yup -- the words in the subject line have become my phrase of choice over the last few mornings. Buenos Aires becomes to rattle and hum about the time that the first few birds begin to sing - literally...I found myself on a sidewalk still vibrating with life at almost 4 in the morn...I was headed to bed - my fellow strollers were just heading out for ¨the night¨ This city more than lives up to its reputation of ´¨Paris of S. America¨´...incredibly glam, it is a delightful cross between the luxe of Paris and the rambunctiousness of Barcelona. The inhabitants are verrrrry friendly and outgoing - much smiling and windmilling of arms as I try to converse with any of them - my 12 or so words of Spanish are woefully inadequate and my sketchy-at-best comprehension skills are entirely lost in the machine gun pace at which everyone here seems to speak...and move....and drive...and smoke...and drink wine....
aaaaaah yes....the wine...delicious inky black chewy malbec...a very good bottle runs about 20 pesos - about 6 or 7 dollars give or take...at the end of this week I will likely be waddling thru the airport on my way to Capetown because the food is also yummy, cheap and er, plentiful...
this city is incredibly easy to navigate...but only on foot...the traffic is insane, despite the breadth of the GRANDE avenues transecting the city. I'm not exagerating when i describe them as grande....between 16 and 18 lanes of absolute chaos and calamity...sometimes the intersections simply fill up entirely - buses, scooters, and the gazillions of bug-like black and yellow cabs (there are 40,000 of them in this city) each vehicle pointed in a different direction - all just come to one tangled standstill. That´s when the fun really begins and I have come to believe that everyone secretly revels in leaning on their horns, gesturing and yelling goodnaturedly at the occupants of the other vehicles...
so it was that I set off on the best kind of day...on foot, with camera clutched to my chest. the cabbie smiles and shakes his head when I wave him off but he asks me in his impeccable english where I´m setting off today...his smile deepens when i mutely point to the barrio I´m headed for on the map...
The barrio is a riot of colour and sinuous cobblestone passageways...each otherwise shabby building flaunts a different vibrant colour. It is the pleasing result of the least affluent in this city using the scavenged remains of paint from other jobs...so lime jostles with fuschia...aqua jostles with tangerine...grafitti of a quality that I would love on my living room walls overlays all...and each miniscule courtyard within yields a tiny winebar or cafe or artist´s studio. The owners all smile and nod and murmur a polite and formal ´buenos dias´´ or a more casual ¨hola¨ but otherwise I am entirely unbothered despite my solo romp and obvious visitor status. When hunger finally drives me into one of the aformentioned cafes, I am met with warm smile and even warmer basket of rustic bread - fresh from the woodfire oven. 12 pesos (about $4) later, I stagger back out into watery sunshine...my belly full of olives and jambon and salamis and cheeses, the equivalent of my bodyweight (now doubled) of the heavenly bread, a glass of wine and a kickbutt espresso...aaaah bliss.
and the bliss continues as I survey the photos I capture there - a gaggle of slightly dishevelled uniformed schoolkids running to meet their mamas, a verrrrrry rotund older gent (he must have eaten at the same place I did) smoking and surveying the corner that his cafe occupies, a couple of young bearded and bespectacled serious young men playing violin and accordian against a ramshackle wall, the pattern of rainslicked cobblestones...and so on.
...and so on I go now...with a huge anticipatory smile and a recharged camera battery. Thanks for coming along with me again...until next time,
tons o´love,
Deli
