A Wild Week in Buenos Aires... by day

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA - 7th March 2010

The purpose of The Daily Rod, back in September at least, was purely to allow people to know where I was and what I was up to without their inboxes being clogged with annoying and impersonal bulk emails that they'd probably ignore or forget to read anyway, and equally to stop me having to write the same thing 25 times to different people. Its remit may, arguably, have subsequently expanded into various other realms - not least as a platform for my various inane musings about the world - but with this blog in danger of losing any sort of semblance with real time, it has become increasingly obvious how useless it becomes in serving its primary purpose when it's hopelessly out of date. The earthquake in Chile put this in real perspective - I had a load of messages from people who read the blog, but had no idea where I was because the last thing posted on there was from Rio de Janeiro almost 3 weeks earlier.

So, after spending a whole week in one place for the first time since being in Mangalore, Buenos Aires seemed like the perfect opportunity to fast forward this blog to a vaguely more sensible time lapse. Whether or not that goal comes close to being achieved, we shall have to wait and see.

Most people you talk to who've been to South America usually come up with the same answer when asked "what was you're favourite city?" BA has managed to build itself a status among backpackers that seems to edge closer and closer to legendary the more you ask people. But what nobody ever mentions, or at least failed to mention to us, is that BA is damn weird.

There's no denying it's a cool city, indeed one of the coolest. However, and Anna and I agree on this (an event so rare that when it occurs it should be duly noted), the place has an undercurrent to it - both in the demeanour of its inhabitants and the general atmosphere of its streets - that is just a little bit uncomfortable. It's not that you feel unsafe or threatened - the discomfort isn't of that kind. Rather, it seems like something that is embedded in the psyche of the city - a lack of thrill, of optimism, of get-up-and-go enthusiasm seems all too prevalent - a feeling that seems totally at odds with the very essence of the reputation Buenos Aires holds among travellers. The reason for why we both felt this is not something either of us could really pin down - to a certain degree the economic collapse in the early part of the decade could provide adequate reasons for a lack of optimism, but BA's weirdness seems to go beyond reasons economic. Drawing comparison with Rio de Janeiro - one of South America's other "heavyweight" drawcard cities - Anna was bang on the money when she noted how both cities have a blend of all kinds of people - ethnically, socially and financially, but in Rio they all seem to blend harmoniously together into one big happy Rio family. In BA, there doesn't seem to be any harmony.

Notwithstanding that somewhat dire analysis of Buenos Aires' social makeup, BA is still a fantastic city - but it lives upside down. You live by night and sleep, if at all, during the morning. Dinner comes after midnight - eating any earlier is the preserve of weirdos, or tourist gringos who have yet to adapt to (or can't handle) the BA-way. You go to sleep at sunrise, and have lunch at around 4pm. This is not just students or young people on holiday - parents are walking around with 3 year-olds in tether at 11.30pm; dinner in a family home is likely to be past midnight. This is Buenos Aires life.


One week is a fairly long time anywhere - my travels are certainly testimony to that - but the week in BA has been somewhat disjointed resulting in a strange blurring of days and events. Of immediate concern upon arrival was that Anna had various other things to attend to and had vanished off into the Subte (subway metro) less than an hour after we'd arrived at Che Legarto's BA hostel. However, Ellen was still with us from Iguazú and, accompanied by Jamie (who'd also just rocked up at our hostel), the 3 of us went exploring the city by foot. Plaza de Mayo was the first destination (see photo above) - a central square of sorts that is home to various civic buildings ranging from the colonial Cabildo to the Casa Rosada ("Pink House") - as the seat of the executive branch of Government it roughly represents BA's equivalent of the Élysée Palace. The central park and pathways of the central section of the Square give more of a hint to its special political significance for both Buenos Aires and Argentina - the scene of the May Revolution of 1810 that set Argentina on its path to independence from the Spanish, Plaza de Mayo today features several mounts of Argentine flags dawbed in slogans protesting about veterans' rights and various other issues, while every Thursday the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo continue their three-decade-long protests demanding information about their children who "disappeared" during Argentina's military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983.

The 3 of us continued random walking around the city, heading up Diagonal Norte to Avenieda 9 de Julio - the world's biggest avenue - and the Obelisk monument in the middle of it. A stroll up Av. Florida and a glance into Gallerias Pacifico brought me back to the same streets I'd walked exactly one month earlier, but we continued a bit further north up to the tree-lined greenery of Plaza San Martín before doing a U-ey and heading home. Interestingly, at some stage around then we were almost certainly within about 20 metres of Anna... but were totally oblivious to the fact until several days later.

We had the pleasure of Anna's company on Tuesday as we headed down to the famous barrio (neighbourhood/district) of La Boca - about half an hour to 45 minutes walk south-west from our hostel, heading through the artesanal shops, streets and buildings of San Telmo en route. You know when you've entered La Boca - it involves walking past the colossal gold and blue mass of La Bombonera ("the Chocolate Box"), the home of Boca Juniors FC (one of BA's two arch-rival football clubs, the other being River Plate). It's a fairly surreal experience - one minute you're walking through a fairly quiet, nondescript, residential neighbourhood with barely a person in sight, the next minute you round a corner and find yourself sharing the road with hundreds of tourists with cameras streaming out of coaches, tour buses and seemingly out of the walls - all posing in front of the multitude of blue and gold memorabilia that is dominated by a single name and face - Diego Maradona. A pretty good footballer, he's generally known round the world these days as an overweight abusive alcoholic whose cheating right arm robbed England of their rightful place in the 1986 World Cup semi-final. In Argentina, however, he's on a par with Jesus - a national hero who can do no wrong (despite the fact that his managerial ineptitude almost cost them their place in this summer's World Cup). Shame for them, really.

The intense colours of La Bombonera are mirrored across La Boca - the buildings are brightly painted and artwork ranging from grafitti to random "sculptures" to beautiful images are visible in every direction - a visage that comes to a head when you reach the street of Caminito. Although the droves of tourists somewhat tarnish its charm, the succession of pastel shaded buildings of every colour combined with simplistic architecture that hints of an Italian heritage give the place a genuine sense of identity and character that is intertwined with the area's proud history of tango. Indeed, it exudes the very feeling that seemed lacking elsewhere in BA.

With Jamie and Ellen, it was the same 3 of us that headed up to Recoleta on Wednesday that had scouted the city centre on Monday. The principle aim of the trip was to check out the famous Recoleta Cemetery - a massive necropolis of marble mausoleums that house the remains of Buenos Aires' rich and famous (most notably Eva "Evita" Perón) in a pretentiousness grandeur that is matched only by whichever tomb lies next door. The most poignant sight is the statue of Jesus Christ in the middle of the cemetery (right) - a simple statue of not great height, that is totally dwarfed in size and opulence by the tombs of those who supposedly died as his followers. If you ever wanted an example of Jesus' words, "the last shall be first, and the first last", being spectacularly ignored by the very people to which they word directed, come visit Recoleta.

The Cemetery wasn't the entirity of what Recoleta had to offer though, and a wander around vaguely to the tune of the LPG-recommended "Walking Tour" saw us check out the impressive architecture of the Buenos Aires School of Engineering, me acquire another Hard Rock Cafe t-shirt to add to the collection, a saunter across 10 lanes of traffic on a cool graffiti-strewn pedestrian bridge, and plenty of photos of the impressive Floralis Genérica sculpture in the United Nations Park. The latter, seen right, is a giant metallic flower, but is cooler than your average sculpture on the basis that its giant metallic petals open and close "based on the incidence of solar rays" - i.e. open by day and close by night. A good place for Jamie to join the illustrious group of England 2018 Bid-Backers...


A couple of journies were made to the leafy upper class Palermo neighbourhood over the week - Thursday's trip with Anna involved a walk through the parks and a couple of hours lying on the grass, while Friday afternoon saw me return minus Anna with a bunch of young'ns (18-year-old pre-university Gap Yearers) and check out the artesanal market and the general surrounding area. A fairly cool market, but the highlight on the afternoon was almost certainly a sign for "feria de la ropa" (clothes fair) on a random back street that got a few people excited; an excitement that burst like a harpooned balloon upon discovery that the "fair" consisted of a guy manning a small table and a single clothing rack - a total of maybe 20 articles of clothing. Whether it was false advertising or good marketing, you've gotta admire the guy's audacity.


Markets were also the order of the day this morning; the San Telmo area is dominated every Sunday by the weekly street market (see above) that runs the whole length of Avenieda Défensa - we covered about a kilometre of it but it could well have gone on for four. Between paintings, clothing, jewellry and the usual blend of souvenirs, there were also some unusual bits and pieces including a whole load of Homer Simpson doing the "Hand of God" t-shirts, coins with their interiors carved out around whatever design they have on the front, and - much to my excitement - a copy of Flashman in Spanish! Given that I'd just about finished my 9th book in the series I was tempted to purchase it... but common sense suggested by Spanish probably wouldn't do the book justice.

In a slightly overgrown nutshell, that largely recounts my various comings and goings of Buenos Aires during daylight hours. It is only by night, however, that BA really comes alive - but those tales will have to wait for another blog.