Riot Police, Economics and Chimichurri

Landing in Buenos Aires at 4am after three hours of delays isn’t the most ideal scenario, but it’s not all that different to landing at 1am I guess. Due to Rachael’s understandable concern about our transit to our accommodation so late at night (or early in the morning it turns out), we booked a private transfer from the airport. The Venezuelan bloke that picked us up also waited out the three hour delay in his car, which was incredibly kind. Tulio was an absolute top bloke that gave us a run down on the ins and outs of Buenos Aires during the drive to our accommodation in Recoleta. It was good to talk some Spanish and see a bit of the city without the absolutely chaotic traffic that we would experience later on.

I was very excited to come to Buenos Aires. I’d heard and read so much about the awesome beef, tango shows, empanadas and late night culture. It is a city of contrasts, but it does have a charm about it. It’s an interesting mix of very European architecture and very characteristically South American chaos. We found awesome coffee here, very overpriced food, great craft beer and terrible pizza. 

I did my research some months prior and decided that I’d be spending my 29th birthday dinner at La Brigada, a famous Parrilla, an Argentine steak house. I mistakenly ordered a $100 bottle of wine which was very delicious and an arrangement of various sausages and a big sirloin steak. Argentines are notorious for cooking their delicious steaks way too overdone, so I asked our very kind waiter, Hugo, to have mine “a punto”, which I was sure meant medium. Upon delivering us our big sirloin, he proceeded to show us how soft it was by cutting it in half with a spoon, which I’m positive has a sharpened edge, because this thing was far from tender. I guess I’m partially to blame for this, because it turns out “a punto” in this restaurant means “not cooked long enough that the interior temperature rises above that of the fridge from whence it came”. Pink, yes. Raw, definitely. Cold, absolutely. Rachael sent hers back to get a bit of temperature happening, while I made the grown man’s decision of suffering through a raw, cold slab of meat on my birthday. This was an incredibly expensive dinner, and as underwhelming as it was, it’s not one I’ll forget anytime soon. It was definitely a laugh and I think I was just happy to be in Buenos Aires at a famous steak house drinking delicious wine. The snaggies were good too. 

The price of EVERYTHING in Argentina is insane. They’ve been going through somewhat of an economic crisis over the last year or so with the election of President Javier Millei, who’s grand idea is to tank the economy and fire half the government workers to build the country back up again. There is a lot more to it than that, but the President eventually wants to implement the USD as the country’s sole currency, and in order to do that, things have to have a relative price to that of the United States. This is a shame for Rachael and I, because if we were to visit even 12 months earlier, we would have been able to live like absolute royalty. Looking at old menus of restaurants on Google Maps, 12 months ago things were 4 times cheaper. A few years ago things were so ridiculously cheap that I think I’d feel guilty not spending enough money on food. But now?! It’s basically the same as going out in Sydney, or Madrid where we’d just come from. Even groceries are insanely expensive. It’s perfectly understandable that 60% of the country is in poverty now. I spoke to a few people around Argentina, and asked if this will be a good or bad thing for the country, and got very mixed answers. Some are all for it, and are really optimistic that this will solve a lot of Argentina’s corruption in the government and help to lift the country back to being the economic powerhouse it once was. In 1913, Argentina was one of the world’s wealthiest countries per capita, but following a military coup in 1930, the economy began to severely die in the ass. In spite of this, the economy still remained strong enough to be even bigger than that of Australia, Japan and even Spain until 1962 when a series of economic crises began which the country would never recover from. 

It’s an interesting situation that Argentina is in. It’s one of the only countries in the world that has enough resources within its borders to completely sustain itself and still have enough excess to export to other countries. But corruption within the government runs so deep, and has done so for so long that it just seems like an impossible hole for the country to climb out of. It’s also completely fascinating to see such grand architecture all over the country, obviously built in a completely different era of wealth and prosperity, which now exists as remnants of a golden era, one that seems so unlikely to ever eventuate again. I guess it’s like witnessing the ruins of Roman civilisation in Europe and imagining what once was, except these buildings in Argentina were only put up in the early 20th century and remain very much intact. It’s just crazy how quick things can turn to shit I guess.

There is (was) one good thing about paying for things as a tourist in Argentina, the ‘Blue Dollar’. For a reason that I really cannot find any answers to, foreigners can send money from their bank accounts to an account they’ve opened with Western Union, and withdraw cash at Western Union branches all over the country for a far better exchange rate that you can get anywhere else. Sure, if you bring fat stacks of crisp US dollars, you can go to dodgy, underground cambios, foreign exchange shops, for decent rates. But for those of us that don’t happen to travel around with fat stacks of Benjamins, Western Union is the way. I worked out that if I transfer $500 to my Western Union account, I get $80AUD more in Argentine Pesos than the official rate. This was great while it lasted, but with the economy tanking, by the time we were leaving Argentina two months later, we were just using our debit card everywhere because the blue dollar rate had come so close to that of the official rate that it made no sense to put in the effort anymore.

Poorly understood economics aside, our time in Buenos Aires was quite good. We visited the national museum of art where we got to see artwork from up to 700 years ago as well as marble and brass sculptures and pottery and various artefacts from Incan and Mayan civilisations. We also went to the very famous ‘Ateneo Grand Splendid‘, which is an antique theatre built in 1919 which now serves as an enormous book store. We went on our first ever food tour in Palermo, which is a really cool neighbourhood with a lot of bars and restaurants. The food probably wasn’t as good as the company, and the whole tour went out afterwards for beers and a boogie which was heaps of fun. 

We moved from Recoleta, a neighbourhood with absolutely nothing going on, save for a famous cemetery that I wasn’t interested in paying entry for, to San Telmo, which was considerably more lively and historic. We stayed in a lovely shared Airbnb type thing called Casa de Velentine, which was home to a beautiful old Border Collie called Valentine, and a brand new member of his family, an absolute pain in the ass Australian Shepherd called Lobo. This Airbnb was located opposite La Casa Minima, the narrowest house in the city at 2.5m wide, and is the only remaining such building that served as a house for freed slaves to live in during the 1820’s.

We visited San Telmo’s infamous Sunday Market which shuts down like 16 blocks of the neighbourhood or something crazy, and I bought a nice handmade knife to use in the kitchen during our travels. San Telmo also has a big, permanent food market which is the oldest in Buenos Aires and full of small cafes and restaurants, which was really exciting to walk through and see what was cooking, and to imagine how tasty a lot of it would have been if I was willing to part with the ungodly amount of money I’d need to pay for any of it.

The insipid memory of the cursed suitcase reared its ugly head once more during our time in Buenos Aires. My darling sister in law, Emma-Louise, took upon herself the riveting task of trying to get the retched thing from our hotel in Barcelona back to Australia through a series of emails and phone-calls. I’d given up all hope of seeing pain in the ass on wheels ever again, and I haven’t got a clue how Emma-Louise managed to pull it off, but the suitcase arrived in Australia with the wedding dress and, most importantly, my sister in law’s Nintendo Switch she kindly let me borrow for the long plane trip, accounted for. I need to return the favour one day, and as long as this doesn’t include organising the shipping of goods halfway across the world by means of phone calls and emails to people in other languages, or English, let’s be honest, I’d be more than willing to help. Thank you!

We also did something very crazy and went to a La Boca Juniors soccer match. This is one of the most famous and popular football teams on the entire continent, and tickets for home matches are only sold to members. We paid our Airbnb host a whopping $100USD each for some sketchy tickets, and waited out the front of a pizza shop in La Boca for some bloke to turn up to show us how to get in. La Boca is renowned for being a very unsafe neighbourhood in Buenos Aires, but this was an opportunity we’d heard so much about and couldn’t afford to miss. Upon arriving in La Boca, we were greeted with riot police lining the streets, and buses full of Boca fans partying and playing trumpets and drums, screaming Boca chants while they drove in circles around the neighbourhood. 

Eventually, old mate turned up with a posse of half a dozen or so, and we followed him toward the stadium, amidst an absolute swarm of Boca fans. He then passed us on to another guy who gave us ID cards of actual members, with their faces covered, so we could scan them to get in. His only advice was to “keep the cards facing down” as we proceeded through the gates, funneled through like cattle by riot police.

We then climbed the steps to get to the stands behind the goals and were met with the deafening chants of the fans in our section. Enormous banners and flags waved, drums played and just about the entire stadium screamed in support of La Boca. The funny thing about Boca playing at home is that the only people allowed to attend are Boca fans, due to what could only have been impossible to imagine violence in the past with rival teams inside the stadium. 

This. Was. Insane. Upon finding a vantage point to actually see any of the game, we were immediately sandwiched between the crowd, and I probably had at least 6 people squeezed up against me at any given time. There were a few times where people up the top of the stand behind us began to fall down and created a domino effect of human bodies piling up on each other, and because no one had any room for their feet to move, everyone just started falling forwards. Miraculously, I managed to keep my footing with a few other guys who’d definitely eaten their share of empanadas for the day and we tried to hold back the avalanche of bodies while keeping the CHILDREN on their feet so they wouldn’t be crushed to death while watching a game of pansies pass the ball to each other and take dives for 90 minutes. At the half time whistle, I said enough was enough, as I honestly didn’t feel like dying while watching a sport I truly didn’t care about and we left. I really wanted to enjoy this, but it was just too much for me. 

I’m glad we left when we did, because once we got back to the street we were greeted by the most police I have ever seen in my entire life, all decked out in riot gear. I did not want to stick around to see why this was necessary so we made our way back to our accommodation. Did I enjoy this experience? Not particularly. Am I glad we went? Yes, actually. It was an absolute spectacle, and definitely one of the craziest things I’ve ever been a part of. 

For the next few days in Buenos Aires we just cruised around, taking a few photos of impressive buildings and big Argentine flags, scoping out potential spots to eat with cheap food and walking through the Ecological Reserve. It was outside the reserve that I fell in love with Choripans. A choripan is literally chorizo (sausage) + pan (bread). So, essentially a sausage sandwich. But the real catch is that you get to load this sucker up with Chimichurri, an Argentine condiment used on all sorts of grilled meat consisting of parsley, garlic, shallots, oregano, chilli, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and olive oil. I’m not even remotely ashamed to say that the next sausage sanga I have in Australia will absolutely have a mountain of chimichurri on it. It’s a match made in heaven. And the best part, it’s one of the cheapest foods you can buy in Argentina. I haven’t got a clue just how many of these food truck culinary delights I consumed during our two months in Argentina, but I can assure you it wasn’t nearly as many as I’d have liked.

We caught the train up to Tigre, about an hour or so to the north of Buenos Aires, on the river, and walked around for the day with a LOT of other tourists. The streets here were beautiful, crowded with trees and green in every direction. The docks and boardwalks along the river were completely packed full of people, and the water was chocolate brown with a lot of poor dead fishies floating down stream. We found a good choripan stand for lunch and walked a long way up the river, past a great deal of very expensive bars and restaurants, then decided to call it a day and head back into town on the train. We found a cool bar in San Telmo dishing out 2 for 1 cocktails, and the place next door to our accommodation had an afro-caribbean band playing which was awesome.

On our last day in Buenos Aires we walked to a very bad clothes market, ate some very expensive empanadas, spent way too much on our morning coffees, but found the absolute BEST choripans going which made everything okay. We had a few beers at a Colombian bar and laughed and reminisced on the 10 days we spent in the capital of Argentina. I don’t think our time here was at all what we expected it to be. It was a lot safer than we’d been led to believe, the people we met were all incredibly kind, there was a lot more to the history of Buenos Aires than I’d ever considered, which I really enjoyed learning about, and the choripans were decadent. It did suck that everything was so expensive and that most of the food was incredibly underwhelming, but I think all of this is a good lesson in not believing everything you read or hear about a place. Even obviously not being members (just look at me) and getting into the Boca match, we never felt or noticed any ill-intent from anyone in the crowd. Walking through the notorious La Boca we never felt unsafe, let alone anywhere else in the city. 

Writing this three months after our time in Buenos Aires, I can say with hindsight that this was the perfect spot to start our South America trip. It’s European enough to not be a massive culture shock upon arrival, but South American enough to be something completely new.