Buenos Aires was obviously built by architects and not engineers and planners. It’s a perfect example of beauty over function. The buildings are striking and grand structures running side-by-side for miles but the streets are narrow and clogged. Traffic is more chaotic and dysfunctional than I have ever seen in all my travels. Even in Indonesia it worked much better. The city is dirty. The garbage disposal system is strange. Rubbish is placed in big plastic bags and thrown on the street side where it collects until somebody comes along and ‘sort-of’ picks it up. While the grand architecture of the city may have been built by clever people, it is now in the hands of incompetents. The police seem content to live with the crime and black marketeering. When crime comes your way, expect to be treated more of a nuisance than a victim. Everywhere I go now I feel like a target. Apparently the perpetrators of tourist crime aren’t interested in passports and will ditch them at the first opportunity. And if you are lucky, somebody may find it and notify the embassy. The lady at the embassy explained two passports had been handed in on the day before I was robbed, giving some idea of the frequency of this sort of crime.
South America is booming economically but not much is being spent on the administration of this place.
I had great expectations of Buenos Aires but so far my experience of it has been a complete disappointed. And I’m still smarting from having to pay $100 to get into the country for the privilege of being here.
I was critical of Santiago but it was a far more pleasant place to be. South Americans have a saying here ‘It is South America after all’ as if sort-of appologising for not having the advantages of better developed first-world countries. That’s fine. I didn’t come here for all that advantage, in fact the opposite, and the ‘South American’ experience has been wonderful elsewhere.
I just saw an upper-class dog on a lead do an upper-class crap in the street in front of the Australian Embassy and the upper-class owner made no attempt to clean it up. That’s not South America, that’s Buenos Aires.
I got my temporary passport this afternoon.
angusmccoll 
Oh Angus – what an amazing journey that you are having and I am sorry to hear about the scumbags that you have encountered. Sounds like you will not miss the camera though =) I hope you next destination is amazing. Enjoying your blogs!! Take care and stay safe. Bek Tottle
Hi Bek, great to hear from you. Yes it is an interesting trip but not all of it is fun. Although given time I will only remember the good times. Hope all is well back there. Take care Bek and thanks for dropping by.