BUENOS ARIES
We arrived £600 poorer, but at least we arrived, for a five night stay in CASA JOSEPH, an apartment hotel in Palermo, a nice area of the city. First impressions of Buenos Aires were great, the weather is perfect being a balmy 28 degrees with a cool breeze and full sun, much nicer that hot and humid Rio. Very clean streets and oddly quiet after the crowds of Rio. Could be to do with the population of Argentina being 45 million and only 3 million living in BA (about a third of Rio's mixed bag of humanity). Anyway, low traffic, nice people, all smartly dressed and friendly, lots of shade trees in the side roads and bags of restaurants. Checked into CASA JOSEPH self catering apartment (just £85 a night), and very pleased with it we were too...... 10th floor, big terrace, floor to ceiling glass and great views, cracked it for a week.
Settled in - next job - book tours of things to see. Check out our current fave - GETYOURGUIDE, and what do we see - not a lot. In fact the headline Buenos Aires tour is a visit to a graveyard - I kid you not. La Recoleta is a few acres of mausoleums so we trekked for an hour and a half to join a tour of rich dead peoples final houses.
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To be fair it was OK. Lots of history, lots of info, but we bugged out halfway through. There is only so many times one can look at a grave and feign interest. On the bright side we saw loads of the city and remained pleaseantly impressed with how clean it all is.
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On the dark side we were informed in awed terms about a General Strike the following day against the new president, a right wing eccentric who has imposed some financial discipline on the country, not to everyone's approval. We were booked on a cycle ride in the same area that day.
Actually the marches helped us because it kept folk out of the city and made the roads even quieter for us on our sit-up-and-beg bikes, which was nice.
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The cemetery gave me ideas for an upgrade to my funeral plans. For those that don't know, when I pass away, in about 50 years or so, I am going to buried on our farm. Under a massive boulder that I have waiting there already (a good friend with a quarry sold me one cheap, as you do). Its about 7 feet long, 3 feet high and 3 feet wide, weights about 5 tons. I was having that plonked on top of me for posterity, little brass plaque explaining who, why and what is under it. It amuses me to think of robots in the future coming across this giant slab and wonder WTF???
Anyway, I now want the one on the left. I just love the fawning angels, and the trendy iron front door. I think it is way more classical, more impressive, more likely to make the AI that will soon replace us humans consider rejuvenating such an interesting example of humanity as me, and putting me in a circus. I do realise it will take a chunk out of Sara and the children's inheritance but Sara has made a solemn promise to honour my wishes. She didn't take quite as many measurements or photos as I had hoped but she swears she has it fully committed to memory and a competent builder already earmarked. I said there was no rush but she had already gone.
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Burials over, we headed on to San Telmo, another trendy cobbled district to check out the covered market, great! A cross between Borough Market and Petticoat Lane. Plus I found the first decent beer of the trip, Patagonia Amber. Just like a British London Pride. And just £3 a pint. I really like Argentina.
As we are self catering we had to stock up on food and wine. Into a local store down the road to find that a top quality Malbec was £2 a bottle. Heaven, I'm in heaven!
The next day was our four hour cycle tour around the town. Another perfect day and an opportunity to see more of the town - and to run slap bang into the strikers and marchers and police. Luckily it all went off quietly and apart from making it a bit harder to score an Uber we were fine, or rather I was fine, Sara was quite keen to get away once a thousand of them started marching straight at us in a side street, cue smart about turn and exit left.
Another must-do, tick-that-box thing for BA is TANGO, both to watch it and to learn to dance it. When I say must-do, I don't me me, I am don't-really-want-to-do. I mean Sara. And as you can't actually dance the Tango alone, then I am conscripted. The first part of the job (watch) we accomplished in a great little area called Camanito. A poor part of town that is safe and buzzy during the day and great for tourists, but which closes at 7.00pm - after which time they roast tourists alive on a split (tourist sirloin being cheaper and, they say, tastier than steak). Personally I thought mine tasted like chicken.
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It was here we got the free Tango show, well worth the money. We also booked into a Tango Class in a Milonga, to dance with the locals. Milonga's are a place where loads of locals come together and Tango!
We started the class at mid afternoon with a massive steak lunch and two bottles of Malbec, plus some beers, and so I was in fine fettle when we met or dance instructor and set off for the the venue. Lovely hall, we were the sole Gringos, Everyone else were serious Tango buffs. I was a three left footed buff. But we persevered. We mastered (I sort of mangled) the first five step routine in under an hour and before we knew it loads more people turned up and so was the music.
Being as I was standing on the outside of a flagon of Argentina's finest Malbec and still digesting half a cow I am amazed I managed anything at all, let alone a Tango in a crowd of serious tango-ites. Our instructor was great though, he was patient and smiling (through gritted teeth) as he realised my professed lack of ability was not some self -depreciating joke, but harsh reality. So to at least inject some pleasure into Sara's evening he took her out for a spin. Well four spins to be precise. Apparently you ask a lady to dance with your eyes, a longing glance across the floor is confirmed by a slight nod. Then you dance (perform) four tangos in a row with a 30 second break between each, when rather incongruously, they play flipping disco music. I guess it is to make quite clear that you are 'on a break'. Anyway, it terribly bad form not to complete the quartet of tangos. Sara did not know this and ducked out at the first blast of Saturday Night Fever, and had to pulled back into a tangoists embrace by our dance master!
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I was fine on the sidelines watching the incredibly complicated steps some of the dancers managed. No such luck. I was soon dispatched to work my magic on the dance floor and as proof I offer this video. I love it because you mainly see proper tango folk strutting their stuff while just occasionally the crowd parts and you catch a glimpse of us two basically doing a slow dance from the 1970's disco era. Not a Tango step in sight. But a great evening among really nice people who tolerated us.
It is slighly odd though that in two massive towns, Rio and BA, the paucity of 'things to do' is so striking. London, Paris, New York they ain't. Rio has four things, Christ the Redeemer, Sugar Loaf, visit a Favela and the Beaches. That is like London just offering a trip to Hampstead Heath and Greenwhich Observatory for the views, a walk round a council estate in Peckham and a day trip to Camber Sands. BA offers the equivalent of a walk round Brompton Cemetery, and learn to dance the Hokey-Cokey. Not complaining mark you, just saying. People we spoke too before we left did say 3-4 days is fine in each, which I am sure is true if you are on a 14-21 days trip. For us it means we have plenty of time to relax and the lack of things being offered means a lack of FOMO, so we really can chill - and I have time to write this drivel.
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So on our last day we plan to sunbathe, eat another cow, drink another vat of fine wine, and get ready for the 3.5 hour flight south to Patagonia, the land of the Glaciers..........
The photo to the right is a typical street at midday, see what I mean about quiet! It is SO laid back. Almost everyone has a little English, and everyone is friendly.
Really nice town but it is time to up sticks and head south to glacier country.
Now I don't really agree with taking photos of your grub but this had to make the cut. The steak is for one person, The Caesar salad is for one person. I'm sorry! that is madness. That would easily feed three, or four at a push. We struggled to eat it between us, although it was amazing. £40 for the steak though. But it was in the famous (and packed) La Cabrera. Around the corner it would have been £14, and probably just as good. Thank goodness I made good use of Google translate"una porcion para compartir", one portion to share please! We are now weaned off steak for life.
But first, before we go, one last Tango! I am the one on the right, about 20 yards to the right.
That boy knows his onions! However, I can do all off those steps. Just not in that order, or in time to the music, or with a girl getting in my way with her long legs and flowing locks and .......... yes Sara, I'm going to stop writing drivel, yes, I can make you a coffee, yes, right now........
But not before I make one last insightful observation on Argentinian life. THEY ONLY HAVE £1 NOTES!. The bog standard and only note is 1000 Pesos. How weird is that? No coins and almost no notes over a quid. An almost entirely cashless society. Especially for tourists.
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To say their ATM's are both difficult and f'ing expensive is an understatement. You put you card in and 80% reject it out of hand, and believe me we have every type of card know to man and we tried them all. Certain bank foyers will consider a deal but their starter for ten is to charge !0% commission, they then offer you the option to draw out £10, £20 or £50 only. Obs you go for the £50, and whammo! they come in with the clincher - a fixed charge of £18 for any and all transactions, on top of the 10%, and on top of whatever rip-off by your own bank. So to get £50 in £1 notes costs around £75! So we just changed $100 US into 100,000 Argentinian Pesos, as in 100 x 1000 pesos notes. We use them only sparingly for tips and cabs. The only two things you cannot use a card for, and we avoid cabs by using Uber all the time. For everything else, literally everything down to a 50p bottle of water, we use cards, as do the locals. CASHLESS! And the papers tell me there is a rumble in the UK over getting rid of the 1p piece! Seriously? I haven't used coins in the Uk for ages. God knows what you pay a dodgy plumber with over here? A £100 is basically a 3/4" thick wad of notes. Weird!
