Buenos Aires (ARGENTINA) - melancholy and the infinite sadness

Buenos Aires (Argentina)
01 JULY - 05 JULY 2015

...And here we now were, back where we started 3 months earlier. 

Below I've included an email that I wrote to Inga on the evening of 18 NOV 2014. It was just an idea at the point, formulating slowly, but when I look back at what I wrote I can see that what we framed in our minds pretty much came to fruition, and not just in terms of things eventuated but in terms of the plan, the way we moved, even the timings of where we thought we'd be and how long we would stay.

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Ok, so this is my 'rough' idea of how we should attack South America. In my thinking process I've considered what we both would like to see, the ever changing weather and the time we need. I think we're going to have to take a few flights internally but that's ok, I'll organise that, so no need to worry there......so here goes.

Arrive Buenos Aires 28/29 March - stay 5 nights, including a very important birthday!!

I think from there its best to head south. If we want to do some hikes around Torres del Paine or Monte Fitzroy then its would be best to do that early, in April where we're still ahead of the Southern Winter. So, for travelling south I have two options;

Option 1 -  Fly from Buenos Aires to El Calafate - take some time to see Torres del Paine, Monte Fitzroy and Perito Moreno. After that, a bus up to San Carlos de Bariloche (which is a beautiful town on lake Nahuel Huapi), then up to Mendoza (wine growing country, great vineyards and red wine, especially Malbec). From there take a bus across into Chile and see Santiago and the coastal town of Valparaiso.

Option 2 - Bus from Buenos Aires to Mendoza, stay there for a few days (red wine hangovers), bus across the Andes to Santiago and then Valparaiso. Come back to Santiago and then fly down to Punta Arenas where we can base ourselves to see Torres del Paine, Monte Fitzroy and Perito Moreno. After that, bus up to Bariloche and then continue north

I anticipate this first part in Argentina and Chile will be close to three weeks - up to nearly the third week of April.

 

Heading North

After this initial section I was thinking of heading north either through Salta in Argentina or San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. From there we would aim to go for Uyuni (Bolivia) and see the Salar de Uyuni, then perhaps go to Sucre if we are ok for time, if not, then straight to La Paz where we'll be able to ride the Death Road and maybe do a hike or two. From there go to lake Titicaca and walk across the Isla del Sol. From there we could head up to Puno (Peru) and see the famous floating Uros reed islands. From there we would head up to Cusco, which is where we can base ourselves before heading up to Macchu Picchu. After that we could head to Ica, perhaps see the Nazca lines and then make our way up the coast to Lima.

I'm guessing that this part may take us to up to almost the middle of May.

For me personally, I'd like to head north and see Colombia for a few weeks. So I would probably buy us a couple of return flights from Lima (Peru) to Bogota (Colombia). I'd like to spend about two weeks in Colombia - specifically I'd like to see Cartagena on the Caribbean coast, and some of the beaches up to Santa Marta. Depending on how we're doing for time, perhaps also Medellin and Cali.

I'm guess a couple of weeks in Colombia would take us to the end of May. I'd prefer seeing only Bogota, Cartagena and some of the Caribbean beaches than running around too much.

Heading South

Right at the end of May we could fly back to Lima and then fly from Lima to Iguazu Falls in Argentina/Brazil. This I think would be the start of June. After 2-3 days seeing the falls we could go either to Curitiba ..or Sao Paulo, or preferably along the Costa Verde,  perhaps seeing either Paraty or Ihla Grande before getting to Rio on the 11th of June. As you know we have about 8 nights in Rio, but that can be a shorter time if we don't feel we need to stay there that long. From there I think we could head back down the coast, see Paraty if we haven't already, Florianopolis, 'maybe' Porto Allegre and then head down to Uruguay. I personally don't think we need to spend a lot of time in Uruguay, I'd like to see Cabo de Polonio, which a kind of bohemian/hippie commune, then perhaps head to Montevideo, Colonia de Sacramento and maybe even Carmelo.

I would imagine getting back to Buenos Aires in early July, either the  3rd/4th or 5th. Stay a couple of days and then get ready to fly home on the 7th.

As you know, I've had a trip like this in my head for a while, so this was the 'sort' of plan that I had. It's rough, it doesn't need to have any fixed dates. I think we can travel how we want, stay where we want etc. If we like a place we stay, if not,we move on, and I know very well that plans change and things come up. Also, if you don't like any of my ideas then please tell me, or if you don't like parts of what I've added, or if you think I'm missed something, then just tell me :)

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We arrived in Buenos Aires on the 1st of July, one day in advance of my 40th birthday, which was the next day. Checking into the Pan Americano on Aveninda 9 de Julio, somehow felt like an achievement. Additionally, Buenos Aires to me feels like a home, and it felt like I had returned home. I understand that saying that out aloud seems odd. Sydney has always been my home having grown up there, and Belgrade is a sort of home as a lot of my family reside there but there's no attachment or connection to Buenos Aires other than the experiences I've had. I can't even say why but I've adopted this city in a way and relate to it in a way that can't be compared to other places I've only visited. Some places are special for reasons that you can't define, so, that's the way Buenos Aires is for me.

View from the PanAmericano - Avenida 9 de Julio - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Avenida 9 de Julio - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Happy 40th birthday! PanAmericano - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Aveninda 9 de Julio - Buenos Aires - Argentina

The view from the PanAmericano - Avenida 9 de Julio - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Our final days were somewhat poignant, filled with plenty of time to reminisce, to reflect and to also enjoy the last few days that we had left. Of course we returned to Plaza Dorrego and stayed in a great place across the way. We investigated new areas in Palermo and even made it to a few tango shows, which by the way, were fantastic! The two that we went to on this occasion, and that I would recommend for different reasons, were Querandi and La Ventana.

Querandi was more for those really wanting to experience the different elements of Tango. It give you a historical journey of tango and provides an insight into its development, changes and impact on BA society. La Ventana on the other hand is a show, in that tango supports various additional elements of the entire performance. The show at La Ventana is entertaining, humorous and also quite powerful. At one juncture they had images of Evita Peron being displayed on the screen, and then all of a sudden the entire audience was surrounded by flag bearers waving large Argentinian flags with fervor whilst the anthem played and was overlayed with audio of Eva delivering a speech to the masses. I'm not sure what exactly caught me, whether it was the power of the imagery, or the meaning encapsulated in what was happening, or the fact that it was just our last night but I started to tear up...who really knows why...and Inga admitted to me a little later that the same thing happened to her.

Plaza Dorrego Bar - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Plaza Dorrego Bar - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

I love this place

Bar Federal - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Aveninda Defensa - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Querandi Tango - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

For our last drinks we headed to Todo Mundo bar, a place right on the edge of Plaza Dorrego. A cool joint, full on weekends, but quite empty at the time we wondered in. We ordered up a few Negroni's and washed it down with a healthy dose of melancholy, because there we were, reality had returned to meet us. We didn't have months, or weeks, or even days left, we only had hours. In the morning I was only a flight back to Australia and a day later Inga was on her way back to Riga

Evita on Avenida 9 de Julio

Don Ernesto parilla - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

We've been back since then...and we'll be back again

 Todo Mundo bar - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 I've taken my photo in this mirror a few times - it resides just outside of the La Ventana tango show - I like to think that a little part of us stays here every time we stand here.

San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Hanging out with Mafalda and friends - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Only Negroni's - Bar Seddon - another San Telmo favourite - Buenos Aires - Argentina

When the morning broke it was all there for us absorb. I don't remember how we got to the Tienda Leon bus station, maybe we walked, perhaps we took the Subte to Retiro, that I can't say, all I know is that there's a strange sort of anticipation that comes before you say your final goodbyes. It's kind of like going to a rock concert. There's excitement and noise all around you but when the band leaves the stage and the crowds exit, there you are, in an empty space, with your own thoughts and in silence. To me that's what it felt like. Saying goodbye and having the bus roll out of the bus station after spending literally every single moment with a person for three months....well...that sucked. We knew it was going to happen but preparing for it doesn't make it easier.

Lima airport - Peru

The last ride home - Santiago airport - Chile

As the bus made its way down Eduardo Madero and onto Autopista 25 de Mayo, my head was full of thoughts. These months since my father has passed away had been monumental. Huge decisions had been made, life changing ones, and not just for me but for people around me. I was now going back to that, but also, I was leaving something behind. I didn't want that something left to be a permanent goodbye, but for right now it had to be left. My next steps, wherever I was going to be taking them now had to be about how I could bring all that I wanted back together. 

Buenos Aires - I'm going to take you to a tango show!

Buenos Aires (Argentina)
28 March - 06 April 2015

The question I get asked by all and sundry is ‘What is it about Buenos Aires’? In the immediate moments after I hear the question I always find myself in that inevitable space of having to fumble for the appropriate verbs and adjectives, I simultaneously berate myself for not ever having developed a stock answer, but now, with the equivalent lucidity of a man that’s consumed three glasses of Malbec and has hit that ‘sweet zone’ of temporary enlightenment, I figure that I don’t ever really need to have one. The question is about as complex as answering ‘why are you in love?’, I mean how do you formulate an answer and provide a significant amount of justice to the weight of that feeling? I know that I can frame the response in terms of what initially drew me in, which was the steak, red wine and its vibrancy of life, but that’s basic talk, that’s just Buenos Aires 101 for the newbie.  I  could then add something about its energy, passion, lifestyle, architecture, sense of style, sense of self, nightlife, the cobble stoned streets of San Telmo, café con leche and medialunas in Dorrego Bar, the roar of the crowd in La Bombonera, the dog walkers handling 10 dogs at a time on the tree lined streets of Palermo, watching the afternoon sun light up the buildings with a glorious burnt orange hue over Puerto Madero, walking Defensa on market day, sipping cocktails and feeling the buzz of Plaza Serrano, looking at the uniquely framed Punta de la Mujer, infiltrating a cross fit class in the parks surrounding Madero, empanadas, dulce de leche, having three bites of walking across Avenida 9 de Julio, not grasping the weird locks of our apartment on Humberto Primo, talking about going to a tango show, actually going to a tango show…you see, the point ends up becoming so irrelevant because in the end it all rests within the realm of my own personal connection with the city and how this place makes me feel. That’s something that I can’t convey in it's entirety, you can’t simply give that to somebody, you can only hope that someone else gets the chance to have that experience and also, perhaps, feel the same sort of thing as you do. So when Inga’s flight touched down at Ezeiza on the 29th of March all I was hoping was that this town would somehow permeate her pores and pass on that same vibrant energy that had mesmerised me for so long.

San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Sunrise in San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Obelisco de Buenos Aires - Avenida Corrientes - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Puerto Madero panorama - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Drinks on Plaza Serrano - Palermo - Buenos Aires - Argentina 

When you front up to the starting line of a 3.5 month adventure you convince yourself that you have all the time in the world, whilst at the same time secretly whispering to yourself, in your 'other' internal voice, ‘yeah but time will pass us by so quickly’, and you know in yourself that you’re right. This adventure originated from an idea that was formulated in Paris, that when said out aloud at the time sounded like pure fantasy, and yet as I drifted through the now familiar streets of San Telmo, there I stood, in another city, on another continent, Inga in situ and me waiting for us to started.

The decision for both of us to do this was a huge roll of the dice on both parts. Travelling with friends, family members, partners, etc can be fraught with danger. The traps are an ever present reality. Spending so much time in the company of one another can quickly undo a relationship and turn it into a pile of rubble, but with that said, where there is risk there is also the chance for an equally large reward. So as I waited at the overcrowded arrival gates of Ezeiza airport and spotted that familiar face in a very foreign crowd all I was able to say when she approached was ‘hey, look at you’, not the most profound opening line of all time but at least I had time on my side to be able to improve on that!

Corridor entrance to our apartment - Humberto Primo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires

 

Our apartment - Humberto Primo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires

 

Our home in Buenos Aires was a great apartment on Humberto Primo, literally on the doorstep of Plaza Dorrego, a place where for me I believe that a person can find the essence of this city. On Sundays the plaza, and the avenue that it sidles up against (Avenida Defensa), comes alive with the chatter of people through its markets, the sounds of tango and the movement of people in dance, cafes filled with Portenos and tourists alike, parillas filling the air with the aromas of all sorts of grilled meat, the clinking of glasses filled with Malbec and the unique sound of Argentinian Spanish. For me it felt somehow important that Inga fall for Buenos Aires the same way that I did and the only way I could think of doing that was to throw the wall of Buenos Aires straight at her on arrival. Walking through the throngs on Defensa, heading up to Plaza de Mayo and admiring the uniquely coloured Casa Rosada, walking Avenida Pres.Roque Saenz Pena and being pulled into the central vortex of the city as represented by the Obelisco de Buenos Aires, an historical monument located at the intersection of Corrientes and Avenida 9 de Julio. This to me is how I believe a city can be truly experienced but especially a place like BA where walking the streets really allows you to feel the vibrancy and its pace of life. As I’ve commented many times before in this blog, I often find the best way of getting to know a city is to just walk, to go, explore and discover, whether that be with a certain intent or wandering aimlessly in the hope of acquiring those ‘happy’ accidental discoveries. I was more than happy that with Inga her modus was similar to mine, although I found out very quickly that she adopted the exhausting principal of ‘walk until you drop’, mitigated by only by the fact that refreshment stops for us both were for the most part cocktail sessions somewhere in the city. An outsider viewing our movements could quite easily have been fooled into thinking that our journey through this metropolis was nothing more than an extravagant bar crawl!

Gardelito, Defensa on a Sunday, he's just such a part of the city. This is the personification of San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 

If it's a glass of Malbec then it must be Argentina - Puerto Madero - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Love this place - Dorrego Bar - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina
 

'Seriously Mafalda!?' - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 

The 30^th of March brought with it an important milestone for Inga, her 30^th birthday. It was this date and of course the 2^nd of July, my 40^th, which essentially provided the bookends to our intended South American adventure. It was these two dates that we selected months ago as being ones that we wanted both wanted to celebrate in this town. So, as opposed to the previous day where we experienced Buenos Aires on the street, I thought that, post morning champagne celebration, which also involved some extreme skill on my part where I caught the flying rebound of the champagne cork off the living room wall (trust me, it looked impressive), that we head out to the heliport at San Isidro and take to the air in order to gain some vertical perspective of what is the second largest metropolitan area in South America after Sao Paulo.

Somewhere over the Rio de la plata - Buenos Aires - Argentina

Puerto Madero from the air - Buenos Aires - Argentina
 

Looking back now, several months removed from where it started, you realise that in writing at ‘arms length’, the location of where a place resides in your mind is always punctuated by the moments that you carry in your memory for what and how those moments made you feel. I do recall on one particular evening whilst taking a walk through the parks surrounding Puerto Madero that we encountered a cross fit group mid-session. What’s fantastic about this area and I guess about Portenos in general is that they enjoy getting out and doing things, now that may be in the guise of going to cafes, restaurants and bars, or as in this instance, keeping fit. Puerto Madero of an evening is filled with inline bladers, runners, meandering couples and fitness groups, something that we of course intended to be a part of. So with the stealth and deft touch of a blind elephant in a China shop, we infiltrated one of these groups by mimicking exercises from the safe distance of 5 mtrs, because as a foreigner, you know, you’ll never be spotted with your cloak of invisibility!? Sure enough, within seconds the instructor was calling us out and beckoning us to join in, without a second thought Inga does and enters the fray and of course I follow. Now, I don’t want to say that the gringo ring-ins showed the Portenos of Puerto Madero a thing or two about exercise, but yeah, we absolutely owned them!

'El Che' mural - Carlos Calvo - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 

Mothers of the disappeared mural - La Boca - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 

El caminito - La Boca - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 

 

Estadio Monumental - Belgrano-  Buenos Aires

 

Estadio Monumental - Belgrano-  Buenos Aires

 

Drinks at Floreria Atlantico - Retiro - Buenos Aires - Argentina

 

When you think of Buenos Aires there are places and things that immediately come to mind, places that punctuate your consciousness, but in the same way these places and events are unique in the manner in which you experience them. So when I think of us in San Telmo I remember the mural of ‘El Che’ on pasaje San Lorenzo, the accompanying words which I now know to say ‘For love, use a condom’ or I think of wandering the multi-coloured streets of La Boca and El Caminito and remembering that greater than the vibrant colour was the acquisition of the best Pisco Sours in the whole of South America ( we didn’t know it at the time but our extensive testing over three months was definitive, Buenos Aires (La Boca) owned the title even though Chile and Peru disputed intellectual property rights) or I think of the inspired 3am suggestion by Inga whilst lying in bed that going out for drinks would be a much better way of passing our time (and I had to agree) or I think of rocking up to the well known restaurant of La Brigada in San Telmo well after midnight and the waiters responding almost incredulously to our question of whether they were still open ‘…but of course we’re open’…but of course we repeat to ourselves, this is Buenos Aires and this is where a so much living is done between the hours of midnight and 6am. This is a town where you can walk into a florist, waltz passed a very non-descript door and descend stairs to one of the coolest bars in town (I’m looking at you Floreria Atlantico)  but it’s also a town where old school charm is still maintained and none better than within the four walls of the well known Café Tortoni. It’s a city of passion, as encountered by our trip to Estadio Monumental where one bright April afternoon we caught the local derby between River Plate and their inner city rivals San Lorenzo, and it’s a city of culinary delights, mostly of the carne persuasion, as typified by our visits to Don Ernesto, La Brigada and Desnivel but more importantly highlighted by our expert opinion which of them had the best chimichurri (The most necessary of condiments in Argentina – and - It was Desnivel by the way). The ‘key’ to feeling a city, this city, is to immerse yourself the best  way you can in whatever it has to offer, and sometimes, if both you and the city are on the same wavelength then something magical can happen. Buenos Aires to me is some place that I have to feel and not just see, and, far more importantly I think, one of those rare places that even though it isn't home it somehow still allows me to feel at home, and if I  mayspeak for Inga also, I think it’s a place that she fell for in the same manner as I have and did again. Why and how that happened is not so important as the fact that it did and the fact that I really hoped that it would. Buenos Aires never ever seems to disappoint and is always able to give so much, this occasion was certainly no exception and for that, Buenos Aires, we say ‘Muchas gracias!’.

We were there! It says so!! Don Ernesto - San Telmo - Buenos Aires - Argentina