We touched down in Buenos Aires at around 4pm on the 20th of January, exactly 4 hours before we had taken off on the 20th January in New Zealand. We were both pretty excited about crossing the International Date Line, we even took a break from film watching to follow our little picture of a plane cross the line on our in-flight entertainment screens.
Unfortunately, even though it was supposed to be 4 in the afternoon, for us it was 8 in the morning and we had just pulled an all nighter. We blearily made our way through customs, getting a much easier time of it than the many other Europeans trying to enter the country at the same time as us.
After we had collected our luggage, we made our way out front to meet our taxi driver. We were still unsure as to how much the journey would cost, having asked our hostel at the time we arranged the pick up, and several times after that. We were even struggling to get a straight answer out of the guy himself.
It didn’t take us long to realise what a luxury we had been experiencing throughout our travels so far. The Language barrier here was HUGE! The vast majority of people that we have come across don’t have a word of English and between the 2 of us, we have barely anecdotal Spanish.
Communication was slow and stilted, we eventually managed to get directions to an ATM (banco). I ran off to get some cash, leaving Martin to struggle through the task of finding out how much cash we would need.
You see, the problem we were having was that we didn’t have any pesos on us. We had picked up some US Dollars in New Zealand but, although the word on the street is that Dollars are the way to pay in Argentina, this is not actually the case. You can trade dollars for a better exchange rate than you can get for pasos back home, but you can’t actually spend dollars in shops. This meant that we had arrived in the country with no usable currency, not unusual for us, but problematic here when you consider that ATM withdrawals are capped at £40 and charge a £9 withdrawal fee!!
Anyway, enough about money. We eventually found out how much our cab was (about £17) and got on our way. We were dropped off at our hostel and ascended the 4 flights of stairs to the reception. There was a lift but it didn’t look to be in a useable condition. We checked in and were shown to our room. It was very cute, high ceilinged, red decorations and exposed brickwork to complete the look. We had a little lie down and then decided we would head out to try and find some dinner.
The first place we tried no longer existed. It was our first clue that Google wouldn’t be as helpful here as perhaps it had been elsewhere. We wandered on for a bit and eventually found a little plain looking restaurant on one of the main roads of the city.
We were browsing the menu when the waitress came and showed us a poster in the window for what must have been the biggest steak I have ever seen. After determining that yes, this was meant for sharing and that she wasn’t trying to sell us half a cow each, we ordered her suggestion and some beers and sat back to relax.
After dinner we made our way back to the hotel and passed out almost immediately. The combination of jet lag and lack of sleep on the flight had pretty much wiped us out and the giant meal had finished us off. Unfortunately though, this didn’t mean that we would sleep well, it was still technically the middle of the day for us, after all.
We woke up fairly early the next morning and we both felt terrible. In much need of coffee we once again wandered out onto the street in search of breakfast. We went into the first cafe we found and, after a brief faff wondering whether or not they do table service here (they do, religiously) managed to order a cafe con leche y dos medialunas (coffee with milk and 2 mini croissants, or ‘half moons’), Martin went for the very intriguing Submarine y dos medialunas (submarine, as it turns out is a chocolate bar. It is typically served with a glass of hot milk and you simply melt the bar into the milk to make hot chocolate, this is the hot chocolate that Martin’s mum grew up with so he was pretty excited to try it).
After breakfast we made our way to the famous Cafe Tortoni where our hostel had arranged a free walking tour for its guests. We were worried that we were going to be too late and miss it but when we arrived we found another guest of the hostel who had been waiting for 15 minutes and no one had showed up. We decided to wait until they were 20 minutes late and then we gave up and decided to make our own plan for the day. We found another free walking tour that was meeting soon, giving us enough time to grab some cheeky empanadas for lunch and make our way there on the AIR-CONDITIONED subway.
We met outside the LOOK UP BUILDING and the tour took us through the most important political parts of the city, explaining a lot of the background to Argentinian politics, the wars, the dictatorships and the European history. Buenos Aires is known as the Paris of South America (although a lot of them don’t love the nickname) and you can see why.
Walking through this city felt like we were smack bang in the middle of Europe; not just the architecture, but the way people behaved and spoke, even the pavement furniture had a very European feel to it.
The last stop on the tour was the Plaza De Mayo, with an explanation as to the demonstration of the Mother’s of The Plaza De Mayo. The women who’s children were “disappeared” during the military government’s regime in the 60s and 70s. It was all very moving. The tour finished with an explanation of Evita Pedron’s lasting influence over the country and one of the main takeaways was how hopeful the guide seemed that Argentina’s darkest days are behind it.
After the tour was finished we wandered on, taking in a few sites that hadn’t been included; the suspension bridge and the nature reserve as well as just soaking in the feel of the place. We then started to head back to hostel as the poster claimed there was a free tango lesson on the roof terrace that evening.
There wasn’t.
By this point we lost faith in anything our hostel promised and decided to just go it on our own for the rest of our stay here. We went out and got some incredible burgers and then went back to the hostel, shared a beer and went to bed.
Argentina had some pretty impressive railways back in the day, the vast majority of them. Most of the countries railways were actually built by British companies making them one of the few countries in the world where the trains drive on the left but cars drive on the right. This is why our destination this morning was the National Railway Museum. The curator was currently working in rail and we had a great chat with him about the past and the future of Argentinian rail.
The museum itself was pretty small but full of interesting artefacts from the countries railways, most of it made in Britain. One this that caught our eyes was the existence of a train-ferry. Rather than build a bridge to cross the river, the entire train is loaded onto a ferry and shipped across. Apparently a couple of these still exist in the world and we are now making it our mission to ride one.
We had decided to book a tango show for the evening. We went for the simplest option of show only, not bothering with the dinner that was on offer. The reviews online said that the theatre was difficult to find, and we soon understood why, the location on Google Maps did not match up to the location of the actual theatre.
After a few minutes faffing we eventually found it, we had actually left early as we half expected this to happen. We sat down and purchased a ludicrously expensive bottle of wine (I say ludicrously, actually it was only about £20 but considering that in our time in Argentina we went to two very exclusive restaurants and paid far less than that for far superior wine I’m sticking with my original assessment).
We were sat in the corner and although this gave us some pretty good views, I was occasionally disturbed by the guy slightly to our left who seemed to be insisting on filming the entire performance. Now, I don’t want to be “that guy” but Jesus I hate people who film performances, not just take the occasional 10 second clip to remember the night, but film the entire ceiling thing on a shitty phone that overexposes the entire show and destroys everyone behind you’d night vision and concentration.
After a good 20 minutes of dodging and diving around this guys screen and flailing arms, Martin had had enough. As we were kind of trapped in he had to move the whole table in order to reach around and ask the guy to stop blocking my view. It was a small gesture but something that made me feel pretty special.
For the rest of the performance I had an unencumbered view to watch the show and enjoy my lovely overpriced wine. If you are ever in Buenos Aires, I would highly recommend this show, it’s a brilliant history of tango and a really good way to spend an evening.