South American part iii: Buenos Aires

Hola amigos! Post numero 3 from South America. 

When I last left off I was at the private hospital waiting to see a doctor. Turned out to be the best $30 I've spent on this trip to date. The doctor was excellent. Better than a lot of the doctors I've seen in Sydney. Perfect English, very helpful, etc. gave me some antibiotics and I was feeling better within 12 hours. 

With my new found lease on life, I went on a free walking tour on Tuesday of the city. It was very good, albeit a bit long.  Also, the group was massive (about 40 people) so that made getting around a bit cumbersome. But the guide had lots of interesting info about the city and Argentina's history in general. The city is so diverse - every neighbourhood has a different feel and vibe. I really enjoyed just exploring each area by walking around. 

My favourite story from the tour was about a fight between two extremely wealthy families; some aristocrats and a family of Irish builders/architects. This Irish family was highly sought after to design the aristocrats palaces and made their way into their inner circle. The son of this one high ranking families fell in love with the beautiful Irish daughter and asked her to marry him. But of course his family would not have any of that and forced him to marry another aristocrat instead. So the Irish family took offence. The aristocrat family already had a family church and crypt built, and planned to build a palace on a nearby lot so they could see the church from the palace (as you do). But before they started they went away on holiday for 6 months (also, as you do). While they were gone, the Irish family bought the lot and constructed the largest building they could to completely block the church from view. The building was the tallest in the continent at the time, and is still one of the largest concrete structures in the world. It was also designed to look like the middle finger. It completely blocks the church from view from all angles and the only place you can see it is standing in the shadows of the building on a street named after the rejected Irish daughter.  

Moral of the story: don't mess with the Irish! 

I made some friends on the tour and we went to an area of the city called Palermo Soho for a late lunch and drinks. I absolutely love Palermo. It makes me want to move to Argentina and live there and learn Spanish. It's like what Surry Hills in Sydney and Main Street in Vancouver are trying to be, without trying. Lots of cool shops and restaurants and bars, and such a fun vibe. I went back almost every day.

I am getting frustrated with the language barrier. I know it's my fault for not speaking Spanish, but I feel like as soon as I try to start to speak Spanish and people can tell that I don't, they just don't even try to listen. For example the other day I went to go to Palermo Holleywood - an area of the city.  I got in the taxi and said "Palermo Hollywood por favor". He didn't understand, so I repeated myself three more times. I would have thought saying "Hollywood" would make my destination clear, but it was like he couldn't be bothered to try to understand me at all. So then I showed him the address on a pice of paper and he said "oh, Palermo Hollywood!" I think a lot of people here do speak English quite well - just not the ones I'm interacting with most (taxi drivers, shop keepers, etc). 

So the three things every visitor has to do while in Buenos Aires are: eat steak, drink wine and dance the tango. So of course I did all 3. I went with my walking tour friends to Tango at a place called Maldita Milonga. There are numerous ways you can get the tango experience here - you can go to a show and watch professionals, you can go to a tango club and just watch/participate with the locals, you can take a lesson, or you can do a combination. Maldita Milonga has a tango lesson for beginners on Wednesday, before opening the floor up to the more experienced dancers. There is also a live orchestra who played tango music which everyone danced to. And after midnight, some professional dancers came on and danced a few songs. It was exactly the experience I wanted. The opportunity to learn a bit of tango and watch some dancing, without it being super touristy and expensive.  I did discover one thing, however, which is that I don't really like tango. You can't like everything you do while traveling! I enjoyed watching the pros more than actually dancing myself. It's a pretty slow dance and as beginners we were pretty much just walking around embracing each other. I much prefer salsa or anything faster. With that said, it was still a fun night with a fun group of people and I'm glad I tried it once! But I will not be enrolling in lessons when I get back to Sydney!

I did a wine tasting one evening as well which was an excellent event. It was a sit down tasting at a boutique wine shop and it was right up my alley. They gave us 5 wines and paired food with each one (like a lot of food). The wine "tastings" were full glasses, and he topped up everyone's glasses for each wine we tried. Plus poured an extra glass of everyone's favourite at the end. So it ended up being about 7 or 8 glasses or wine. He spoke about each wine and the region it came from and the type of grapes and it was very well organised. I was at a table of Americans - an older couple from Illinois, a younger couple from Georgia (both in the Air Force), and a girl from Louisiana who met an Argentinian man and got married and moved here. The man from Illinois was big, had crazy white hair and was "Joe tourist." I was hopeful he would be hilarious (either intentionally or unintentionally) but he turned out to be a bit blah. The others were all easy to talk to though and of course Trump came up in conversation a few times! 

Speaking of American politics, Obama was in BA while I was. That's the second time this year he's been where I was (Hawaii earlier in the year). He danced the tango the same night I did, and then took a lot of heat in the US media for not flying back to the US after the attack in Belgium (and fighting ISIS) but instead dancing the tango.  

He also was not the most popular person with the Argentines at the moment. Not for anything he did, but because he is president of the US in general. I had no idea but on 24 March 1976, the country underwent a military coup where the government was over thrown by the right wing army who formed a dictatorship. My Argentine history is a little weak, but think it's believed the Americans supported the dictatorship, so there is still bad feelings there for many people. So Thursday was the 40 year anniversary of that coup, and it was a day of peaceful protests and remembrance for the 30,000 people who "disappeared" during the dictatorship. 

Long story short is that there were a number of left wing guerrillas who opposed the right wing military government and fought back (setting off bombs and killing a number of important military and police officers, etc). The dictatorship then started rounding up anyone thought to be a leftwing guerrilla or sympathiser (which then extended to journalists, teachers, etc), and made them disappear. I won't go into the horrible details, but Thursday was a day of remembrance for them and a protest against a number of things (among them the new right wing government).  It was a very interesting and unique experience walking around amongst the protests.  I really wish my Spanish was better so that I could understand more. The country seems a bit divided at the moment - the new president was elected with just 52% of the votes, and those who didn't vote for him are very vocal in their dislike.

On my last night in BA I went for a big steak dinner with my tango/walking tour friends. We went to a place in my favourite neighbourhood (Palermo) and had excellent steaks. I can't get over how tender the meat is in this country. You barely need to chew. I don't know what they are doing to those cows, but whatever it is, it's working.

I'm warning you all now that there are going to be a lot of complaints when I get back about how "fat" I am. The food here is literally steak, wine and carbs. It's toast, cereal and croissants for breakfast, and sandwiches, steak, empanadas, pizza, pasta and French fries for lunch and dinner. Unfortunately, I'm a bit of a carb fiend, so I'm not exactly turning a lot of it down. At least I was on the "food poisoning" diet for two days and didn't eat anything. I'm hopeful Peru will be a bit better - ceviche, ceviche, ceviche.  That combined with the altitude (where you lose your appetite) and three days of hiking hopefully will do me good. 

The one food/drink I haven't tried is "mate" (pronounced mah-tay). It's a tea that they drink out of a special cup and metal straw. It's a herbal tea and it's made with loose leaves and herbs with hot water poured over them.  The metal straw has a filter so you don't drink the herbs.  People are obsessed with it and often carry around a thermos of hot water with them so they can continually refill the cup. It just seems like a big messy production to me, but I'll give it a try at some point.

I've absolutely loved Buenos Aires. I wish it was easier to get to, so I could come back more often. Apparently you can rent a really nice place in Palermo for $1000 a month, which I'll keep in mind if I ever take a career break or have a midlife crisis in 15 years. 

I'm now in Iguazu falls for a few days before heading to Lima. I'll write about that in my next post. 

SH