A guide by VANYA
To keep up with what's going on in the city, try WUBA (What's Up In Buenos Aires), a website run by an expat American living in Buenos Aires.
The delta in Tigre is a unique place, a mix of Venice and Vietnam, only one hour from BA. You can go for the day and have a barbecue (asado) or stay over night in one of the 'recreos'. Don't miss it.
Train to Tigre and then public boat. www.ruta0.com/locs.asp?loc=74
Since devaluation in 2001, hundreds of talented, young designers have emerged from the woodwork in a bid to make a living during the economic crisis. Most of these appear to have opened small boutiques in Palermo Viejo, where one-off designs can be purchased for just a few pesos. For even better bargains, however, wait until the weekend before paying a visit to the area of Palermo Viejo surrounding Plaza Serrano. This is when the local bars play host to the city's design fair. Literally hundreds of local designers (most of which are still unable to afford to set up a shop of their own) flood the Plaza, offering everything from hand-made belts, customised shirts and one-off cocktail dresses. Arrive in the early afternoon to avoid the crowds.
Most of the bars surrounding Plaza Cortazar, Palermo Viejo
Transport from the airport to your hotel, for about £4 each. Friendly, efficient, reliable, fast. By minibus to any hotel.
At Buenos Aires airport, it's well signposted; www.tiendaleon.com
Buenos Aires is the 4th nosiest city in the world; a statistic that will not surprise visitors. The root of the noise, as in all cities, is in the movement of people: black taxis spew decibels of filth in direct competition with beat up buses as they plough the city's potholed expansive roadways and act as obstacles for the cars to weave between. Streets here are five or six lanes wide and the centre piece, ‘9th July Avenue’, totals eighteen lanes of traffic. Crossing it is an expedition in itself. Clouds of exhaust hover over the tarmac. A city that has minimum speeds for each type of road wants to keep everything moving and each porteño seems to live up to this by keeping even the most beat up vehicle going even if it is just beyond that minimum speed. King of the survivors seems to be the Ford Dodge trucks that cling to life just as their exhaust chokes all other. I have not seen a new version of these vehicles so I can only assume that the relics that chunder back and forth are from the days of Peron and are kept much as London keeps its routemasters.
Peculiarities abound here:
Number One: each shop or business seems to have the right or the duty to develop its own pavement covering: crazy paving here, buckled flagstones there, Romanesque mosaic right here - all different heights - sleeping policemen for the over zealous pedestrian. My favourite design was the surprisingly common ‘wooden pallet over mud’: ´Claims-R-Us´ would clean up here.
Number Two: one of the products listed at the airport as not fit for bringing into Argentina, along with the usual fruit, meat and pets, was....semen! It brings a whole new meaning to ‘coming into the country´.
Number Three: the singing on demonstrations in Buenos Aires is positively melodic and makes them far more attractive than the football style chanting of the British demo. I passed a colourful demo near a flea market in Palermo that seemed to be populated by the flea holders; a curious affair that led with three key melodies for tenors and mezzo sopranos; no sooner had it caught the attention and got the traffic diverted than it dispersed and the demonstrators went back to peddling Argentinean beady wares and ghastly woolly affairs. Urban metal railings really are purpose built for hanging pieces of dodgy ´local´ art.
Cake appears to be a passion here in Buenos Aires; well I suppose that some country had to share this passion with the Belgians. Almost every shopping block has at least one elaborate and well stocked cake shop. The cakes are huge cream covered affairs and are displayed with great pride, yet in all my visits to coffee shops on the cooler days I struggled to see anyone eat any, so the cake fetish remains unproven beyond the urge to display. Meat is a more obvious passion and there is plenty of that everywhere but why a city so close to the sea and with links to the Spanish should not have a greater love of fish is surprising. The only fish I have seen on offer to date have been salmon, trout and hake, although my saunter up to Tigre on a bone shaker from the main BA station at Retiro did reward me with some flatfish. Maria Lujan, the restaurant I chose in this aquatic city escape was recommended by the Time Out guide, which I think does cities better than the other guides. This place was beneath a large tree on the banks of Rio Lujan one of the inlets of the huge Tigre delta that was and is becoming again a fashionable retreat from the noise and car fume stench of the city. The Tigre region has faded glory but is well maintained and if you ignore the hideously huge Mcdonalds sign that is planted on a row of original looking stables there is a real charm to the place. I walked off the meal watching the craft sail back and forth while relaunching my laughable ´lets buy a boat´ charade.
San Telmo on Sunday came heavily recommended (Frederico, my Buenos Aires travel agent and the people at the B&B to name three) for a stroll round the Antiquefest that takes place in the streets around Av Defensa. The danger with these honey-pot affairs is that, as I have observed in all the cities I visit, they fall victim to the lowest common denominator of street artists; King Pan Pipes and Queen Statue People. Well, the Queens were well out in force here and, I am afraid to say getting a wonderful reaction, but this area also had great novelty amongst its narrow cobbled streets of antique stalls and shops. The city has tango and the streets were the place for this to be exhibited; not just exhibited but paraded with lectures about the dance and its relationship with the city. All ages were at it and with some considerable skill. Of course the great advantage about lacking the local language is that the crowds chatter becomes background colour instead of inane comments and there is no detraction from the scene. Whilst there were some wonderful exponents of the ‘tango’ my all time favourite artist was ‘Maleva of San Telmo’. Now she did not exactly practice the tango but the music emanating from her small stereo player and the photos on the wall behind her suggested that in days gone by, perhaps the days of Peron himself, she had been in close contact with ´the tango´. So what was her act today? Well, this 80 yr old paraded back and forth in fish nets, stilettos and a mock leopard skin coat. Her peroxide blonde coiffeur hardly moved in the fair breeze that blew up the street. She clutched a naked baby doll by its blonde hair in her black gloved right hand and demanded 2 pesos for a photograph - without the offer of a donation she would throw up her black gloved left hand in a stop motion and then point to the cup that stood beneath her. She was fascinating – I was mesmerised by the sight and the possibility of a world of history behind her arrival at this spot. She was a thousand times more entertaining in doing very little than the inane statue people stuck in the wind down the street doing nothing. Elsewhere the musicians and puppeteers all added originality to the streets. The antiques held a lot of fascination too: a lot of silver plate ware and a sideline specialisation in old coloured soda bottles which could be bought for a few pesos and yes of course I looked at them and thought about the number of pounds I could flog them for to pretentious suckers in Camden or Portobello. The eateries around Plaza Derrago, the centre of San Telmo, were packed and doing a roaring tourist trade although none had yet moved to Spanish/English menus, and what they lacked in culinary class they made up for in character. My favourite shop in the whole street was the second hand record store which stocked such a poor collection of records I was laughing out loud: Bee Gees (the bad albums), Carpenters, America, Van Halen, Blood Sweat and Tears, AHA, Yes and Art Garfunkel solo albums were a speciality. But then just as I got bored of the awful predictability of the racks I came across THE BEST OF CHAD AND JEREMY which was advertised as "LOADED WITH HITS". Exactly! Who???? Before I could ponder that any further my eyes and ears were taken by a church parade of an elevated Mary down the street followed by hordes of people. I followed at a distance to the local church, Iglesia Nuestra Senora de Belen, an impressive twin towered Andalucian style structure, that was decked with bunting. A brass marching band stood by for the end of the blessing and the fireworks and then they let rip with some foot tapping brassy numbers - the Latin American brassy sound is hard to describe but it is utterly affecting.
I came across the Plaza del Mayo purely by chance as I meandered up from the old docks which were now done up in ‘new dock’ style just like any other old docks have been done from Cape Town to Bristol to Boston: themed or chained restaurants, walkways and plenty of luxury apartments and office space. Ho Hum. The world is short of imagination. Historical curiosities abound though even here. The huge steel protrusions used in the past for the securing of ships that dotted the harbour line were stamped with the name of a forgery in Cardiff. Interesting that 150 years ago Cardiff would have been the natural place to get them made
Anyhow I was around the Plaza del Mayo at a time approaching 6pm and I was drawn to the famous Casa de Rosa partly because it was lit up on the southern end of the square but also partly as it was painted a most dire colour of pink. The building itself held little architectural merit but what took place in front was of more interest. Eight elaborately dressed guards with drawn swords stood around a huge flag pole and waited until 6pm to begin an overblown ceremony to lower the huge national flag. On an oral command one guard blew a trumpet fanfare (note to trumpetologists - he used a one valved trumpet) while two others lowered the flag and bagged it: all very straightforward but for the formation march that followed that was pure John Cleese. Every nation’s army appears to have to adopt a walk to match its flag or its anthem. These Argentinean guards marched as if they were wading through deep mud with the front foot thrown out a great distance knee bent and the following leg dragged up and forward to follow. I followed their path as they began to lollop toward the edge of the Plaza and the usual six lanes of traffic that stood between them and the Casa de Rosa. How cute! One soldier pressed the traffic signal and they stopped to wait for the green man! I really couldn’t imagine any of the guards outside Buckingham Palace waiting with their swords drawn for the green man in order to cross safely.
The Plaza del Mayo was also home to protest; a long running protest about some 90 young people who appear to have been killed or ‘lost’ because of corruption at the highest level, and a disgruntled bunch of Malvina Veterans clearly very unhappy with their lot. To demonstrate this unhappiness the verterans sat around all day long with banners chatting, smoking and drinking that local green tea that appears in little drinking pots everywhere in this city. Every time I passed through the square I saw them; a sad existence for soldiers that were clearly sent up a South Atlantic garden path.
La Boca is a poorer district of the city and on the tourist’s itinerary for the art galleries along the waterfront, the brightly painted houses of the neighbouring streets, and for the Boca Juniors football stadium. I met up with a group of schoolchildren who wanted their photograph taken. All schoolchildren apparently wear white coats, much as our lab technicians to, so to a casual visitor it can look like there are a lot of young scientists around the place. Having taken their photograph I was then asked several ‘beginner English’ questions: “Where do you live”, “Do you like Buenos Aires”, “What is your job” and so on. The girl asking the questions was delightful and I chatted to their teachers who said the children were from a school in the Palermo district which was where I was also staying. Palermo was a fairly well to do, up and coming area of the city, where the arty types had colonised old buildings only to be followed by money in the form of property developers and fashionable restaurants and boutiques. As it is right now there is a good balance between grime and money; a few more years and it could suffer the same fate that a district like that around Northcote Road market in South London suffers, which is a smothering saturation of the moneyed classes to the detriment of any other reality.
The public transport of the city is dominated by small black taxis and the single deck bus companies that speed around the streets. It was about Day 10 before I braved the bus system partly because of the bewildering array of buses and bus companies that seemed to have little co-ordination. Bus routes snaked from one side of the city in chaotic routes that can only have emerged by a series of historic random choices on the part of an operator. Every route appears to have its own coloured buses and the 29 is one of the more glamorous. It costs less than a peso to travel on the bus, they travel in short intervals and at high speed so they are quite effective at getting from one part to another; well, they get to one part very quickly but you have to be damn smart to get off. If the passenger is not poised ready to disembark, then the few seconds the doors are left open will not be enough. The pensioner here has a remarkable balance, greatly agility and strong grip. I don’t think the grumbling London pensioner would cope. The 29 route that took me away from La Boca weaved its way through many streets I had not yet ventured down and then along through San Telmo through to the busy heart of the city. It was a good way to see the city and spy over the goings on.
Poor weather on the last day drove me to the main shopping street of the city which of course was a mistake. The place was as devoid of joy as Oxford Street, the Ramblas, 42nd Street or any other main city thoroughfare. It was here that I came across my nemesis; the pan pipers. There they were complete with huge amplification, ponchos and CDs…..although they were absent from the rest of the city I knew they must have been hiding somewhere. As it was raining I ducked into a cinema. This cinema, which gave out complementary hot dogs with tickets (I declined my hot dog because as I am with Steve Martin on this issue; I don’t like animal lips) was a cheap as chips. I entered the cinema and stepped into a vast cavernous space the like I have never seen before. The seating was basic but the space was cathedral like. I sat totally spellbound by the space and the film, Sin City, was not able to compete with the space in which it was being shown.
With a strange exhibition of symmetry, my last day first day mirrored by first day; I witnessed a traffic accident, this time a motorcyclist sprawled over the road and a bus driver giving him short shrift. The accident was in lanes four, five and six of the eighteen lane expanse that is the 9th July Avenue. My bus driver bobbed around the incident but all the passengers looked over and moved their heads disapprovingly. The passengers on the stranded bus looked drawn in the face – wondering how long they would be stranded on the bus in the middle of a motorway with no means of escape. The second event was more pleasant. As I strolled along Avenida Santa Fe I came across the dancing pies that I had seen a week before. On my first day I had witnessed the four dancing pies parading themselves in highly choreographed style in front of bewildered motorists at a traffic junction to music being blared out from the kerb. The pies were very fetching as they had long eyelashes and long arms and legs. This time the dancing pies were doing Avenida Santa Fe and hopping on and off a trailer to give out free pies to passers by. I was given one but gave it on to a kid who missed out as they all appeared to be filled with beef…what else would they be filled with?
Argentina
Situated in the heart of Palermo Viejo, this boutique style hotel offers comfortable rooms (more than 5!), friendly and helpful staff and a beautiful roof top with a small jacuzzi pool.
4742 Honduras, Palermo Viejo.
Phone: 54 11 5235 5555
www.fivebuenosaires.com
If you are staying in BA for more than 4 days, use one of them to go to Colonia in Urugauy. You catch a ferry that takes you up the River Plate. It takes about 90 minutes.
Colonia is a World Heritage listed town and you can see why as soon as you get there. Cobbled street, picture perfect houses and a natty little light house to climb.
For lunch go to the yatch club and get a table outside. Sit back and enjoy whatever Chef recommends.
Colonia could easilly be the most charming town in the world I can't recommend it enough.
Buquebus offers ferries to/from Buenos Aires and Uruguay (Colonia, Montevideo) in combination with coach transportation within Uruguay. Very easy to book online, very reasonable rates (my roundtrip ferry/bus fare was less than $100). The ferry is comfortable, as are the buses. For pictures and full description go to www.travelmusings.net
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