Day 2 & 3 - Buenos Aires

In an attempt to make it a little easier for us to communicate with the locals we booked ourselves on to a 3 hour Spanish crash course. Our lesson didn't start until 2:30pm so we had a lazy morning before heading to our lesson. Our Spanish teacher Macarena (like the song) was lovely. Simon left the class with some basic Spanish however all I left with was a headache. It was definitely worth it, if only for the numbers as now we have a rough idea of how much money we need to hand over without just handing over notes until they tell us to stop!

The next morning we joined a tour of La Boca. La Boca is a bright and colourful neighbourhood and one of the first areas that housed the huge number of immigrants that entered Argentina via its port between 1880 and 1930. These immigrants arrived with nothing so to make money they got jobs in the busy port and on the railroads. They then built their homes from discarded materials from the shipyard and railway and painted them in this mismatch of colours using leftover paint. The tour taught us a lot about the history of the area and Argentina. The most harrowing story was of the disappeared which was still happening only a couple of years before we were born. The military government at the time kidnapped anyone that was thought to be a socialist / left wing / intellectuals and tortured them using electricity. When deemed of no further use they gave them large doses of sedatives and threw them out the back of military planes over the river. Because the bodies were never found, the government managed to get away with this for a very long time.

When in Argentina do as the Argentines do and something they do with passion is the tango. We opted for a lesson, dinner and show at The Ventana Tango Show in San Telmo. My inability to move my arms and legs independently meant that my attempt to tango was a cross between a thunderbird and a baby giraffe learning to walk. Si said it was like dragging around a scarecrow. I think Lord of the Dance here is just being mean for adding that into the blog post. Even our tango instructor laughed hysterically at my inability to relax and let Simon lead me! Needless to say I won't be giving up the day job. It was however one of the funniest hours of my life. Simon, despite dreading doing the lesson also really enjoyed himself although his joyous cries of "perfecto" were met by more laughs from our instructor.

Our tango lesson was followed by a yummy three course dinner. To start I had a tomato and mozzarella salad, followed by steak and ice cream. Simon opted for the empanadas, steak and a traditional Argentine custard dish. The steak was divine! This was accompanied of course by some Argentinian malbec.

The show was a mixture of tango, singing, a crazy man on a ukulele type instrument that had 10 strings and another crazy man that danced whilst spinning ropes at a ridiculous speed that hit the floor at precise times interacting with his tap like dancing. It was a lot of fun and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.Read more