In Buenos Aires airport we were met by representatives of Princess Cruises (and I was offered a job because I helped out some other passengers having trouble understanding the process) and were taken on a slow drive through the Argentine capital city’s traffic to the port area to board the ship.

As with many places that cruise ships dock the port area of Buenos Aires was a commercial zone with not a huge amount of interest to look at if you’re not fond of shipping containers and cranes but the weather was gorgeous, we were in a foreign country, I had my camera to hand, there were some lovely pieces of brutalist architecture on show too, and photographs were quick to follow.

In addition to taking pictures from our mini suite balcony when we first arrived in Buenos Aires we took a walk up onto the top deck of the cruise ship and I snapped some photos of the commercial port and the Río de la Plata from there too.

Our coach pulled up in the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires and we gathered outside the walls of the cemetery to hear some of the details of the location from our guide. Naturally, I wandered off and took some photographs of the surrounding area and its concrete-friendly architecture and missed all the information.

We then entered the cemetery itself for close to an hour to explore its street-like layout of above ground crypts. As it would turn out this would not be the only cemetery filled with above ground crypts we would visit on our South American cruise aboard the Star Princess; it turns out they’re fond of these things down that way.

Other than tourists, a few relatives (perhaps), and a few workers, the only other living things wandering the impressive alleys between the equally impressive crypts of the cemetery were cats.

La Recoleta cemetery’s most famous inhabitant is, of course, Eva Perón, whose body lay within the crypt marked by her family name of Duarte.

We had time for a few more photographs of the Recoleta district surroundings and buildings outside the walls of the cemetery before boarding our coach for the next stop on our organised tour of Buenos Aires.

We made it onto Avenida 9 De Julio (July 9 Avenue), the widest avenue in the world, named to honour Argentina’s independence day. Traffic was particularly bad here but it meant we could inch past the Obelisco De Buenos Aires so it had its benefits. We eventually turned up Avenida Presidente Roque Sáenz Peña as the third coach in a convoy of four from the Star Princess but a side road was blocked off by police just as we tried to turn down it.

We were stuck there for a fair amount of time while our guide made calls back to the ship. Eventually, he secured the assistance of some crew to come out to us and help to escort us as walked the rest of the way towards what would be our next stop: the Metropolitan Cathedral. This meant we got to stretch our legs and get some fresh air – which was nice – and we got to walk down the middle of a major road in Buenos Aires with no traffic around and just the sounds of distant engines, helicopters, and the odd chant from unseen protest groups. Bonus!

Mausoleum of General San Martín

Inside the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral was an alcove area, the Mausoleum of General San Martín, housing the remains of the aforementioned general and protected by three female statues representing the countries of Argentina, Chile, and Peru. Our arrival in the cathedral was very fortuitous as we just in time to see the changing of the guards assigned to further protect the monument.

The Argentinian police and their vehicles (including a water cannon) were certainly present in reasonable numbers in the area around Casa Rosada. As far as we know, though, there was no violence while we were in Buenos Aires.

The rest of the time on foot was casually walking towards our next stop, La Ventana tango hall (where we would see a fabulous show about a metre from the stage and have the most incredible steak I’ve eaten in my life (top travel tip in Argentina: don’t be like all the Americans on our table; order your steak rare, how it’s supposed to be, and get a nod of approval from the waiting staff absolutely free)). On the way we had plenty of time to pause and allow fellow passengers on the tour from the Star Princess cruise ship time to catch up and that gave me plenty of time to take photos of the buildings we passed. Some people might find the buildings ugly but I’ve always loved that gritty, grimy architecture of big cities. Nothing too brutal along the streets in Buenos Aires that we were walking, which was a shame, but plenty to see nonetheless.

As we approached the district the surroundings took on a surreal air with brightly coloured buildings springing up everywhere; murals, slogans, and cartoon-like sculptures were everywhere. While I don’t normally like taking photos from inside a vehicle on account of the usual dirty condition of the windows, the chance of vibration softening up the pictures too much, and the high potential for reflections I couldn’t resist capturing some shots as our coach closed in on its destination.

We happened upon some train tracks running along one side of La Boca that I assumed were disused on account of their general condition. We discovered soon afterwards that this wasn’t the case as a train came slowly rolling through the district.

We’d been advised to stay very much in the colourful, tourist part of La Boca and not to wander away as it could be dangerous – there was a police car parked up as an additional protection for tour groups – and we duly did that. There was plenty to catch my eye and my camera’s sensor in our restricted zone as my wife and I meandered up and down La Boca’s pedestrianised areas admiring the buildings and the impressive amounts of street art everywhere. At one point a tango dancer approached me and asked if I wanted to take her picture; fearing an appeal following that for money I didn’t have on me (it was impossible to pick up Argentinian money before our cruise) I declined.

It’s interesting when travelling on coaches on various excursions organised by the cruise companies just how often I see people taking photos with point-and-click cameras without turning the flash off. I do wonder just what those pictures end up looking like although I suppose without it, depending on the camera, the shutter speed might end up being so slow as to render nothing but a blur anyway. Top tip if you’re planning to take photos of anywhere through the windows of a coach: work out the settings on your camera to disable flash and take faster pictures for sharpness! Another tip is to try to pay attention to reflections of interior lights or the windows opposite your seat. That’s not so easy to avoid, though, and sometimes you just have to live with less-than-perfect pictures to go along with your memories.

Even while our guide was warning us about the dangers in certain areas of the city and advising none of us to head away from the main shopping areas if we left the ship (not that we would as our South American cruise was due to start properly soon after with the Star Princess scheduled to depart that evening) it was fascinating to see the apparently poverty-stricken areas of Buenos Aires occasionally showing signs of complete normalcy: the clean, new-looking taxis were the most prominent signs; indicators that the drivers may not have been paid very well, probably, but also that the supposed dangers of the Argentinian streets we were driving through may have been exaggerated somewhat as I couldn’t imagine cars in decent condition lasting that long if things were truly as bad as we were being told.

Attempted Mugging In Buenos Aires

As an addendum, while it didn’t look dangerous passing through this part of Buenos Aires to me at the time this was during the day. We later learnt on board the ship that some people had come into the capital city a few days early before boarding; one of those people was a Canadian man who went for a wander late at night and his sense of direction let him down. He ended up straying into the wrong part of the city where he suddenly realised he was being followed by a couple of men. He turned to confront them when a large knife was pulled out on him. His reaction was to scream for help and, fortunately for him and as an example of the good naturedness of most people on this planet, some locals across the street ran to his assistance. His would-be muggers left and he was helped away to safer streets. So, as it turns out, seeing some parts of Buenos Aires from a coach window may actually be the best thing you can do.

From going back and looking at the photos taken of the brutalist buildings along the port area one of the things I missed at the time was the lovely, socialist design work in the concrete of one of the structures. Worth looking at these images in full size.

The spectacle of concrete style couldn’t go on forever and, much as I like it, there was the matter of a two week cruise around South America to deal with which did have more than its fair share of appeal too. We left brutalist Buenos Aires behind and passed the remainder of the commercial port area.

The port was soon behind us as we turned out onto the river that would take us to our next stop, Montevideo. The dipping sun had just enough light left to provide a few nice shots through some of the buildings along the waterfront area of Buenos Aires and we got to see some distant high rise structures that hadn’t been evident when we’d been in the main part of the city. We also noticed a pier with a narrow-gauge railway leading along it.

Taking photos on public transport isn’t something I like doing. While I’m not a perfectionist when it comes to photographs by any stretch there are still some things I hate seeing in pictures: sensor dirt, blurring, and reflections on glass are three of those things and when you’re on a bus, for instance, there’s a good chance you’re going to get the last two and depending on how clean the windows are where you’re sitting you might get something that looks a lot like the first one as well. In addition, windows on public transport are often tinted or polarised which can be a blessing or a curse. In bright conditions they might help prevent overexposure and loss of data in the image but with an increased risk of reflections; in darker conditions the tinting can effectively strip out some of the colour information. All that being said, I love street views, I love the real life activities, I love seeing people going about their business or signs of the local culture as we pass by (typically on an excursion), and I love the elevated angle that just changes things slightly from the view at street level.

And so to the shot itself, that being of a man having his shoes shined in the Argentinian capital city.

The first thing I changed was the crop slightly, taking out the back of a man walking past on the left because his foot was blurred with movement, an artefact of the slower-than-ideal shutter speed thanks to the window tinting reducing ambient brightness. I next reduced the aqua and green tones in the picture to compensate a little for the tint and increased the exposure and clarity a little as well as pushed the white in the image to maximum. I duplicated the image layer, increased its contrast, sharpness, and texture to get something a lot grittier, then overlaid that at around two thirds opacity in a lighter colour blending mode. This took out some of the warmer tones in the picture, gave a boost to the chalky elements on the street surface, and added highlights to the skin of both men, accentuating bones and muscles. I wanted to make the picture cooler and grittier still without making the image too sharp as that would just introduce far too much noise in the darker areas so I took another duplicate layer and this time applied a high key treatment to it to oversaturate the brighter colours towards white. I overlaid this at half opacity with a hard light blending mode which made the blacks really black and the lighter areas both more bold and less dappled with colour. This did lose some of the definition in the black trousers and tee-shirt but for what I was going for here, this was okay. Finally, the image was still a little too warm to me so a simple deep blue photo filter applied at the end cooled everything down nicely, removing the remaining greens and sepia tones in the shop window especially.