Lost in Necropolis

Sunrise and our airplane at the Santiago airport

We arrived at the Santiago airport on Monday morning, April 4th. We had printed electronic tickets, but nowhere did it say which airline it was! So we wondered around everywhere, a bit stressed, and after a good 30 minutes we found out that we were booked on a Brazilian airline called GOL. Phew! The flight was quite good and we arrived in Buenos Aires after about 1 1/2 hour.

We had a beautiful view of The Andes (huge chain of mountain separating Chile from everywhere else) from the aiplane window:

Los Andes

Buenos Aires
The city of Buenos Aires is really beautiful, it kind of reminds me of a mix of Paris and New York with lots of Italian food. The people are quite nice, and the architecture is really detailed and very European style:

The micro center of Buenos Aires

On Monday night (or should I say, very early Tuesday morning?) we went to see a show which featured Stoner/Doom metal band Dragonauta. For some reason, they sounded even more powerful than on their albums! Their riffs were amazing, and people went totally insane… here is a photo of their set:

Dragonauta

Thanks a million to Alejandro for the invitation to the gig!

The next day, we finally tasted some of the famous Argentinian steak. We had Bife de Chorizo (a steak from the back of the cow) at a restaurant called Pippo. The meat was very good and tasty, and was cooked over charcoal (they call it parrilla around here). I actually had a better steak in Montreal last summer, so I am still craving an absolutely mind-blowing steak from here, but here are the photos anyway!

The steak with some bread and some pumpkin purée

Cutting the baby up. Notice the fat on the left? That's extremely crucial to the taste of the meat! Never remove all the fat before putting it on the grill!!

We also had some of Buenos Aires’ famous pizza, which tasted ok (the crust was quite nice) but I prefer my very own hahaha:

Pizza Napolitena from El Cuartito

But what we enjoyed the most, and what we will remember Buenos Aires for, is its cemetery…

La Recoleta Cemetery
Located in a high-class neighborhood, this cemetery dates from the late 1700’s and contains about 4300 mausoleums – all above ground. You can say it is some sort of Necropolis (a city of the dead) because it actually has roads:

Lost in necropolass...

And the coolest thing about this cemetery is that alot of vaults have been forgotten for years, even centuries… so some are extremely dusty and have ancient spiderwebs…

Ruins of a mausoleum

Highlight of the visit? A coffin so broken that the skull came out!!! WOAAHH!

There was also some cool stuff, like Egyptian ornaments:

Egyptian mauseoleum detail

A necrocat:

She loves the dead!

A zombie grave:

Perhaps the mausoleum of one of the ancient ones...

And some other cool cryptic stuff:

Life after death

Some big-shot mausoleum

We also went to a friend – Eric (Baphometal zine and distro)’s place, and had a killer dinner while talking about traveling and metal from all over the world. (We listened to some Nepalese metal and more!) It was really eye opening, as Eric and his girl are great travelers that went all over southern Asia and India on a 2$ per day budget. Really cool! They taught us a lot… a million thanks to you two!

So that’s what we pretty much did in Buenos Aires! Haha! On Friday, we took a 11-hour night bus north to Villa General Belgrano.

Before entering the bus, I had one of these babies. They are from Paraguay and I forgot the real name, but I call them crackbread because they are hellishly addictive and they are sold in the streets. They are filled with cheese and squeak when you eat 'em!

Inside the bus. Check out the leg space! We can stretch it out fully! Unfortuntely though, the temperature inside the bus was extremely cold when the night came... we froze our asses and barely slept most of the night.

Included was a huge meal! Pictured you see breaded chicken, potato omelette, bread, fried thing that tasted like onion bhaji and a dulce de leche roll. On top of it, they gave dessert with consisted of waffles, chocolate and dulce de leche candies! Oh, and a huge bottle of pepsi!

We arrived to Villa General Belgrano at 8 in the morning….

Villa General Belgrano
Located in the mountains in the province of Cordoba, and with a population of 6000 people, Villa General Belgrano is quite a strange village. It was mostly populated by German sailors that survived from a ship wreck in the 1940’s! The town is absolutely charming; the houses are made Bavarian style and they host the world’s third biggest Oktoberfest festival. We stayed two days only, but in a bed and breakfast. Luxury!

François with the drunken bus terminal sign

The village of Villa General Belgrano

Our bed and breakfast - Las Acacias

With Obelix, the dog of the place!!

The place also had some killer German-style restaurants and microbreweries which we tried of course!

Vienna sausages, smoked pork chops with sauerkraut and potatoes. The sauerkraut was absolutely amazing... I ate the whole thing by myself haha

Reading a fanzine on the side of a tiny river

Some micro-brewery beer (Waffe) with François' hands in the background. This one wasn't my favorite because I am not big on unfiltered beers, but it tasted really fresh and nice anyway!

So that’s all for Villa General Belgrano. We really enjoyed that city, although it was really weird to be immersed in so much German culture in Argentina hahaha!

This afternoon we arrived in Cordoba, the second biggest city in Argentina. We didn’t get to visit too much, but so far it’s really cool. More news from that city later on this week, I guess!!

Cordoba in the evening...