Every guidebook says it, and everyone who has been will tell you that Buenos Aires is a city that feels very European – Parisian architecture everywhere, a relatively cosmopolitan mix of (sometimes quite astoundingly beautiful) people, every type of shop, café and restaurant. But I also think it feels, in places, quite like New York too – narrow, straight avenues rammed with people and littered with shop signs and advertising boards, enclosed by grand, ornate bank buildings and tall, tall shiny office blocks housing International company headquarters.
On my first day, after arriving at very early o’clock on the overnight bus from Mendoza, I was given a fake 50 peso note (about £8 or £9) by a taxi driver, did a city tour with Marc and Jennie who I arranged to see again after meeting them in San Pedro, got drunk in an Irish bar and then had the first of my 4 visits to Des Nivel, where the steak is amazing and relatively cheap, and where they serve wine in penguin shaped carafes.
The hostel I stayed in during my first week in BA was so quiet, hardly anyone else was there. And those who were, I tried to avoid. The first was Jean-Claude, a French-Canadian writer of about 65 who, although he had some interesting tales to tell, was too easy with his compliments (“Your accent is like a gift to me, just talk, about anything”, “Your smile is so genuine”). He also had swine flu, and was meant to be in quarantine – though that didn’t stop him chatting me up over breakfast. The other avoidee was a 20 year old Turkish chap who seemed to think that because we were in the same room we had to hang around together the whole time. He could speak no English and very little Spanish so we couldn’t even have a proper conversation. He kept getting lost in the city, he did nothing else but look for the Turkish embassy, he smoked constantly. And he still owes me 5 pesos.
During that first week I did pretty much all the site seeing required. I visited a couple of galleries, some museums on the city’s history and Eva Peron, the famous cemetery (which is like a little neglected model village, where the grand, rich family’s tombs line up in rows like squat houses, cobwebbed and ageing away).
I tried to dance some Tango, taking a lesson along with a few people I met in Mendoza – it’s a sleek, stylish, sexy dance but I made it look like a stuttering stroll, and I was always completely out of time with the music.
With Yoshi, who I also met in the hostel in Mendoza, I visited some bars in Puerto Madero and had the first of my visits to La Boca, a poor area of the city which although is a bit of a tourist trap still feels unique and interesting with its bright, mis-matched coloured walls, window-frames and shops, all surrounding cafes with Tango and folkloric dancers out front. Boca Juniors, the team that Maradonna played for, have their stadium near these few rainbowed streets. On my second visit to the area, on the day I met Angus (introduced to me by George), who in turn introduced us to Kate, Muireann and Karen, I would buy my Boca Juniors boxer shorts - the Argentinean entry into my pant collection.
I followed through on my desire to do some more volunteering, this time with kids who live in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in areas (called villas, pronounced ‘vishas’) that tend not to have street names, where ambulances don’t visit, and where drugs, gun crime, teenage pregnancy and adequate sanitation facilities are just some of the problems faced. The organisation is called L.I.F.E. (www.lifeargentina.org, which stands for Luchemos para una Infancia Feliz y con Esperanza = We strive for a childhood with happiness and hope) and their primary aim really is to give the kids of those areas something positive to do that keeps them off the streets, to help a little with their schooling, raise their aspirations and make them feel important, that people care about them. So the volunteers, mostly from the US and Britain, play sport with them, teach a little English, do some maths, colouring, make balloon animals, paint faces, fly kites... as well as offer chocolatey milk and cereal. Mostly the children were sweet, funny and kind, but of course some would steal games and fight, quite violently actually (as we left in the van one day there were stone missiles being hurled as a sobbing chubby boy wielded a breeze block…). I went to a couple of different areas during my afternoons of volunteering. The villa that stood out for me was centred around an old unfinished hospital building, 8 open floors of bare brick corners and nothing else. Families lived inside this tall building that had no walls, and that particularly struck me as during the time we were there it was cold, windy and raining. We played football in a little courtyard beneath the half-finished building as waste water dripped into the corner and under some concrete steps a litter of newly born puppies sheltered. It felt very desolate and miserable there that day.
A couple of volunteers managed to get swine flu, so a few days of activities were cancelled (we randomly met one of the culprits, Swine Flu Stew, later on staying in the hostel), and there was also a day cancelled due to torrential rain – so I went to the cinema to watch what is the worst film I have ever seen, Transformers 2. Unfortunately, I paid to see it again a few weeks later when I went to the cinema one night with George, Angus, Kate and Muireann hoping something else would be on. It was slightly better the second time actually, though still awful.
I met Mr George Evans volunteering at a football session where the kids were doing step-overs, scoring volleys, leaping into overhead kicks and feigning injury. And I ended up spending most of the rest of my time in BA with him and his big smile. He had met Angus in La Paz and they’d arranged to meet in Buenos Aires. In the meantime Angus had met Kate and Muireann, who bumped into Karen a few times on their trip - she had with her Aidan and Marco - and we all ended up convening in Milhouse Hostel one Saturday, eeking together enough change for the bus to La Boca, making friends, and later having a great drunken night out.
George is a catalyst for good times, he just makes them happen, and he can befriend absolutely anyone – he has the energy of 3 men, a 6 year old’s capacity for fun, chat that runs and runs. Angus is somehow the final piece of any situation’s jigsaw – stories happen around him, as if when he arrives good fortune or bad luck conspire to conjure up an event, his presence enough to bring to head the potential of a scenario, giving him enough stories to keep a hundred grandchildren entertained. So I couldn’t have met two better people to be my best Buenos Aires buddies… meaning I’ve too many good times to log here…
Though I do need to mention, so I can’t forget: Three more visits to Des Nivel and their perfect Bife de Lomo, wandering around San Telmo market (its antiques, 1920’s Tango artefacts, accordion music, leather and paintings and tat, ramshackle junk shops, Parisian balconies and flaking plaster frescos), chori-pan, making up stories over tea on sofas, Illanit (despite the small vocabulary she’s the wisest, most reasoned, most centred person I’ve met… though I won’t mention 3 drinks = 3 cabs to get home + sizeable dry cleaning bill), Bomba del Tiempo followed by Edwardian court musicians doing disco classics, all the LIFE volunteers, “rubio”, La Cabrera topped and tailed by free champagne, the Urban Art show, La Continental for empanadas, pizza slices, chats and wine, Joy and Rocio inviting us round, Vicky and Lucia, gaucho asado and the charging horses in San Antonio de Areco, Plaza Serrano until well into the next day…. and so much more… An unforgettable 3 weeks in Buenos Aires.
