Buenos Aires Dec 3 - 6

Buenos Aires was undoubtedly a highlight of the trip to Argentina. This city is modern, clean, efficient and proud. It has fantastic architecture, some beautiful parks, and more monuments and statues than you could shake a stick at (whatever that means).

It is easy to get around - taxis are plentiful, honest, and reasonably cheap, and although the subway is not quite the modern marvel of Santiago, it is nevertheless functional and cheap (50 NZ cents for any journey).

It is more-or-less a non-Argentinian city, with comparisons to London or Paris easy to make. (By the by, the more the trip goes on it is increasingly difficult to get a strong sense of exactly what the Argentinian ´identity´ actually is in any case). So BA is pretty unusual in that it is a non-Argentinian city, in a non-South American country. It is so non-Argentinian, in fact, that it bizarrely has its own time zone - an hour ahead of the rest of the country, and surprisingly, just 2 hours behind GMT.

But regardless of other chronological vagaries, god knows what to make of this shambolic display of disynchroncity...

It would also be remiss of me not to mention the fine state of the fairer sex here. The rest of the country hasn´t exactly been full to the brim with stunning women (and perhaps not men either, though I am no great judge), but BA is once again seemingly non-representative of the rest of the country and the women are attractive, personable, and confident. What might keep me from moving here is not readily apparent to me.

Anyway, when we weren´t all going ´Phoooar´ and ´Shit, check that out´ and generally being about 17 again, what did we get up to ?

Well, we checked in around midday to our apartment in the Palermo area which I guess is ´upper middle class´(think Hampstead) Mid-afternoon we headed out to the Recoleta district - a 30 minute walk. Here we visited the famous cemetery, which is quite a sight - almost like a miniauture city, with lots of small stone ´huts´ acting as mausoleums. These contain either coffins, or caskets presumably containing ashes.

It is a strange sensation wandering around here - some of the structures have photos of those that they hold - and one can´t help but feel slightly ghoulish and rubber necked, yet this is undoubtedly what those who are buried here appreciated would happen. And so one walks around taking photos like there´s no tomorrow. Many of the rich and famous are buried here, with easily the most notable internee being Eva Peron, who died at the tender age of just 33.

We then spent a wee while wandering around the Museo de Bellas Artes, which housed a fantastic collection of paintings. These included Rembrandt, Monet, Manet, Degas, Renoir, Gaugin, Toulouse Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Kahlo. Inspecting and admiring such revered artists is always enjoyable, and something to be indulged in when away from NZ.

The workmanship and virtuosity displayed is breathtaking, and my inspections would have been even more close range were it not for the automatic message over the sound system that was triggered whenever you leaned too close. I kind of suspected it early on, but around the 20th time it happened an attendant came over and politely asked me to stand further away. Ah, the joys of being ignorant with the language...

The next day we started off by taking the subway to the barrio (district) of San Telmo. This is more ´old town´ but is far from old in terms of up-keep - once again it is clean, unstressed, proud of itself, and a delight to wander through. It is the art area of BA - full of shops with paintings, antiques, books, maps and the like. We also stumbled upon a really curious shop/arcade which sold jewellery and chinaware, all lit up by thousands of small lights - somewhere, if you were really inclined, you could wile away many hours.

We stopped for a beer on a pavement, commented at how ridiculously un-hurried it all was, and then continued on to the Puerto Madero area - situated in the old docks area (now unused). The proximity to the docks (on the River Plate) goes some way to explaining that San Telmo has clearly been a much more important centre of business in the past.

Puerto Madero is much like many revamped dock areas in the world, with many great looking bars and restaurants. We take the opportunity for another blissful cerveza in the warm sun and again comment on the casual nature of it all. It is now 6.00 or so on a week day and the bars are so deserted it is hard to imagine how these bars survive - who knows, perhaps they were an awful lot busier 12 months ago. We go to leave the area, but the sun is now hot rather than warm, and another beer at another bar has our name on it. Tough job, but someone has..... etc.

We cross back over via a modern footbridge, and watch some guys playing 5-a-side football outside. They all look pretty skilful - seemingly born with skills that take a lifetime of practice and learning for others (and still ending with a more far more basic level of attainment). Still, they are shit at cricket. Oh, so are we. Oooops.

That evening we go for a late beer in the Plaza Serrano which is reasonably local to us. The area is humming - sort of like a mini-Courtenay Place, but with much more of a hum, rather than an uncultured yell, to it. (Did I say that ?). Argentinians are not big drinkers (indeed even ordering a litre bottle of beer each, rather than to be shared, raises the eyebrows to some degree !), and they chat away merrily well in to the night.

A couple of women sat nearby and one of them takes the record for the longest dissertation without a colleague getting a word in edgeways (sounds like you Ed, I hear some of you say). Anyway, after what seemed like about 90 minutes she finally stopped, and they promptly left. Steve reckons she should have tacked on the end ¨which was nice¨. You´d have to have seen ¨The Fast Show¨ to appreciate that.

The Final of the National Polo Championships was on whilst we were in BA, and this was an opportunity not to be missed. It was rather an odd sporting occasion - seemingly totally devoid of pre-match build-up or post-match revelry. Indeed, even during the game itself there was little in the way of crowd participation, save for when the hot favourites moved to a 4 or 5 goal lead and the crowd started cheering for the underdog to get back in the match.

It is incredibly skilful - to ride around on a pony at high speed, trying to hit a ball on the ground, and although it would be non-objective to say it was totally error free, it was still great to see such undoubted athletes at work. The ponies are surprisingly quick - scampering along almost like greyhounds when called upon to do so, but tire quickly and the players are often off to the sideline to switch to a new mount (or maybe a new ´foothill´- they are quite tiny, after all).

So this is what the crowed essentially seemed to be there for - to marvel at the skill of the (4) players, although this was surely their secondary motivation. The primary motivation seemed two-fold - firstly to be at the polo, and secondly to be looking good. And, the gender that I was checking out in the crowd was doing just that. When I move here I think it will be close to a polo ground.

And so our time in BA draws to a close, and it´s time to move on. The city has impressed us hugely, with little in the way of things to be critical about. If you really had to, you´d complain about the state of the pavements - plenty of cracked stones or displaced tiles - enough to frequently cause you to trip up, especially given that you are often looking up at the fabulous architecture. Ironic that - the crappier the city, the worse you can let the pavements get because no-one cares to look anything other than down anyway !

One last pic - the Casa Rosada or (¨Pink House¨). This is where, amongst other things, the Peron´s would make their impassioned speeches to the adoring masses. In reality, the building is not overly impressive, but salmon pink doesnt adorn an important building everyday so best it gets an airing here.

We say goodbye to Craig here - he has two more days left in BA before flying back to New Zealand. Steve and I are catching a plane to El Calafate, in inland Patagonia. It is a 3 hour plane journey - that gives you some clue as to why a bus, even a comfy one, might be stretching sensibility just a little too far. Until then, adios.