Last tango in Buenos Aires

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Buenos Aires is massive city full of distinct neighbourhoods, some of which are thriving and some of which...well lets just say you don't really want to walk around them at night. We are staying in San Telmo, the tango neighbourhood. We drive through the very rich neighbourhoods of Recoletta and Palermo to get there. Our hotel is magnificent with massive rooms, a tango theatre and a rooftop pool and free internet. The metro is very convenient for getting around BA and feels very safe. Walking along Av 9 de Julio (the widest avenue in the world) at any hour of the day is busy.

The amount of roadworks, dodgy paving and dog turds make the streets rather hard to navigate by foot.
Av Florida, the pedestrian shopping street is always very busy and feels much cleaner. When we hit the end of that we sit in San Martin plaza for a while with its monument at the end. The beautiful gardens of Palermo are also worth a visit. La Boca, a very poor neighbourhood with an artistic centre called Caminito, a touristy street with different coloured houses and live tango shows and crappy souvenirs galore is also worth a look.

Playing 8-ball in pubs in BA

Falling for the Aussie trick of putting a goldie on the table, we are pointed to the blackboard with names. This is a serious game with the locals, and us Gringos team up to take on our first rivals - who wipe the floor with us only to sink the white ball on the black. With the winner stays on rule in place, we get another crack. We very quickly discover that no two shots, but you can put the white wherever you want after a foul. You also have to call pockets for every shot and if you call incorrectly, it is a foul. I hit my straps and we stay on the table for another game. The next game facing certain defeat, I sink 4 in a row including an impossible black ball double called correctly and the locals start paying attention. We speculate as to whether we Gringos will get out of the pool room alive considering we have taken over the table and there are a lot of Spanish muttering going on between the groups of people waiting for the table. It is a pretty motley crew that can’t speak much English which is good learning for us. The next game I sink another impossible black ball shot doubling the full length of the table which the locals laughed at when I called it. One guy, David Montoya, supposedly the cousin of F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya, is very impressed and invites us to join him in his Colombian house in January. We politely decline, hard to do and justify when you speak such little Spanish. Ironically our long running streak comes to an end when I sink the black ball on the break and we are out of there at 1:30am for the short walk (or stagger) home.

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