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Published: October 9th 2011
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After five years of being dreamt about, the next Big Trip begins - the Great Trans-American Adventure. And Buenos Aires is where it all starts.
Now-bleedingly-obvious-but-never-really-thought-about-it-before-observation number one: South America is a long way away. A
very long way away. Looking at a map of the world it hardly seems possible that the Argentine capital is a whopping
fourteen hour flight away from London. But it is - oh, it is. I can't say those hours pass by particularly quicky - indeed, our progress on that little electronic map they now supply you with seems painfully slow. Which brings me to NBOBNRTAIB observation number two: South America, in addition to being very, very far, is also very, very big. Surely, once we pass over the Brazilian coastline, we must be nearly there? Nope - still another seven hours to go...The reality hits me: a year and half seems like a long time, but there's an awful lot to see. We're going to be busy.
By the time we touch down at Buenos Aires' Ezeiza airport we're ready to fight our way out of the cramped and stuffy cabin simply to get a breath of fresh air. Fortunately for us,
we've arrived on a lovely, crisp spring morning. For yes, it is spring - if we play our cards right, we should be able to avoid a winter for a whole year and a half. Now that would be a result.
Our little hostel, the Rayuela, is located on the northern edge of the
barrio of San Telmo, a lovely atmospheric neighbourhood full of colonial-era buildings, cobbled streets, markets and antique dealers. It makes an excellent base for exploring various parts of this really quite large city.
Ask anybody about Argentina and chances are the answer will include "beef" and "tango". If that anybody happens to be a food fan "dulce de leche" will probably be in there as well. Sure enough, cliché as it might seem, beef and tango and dulce de leche seem to be the joint cornerstones of
porteño - Buenos Aires - life.
Every city, surely, has its culinary lifeblood. Paris has its baguette, Madrid its tapas, Rome its pasta (London its doner kebabs?).
Porteños run on steak. Lots and lots and lots of delicious, juicy, flavoursome, gorgeous steak. You can barely walk a block in Buenos Aires without tripping over
parrillas, or
grills, where a fantastic variety of delectable hunks of cow are available for one's carnivorous pleasure. Now, for the past couple of years we've both been making an effort to cut down on meat, cooking vegetarian four or five times a week and focusing on not buying meat unless it's to get the good stuff. But surely, if there's anywhere in the world where we need to suspend this little resolution of ours, it's Argentina. Not eating steak in Argentina is a bit like going to Japan if you don't like fish - pretty pointless.
With our meat-eating scruples happily discarded, we rapidly get stuck in to our
bife de chorizo (sirloin),
cuadril (rump), and best of all
vacío (flank) and
entraña (skirt). This is one city where it pays to know your cuts of beef! Grilled on a charcoal-fuelled grill or
parrilla, it's all uncommonly good. And cheap, so cheap! How lovely it is to sit down at a restaurant table and think "I'd better go for something not too extravagant...a massive grilled sirloin steak, please". Oh, the suffering of it all. Vegetarians, beware of Argentina: it might make you very very cross.
Dulce de leche is
another of the hardships our first week in South America sees us endure. For those poor souls who have not yet discovered dulce de leche (a sin for which there is little excuse, as you can buy it at the supermarket back home), it's essentially what you get if you add a ton of sugar to some milk and boil it down. Lovely soft sweet runny delicious caramelly goodness. And in BA it's e-ve-ry-where. You try to avoid it but it just keeps finding its way into your mouth. Usually in massive spoonfuls straight from the pot. The local supermarket - a modest affair smaller than your average Tesco Express - has an entire shelf unit devoted to the stuff. Quite how Porteños manage not to all be diabetic must surely be a medical marvel.
And finally tango. Well, you can't eat tango, but Porteños don't seem to be able to live without it, either. One evening we hop on a
colectivo (public bus - there are thousands and thousands of them to keep BA moving) to a small park in one of the city's posher neighbourhoods, Belgrano (I think they're trying to tell us something). There, every Saturday
and Sunday evening, on a beautiful bandstand, Porteños of all ages come to dance the tango, and watch others dance it. Students, older men scouring the edges of the bandstand for potential dancing partners (with a bit of luck, a sprightly young thing - we watched it happen and it wasn't as creepy as my description has just made it sound), glamorous ladies in their high-heeled tango shoes, people coming home from the office - it was a truly wonderful thing to watch. And, to my surprise (I'm not really the dancing kind, you see), it was a much more sedate affair than I'd expected. No kicks or high drama, no smouldering looks - that's just for the
turistas, I suppose.
Sunday morning sees up hop on a bus to a fantastic weekend fair 45-minutes or so out of town - the
Feria de Mataderos - and indulge in all three of these actually-not-clichés. Here are hundreds of little stalls selling foods from around Argentina,
maté cups (hollowed-out gourds from which Argentines sip, invariably through a metal straw, their national drink, brewed from the leaves of a local shrub. Such a national obsession is it that we spot a
number of people milling about with Thermos flasks slung over their shoulder, so as to not run out of their precious maté), alpaca wool clothes, we watch locals indulge in their passions: dancing and eating. Lots of fun.
We also visit La Boca, a rather unusual part of town. Located south of San Telmo in what is, frankly, a rough-as-rats part of town close to the old docks (so rough, in fact, that walking there is strongly discouraged in any guide to the city), La Boca harbours a picturesque collection of old buildings and brightly coloured corrugated iron shacks which served as home to many early Italian immigrants to the city but now attract thousands of visitors eager to soak up the unique, gritty atmosphere. Just down the road is the Bombonera Stadium where Diego Maradona used to kick a ball around (so I'm told - not really my area).
You can tell Argetina's hit the hard times of late. Many parts of the city feel a little run down, but it has a completely unique charm which has rapidly grown on us. Fantastic food, astonishingly friendly locals (despite their reputation elsewhere in Argentina for being snooty and
cold) and a definite bohemian vibe make Buenos Aires a captivating place indeed.
Right, I'm off to eat a grilled hunk of cow.
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