Buenos Aires - the city that never sleeps!!! Well, it certainly lived up to its reputation!! Never have I seen so many sunrises and sunsets and so few middays!!!! We loved Buenos Aires, ended up staying for 2 and a half weeks and if we didnt have to be in Rio for the carnival, we may have never left!!!
Monday nights (for three weeks) we went to Konex a disused warehouse downtown where La Bumba, a samba/african drumming band played the most uplifting funky improvised beats! It was packed every week with a mix of locals and tourists, the atmosphere was electric, you couldnt help but dance and starting at 7pm you saw the sun go down as the music picked up, incredible experience!!!
Then on Wednesdays we discovered a gay night at a club called Bahrein. The music was classic house and when they played Robin S - Show Me Love and the whole place erupted it had to be one of my best memories of the trip!!! Pure happiness!! We loved the place and being gay it was like a home from home and meant we could dance without having to put up with the Argentinians giving it the old latino charm every 2 minutes (gorgeous though they are, it can get a bit tiresome when a girl's trying to dance!!) Nothing gets going in B.A. til midnight, clubs don't even open til 1 or 2am and they keep going all night, its brilliant!!! Two weeks on the trot we left at 7am and not before the final song had been played!! Then we'd walk through the city, past the river back to the hostel. The perfect time for sightseeing, with the quiet streets and at 7am it was ONLY 25 degrees! Admittedly we got a few funny looks from the city slickers on their way to work and us in our going out clobber stumbling home, but hey, we're used to getting funny looks by now!!! Sometimes you'd think they'd never seen a blonde before in this city!!!
The clubbing wasn't all happy times, we did get our camera nicked from my bag when we were in a club. So the following week we re-visited loads of our fave spots and re-took the photos only to attempt to up-load them on our final day there and for the computer we used to corrupt the memory card. Hence the lack of photos, we now don't have a single photo of Argentina, by far our fave country so far, gutted!!! Anyway having become a crime statistic we felt it only right we claim on the insurance and for that we needed a police report. We had to go to the station closest to where the robbery took place which meant we got a lift in the police car (a first ever for me and litle did i imagine it would take place in argentina). Infact I was so excited about being in the back of a police car I took a photo from the back seat, which the copper found totally confusing but kirst and I thought was absolutely hilarious!!!
So after almost two weeks in a crazy party hostel and having done irreversible damage to my liver, we move to the quiet area of San Telmo full of ancient mansions, antiques markets and narrow cobbled streets. On Sunday night they have an outdoor milonga (dance hall) in the main square, all the locals (all ages) come to practice their tango technique. Everyone really is big on tango out here, it isn't just a put on for the tourists. And its so fantastic to see all these people of all different ages getting together and dancing this fantastic dance. Its just brilliant people watching!! It was so much fun! Its the sexiest dance, the women are soo hot, so we were picking our favourite dancers and trying to work out who would be going home with who at the end of the night!!
Of course, I had to give it a go myself (not at the milonga, that's purely for people who know what they're doing!) I did a tango lesson at the hostel and it has to be said, it's pretty tricky! I thought i was gonna dislocate my hip at one stage, i was standing on one leg with the other leg twisted round my partner while i attempted to flick it and kick it. I was pretty sure i was gonna loose my balance and send us both toppling over and end up in a heap on the floor! He looked extremely worried and broke out in a sweat. I think my enthusiasm and the look of sheer determination on my face, he could see me getting totaly carried away and ending up kicking him in the nuts!! Luckily i managed to avoid either!
Later we went to see how the professionals do it at a proper tango show and at the end the male dancer asked for a volunteer, of course, you guessed it! My hand shot up!!! So I´ve now danced with a professional! He kept telling me to relax but good God, that's easier said than done, when you're new to this tango stuff and he's marching me up and down and spinning me round at a crazy speed, theres tons of ppl watching and my shoe kept slipping off!!! Good entertainment for everyone else though, i´m sure!!!
So a whole month in Argentina and not a single morsel of steak crossed our lips!!!! So to all those who said it wasn't possible, YOU WERE WRONG!!!! Infact it turns out that the Argentinians are sick to death of steak, they're totally over it (they don't tell you this in the Lonely Planet!), which is why we found some of the best vege restaurants we've ever eaten in - all full of locals, enjoying good healthy wholesome vege food, and who can blame them! Only issue was they all bloody closed at 3.30pm. Its like 3.30pm is the witching hour for vegetarians and you can't eat after that! Well with our wild partying, we were doing well if we made it up and out before dusk let alone by 3.30! So many a day we were seen scrambling into our clothes, whatever we could find and legging it up Avenida de Mayo to get to some vege buffet place before it shut!!!
So in the lovely mansion hostel with antique furniture and a balcony overlooking the pretty street below, there were bed bugs!!!! Well, in kirst's bed there were at least! And she got bitten to death! so on our final weekend in B.A. we had a shopping day planned in the posh area of Palermo and it had to be said she looked like she had a bad case of the measles!! We got some very strange looks and bless her she was itching like crazy! So the only shopping we did that day was a tube of hydrocortisone cream to take the swelling down and the shopping got ditched in favour of a much needed bottle of sparkling and some people watching outside a bar in the main plaza.
But even after the theft of the camera, and the bed bugs, and the stupid opening hours of the restaurants and the oppressive heat, we love love love Buenos Aires, and most definitely would have stayed longer if we didn't have to be in Rio for carnival! Infact we may never have been ready to leave! But without a single photo we have no evidence of how amazing it is, so you just have to visit B.A. yourself, its soo much fun, the party scene is the best and the men are just to die for!!!!
