Hola

Buenos dias a blustery Buenos Aires. I think. It’s all hustle bustle here as usual. We’re getting ready to leave for the relative peace and quiet of the Iguazu Falls this evening. They’re located in the North East of this vast country and we’re taking an overnight 16 hour bus journey to enjoy the spectacularity. It’ll be the first outing for the tent in the wilds of South America so we’ll see how that goes. We’ll be heading north towards the equator, from where BA is located at about 35 degrees south to 25 degrees south, so it’s going to get warmer still. It’s a jungle area and very humid by all accounts. But the falls are the one thing that you’re advised not to miss while in the area so even though I’m not a huge waterfall man myself, I’m going to make a 32 hour round trip to see what all the fuss is about. For some meaningless statistics about the falls see here.

I got in trouble for taking this - I still don't know what it is

We’re still wandering around being gawked at. Each apartment building here, pretty much every second building on any street in Palermo or Recoleta, has it’s resident “Super” or caretaker. Far from having superpowers as their name suggests, these men, ranging in age from early twenties to late sixties, spend their day standing on the steps of their building ogling women and giving macho looks to passing men (or fellow supers). This not quite blatant local talent watching (they will turn their bodies to face the direction of travel of their target in advance, so as to appear wholly disinterested, watching nonchalantly, generally out of the corner of their eye as their visual entertainment passes and then getting really stuck in when the ass in question has passed) is commonplace, regardless of age (the super’s or the talent’s). Their other daily duties include polishing the nameplate and fancy brass multi-doorbell, washing the marble footpaths outside their building (although they have been known to stand watching a steaming canine cookie for hours if the cookie in question arrived between scheduled pavement washings), replacing light bulbs and ushering tenant’s cars into the adjacent underground parking while crowd managing the pedestrians.


Having said all that, some of the foyers of the buildings these guys work in are very visually impressive in themselves. They are generally very understated, open, marble floored or polished wooden floored areas, with usually little or no furniture (except in the one pictured above.....) for the hard working supers to rest their weary eyeballs. One wouldn’t want to the ruin the austere minimalism to accommodate the hired help. These elegant hallways are usually barricaded off from the lowly pavement pounders with huge impressive old wooden doors (some of them are a combination of Art Deco carved wood and glass) which look like they’ve been designed by a team of midget European master craftsmen. I say team because these things are huge and probably very heavy. No single midget master craftsman could manage it on his own.

Overexposure 101

At night when passing these buildings, a homely glow radiates from a very inviting and opulent lobby, but standing somewhere in the shadows you’ll always spot the lowly super either asleep standing up or with his eyes rolling randomly in his head a sure symptom of the onset of advanced boredom. I‘m not sure what the perks are for this position, most likely you get a room in the building, unlimited use of a hose and obviously an air conditioned perch from which to bird watch all day, but it seems to be a pretty mind numbing occupation. Despite this however, it seems also to be a highly coveted position in working class porteňo life with the younger guys inheriting the position only when an elder super has keeled over from chronic eye muscle exhaustion. It is quite a social occupation also, with all supers on a given street who are within shouting distance of each other, gathering for the morning and afternoon mate tea rituals.


It’s very interesting though, if they are ogling in groups, not a word or any audible manifestation of their enjoyment passes between them. These guys ogle in stealth mode and don’t feel the need or feel it appropriate to wink, whistle, exhale frustradely or make any rude hand gestures. They merely appreciate, the only sign of anything resembling communication being a shared look of silent shock when something particularly inflated (or deflated) passes under their noses. Porteňos generally are pretty unabashed gawkers. Certain things like M’s pink sandals (or me being forced into wearing swimming trunks out for a morning walk due to everything else being in the wash – the chafing in the morning heat was extreme) will cause a stir.

Less cars, more car parks

In general though, the locals are super friendly and it really is a shame we cant return their friendliness without having to resort to our phrasebook. We’ve been meaning to get Spanish lessons but have been too busy topping up our 3rd degree burns and taking in all this city has to offer to commit to them. I figure, in the provinces where there’s even less English than in BA, M’s improvisation and drama skills will be sufficient for us to communicate.

M being effortlessly dramatic - here she's seen asking for directions to the Off License

A recent shocking demonstration of our abject lack of local language; M dropped some clothes down in the local launderette and returned later to collect the clean clothes. On returning to the apartment she noticed that the laundry bags she brought the dirty washing down in were missing. How in the name of God was she going to be able to communicate this to the non English speaking washer women?


She had the brilliant idea of drawing these lovely ladies a picture. She decided to try and explain her predicament without having to resort to flash cards for the sake of everyone’s dignity, but on trying to explain using only the power of hand gestures, a majorette’s baton and monosyllabic English, the ladies in the launderette just looked at her blankly punctuating her every attempt at explanation with one word……”Nada” meaning nothing, or in local speak – what the hell are you speaking of child?. So M pulls out her handy work, flashes them the diagram, hilarity ensues and the bags are returned within seconds. M said she could have spent the whole morning chatting to them had she possessed even the most rudimentary Spanish. They seemed extremely friendly and very impressed with her abstract rendering of laundry bags. We cudda been their friends for life. I went for a haircut this morning aswell and because of my inability to describe in detail the exact requirements for my coiffure, I ended up with a locally de rigueur mullet.

41C in the Subway

We’re walking several hundred blocks a day aswell visiting museums, fancy colonial houses and out of the way vegetarian restaurants (meatless oases in a city of carniverous carnage). We’ve gotten our heads around the scarily primitive but very effective local subway system (La Subte) but sometimes its far nicer and far more interesting to walk to your destination. We had one moment of weakness on Saturday when having walked all afternoon, we needed to get home and the subway was out of action for some reason (our translation of the flashing neon sign at the mouth of the subway was “Large Malfunction”), we hailed one of the bajillion cabs which roam this city.


Bad idea. I was carrying my camera and wearing trainers and in fairness we did look like the first couple of Tourism Inc. but this old taxi driver dude completely took the piss. I think I saw a dollar shaped twinkle in his eye when I completely mispronounced our street name when he requested our destination. He took off at a leisurely pace in vaguely the right direction but 10 minutes later when I stopped recognising street names I consulted our much used, sweat soaked pocket map. I couldn’t even find the street we were currently bouncing along on the map. Our map covers the city centre and all surrounding neighbourhoods. The bastard had taken us off the map as the meter ticked happily along and he played completely dumb (with very little obvious effort it has to be said). To give you some indication of the level of corruption of this man, if I was to use the geography of Dublin as an example, we were on Stephens Green, we needed a taxi back to Milltown and this guy brings us home via Saggart. Half blind as he was, judging by the thickness of his glasses, he had chosen the scenic route. We twigged, he knew we’d twigged, but we let him bring us back close to our neighbourhood before telling him to let us out immediately and throwing 10 pesos at him (what the fare directly back would have been) and ignoring the hugely inflated price on the meter. I didn’t even give him a chance to bleat his dissent at me as we legged it although I’m pretty sure he knew he’d been rumbled and he was left to ponder his own lack of finesse and that famous parable of The Blind Man Who Took The Scenic Route. It was an altogether maddening experience although we did get a pretty much free tour of the Saggart of Buenos Aires (without the ramps), so we can’t really complain.


Buenos Bizarres 2 : We’re watching too much CNN (Jon Stewart from The Daily Show said that CNN is only watched by ex pats, or bored or very ill tourists) these days mainly because it’s the only English speaking news channel we have any access to. Anyways, they have constant ads for their own sub par news delivery services, one of them being cnn.com/anywhere which they pronounce as cnn.com “slash anywhere”. We find this particularly amusing seeing as that’s what the kids over here seem to enjoy doing. On Friday, we were walking down Avenida Corrientes, a busy shopping street in central Buenos Aires and there’s this 3 or 4 year old kid standing on the steps of an upmarket department store, nonchalantly launching forth a high arc of kiddie piss into the street. His dad is standing beside him half laughing at the kid in a very self conscious way, and half waiting until the kid is finished his business before taking any action. In the meantime unaware shoppers are being drizzled on from a height. But no one seemed to mind too much.

So we'll be offline for 4-5 days but sure we'll be full of news when we come back. Laters.

For Graham & Gill. Whooda thunk this stuff came in cans?

The second biggest Nirvana fan I've ever met