Buenos Aires

  Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sunday, August 5, 2007

After 19 hours on a bus from Puerto Igauzu, eventually reached Buenos Aires.  We got the metro from the bus station and as we emerged from the Metro on Avienda de Mayo it was like we had landed in Paris on the Champs Elyesses!  It is very much a European City in style and architecture and easy to forget that you are actually in South America!  The Youth Hostel that we are staying in, Milhouse, is amazing and is really like a hotel with hostel prices.  Its a really lively spot and theres always something going on in the hostel.  Everybody is very friendly and mix well.  Everybody we have met can speak English, so we dont have to use our fluent Spanish!  We will add on more later.
Its Aug 11th now and we lwave Buenos Aires tomorrow on another 19hr bus journey to Puerto Madryn.We´ve had a ball here and have met so many nice people. Onme of the most poignant things we´ve seen here are ´The Mothers of the Disappeared´ (pictured wearing the white head scarfs in the photos). During the Dirty War here in the 1970´s a military Government was in power, and decided to ´clean up´ the population by kidnapping poets, artists, intellectuals, lawyers anyone really. They were then tortured, beaten and raped. Then brought up in aeroplanes and concrete blocks tied to their ankles...then pushed off  the plane into the River Plate of Buenos Aires below. Over 30,000 just disappeared off the face of the earth. To this day no government has ever held a case or investigation to the events of the time. But apparently alot of the abductors still walk free on the streets of Buenos Aires ( so survivors of the period say).

And so every Thursday at 3.30pm the Mothers of the Disappeared meet in a big square called Plaza de Mayo, and walk around the park in silence wearing photos of there lost loved ones. On there heads they wear a white scarf with the name and details of their missing loved ones stitched in blue. They have been doing this now for over 30 years week in week out without fail. The pavement they walk on now has white head scarves painted all around the fountain as a symbol for their plight. The poor women ranging in age from late 50´s to 90´s still look so broken-hearted.