Buenos Aires otra vez

Playtime at a bar in Palermo Hollywood with our Swedish friends Anna and Elias.  We met them at the Iguazu falls.  You guys are good at Jenga, look at the huge tower!!!

 Torre de Babel.  It's all made out of books.

 Cementerio de la Recoleta. This is not just any cemitery, it's THE cemitery in Buenos Aires and it's a town of itself.  Important people like Evita are resting here in their tomb-suites.

 

Avenida 9 de Julio has 12 lanes.

 Plaza de Mayo

 The white circle on the ground around the statue is the 'circle of the mothers'. The white head scarves painted on the ground are the symbol of the mothers.  There's some history to it that we learned while on a really interesting, free city tour organized by the hostel. 

Here's a short explanation:

Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo is an association of Argentine mothers whose children "disappeared" (meaning taken away) during the Dirty War of the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. In 1977 a few mothers started to meet at Plaza de Mayo as a demonstration for their lost sons and daughters and to demand information from the government about the location of their children. Most of the sons and daughters were tortured and killed, their babies were adopted by people withing the government. At that time, standing in groups of more than two people was not allowed in public places. So the police told the mothers to "move along" (the Spanish way of saying this is literally walk around), so they started walking in pairs around the Plaza. They were walking in a circle, wearing white shawls on their head to recognize each other. Some children of the "disappeared" women were found and identified thanks to the association. The women are still meeting today, on Thursdays.

LA BOCA:

La Boca is an area at the river mouth consisting of a few very colorful streets. It's a super touristy part of Buenos Aires, but it's still fun to take pictures with all the bright colored houses.

Argentinian flag made out of Legos at the airport. 

I can't believe it, we were really leaving on time. A volcano in southern Chile started spewing smoke and ash, so surrounding airports and also the Buenos Aires airport were closed for days.  Maybe the rain on our last day in South America helped, or the air above Buenos Aires just cleared up by itself, I don't know. All I know is that we got super lucky because the airport opened the evening before our flight and we left on time just like nothing had ever happened.

ADIOS ARGENTINA!!!