I am now definitely in the country of steak, wine and mullets, and Buenos Aires is the capital of all of this. Here it is hard to know who is most popular: Maradona, or Che Guevara, but one thing's for sure, the mullet is still most definitely in, and it is showing no signs of going anywhere despite it now being 2010. Other things that are big here are dogs and dog walking, sweet treats (I am especially loving the alfajors), mate (a super popular tea style drink) and over the top public displays of affection. Buenos Aires is a fantastic place to experience, despite there not being a long list of worldwide known tourist attractions.



I had timed it so that I would arrive in Buenos Aires for new year, but had no idea where to go or what to do for my 2010 celebrations. For the first time on this trip I had made a reservation at a hostel and was pleased to discover it was quite nice, as finding somewhere else at this time of year would have been almost impossible. They were having an asado (BBQ) for new year, and for an almost reasonable price you could join in with this and have unlimited drinks, which sounded like a good place to start to me. Pretty much everyone else in the hostel had also gone for this option, so we stuffed ourselves and drank as much as we could before midnight and then headed out to the streets to watch the fireworks. At midnight I was in the middle of the widest road in Buenos Aires, which is far wider than any road I’ve ever seen before. I toasted with my new hostel friends, and then returned to the bar to continue to dance and eat the leftovers from the BBQ before I was knackered and headed to bed at around 4am… very early by Buenos Aires standards, but I was barely awake enough to head to a nightclub.

Although I had eaten steak at the BBQ for new year, it had been cremated and therefore was not up the "melt in the mouth" expectations I had. Therefore I headed out to a restaurant near to my hostel for some nice rare meat. The steak I had was a great size and cooked perfectly, it also came with a pathetic side salad (which of course did not get eaten). Sharing steak and wine with new friends is definitely a highlight of Buenos Aires and something that I did rather a lot of! It is also a great thing to do alone if there is nobody around. I had been recommended by a guy I met in Madrid when I was working, that I should take a walk around the docks at Puerto Madero to see the skyscrapers, and to go for food at Siga de Vaca. Before entering I saw a couple of guys unloading the van full of pretty much half-cow sized hunks of meat, then took my picture with the nice cows on the door… really not a great place for any vegetarians to visit! This place has an “all you can eat” system and at lunch it costs $49 (around £8.50) – about twice as much as I had paid for my other steak, however I was surely going to manage more than one steak and this also included my first drink and a desert. I was rather surprised to find that my first drink of red wine was the whole bottle! So, one bottle of wine and a whole lot of steak later, I was confused by the fact that the sun was still shining and it was actually still only mid-afternoon.

Much of Buenos Aires is done by night, however I also managed to undertake some daytime activities too. I went to the Recoleta Cemetery, which is now home to Eva Perón… and therefore huge crowds of tourists visiting the family grave where she is buried. The majority of the cemetery is deserted and there are some absolutely stunning memorials there of various rich Argentineans of the past. There are many organised tours in various different languages that go around the cemetery, but flock more or less to the site of Evita with queues of people wanting to take a photograph. It is impossible to find a gap in the tour groups, so in the end I had to join the queues if I wanted to see it and get my photo. Just outside the cemetery I saw a phonebox just like the old-school red ones in England, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen anywhere else before; it looked very out of place on a beautiful sunny day. In the park just next to the cemetery a very scuffy looking man came and asked me (in Spanish) for my purse, I pretended that I didn’t understand him and eventually after trying to ask for my money and, even as a last attempt my silver, he left me alone. After this I went to visit the Japanese gardens which are not too far away, and although they were very beautiful, they were obviously nothing compared to the stunning gardens I’ve seen in Japan. Sometimes I have to stop and remember how spoilt I am to have seen so many great things in my life.

I also went building-sightseeing to the Obelisco, the Cathedral and the very impressive Monumento Dos Congressos. I thought the congress building was really quite something, but apparently it is not without its faults, and the architect was not 100% happy with it and killed himself... artists are odd individuals sometimes. Then on New Year’s Day I got to see the start of the Dakar Rally from Buenos Aires to Santiago, the streets were crowded with people waving to the various cars, bikes and trucks embarking on the journey. Something I saw a lot in Buenos Aires, particularly in the San Telmo region is a small female cartoon character named Mafalda. I asked someone about her, and if my interpretation of their explanation is Spanish is correct, she is a cartoon strip character who was supposed to live in San Telmo. She is a young girl who has a group of friends that also feature in the cartoon strip, and her main “thing” is that she asks a lot of very intelligent questions. The author/cartoonist died and since then more and more Mafalda-related memorabilia has been cropping up. I even saw a strip of Mafalda recreated on one of the tube station walls.

Other daytime fun included walking around various parks being amazed at the paseoperros (dogwalkers) struggling with many dogs on one big communal lead. I think there are some laws in place to restrict this to 8 dogs per person, but I’m sure I saw some people with a bigger pack. The majority of the “walkers” I saw however were sitting around with friends chatting under the shade of a tree, whilst the dogs were tied up to the tree barking, panting, and humping one another. I went to a lot of markets and also a lot of shops to try and find warm weather gear for when I venture south. I even met one rather interesting man who was selling Spirograph (remember that, off of the 80’s?), and surprisingly it was selling like hot cakes and he was all sold out by the time I had finished talking to him. The handcrafts on the markets are quite different here than in Brazil, and there is a lot more made from leather. I even saw a stall with a woman selling flattened bottles of alcohol. There are also a lot more street performers in the market areas, with everything from human statues to tango dancers to musicians. One area where there is a lot of this is Caminito in La Boca. Caminito is a small colourful street in an otherwise dodgy area of Buenos Aires. It is very pretty and nice to walk down, but if you want to buy anything it is incredibly pricey.

At night time Buenos Aires really comes to life and there is a lot to do here. Every Monday there is a drum show called “La Bomba” which is really good fun to go to, especially if you get yourself right to the front. The drummers are amazing and there is always one of them at the front of them all who goes crazy and conducts them all on when and how to play. At one point there was also a girl who came and wailed along to the drumming, which could have been very good had she been Beth Ditto or someone, but at times she sounded too much like a cat for my ears to take. That said, she was rather more pleasant to look at than Beth Ditto, and I guess you can’t have it all. My night at La Bomba also brought with it my first experience of an Argentinean man coming onto me. He was not as forceful, upfront or intimidating as any of the Brazilian guys, but not too far off. In Argentina there is still the macho cultura, but it is also mixed in with a bit of gentlemanliness. This means that here the men are more likely to hold the door open for you, but you know the only reason they are doing it is to check out you ass as you pass through! Also, it seems like most of the guys here have Tourette’s: you can see them looking and being silent, then all of a sudden from nowhere they will have to compliment you in some way before returning back to their previous state of comparative nonchalence.

Tango is also massive business in Buenos Aires, and it is compulsory as a tourist here to go and see a tango show. The one I went to is super touristy and also included a nice touristy tango lesson beforehand. I really enjoyed the lesson and definitely want to learn more, although preferably with a partner that can dance! It really does take two to tango, and often I was left being paired up with the few men who had gone womanless, and it seemed rightfootless too. In the end I had to convince one of the male teachers that he should partner me every time, this way I learnt a lot and also got to do some steps that the rest of the class were not doing, although most of the time I was being pushed around by him with no idea of what was going on! The show itself was very good, and one couple were by far the stars of the show – I was pleased to see that it was my dancing partner who had all the best moves.

Buenos Aires is a very international city, so I do not stick out like a sore thumb quite so much as I have done in the recent past. Wherever I go, normally people can tell I am English just by looking at me. However in Buenos Aires I have had a variety of places that people have thought I am from. On my way to the tango show there was a French couple who thought I was French, until the only French I could dredge out from the depths of my memory was “je ne parle pas Français, je suis Angles”, apart from the obvious line from Lady Marmalade, but that did not seem appropriate at the time. I have also had many people asking me if I am Australian as apparently to many people English and Aussie accents sound the same, and as I am not white or red they assume I’m Aussie! I even had someone ask me if I was Brazilian as I was talking in Portuguese… I wouldn’t have minded too much, but I was trying to speak Spanish at the time!

I am happy that Buenos Aires lived up to my expectations and I would definitely like to come back here on my way back up North. Then maybe I can get some more tango lessons, and maybe even try a little more of the steak and wine it has to offer…