spreading the love

After a day off I joined my G Adventures tour group in Buenos Aires to start our trek to Rio over the next 17 days. A young crew of mostly Aussies with some Brits and Swedes thrown in and el hombre, Tomás at the helm we headed to San Telmo for dinner of bife de chorizo, ensalada, papas fritas and vino tinto.

We needed our strength ahead of a night out at a hostel on Florida Street. I enjoyed a few pisco sours and cuba libres while dancing and smiling and somehow maintaining the attention of Manuel from Venezuela. He didn’t speak any English but he stood in line to order my drinks (I paid…I’m not sure I’m doing it right), and insisted on dancing v e r y closely 😉 On one of my escape attempts I managed to run into locals Pablo and Alejandro who apparently wanted nothing more than to whisk me away in their car for a great night out. I of course respectfully declined which in these parts evidently requires some serious compensatory kissing…at which point Manuel showed up again and I had three guys shouting over the music, distracted long enough so I could slip sideways and realise that most of my group had seen all this. I claim innocence…I didn’t do anything, they all came to me!

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Staying out till 5.15am isn’t something I’ve done in a while and I skipped breakfast ahead of our walking tour the next day. We went down to the trendy Puerto Madero which reminds me of Teneriffe and the wool stores in Brisbane. An old ship museum, the Women’s bridge and glorious sunshine, Buenos Aires really showed us her best angles. We took the local bus to La Boca and drank in the colours and characters of Caminito.

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Jostling with tourists and hawkers we ended up at Boca Juniors stadium, La Bombonera, home of Maradona. The bright yellow and dark blue assault started a while before we reached the stadium, murals on walls, souvenir shops and flags abound so you know where you are. As Captain Obvious would say, they sure do like their football around here.

We toured the museum under the stadium, a very professional affair with a LOT of trophies. We were led around the stands on all sides and given the interesting facts about Boca Juniors, including going into the visiting team dressing room…where the doorway is short, which makes you duck and bow your head in reverence to Boca Juniors, whose dressing room door is a giant filigree blue gateway. The expensive seats are $6000 AU a year, and that’s not even a corporate box deal. The stadium is small compared with Lang Park, and the heaving thousands at a game must engulf the field with their passion and spirit each game. This place truly feels like a cauldron. The cheap seats stand over the visitors dressing room so the fans jump and jump and yell in unison to give them quite a “welcome” as they come up onto the field from a tunnel. Guess it’s the safest when the giant fence surrounding the field is best left intact…who knows how many players would make it to the field!

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We got to step onto the field area…well at least the AstroTurf corner piece set aside for tourists. Still made you feel small to look up and survey the three tiers of bedlam the players would carry over their heads in a match. Not for the faint-hearted.

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Lunch at a restaurant built around a BBQ pit next door of traditional pork sausage on a bread roll was delicious and is apparently the done thing when going to a game. Flimsy unmeat hotdogs haven’t got a patch on the giant chorizos which would pass for a baby’s arm. They feed four!

The evening will remain one of my all-time favourite highlights of this trip – a tango lesson, dinner and show. Tango is a mesmerizing spectacle that lures you in with the jaunty opening bars of the music, then holds your soul with romance, betrayal, sensuality and pride. Then it drops you like a brick. And you get back up, dust off and chase after it for another fix. To watch the dancers glide, twirl, spin, jump and stomp made me sigh and forget where I was. I loved it hard.

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Our beginners lesson was a ton of fun and such a long way from the amazing talent on the show stage that you can see why it would be a lifetime dedication to become the best. Interspersed with the dances was Tony Bennett’s doppelgänger who managed to make my night even more amazing by singing one of the songs to me…I asked Tomás what the lyrics meant and the best translation was near enough to “…oh my, what can you tell me about the woman!” I said he’d obviously heard about the night before and Tomás found that funny enough to warrant a high five. A kiss on the hand as the song came to a close and I was so full of joy I could have died.

Buenos Aires, you really saved your best till last!