Argentina part 2 - Tango, Poker and Chilli Bombs

So, on our return to BA, we became city tourists once again. If you like Paris, youll like Buenos Aires. By far the most Western of any city we visited in South America and stacked with culture. If you like museums galleries, red wine, steak and tango you will be in your element in BA, otherwise you might struggle after a couple of days. We stayed in San Telmo and spent a few days around the city. We visited Evitas grave, some picturesque Japanese gardens and generally walked around upmarket areas like Palermo, trying to get a feel for the place.

However, so enamoured were we by BAs love of tango that we decided to take part in a tango lesson at the Carlos Gardel museum. Carlos Gardel is a man who cannot be avoided in BA. Having brought tango to the mainstream he is a demi-god. His face is everywhere. So we saunter to this lesson fully prepared with the correct dancing footwear, which for Akshay means flip-flops. Oh yes, Akshay went for a tango lesson with a man who CLAIMS to have taught tango to Madonna...wearing flip-flops. Nevertheless our moves we sublime. The instructor even gave us/confined us to our own little corner of the dancefloor with some very patient Argentine girls to play with.
So impressed was I with the liquid moves of Berry and Agrawal that I caught about 10 seconds of footage on video which will, in good time, make its way to the public domain.

Having shown BA how to tango, the tripod moved back to the hostel for Akshay to partake in a poker tournament, with the other two legs of the tripod there for moral support. As the night wore on (and Akshay had to buy back in) the owner of the hostel invited myself and Ben for a quick drink at a bar he knew. So with Akshay applying some pressure with his raises and preying on the river we departed for La Puerta Roja (the red door). This place lived up to its name. Just a closed red door on a street, but a knock-knock later and we e in a busy bar.

We e on our first pint and looking to keep the night relatively small when the owner insists that we each do a chilli bomb which is essentially a Jager bomb but with chilli vodka instead of Jagermeister. So we do these chilli bombs and think that we e not going to feel it, forgetting that chilli dilates your capillaries and arteries. Sure enough, a barman wed befriended comes round the bar and offers two more chilli bombs. Now we try to resist but this guy likes chilli bombs so much he works behind the bar to pay off his bar tab. For example, during our discourse he reveals in his spanish accent,
I came in for work the other day man, I talked to the barmaid, she says I had 23 chilli bombs last night. I don know, I can remember...TWENTY-THREE chilli-bombs man...f*ckin chilli bombs...
So we take the second round of chilli bombs and continue on the pints, and the next thing we know we e leaving a locals house at 7am having sat around pretending to understand Spanish, singing Hotel California to guitar accompaniment and avoiding the morally-upstanding Polish neo-Nazis who decided to frequent the red door towards the end of the night. To cap off the evening we returned to out room to find Akshay victorious in the poker stakes - apparently the first hostel guest to ever beat the locals - but its not everyday BA is hit by an Agrawal.

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