Buenos Aires

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We arrived via bus (the new way to travel) from Iguazu falls to the second biggest city on the continent. We jumped a cab to the suburb of Cabillito which is about 7km from the city and well away from any touristy areas. There, our host Juan Carlos showed us what would be our home for the next 2 weeks. It was a old but nice little apartment with a courtyard from which every room was attached and it also had a rooftop terrace. We set out to explore the area which had easy access to the city via the subway system.

The first thing we noticed about BA was that it was very much like a European city. We didn´t feel like we were in South America at all. Lots of well dressed people going about their day amongst tree-lined avenues with archetecture very reminiscent of Paris. If anything I got the feeling that Argentina was once a great country, probably one of the wealthiest as well, not the country that you rarely hear anything about these days. I also got the feeling that Portenos, what the residents of BA are called, realise this and are very proud of their country and city. Unlike the care-free Brazillians they are very into the political goings on of their country. This was in evidence when on our first day exploring the city we saw a protest on the city´s main avenue. It was peaceful but there were plenty of riot police standing around in case things got out hand. We soon realised that protests are one of things that Argentinians do quite frequently. With anything from thousands of people taking to the streets to one we saw that had about 25 people. I realised that this country, which is stuck down the bottom of a very poor continent, is full of well informed and well educated people. They have an enormous grasp of culture and quite a lot of style. They also eat dinner and stay out extremely late. Dinner is usually at 10pm and the average porteno doesn´t go to bed until about 1am! This makes the city very safe to walk around at night because there are always people out and about.

The main thing that sets the country and the city apart from their European cousins is the price. Just about everything in Argentina is very cheap. They have great clothes there and they are very reasonably priced. On our exploring we found a shopping mall which was dedicated entirely to dressing the city´s punks/emos. Very funny. A few blocks down was a similar mall entirely dedicated to second-hand clothing. The city also has all the big brands but it really is a shoppers paradise.

The food is also extremely cheap as well, as long as you stay away from the touristy areas, and the quality is extremely high. Argentinian beef definitely has my stamp of approval because unlike Australia they don´t export their best stuff overseas. Hayley and I had a great steak with chips, salad and a bottle of wine. All this plus tip added up to about $20 AUS, awesome! And although as budget travelers we should have been cooking our food in the apartment, we found ourselves eating out all the time and craving steak.

Because it´s been a bit of a while since we left BA and all the days sort of blended together I thought I would just list some of my highlights and the things I most enjoyed about this wonderful city. They are in no particular order and follow no timeline.


1. Recoleta Cemetary
This cemetary in the rich northern suburb of Recoleta was built to bury the city´s wealthiest and most important citizens including Evita. The graves are more like houses built in all different architectural styles and each one seemingly trying to outdo the next. There are plenty of statues of weeping angels and fearless warriors etc. It is quite eerie at first but by the end it all seems quite over the top and vain. But it was quite fun walking around and taking photos of the best and biggest ones. On the same day we walked a short distance to the Museum of Fine Arts to check out works by the some of the world´s greatest painters including Van Gogh, Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Monet, Manet, Gaugin and my favourite, Degas.

After that there was another short stroll to MALBA which is the BA equivellant of our very own GOMA. It is in a stunning building, just like the GOMA, and the works there are just like, and as good, as you would find in any modern art museum. Funny, smart, thought provoking etc.

2. Radiohead
This was always going to be one of the highlights of the trip but seeing one of the greatest bands ever was better than I expected. First, the negatives. The concert was played on a flat field with what must of been a fairly low stage. This meant that actually seeng the band over the 27,000 odd people that were there was quite rare. And although the concert was sponsered by a beer company there wasn´t a drop of alcohol to be found, but that meant the crowd was very well behaved.

But the performance of the band and the accompanying audio and light show was one of the best things Ivé seen/heard. Thom Yorke´s voice was especially beautiful and it sounded best when they played songs off their most recent album, In Rainbows. In fact, they played almost the entire album as well as a lot of favourites from their older ones in the two and a half hours they were on stage. But it was his voice that really made the night for me. Amazing!

3. Tigre
Our host Juan Carlos took us out of the city one day to the town of Tigre. It´s situated north of the city on the delta that separates Argentina from Uruguay and is a kind of weekender escape for Portenos. It´s kind of a cross between Amsterdam and a quaint English town. There are heaps of waterways and small islands and people can hire rowboats or take water taxis to them. On these Islands people build little holiday houses and spend weekends there, rowing or fishing. There heaps of rowing clubs on the main channels and they are huge tudor-style buildings so you really feel like you are in England. It´s very nice but it was also kind of surreal as it easy to forget that you were in South America.

4. Argentinian wine and beef
If it came down to population then argentinians must be the biggest consumers of beef in the world. In Buenos Aires there probably isn´t a single street that doesn´t have some place where you can get beef served in some sort of form. And it´s all good too, it doesn´t seem to matter where you go. They generally have their steak overcooked by aussie standards but you don´t notice because of the quality, the way they cook it, and the seasoning. Every restaurant (parilla or grill in english) and home has an assado, which is a barbeque cooked over hot coals. And the don´t just do steaks either. Chicken, sausages and offal, as well as some tasty cuts of beef, usually make up the contents of a parrillada or mixed grill. My favourite was the morcilla or blood sausage. It sounds gross but you spread this baby on bread and it tastes awesome. I even convinced Hayley to give the stuff a go and am happy to report that she tried it more than once.

Then you wash all this lovely food down with a glass of the local wine which is sweet and smooth. Argentina has it´s own wine variety which is called malbec and it´s a shame that you can´t get it in Australia because it´s a lovely drop. But like their beef they pretty much produce wine for their own market. They only export to places like Brazil, United States, England, and Poland (?).

5. Futbol match
We managed to snag some tickets to the Argentina vs Venezuela world cup qualifier using the local version of ebay. It was held at River Plate stadium which is the biggest in the country and has a capacity of around sixty thousand. The crowd at the stadium was unlike anything I have ever seen before with chanting, songs, and a drumming band never stopping for one moment. We managed to get great seats which were in the highest stand but right at the front. Because of this we were able to hang an Argentinian flag we had bought before the game off the railing just like the countless others around the stadium. On a rather humourous note there was an absolutely massive flag unfurled down one end of the stadium that had a special message to the people of England. It was so big that it blocked the view completely of the people in the stand below. I won´t go into details but it is in Hayley´s photos on facebook. You won´t miss it.

We were also dressed for the occasion. Hayley had a singlet in the light blue and white of the country´s flag that she got at a tourist shop while I had a vintage national team jersey that I had picked up at the aforementioned second hand mall. The game itself was great if only for the fact that Argentina won four goals to nil. As you know games can end with no goals goals being scored so we got value for money. You had to feel for the Venezuelans but they are the only country on the continent where football isn´t the national sport.
We also got to see the legendry Maradona manage his beloved country on home soil for the first time. The love this country has for this man is amazing. Half the songs sung that night seemed to be about him. Not bad for a self-confessed cheat and former cocaine addict.

6. San Telmo markets
Every Sunday in BA these markets are held. You go to the main plaza in the city centre and walk about three kilometres down a road called the calle Defensa to the main plaza of the suburb of San Telmo. The road is closed to traffic and there are market stalls all along the way. The stuff you can buy is amazingly varied not to mention cheap. You could get a hand-made leather jacket for about $120 AUSD. The closer you get to San Telmo, bars, restaurants, and street performers increase in greater numbers. The plaza Dorrego at the end of the walk is also full of stalls, but they are are entirely dedicated to antiques. At six pm they pack up their stalls and the square clears for the evening milonga which is a public tango where everyone is allowed to join in.

San Telmo is a lovely historic part of BA which used to be for the wealthy but a cholera epidemic scared them away about 150 years ago. It then became a place for artists and bohemians and is now very trendy, like New Farm I guess. It has heaps of cool old bars, where you have to wait for table, and antique stores lining it´s cobblestone streets. We liked it so much we went to the markets twice and went through San Telmo a few times during our stay.

7. Torquato Tasco
This was an authentic tango bar that our friend whom we met in Salvador took us to. Tango is one of the main tourist attractions of BA and everywhere you go there are touts offering you tickets to a tango show with a dinner included. But one thing I quicky learned about tango, which is both the dance and a style of music, is that it is mostly about passion. Therefore a lot of these shows, and the dancers in the street putting on displays for money, lack tango´s main ingredient. Thats why this show we went to was one of the highlights of our stay.

We went to a poorly lit bar to watch a concert which only involved the music of tango. We ordered a bottle of wine and the most basic of antipasto platters and settled in to watch the show. There was a singer accompanied by a pianist, a violinist, an accordian player, and a guy on the double bass. The songs they performed seem to come straight out of another era with even their suits and hair looking the part. Although we didn´t understand a word that was being sung the passion of these songs of heartbreak (it was always the woman who broke the man´s heart) came through every time. Every song seemed to follow a formula and all were roughly the same length. I figured that for a song to be truly tango it has to follow these rules. And as every song finished there was a resounding "bravo" from the crowd, which consisted of exactly two tourists, Hayley and myself. A fantastic introduction to a different culture.

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