The time in Argentina (Buenos Aires) has flown, and I am writing this at the airport now on my way to Rio…
No such thing as jet lag … you can pack alot in after a 14 hour flight !
Got upgraded on the flight … economy plus … sat next to blokes in Argentinian trackies with a soccer ball on them, but was to slow to realise (until we landed to the craziest fanfare I have ever encountered at an airport, that they were part of the Argentinian Futbol team …. hey ho ... nice chaps and we had some funny moments trying to converse and practising respective languages.
Pics for the below here .. Street scenes Argentina
My flight arrived into Buenos Aires at 8.20 am (14 hours), due to not being able to check in at the hotel immediately I had arranged with them to do tango lessons… arrived at hotel and to my surprise the room was ready... much needed shower and off I went. Everywhere in Buenos Aires offers tango lessons, so I just literally went next door…. Oh that poor bloke … I have started to realise as I age disgracefully, that I am becoming less co-ordinated, something I should have learnt when I tried salsa, Irish dancing (well I was drunk and it was actually a ballroom lesson, but the Irish stuff seemed much more fun and of course my terrible ice skating) CRH I do not do you proud. Hey it was an experience, and quite sensual, and I learnt a lot about the history of the tango. It was originally a dance between two men, and it only became acceptable and then flourished since 1925 when the French declared it ooh la la, until then it had been kept to dance clubs in back alley ways and was mainly for the working class.
3 hours of tango lessons and tango history (42 degrees in the studio) left exhausted.
Whenever I first arrive in a large city, and if I have limited time, the first things I do is the bus turistica.. hop on hop off bus, generally a 24 or 48 hour ticket that passes all main sites, provides audio an you can get on and off as many times as you like, I do this to have scan, get familiar with a city, pick a few things to go back and see. It is a great way to also feel the city, see how the different areas come together, understand what the architecture is like, see the people, how the city moves .. a brilliant bird’s eye view. The following is the stuff from the tour and me stomping about the city …
I thought initially that I would not get my head around the layout, the city is made up of 48 areas (suburbs), like most cities extreme wealth v extreme poverty is easy to see. There is a huge French influence in the architecture and the city is more European than I was expecting, it actually reminds me a bit of Lisbon. Bit confused, bit dirty, striving to try and get ahead, yet a real sense of pride, even though improvements needed. It does however have an undercurrent of sexiness (mainly at night when all the clubs and tango places come alive).
Downtown, where the working class live is full of theatres, tango clubs and the best local restaurants, Palermo & Recoleta are in the north and full of embassies and grand homes, old money large French influence, the wealthy lived downtown until huge cholera outbreaks and then they upped and left, re-establishing themselves in the north. La Boca and Caminito are by far (despite being the home of Boca Jnrs) the poorest and most dangerous areas (naturally also my favourites), and then you have Moderna a new area established 1989 and built up on old docks (like Canary Wharf and Docklands Melbourne) this is all new money, with high rise apartments, fantastic restaurants and the most expensive hotels, (e.g. Messi lives here). A lot has been achieved in such a short period of time developing the suburb, all the streets are named after Argentinian women.
I was also surprised at the number of political rallies, I saw one every day I was I Buenos Aires, on the first day, one passed directly in front of the hotel and the noise nearly deafened me, (although I did join in for two blocks) ! I always love the energy generated from a good march and I was a bit disappointed to learn that the political parties actually pay folk to march, sell their cause / drum up business, and actually the locals have become slightly disengaged with it all now.
There are some fab quirky things that I loved about the city, bread delivery boys, they deliver bread and pastries to the hotels first thing in the mornings, on bikes with the biggest baskets strapped to the front, the dog walkers .. they are everywhere, I counted one guy walking 18 dogs at once, bloomin’ crazy, bookshops loads of em’, in all the main streets where the theatres, dance halls, tango clubs are there are bookshops everywhere open till 4 or 5 in the morning. Oddly too are the amount of folk you see wandering around the city in hospital scrubs ! Although I have since learnt that folk from Buenos Aires (portenos) have more plastic surgery per person than anywhere else in the world.
Gotta throw in a quick mention of Avenida 9 de Julio – avenue 9th of July, 23 friggin’ lanes wide …
Statues old and new are everywhere, Evita and General San Martin (liberator of Argentina) feature heavily but there are some great new sculptures too, my favourite being a piece by Eduardo Catalano which is of a huge silver flower (at least 20ft high) that is built with the most amazing electronics allowing it to automatically open through the day and close at night…. Ooh I forgot to mention Fangio … you have to hunt to find them … but they are there …
I drank mate (Argentinian tea) at Café Tortoni, the oldest tango café in Latin America and now also home to the world tango museum and national academy of tango, rode the subway (all named after Latin American places (Uruguay, Montevideo, Paraguay etc) it is also the oldest subway in Latin America and I was a bit freaked to discover the wooden carriage (remember this is underground) was an original one … and still working … London tube dudes could learn some stuff…
Stopped in at the Polo club for a brief tour, ‘The cathedral of polo’ this place had a real impact on me, I think given how much you hear about Argentina and polo, I also happened to go on a day when they had their polo horse auction which was quite spectacular to watch.
This is getting long now … I’ll come back later…
Oooh and I have been getting some technical assistance from a fellow traveller …. if this works, you can see some random street pics by clicking here …
ooh and BTW I friggin’ hate taking pics with a touch phone, when it is sunny you cannot see the screen .. so my pics are even worse than normal.
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