We had lunch yet again at Don Julio - the amazing steak restaurant just down the road from my hostel. Delicious!
In the evening we attempted to go for a Tango show at Cafe Tortoni - Argentina's oldest cafe - having been established in 1858, but when we got there, the show was oversubscribed and we couldn't get in. I did however get a free history lesson from a Tibetan-Swiss guy with us. Apparently Switzerland has one of the largest Tibetan communities out of Tibet. In the 1960s, Red Cross resettled 300 Tibetans in Switzerland and an additional 150 orphans were adopted by Swiss families.
The next day I finally made it to Recoleta cemetery, and I admit, it is the most beautiful cemetery I have ever been to. It was almost like visiting a museum - amazing sculptures, beautiful tombstones etc. It was the first time I had seen bodies buried above the ground. I always assumed that "six feet under" was the norm, but apparently in some places, people are buried at ground level. Most of the bodies were in mausoleums.
I got to where Evita was buried and there were people crying at her grave. It was quite touching given she died in 1952. I recall asking someone who worked at the cemetery to direct me to her grave. He started hitting on me and I remember thinking "how inappropriate is this? Should you really be hitting on people at a cemetery?" The cemetery was huge - I walked around for hours and i'm not sure I got to see everything. Some of the mausoleums were in disarray - perhaps a wealthy family that no longer had money. In some, you could see bones falling out. Some were so touching because of the melodramatic sculptures - the wailing maidens were a fixture throughout.
There was one mausoleum that had a sculpture of a woman and a dog. I wondered - was her dog buried here? Did she die of rabies that she contracted from the dog?
After the cemetery I went to a brewery down the road where I had a few beer samplers. In the evening I went for dinner with a friend and her friend. After that we partied the night away - highlights include meeting a long haired Chilean artist who played Mulatu Astatke - the godfather of Ethiojazz. It was a great day and night!
