Meat and Mincing in BA

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Holy shit, its the 31st of August and I have until September 22 to see Uruguay and Southern Brazil.

I am in Buenos Aires where I´ve been polishing my loafery award with Alexis´help since last Sunday. We got here after 15 hours on a bus from Foz do Iguacu, where we saw the famous falls and visited the Itaipu dam. We spent the day at the falls but at first I wasnt much impressed because the viewing platform they shunt you to looks over a boring perspective (esp if youve seen niagara falls) and it doesnt look as big as the pictures make it seem. But once we went further into the park and took the trail to round the other side -. making our way to the shore where we were to catch a jet boat and be ridden like the mental sell out tourists we are into the middle of one of the falls - it was truly stunning. We walked through lush jungly vegetation spying loads of dfferent types of butterflies, monkeys, coatis, and we walked opposite the other side of the falls which close up was more beautiful, with several huge falls thundering into the river below and spraying up massive mists that hung in the air making rainbows. The ride in the jet boat, which I didnt know Id booked as I thought what Alexis was suggesting was a tame half hour trip on a small boat round the falls, was one of those full on touristy things where some bad idiots went in with their bikinis on (in a queue full of fully clothed people) and as one bloke at the front of the queue took his shirt off (cuz it looked like we´d be getting soaked), the next one thought he´d best follow suit cuz thats what men do isnt it, and the next, and the next, but thankfully alexis was british enough to stand out and not do this. I was imagining it would be rubbish, and Im not a person to enjoy being soaked and paying for the privilege, but I have to admit, it was really fun, being driven right up in touching distance of the falls themselves, being soaked through, feeling the force of the water. But we had booked our 15 hour bus to Buenos Aires too soon and had left no time to dry off or change after, so we had to get on the bus to the terminal like that, me with my ripped jeans hanging off my arse from the weight of the water. I had to change out of those jeans and put them in the bin before getting on the bus - which was emotional cuz those jeans have travelled with me everywhere since summer 2005. But to be fair they were knackered.

The Itaipu dam was fun too but I was thinking we´d get to see gargantuan torrents of water coming out of the dam and get some quality shots. But we were there at the wrong time of year so there was very little water. But we were guided around the inside of the dam, to the control room, to see the inner workings, and that was awesome. It reminded me of the Dozers in Fraggle Rock.

We are staying at the Hostal Carly which is dirty cheap at 38 pesos a night for a double with private bathroom, and the shower is by far the best Ive had in all of south america. Its so continuously blisteringly hot that I almost cant take it and Ive been spending up to 40 minutes at a time standing underneath it solely to enjoy being warm, since the weather here is much like late spring in England - v cold but bright and dry. Our hostel is in the San Telmo district, the antiques and artists quarter. Never have I been to a place where that label is so accurately used. The streets are cobbled, the houses are town house art deco parisienne style with shutters and balconies, the antiques are high in provenance and price, the square is littered with hippies and artist types wafting about in afghan coats carrying canvases and shaking their bowl cuts, and the elderly porteños (the name given to traditional buenos aires inhabitants) are effortlessly chic with their black berets cocked to one side, cravats, camel coloured coats, tailored suits, fut coats and ferragamo heeled ballet pumps. This is certainly one of the coolest cities Ive ever been to in all my travels, and if I had more time and money I would probably come here maybe to spend a summer freelancing (loafing), no doubt on a mac powerbook while supping a twinings english breakfast tea from a verdigris style chair and table on a parisienne style balcony three floors above Plaza Dorrego, or perhaps in Palermo Chico. I did deliberately leave all of my nice clothes, my vintage stuff, my shoes etc, at home so that I could detach totally from all that shite for this trip, but in Buenos people are so cool in such a non try hard way, from the yoof to the grandads, that I feel positively Oliver Twist in my somewhat weathered travelling garb.

We´ve spent a lot of time walking around the city checking out different districts - there are several cool areas - which I always think is the best way to go about getting to know a place, but the pace is decidedly slower than when Im travelling alone as with a place this action packed, I would normally make a tightly structured list of all the things I wanted to see and a tight itinery for about three days, and execute my plan with nazi like precision to get everything in. Here is more a case of leaving our hostel at 1pm, if we´re lucky, catching a bus to one of the areas we like the sound of, walking for several hours and thoroughly enjoying taking the vibe in at our own pace. And stopping for regular super panchos (hot dogs), big macs (we still cant shake the exhilirating feeling of being back in the first world where mcdonalds exists, unlike bolivia), coca cola in glass bottles and posh teas. We even found ourselves browsing a supermarket called disco for about an hour, having only nipped in for pasta sauce but finding instead that this argentine version of tesco is more like some sort of gordon ramsey wet dream, borough market in a supermarket chain style, with a whole two aisles devoted to cheese ( i hate cheese obviously but even i can see the merits of such a concept). And this city has hundreds of cafes, tenedor or parilla libres (all you can eat meat buffets), astoundingly well stocked bookstores, hundreds of cinemas and chic theatres, beautiful streets to do a bit of post-fanging strollage..... argentineans certainly know how to live. The architecture of the city is undoubtedly very European - a mixture of Paris, Berlin, London, Zurich and New York too - with a pleasingly high percentage of original art deco edificios (buildings, or blocks) with stunningly ornate fascias and turrets perfectly preserved and maintained, all jostling for position in tourist photos. There are also a lot of more modern blocks of flats but they are almost without reservstion unoffensive to the eye and when bunched up against the art deco stuff, the whole picture is really something to the Londoner who is used to seeing old and new living happily side by side. There is a lot of artistic expression and pride therein here - Ive seen several huge murals in a sort of Diego Riviera-commie pride style covering whole blocks, some quality stencil grafitti and a lot of colour and style of different types bringing the more modern, urbane buildings into focus in a good way instead of leaving them to distubr the architectural karma. Buenos Aires is everything I hoped for in terms of chicness.

We spent an afternoon in Recoleta, one of the most popular districts centred around the old convent, the church and the very famous Recoleta Cemetary where many of Argentina´s wealthiest and best landed types from the golden age lie coffin to coffin in preposterously grand mausoleums across a huge area. We peeked into a lot of the mausoleums and saw coffins laid out on sleek marble and granite plinths, sometimes with stained glass windows and fresh flowers, in various styles, ending up in the cemetary looking like gotham city. We stumbled by chance across Eva Peron´s mausoleum which was oddly small but had a few tourists staring at it as if it was the grave of their much loved auntie. We saw a few teenage goths hanging around smoking between a few of the creepier tombs which was quite pleasing. And there seems to be a lot of overweight cats living there. We took a look inside the church which was very nice, and then spent a bit of time pottering round the posh shops.

I was pretty excited about going to La Boca, the famous bit of town with the multi colour painted corrugated tin houses and the Boca Juniors stadium. It was a nice day out but I felt that it had been touristed to death and what with all the bloody trinket shops touting maté sets and the same postcards as the next shop, I could have done without that. The area itself does seem quite dodgy apart from one tiny pedestrian street for the tourists where the houses have been given annual paint jobs and look like some sort of Lego village and not that authentic, nice though it is I spose: we were wandering off the tourist trail to a bit that looked much more interesting but a chinese shop keeper literally chased after us the second she clapped eyes on us, and did everything but stand in our way holding an Uzi to our heads, telling us in clearly seriously concerned tones that we should not go there unless we wanted to be robbed and stabbed (she told us this complete with stabbing motions). So I admitted defeat and we wandered where the tourists were. Seeing the Boca stadium was cool but the games were only every sunday and cost 100 pesos admission! So the tourist sell out was complete which was a shame because it has a lot of immigrant, tango and argentine history to its name and could have been much more interesting. On our way there we came across a Russian Orthodox church with baby blue onion domes.

We spent lots of time walking around the streets coming off the avenida 9 de julio, the worlds widest road with precisely 18 lanes of traffic going both ways through the middle of the city, punctuated by a massive obelisk in the middle. The streets coming off this road are more or less the theatre and shopping districts, leading to a couple of awesome and historial plazas containing the old national congress building (we did a free tour, it was great - we were in the room where eva peron and her ladies orchestrated the beginning of the vote for women in argentina), the cathedral where peru and argentina liberator san martin´s tomb is guarded by two men dressed in victorian toy soldier outfits, and we saw a political demo there which had attracted a couple of hard as fuck looking police water cannon trucks that were more like massive tanks from robot wars. We had hot chocolate and churros (pastry sort of things fried and covered in sugar, in brazil they come with dulce de leche in the iddle...mmmm) at cafe tortini, a famous and old cafe. We found a pant wettingly awesome mini mall called bond street which is entirely given over to sort of punk-metal lifestyle shops and about ten tattoo parlours always with some skateboarder type sitting in the window having a Henry Rollins style inking done. I gave up on the no shopping thing and bought a t shirt with a misfits stlye skeleton printed on the front and the back.

Argentina is obviously famous for its love for and production of quality meat products, and Ive long been a vociferous supporter of the global meat trade. So it will come as no surprise that I have been eating a lot of meat products here in BA, and last night was the pinnacle when Alexis and I found a proper tenedor libre, or all you can eat meat buffet, before going to see The Bourne Ultimatum. We paid 20 pesos each (just over 2 quid apiece) and were served lusciously rare, bloody steaks, chorizos, black pudding (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), and other cow products by a very fine man standing over a huge levered barbeque. We went back three or four times and they even served us cold coke in glass bottles. I spent the rest of the night cradling my stomach and curling into the foetal position - I am clearly not as hard and as good a gannet at i used to be because that meat feast gave me the stomach ache of my life. Alexis was fine, which made me wonder if I´m losing my touch. But I consider the pain collateral damage in a night of ecstatic meat quaffery.

We bought two tickets on a ferry crossing the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay for this Sunday morning and will stop at a place called Colonia (cool name!) before finding our way to Montevideo, the capital, and then making our way north again up the Brazilian coast. We hope to catch a tango show tomorrow night but we´re such loafers, who knows if we´ll make it out of our hostal before sunset.

x

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Photos

Bloatstress in Buenos
Yep, thats me in a nutshell. In a parilla with Al, Buenos Aires, Argentina