Buenos Aires by gum

Notes:

£1 = 6 pesos ARG

1 night @ Ayacucho Palace Hotel – 215 pesos including breakast

Argentina population – 23 million

Buenos Aires population – 12 million

Buenos Aires, the Paris of South America and with good justification. I arrived after a 23 hour trip on Air Canada via Toronto and Santiago de Chile. Toronto was just an airport stop and the most striking thing was that all the men and a considerable portion of the women were bearded: the cold or perhaps the cereal? On the Santiago leg I sat with a fellow and his father. The father seemed very ill and the son told me he had been to Toronto for treatment but it did look like he might expire at any minute notwithstanding the usual trials and tribs of a long flight.

It felt strange to be in Santiago airport again as the last time I had been here, Fo and I had slept at the airport awaiting the trip to Juan Fernandez Island. Indeed, the flights here run all night and the usual collection of bug eyed people were sitting around the sleepy end near the sculpture of suitcases made from the list of unfortunates who never did receive their lost baggage.

I said goodbye to the son and father who lived in Santiago and wished them good luck.

Arriving in Buenos Aires was a relief and once I got the baggage it was off to the old café in the airport for the first taste of good coffee in Argentina. A steaming café con leche, a demi-luna and to the taxi rank. Buenos Aires hosts half the population of Argentina, 12 million of the 23 million total and the city is large and sprawling with the recognized centre a small raft in the east of the conurbation. The Ayacucho Palace Hotel, in Recoleta, was little changed and I lucked out, a room with a balcony on the street, the roaring of buses and traffic on Avenida Ayacucho below was loud, but not unpleasant. The buses in BA are many, frequent, smoky, driven by enthusiastic boy racers and extremely cheap. They come and go along well defined lines but unscrambling the exact route is difficult, but if you have time its great to cruise around and pick up buses to random places and accept the destination as a new adventure. The tube is limited but is of two distinct engineering schools, the French section with the charming rubber wheels and the English section with the old carriages which still hack around the Central and Northern Lines in London.

The Boulevards are wide, in fact the Avenida 9 de Julio is the widest in the world, but there is 'big traffic' like every other large city. All the other minor streets are wide, pleasant and link plazas and parks all over the city which makes it one of the most open, green cities in the world, and one of the most accessible. This is helped in some part by the yankee grid system which breaks down in places and also, surprisingly, some of the streets change their name at random points along their length. The distinct districts vary in their look and feel; San Telmo, Monserrat, La Boca, Recoletta all confined within the historical central part, with distinct histories of immigration and development. The Ayacucho Palace Hotel is in the Recoletta district and indeed, Recoletta cemetery is just up the road. The Plaza San Martin de Tours is next door with the famous Biela café and the enormous Gum tree, which shades it, is older than BA itself. The Biela café is where the ‘elite meet to cafe’ in the area and with the beautiful weather, its a great place to hang out and watch the porteños go about their business.

On Saturday and Sunday it hosts a fabulous market with a whole host of ‘artesania locale’ which is really quite good, most of the arty jewelry being original and modern, the art isn’t completely ghastly either (although some of the street scenes look like a side of beef with a sombrero on).

Hanging out is a popular pastime here and looking good is part of that. You don’t see too many overweight people here although they eat ‘late and a lot of red meat’. Its very fashion conscious and much like London without the massive variety of fashion and much of it is ‘ivy leage’ USA. The shopping is great and varied with a lot of independents. Whilst you are browsing there is always the great coffee houses to punctuate the aquisition-fest. There isn’t too much of the Macs/Starbucks/Dunkin’ frat going on which is such a pleasant change from most European cities.

The first day I confined myself to Recoletta; a parilla, coffee (strictly off the diet) and a gentle walk up to the old church on Plaza San Martin de Tours, in fact the only colonial church in the whole of BA. In the afternoon it rained quite hard and I caught up with a game of ‘squelch’. This is a hazardous watery game where the contestant steps on random paving slabs and if he is unlucky the corner tips and the corresponding diagonal corner issues black water up the trouser leg. The pavements in BA are studiously untended and looking down to anticipate holes, gravelly watery patches and precarious ravines is a good idea. I turned my ankle on the third day and spent a couple of days limping without any thought, or possibility, of litigation.

It is a town with much cultural activity, music, dance, theatre, café society and of course football. On average the younger and much of the older population eat out quite often in the many restaurants and in the evening this may be as late as 10 – 11 o’clock with a later diversion to the clubs or bars, arriving home at 3 – 4 am for a light sleep before work. This is augmented with a snoozette at about 8 or 9 in the evening before the out. It is a punishing schedule but also means that many restaurants don’t really open until about 9pm. I am, of course, in bed by then.

Each day I got up and was met by the smiling face of Maria in the hotel café. She has three children, lives near the Aeropuerto Ezeiza, takes an hour and a half to get to work, works 12 hours, then goes home. She doesn’t look a day over 22. Her most endearing feature is she blushes each time you ask her a question and is studiously efficient.

From the café window each morning at breakfast I watch the husband and wife team put together their vegetable store across the way. They have a small section of the front of an oriental 24 hour kiosco. I am guessing they rent it from the Chinese owner (who chain smokes) and peddle the fresh produce, which definitely enhances the meager offerings of the kiosco. He is ‘Jagged Edge’ in his preparation of the shop front, fruits and vegetables are manicured for display and stacked in distinct groups of colour and shape. They are, I am guessing, Indigenous Indians, they work every day including Sunday. He parks his old Ford pick-up just up the street and drives out of BA to get the vegetables fresh every day. They are ever industrious, patient and do a favourable root and fruit crop and most of all, he looks like the guy who cuts my hair in Twyford who is from Slough, only slightly spookey.

Each day is a walk to a different area always crossing 9 de Julio and each time I gaze at the building with the Mercedes Icon on the top, which dominates the Avenida and is the first thing I remember about Ba when I came here 25 years ago or so. I also remember we went to see Ben Hur in the old cinema on Lavalle Street which was the first time I had seen it on the big screen. It was spectacular, especially the chariot race, although I can’t hold Charlton Heston in the same idolatry, the man’s ultimate man, all chest and loin cloth, since ‘Bowling for Columbine’ where it turns out, he’s a bit of a twat about guns.

There is only one Che Guevara. He was Argentinian, a doctor and a host of other things, moralist, philosopher, skilled combatant, and he did a extraordinary things for Cuba but got killed for his troubles. Above all, his belief of personal morals above personal wealth was his most enduring and stayed with him until he was executed in Bolivia. He will be forever be the choice poster pinup for discerning students and he is still the most recognisable face of the 20th Century. His story is a breath-taking rise from doctor to revolutionary hero and a riveting read on Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_guevara

He seems forgotten in Argentina as one of their most successful sons, replaced perhaps my Maradonna who is a god to all football fans and perhaps bridges the divide.

San Telmo and particularly, Plaza de Dorrego, is still bohemian, shabby chic and full of traveling wire benders, or jewelers, artesans as they would like to be called. They make beautiful jewelry, mate pots, and do a bit of juggling, trickery and cigarette rolling on the side. All the cafes have Tango mats and the Tango rolls all day. Today of all days there is a couple who really put their souls into the dancing…probably helped on his part by her obvious beauty, matched only by Aphrodite, Helen of Troy etc (i’m guessing) i.e. you would sacrifice half your DVD collection…anyway the dance was beautiful, they moved as one, many ships were sunk. I tipped heavily, doh. I finish with a beer in the Bar San Telmo, one beer gets you a plate of Monkey nuts which would keep a whoop of Plebosus trim for a month, and catch up with some good Argentinian music. Quilmes is the beer of choice although I vowed not to touch the stuff after revelations about Macchu Picchu. So apparently, the aforementioned is not owned by the Peruvian people any more but by a fellow called Quilmes, who lives I Switzerland, is Venezuelan allegedly and makes a packet (3000x365x$55). So by association, don’t drink Quilmes…who knows?

I had always wanted to see a game of football at La Bombanera, the home of Boca Juniors, and again I was thwarted so I visited the ground itself. It is in the middle of the Barrio and a collection of small streets that lead down to the port, which have now become Disney-Boca, the inevitable move from authentic dive with related drug dealing, prostitution and excellent food to parody of itself. You can’t even get assaulted and robbed authentically here any more as the police outnumber the locals 2:1. The ground was small and the pitch terrible, ‘our’ Dave wouldn’t risk his ankles on this surface, it looked like Hackney fields. You could feel the intensity it inspires by just standing near the pitch, which you can touch from the front seats, if the 30’ fence hadn’t been erected to stop the rioting.

Anyway, went to ‘Superclásico, Boca vs River Plate. The atmosphere built up over two hours (due to a ‘B’ game before the main feast) and the sentiment between the two sets of supporters was one of mutual hatred. This is not due to the upper/lower class differential (Boca being the Barrio, lower class) as most people think, the areas are very similar in demographic, but an intense rivalry that comes from the fact that either one usually takes first or second spot in Primera División. Well, forget the cathedral (silence) like Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge. The noise, flares, confetti and drum bands rock for the whole game and the football is secondary. In fact the game was average apart from Riquelme (No. 10 shirt) who is class, the flare event was something to remember. A family on the bus had come all the way from Mendoza to see the game, and although Mendoza is in the Primera División, the whole country, really, either supports Boca or Plate. In fact 15 of the top 22 teams or so in the Primera División are from Buenos Aires. That leaves a few small metro cities scrapping for the bottom few places and not much silverware (or share of the TV rights).

So many Parillas and Cafes later it was time to get the bus to Puerto Madryn, a 22 hour hike south but away from the big city and the smell of the buses and humanity.

Photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/BuenosAires23102009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/TangoInBlackAndWhite31102009#