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Tango, beef, opera and a soupcon of old Paris
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Buenos Aires was a helluva surprise for me.
I expected the size of the city we stared down on from our aircraft
window as we approached. I did not expect to see, out the window
opposite, an extension of the city nearly twice that size stretching
along the River Plate.
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Tango first, dine much later in B.A. |
B A, as the portenos call it, has a population of 11 million, and an additional peri-urban population equal to that of the whole of Greater Johannesburg. In those terms – but only in those terms - BA is nearly as big as the city of New York.
It is of course nothing like New York, or any other of the mega-cities of the world. It belongs in another age; less frantic; more confident.
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The portenos relatively recently ripped out the heart of their city to create their urban extravaganza known as the Avenda 9 de Julio
to commemorate their independence of Spain. This main artery is 7kms
long and 140m wide, with 20 traffic lanes, four broad islands and
several grand plazas.
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Most traffic islands are lawns under flowering
trees that shelter flocks of parrots, and remarkably few ‘birds of
passage’ or drug addicts who go there to warm themselves on the
Underground’s ventilation.
BA calls itself ‘the Paris of the South’, but if it resembles Paris at all, it has to be the Paris of the 1930s. Or pre-World War II Europe, for its residents are a mix mainly of Spanish, Italian, German and English, and its institutions belong to an older world; Catholic; almost quaint. Eva Peron has become an icon, revered by some almost as much as the Virgin Mary. She was finally buried in Recoleta cemetery – to which Eva Duarte’s family (but not Peron) were given access. Recoleta is the exclusive and final refuge of Argentina’s land barons, early capitalists and tyrannical military leaders.
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Recoleta, and the neighbouring cemetery, which
houses among its celebrities Juan Peron and the champion of Tango, are
central institutions to this strangely laid-back society. Which other
city lists its cemeteries among its ten best attractions? |
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Argentine flourishes marvellously on unpaid foreign debts; and on memories. BA models its style on the tango, and you are not allowed to forget it. However, the upper-crust prefer the style of polo. There are polo fields even in the heart of the built-up area.
The city has a constantly active Opera House, the Teatro Colon which was founded at the end of the 19th century (completed 1906, I think) and which compares with Milan’s La Scala and l’Opera in Paris.
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In the western boulevards that divide BA’s great
sprawling parks there are elegant squares and monuments contributed by
almost every European country – as well as Russia, China, Japan and
others. In the parks you will see packs of dogs on leashes.Students earn money taking apartment-dwellers’ dogs for walkies, but it’s not an easy
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job, for all the dogs seem to be of large, macho breeds.
Eastwards, in the old fishing harbour, a carefully restored Bohemian Quarter named Artes de La Boca, consciously recaptures – not the ways of the original fishermen, but the atmosphere of a European Latin Quarter of the 1920s.
All these are obvious first-sights for a visitor to BA. You will not escape the Plaza de Mayo, with its pink presidential palace where Eva Peron was immortalised (in film, not reality) waving to the mobs from the balcony; nor the Calle Florida, the famous pedestrian shopping mall. Nor should you.
(Shopping, I’m told, is well worthwhile. I was persuaded to buy a pair of very good shoes at a price ‘you won’t see in SA or anywhere else’).
In sum:
# take a city tour, then visit as many of the recommended tourist sights as you can. They are ‘different” and interesting, and tell you about BA.
#Visit a Tango show – my first choice:- ‘Senor Tango’, which has entertaining show-biz professionals, above the shows that try to offer tango as serious culture.
# I recommend a brief stop at Recoleta Cemetery, even though, at first, I did not want to be bothered. Also, nearby, you should check out the luxury Alvear Palace Hotel. We tried, but failed to find time to lunch there, for we were told by a ship’s ‘expert’ that it was ‘the best bargain in BA – about 15 dollars for lunch’.
#Definitely find time for a tour of the Teatro Colon opera house. It’s an eye-opener; a visit which has nothing like it anywhere else in the world I think. (They say it's interior studios, chambers, workrooms et al are more accessible to the public than are the Opera Houses of Rome, Milan and Paris). There's a tour every hour on the hour. Get there early.
#Definitely find time for a beer at Café Tortoni in Avda. de Mayo, if only for the nostalgic décor.
# If you have time, take an afternoon to relax on an organised tour to Tigra delta and the canals and resort just outside the city. If you take the tour instead of trying to do it independently, you will be picked up and returned to your hotel by a guide in a mini-bus; then taken on a neat, brief train ride through leafy suburbs and markets, then put on a boat to drink beer while you see how the Argentines live in the country and on the water.
#Cisco Sour was our party’s favoured local drink throughout south-South America. . . not as good as a ciaparina, but worth a try. Beer is reasonably priced on the BA boulevards, and always seems to be accompanied by chips and peanuts, olives, sometimes even ‘free’ chicken-legs.
Enjoy. |
