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Published: February 22nd 2014
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La Cemetario de la Recoleta
The only place in BA to be seen after you are dead. Well I am over the novelty of not having to go to work in the morning and am now ready to write...
For me coming to Argentina has always been about Patagonia rather than Buenos Aires. (In homage to Bruce Chatwin - if not to hunt for dinosaurs or their remains at least look on the landscape that made such ideas possible). So I did not have many preconceptions about Buenos Aires and only had quite a sketchy idea about what to expect.
I had heard that it might be oppressively hot (in fact the weather was mild and dry - perfect for exploring on foot), I had feared it might be difficult to navigate with my "improving" Spanish. In fact the whole experience was largely a big success.
I was lucky that my hosts were both very friendly and bilingual and that my fellow guests were equally friendly. In fact BA is quite acessible, laid out in a grid system with good public transport. It felt unmistakably South American - street food, stray dogs, traffic chaos - but with enough of a European or at least colonial feel to make it accessible.
I spent most of
The Congress
Argentina´s parliament showing a French influence (who knew). my time sightseeing on various walking tours, impromptu and organised. BA has some very impressive buildings - the congress, baroque cathedral and Casa Rosada and in places a lot of faded glamour/old word charm. Favourites were Caminito - colourful shacks and tango dancing in the squares and La Cemetario de la Recoleta, where BAs great and good are buried (including Eva Peron) together with whatever family members, pets or other memorabilia they or their family members may have thought appropriate. It's a strange mix of the morbid, moving and frankly kitsch but never less than impressive.
However, BA is not really about the sights or even the food (I had some memorable steaks, enjoyed the street food, particularly the empanadas, and tried to do the right thing by San Telmo's lively pub scene). But ultimately it all comes down to the atmosphere and for a lot of people that means the tango. I drew the line at tango school - four days would not of scratched the surface - but did succumb to the lure of a tango show. Maybe it was delayed jetlag or some subliminal BA spirit but for someone whose idea of a very bad evening's
Street Dancing in Carminito
The best place to see the tango tv is a celebrity dancing show and has a strong aversion to being organised/commoditized this showed at best questionable judgment. And so it proved. The dancing was all very impressive, possibly over-choreographed, but the over priced meal, the bickering couple next to me and the obligatory compromising photos with the dancers - prints not purchased - did nothing to enhance the experience. I would have happily cut my losses after the dancing but we were also promised folk music and it was then that the penny dropped - in this part of the world folk music means panpipes. Suffice to say we are paying a heavy price to remain safe from the guinea pigs. Our evening was rounded off by "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" accompanied by a montage of Eva Peron images and to complete the tour experience I had the dubious honour of last drop off on the coach journey home. Still best we get these glitches out of the way early, valuable lesson learnt etc.
Now we move on to Ushuaia and the southernmost tip of the continent...
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