Recoleta Cemetery...

Set the scene; having gone out with the guys from the dorm the night before and eventually passing out at 5ish, it was up at 10 for a hangover cure!! And what better than a nice long walk...  Ok, so that didn’t exactly cut it so the next best solution is Ibuprofen.  After seeing how strong they were Kate’s reaction was; are taking two of them, you know they ruin your stomach?  Of course I was taking two and no, I did not know that; but anything to get rid of the headache... washed down with a bottle of Gatorade or energy and Yakult for good bacteria.

After walking around Palermo for a couple of hours and had lunch, we got a taxi to the Recoleta Cemetery.  The cemetery was opened in 1822, now had 4691 vaults and is absolutely massive!!!  14 acres to be precise and is surrounded by a 3 metre high wall.  It is now home to several Argentinean presidents and most famously Eva Peron (Evita).  It is pretty impressive inside with all of the vaults completely individual and some houses tens of coffins.  Looking inside some it is clear that they are quite deep too.

A couple of strange things happened within the cemetery too.  The first being as soon as we entered we were approached by an extremely odd Spanish woman selling maps of the cemetery.  She asked us where we were from to which we replied England; yes but whereabouts... Near London, yes but whereabouts... Kent; yes but whereabouts... near to Bromley; yes but whereabouts... Chislehurst.  To which the final response was; Oh yes I know Chislehurst.  The same was done to Kate with the same outcome; bearing in mind she lives in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere.  The next thing that came out of her mouth was even stranger:

“When you get back to England, I want you to go into a big supermarket like Sainsbury’s – definitely not a small shop – buy a KitKat chunky and eat it in my name.”

Then suddenly two guys who we’d met at Iguazu appeared and when telling them in about the woman; they said in all honesty that they hadn’t seen anyone, and when we tried to point her out she was gone.

The next hour or so turned into a running joke between the 4 of us about how much money it would take to be locked inside one of the vaults for 1 night, on your own and the entire cemetery is locked...  The general answer was around a few million; however having wandered around a bit more we all decided that there probably isn’t enough money that could persuade us.  The majority of the tombs were in pristine condition, really clean and generally with a large metal door that was secured locked; however some were not.  The oldest part of the cemetery was pretty creepy and the time of day we went did not seem to help the situation (around 5pm as the sun was lowering in the sky casting long dark shadows).  The tombs were made of brick rather than granite or marble and were heavily weathered.  The doors were wooden and a lot of them were broken (a few looked like they’d been broken open) and you could see right into the depths of the vault with all of the caskets lined up around the edges.  This is the point when the conversation was getting most creepy and our minds started playing tricks as a few noises could be heard and sounded like they were close by; whilst no-one else was around...

The actual cemetery though is amazing and some of the vaults are incredible.  So much effort has been put into them and many have large statues of Angels and other religious figures and symbols as a main centre piece.  A few of them also have statues of death... or a hooded person dragging the body of a man away.  Presidential and military vaults have statues of soldiers guarding the doors to their tombs.

One of the stranger sights though was a tomb fairly in the middle of the cemetery which was surrounded by about 15 cats all laying asleep at the base.

The body of Eva Peron is laid within her family vault near to the back of the cemetery.  After her death her body disappeared for almost 16 years and it was found that she had been taken to Milan by her husband and exiled President Juan Peron.  The Argentineans are so worried that her body will disappear again that her casket is placed two floors down inside the vault and secured behind two large steel doors.

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