#38 Baking in Buenos Aires

Sunflowers in Buenos Aires province! A welcome change
from the thousands of kilometres of nothingness of R3.

No, we didn't spend our week in one of the world's cosmopolitain cities in the kitchen, we spent it in the sweltering heat. While New Zealand was experiencing one of its worst summers in a while, temperatures in B.A. reached a 50 year high, on one day surpassing 38ºC. It seemed  the perfect opportunity to spend some time in an air conditioned apartment watching t.v. After 3 months it was important to catch up on the essentials we had missed - `Keeping up with the Kardaishians, Chloe and Kim take Miami, Chloe and Lamar, etc etc.


Our apartment bordered the posh suburbs of Palermo and Recoleta, and even had a view of the Rio del Plata if you craned your neck. Not that the muddied waters of the river are much to look at. An apartment allowed us some time to chill out by ourselves while still experiencing what the city had to offer. That included sightseeing to the suburbs of San Telmo and La Boca, home to the famous Boca Juniors (a soccer team for those who like me, had never heard of Maradona's home team before arriving in South America!). To be honest, La Boca was a bit of a let down. We were told that it was danagerous to deviate from the walking street fair which left us with a handful of souvenir shops, 'tango dancers' used restaurants to lure in patrons, street artists, and some markets, albeit in brightly painted interesting looking buildings.

San Telmo was an improvement. Sundays see it's famous antiques fair where you could buy anything from silverware and pocket watches to old-style working telephones, along with the hordes of other market goods directed towards the thousands of tourists that descend on its cobledstones streets each week. My one purchase turned out to be a dud: I got some second hand sunglasses which I proudly haggled down from 30 to 20 pesos (a saving of US$2.50) only to find that what I thought were simply smudge marks were in fact scratches. Nice bargaining Charlotte.

There is of course plenty of Evita related memorabilia in the city: a museum (we didn't visit), the famous balcony of the Casa Rosada (the government house, translated as the 'Pink house') from where she waved to the crowds, and her mausoleum. This was definately a highlight of our time, though Evita's tomb was a bit lacklustre - it would be much better if you could see her mummified body inside. The tour of the museum included some great stories of a number of prominent and wealthy Argentines buried in fabulously over-the-top monuments. If anyones interested tombs (used) start at around $50,000 for a basic plot.

And then of course Buenos Aires most famous tourist attraction: tango. I had wanted to make the week all about tango: tango shows, tango lessons, tango dances at local milongas (dance halls), but I realised what one could learn in a week was never really going to be enough to dance at a milonga, so we skipped both and simply attended a show instead. That too was nearly skipped. Tango is offered everywhere and its apparently impossible to see 'the real thing', whatever that may be, in a show. Still, we weren't interested in some cabaret/dinner big.. so settled on a smaller show in Buenos Aires oldest cafe: Cafe Tortoni.

We were unable to get through on the phone to make a reservation so figured we would just turn up to purchase tickets. Enough said. We turned up the following night (hoping no one would notice we were wearing the same clothes) for the cheaper of the two shows on offer. It apparently had less dancing but more singing than the other show. Still, that implied some dancing and when there was none (though a very nice show none-the-less, Reece's highlight the dynamic piano-accordion player), we felt justified in being slightly disappointed. That dissappointment was expressed in a friendly manner to the Manager, and what do you know, we got to see the other show that night too. If we had have known what was on offer for an extra $5 we would have instantly opted for it, a storyline, costume changers, three wonderful dancing couples, a band, and a male singer in a cozy theatre.

The narrow lanes of the mausoleum.

Probably the highlight of Buenos Aires was a tour we did on our second to last day in the city. Reece had found a street-art walking tour through to see some of the graffiti art on offer and learn some of the history of street-art in B.A., the politics behind it and about some of the artists themselves. There's a photo below of painted white head scarfs representing the mother's of the Plaza de Mayo, an organisation formed by a group of women whose children 'disappeared' in Argentina's Dirty War. For years these women met in the Plaza de Mayo in Central Buenos Aires to voice their protests; the scarfs are a symbol of children's blankets and were used to identify one another when the movement first began. The scarfs are often painted above children's playgrounds around the city.