It takes Two to Tango, down in Buenos Aires

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Well, after the hustle and bustle of La Paz, we were looking forward to a more laid back time in Buenos Aires. We certainly were happy to be able to hop into a clean taxi, pay on the meter instead of haggling over prices, and have a relatively honk-free trip, and while we enjoyed the change of pace, there were a couple of elements of life here we struggled slightly with.

Initially, we toured the main city area, focussing on the triangle of Plaza de Mayo, Plaza de la Republica and Plaza San Martin, since we were staying near the latter (the Marriott, no less!). The buildings around central BA are fabulous and just seem to have a character of their own - I have shown a small sample in the pics. Florida Mall is a major thoroughfare and goes right through the main city area (a bit like La Rambla in Barcelona), with all the artisans stalls and inpromptu entertainers one sees in all similar major tourist traps. We loved the little outdoor coffee shops, which gave us a chance to soak up the warmer weather than we had in the high country, and generally watch the world go by. A major disppointment for us, however, was that once you moved even a block or so away from the main tourist throughfares, the back streets resembled a rubbish dump. BA might be touting itself as the 'Paris of South America', but it needs to clean up its streets before it fully makes the grade!

We visited the ´bohemian' areas of San Telmo and La Boca on the Sunday, which was fun because this is market day in each and there was plenty of activity and lots of people. The former has a large antique market that day, which we suspect is more geared for the locals than tourists, while the latter was unashamedly putting on a show for the tourists. At both, we had the fortune to come across spontaneous tango exhibitions - basically private citizens who set up some music in a small space, put on a show for 10 minutes or so, then pass around the hat. A great range of ages - the young ones were great, but some of the older ones looked like they were trying to recapture previous years of glory, and didn´t quite have the same energy levels! Was all good fun however. One of the claims to fame for La Boca is the brightly coloured houses (see pics) and also the range of locals personalities, from the arty, to the gay, to the impoverished - they were all there.

The following day, we took off for the more upmarket suburbs of Palermo and Recoleta. Being a weekday, however, there wasn´t nearly the same general activity level. We were somewhat bemused however to watch the ´beautiful people´, clad in their shining lycra, doing their morning jog around a large park. Had all the elements of the Darling Point set on show in Centennial Park! While this was tongue in cheek, we were less amused with what we saw at Recoletta. Obviously many working people here live in apartments and own dogs, some quite large. We came across a park in Recoletta around mid-morning where there must have been at least 100 dogs in the hands of only 4 or 5 ´minders´, each of whom would control there 20 or so dogs by either tying them to each other, or if they were troublesome, to a tree on their own with short leashes. Every now and again, one dog would play up, that would then start a barking frenzy by all the others tied up to it, and the solution was the minder would set onto them all with a whip. I´m not suggesting this is always the case, but the scene we took in for 30 minutes or so would not strike the heart of any dog lover.

So mixed feelings in BA. Generally, we loved the place and enjoyed the freedom from many of the hassles of Peru and Ecuador, but we were disappointed in the general state of rubbish and the dog thing. As though to leave us with a lasting memory, the driver of our taxi from the domestic to the international airport tried to rip us off by insisting our pesos didn't have the right serial numbers and we would have to pay in American dollars (at a lousy exchange rate, no doubt!). It was only after 10 minutes of heated exchange and my threat to bring in the Tourist Police that he scampered with my 'bad' 100 Peso note.

So next (and last stop) is the Iguazu Falls, although I will do a seperate blog on a brief side trip we did from BA.

PS. Sorry about the quality of the photos. My new camera seems to be on a setting slightly too dark (particularly noticable with the tango and doggie pics), and having lost the use of my notepad computer, I've also lost the ability to lighten and/or to crop photos, so you'll just have to bear with it for these last couple of blogs!

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