Beautiful Buenos Aires

While on the flight from Dubai to Buenos Aires via Rio de Janeiro, I sat beside a tall, strapping, athletically-built gentleman. In the course of time, he told me he was an Argentine and spoke no English. He was surprised how, being an Indian, I could do that. In broken English, sign language, animated gestures and Spanish that I could understand, he told me that he was a football coach. Football and Argentina – how could I have not linked the two. He had been on an assignment to Taipei and was returning home after a brief stopover in Dubai. He was from Cordoba, a suburb 500 miles off Buenos Aires, he told me. He will drive home these 500 miles in no time he added.

The last stretch of the journey, from Rio to BA, was tiring. It was the last one and half hour after the 24.5 hours we had already spent. But the sky looked fabulous; it was drizzling, and the sun played hide and seek with the ominous clouds. When we touched down at the Ministro Pistarini Airport, it was early evening. There were not many people who got down, but among all those who did, only a few of us were not locals. The airport reminded me of the one at Guwahati; non-descript, not crowded, lazy and un-happening. I was mistaken on my way back – a lot happens here.

The drive to the hotel on that wet, Sunday evening was uneventful. We were happy that the dollars had been exchanged and the pesos were in our wallets. The driver did not speak a word except for asking us the name of the hotel. When we settled down for the night, the city had not made much of an impression on us. But the morning proved to be surprisingly different. In the broad daylight, we fell in love with BA. It exuded a warmth and an old-world charm that mesmerized us. The yesteryears’ colonial, Spanish-type buildings and the cafetarias resembling some mystic town of Sicily (Palermo may be) transported us ages back into history and into the sets of Godfather.

Very few people in BA speak English; the cabbies – not a single word. They are proud portenos (the people of BA) who love the Argentinian way of speaking Spanish. But, believe me, they are a happy-go-lucky lot who look at life in a much different way than we do.  The streets are crowded in peak hours but no one honks, there are queues for buses but no grumpy faces – they even walk their dogs along 9 Jul Ave after returning home from work. On street-side cafes and hole-in-the wall pubs you find the young and the old talking their heart out to each other and sipping their mate (pronounced matay).

If you are in BA, you must visit Puerto Madero, Recoleta, San Telmo, La Boca, and Palermo. You must see the Teatro Colon, enjoy a meal at Café Tortoni and see an impromptu tango while you shop at Florida Street. We did some of these places, could not do a few and aspired to do many more. Of those that we managed to visit, La Boca was one.

La Boca is near to the Riachuelo River, a ferry ride from where takes you to Uruguay. Steakhouses and street artists are all round Caminito, a narrow lane full of brightly painted zinc shacks that is so reminiscent of the district’s early immigrant days. Noisy and boisterous on match days, La Bombonera is the home ground of Boca Juniors soccer team; that Boca Juniors, where a young, ambitious boy showed his soccer skills and became Maradona. That Maradona, whom you saw the other day on television, desperately punching his fists around and waving his arms. That his country did not make it to the finals of the 2018 Fifa World Cup is another story!