La Boca

On our return to Buenos Aires we did a tour of La Boca, an area of Buenos Aires Capital which is notorious for football, tango, coloured corrogated iron houses and street crime!

Firstly, La Boca is home to the Boca Juniors, the team made famous by Diego Maradona as it was where he played. The stadium is a few blocks into the neighborhood and is not the most pleasant of walks. They say it´s perfectly safe, but some of the looks from the locals and the lack of other tourists around the stadium made me feel quite unsafe. We spent a quick five minutes around the outside of the stadium (to satisfy the boys) and quickly returned to the busy touristy streets of the main drag.

La Boca is also famous for the painted corrogated iron houses that line the streets. La Boca is a very poor area, inhabited by the first imigrants to the city. They found a lively hood working in the docks and with the left over paint from the ships they painted their houses. Hence the coloured houses that line the streets. Now the two main streets near the docks are filled with tourists every day and the locals, dressed up as tango dancers, tout to have their picture taken for small change.

The real Boca lies beyond the stadium and closer into the center and is certainly not a place for tourists.