Buenos Aires - February 1st

Today we are going on a day trip.  There are many on offer from all the tour agencies in BA, but we are going to organise our own to La Plata.  This town is the capital of the Buenos Aires province, BA being the federal capital and in its own area like Washington DC.  It is about 70 Km south of BA and in a change can also be reached by train as well as buses.  So we get the subway to Constitution station where trains run every half hour to La Plata.  We get a shock when we come to pay for the tickets, the price for a return each is 60p, which is a lot cheaper than it would be for a similar ticket in Europe.  The shock is because the bus fares have been relatively expensive.  I guess the train is slightly slower due to the number of stations, but it’s a quite pleasant ride.

When we get to La Plata it is hot, far hotter than it has been in the previous two days.  We bake as we walk up to the central square, past the state buildings, and then onto the very impressive cathedral.  This is by far the best we have seen so far.  As this city was planned from the start it has a nice layout, with great views of the impressive buildings, unlike the cramped nature of some of the BA streets.

After a larger than expected lunch (our shared Spanish tortilla had about 10 eggs in it) we continue onto the natural history museum in La Plata which was the main purpose of our visit.  As I have yet to see some dinosaurs on this trip, I chose this museum, which is better stocked than it’s BA counterpart due to the personal collection of our trip icon Perito Moreno.  It is pretty good, and like the art museum yesterday, actually about the right size to look through (similar museums in London or New York are actually too big to visit).

After that we head back to the train station and get the train home.  The plan is to go to the cinema this evening.  As we approach BA the sunny weather changes to rain, and thunder.  The rain is not too heavy though.  We get back onto the subway (once again avoiding the long queue of people trying to get their electronic cards, the problems in getting these is the big local news story). 

However on the train a strange thing happens, first the driver comes on the intercom asking us to close the windows (and in this heat that is dangerous) and then as we drive forward a load of water comes in through the roof drenching us all.  We get off a stop early as the train fails due to wet water and we discover that the rain here is a lot heavier than when we were last overground.  There is a waterfall coming down the stairs up to the street, and obviously the train went through a leak from the road above. 

The rain is as heavy as anything I have ever seen, and the sky above is dark before sundown but brighter than ever due to the amount of lightning.  We shelter in a shop door for half an hour before we decide there is no alternative but to walk the 10 blocks home in the rain.  Needless to say we got soaked, and we decided our walk to the cinema was off, so we just bought some food in the local shop and stayed in for the rest of the evening watching the flooding on the local news, it was now the top story, over 50mm fell in 45 minutes, and 100mm in total over a few hours causing massive flooding and transport chaos.