Back to La Boca

Friday, June 1^st, 2012

Ok, it’s terrible to admit it, but it had been a while since I’d been to La Boca neighborhood (more specifically, El Caminito, where all the houses are painted) and I was up for a tourist adventure to get some more pictures.

I KNOW El Caminito is the venus flytrap of tourism in BA, but, I wanted to re-explore it and see if there was supposed to be more to it than taking pictures in what they want you to believe is the most Buenos Aires-y part of the city. Maybe even find out a little bit of its history…

Nope. We were snapping away on our cute little colored Canons being accosted by every single vendor, restaurant owner and anyone else trying to make a buck off the tourists passing by. It was so uncomfortable. You could be the ugliest person on earth and they’d still swarm you saying how beautiful you are, so being even kind of attractive, it took us 5 minutes to walk 5 feet.

The more and more I travel, the more and more I feel uncomfortable being a tourist because even though there are certain things you have to see, like La Boca, there are other things you have to discover or enjoy from your own point of view without being interrupted by wide-eyed tango dancers hoping to score $30 for a photo with tango poses that I don’t even know how to dance. It feels fake. Obviously tourism can make or break a local/national economy and I do the “touristy” things in almost every city I visit, but something I’ve realized that in 4 months, I’ve visited more sites in Argentina and Buenos Aires then some of the natives themselves—but before I toot my own horn about that, I realize that it could be because even thinking about being surrounded by gobs of tourists in your own city/country might be the most unbearable thought so as to prevent you from ever going to see these attractions. But then other attractions, like our bike ride through Circuito Chico in Bariloche, are just so spectacular that touristy or not, you have to experience it. It wasn’t about buying screen-printed t-shirts and snapping some kind of clichéd photo, but rather breathing in fresh air and scraping our jaws off the floor after every curve, presenting a new and incredible view. Unfortunately Boca does not offer this type of experience…

As we were walking, I happened to catch the eye of a service worker cleaning up some gated up mess, and while normally I avoid talking to guys like this (because they give me that “I’d love to defile you, little foreign girl” look), he gave me a nice smile and said buen día. As Melanie was having a crisis with all her photos turing out pure white, I shot the breeze with the Peruvian. Sometimes conversations like this can be uncomfortable because you can usually still see the “omg I’m talking to a 20 something pretty gringa girl!” look in their eyes and catch them throwing out a few creepy lines, but I still like to have them because it’s always a great way to practice my Spanish and hear new, interesting perspectives. In five minutes of talking we were already discussing religion and the social condition of Peruvians in Argentina (which is poor). And as I bid the Peruvian adieu, I tried to think of the last time I talked with a trash-worker about religion and social justice in the states, which was about, oh…never. It’s what I love most about this country, and really what I love about life—the conversation.

But another reality about life in Argentina set in, and with the sun getting a little too low, we knew it was time to leave La Boca. Like a pro, I hailed the 64 and as we passed through the neighborhood I noticed other little houses exactly like the ones in the famous Caminito—the only difference was that these houses weren’t painted. And I started to wonder if a coat of paint could really make that much difference, because nobody was snapping pictures of these houses, despite the fact that they probably represent the real Boca more than anything en el Caminito.