, off down the Riachuelo.
La Boca is primarily famed today for its brightly painted buildings. This was initially the result of the left over paint from the shipping barges being used to spruce up the port dwellers corrugated iron homes. Today it is what La Boca is known for...and is a very suitable backdrop to the weekend craft markets.
Contrived or happy accident?
Caminito is La Boca's most famous street and is visually reproduced to death in every medium possible.
Mmm, sleepy one...
Hungry pidgy...
Now I'm awake! Hungry puss-cat, 'I see you!!'
A fashionable dog, appearing in all the wrong climates along our travels.
Real local housing, in what is essentially a run down area. The Lonely Planet describes it as 'not the place for casual strolls or straying off the tourist trails'.
Some beautiful, old and classic buildings made affordable by being classed as in a 'rough area' of Buenos Aires. 'Lets buy!!!'
Tourism to the max...How could we not join in?! Lmao. We really tried hard to keep a suitably straight tango-face!
Totally hilarious, on many levels.
Not far down from these streets was the La Bombonera stadium, home of the Boca Juniors soccer team. It was also the former club of disgraced superstar Diego Maradona. This chap was making a tourist mint out of having a looky-likey snap with him. In a country where the mullet is alive and actually fashionable, he did have really luscious and thick hair...for his age! Lol. Wiji found him funny and explained the legend of Maradona's 'hand of god' to me. Interesting. He was equally famed for his drug habit too, but we won't hold that against him!
Having a bit of lunch in the sunshine at this pedestrian street side cafe. Across from us a tourism tango show was in full flow, with live band. Nice.
In a break with tradition here's a pic of my meal! I opted for the traditional Argentine quince jam and cheese appertiser...I love quince, a good combo as a one off for me.
Eating it and wearing it. No shame here in wearing fur, whatsoever it seemed. We loved the cow hide rugs though.
Walking within the tourism limits to the River Riachuelo. You could do a riverbank walk here apparently...we didn't fancy it much, it was a bit wiffy. Just by the boat was a tide of floating plastic.
Some nice old boozers reminded us of our happy times hanging out in Ladbrook Grove, browsing the market and doing a bit of all day drinking.
Looking back down one of the market streets where a taxi dropped us off and later we caught one out. 'Bicycle man peddles empanadas'. Lol, but lame.
A train line runs through part of La Boca, in a bit of a hap-hazzard way. We missed a snap of a train on our way in, but while in the taxi heading off I spotted this one and jumped out of the taxi, while Wiji waited, to get a pic. Strange, this immediately co-insided with me noticing just how dodgy the area really was...I seemed to attract some unwanted company...
But managed to dodge them all by keeping on the move before getting this last pic, then legging it back to the taxi, literally. The men on the front of the train were there to tell the driver if any obstacles were on the line...a bit of a fault with the train design, surely, no?!
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