Buenos Aires - open 25 hours!
After a monster of a 13 hour flight we hit the pavement in Buenos Aires at 11 am local time fairly wrecked. We took a bus into the city centre. I slept for the whole journey and only really realised I was on another continent when the heat and dirt hit me during the taxi ride to our hostel. We had booked into Millhouse on Hipolito Yrigoyen. In an effort to put our body clocks on the right path we had showers and headed out to look around the city.
The hostel is only a block or two from one of the main drags - Av de Mayo so we strolled down towards Plaza De Congresso on the hunt for some asado (bbq beef). It didnt take long to find an agreeable place with streetside seating. We were served up a parilla por dos for about 9 euro. It consisted of about 2 lbs of beef, a heap of offal and basket of chips. Just what we needed...well maybe not..
Afterwards we waddled our way around the Congresso where there were protests afoot at the presence of Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres in the capital. We skirted our way around the crowds and made for Plaza De Mayo and the pink facade of the main government buildings at Casa Rosada. At this point we were too tired to contemplate anything but bed so reluctantly trudged back to the hostel for a sleep.
First impressions: it´s a very big, busy city. It´s dirtier than expected, the pavements are broken up and generally a lot of dog shit everywhere. After the clean towns and cities of Oz and NZ the differences in basic sanitation is stark I suppose. It´s very humid, about 60% at the moment. Normally in new places we´re constantly talking and observing as we walk about but that first day we were so tired we were barely able to string a few sentences together so we wandered, nodded and pointed to each other. No major consensus was reached that day, but as the week progressed we liked this city more and more.
The exchange rate is great to the euro, approximately 5:1. Breakfast costs as little as 15 pesos and a main course in a basic restaurant can set you back as little as 20 pesos!
We need to brush up our Spanish pronto though. Smiling and pointing will only get us so far!
We took a walking tour of La Boca the next morning from the hostel. This is the poorest area of the inner city but it has partly converted itself into a tourist haven of a few blocks where colourful buildings mix with locals and con artists of all shapes and sizes in a neighbourhood called the Caminita. Home to the tango - which originated between drunken sailors and prostitutes here on the site of the original Spanish port - the streets are lined with restaurants and bars offering live music and tango shows. The area is equally as famous for its football team of course - Boca Juniors, and we went into the museum at the Bombarino. This is Maradonna´s stomping ground, and garish statues of him abound around the cobbled streets. Unfortunately there wasn´t to be a game for about a week so we missed the experience.
After lunch in a small restaurant near the stadium we bussed it back to Millhouse. If you are up for drinking and dancing till dawn, then Buenos Aires is the place for you. If you are up for drinking and dancing past dawn, then stay at the Millhouse.
We took a free tango class later that evening there and after a few beers five of us jumped into a taxi in search of one of the best steak houses in town. An American in the group had been to Restaurante La Cabrera a few months previously, so on his recommendation we sped towards the upmarket Palermo for some beef.
I have never tasted steak like it. I was in heaven. You could cut this stuff with a wooden spoon. Washed down with a few bottles of Malbec (possibly the finest wine on the planet) we struggled to get through 3 main courses between the five of us. The bill came to about 70 euros all in, including a generous tip. If you could find an equivalent standard of service, food, wine anywhere in Europe you would be doing well to get away without dropping more than four or five hundred euro. I can´t rave about this place enough. Go there. Save. Catch a flight to Sao Paolo, connect to Buenos Aires, eat steak, go home. Say no more.
So suitably delighted with ourselves (ourselves being myself, S, a Yank, a Danish journalist and a spaced out Swiss fella who had spent the last 10 months in Bolivia) we fell in and out of numerous bars on the vicinity until 6am. I love the light and the emptiness of big cities at dawn, and apparently I shouted as much repeatedly with my head out the window in the taxi all the way home, a big shit eating grin on my face. Viva la vida. Viva beef!
4pm- sore heads, discombobulation. Walked though the beautiful San Telmo, along Defensa to Plaza Dorrego for coffee and food (again..yes..) We sat on the plaza for about two hours watching a couple tango and taking in the atmosphere. Later that night (at about midnight - restaurants generally wont serve dinner until at least 8.30pm and don´t stop until maybe 1 or 2am) we found Museo de Jamon - another excellent restaurant. Very underdressed, and still slightly ´confused´ from the night before we were seated and made our way through another beef/Malbec combo spectacular. Ahhhh, its tough..it really is.
Determined not to turn into absolute messes and to educate ourselves a little on Argentinian history, we set off bright and early the next morning on a mission. Unfortunately the museum that we were aiming for was closed, so we ended up walking along the pedestrianised Calles Florida through to Recolletta. The cemetary here has about 5,000 mauseleums where the great and good of B.A have been entombed for over a century. Among the most prominant of these are two Irishmen, Fr Antonio Fahy and Admiral Brown. The former was a missionary, the latter founded the Argentinian Navy and both did tremendous work for the Irish community here. The interesting thing about the Irish in Argentina is that they are amongst the only emigrating Irish who were proactive colonisers, and not the displaced colonised. The bulk of the population came from Westmeath, Longford and Wexford and established significant land holdings and estancias (ranches) in the Pampas within 20 or 30 years. There are 70 year old men out on farms here who are third generation Irish, have never left the country and speak broken Spanish but great English in broad Westmeath accents.
The most famous tomb here though is that of Eva ´Evita´ Peron, the subject of much controversy and national emotion of which I wont go into here. Next to the cemetary is the second oldest church in the country, the Basilica de Nuestra Senora del Pilar which stands on the corner of a leafy square where we paused for coffee and a bite to eat. Then on to Puerto Madera, which was a fairly big walk in the heat. This is a regenerated dock land area which is fairly upmarket and full of bars and restaurants. We hung around there for an hour or so before strolling back to the hostel with the intention of taking it easy for the evening. Ha.
I bumped into a friend I hadnt seen in about 5 years - Ben. A Canadian who I´d been in college with on Erasmus in Copenhagen, we immediately made plans to meet for a beer. We had played a gig together in a dump of a bar in Denmark and when he found out I was travelling with the guitar..well you can guess where this is going. A few hours later we grabbed another ridiculous dinner in a nearby restaurant, the Swiss spacer and Ben´s mate from Toronto in tow.
Then back to the hostel where there was a DJ and bar set up for a few hours of gyrating, then on to a nightclub (Club 69...cheese haha) for more of the same. Driving in Latino countries is great - you have to have completed Mario Kart to get a licence over here. There is a 14 lane highway stretching through the centre of the city along Av 9 de Jullio (the widest boulevard in the world) and nobody pays any attention to lanes, indicates, or bats an eyelid at almost certain collision. Its marvelous. We got to the club in about 45 seconds. It reminded me of clubs I have been to in Madrid - with painted and feather bowet clad tranny hosts/hostesses running around to Samba techno. The kind of place a typical God fearing Guinness loving shirt wearing Naas man would faint in. Tommys to Club 69..taxi! haha! We lasted an hour or so before myself and Sarah ducked and dived home at about 4am, leaving the Canadians to their sordid devices.
Uruguay for a day!
Unfortunatey Millhouse was full for Friday night so we arose bleary eyed to make a move across town to the welcome calm and quiet of Hostel Arrabal. After showers we rushed to the docklands to catch a ferry across the Rio del Plata to the town of Colonia del Sacramento in Uruguay.
The ferry across was nice and smooth, apart from the giddy madness of the underage Uraguayan national rugby team who were clearly the worst for wear after presumably being hammered by their beef laden Argentinian counterparts. We slept and arrived in Colonia after about 1 1/2 hours. The ferry crosses the stretch of water where the Parana River and Uruguay River converge into the Rio de la Plata.
The Barrio Historico de Colonia is a world heritage site, and is a charmingly beautiful cobbled town with colourful buildings and a great atmosphere. Only having 4 hours to play with before returning to B.A, we made our way from the ferry port to the old town, through its stone gates, and explored the place. The town changed hands between the Portuguese and Spanish a number of times before finally being settled by the Spanish in 1777. The Brazilians had a go until the Uruguans took over in 1828. So we whiled away a few relaxing hours there, taking a break from the beef with a few burritos con pollo in a restaurant with a view of the water. The boat was running on South American time (ie anything between an hour and a week late) so we were late getting back to B.A were we were to meet my uncle Noel for dinner.
It was great to catch up with him and we had a fantastic meal (have a guess...) down at Puerto Madero before making it back to our hostel at a by now very respectable bed time of 2am.
Buenos Aires..jaysus!
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