We didn't have the best start to our Argentinian leg of the trip. Having got another 12 hour overnight bus from Sucre in Bolivia to Quiaca (Bolivian-Agentinian border town), we got to the company office of our connecting bus and I was hit by a serious waft of wine. The guy behind the desk was barfing on the floor and in an awful state! We needed our bus tickets fast but this lad was an absolute joke. I proceeded to shout continually at this lad in a faint hope to wake him up as he had fallen into a drunken stooper.
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| Crossing the Argentinian border |
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| Main cathedral at Salta |
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| "Papa Francisco"....a very popular man around these parts |
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| Graffitti in Salta |
We finally caught our connecting bus to Salta and after almost 20 hours between two buses we're like a pair zombies walking into our hostel in Salta. Thankfully after having a shower I started to feel slightly more human again and we head off to the main square of Salta. I had a giant Argentinian steak in my cross hair and we stopped off at "El Posto" for a delicious slab of a Argentinian beef in pepper sauce. And so began my love affair with the Argie steak. Another trip around the square is followed by an early night to bed.
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| Just another bus station |
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is a brilliant bustling metropolis and looking back on it probably ranked as my favourite city of the trip. BA as the locals call it had been billed as the Paris of South America before our arrival. After looking through the guide book, there didn't seem to be any Eiffel tour equivalent, no grand Parisienne walkways or Louvre. There didn't seem to be any focal point. No massive must see sights but as the week unfurled the soul of this city revealed itself in its unstoppable spirit. The locals who are called portenos (port dwellers) say there's three types of Buenos Aires: at night, at day and at the weekend. In the week that we were here we got to experience all three.
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| San Telmo |
We arrived on a Monday morning after a 20hr bus journey from Salta. It seemed a lot easier than any other long journey and a far cry from our chicken buses of Guatemala. Not having the gigantor of a double decker coach traversing through the Andean windy roads lead for a much smoother and easier passage. You can put your feet up and enjoy almost transatlantic-flight style luxuries being served to you at your seat. I even had a chuckle to myself when the bus steward came around just before midnight asking did I want a whiskey in a glass!
We arrived in at 8 in the morning and I was feeling surprisingly fresh. We got a taxi to our hostel "Back in BA" which had been recommended to us by friends. It turned out to be a great shout with a hearty breakfast and a decent bunch of heads staying there. It was funny to bump into some of the fresh faced travellers just beginning their journey and attending Spanish classes. We were coming to the end of ours and here was an avid group of beginners half wondering how they would travel a continent.
The hostel was based in the suburb of Palermo that is probably the coolest neighbourhood I have ever stayed in. Either a trendy little bar, coffee shop or restaurant seems to be on every corner of every block with the answer to every whim of my appetite. Here we had arranged to meet up with some of our friends who we had met in Spanish school in Quito three months earlier. One of the girls Gemma had a friend living in BA. This was a serious stroke of luck as we got treated to all the city's highlights from her friend Johanna. She was an English girl who had adopted BA as her native city for the past two years. We went straight down to San Telmo and all of us ran through our travel stories of the intervening few months over some Argentinian wine sangre and a cool bottle of Quilmes beer.
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| Catching up in San Telmo |
San Telmo is bit of a trendy trap, its a recently gentrified hipster-ville and home to a massive antiques market. As we sat out in the sunshine, a couple began to do a tango dance in the centre of the outdoor plaza. I went over to have a closer look. I had read about the tango culture but as in Ireland I thought I would have to succumb to the tourist circuit to get a feel for the tango. Not at all! This was a few hours into the city and here was a couple looking intently into each others eyes as they perform this almost trance like dance.
Now I'm no stranger to salsa dancing after seeing couples perform it the length and breath of central and South America and even giving it a shot myself. But I was struck by the intimacy and intensity of the tango. Here was a couple in a square almost working on a different telepathic plane than those twins out of the Guinness ad!
The intensity of the gaze and the form of the dance was terrific. I don't spend my Saturday nights adjudicating "Strictly Come Dancing" from the couch but this was a couple almost operating as a single movement. The lady would follow the man but it was all quite slow-slow-quick and with the woman's eyes closed during some of the dance.....it was all played out in this unbelievably sensual way.
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| Tango in the square |
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| Casa Rosada |
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| Saluting the flag at the changing of the guards |
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| Another "25 of May" square |
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| Palermo |
After our 8-9pm nap, local timetables operate on having dinner at 9 or later and sometimes much later with literally no end to the night. We knew we'd need to be on top form to stick the local pace so a mighty shnoooze was enjoyed....my life gets tougher having to snooze before hitting the town!
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| Juan Martin and the Casa Rosada |
Then we went down to one of those said trendy spots for dinner and a titanic almost US college style beer bong. This had a tap on it and you could fill up as you wished. I loved how social this drinking style was. The Quilmes beer started to slip down very well and it's crisp cold taste was probably well needed to snap us out of our slumbering state. We ordered dinner at 11.40! No big deal, we were officially on BA time.
Next day Gemma took up the reigns of the city guide and lead us to a cemetery in Chacarita. Death is bit of a big deal in BA and they bury their dead in the most ornate of plots in a beautiful cemetery. The other more famous one called Recoleta holds the body of one of the most famous portenos..Eva Peron. It was a real nice afternoon spent wandering this quite beautiful monument to death.
After arriving back to the hostel, we were zoning in on having our quintessential Argentinean beef experience in one of BA's most famous steak houses: La Cabrera. I had been told plenty about this place. Basically if you went there at 6.30 and queued up and got seated at 7 you could order anything on the menu for half price once you were out by 8pm when all the local Gauchos (Cowboys: what Agentinians call themselves and are known as by other South Americans) began to arrive.
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| The cemetery at Chacarita |
Just to jump in here, I must give you a background on the current Argentinian currency situation. We had been told prior to coming to Argentina that the dollar was trading on the fx market at 5.9 but on the "grey market" we could get dollars transferred at a rate of 10 Argentinian Pesos to one dollar. The grey market is the market at which you trade dollar currency with money changers on the streets. Needless to say we stocked up on dollars in Bolivia. This effectively meant we would be spending/buying everything for nearly half price.
On this basis we were now going to eat steak for a quarter of the price! Now beef is quite cheap in Argentina anyways purely because the abundance of livestock but to buy it at a quarter of the price was goin to make the juice of this prime meat taste that bit sweeter!
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| Home of the nicest steak in Argentina |
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| STTTTEEEEEEEAAAAAK!! |
One of the lads I had met in Bolivia had taken on 800 grams of steak in La Cabrera, I really wanted to give this a shot. Another English lad, Ian joined us and we all tucked into probably the best meal of the trip. There was no fries, no carbs just meat! I ate the full compliment of 800 grams of sirloin steak and even had space for some of Liz's rib eye. Liz, Gemma, Ellen and Ian made the most of the Argentinian wine aswell. It seems to be all about the Malbec here but for me the Quilmes was still going down very well. By eight o'clock we were all full on the finest and tastiest beef I've ever tasted.
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| Stella and Steak a perfect combo |
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| Trying times on the dancefloor! |
Before we waved the to girls off to the UK we took a trip to Parque San Martin - This guy features everywhere in open parks in South America. You can't go anywhere with a historic backdrop in a city without bumping into either a plaza, park, statue, street name, town or building named after San Martin (Liberator of Peru, Chile and Argentina) and Simon Bolivar Liberator of Bolivia, Venezuela and a number of other South American countries. The pair threw off the Spanish shackles of South America and Simon Bolivar is named the Liberator of the continent.
While jumpin off the point there a bit, a very enjoyable afternoon was spent in the park eating choripan (Argentinian chorizo sausage stuffed in a white roll with chimichurri sauce) which was another top local delicacy. It's another taste of the city that leaves you craving for more and indeed anyone goin to BA...I'd recommend on bringing a huge appetite!
After having our own personal guide bring us around for the first three days, it was time for us to get a feel of the city ourselves. To get our barings we signed ourselves up for a guided tour. We checked out one from our hostel called City Walkers. Here a porteno native from La Boca called Lou lead us around for 3 hours. We were steeped in luck as it was just the pair of us and an Ozzie lady. The tour was great and Lou showed us all the main sights and large city neighbourhoods. I was amazed you could get to most of them on foot in 3 hours.
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| Obilesco |
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| Liz siting on a concrete bench. The city mayor played a private joke on locals by installing these benches in around the city that look like antique cushion benches but are actually concrete |
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| The strange facade of the national cathedral |
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| Enjoying a sub-marino at Tortoni cafe |
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| The famous Tortoni cafe |
Lou told us about the love of Argentinians for protests, wine, food and going out for dinner and theatre is a national pastime. Argentina is one of the greatest looking European influenced cities in South America. This is primarily due to the influential waves of migrating groups they've experienced in their short history. The greatest immigrant community here are Italians and their influence is very evident on the streets with pizza parlours and heladerias littering city blocks. It doesn't stop there either. For me it certainly stuck that they borrowed some of the Italian lifestyle loves: goin out for dinner, drinking good wine and theatre. Indeed BA is now home to one of the greatest and most amazing acoustically equipped theatres in the world at the Teatro Colon. Along with it they have 112 theatres in the city which is only second to New York on numbers in a city in the world.
The tour finished up on 7th of July avenue which is as the portenos proudly tell you "the widest avenue in the world" with 16 lanes of traffic. Here we got to sample Alfajore, which is a chocolate biscuit lined with (Dulce de leche) toffee/caramel inside. Gauchos love their chocolate and we duly obliged to treat ourselves to some of local delights, Lou informed us that Havanna had the best ones and they were indeed delicious. Later we went to a famous French style brasserie on the avenue called Cafe Tortoni and experienced a hot chocolate called submarino which was another sweet tooth delight, the chocolate is an actual chocolate bar dipped in and melted in hot milk which was top drawer.
After that absolute sugar rush, we hit the Teatro Colon and got a guided tour around this extraordinary structure. I had experienced the splendour of the Sydney opera house when I was a kid but we actually got a chance to check out the acoustics here. The tour brought us into the practice room where there was a masterclass ongoin with an Italian opera voice coach. For such clap trap high faluting surrounding the tour gave us a good deal of access to the building. We also found out that the theatre hosted free performances on Sunday morning to give locals free access to this unbelievable building. As the lady called it: "the locals cannot love what they do not know!" We didn't get back to the hostel till 9.30 that night after walking the whole.
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| The facade at the Teatro Colon |
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| Inside we caught an orchestra practicing |
Next day we were up early to get tickets for our free performance in the theatre. It was a string ensemble of 8 cellos and thankfully we secured the tickets. The day was struck down with a brutal downpour that never let up for the whole day. We jumped from the theatre to the cinema as we looked to take refuge in the confines of a multiplex in the heart of the city. We were in serious luck as it was discount day on Friday and all admissions to the cinema were $2 per person! The timetable was to our liking aswell as they had an abundance of new releases. We booked Gravity and hit BA's best pizzeria for lunch called Las Cuartetas. The pizza here was a slice of heaven and the pizza-bread was absolutely delicious with mountains of cheese flowing off it. Two slices here was a perfect snack before our cinema visit. Gravity turned out to be every bit the blockbuster we expected and as an extra bonus it was in 3D. I felt I had left BA and was in space looking down on the world. Between the new angled cinematic shots of pulling out from spinning people in space and the shrilling tensions building surround sound of closing hatches it was a proper suspense filled hour and 30 minutes. We came out completely satisfied with our day's work only to be greeted by the same downpour we had tried to escape. Giving a quick glance to the schedule, I realised a showing of Captain Phillips (another Oscar billed blockbuster) was only 20 minutes off. Loving the familiarity and timely reminder of a home comfort of the cinema I was well up goin in for another flick and dodging the rain especially at $2 a pop. With no immediate plans on our horizon, I reckoned another visit the same day would be no harm and Liz was game ball for it. Like a pair of students on the hop we went in and got our tickets.
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| Thank you Italy...."Las Cuartetas" - home to amazing Pizza |
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| Parilla Time |
So we escaped the rain again to dive into the world of a Somali pirate hostage situation on a huge Maersk commercial liner. This turned out to be another fantastic suspense filled flick and made for a memorable evening at the silver screen including a very emotional last 10 minutes in the film. I don't think I've seen such two high quality movies consecutively.
I wouldn't say I had built up a huge appetite after emerging from a day spent inside the cinema but we went on a hunt for a recommended grill house or as they call them in Argentina a Parilla. Here in a restaurant called El Gaucho we were treated to a Parilla for 2 which was the equivalent to the biggest mixed grill you could feast your eyes on: black pudding, chorizo, ribs, steak and lamb chops. A carnivores fantasy on a grill.
Being on the road and living in each other's pockets for so long we often put a day aside to go about our own bits of business. Saturday was one of these days. Liz hit the street markets and I had been building up to enjoying the Gauchos other great love.....football.
La Boca and The Cult of Maradona
I took off on a bus trip to La Boca. This is the old industrial port part of the city which was home to the working class port dwellers of Buenos Aires. It was also home to the spiritual and footballing Mecca of La Bombanera (chocolate box). The proud footballing altar of Club Athletico Boca Juniors, the most famous club in South America and for me one I was looking forward to visiting for a very long time. I had followed their exploits since playing football manager games as a kid and guiding Boca to many a Copa Linertadores title! The club had gone through a golden generation of footballing success during my youth: the success of the late 90's team lead by striker Martin Palermo and playmaker Juan Roman Riquelme and featuring names as Nelson Vivas, Nobbie Solano, the Scheletto brothers was continued into the 00's with the emerging talents of Carlos Tevez, Marcelo Delgado, roberto Sosa and Fernando Gago. Riquelme at the age of 35 actually still plays for the club.
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| La Boca nieghbourhood |
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| La Bombanera |
I had also seen Boca fans and jerseys and club paraphernalia line my route all the way south from Mexico, the fanaticism of Argentinian football is something that I had read about extensively for years. A BBC's south american football columnist Tim Vickery who went so far as to say Argentinian football fanaticism negates the ability of footballers to fully express themselves as they play with fear of making mistakes in front of such a vociferous home support! This support I hoped to experience at first hand.
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| Diego |
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| La Bombanera - (Chocolate box) |
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| Some familiar faces of la Boca |
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| There was even an Abramovich here! |
With all the famous players to wear the blue and yellow of La Boca one stands out above them all, Diego Armando Maradona. Unlike a lot of young Argentinian talent plucked from the club before the age of 19 and shipped off to Europe's top clubs. Boca's most famous son played in Argentina till age 23 before departing for Barcelona. In that time he ensured his legacy. He is almost a deity around these parts and you can even get your photo taken with a Diego look-a-like in La Boca for a small fee. He has his own private viewing box in La Bombanera and there is a bronze statue in his honour on the stadium tour. What struck me about the fanaticism is how relevant he still is now. For me I have grown up with the wonders of Leo Messi but he never got to play in Argentina for that long and he never grabbed hold of the national team like Diego did. In 1986 he effectively lead a very weakened national team to a World Cup in Mexico, scoring that wonder goal against England on his way to the trophy. The cult of Maradona casts a long shadow over the domestic footballing pysche and I think our tour guide summed up the sentiments pretty well. When gettin egged on by some Brazilians on our tour over the eternal debate of Pele versus Maradona he said..."Yes I agree Pele is the greatest player on earth but that's because Maradona wasn't born on earth his football skills are from another planet!"
Some Concerto for breakfast followed with Passionata for supper
Our final day in BA was an action packed one, with both of our tastes getting well satisfied. We were up to catch the free concert in the morning in the Teatro Colon which was a memorable experience. Eight cellos lined up in a semi circle on the stage and without a microphone played beautiful classical pieces that spanned from 1765 to more modern stuff of the 19th century. The music sailed high around the auditorium and reached all of the 3,000 people that were lucky enough to hear it. This was a great way to kick off a Sunday and Liz being the classical music fan loved every bit of it. There was a certain amount of her own reminiscing of her orchestral days after this. The 8 lead off with the bouncy William Tell Overture and finished with a very modern piece. It was quite the musical education and something that will live long in my BA memories.
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| Avenida 9 de Julio - The widest avenue in the world |
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| Inside Teatro Colon listening to a Cello ensemble |
We grabbed lunch in Recoleta, a famous Italian part of the city and then headed back to the hostel to make a few sound-outs to our families. But our final act of the week was to go to a local football game, I was hoping to get to a Boca game but unfortunately they were playing another BA team that was a good 2 hours out of the city. The other famous Buenos Aires club is River Plate who were playing Estudiantes in their home ground El Monumental. This is the national stadium where the Argentine captain Daniel Passarella lifted the World Cup trophy in 1978. We had booked the tickets for the game through our hostel and a company called gaucho football.
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| El Monumental |
We got picked up from our hostel and taken for some pre-game pizza and beers. The group was a full blooded mix of football fans. At our table was an English gunners fan and two German lads and a Brazilian die hard Vasco de Gama fan who looked like he headed up their combat 18 branch. After speaking to him for a bit I realised how difficult the Portuguese language is to understand and any ideas I had about my Spanish getting me through Brazil died.
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| River Plate Ultras called "The Drunks of Tablon" |
We then bused it to onto the main avenue leading down to El Monumental. The stadium was massive, it holds 67,000 and due to new Argentinian FA restrictions over fan violence there is no travelling support permitted in the stadium. We were fortunately seated in the nicer section and had arrived good and early to get some pics of the stadium.
As 9.15 (k.o. Time) approached the stadium filled up. The travelling support sections of the stand at one end of the stadium lay ghostly empty. As the ultras piled into the stadium at the other end, there must have been 30 to 40 guys with massive drums who took their almost weekly spots in that section and began the loudest crescendo I have ever heard. The singing started 15 minutes before the game and never stopped for the whole thing. Liz noticed that they didn't even seem to repeat the same song. It was magnificent. It was all helped by the fact that River scored after ten minutes and sent the home crowd into a typical South American fanatical level of delirium. As the commentator screamed "gooooooooooooooooooooool" into every tv room and bar around the country, inside the stadium leaflets that were advertising election manifestos for upcoming club presidential elections had been torn up and sent into the air like confetti. The flares started and the stadium of 67k began rocking. "Amo River Plate, Amo River Plate, A-M-O River Plate!". The hairs began to stand up on the back of my neck. I was at the top table of club football in Argentina and absolutely loving it!
A season regular to The Emirates, Matt who was sitting beside us could not get over the support. I was like surely to God the Gooners have some ultras who give it Dixie at the matches...his response"for £60-£70 people don't even think about bringin a drum never mind singing songs all the way through!"
The football itself was very exciting. I had read and had heard about Argentinian football being so attack minded that possession had little value. The action in Monumental unfolded in a similar way.
Sure enough the defending could have been better but after River scored it broke out into end to end attacks. Cantenaccio this was not! Every player seemed determined to beat a man even the holding mid fielders were intent on beating someone before trying to thread the ball through the eye of an needle. The pitch brimmed with creation, there was hardly any lateral passes and every time one of the wing backs gained possession the supporters roared them up the field. It was bloody thrilling. I knew little or none of the footballers on the pitch but the quality seemed very high. The attitude of "you may score but we'll score more" was written all over the home team's attack minded formation. Estudiantes struck back in less than 10 minutes which was greeted by about 5 seconds of silence before the drums kicked into an almost defiant reflex of even louder drumming. I was thinking this is goin to be an absolute shoot out.
A lot of patterns of play were marked by intricate one-twos and I must have counted at least 7 little flicks in a passage of play of about 6 minutes. I'm christening this "flick football". Great technique but "the art of the flick" always seemed to take precedence.
A few minutes later the River enforcer midfielder gets sent off for a second book-able offence. Again the drumming reacts with an even louder bang. The defence switches to three at the back and again keeps attacking. It's relentless and absorbing. Twenty seven minutes in and we've had two goals at either end and a sending off. Another 10 minutes go by and another goal but for Estudiantes again. As far as games go the half time gaucho panel wouldn't be short on talking points
2-1 half time. Stadium empties for mini burgers and refuelling coffee for some more second half mayhem roaring and drumming.The mistakes start to creep into River's play in the second half and the ref decisions turn against them as he begins to favour Estudiantes gettin on top. The crowd goes livid, at one decision I hear at least 15 "puta madre" (mother fucker) roars at the ref. Ridiculous hand flicks and unending gesticulating. I was thinking my auld lad would be proud of such fury and animation amongst the faithful.
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| River Plate fans going crazy |
Estudiantes look most likely of grabbing another goal on the break as River abdicates all defensive duties. They even put three up front. At this stage I am dying for River to grab a goal just to hear that manic roar of goal celebrations again. It never comes. We all leave the stadium that night having been struck by a national passion, that runs so deep I wonder how it will be bottled up until next Sunday.
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