Post 6 - Hello Buenos Aires !

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From my first sighting of the tallest towers of this city I have had my heart set on visiting for so long, atop the lighthouse across the river estuary in Uruguay, it is but an hour's sail across the mouth of this widest of all the world's river estuaries to the city itself - on one very hot January 4th morning, 2010.. hello Buenos Aires at last...!



A taxi drops me at 1057 Rodriguez Pena, smack in the middle of the commercial heart of this mega city, and home for the next month ..



No day to day account here you will be relieved to here - this is my time out from travelling for a month and the opportunity for a return to some city living. This brings its own share of frustrations as well as pleasures of course, and the expectation of seemlessly feeling the pulse of this huge metropolis doesn't really happen, though I enjoy my time here all the same. The reality is an extended month of being a tourist in the city, seeing all the sights, revisiting my favourite areas time and again, but never really feeling at home here as much as I hoped I would.



My (tiny as it turns out) appartment, is in a well maintained appartment building complete with roof top pool in Barrio Norte, very close to Recoleta and a famous cemetery where a particularily famous first lady is laid to rest - the trip to find Evita's resting place is one of my first city walks. Her family plot is an unremarkable one and testament to the controversy she still provokes amoungst the people here, and takes some finding in this micro metropolis of the departed - the more important the person the more grandiose the tomb, competition with the Jones's reaching far beyond the grave it seems - Evita Peron being the noteable exception with a very modest black granite slab on very much a side street of the cemetery.



My base is certainly right at the heart of things, though right at the commercial heart of a city of this size is not necessarily the best place to be - its rather like renting a studio flat on Oxford Street when you really want to be somewhere more interesting.. like Shoreditch.. ! The Shoreditch equivalent of Buenos Aires is in fact not so far away - in Palermo just to the north, subdivided into Palermo Viejo, Soho and Hollywood (the most like Shoreditch with lots of new developments, converted lofts and the home to the city's independent film and tv production companies, hence the name). The heart of Palermo though is a cafe filled Plaza Serrano brimming with life at all hours of the day and night, and the streets surrounding in all directions are filled with the trendiest shops and boutiques imaginable and all the global brands are here in force, together with cafes and restaurants as cool as anything you would find in London, Paris or New York - unsuprisingly this is an area I return to many times through my stay.



The European feel of the city is very strong here in Palermo, with many of the trendiest stores claiming European routes (Bowen of London.. menswear, with all the clothes made in China..?!) or at least European theming to entice customers in, such as another small upmarket menswear chain called Old Bridge, the interior theming of which is entirely english, with replica retro railway signs for Liverpool Street and Henley on Thames .. I give the staff a quick english geography lesson as they are clueless as to where these places actually are..! This is very typically Argentinian - a real melting pot of different cultural identities though perhaps struggling a little to confidently market its own (something which the Brazilians do so well of course).



To the south of Barrio Norte is, for me, the city's other most interesting area - San Telmo - a very old barrio, also with a very European, and in particular Parisian feel to it - the main square here, Plaza Dorrego becomes another favourite haunt, filled with outdoor cafes and always a performance or two of tango on one side of the square or the other. The streets surrounding this square are mainly filled here with an interesting mix of antique shops and second hand clothes markets as well as the usual mix of up-market and trendy cafes and restaurants.



Downtown BsAs features a giant obelsik in the middle of the widest avenue (though why any city would boast about having 16 lanes of traffic tearing through its heart is a mystery to me), the rather tatty main central Plaza de Mayo with its Casa Rosada (president's office), easy to miss Cathedral and continually camped Malvinas veterans and protesting Madres of lost children from the days of the military dictatorship, and the ever-flowing pedestrian street of Florida (with far too many branches of Macdonalds)... all not creating the best of impressions as you can probably tell...!



There are two further main tourist hangouts of the city, on being the old port area - Puerto Madero, now undergoing a Docklands style rejuvenation - so its all the usual anonymous metal and glass towers, Hilton hotels and theme restaurants catering to the tourist masses - I do this one afternoon and don't feel the need to return - other than one evening for dinner with Michael and Malcolm, the boys from Uruguay who are in town to shoot a Pilates video. The other area is La Boca - an old working class area to the south and the oldest port area of the city - the little street of brightly painted houses here attracts tourists by the bus load, with endless tango performances and general tourist tatt on sale everywhere - again, I do this one Saturday aftenoon and don't feel any need to return.. it just feels very fake, apart from a very good art gallery here where I escape the tourist mele below for a civilsed roof top lunch.



Then there is BsAs as a cultural centre, and the city is fairly brimming with theatres, cinemas and gallerys as well as the endless varieties of all things tango. Avenida Corrientes is the centre of action here, though the grandest of all theatres, Teatro Colon, is closed for refurbishment. The biggest stage shows appear to be Tango extravaganzas and Calender Girls rather bizarrely, neither of which appeals. I do make it to a more intimate tango show though, one of the best reviewed, and held nightly in the small downstairs space of the oldest and smartest cafe in town, the Cafe Tortoni... highly recommended and delivering my main tango fix.. tick.



I spread the main galleries out throughout my stay - the best seem to be Malba - showcasing Latin American art, what there is is good and housed in a lovely light and modern gallery with an even lovelier teashop attached. When I visit though they are featuring a large Andy Warhol retrospective taking up far too much of the available space .. to quote from Alec Guinness, whose 'My Name Escapes Me' I happen to be reading at the time, I really do not need to see another Andy Warhol image of Marilyn Monroe in my lifetime .. ! The larger Museum de Bella Artes is divided by European art on the more spacious and better exhibited ground floor (the odd Monet, Degas etc) but to me the more interesting Argentinian art, as I've never seen any of it before, on the stuffier and poorly lit, and also completely deserted upper floor. I visit a few other gallerys and museums too in my stay though nothing really stands out in particular.



My other major BsAs commitments are to the gym.. one of the city's largest is opposite the flat, so I join for the month and begin to get back into a regular exercise routine, and I embark on a further week of spanish language learning, at a small school, having one to one lessons as they are very affordable here. This is great for improving my confidence in speaking, and building on my very limited vocabulary, though I remain very much at beginner level I'm afraid..! The school organises the odd day trip out of the city, and one I take up is a Sunday trip to Tigre - a very pretty small community to the north of the city, in the delta of the huge Rio Plata. Hot summer weekends, like the one we go on, see vast numbers of city folk heading to Tigre, and the early Sunday morning train we catch is packed to the rafters. It makes for a very enjoyable day anyway, playing about on boats on the network of pretty little canals and enjoying the hot sunny weather, which is a constant throughout my month in the city, in the cooler and fresher environment of the river delta.



Being based in a flat for a month my intention was to food shop and eat at the flat a lot of the time - this was pretty much thwarted though - firstly, not really wanting to cook in the same room I am sleeping in (yes, my 'appartment' really was that small.. ie bedsit), and all the city centre supermarkets sell only raw ingredients - a huge counter of raw red meat, poultry etc - where is the M&S foodhall when you need it most, with all those tempting ready meals to throw in the microwave - 3,000 miles away is where...!!Someone should tip them a wink - they would make a fortune in BsAs ..! On the positive side, the restaurants in BsAs are so plentiful and so cheap (very easy to have a full evening meal for less than a tenner) so it was much easier to eat out most of the time anyway. More frustrating at lunch-time though, when the locals tend to eat their main meal of the day - the ten or so blocks between my flat and the language school must have had in the region of 100 restuarants - trying to find one though which doesn't involve waiting to be seated at a starched white linen clothed table and offered yet another take on steak and chips when all you want is a quick healthy salad became a very frustrating process...! At the same time, being able to wander into a small parrilla at midnight and order the most succulent steak and wash it down with a full bodied glass of Malbec for 60 pesos (£10) does take a lot of beating.



There are plenty of opportunities to sample the BsAs nightlife throughout my stay too of course .. though in a city where no-one begins to think of going out to eat dinner until after 9pm, and the main bistros and restaurants of Recoleta, Palermo and San Telmo happily serving main meals until 2/3 in the morning (..!) hitting the right bar or club on the right night at the right time requires a lot of research and patience .. It's more miss than hit to be honest, bars often being very quiet (January being the month when everyone escapes the city) and clubs being mainly full of smoking kids..!



So a month of city living yes, and living in a flat yes and not a hotel, all good, and I did certainly get a feel for Buenos Aires as a cultural, interesting and lively city. It just didn't grab me by the horns and swallow me whole and refuse to let me go, which I guess I was partly secretly hoping it would .. big sighs coming from across the Atlantic now I'm sure .. so he's not staying there then ... I guess it is one long term option off the list anyway ..



My last few days in the city was a frantic rush in fact - to revisit the favourite haunts, try to get fitter at the gym, re-pack with all the inevitable new purchases from Palermo, necesitating giving away quite a bundle of clothes I brought from the UK. My main task though is to organise my onward travel plans .. rather than visiting other parts of Argentina and then returning to BsAs I decided when I arrived to just stay a month and then take the remaining spare 3 weeks for a round trip of the country, to take in as much of Patagonia as possible, then up to Mendoza and across into Chile, where I leave South America and the first leg of my round the world trip, to fly to Auckland, New Zealand on February 24th..! It takes some finding, but I finally track down a really excellent independent travel agency in the city, called Say Hueque who put together a full itinerary for me - it being Patagonia I am not leaving anything to chance ..



So my next installment, post 7, will be of this jaunt around the most southerly parts of Latin America, and will also be my last one from South America, and I'm aiming to post it when in Chile just before I leave for NZ so I will be bang up to date.. for the first time.. fingers crossed..!


With that in mind, I need to turn my attention to writing up blog 7 and somehow selecting the best glacier and iceberg shots to wow you with....!


So over and out for now...


LOL


Simon XX

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