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Published: March 30th 2008
We had a few fun filled non stop action packed crazy days in Buenos Aires. We'd barely landed there and we found ourselves in a transit van winding through the downdown streets of this hugemungous and exciting city. We arrived at our destination and were ushered into a building and up some stairs into a studio, ready to learn some new skills, we were ready to learn Tango! The lesson was great fun but we'd probably need a few more goes before we join the Halifax Tango display team...
After our lesson we were seated for a steak and 'drink as much vino as you can' dinner before our Tango show started. In truth we weren't expecting that much of the Tango show - we thought it would just be a bit of cheesy 'for the tourists' sort of stuff that would allow us to tell everyone we'd seen Tango in BA. In fact we were treated to a hugely entertaining super fantastic performance that left us buzzing - ok, so the 'drink as much vino as you can' deal probably helped. The location for the show was a cafe/restaurant where the tables were arranged around a stage on floor
Janine learns Tango
Janine thinks she's learning Riverdance!level and on a balcony. The performance/play was of the story of Tango - it was done as a musical with an accompanying band up on a balcony. The play was performed partly on the stage and partly on the floor right there in between the dining tables - sometimes there was solo singing, sometimes they sang as a group and of course there was lots of Tango. The performers were brill, very talented and rightly proud of what they were doing - it was moving, exciting, funny and an icle bit sexy too! At one point Steve even ended up being a part of the performance! - although that definately wasn't sexy. Top do that Tango show.
The next day we popped out in the morning to have a quick look at the Recoleta Barrio (neighbourhood) where the posh people live in BA. It was very nice too and whilst we were there we had a quick look at Evita's grave buried in the famous Recoleta cemetary - this is where rich people from BA come to get buried. After that fun we headed out of town with a few others from the hostal to go and watch
Steve learns Tango
Steve thinks he's lining up as part of the defence for a free kick a polo match. We'd never been to watch polo before and the Argies are supposed to be rather good at it so we thought we'd might as well give it a bash. We found ourselves in a pleasantly green and leafy location whilst we mingled with the Argentinian "well to do" and watched the final game of a tournament. There was one of the top 15 polo players in the world on display....apparently! Watching polo is fun, you just sit around drinking beer and having pleasant conversation, occasionaly turning one's attention to the polo field. Every now and again it all got quite exciting as all the horses galloped off towards the ball. There were some good skills on display and we saw some good goals in a tight and tense thriller of a match - won by the white team, as opposed to the chaps dressed in blue who came second. It did occur to us that the 'goal umpire' chaps had rather a dangerous job - these chaps stand behind each goal and wave their flags to confirm each goal. The trouble with this is that as the ball rolls over the goal line it's usually closely followed
by a pack of fast moving GG's. And sure enough, towards the end of the game one of these brave chaps was mown down by a fast moving hoss. There followed a nervous few minutes for all of us but thankfully he was alright on the night.
Now polo is good, but after polo parties are even better - players and spectators alike proceeded to get well lashed up on free Stella and Absolute vodka and what not - there was dancin and everything - it was great. That said there was a dicey moment when the Stella girls stopped giving out beer because "the temperature wasn't right!!". Apparently the special Stella fridge was showing too high a temperature so we had to wait until things cooled. The bosses at Stella headquarters in Belgium would no doubt have been proud of them girls but we certainly weren't - we made do with vodka for a while and then thankfully the temperature of the beer dropped and we were back on again :-)
We got back into the city around 10pm that night - quick shower and then off on the hunt for food - we found a Parilla
These two weren't bad either
Our instructors - nice folks they were too. (steak house) around 11:20pm - not a problem in BA - the place was heaving with folks. It was a rustic sort of a place with a tiled floor and plain tables and chairs but that's generally the crack with these places in Argentina - you come for the meat not for the decor. We were taken through one full room into another and finally a place was found for us in a 3rd room. The place was buzzing, tourists and Porteños (that's what they call folks from BA) alike having a right good banter. Our steaks, cooked on a great big grill sizzling with loads of meat, were delivered just before midnight - great big bad boy jucy melt in your mouth Argentinian steaks. Best steaks we've ever had them steaks and all for less then a pub meal back in blighty! After our steak dinner we headed on to the Pacha nightclub for a bit of dancin - it was a super cool club but unfortunately the beats weren't fast enough for us man (we really like to throw our shapes) so we left early at 4am to catch some more sleep. There was still plenty of people
Steve gets in on the act
One lesson and several bottles of wine later - Steve and Rob get up and show them how it's done. arriving as we left though - those Porteños sure are party people.
After a few hours sleep we were ready for a game of footy so we popped down to La Boca Barrio to watch the famous Boca Juniors team play Colon in the Argentinian Primera division at La Bombonera stadium. La Boca is a colourful 'working class' Barrio where folks are super passionate about football and in particular the Boca Juniors - Maradonas's 'spiritual' home. They sure do adore the little man over here and especially so in La Bombonera where they still sing about him a lot. Security is pretty tight for a football game around here - we were frisked once just to get into the ring of streets around the stadium and then again upon entry to the ground. Just in case of any trouble the police were well and truly tooled up with shields, sticks, handguns and even great big pump action guns too! We didn't manage to get seats so we had the pleasure of standing with the partisan locals which actually turned out to be a real treat as the atmosphere was fantastic - singing (actual songs with more than just a
few words!), chanting, shouting and loads of drums and flag waving and what not. It was quite a good game and thankfully Boca won 2-1 so the locals were all happy chappies as we left the ground.
On our final day in BA we did some hardcore sightseeing - BA is a beautiful city - loads and loads of very nice buildings indeed. We had a look at the Pink Palace where Evita used to famously speak to her adoring Porteños. We visited the cobbled streets and cafe's of San Telmo, the pleasant walkways and the cool bridge around the port area and the green spacious parks (filled with Porteños enjoying the bank holiday sun) around Palermo. To get to Palermo we had a ride on line A of the underground which still has it's wooden carriages which were quaint indeed!
We absolutely loved BA, definitely our most favourite city so far - fantastic place, loads to do - but it was time for us to slow it down a wee bit so we headed on up to the north east of the country to the famous Iguazu Waterfalls - one of the natural wonders of the world.
Recoleta Cemetery
Where the rich of Buenos Aires come to get buried. This grave was our favourite. We saw Evita's grave here too. If you like waterfalls then you´ll like Iguazu - higher than Niagara and four times as wide - these falls is big falls - so big that we spent a day and a half looking around them! The site and location of the falls is very impressive indeed - they're surrounded by thick jungle and there's a very well organised series of walkways that allow you to see the falls from all sorts of different angles. On day 1 we walked around all of the Argentine side of the falls and then on day 2 we nipped over to Brazil in a taxi to get the panoramic view for half a day. We´ve never been across a border in a taxi before but it was either that or spend the whole day catching a series of 6 different buses, so a taxi it was! The weather was hot and sweaty for us up there in the high 30's (just the way we like it!) and the falls were mega mega mega - best 'thing' either of us has ever seen. Difficult to describe them so we won't bother - it's one of those ´got to see to believe it´ jobbies
Polo
Out for a spot of Saturday afternoon polo what what what really but that didn't stop us taking lots of piccies. We took 108 pictures of the falls (in fact we took more but we deleted a few afterwards) in a day and a half which is quite a lot when you think that we took just over 1000 for India, SE Asia and New Zealand combined!! Oh yeah, we liked Iguazu falls.
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