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Published: December 26th 2008
I´m not about to complete those lyrics for you, but understand that B.A. was as crazy, random, and ridiculous as they are. We covered it from end to end, or from wall to wall as some may say, in constant heat, causing a ridiculous amount of unattractive sweat (figure that one out yourself). We hit the night life as hard as we had intended, and didn´t short shift any of the tourist attractions. It was going to be hard, nearly impossible, for Buenos Aires to live up to all the hype I had heard prior to my arrival and we were all extremely anxious to get back into the city life after so many weeks in hiking, and this simply magnified the already high expectations. And yet, somehow, the city has only time and again surpassed what could ever have been hoped for.
The downtown area, where we started our ten day exploration, is pretty much like any big city. And I truly mean big city, with big streets (9 de Julio has the claim of widest street in the world at 16 lanes), big buildings, big plazas, big traffic jams, big crowds, big night clubs, and, my favorite, big
steaks. As expected, it had more honking and hustle and bustle than you could want, in the downtown area, typical of any South American capital. We checked out the main plazas, the pedestrian malls, and simply tried to stay alive by dodging the enormous buses zooming down on us that first day. It left our heads reeling and we simply didn´t know if ten days of that was possible.
The next day we headed further south, to the San Telmo area. A few blocks from downtown the crowds of business men thin out and the traffic disappears. It becomes a beautiful series of smaller streets with older architecture, small boutique clothing stores, many antique shops, and a plaza full of tourist stands and tango dancers looking for some change (kind of like president elect Obama, just hoping for some change). On weekends these streets stands take over the entire neighborhood and tourists crowd around the innumerable piles of merchandise checking out the souvenirs and street performers. It was probably my favorite market in South America, which is saying something.
After that we headed over to Puerto Madero, the newest neighborhood in Buenos Aires, a revitalized waterfront that was
once warehouses and is now high-end apartments, trendy night clubs, and chique, loungey restaurants. There are several large dikes holding water, creating two different waterfronts for all the restaurants inhabiting the old, enormous, refurbished buildings, and, to top off the trendy, grunge feel, there are brightly, freshly painted cranes spread around the area. This stretches for a dozen city blocks or so, and a few blocks behind it high-rises are popping up faster than acne on the face of a thirteen-year-old red head. And, just on the other side of that is an enormous bio reserve with running paths to get you completely out of the city while still being in it. Ive never been to a place that had more of a "see and be seen" feel to it, and, if I had the money, would have loved living it up in that neighborhood. However, I´m broke and got out of their before they kicked me out for not being one of the rich and beautiful.
The Boca neighborhood, further south, is known as the working class, immigrant neighborhood, and also home to the Boca Juniors football club (i.e. soccer team) (more on them later). When the area
was built, the inhabitants didn´t have much money for their homes, and simply threw large sheets of corrugated metal up for walls and splashed on what ever paint they could find. Of course, tourists found this attractive and now come in camera touting hordes to snap pictures of it. It is also, as with any tourist area in Buenos Aires, packed with tango dancers and memorabilia. We spent a few hours meandering the streets and checking what was to be seen before we headed back to the bus. However, on the way I got molested, completely violated, maybe man handled, by a woman (or at least I think it was a woman). This enormous woman with bright red lipstick and layers of thick make up dressed in a tango outfit many sizes too small came running up to me. She grabbed my hand in a vice like grip and, like quicksand, the more I struggled to get away, the more I got sucked into her layers. She threw a hat on me, slapped my hands onto her lumber leg thighs as she wrapped them around me (immediately making me want to burn my board shorts and seek a little hole
to cry in), and made it look like I was her dance partner. Of course Eric, Burton and Drew did nothing but laugh at my predicament and immediately started taking photos, taking her bait exactly hook, line, and sinker, and then demanded they give her some pesos for the entertainment. Ugh, the mental scars.
Recoleta (I´ve completely lost chronology here, sorry if its confusing, but I´m just running through the neighborhoods we visited. If you don´t like it, well e-mail me and I´ll tell you what you can do.) was a much more wealthy (i.e. predictable) neighborhood further north in the city. The major sight in Recoleta is the cemetery, housing Argentinas dead, rich, and famous. There are many generals, ex-presidents, rich people in general, and most famously, an ex-presidents wife, Eva Peron. For those that don´t know who that is by name, it is the person Madonna portrayed in the movie Eva. (If that just made it click for someone, I feel bad for you.) It is a very picturesque area, even though it is exceptionally gloomy and eery. We walked around for a bit, and then needed to seek shelter from the sweltering heat (it is the
Casa Roja
The balcony that the Perons, and Madonna, used...midst of the summer and is consistently in the 90s). So, we ducked into a movie theater to check out Web of Lies. Everyone back home may let out a sigh as it isn´t the most exciting thing we could do in B.A., but it included air conditioning, and just thinking of a nice cold room now gets me... well I´ll just say excited for the sake of decency. We came back on a more overcast day to check out the market and the art museum full of Goyas, Cezzanes, Gaugains, Manets, Monets, Degas, Van Goughs, Picassos, Rothkos... it was a good museum, and free!
After several days in the downtown area we headed up to Palermo. It is a neighborhood north of the city center that is full of restaurants, boutique shops, and plenty of nightspots. It has wide streets with fewer cars, large old trees stretching into the sky, cobblestone streets, and an incredible number of large parks. It has everything you could want within itself, and if you need to venture outside it has easy access to the city via the Subte (metro). We ended up spending the majority of our time in Buenos Aires based
Downtown
Busy down town area, but always an obelix somewhere in sight. in this neighborhood simply checking out the great neighborhoods nearby. I did a fair bit of shopping; I was impressed by not only the boutique shops, but also the areas where individual designers rent space for a clothes rack and sell their goods from a single rack of really unique clothes. We checked out a few bars and cafes, enjoyed the amazing food (while we couldn´t spend money at the plethora of high end places there were plenty of cheap options for us as well), and simply tried to get to know the city better. While we covered as many neighborhoods as we could in the ten days we were in Buenos Aires, we were constantly left knowing that there was so much more to discover. And, while each neighborhood is incredibly unique and they give Buenos Aires something for everyone, they are simply the venues in which the craziness of BA occurs...
So you couldn´t come to Buenos Aires without experiencing a night (or more accurately a morning) out on the town, or at least I couldn´t. However, the hours the locals keep are staggering and surpass anything Ive seen, including Barcelona which previously held the record for
9 de Julio
It is a huge street me. You don´t even start discussing the idea of going out until midnight, when you might be getting dinner going, and if you show up to a club before 2:30 a.m. you are dorkishly early. Getting home by 5:00 a.m. is an early night, and seeing the sunrise isn´t abnormal. The clubs are obviously crazy in their own right, ranging from dingy bars to high end discos. We made it to one really bizarre drag-break dance show, and also managed to find an "American Bar" which featured 4 liter pitchers, American football games, and beer pong. There are many chique, loungy bars, all night raging discos with twenty dollar covers, and street cafes where you can simply sip down pints on the sidewalk watching the night go by. Christmas Eve and Day are both huge party nights complete with midnight fireworks, many "Feliz Navidad" toasts, and enormous crowds at all the bars. (Kyle´s edit: Okay, this is the third ending I´ve attempted for this paragraph, and Eric angrily and belaboringly disagreed with the last two. So, to avoid having to listen to him again, I´ll just say that Eric is nearly always right, and when he is wrong he will
admit it willingly. He is a reasonable arguer and is not stubborn in the slightest. While this is complete B.S., at least he shouldn´t whine about it.)
And, what could be a better spectacle to witness in one of the most football crazed nations in the world than a championship match between two bitter rivals? When we arrived the football season was supposed to be over. However, for the first time since the 1970s, there was a three way tie at the end of the regular season, requiring a playoff. So, we were able to catch a Boca Juniors game while in town, and they just so happened to be playing their rivals, San Lorenzo. Boca is like the New York Yankees of Argentine soccer, it is the most popular club with the longest history and was home to the most adored player (Diego Maradona) in the history of Argentina. Going to a match in South America had always been something I wanted to do, and it was by far the wildest event I´ve ever seen. We showed up three hours before the match to try and get some descent seats; it is standing room only and proved completely
San Telmo Church
The church in San Telmo pointless. The only advantage of the seats we found was that we were next to an enormous, six inch wide metal railing that stopped the mobs of people that would rush down several rows knocking people over as they went. Two and a half hours before the game the fans started their chanting at one another. Two hours before the game it was shoulder to shoulder, chest to back, jam packed with people; at times I could have lifted my feet off the ground and not fallen. I had an itch on my leg at one point and simply couldn´t reach it. While it is uncomfortable, it is the constant moving and jumping, the chanting and fist pumping of everyone around that is worse as it shakes you constantly and puts you in a constant state of unrest. At any second, the slightest spark could ignite a riot of momentous proportions. Luckily they attempt to stop this by putting you in a fenced in area complete with barbed wire. However, people climb these and sit on the barbed wire, so obviously it isn´t enough. There is also a moat, mid evil style, tens of feet deep and over eight feet
wide, complete with dirty, nasty water at the bottom, to keep people from going onto the field, cause the riot police and twenty foot fences don´t do it. And, just to really stop any sort of riot, they isolate opposing fans to the quarters of the stadiums behind the goals, and do not allow anyone into the other half of the stadium along the sidelines. This provides enough room to stop them from trying to murder one another over their passion for their teams. However, it doesn´t stop them from numerous other acts of absolute ridiculousness. It was nonstop singing, chanting, jumping, shouting, pushing, and general maniacal behavior throughout the game in a manner Ive never seen. There were banners dropped from the top row of the second story rafters that stretched all the way to seats on the field, fireworks and flares lit in the middle of crowds, fights between fans for who knows what reason, bottles and other objects thrown at players... While it was immensely enjoyable, we were all glad when the police opened up an extra area halfway through the first half where we could seek a bit of refuge. Luckily Boca won that match and,
subsequently, went on to win the playoffs.
And, there are plenty of other forms of entertainment that don´t require late nights, alcohol, or hooliganery. We had heard about a show in town, called La Bamba del Tiempo, and knew not much more than it was only on Mondays, involved a lot of percussion, and shouldn´t be missed. We showed up and the line stretched around the block and it was overwhelmingly local, which was a great sign. After waiting in line for a long time, and paying only five bucks to get in, we had an amazing show. It started with around fifty students on various percussion instruments standing in a circle at the same level as the crowd with three rotating conductors creating the music improv through various hand gestures on time and measure from the leader. It was incredibly impressive, and the students enjoyed it as much as the crowd. They were smiling ear to ear with us as the music progressed and they were amazed by the sounds they were creating as a group. Eventually the conductors joined the rest of the professionals on an enormous staircase that came down from the buildings surrounding the open
Yummy
Cheap food in San Telmo air venue. They were phenomenal. They constantly changed conductors, each with slightly different styles, each feeding off the crowd, and the crowd constantly feeding off of them dancing at an ever increasing rate. It was an incredible show.
While there were so many other things I could have mentioned in this blog, there simply isn´t any way to describe everything that happens in Buenos Aires in ten days. It was a good amount of time to spend here; we did pretty much everything we wanted to, and doing it in any less would have been pushing the limits. It lived up to every expectation, which had been set incredibly high, and is without a doubt one of the best cities in the world.
Oh, and Happy Haunakha, Merry Christmas, Fantastic Festivus, Happy New Year and whatever else is going on, I hope it was a great end of the year for you and yours and I hope the next year is as good as this past one has been for me!
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Kyle's mom
non-member comment
Dream
This sounds so wonderful. It is a dream of mine to make it to BA.. I'm sure you have so many great stories to share. Wishing everyone there a happy holiday season. We are in Cancun enjoying the warm sunny weather - much different than the snow and cold in Wisconsin. Enjoy!