La Recoleta Cemetery

This place is even better than the Key West cemetery except all the names are unknown to me. 

Eva Peron always attracts visitors: 

I took this photo of a crypt using the flash. It was otherwise just a black hole. 

I have always like cemeteries, especially the ones with interesting burial methods and even more so if they display history to connect you to the city. Buenos Aires set aside land for a cemetery in 1822, a co project which has become world renowned for beautiful if eccentric tombs famous around the world.

There were only two graves was remotely familiar with, Eva Perón buried in the Duarte family crypt and Domingo Sarmiento, 7th President of Argentina. 

I learned about him after we camped on the shores of Lake Sarmiento in Chile in December 2024 and I was curious where the name came from. 

During Argentina’s 19th centrifugal struggles the Unitarian party wanted a European centric enlightened republic of which Sarmiento was one, but the Federalists on the other side saw them as elitists working at the expense of the poor.  Sarmiento didn’t lot of his life in exile including in Chile a country he admired for its progressive corruption free politics so I guess they figured naming a Patagonian lake after him

might be a good idea. He has a large tomb in the cemetery with lots of plaques from his supporters:

One of the oddities of this cemetery is how people stick bronze plaques on the tombs of friends or colleagues to honor the dead on the anniversary of their death. 

Person’s tomb is actually quite low key as these things go in La Recoleta.

Aside from these two there was no one familiar to me buried here which was rather liberating. It cost $18 to get in which seemed steep but after I photographed the two tombs I knew I wandered at will among the elaborate and crumbling crypts.  

This striking statue is of a 19 year old skater, a member of the River Plate Skate Club who died in 2018 in a car accident. 

And there she is, boasting the newest statue in the cemetery. 

This is an actual working cemetery and this tomb is a reminder of that. Despite the hordes of tourists taking pictures La Recoleta is where families bury their dead and there is no space devoted to explanations or headlines about the occupants. 

Aside from these two plaques from friends and colleagues the other oddity have never seen elsewhere is that of putting coffins in crypts and leaving them on display. 

This detail photographed the glass is of a mature woman cremated. At first glance I thought it was the coffin of an infant. 

There they all just dumped in the crypt which I thought was weird. 

It looks more like a funeral home than a tomb but I guess that’s how they like it. 

Exit this way, back to life and the bustle of the Buenos Aires. 

Getting Stuff Done

I have come like Buenos Aires quite a lot. Driving around the city in a 9400 pound 21-foot van is a pain in the ass, speed bumps, rain gutters, invisible rights-of-way and no parking make it a challenge, but I’ll tell you what: this is a great city.

Above you see a sign promising more police patrols and cops are everywhere, we’ve seen them though I don’t know how crime is in the poorer neighborhoods…

Street cleaning is constant. I got up early this Saturday morning to walk the Mujica park where we have been sleeping and Rusty and I were not alone.

I want to come back and park GANNET2 in the suburbs at the secure storage and take some more time in the Airbnb, which incidentally Rusty was reluctant to leave. He has found his joy in Buenos Aires.

If you are looking for a southern hemisphere city to enjoy summer in winter or vice versa try Buenos Aires. Argentina isn’t a bargain basement third world country anymore but this city is vibrant with everything a tourist could want  before I came here I never in a million years would have thought I’d say that  and I want to come back  soon. Traffic sucks but in an Uber there is no need to care and the service works very well here.

I would not recommend a unicycle here not even an electric one but I concede they do have their advantages: 

We have a date Monday back in Uruguay to hopefully finish our electrical upgrades and changes. Meanwhile yesterday we got our fridge fixed. The compressor we had installed in Brasilia appeared to be a used or damaged part and the new motor installed by Jose Luis in his home workshop for $200 works perfectly.

The unit installed in Brasilia when we converted to 12 volts had thewiring reversed making José crazy -who uses black for positive? he fumed as he struggled to make the new motor fire up. The motor mounts were broken in the “new” Brazilian unit so the motor rattled horribly as it struggled to do its  job and the Brazilians even left the 110 volt light in place so we had no illumination. And they charged $700. José added a 12 volt bulb and now we have a silent fridge that lights up like the Ark of the Covenant when you open  the door.

We have an oil change scheduled for Saturday. Our last one was in Boa Vista in northern Brazil before we entered Guyana, 7,000 miles ago. We usually do them at 5,000 miles but we speeded up the changes on the rough roads of Amazonia and stretched them out a bit to get back on schedule on the easier roads of the south.

We got gas trying to get used to the $6:31 price and today we have a plan to get showers at a gas station shown on the waterfront with full truck stop facilities. Yesterday Layne found a do-it-yourself laundry but of course there was no parking so I drive off to find a dead end street with space for GANNET2 and room for Rusty to walk.

Since Ivan and Paula left and we moved out of the apartment we have been sleeping in a park in a more upscale area, waiting to cross back to Uruguay to get some jobs done on our house. 

We are going to investigate the ferry services to Uruguay, two hours across the River Plate back to Colonia where we slept on the waterfront. 

There is a way to reserve online but as usual the website is funky and we can’t make it work so I plan to visit the Buquebus terminal and ask an employee directly. Wish me luck as it’s that or driving 170 miles back to the bridge at Fray Bentos which at this point seems like less hassle. Layne says I’m an idiot but I like driving mountain matter the cost of gas. 

That’s life in Buenos Aires… a hot shower, an empty porta potty, Chinese food for lunch I hope (thank you Eric) and a quiet night in the park. 

I don’t know if Buenos Aires is the prettiest city in the world but it’s not at all bad.