Argentina

Early December to late December 2006

I flew north out of Chilean Tierra del Fuego, and after a brief stop again in Santiago, I caught a bus through some beautiful Andean scenery into Argentina. My first stop was Mendoza, a small-ish city in Argentinian wine country.

My plan for Mendoza was all about chilling out. Patagonia had involved a lot of running around, hiking on glaciers and all that energetic, outdoorsy stuff. Now I was looking forward to just pausing for breath, drinking some local wine, and having someone do my laundry! At some points in the Patagonian cold, I must have been wearing every article of clothing I could find in my backpack, all at once…

Mendoza was a pleasant laid-back place to relax, with lots of pavement cafes to while away time at, and some attractive sunny squares to sit in and read. One day I made a trip out of town to the La Rural vineyard and winery, which also had a museum of wine making. They provided a free guided tour in Spanish and English, which of course ended with a sampling.

However, one of the most refreshing things about Mendoza was the noticeable drop in the cost of living compared to anywhere in Chile, (and also even compared to Argentinian Patagonia, where presumably stuff was so expensive because the region is a bit remote). The currently cheap Argentinean Peso is a hangover from the country’s financial collapse back in 2001, which obviously increased levels of poverty. But it is hard to pretend that lower prices for everything didn’t come as a relief to the dwindling travel budget…

So after a few days of R&R in Mendoza, I was ready to head over to big bad Buenos Aires! The reputation of this place really preceded it. Right from the point that I started planning this trip, I had people telling me that BA rocked their world like no other city on earth, and everyone that I had met on my trip so far that had been had backed this up. So it had a lot of hype to live up to!

The trip from Mendoza to Buenos Aires was to be by overnight bus, and since this was going to be the last long-distance bus journey of my whole trip I decided to splash out on the experience of going first class. This meant being downstairs on the double-decker, where there were only six seats on the whole deck. These seats reclined to be fully horizontal, and for the first time on this trip I actually got a decent night’s sleep on an overnight bus! The fact that they served dinner with wine, followed by glasses of cava, probably helped.

So I arrived in Buenos Aires fairly refreshed. Since I was going to be in BA for some time, I spent the first night in a nice enough hostel in the San Telmo area but in the morning started to search for a cheaper one. It was high season and there really wasn’t much else available, but walking back to my original hostel I noticed a sign for one called Ayres de San Telmo, and a woman standing outside looking a bit like she was locked out.

She turned out to be Jen, a Canadian flight attendant, and indeed she was staying there but couldn't get in. Jen told me that the hostel had only just been opened, everything was brand new and really nice, and that she was virtually the only guest. So when the staff finally answered the door, I booked a dorm bed for myself on the understanding that I could have the whole en-suite four-bed room to myself, unless they had filled the 40 or so other spaces in the place first. In the end, I did have the whole room to myself for my entire time in BA, and I don’t think they ever had more than a total of five guests while I was there. I suspect that this sort of thing won’t be possible once they sort their marketing out…

So now I had a nice place to stay, I could set about enjoying the city. Without any doubt at all, Buenos Aires met all the hype and then effortlessly rose several notches above it. I never thought that I would find a place in South America that I would genuinely not want to leave, but there it was. The bars, the achitecture, the galleries, the shops, the restaurants, the music, the clubs, the noticeably high percentage of attractive porteñas (female BA citizens), the culture, the diversity… and the dog walkers!

A common sight in BA are professional dog walkers who often have an unfeasible number of pooches strapped to them at once. Although upper-body strength would clearly be a pre-requisite for this job, city law actually limits the number of dogs a person can walk at one time in case they get out of hand. The law doesn't seem to bother anyone though; this guy has a dozen with him! Somehow they always seem well-behaved…. none of the nipping, yapping, snarling and humping you might expect from a group of random dogs thrown together. Anyway, being someone who loves dogs but isn’t responsible enough to own one, seeing sights like this always made me smile!

Being British, it was interesting to talk to locals about attitudes within the two nations towards each other, a quarter of a century after the Falklands-Malvinas conflict. In particular, I had a long and really interesting conversation with a young punky guy who worked in a t-shirt shop, had a mohican and spoke excellent English. He told me that many older Argentinians consider the war to have been a success for their country, and still resent British ownership of the aforementioned sheep-infested rocks. He himself was fond of the UK as he saw it as the cradle of punk rock, and also liked British people because they tended to be the most polite customers that came into his shop!

When he asked me how most British people viewed Argentina, I realised that images of the Falklands conflict have probably now been replaced by soccer player Diego Maradona’s infamous “hand of God” goal, which knocked England out of the 1986 world cup. In fact, Argentinians seem curiously proud of this incident of shameful cheating; you can buy numerous t-shirts, aimed presumably at English tourists, commemorating “la mano de Dios”…!

I have to say that I was never aware of any prejudice or resentment based on my nationality the entire time I was in Argentina, (and I had half-expected to at some point). The scars of the war are still there, though. In the Retiro area of Buenos Aires there is an ornate brick clock tower, built from English parts by Anglo ex-pats who were living in Argentina a century or so ago. It used to be called Torre de los Ingleses, but in the 1980s it was renamed simply Torre Monumental. Now standing directly opposite the tower is a monument to the Argentinian servicemen who died in the Falklands.

Anyway… in Buenos Aires I met up again with Henriette with whom I had been in the Peruvian jungle, Mike from my travels in Ecuador and Peru, and Kath from Torres del Paine. It seems that people travelling in South America inevitably gravitate towards Buenos Aires, (and then often stay longer than they had intended!). Also through Jen I met Alegria, with whom I spent some time in the city.

There was just so much to do. Jen, Alegria and I took tango lessons, and although I managed to avoid crushing any of my partners’ toes I have to admit that I wasn't too light in my loafers. But it was great fun! Then there was a night in Pacha. Clubs in Buenos Aires don’t open until about 2 a.m., then they just keep going until well into the following day. Other than the late hours, Pacha was actually not dissimilar to any other big club playing house music anywhere in the world, except for the fact that it seemed everyone was wearing sunglasses, usually pushed up on the head. Ahhh, that’ll be for the sunrise on the outside terrace! Actually on the morning we were there, a violent thunder storm raged outside accompanied by highly destructive gales and horizontal rain, but that didn’t stop some hardcore porteño clubbers getting soaked greeting the dawn in an al fresco stylee....

Then there was the visit to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, the Museo Xul Solar…. the tango show at Café Tortoni, the incredible open-air percussion show that Alegria and I watched, the tour of old underground tunnels created by previous city inhabitants, the nice soft black leather jacket I got for an absolute song. Not to mention the countless excellent meals, especially the bife de lomo at a parrilla (steak house) called El Desnivel. I swear it was the first time in my life that a slice of beef has melted on my tongue. Wandering around the huge, ornate Cemeterio de la Recoleta where Eva Peron is interred, taking a stroll around the colourfully painted area of La Boca, the weekend street market and performers in San Telmo...

So as you can probably tell, yes I did love Buenos Aires. However, I did manage to tear myself away for a couple of nights to fly up to Iguazu in the northeast corner of the country, where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. There are some of the most amazing waterfalls in the world, including the awesome Garganta del Diablo, or Devil’s Throat, which is semi-circular and so the water appears to be pouring into a huge demonic gullet. The noise and spray close up to the thing was incredible, and it was quite hard to take pictures while keeping the camera dry. I came away from it soaked to the skin just through the airborne spray.

With some of the less violent falls you can take a launch out on the lake to have a look at them. Then, after they have issued you with a dry bag for your precious belongings, they take you right up close to the falling water and you really might as well be under the waterfall itself. Thankfully the day I went it was very hot and sunny, so drying off, (for the second time), wasn’t too much of an issue.

After I had seen the falls from the Argentinian side, I decided to try to see those on the Brazilian side as well. So on the day of my afternoon flight back to Buenos Aires, I set off early on the morning to try to “do” the Brazilian side of the falls before lunch. This was a woefully over-ambitious plan. Once the logistics of getting a bus to the border, getting off for immigration, waiting for the next bus onwards etc. had been dealt with, I just reached the entrance to the park where the falls were in time to turn around and go back! Apparently they aren’t as stunning as the Argentinian ones, and you can’t get as close so I don’t feel too bad about it.

My morning jaunt across the border into Portuguese-speaking Brazil had reminded me what it was like not being able to speak to or understand the locals again; my assumption that Brazilians would be able to understand my Spanish were somewhat ill-founded! However, it made coming back to Argentina actually feel like a homecoming to a familiar place, and I suddenly had a new-found pride in the Spanish abilities that I had scraped together over my five months in Latin America.

So then it was back to Buenos Aires, and almost time to leave for Europe on my Christmas Day flight. My hasta luego to BA, and indeed Latin America, was to visit Pacha again, this time in the wee hours of Christmas Day. I saw the sun come up, (no storm this time!), with the partying porteños then left around 8 a.m, squeezing into a cab with some Dutch clubbers. I went back to my place, got my stuff packed and got myself to the airport for my 2 p.m. flight to Madrid. Thankfully there was an empty seat next to me, and I slept all the way back to Europe.