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Argentines love their holidays, and in a month like March they are blessed with several. However for the tourist and the Spanish language student the thought of closed shops, closed restaurants and closed cultural centers doesn’t have the same thrill as it does to your daily Buenos Aires office worker.
But don’t despair there are many ways a visitor can enjoy the day when the city has shut its doors.
Go for a Walk
Put on your walking shoes and head outdoors. With fewer people on the streets you will have the space to walk, stop and take in your surrounds. Don’t forget to look up to view the ornate decorations of some of the buildings. Stroll the inner city in peace, or head into the neighbourhoods of San Telmo, Palermo, Recoleta or Puerto Madero.
Buenos Aires Bike Tour
The roads are quiet, the buses are less frequent and there are few pedestrians j-walking. This is the time to take to the streets and pedal your way around the city. Hire a bike to cruise around the Costanera Sur or better yet join a bike tour of Buenos Aires and have a local guide show you the main sights and hidden gems.
The Easter long weekend starts the final day of March when many porteños will take Thursday off work and enjoy an extra long break. It is a good excuse to go do some travelling yourself.
Surf Trip
Get out of the city and join in a long weekend surf trip to Mar del Plata. The swell isn’t quite Hawaii but for beginners and intermediate surfers it is still a great beach scene. Equipment hire and surf lessons are all possible so cross your fingers for the sun and hit the beach!
Iguazu Falls
We know it is a long bus trip from Buenos Aires but if your budget cant stretch to a plane flight, at least make use of the great bus quality and get a good nights rest on the overnight service. You can spend a couple of days enjoying the stunning scenery at Iguazu waterfalls. Take a paddle along the river, a speed boat into the falls or a helicopter over the National Park.
So don’t stay locked up in your room during the public holidays, get out and explore the city and Argentina.
Mars
If you’re not quite in the mood for being the travel-guide wielding foreigner at one of Buenos Aires’ many tourist locations, the Recoleta Fair in Plaza Francia is a perfect way to spend a lazy Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Glittered with artisan stands and packed with porteño hippies, hipsters and tourists alike, the weekly fair exudes Buenos Aires’ bohemian spirit but with a family-friendly twist.
I went to the crafts fair last Sunday with a friend to try an alternative to San Telmo’s cobble-streeted version of the Buenos Aires flea market, and could tell right away that the Recoleta Fair had a more laid back, spending-the-afternoon-drinking-mate-and-people-watching sort of vibe to it. Across the street and just outside the fair, there were two local alternative rock bands competing neck-and-neck to draw in the largest crowd, with one crooning Yellowcard-esque tunes and the other giving a tribute to 90’s grunge. While sidewalk tango shows may be a staple of San Telmo’s traditional antique fair, the bands that occasionally set up shop along the grassy hills in Plaza Francia can range from reggae and acoustic guitar, to mellow background music for those chatting it up on the hill.
Once inside the fair, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed by the variety of hand-crafted jewelry and trinkets, souveneirs, cityscape paintings, and stylish summer clothes. Basically, it’s filled with all stuff you probably didn’t think you needed, until you began walking through the stands and wondering if your wallet could handle a few skirt steals and a new mate gourd. Among the unique finds at the Recoleta Fair are monedas that have been made into retro necklaces and earrings, multi-colored strappy sandles that are cheap and comfy (according to multiple sources), and Buenos Aires classics from quality leather bags to mates in every design possible. And, of course, those harem pants that you desperately want to try but fear will look more like pajama pants with a built in diaper rather than chic porteño street wear …
With so many quirky goods that can’t be found in big-box shopping malls back home, it’s easy to fall into the tourist spending trap and want to buy everything. Afterall, it’s “one of a kind,” so how can you not? To shield ourselves from this doomed mindset –and to still have money left for food and basic living –my friends and I have instated a pocket-book protecting policy, i.e. a limit of one or two purchases each visit. I should note that this policy comes with the caveat that more purchases are allowed in the case that they are to be “souveneirs” for friends back home. Luckily, whether or not these souveniers ever make it past our own wrists or earlobes and into gift boxes intended for our friends and family is beyond the jurisdiction of the policy …
So, go enjoy an impromptu humor skit accompanied by bongo drums and crude jokes lost in translation, eat an empanada on the grass hoping to blend into the hip (and cute) mate-sipping Argentinean locals next to you, and pick out a few earrings and a new wardrobe … I mean, “souveneirs” … at the Recoleta Fair this weekend, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Des
Argentine’s film ‘El secreto de sus ojos’ (The Secret in Their Eyes) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film last night! It is directed by Juan José Campanella.
The thriller is set in the early 1970s Argentina. The story unfolds in the country’s main federal courthouse, where an investigator discovers co-workers torturing suspects into false confessions and running death squads for the president.
You can read more about the movie here or just go and rent it, and practice your Spanish!
Isabel
Buenos Aires has a zoo in the city but actually not too far from the city, there is another zoo, or more accurately a bioparque called Temaikén. It is only an hour bus ride from Plaza Italia and the bus will drop you right off at the entrance.
Compare to the zoo in the city, Temaikén is called a bioparque for a reason. They have a huge range of exotic animals living there, from the not-so-endangered animals like macaw, to dangerously endangered animals like chita; thus, many animals in between which I have only seen on Discovery Channel! If watching bats sleep fascinate you, like me, you’d be in for a treat, but they do stink!
The park is very well-designed with tons of trees, plants, and pretty landscapes. The animal’s living environment is 
designed to imitate as closely as possible to their natural habitats, and may be because of that, the animals were way more active than I could ever remember when I was last at a zoo, where the probability of actually seeing the animals doing something was pretty low. At Temaikén, I had chitas, of course separated by a glass window, walking up, modeling and showing off, to me over and over again! You getta love that!
The bird section was very impressive too. It is dissected into various ‘rooms’ gated by heavy chains, so you can be in the same room with them and have them check you out. The aquarium was also very beautiful, all kinds of fish and sharks swimming all around you in the circular tank.
I didn’t expect to have so much fun plus all the wonderful surprises at Temaikén. If you are an animal lover, it’s a must visit, but even if you are not, you will find yourself enjoying a relaxing day getting in touch with the nature in a fascinating way.
Isabel
