Buenos Aires

December 2nd, in Buenos Aires and it is "caliente" (about 25 degrees Celsius). It was a long flight, four hours to Houston, three hour layover, then another ten hours to BA. Neither of us slept that well on the overnight flight.

Flying into BA we flew over miles and miles of agricultural land. Fields that looked from the air to be larger than the square, one section fields that we see in Canada and the US.

We went through customs and immigration in BA with no problems except for the $75 US entrance fee charged to Canadian citizens. It is called a reciprocal fee to off set the visa fee the Canadian government charges Argentinian travelers.

Pepe, the school's driver, met us at the airport and spoke no English, although he did understand my three words of Spanish enough to correct my fractured pronunciation. The airport is about 30 km from the city centre and it seemed like every 5 kms there is another toll booth on the freeway. At that rate it would cost a couple hundred dollars to drive through Calgary on the Deerfoot.

Then to the host home in downtown BA, which has a population of 13 million, over one quarter of the population of Argentina lives in BA. It is mucho busy. No one at the host home speaks English, so we have some interesting conversations. The hostess explains things in Spanish, we nod our heads and ask questions in English, then we all dig out a dictionary to try and find the words. It all works out, and we all walked over to the Spanish language school where we are enrolled for a two week intensive beginners course. We start Monday.

Our room is in an older building, maybe circa 1920's. A four story walkup and the flat we are in takes up three quarters of the top two floors. The bottom floor was at some point a store of some kind but is now closed. Rooms are many, spacious and when built was probably a very high class home. Twelve foot ceilings, dark wood panelling on the bottom half of the living and sitting rooms and parquet or hardwood flooring throughout.

We have a Castilian style patio off our bedroom with double French doors.

There are 48 barrios or buroughs in BA, we are in the San Telmo area which is full of charm and personality. The guidebooks say it is one of BA's most attractive and historically rich barrios. We went to a little plaza Friday afternoon where there are restaurant patios and artisans selling their products. We had a couple of beer and watched couples who come to the plaza and dance the Tango for donations. I really like watching them dance the tango.

What I learned about the tango. The dance was started in the late 1800's by migrant workers from Europe who were here with no wives or girlfriends, so they visited the local bordellos. While waiting they took to dancing with each other in an aggressive, almost fighting style. As more ladies of the night migrated to Buenos Aires, the migrant workers started dancing with the prostitutes and the tango evolved into a very aggressive sexual dance. Frowned on by the high society of Buenos Aires, the dance was none the less taken up by the sons of the very same families and exported to Europe on their overseas jaunts. Eventually the tango returned to BA and became the refined sensual dance that we see today.