My sister and I booked a South America cruise a few months ago. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment decision.
We arrived in Buenos Aires at around 9 am. It took about 20 minutes to go through passport control and customs, which was less time than I expected.
We planned to take the Remis taxi to the cruise terminal as this was recommended by many people online. I tried to book it online before the trip but payment wouldn’t go through for some reason. I contacted them and was told we could only book it at the airport counter when we arrived.
At the airport exit, a lady was holding a sign asking passengers if anyone needed to hire a Remis. So we stopped to ask about it. When I tried to book online, the price was a little over 6400 pesos. But at the airport we were quoted 10500 pesos. I was confused why such a big difference and we tried to figure out how much difference that translated into dollars.
Before we were able to figure things out, they suddenly announced that they ran out of cars. We had no choice but to find another transportation option. We saw a taxi stand and was just about to go ask, a man approached us and asked if we needed a taxi and quoted us USD $48.
It was a little cheaper than the quote we got from Remis. Since we were tired of the hassle and were eager to get to the ship, we decided to take the offer as we were told credit cards were also accepted and that was the only way we could pay.
So we arrived at the cruise terminal in about 45 minutes. He dropped us off across the street from the terminal. I was wondering why he wouldn’t drop us off at the terminal but since it was only a short walk, we didn’t fuss about it. My sister gave him her VISA card, he inserted it into the reader, then showed us the failed transaction on his phone. My sister then tried her Amex card and got the same error. She had no choice but to pay cash.
She handed him a $50 bill. He took it but then soon held a $1 bill and said my sister didn’t give him enough money. My sister was confused but thought maybe she did give him the wrong bill so she gave him another $50. Afterwards, we realized that we were ripped off. My sister remembered she never had any $1 bill with her and had two $50 bills but now there wasn’t any left. So the man was clearly a crook. But it was already too late.
We arrived at the terminal at around 10:15 but check in didn’t start until 11:00 am. And due to some technical issues and large group of priority check-ins, we didn’t finish checking in until 12:46 pm. Things hadn’t been going well so far.
We had a quick buffet lunch and headed out to explore as soon as we were done.
Our first stop was Plaza de Mayo. It is considered the most important place in the city. It’s both historically and politically significant.
Casa Rosada stood at one end of the plaza. It is the office of the president of Argentina.
We wanted to check out San Telmo Market and decided to walk there.
Along the way we saw quite a few interesting living statues.
We didn’t find anything really interesting at the market. So we continued to walk to Caminito. It’s a famous pedestrian walk and open-air museum in La Boca neighborhood. It inspired the music for a famous Tango with the same name. It’s a very colorful neighborhood and what I was looking forward to visiting the most in Buenos Aires.
Exploring Caminito was fun. But we wanted to get to our next site. It was a few miles away but since it was pretty hot and humid, we decided to call an Uber to save us some walking.
Our last stop today was Floralis Generica. It is a mobile sculpture of six steel petals. They open at 8am each morning and close at midnight but remain open all day on patriotic holidays.
It was close to 6 pm by the time we finished at Floralis Generica. We had a really long day since we left home around noon on Saturday. So we called it a day and walked back to the ship (45 mins).