Buenos Aires

  Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sunday, April 6, 2008

South Americans, particularly Argentineans, are Italians who speak Spanish, live in French houses and believe they are British.
Quoted by Ernesto Sabato;   Argentinian journalist and author.

This quote was given to us by a friend and it does ring true; certainly in Buenos Aires. It is a crazy, beautiful country with crazy, beautiful people and we love it.

We arrived at Buenos Aires airport from Iguassu and, as David was waiting for our luggage, I went to book a remise; we had been advised that they are a good alternative to street taxis as they are owned by private companies and one agrees a fixed price in advance. The first desk I went to said 30 pesos but they had no cars available; the second said 50 pesos and they had cars; the third said 40 pesos and they had cars. I bargained with the third and we got our remise for 30 pesos. My bargaining skills and Spanish must be improving?? Anyway we arrived safely and had a very good driver(by Buenos Aires standards). On  the drive through the city there was another taxi following us who seemed to think that we were not travelling fast enough or going through enough red lights so kept sounding his horn. When we were stopped in traffic he deliberately bumped into the back of us and our driver just made rude hand signals and drove on!!! We decided not to rent a car here.

Night view from our BA apartment

So here we are in the beautiful city of Buenos Aires. What a change from the small towns we have been in recently. We were lucky to find a fantastic apartment on the internet (what did  we do without it?). It is not in one of the city's smart residential areas but right in the centre on one of the main squares, called Congress Plaza as it contains the Congress building which we faced.

Buenos Aires; our apartment

The apartment  is in a beautiful old building on the top floor and is on several levels going right up into the cupola on top of the building. A huge balcony and amazing views at all times of  day from the floor to ceiling windows.

View of Congress Square from our balcony

We think we should rename our travel blog; 'Rooms with a view' as we have had such a variety of views from lakes and mountains to waterfalls and now a famous Buenos Aires city vista. The owner of the apartment is obviously an avid collector as the place is full of interesting paintings, sculptures, antiques and curios; a quirky, eclectic collection. It is huge and could sleep 6 or more so lots of room for 2.

A useful hat stand(?) in our BA apartment

The residents of Buenos Aires (Portenos) are very fashion conscious in a trendy, arty way and they are certainly  stylish. We sometimes feel a little underdressed in our travel clothes.

It is cheap to live here for foreign tourists but not so for locals. Their currency has devalued by over two thirds in recent years  as it used to have parity with the US$ and is now more than 3 pesos to the dollar. So we are able to enjoy all the fine things of the city at low cost. Buenos Aires, at the moment, must be one of the least expensive cities in the world to visit and it has so much to offer.

Faulklands/malvinas demo

Argentinians love to rally and since we have been in Buenos Aires there have been 3 rallies. One was anti-government unions protesting about a new tax system, one on the anniversary of the Falklands invasion (a weird public holiday ; whoever celebrated a defeat?), and the strangest of all and unique to Argentina; a pro-government rally.

Demonstrators marching in Congress Square

The last saw the Plaza de Mayo(just a few blocks from our apartment) filled with tens of thousands of $50 a head "supporters" bussed in from the provinces at the taxpayers' expense and government employees under threat of suspension or dismissal if they did not attend.All of these passed off peacefully and we saw and heard some of the marchers from our apartment balcony, quite a spectacle. The city has so many beautiful old buildings but there is so much grafitti everywhere one goes.

Grafitti, Mayo Square, Buenos Aires

We have walked and walked and walked so, in the week we have been here, we are starting to feel at home in the city. The subway is good for getting around some areas and is safe. Surprisingly, the main areas of the city are safe to walk in, even at night, and the streets are full of people at all hours enjoying strolls and eating out or just sitting having coffee and chatting in the cafes which spill out onto the wide avenues and the narrow streets too. We can walk out of our apartment building and be close to numerous restaurants, cafes, museums and theatres. Lots of the old buildings are open to the public and the interiors are beautiful.

We did a half day bus tour of the city for orientation and it was interesting. A highlight was visiting La Boca, the original port area.

Street Tango, Buenos Aires

It is supposedly where Tango started and was full of life with Tango dancers in the streets and in the cafes with the sound of  Tango music everywhere. The music stores in Buenos Aires have row upon row of Tango music CDS, much more than any other clasification. We know this as David insists on stopping at every music store even though most of it is in Spanish and he doesn't even like Latin-American music. 'Still crazy after all these years'.

La Boca, Buenos Aires

The shopping here is excellent, in particular the leather goods. We are so pleased that our luggage is at the airline weight limits or we would be very tempted to buy stuff we don't really need!! We made do with sampling the local gastronomic delights. We had heard of a restaurant which has a great Parilla(barbecue meats) as part of  an all-you-can-eat  buffet (buffets like this are called Tenedor Libre) so on a day we were feeling hungry we went along. The 'deal' included a drink each and so we asked for 2 glasses of red wine. Our waitress did not speak English but my Spanish had (I thought) got to the level of being able to order in restaurants fairly successfully. We thought that she was saying that we could only have one drink which seemed odd. Anyway, after much discussion, we realised that the 'deal' included, not a glass of wine each but, a bottle of wine each and she had been asking if we actually wanted 2 bottles at once. We said that one would be more than enough and had a laugh. Would people really have a bottle each? We suppose they must. Anyway the whole evening of as much of everything we wanted was about $16 ( £7 each). This was a smart place too in the upmarket Puerto Madero area. This is an old port area converted into a trendy residential and restaurant area set along the banks of the river so one can stroll along the boardwalks. This may give you an idea of how reasonably priced it is here.

Eva Peron's family mausoleum

We visited Recoletta Cemetry which contains Evita's grave;  it is a huge cemetry and her grave is hard to find as she is in her family mausoleum under the name of Duarte. David said that they should have speakers playing 'Don't cry for me Argentina' so tourists can find it more easily.

San Telmo market, Buenos Aires

On the Sunday we spent hours strolling the San Telmo area of the city which is famous for its outdoor market. It is an area with lots of antique shops and, on Sundays, the market stalls take over and sell anything and everything including crafts and junk. It is so lively and goes on for street after street. There are buskers of all sorts and tango dancers and weird characters and food sellers and restaurants and cafes spilling onto the streets. We stayed for hours and had coffee watching the world go by.

'Churros' seller in San Telmo

After our interesting week in the city we headed to the main bus station for our next adventure; an overnight bus trip, west  to Mendoza. We were keeping our fingers crossed that we would get through as the farmers had been blockading the roads as part of their protests and some buses were cancelled or had to turn back.