No hablo espanol - Blogabond

So we´ve had a full week in Buenos Aires now, and apart from the searing heat, it´s been great. Strangely it seems to be hottest at around 4pm in the afternoon, and got up to 38 degrees the other day. The city reminds me a bit of Paris, with its wide boulevards and beautiful architecture (in places). In order to improve the old espanol I registered for beginners Spanish classes from 9am to 1pm Monday to Friday, and they were good fun. It was a good group of students (including Dolly Parton´s cousin!) and although I couldn´t be called fluent at the end of the week, I can probably now make myself understood in a restaurant which lessens the likelihood of ordering an intestine and anchovy pizza.

Spent one evening down at Cafe Tortoni, an Argentinian institution incorporating a restaurant upstairs and a tango show downstairs. I´m not sure where it stood on the tourist vs authentic axis, but it was an entertaining night out nonetheless. The body clock needs adjusting a bit out here. It seems nobody goes out before 10pm, and when we went for a night out on Saturday in Palermo, there was virtually nobody in the bar we were in until 1am. We were being escorted round by a guy from Buenos Aires, and by the time it got to 4am he told us we should go to this bar that would just be getting going! He seemed surprised when I explained that back home people would normally be passed out on their sofas with pieces of kebab stuck to their shirts.

There are some great street markets here, with impromptu entertainers performing all over the place (a higher quality variety than their South Bank equivalents) and the food has been good too. Although it´s difficult to get what you´d call a balanced meal here. If you order meat, you get a plate of meat, and if you order salad you get a huge bowl of salad. It doesn´t seem possible to get a steak and chips with a side salad. It´s one thing or the other. But the steaks are great! We went out for a day to a town in the Pampas which is Argentinian gaucho (cowboy) territory. Hoped to see poncho-clad gauchos on horseback lassoing errant cows, but sadly it was a bit tamer than that. But enough to get a sense of Argentinian history prior to the importing of culture from Europe in the 19th century.

Impressive city though it is, it is still a city with all the dirt and noise that goes with that, so it´ll be good to get down to Patagonia in a few days and get back to a bit of nature.

written by

phileasdogg on January 18, 2009 from Buenos Aires, Argentina

from the travel blog: Planes, Trains & Taxiwallahs

Send a Compliment

comment on this...