RIO, CARNIVAL and the hunt for Indian food

 

 BUENOS  AIRES DAYS

 

DAY 2

Florida street is a tourist mecca here. It has malls, brand stores, outdoor cafeterias and no traffic. It’s a walking only street about 2.5 kms long.  It was just a short walk away from our hotel. As a  country with Spanish culture, things are slow to start here. We stepped out by 11 am and  things were stirring. As our hotel clerk laughingly told us the previous day , 6 pm is still tea and snacks time  and happy hour ends at 9 pm when the serious business of food and drink begin.

We leisurely  window shopped though Florida,  and settled down at  an outdoor café for  lunch. It was lovey weather and the sun wasn’t warm and the beer tasted good.

It was predicted to ba a rainy evening and we just went for shirt walk round the block and wentfor an early dinner.  The htel guy was right. All restuarants serving dinner opened only after 7 pm and happy hours was from 7 pm to 9 pm. The serious business of dinner and drinks began after 9 pm.So we decided to go to mall nearby the ‘Galleria Pacifico’. We knew that malls meant food courts and they catered for all choices. True  enough , we found predominantly green restaurant and also a Chinese place in the food cart. The Chinese place quickly became our go to place for atleast one meal a day.

We also saw this strangely named shops all over BA.

What was strange was they were frequently closed. They were usually open for 14 hors or maybe a bit more. Certainly not as the name indicated. It was the usual grocery store hawking things of daily needs just like our neighbourhood kirana stores.

 

We had booked for a Tango show for the evening through the hotel.  I use the term evening, rather loosely as the pick up was at 9.30 and the show was to begin at 10. Tango is the Bharatnatyam of Argentina, except that it is performed by couples. It apparently originated in the 1800s among the Argentinian, Uruguay part of South America. The music, especially the percussion part  comes from the slave population from Africa. Starting from  musical evening gatherings of this slave population, it rapidly became popular and became a cultural mix of the African and native population. By this time, the actual native population had been decimated , so by native, one means people of Spanish origin.

 A very sensual performance. We chose a small theatre  with  performances since 1969. The location itself has been a hospital and  a Russian bar among other things since the 1900s. The location and the theatre is now considered a heritage site. The performers themselves were extraordinarily fit and moved their hands and legs in whirls so swift that the mobile phone cameras could not capture the shots. It was quite a breathtaking performance. The show ended close to midnight and for us it was a late night !!

 

DAY 3

The next day we woke up groggy eyed after all that free sparkling wine from the previous nite.  We thought we will get on the hop off hop on bus to get a feel of the city.  We have  in any case,  planned a guided visit on the 2nd March on our return from Ushuaia .  It started out as a cool day and got progressively warmer . We hot some interesting facts on the guided talk on the bus. Like the British held the city for a short period  in 1806 for 45 days but managed to  builtd a  tower in 1910 to signify friendship with Argentina.  And strangely or in a deliberate mocking of the British, Argntina built a monument honoring their heros who died  in the lost cause of the Falklands war.in 1982.  Argentina got their independence in 1816 from the Spanish.  And that the ferry terminals have regular boats to Uruguay !

The bus your passed by the Recoleta cemetery where Eva Peron is interred.  She not only is the subject of Evita the play, but also had a significant  impact on Argentina. She came from the lower income group, moved to BA and became Juan Perons 4th wife in due course. She championed the cause of the poor called  ' des camisados' or the shirtless ones. She  also championed women's suffrage. She died yong at 34 of cancer. We got off  at the cemetery stop, walked through the church there, and  it being a sunday, strolled  the weekly handicraft market set up outside.We also had lunch at a pretentious and overpriced Italian place at the plaza outside. For some reason Italian pizzerias  and restaurants seem to be popular in Buenos Aires. Its not that the place has lot of resident Italians. I would have understood German cuisine being popular considering the rumours abou tthe nazi aristocracy having settled in  Argentina in droves, post WW2.    We took the hop on bus again and after what semed a long ride reached our drop off point near our hotel.

                                                     A view of  the church next to the cemetery

                                           The  scene ouside the church on a sunday afternoon

On the way  back we passed the Boca football stadium, where a match was slated for later that day. Now, one cannot come to Argentina and not speak of the legendery heros of of Argentina. As it happens, I have never feally followed football. Outside of cricket, I have only followed  tennis  and a few sporting heros from India like PT.Usha, Abhinav Bindra and lately badminton, where India has made impressive strides. But even I have lost of respect for  the  legendery  Maradona  and Messi. But unlike India where you will find tendulkar, Dhoni and Virat Kohli  on hoardings and television hawking chips to soaps to cars , I did not find any such posters of  Argentinian football heros  on street corners. Perhaps becuase I did not watch the local TV channels and also because the concept of hoardings are alien to Argentina. The closest i came  was this photo below.

Incidentally we did not see any Indian tourists anywhere , unless one counts US resident of Indian origin holidaying with her friends. She was more surprised to see us than we were at seeing her! But then , that evening at the food court I had mentioned earlier, I spied two very Asian looking young men. I made casual talk with them and found out that one was an Indian and the other Srilankan. And whats more the Indian chap was from Vizag in Andhra Pradesh.  They were officers  from a merchant ship and just in port for a few hours. 

DAY 4 

The 4^th member of our group made her way to BA this morning.We hung aroung the hotel waiting for her after a leisurely breakfast.

Meanwhile we decided it was the last chance to do a laundry run. We had earlier located a laundry service across the road from our hotel. We walked across and  dumped our clothes on them. They have system where they charge by  a basket.  As it turned out they piled our bundles into 3 lots and each lot cost us 5000 pesos, that was roughly a bit less than 5 USD.

The 4 of us lunched,  and after a nap decided to try out a nearby Indian restaurant for dinner. The reviews didn’t sound promising, but we thought we would try it anyway. Big mistake !!!.  The staff was Indian, the menu sounded right but they got the spices and taste all wrong. With exhorbitant pricing, we felt we had be ripped. I always maintain that we should try out the local varieties and cuisine and that’s safer because its likely to be fresher and something that’s familiar to the local chef. I don’t fancy  paneer  of unknown vintage doing a tango inside me.!!  Fortunately we had steered clear of paneer and no major damage was done. I did leave a review though for future Indian tourists. They visit this place at their peril. 

The only good thing was the beer I had.  I had Ayyanger beer in Germany .Now I am on the lookout for  a Siva beer!!

 

Some random pix of Buenos Aires