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Published: October 4th 2006
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Our day started at 1:25am in Lima airport where we were catching a flight to Buenos Aires. I felt particularly short at the airport as we were flying with the Venezuelan national basketball team & funnily enough there were no extended leg room seats left on the plane. Once in Buenos Aires we caught a bus to the central station & then a minibus to where we were staying. What actually happened was the minibus driver stopped sort of centrally, got everyone out & told us how to walk to the hostel. Having got to
Hostel Inn Buenos Aires we checked in,
Ges was downstairs having breakfast & we caught up while our room was being made up.
It was soon lunch time so we went for a walk round San Telmo & had lunch at a very Argentinean cafe where the waiters wore bow ties, the counter was laden with pastries & empaƱadas & lots of people sat around drinking coffee & chatting.
It had been drizzling in the morning but it had cleared a little & as it was the anniversary of Evita's death we decided to go to Cementerio de la Recoleta to visit Evita's grave. The cemetery was in a plush part of town & the tombs were very grand. Lots were so big that they contained chapels above crypts which were furnished with marble & stained glass windows. The tombs & memorials were laid out like a small town with paved roads between them. It wasn't hard to find Evita's tomb, it was where everyone was heading. Flowers & paintings had been left in front of the tomb & there was a man delivering a speech to a painting of Evita. He kept repeating the speech & when a TV crew turned up he delivered it to the camera but they wanted to film him talking to the painting & kept turning him round. They then started doing interviews with those who had congregated in front of the tomb, we shuffled around trying to get in the shots which would no doubt be on the evening news.
Nearby was the free Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes which had a good collection of contemporary art along with lots & lots of other art works. After a while we were flagging & needed to get the sleep we had missed the previous night so we headed back to the hostel for a snooze. We caught the subte to San Juan & walked to the exit, people had collected by the door & we could see there was a hail storm outside. It didn't seem to be letting up so we dashed outside & hid under the awning of a ferreteria. The hail stones were the size of marbles at first but the downpour got heavier & the size increased to golf balls. One of the staff in the ferreteria put up his collar & ran out into the storm coming back with pieces of a hailstone that if it had not exploded on impact with the pavement would have been the size of a tennis ball. Birds were having great difficulty flying, the traffic stopped, trying to hide under trees but were just covered in leaves & broken branches. Most of the taxis in BA now have seriously dented roofs & bonnets. We later found out that several were so bad they were written off & all the roofs of the greenhouses at the botanic gardens were smashed. Rivers of ice & rainwater were flowing down the streets when we finally dashed back to the hostel & we were soaked through. Having hung up our clothes it was time for a nap.
The alarm went off, it was 6:30 & it felt like we had just closed out eyes. It was time for our tango experience. We met the guys downstairs & shared a welcome beer & then walked to Tango City backpackers where we increased our numbers. We all hopped on the subte into town & to
Darcos Magic Shoes Tango. There were more people there including Aaron & Marie-Clare, other students from our spanish school in Peru. There was a bit of wine drinking to start with & then we moved onto the dance floor to begin the lesson. The teachers gave a demonstration of how tango is supposed to be done & then got us to do some basic steps, forward, backward, left & right. As with most dance classes there were a lot more girls than guys & the twenty or so of us shuffled round the crowded dancefloor trying not to step on each other. After every set we swapped partners so that some of the girls didn't end up leading all the time. We tried variations including closing eyes while being led & speeding up but the instructions while leading were to feel the way you intended to go & this would be transmitted to your partner like some jedi mind trick. The force was not too strong this evening & it became a lesson in collision avoidance not with much success. The final advice for the rest of the evening was how not to cause too much trouble at the milonga & how not to look such an idiot.
It was about eleven & time for dinner (the Argentinean are very much a eat late, go out late & sleep late people), we had pizza at El Cuartito, a huge restaurant filled with people chomping pizza & swigging beer. We were seated at a long table & pizza after pizza came out until we were stuffed. The pizza was swimming in grease in the huge pans & probably really unhealthy but it tasted so good.
A short walk or waddle later we were at Plaza Bohemia where the milonga was held. Tables surrounded the dance floor & we grabbed a few & sussed out what was going on. The crowd consisted mainly of gay men, a few older couples & us. We watched as couples danced cheek to cheek during the sets. Each set was three or four songs long & the protocol was this: First the guy choose a girl (or other guy in this case), he looks at her & flicks his eyes towards the dancefloor, if she accepts she follows him to the floor, if not she looks away. At the beginning of the first tune they listen to a few bars to get the tempo & then start dancing. There is no talking until the end of the set, if you don't like your partner the usual excuse is that you don't like the music & go to sit down or run away. We went up to dance for a few sets & generally managed not to trample on anyone. Being mostly gay men at the milonga there wasn't much chance of some of the girls in our group being asked up to dance & it became more of a spectator sport. At the end some crazy dancing with hands waving in the air & running from one side to the other kicked off & then it was time to catch a taxi home at 2.30am thoroughly shattered.
Drink of the Day:
Quilmes
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