12-31-19 - New Years Eve Hard Rock Style

It’s our final full day in beautiful Buenos Aires. We have checked off several suggestions from friends back home including Lili who is Argentine.  In fact, all three of our Argentine friends were full of useful recommendations. Thanks Lili, Sebastian and Tahta for your input. 

One of Lili’s recommendations is La Boca, the district by the port that is an artist’s community.  With bright vibrant colorful building exteriors, it’s a Buenos Aires must-see!  As with most big tourist attractions, the downside are pick pockets and bag snatchers. Online reports suggests not to even bring a bag and limit to only one person in your party taking photos. We are on guard.

We split into two Ubers. On the ride over, Leanne frantically texts Kyle that her taxi driver said someone was robbed and shot here last week and we shouldn’t even take our camera out at all.  No pictures?  Kyle starts to hyper-ventilate at the thought.  No es possible!

As Kyle’s cab drops them off, Kyle sees a guy standing in the middle of the street with a $2,000 digital SLR camera and mega lens taking pictures.  “Hmmm, apparently he’s not too worried about getting mugged for his camera,” Kyle muses.  We all meet up on the corner when we notice that there are a group of adults with Scouting neckerchiefs and shirts playing basketball. It turned out to be a group of young adult scout leaders from Poland, UK, US and Canada who were in Buenos Aires for a Scouting event. Corey and Justin ask to join in the game and are soon passing, dribbling and shooting away.  It’s magical how our scouts are never far from their global Scouting community.  

While they play, the rest of us duck into a cafe for empanadas and cappuccinos. Kyle points out, “so we’ve seen a guy with a $2K camera, a mass of tourists taking pictures with iPhone in every direction and a group of Boy Scouts playing basketball.  That doesn’t exactly scream bad neighborhood where people get mugged and shot.”

The Scouts rejoin us and we head out to explore the colorful neighborhood of La Boca. It is a little hard to describe but it has different shaped and sized buildings that are painted in all different bright vibrant colors.  There are shops and street carts selling souvenirs and local foods to the throngs of tourists everywhere.  We check out some of the souvenir shops and add to our global collection of pins, patches, key chains and post cards.  We pass a BBQ place cooking the largest steaks we’ve ever seen on an outdoor grill. 

And of course, we take a ton of photos with the various arrays of paintings, statues and murals that adorn the neighborhood.  After a couple hours of taking it all, we decide to head back and are in need of a couple taxis.  There is no obvious taxi stand and John doesn’t want to venture too far away from the main area.  We eventually find the right spot and get two taxis back to town.  We have safely made it out of La Boca without incident and even the taxi rides were uneventful.  But better safe than sorry.

Pizzeria Guerrin was so popular we decide to return for our last lunch in Buenos Aires. Kyle successfully manages to order the pizza he intends to and avoids the surprise corn topping.  We have discovered that it is much easier to understand Spanish when we speak it each other which is inherently much slower than the locals so we are increasing our efforts on that front. 

One of the kids’ favorite dinners on the road is going to the Hard Rock Café in the different locations we visit that have them.  So they have been lobbying to go here in Buenos Aires all week.  The dinner schedule hasn’t worked out for it so far and tonight is our last night here so Hard Rock Café it is.  We have to leave tomorrow morning at 7:45 so chances are we aren’t awake at midnight.

We head over to Hard Rock around 7pm, open the door and are greeted with an empty restaurant. No Bueno.  While we are standing there pondering what to do, an employee happens to walk by us.  A good bit of Spanish dialogue ensures and we manage to figure out that they are closed now and will reopen at 9pm but it is a special New Year’s Eve so they charge a fixed fee per person with a set menu.  Given that we didn’t have a backup plan, we have to roll with it.

We go out and walk the surrounding neighborhood for over an hour and return.  As we are being seated, Kyle asks if they are going to have live music hoping for a repeat of Cambodia where we ended up hanging out with the band. Alas, no such luck.  While the dinner wasn’t the typical Hard Rock fare, it was great none-the-less.  We enjoyed the 80s and 90s American music.  Upon arriving home, Leanne and John made it to midnight while the rest of us settled for an early Happy New Year!