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Published: February 6th 2010
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Buenos Aires seemed to be the sort of place where you take things slow during the day and then party long into the night. We discovered this as soon as we arrived in the deep hours of night. We needn't have worried about waking fellow travellers as we stumbled into bed, our hostel was in full swing at 4.30am!
I wondered if the heat had something to do with the nocturnal lifestyle, it really was pretty hot. It was also very pretty so we were quite happy to spend our nights soaking up the party atmosphere and the days wandering slowly through the leafy streets.
With a week to explore Buenos Aires we were looking forward to getting to know the place and also excited that we had some Porteños (Buenos Aires locals) to show us around. Joe's brother's friend who had moved to the city a couple of years earlier and his lovely fiancée were our first Porteño friends, Adam and Solange took us to a lively place where the grill was the speciality and red wine flowed. A brilliant introduction and we were soon armed with a list of all the hotspots from Adam to visit.
One afternoon we wandered upon an area called Recoleta and the famous cemetry. It was a very eerie place with all the grand old tombs of the Argentinian rich and famous towering above us. Indeed a grave place compared to La Boca which we stumbled on another day and it's vibrant and colourful streets. The reason for all the colour is because the sailors who originally set up home here couldn't afford to paint their whole house at once so they used whatever colour they could find and painted until they ran out and had to move on to a different colour. We spent an afternoon watching tango shows on the street and looking in the little boutiques filled with Argentinian leather.
Alex, a London friend, put us in touch with her old flatmate who had recently moved back to Buenos Aires... our next Porteño friend. Juan took us under his wing to Palemo, where we rode bikes around the park past the rose and lavender gardens, past the white ducks swimming on the lake. Not scaring him away with our terrible Spanish he invited us to an asado (a real BBQ!) at his place with his friends that night. It was quite a feast with Juan feeding everyone until our tummies grew and we were struggling to keep our eyes open... which may have also been due to missing our daily siesta. Joe and I have since worried how we will manage to enter back into the real world of jobs and no napping in a month or so!
After a few nights in the party hostel we felt we had had enough so moved into a more tranquil place near some quaint vintage shops and cafes. Just down the road was a one of the hotspots on our list and we ventured out to find this place, Red Door. We found the red door but with no name outside we tried our luck with a knock on the door... it opened and we were lead up a dingy staircase, Joe and I feeling quite BA underground. They played music we knew and liked and after bumping into some traveller friends we had met earlier we had a fun night.
Getting into Argentinian culture we went to La Bomba one night, a group of percussionists with lots of different drums, drumming out improvised and experimental sounds and beats. The atmosphere was very cool and lively and made our half an hour wait in line in the surprise torrential downpour seem worth it. Sopping wet we drank giant beers and watched the impressive show.
Juan invited us to his parents holiday home on the coast for a couple of nights to a place called Pinamar, a pretty holiday spot set on sand dunes in a pine tree forest. It really did feel like a holiday after the bustling week we had just had in BA and Joe was quite pleased because a football game in a nearby city was on the following night and we had been told it was something we couldn't miss while in Argentina. The football matches are well know for their festival type atmosphere. Even I, not an avid football supporter, was impressed at the show the spectators put on. Huge flags, entire bands and a myrid of cheers for each team, I managed to sit through and entire game entertained!
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