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Stage 1 - Saturday 3 January 2009 | Buenos Aires > Santa Rosa de la Pampa

  • Connection 196 km
  • Special 371 km
  • Connection 166 km

Travel diary

Judith Tomaselli, a motor-sports journalist, has traveled throughout this last year through the regions visited by the Dakar. Check out the official site for here impressions and photos.

  • Casa Rosada

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    Casa Rosada, which is the home of the President, dominates the Plaza de Mayo. Juan and Eva Peron and many other presidents used to salute the crowds from high up on its balconies…

    Casa Rosada
  • Puerto Madero

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    Puerto Madero is one of the new districts of Buenos Aires. This former port has been reconverted into a trendy neighborhood and the old docks have been transformed into restaurants, offices and loft apartments.

    Puerto Madero
  • San Telmo

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    On Sundays, the paved streets of San Telmo welcome a cornucopia of antiques, odds and ends and craftwork, all livened up by singers of tango, jazz, Latino beats, guitarists, etc… Here, art and culture are the watchwords.

    San Telmo
  • La Boca

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    La Boca, a proletariat district on the banks of the Riachuelo, offers visitors its colored façades, artists, tango dancers and humor.

    La Boca
  • La Boca

    /PHOTOS/DAK/2009/carnetderoute/0-05.jpg

    La Boca, a proletariat district on the banks of the Riachuelo, offers visitors its colored façades, artists, tango dancers and humor.

    La Boca
  • La Boca

    /PHOTOS/DAK/2009/carnetderoute/0-06.jpg

    La Boca, a proletariat district on the banks of the Riachuelo, offers visitors its colored façades, artists, tango dancers and humor.

    La Boca
  • The Tango

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    The tango is force, elegance and passion, a dance that mixes sensuality and virtuosity with the rhythm of the bandoneón.

    The Tango
  • Tradition and folklore

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    Villagers on their way to celebrate in their best finery. In the Pampa, tradition and folklore are omnipresent.

    Tradition et folklore
  • The Doma

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    The Doma, the Argentine rodeo, is in fact an ancestral way of taming wild horses.

    The Doma
  • Parilla a la Estaca

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    There cannot be a celebration without the Parilla a la Estaca, the Argentine barbecue for roasting pigs.

    Parilla a la Estaca
  • Sheep or lama wool

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    Sheep or lama wool is still handspun, which gives it a much-appreciated rustic appearance.

    Sheep or lama wool
  • Storks

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    When the Pampa gets hot, the storks invade the meadows and fields.

    Storks
  • The Pampa

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    The Pampa is, of course, synonymous with vast prairies, but it also plays host to deserts, hills and salt lakes, which make for extraordinary biodiversity.

    The Pampa
  • Migrating birds

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    The stretches of water sometimes found alongside roads act as refuges for migrating birds.

    Migrating birds

Argentine - Buenos Aires

Strolling through Buenos Aires, a capital of contrasts between Europe and Latin America, you travel from one dream to another, from a modern and fashionable district to a neighborhood from another age, dotted with the blackened façades of old-fashioned edifices… all peppered with a zest of baroque to a tango backdrop.

Let yourself go, and submerge yourself in nostalgia, swept happily away on a sea of phantasmagoria where reality will escape you…

Argentine - Santa Rosa

On leaving Buenos Aires, travelers plunge into rural Argentina. The Pampa, the land of the gauchos, is the land of cattle and crops where ancestral traditions and a taste for folklore live on.