Buenos Aires

Hello! My first blog post on our tour of South America is coming to you from Colonia del Sacremento, in Uruguay. From here, on the horizon, across the enormous mouth of the Rio de la Plata, you can see the skyline of Buenos Aires. It looks like a distant, floating city, and it was our first destination. Now we have put some distance between ourselves and that sprawling, manic metropolis, I thought I´d write about it.

We arrived last Saturday at midday, in a dazed blur of jet-lagged excitement and nerves. We took the local bus from the airport to the city centre, which took two hours. It felt dreamlike as we meandered through the dust filled streets, our bus gliding past other cars and missing them by mere inches. I still couldn´t believe after two years of saving up, we were finally here. When we arrived at our hostel, my body was screaming, "Lie down!" but my head would not let me. We had to explore the city. And what a city Buenos Aires is.

Buenos Aires is a chaotic, loud, dirty, brilliant place. It looks like a run down, beaten up Paris, like it´s been slapped around a bit. Stunning colonial architecture is dotted amongst crumbling tenements and cracked pavements. But Buenos Aires is not about aesthetics, it is about ambience and atmosphere, and that atmosphere oozes class, chaos and fun. Immaculately dressed women chatter in 19th century malls that put our drab, sterile behemoths like Bluewater to shame. Sparrows chirp in the Plaza de Mayo as bank employees march through the street, chanting and letting off booming explosives. People sit outside the cafés on the Plaza Dorrego, watching the world go by over a delicious café con crema" The smell of caramelized nuts mingles with the stench of fumes from the seemingly innumerable yellow and black taxis, buzzing about like bees. It is manic, it is mental, it is awesome.

As I said, BA is a city reminiscent of Paris, but it does not have the arrogance of Paris. It has the sophistication, but not the snobbery. And it definitely, absolutely has better food.

I could write an entire post about the food, but I´ll try and sum it up in a short paragraph. Carnivores will be in paradise here, and vegetarians will be cured! The steak melts in your mouth, the choripan (a chorizo hotdog) is ridiculously succulent, and it is all extremely good value. Eat a steak in Buenos Aires, and you´ll spit every other steak you have out! You will mourn our poor, tasteless British cows, who simply cannot compete. But it´s not all about the steak. The salads are good too...only joking, it is all about the steak! If anyone is coming to BA in the near future, I highly reccomend La Posada de 1820. It´s in the centre, and always full of locals.
Argentinian wine is also a treat for the palate and the wallet. 95% of the wine remains in Argentina - like the beef, Argentinians know a good thing when they see it, and they keep hold of it. So to fully experience the culinary delights, you have to come here.

I, James Bradley, man with two left feet and inventor of the world famous "drunken shuffle," tried to dance the Tango. It is hard. Harder than salsa. Harder than algebra. Harder than a drunk Glasweigan. You get the point. But Tango is also fun. Tash and I went to "La Catedral," a trendy old warehouse where everyone dresses casual, and tourists make fools out of themselves en masse. I am determined to learn the dance as our journey through Argentina continues, as watching those with expertise was a great experience. It is a seductive, sensual, complex dance with rules, but when two people who know what they´re doing Tango, it is truly beautiful.

Buenos Aires is, to conclude, an incredible place. Cosmopolitan but friendly. It is the biggest city I have ever visited, and one of the easiest to get to know. It is, no word of a lie, no exaggeration, one of the greatest cities in the world.