BA - That's Buenos Aires not Barracus!

Oh my, what a bus.. this is like "the nuclear bus".. anyone remember that film??
We've got a suite!! With curtains both sides, seats that recline to 180 degrees becoming beds, a foot of space between each suite so no one kicking your back for 18 hours and whats that? Champagne? ... "oh go on then my dear, don't mind if I do"

17 hours later we woke up to the sight of enormous billboards and were excited to realise we had arrived on the outskirts of the city. In the taxi from the station we were like kids in a candy store eating up the sights with wide and hungry eyes. Helllooooo Buenos Aires.....

nice books.

"Buenos Aires has all the elegance of the old world in its buildings and streets, and in its people all the vulgarity and frank good health of the new world. All the news stands and book shops- what a literate place, one thinks what good wealth, what good looks" Paul Theroux

looks like a great city, however we soon find you need to keep one eye on the ground... its streets are paved with turds. We think the competitive dog walkers have something to do with it (theres no time to scoop)

this is an average ratio of canine to human

We pick up a copy of the English language daily herald, and read the news for the first time in two months, not that interesting really.... appart from the news that Bolivia had just elected their first idigenoues President. He's already been busy nationalising water & electricity & has his sights set on the phones, He doesn't believe a select few should profit from the need to communicate.

a cat sticker!

After looking around for a new camera charger (for hours - a saga set to last all week) , and taking in a few local pattiseries and bars we head over to the swanky district of Palermo having met up with Bradly & Lisa (good friends from Bolivia via East London)). They have picked up some waifs and strays on their way round S America and we are joined by three boistrous Irish lasses and some savvy boys from the states (they do exist)

Have a pretty good steak & wine (well, we are in Argentina) in a fancy restaurant in BA's equivalent of Soho, except its swankier, warmer & a lot cheaper.

Pile into 3 taxis, none of which know a street called Sarmiento????? we are hungry for tango and a place called the Cathederal is meant to be the real deal.

We end up in the district of San Telmo where most of the Tango shows are and wander the streets for hours trying to find a reasonably priced authentic Tango experience... we fail and set to drinking in the square.

The next day we spend all our time on the internet trying to sort out accomadation (no room at our inn), after hours of stress we get confirmation on a flat. We drag all our baggage across town only to be told at the agents its already gone & they have nothing else..erm hello!!!...... blink... excuse me... the phone call... you said...eh?.

Eventually we get lucky with a place in Tango district - San Telmo.
Its a great little flat on the sixth floor with a balcony overlooking the neighborhood

view from flat

We are excited about cooking our own food (its been ages) and Diego(very friendly owner and geologist) lends us a laptop. There is plenty of space, all nice and clean and we have an ensuite bathroom with a bidet, John Peel (who advised his son to always take a shit before showering) should have got one!!

Get some food an' booze and settle in for the night with our creature comforts. Watch an amazing storm across the city with horizontal lightning.

"Had a dream last night about Michelle, She had two tiny dogs inside her ear, they were only a couple of millimetres wide. If you looked closely you could just make them out wandering around" -Jackie Jones

Have a homemade fry up, what a treat!!
Wander around our local area, popping into various boutiques. We find a great English bookstore (walrus books), are spoilt for choice and leave thoroughly confussed.

Go into a excellent little art gallery on our street and are inspired by these soft sculptures..

Stop off in a Hat shop that has designs from all over the world (you'd love it Gav), the owner who has a distracting wonky eye talks at length about all the different hats.. suprisingly the english bowler being one of the most popular here. Real Panama hats are actually made in Ecuador dont you know and come with a lifetime guarantee.. which is nice.

Have a culture shock, ie there is none(its not even Sunday, our usual problem).. all the museums we try and visit are being renovated or have closed down due to lack of funds..

we find one gallery however, Hunter perhaps?

Head over to Palermo for Sushi with Brad and lisa who can't get enough of the stuff. Its about a quarter of the price it would be in London and we get a huge platter of various items to share.
We have some Saki (Salud Abuela!) & a couple of bottles of Argetinian Champagne, very tasty.

After a rowdy dinner Jackie and I head to The Cathederal a cool Tango club , which it turns out is the one we were trying to get to on our first night here.

Its like a softer more romantic version of the foundry(if thats possible) on a much grander scale, there is an enormous paper mache heart light behind the bar.. Paintings and drawings adorn the walls and all the tables are candlelit.

Feeling right at home we proceeded to get merry...

listen to some amazing abstract Tango music with screechy violins,
& a great band(with speakerbox drum) plays out the night.. We head home feeling we have just witnessed one of the citys secrets.

The next day we decide to head over to la Boca, one of the major tourist draws of Buenos Aires. Its famous for Tango and its colourful buildings.

La Boca has a bit of a reputation and its not the renowned football team that has us on tenterhooks as we stroll down the main road into the district.
We can smell the docks before we see them. A foul and eggy chemistry lab experiment of an aroma fills the air, rainbow oil slicks cover the water, ships slouch - oxidising and the sky springs a leak.

now

then

The tourist part of La Boca, where they take your money with a smile instead of a knife, is comprised of three small intersecting streets, making an inverse of the bermuda triangle (step out and its trouble, apparently... actually it probably is, we did and quickly stepped back).
All the houses are painted with leftovers from ship painting, hence they are a strange mish mash that - rather than appearing vibrant and joyous, are muddy and wrong.

The streets are filled with tourirts, Artisans, tango dancers, sketches of tango dancers and paintings of the painted buildings. Its like Camden. Amongst all this culture.. a sporting hero. What a great Maradonna lookalike, he appeared on TV with the original whose entreupeneering skills seem to have rubbed off on him, how can you not have your photo taken (for a modest charge).

After we are robbed in the local pub by the cash register we head over to the modern art museum... closed for moderni...(hmmm)

In another museum we peruse paintings and drawings of one of the citys most famous artists.. likened to Van Gogh (very tenuous) he paints nightmarish scenes of the docks. The grim reality, heat and sweat is suffused into his clumsy compositions giving you a pretty good sense of what life must have been like back then... Grim, Hot and Sweaty.

steeel town?

found this artwork in the corridor


Gorilla Advertising

football face

Later that day we get a train to laTigre (about 45mins away) and meet Brad, Lisa and Turner for a night at the casino.

As soon as we get onto the second escilator hell decends around us, thoughts of fear and loathing mixed with louis thouixs weird weekend come floading in.

2nd floor

A cocophany of epileptic lights & slot machines, layers of defeaning rythmns & clicks makes it impossible to decipher & hipnotically numbing. When you can snap yourself out of the trance & focus you see palid, desperate individuals with bad hair chained to the machines they are feeding, big plastic cup (you can purchase outside) gripped in one hand like a holly grail of hope.

We suddenly realise coming was proberbly a mistake and the only positive to be gained was if they would let us photograph this but sadly they dont want outsiders to see the desperation of it, such a shame theres some characters here, so here's some more drawings...

fruit machine queen

Just passinng through these floors slightly unhinged our brains, it must be awful to work here.

Lisa said she´d never seen such a pikey casino, oh well, in for penny!

Wheel of misfortune

The roulette tables were crowded and smoky, the big betters seemed to put big piles of chips on 75% of the numbers & sometimes on serveral tables at once. This made it a little tedious waiting for the wheel to be spun. We were winning for a while which was a thrill but it was very cautious slow going betting. We couldnt really test out bradlys top betting technque as the smallest bet was a fiver and we didnt have enough money to chase it.

The invevitable happened we got bored of slow increases & waiting for several of one thing before betting and eventually we all lost everthing.

When we left the place (3am eternal) we saw no winner faces, just beaten looks and dead eyes.

Back at our flat

Sleep like berns till lunchtime, wake up feeling a little sick, dirty & used. Having decided to get the generic charger and hefty transformer for Jackies camera we head into town on the tube (which is good and cheap.. wake up London!).

Check out these spiky pregnant trees near the tube.....

The shop is closed.

Pick up a big slice of fish pie and wander over to the botanical gardens. Its full of stunning trees in blossom & lilac petals carpet the pavements. We sit down and play with a herd of cats. They are really cute and very friendly, jumping all over us and delighting in the fish pie.

Hundreds of them live in these gardens, no wonder when there are so many dogs on the streets. Cats, exotic plants and purpleness, Mary you should live here.

Later we head over to the posh Recoleta district, famous for its cemetry housing Eva peron and other renowned Portenos (Ba residents).

Overshadowing the cemetry, almost literally, is this enormous tree....

..it must be at least 40 metres across with a 5m trunk

Some have compared the cemetery to the city outside its walls and we had a very pleasant stroll amongst the streets of dead poking our head in a few open mausoleums.

We found a Modern art gallery up to date enough to actually be open. Once inside it was difficult to see why until we came across this cracking glitterball skull with club style dry ice.


On Sunday the local markets in our district are buzzing. The nearest is full of interesting diversions. .

Stalls full of buttons and postcards, records and old comics, grammaphones and telephones.

You'd never escape Dad!

How's the war going Dave?

After managing to drag ourselves away we browse the outdoor market of Plaza Dorrego. Its very silly.. all the stall holders seem to think they will sell more if they are in fancy dress and we come across.. Cezanne, Frida Kahlo, Freud, The Angels of San Telmo and this haggered old cow smoking a fag..

Angels!

Frida?

sign painter paul calf

Tango Divas strutt their stuff ,leaving us mesmorised at the intense and suggestive manuevers
It was devised & originally danced by couples of men to kill time while waiting outside brothels and its moves have there origins in fighting with knives.

After one too many antique shops (we definately look like time wasters), we grab a fat steak sandwich and pop into our favourite local for a delicious glass of red wine while various crooners appear and sing for their liquid supper.

Over to the camera shop again.. but it bloody well isnt ready.

I must be in a good mood and suggest we spend the day in trendy Palermo amongst the boutiques with a view to picking up a little number for Jackie. Since the Peso crash of 2001 an increasing number of local designers have appeared on the scene. Theres some great stuff, although most of it a little too Hoxton for our tastes. Just as its looking a lost cause and the "whim whams and fribble frabbles of fashion" seem to have beaten us, Jackie spots a delightful pink tartan cowboy shirt with lenghty cuff ties.. perfect, and I didn't moan once.. close!

shop wall

Back at the camera shop, the charger we ordered isn't there yet.. "its coming by courier, it'll be here shortly".. grrrrrrrr!. we retire to the nearest cafe and watch the world go bye! over a bottle of cold chardonnay.

Of course the charger doesn't show up and we stagger back home.

The following morning.. todays the day we get the charger!!!!

In the Borges cultural centre we look at some great paintings that seem to be a mixture of keith haring and the weavings of indigeonous Bolivian woman..

this isnt one of them, good photo though isnt it?

We shirk off Tango lessons as the only footwear Jackie has are soaking wet trainers.. not very glam!

As its our last night in the city we decide to have a really good meal as a special treat. We've got the Time Out guide and find a restaurant with a Michelin chef who puts a twist on traditional dishes..Unfortunately, and this is only the start of our culinary misadventure, it no longer exists. This surely must be the last word on minimalist cuisine? one vegetable slice....er get rid of the plates.. I know, I know.... eat off the floor....fuck it! get rid of the building. YES!!! Genius.

Next on our list is a traditional (greasy owner, swooning tourists) Parilla.
MEAT, is the bottom line, unsure we book a table for later as its v busy.

We need a drink and order Mojitos at a local bar, the barman kindly gave us half a pint each whilst we waited for him to gather the mint. We really like Mojitos.. lovely minty, limey sugary rum over ice..mmmmm.

Can't wait... here they come! ??? eh?

What we get seems to be neither rum nor lovely mint, but icy water, slice of lime and a sorry sprig hanging over the rim trying not to drown. We can't let this go unchallenged and attempt to tell the barman how to make a proper Mojito and leave without paying.. at his insistence of course.

We write off the traditional Parilla and get a Taxi to the next restaurant on our hitlist. Its hideous... a wall st wine bar decked out in dark graphite & cold metals, the clientelle mirroring the atmosphere, no thanks! we nip into an unsuspecting cafe to use the loo... well, we have been on a mission for hours!! Another taxi ride later & we are in the expensive Recoletta district. This time we get as far as sitting down and eating the breadsticks, crudites & dips (they foolishly put in front of us) before realising this place is wrong, its chilly & decked out in white & gold.. Dallas meets MFI. We run away!

Back outside we are squiffily amused with our restaurant adventure.. surely we can find something suitable in this town. We pile into another taxi and drive over to Palermo..

Finally, perhaps as we are too tired to try any others , we get ourselves seated in a pleasant venue and enjoy several glasses of chilled rose, some lamb and rabbit... yum yum yum!

Sad to hand over our keys the next day, we have a parting burger and red wine at our favourite local.

It takes longer than expected and we suddenly appear pushed for time.. not usually one to panic, I find I'm constantly clock watching and nail biting. I've never eaten a burger & chips so fast it was funny.

We make the bus with a whole minuet to spare, and are driven away as the sunsets over the river. The hours of bump and grind ragga videos and some bad films in Spanish on the bus ease us nicely into slumber.. these buses are muy comfortable! Next stop whales!