Nervous in La Boca

I started today, my second full day in Buenos Aires, by visiting its La Boca neighbourhood.

Readers might have one of a few reactions upon encountering the title of this entry, “Nervous in La Boca.” People who know me, but haven’t read any tourist guides on La Boca, might think “nervous” is superfluous because I’m always nervous. So, of course, I’d be nervous in La Boca.

I should mention here that, yes, I know that angst is a spectrum, not a binary state. My angst is probably in the upper half of the scale, but still well below the pinnacle. However, it is generally omnipresent. Enough about that.

People who know nothing about me and nothing about La Boca might wonder why my anxiety heightened here.

Courageous people who know something about La Boca, whether they know me or not, might think, “What a freaking wimp.” I’m offended by them thinking that, but I don’t entirely disagree.

I’ll expand for the benefit of those who haven’t read any of the tourist information about the La Boca neighbourhood of Buenos Aires. It’s generally highly recommended for a visit, but the recommendations usually come with warnings that it’s a rough area.

The Government of Canada’s travel advisory webpage for Argentina recommends that if you visit La Boca, you should stick exclusively to the main tourist street of El Caminito and be out of there entirely at night.

One of my guidebooks expands that safe area somewhat to include also the nearby river walk, but reiterates the recommendation to leave by nightfall.

The guide on the food tour I took yesterday, Eli, didn’t put geographic limits on his recommendation to visit La Boca, but he forcefully suggested leaving the La Boca neighbourhood by 6:00 pm.

Warnings noted. Worries heightened.

I took the middle ground. I went in the morning and stuck to El Caminito, the immediately adjacent streets, and the riverwalk. I expanded the definition of the riverwalk a bit to also take in an art gallery immediately across the street from the riverwalk and not far from El Caminito, Museo Benito Quinquela Martín.

El Caminito in La Boca

I think when the tourist books and other warnings talk about El Caminito, they must be using it as a generic term for a broader, but still small, sub-area within La Boca.

El Caminito is a wide pedestrian lane that runs diagonally to the generally grid pattern of the streets in the area. El Caminito, two other wide pedestrian lanes, along with a short section of a street at the top, form a triangle with the top lopped off.

The buildings along the lopped-off triangle are painted with hues that draw from much of the expanse of the palette of bold colours.

What makes me think that the guidebooks take a broad view of El Caminito is that El Caminito itself is the least interesting of those streets. All of the buildings there turn their backs on El Caminito, with their entrances on the nearby streets. The backs of the buildings are colourful, but I didn’t find them particularly stimulating.

Vendors set up tables to sell mostly crafts on El Caminito. Some others set up vertical frost fence panels where they hang paintings and drawings for sale, but it’s mostly quite low-key. So that adds some verve to the lane.

The other streets in the lopped-off triangle, on the other hand, are a lot of fun. And the colours of the buildings on them are bolder. The buildings, which contain shops, restaurants, and bars, all have their entrances on those streets. The shops sell leather goods, souvenirs, and other relatively low-value curios.

Fanciful sculptures of what I assume is papier-mâché stand on the sidewalk in front of a few of the stores and on several second-floor Juliet balconies. It makes for a great experience.

Despite not venturing beyond that almost triangle, I peered along the adjacent streets as best I could. They looked like gentle residential streets with dense tree canopies. So maybe Eli was right in his suggestion to explore deeper into La Boca. But being the wimp that I am (yes, I admit it), I wasn’t going to risk it.

One of my guidebooks said that I should expect to see couples dressed in tango costumes standing at the front end of El Caminito. It said they’d try to entice me to take their picture, have my picture taken with them, and/or wear some tango paraphernalia they have available to loan and have my picture taken with them and/or wearing that. All for a fee, of course.

They were, indeed, there. I resisted their inducements. My resistance was made all the easier by not having the least interest in doing it.

La Boca River Walk

A river runs beside the La Boca neighbourhood. I’m not entirely sure what it is.

On Google Maps, it’s named the Riachuelo River. But in Wikipedia, if you look up the river that the La Boca Bridge, also known as Puente Transbordado, crosses, it tells you that it’s the Riachuelo River. But if you click on the “Riachuelo River” link on that page, it then takes you to a page titled, not “Riachuelo River,” but rather “Matanza River.” So which is it? I haven’t the foggiest.

Whatever, there is a riverwalk that stretches for the equivalent of a few blocks on the La Boca side of the What’sit River.

The riverwalk is relatively wide. Its surface is comprised of cobblestones with a band of flat paving stones running along the centreline. For about a block’s worth of the walkway immediately opposite El Caminito, the cobblestones and pavers were painted bright colours, much like the buildings in the area.

For about another block or two beyond that, the cobblestones and pavers were painted, but they could do with another coat because most of the paint was worn off. Beyond that, the remainder of the riverwalk was unpainted.

The river itself is reasonably attractive, but not fabulous. There are a few vestiges of what looks like an industrial port, but if that’s what it was, it’s largely gone.

Museo Benito Quinquela Martin

My final stop of the morning was a visit to the Museo Benito Quinquela Martín. It’s a modestly sized museum dedicated to Benito Quinquela Martin, an Argentine painter who was born in 1890 and died in 1977. In, I don’t know how much of, the latter part of his life, he lived in and had his studio in the building where the museum is now.

Benito Quinquella Martin was known largely as a port artist. He lived by a port and painted ports. But there were a few paintings of his on other themes on display. There’s one small room with, I think, five of his paintings, all depicting something to do with fire. There was a painting of a major fire in La Boca, a fire on a ship, and some fires burning in kilns.

The museum also displays some paintings by other Argentine artists. They had a wider subject palette.

Keeping with the nautical theme, there’s a room with a collection of ship figureheads that were carved in the belief that they’d protect their ships. The ships were nowhere to be seen when I was there, so maybe they didn’t do such a great job of that.

As I mentioned, Benito Quinquella Martin had lived in the building. The upper floor still contains some of the rooms of his home, with furniture in them. (The rooms are roped off, but visitors can peer into them.)

The cabinets and appliances in his kitchen were each painted a different colour, matching somewhat the colours of the buildings in the neighbourhood. Also on the upper level, there’s a small terrace with a few statues.

That concluded my time in La Boca. I’m happy to report that I escaped alive and entirely unscathed.

What’s more, had it not been for the niggling remembrances of warnings past, I would have felt every bit as safe there as I feel in the safest of other places I’ve visited. That is to say, rarely 100%, but nowhere near a debilitating angst.

Would I have felt as safe if I had gone beyond the geographic and temporal boundaries of the alleged safe zones? How the heck would I know? I didn’t go beyond them, did I? I wish you’d stop asking me these inane questions. They’re a waste of my time.

Wait. Those questions were only in my head, weren’t they?

Oy. That’s not good.