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What on
earth do you have to do to get a drink at 7:00pm on a Saturday night in
Buenos Aires? We went to six bars around our apartment the first Saturday
evening we were there and they were all shut! We found out later that
they do not open until 10:00pm and shut until 6:30am!
However, they do have a dedicated rugby channel, so all is forgiven! Come
on UK Sky Sports!
Buenos
Aires, what a great city, unless you are us and you are out shopping. It
was late spring, but the majority of shops they seem to have sell either
leather jackets or cashmere sweaters! People stand in front of their
shops trying to entice you into them and cannot understand why a bloke who
wears t-shirts and shorts all year round in England really does not want
to buy a leather jacket or sweater!
One
thing in particular that we loved here was having our own place for a
couple of weeks. We were asked by a few people before we left what we
would miss from the UK over the year? Funnily enough, the only two things
that we both really missed were orange squash and beans on toast! Both of
which we managed to have in Buenos Aires. Mind you we had to make our own
baked beans as they don't have them here, but a packet of tomato
concentrate and a tin of flageolet beans later we had some delicious baked
beans! Also, we can officially claim to have lived in Buenos Aires as we
joined a DVD Club and you can only join it if you have documentation
showing your residential address, not including hotels, hostels or B&Bs!
Buenos
Aires has a zoo, which is a park dedicated to conservation. They only
have animals that have either been bred in captivity and cannot be
released into the wild, or animals that have been rescued. Mind you we
could just have as easily spent the day at a local farm as Angela spent
most of it feeding the sheep and goats in the children’s petting area!
From
the zoo we visited the Japanese Gardens, which are meant to be quite a big
thing here, but no more than five minutes later we had finished walking
round them! Right now it looks more like a building site than a garden,
but I am sure will be beautiful when they get round to finishing them!
On
Halloween we decided to go to the horse racing at the Argentinian
Hippodrome, unfortunately with it being a Monday it was extremely quiet,
and alcohol free, so we only stayed for four races before we decided to
leave and find a bar to toast my little brother’s birthday in!
We went
to the cathedral where San Martin's Mausoleum is. On the same square they
have the government building known as "The Pink Palace" but that is only
because of its colour! We then moved onto the Boca Juniors Football
Stadium and Museum, home of Maradona. There was no mention anywhere about
the "hand of god!" but trust me I asked! The Argentineans worship the
ground that bloke walks on! We also saw the grave of Eva Perón, drove
down the 140 metre wide city centre Avenue Neuvo De Julio and many other
different parts of the city.
The
highlight of our city tour was going to Caminito! One of the smallest
streets in Buenos Aires, but definitely one of the most famous. The
colourful houses, the street tango dancers and artists were incredible. A
close second to Caminito had to be the dog-walkers! Some we saw had over
fifteen dogs each and the parks that they use seemed to have five or six
dogs tied to each tree!
We also
spent a very pleasant afternoon cruising around the picturesque Tigre
Delta, enjoying the views, expensive houses, hot sun and cold beers! The
barman was worried that the bottles he kept giving us had holes in the
bottom, although, I’m not sure what he meant!
Many
evenings we just spent in the apartment, enjoying home-cooked food and
watching the telly, after all this was a break from travelling for us.
However, we had a couple of particularly memorable evenings out. We went
to a Tango Show at Esquina Homero Manzi, where the dancers were
mesmerising and the quality of the music, combined with delicious food and
wine gave us an incredible night out. The other was at a restaurant
called Estilo-Campo in Puerto Madero. Here they serve, in our opinion,
some of the best steaks in the world. Malbec wine from the Mendoza Region
and Argentinian beef combine to tantalise your taste buds like never
before!
The
middle weekend in Buenos Aires we went to watch the Pumas versus
Springboks at Estadio Velez Sarsfield. It was incredible how many Boks
were at the game, but even more incredible was that there was no beer
allowed, especially as it was sponsored by Argentina's biggest brewery!
Both nations belted out their national anthems and then, as Maradona was
there all the Argentineans sang to him! Have a word! The South American
passion is shown nowhere better than at a sporting event and they didn't
stop singing, clapping and dancing all through the game!
The
hairiest moment of the game though had to be when Jean De Villiers pushed
Lucas Borges over the advertising hoarding. As we were at a football
ground, where usually crowd control measures are needed, on the other side
of the advertising boards, where at a rugby ground there would have been
more grass, there was a ten foot concrete moat to stop football fans
running onto the pitch! The speed that Borges went over it, head-first,
he would have been very seriously injured. However, De Villiers had
lightning-quick reactions because he managed to catch him by his ankle and
then hold onto Borges until others came to help pull him back up! At the
final whistle, South Africa won and a great time was had by all!
One of
our final days in Buenos Aires we took a ferry to Uruguay, which is only
forty kilometres away. We went to a gorgeous little town called Colonia.
This
very historic Uruguayan town was always fought over between the Spanish
and Portuguese. The Spanish always won, but then handed it back in trade
agreements shortly after, then fought for it back again! Uruguay only has
an army of 500 soldiers, but they are just for ornamental purposes, as
they have never had a war with anyone!
What they do have though is
zero crime and zero pollution on their beaches, where we had a really
funny experience with a beer. The glasses were so cold on this
beach-front bar that when we poured the beer into them, it froze! We had
to wait for quite a while, with the beer in the sun, before we could drink
it!
On our
final day in Argentina we went to a Gaucho Farm, which nowadays is just
run for tourists, without cattle, but in the olden days the Gauchos were
cattle farmers. The day was awesome, when we arrived we were greeted with
wine and empanadas, then you see what must be a fifty foot long parrilla
(BBQ) cooking all the huge joints of beef, sausages, chicken, etc, for our
lunch. Whilst you are waiting for the food to be cooked you can take a
ride in a traditional carriage, or ride a horse. Then the enormous,
gastronomic delight begins and is accompanied with all the beer you can
drink, for free, and a tango show. After this the Gauchos demonstrate
their horsemanship competing against each other to capture tiny rings
hanging from a pole with a handheld stick. The highlight for Angela had
to be when she was given a ride on one of the Gaucho's horses and taken
off to gallop round the next field!
For me,
an added bonus was meeting a lady from New Zealand, called Karen. Her
grand-father, David Gallaher, was the first captain of the All Blacks when
they came to Britain and France in 1905. Coincidentally, only the
previous weekend the centenary game had been played in Cardiff well, I say
game, but it was more like a game of unopposed rugby for New Zealand! |