Buenos Aires and Beyond

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Often referred to as the Paris of the South, BA does bear a striking resemblance to its European counterpart, even sporting a massive obelisk in the middle of its main thoroughfare, the massive 22-lane Avenida 9 de Julio, supposedly the widest avenue in the world (not a good place to jaywalk!). Surrounded by suitably drab and decrepit suburbs, the city centre is very clean and tidy, feeling most un-South American, and seems to ooze elegance, sophistication and intelligence. Argentinians are exceptionally good looking normally, and being the capital, it draws the cream of the crop, so it is nigh on impossible to find an ugly person there, however while the women are always fashionaly attired, a suspicious number of the men still parade mullets with pride.

Crawling through heavy traffic, the tension in the air was tangible, buzzing with electricity from the extreme heat, steadily increasing until the heavens opened and an extremely impressive lightning storm strobed over the city throughout the night. Slightly fresher the next day (we were still very appreciative of the air con in our room), we embarked upon a walking city tour with our local guide, Ali, taking in the main sights of the Pink House (White is so last season), the antequated and charming underground system, San Telmo (the Bohemian & antiques district, good for eating out) and ending up in La Boca, the heart of the Tango district and home to the massively popular football stadium and Diego Maradonna. All Argentines love Maradonna, but in La Boca and its surrounds this transcends to a religion, which somewhat inconsistently means he appears on posters alongside God and Che Guevara (high praise indeed out here) but also tubby shortarse lookalikes with dodgy perms and striped t-shirts try to charge you to take their photo.

La Boca is the most colourful barrio/neighbourhood of BA, containing a substantial amount of Italian and Spanish immigrants, and consisting of many houses of corrugated iron painted in garish yellows, reds and blues. Originally a rather delapidated area, a local artist donated his lifetime earnings to redressing the area, securing educational, health and exercise amenities for all. Situated next to the docks, the vibrant colours came from leftover ship paints being used to decorate the buildings. Having finished our tour we stopped for a quick lunchtime bite/meat heavy grill platter to enjoy while watching local tango dancers plying their trade on the streets. Wandering back for a quick siesta, we headed on out to Cafe Tortini, one of the oldest cafes in the city to watch a tango show within the vaults of its red brick basement. Needless to say the tango was first rate, and was interspersed with some amazing bola dancing, a combination of tap and swinging bola balls on a length of rope, providing some amazing percussive rhythms. On from here many of the group retired while those hardcore few among us remained out and about, heading on down to the eating/bar area of Palermo for a couple of cheeky cold ones. Supposedly THE place to go out, we were mildly disappointed when everything started to shut down around midnight, so after a futile effort to find a follow up bar, most of the others headed home. Maintaining our hardcore party reputation, Matt and I carried on regardless, taxiing our way to a Brazilian club (a taster of things to come?) for the obligatory caipirinhas and booty shaking until the early(ish - we were flagging a bit) hours.

The following day I headed out to Recoleta cemetary, a city of mausoleums housing a who´s who of Argentinian presidents, generals, scientists and its most famed resident, Eva Peron, aka Evita (the soundtrack had of course been played on the approach to the city). Stunning in both scope and scale, the Cemetary offers a (perhaps somewhat macabre?) plethora of photographic opportunities - I took a most conservative 200 shots in an hour and a half! Nearby stands a most impressive steel sculpture of a flower with petals that open and close with the sunlight - thankfully it was sunny so we got to see it in bloom. Heading back into town for lunch, a couple of us returned to Cafe Tortini for a "free" tango lesson (still cheap but mildy annoying) on the same stage used for the performance on the night prior. Being the only man there I was shared between the 3 girls like a piece of carrion between vultures (ok mildy overegging the analogy), and within half an hour we were gliding around the stage with varying degrees of success. Jo, the girl on our trip with whom I had arrived, used to be a dance teacher so has a good sense of timing and movement to music. The other two randoms were less naturally suited to such things, although this could be blamed on me for not giving a sufficiently dominant lead (but I doubt it - ahem!), but fun was still had by all. Later that evening we headed back to Palermo for an absolutely awesome meal (steak once again surprisingly) and a few mojitos in a very trendy bar.

Having booked ourselves in for a skydive that never materialised due to low cloud, our last morning in BA was spent pottering around waiting to see whether the jump would get the go ahead or not. Finally getting the negative, we went shopping instead to console ourselves (well the money had been set aside for the jump anyhoo), and surprisingly enough more steak for lunch before heading out to another tango show. This one was a bit more fancy (and priced accordingly) but included another free lesson and a meal with the show. The lesson was a bit of a nonstarter (40 odd people in a room really too small for half that number), not so much a concern treading on your partner´s toes as being stamped on by another couple. The show itself however was fantastic, more tango specific than that at Cafe Tortini, and possibly better for it, with more technical tango elements and less of the comedy. On from the show, we had arranged with some of the others to hit town hard in the big superclub area, and after a lengthy taxi ride from the hotel we got to the first recommendation to find it was very closed. Undeterred, we met up with but a few of the others in Hooters (sadly not half as interesting as I was expecting - they merely wear hotpants and crop tops) for a couple of cocktails before swinging on out to the next club in line, again shut. Starting to despair, we worked our way down the docks (where they are all based) to discover everything was shut - as per a number of things on the trip we appeared to have arrived in the wrong season as many of the city´s population shut up shop and head to the beach with the warmer weather. Thankfully, we had a helpful taxi driver who took us back into town with a quick sightseeing tour en route, but only to discover a couple of very mediocre looking places filled with gyrating teenagers. Finally getting the hint, the three of us remaining threw in the towel and decided to call it a night.

Tearing ourselves away from Buenos Aires was a great hardship, one which not everyone chose to endure as again several members of the group decided to stay put for a couple of extra days (both to see more of the wonderful city and to use it as a base for ferrying over to Uruguay, a strangely avoided country on our tour. Those who stayed on found ourselves heading instead for Paraguay, our first stop being Trinidad where we ambled around some extensive Jesuit ruins before rocking on into camp in the searing heat of a strong afternoon sun. Set in a beautiful location, the campsite was basically a converted ranch complete with extensive bar and good sized pool, in which we spent the afternoon competing with Brazilian kids for the best bombs and backflips off the diving board (they were appreciably more graceful than us!). Celebrations for our driver, Luke´s birthday started gearing up in the evening, with Damo making caipirinhas for us all before all heading down to the bar for a barbeque. A long standing tradition on the truck for birthdays has been for the birthday boy/girl to have their face stuck into their cake, and this was no different from normal (looked great - Luke has a beard!). However, after a couple of people had been suitably dunked, cake began flying around the room and a full on food fight ensued. Barely had it happened, the bar owner came storming out, calling us a bunch of animals and many other things beside, then proceeded to produce a knife, waving it around the place (precariously close to a couple of the group) and begand popping all the birthday baloons telling us to get off his site this instant. Having dispersed the group and cleaned up the mess (wasn´t that bad really), we did eventually manage to placate him although kept a very low profile the next day, sitting around by the pool, playing ball games and getting frazzled by the deceptively strong sunlight.

Our next stop in Paraguay was the capital, Ascunsion, a city very lacking in dynamism and character. Incredibly hot and humid when we arrived, the icy cold air con was blissfully welcome as no sooner had you walked into the street you were dripping with sweat. Ascunsion is known for its duty free shopping, as is all of Paraguay, and several of the group ended up getting new cameras to replace those lost/stolen/broken. I did deliberate on getting an SLR for some time but decided against as there are newer and better models back home. Other than its shopping allure, Ascunsion offers little to the tourist apart from a few nice regal buildings and feels most unlike a city, let alone the capital. Both nights there we struggled to find any bars (although all 3 we saw were karaoke orientated), finally ending up on cocktails in a beautiful old house overlooking the presidential palace that offers very nice views at night when illuminated. The city also gave us our first taster of comida por kilo, or a buffet where ou pay according to weight of food on your plate - naturally competitions were had to fit the most on in one go (I actually nearly came last - was feeling decidedly unwell with mild sunstroke from Trinidad). Following this meal (celebrating joint birthdays for two of the group), we braved one of the karaoke bars to churn out an interesting mix of tunes (I had to abstain - really was feeling below par!) before traipsing around town in vain on the hunt for pubs, sadly to no avail.

It is probably fairly safe to say that noone is likely to have Paraguay on their places to revisit list, and as such everyone was very excited about the prospect of heading on up to Iguazu to cross into Brazil. Strangely the border town on the Paraguayan side seemd to be immensely more active than the capital and seemed to offer a lot more in the way of duty free, buzzing with hordes of Brazilians crossing the border to buy cheap electricals on the other side. That evening, a few of us headed out to the "world famous" Rafain show, although interestingly none of us had ever heard of this famed spectacle. The evening started out promisingly with an absolutely fabulous buffet offering steak to sushi and everything inbetween, and continued to impress with a combination of a number of South American dance styles performed in rapid succession, ending in true Brazilian style with some impressive Capoeira and an Amazonian beauty clad in next to nothing booty shaking to the Samba. Spectacular though the performance was, I was still incredibly tired (feeling shitty in Ascunsion prevented any proper sleep), so was glad to return to base after the applause had died down. Again due to a combination of extreme heat (back to Central American humidity, but in a tent) and still feeling poorly, very little sleep was had that night.

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