Day 247: Buenos Aires – Argentina – Feb 19th

We spent what was the worst possible day as a tourist. That’s part of the trade-off when traveling without making set plans, but it is a real bummer because we’re trying to book our itinerary for the next couple of days but we’re getting some mixed signals, false information and a lack of communication from all fronts.

In the end, we spent all day waiting for information by our agent, who just ended up telling us at 4:30pm (when everything is closing) that she can’t sell us the tours because we talked with the agency she was working with first. W T F. Wasted us TWO days of sitting around.

At night, we splurged on a rather stereotypical Buenos Aires event…. a tango show! With the hostel, we paid $360Pesos (~$50USD) but online, the price is $140USD, which is closer to $1000Pesos at the unofficial exchange rate!!

Buenos Aires in general is pretty safe to walk around at night, and we did some exploring of the downtown streets outside of the usual Florida and Lavalle pedestrian avenues, but that doesn’t mean the shady money exchangers didn’t ask us, just less frequently.

The tango show is located in another touristy area, but the bright lights and dark wood all around makes it a bit of a fancy place. It didn’t help that we were dressed in our only style of clothes: hiking. It’s not even like weekend casual in university kind of laid back, we’ve got brightly coloured synthetic tops that look like we’re going out for a jog, and we have those pants that unzip at the knee to double up as shorts… NOT really working for a fancy dinner place. In fact, if we were back home we’d feel sort of strange just to wear this to go out even to the food court! =P

We got some pretty sweet seats in the middle, and the whole atmosphere is a bit old school classy without being cheesy. Service was decent and they seemed to have a system going on with the menu coming first, the bartender introducing himself, followed a pair of dancers and the photographer coming to see if you’d like a picture. It would’ve been fun, but we look like we’re about to do a 10k run and that would just look strange with a tango hat now wouldn’t it? Dinner was good, and the meats were as awesome usual even if they over cook it (They seem to like over cooking their steaks here!).

The show started at 10:15pm and ran for a full two hours. It was brilliantly planned with very little ‘boring’ parts or getting overwhelmed by crazy dancing footwork. The live band did their thing for about 10mins, followed by some REALLY crazy tango dancing for about 50mins mixed in with some singing here and there. Then out of nowhere they shut the lights and the female singer starts on a Spanish rendition of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina”, and towards the end all the dancers came out and waved Argentinean flags above our heads (we could feel the gusts of wind from their waving). It was a bit strange and cheesy, but hey, it was pretty good! We expected more tango, but out came a show of the natives of Argentina doing some traditional folk music, and the performers really loved their music and you can feel the contagiousness of the performance. And the folk performers had this guy who would do some crazy rhythmic dancing with two wooden yo-yos that’d make a clicking sound when it hits the floor..so he’d spin the things in various rhythms and dancing along to it! It was crazy! Two full hours later, we were full, extremely content with the really entertaining show we just watched and was out on the street being extremely content.

BA really does liven up a lot when the sun sets and the wine starts flowing. It was a TUESDAY at half past midnight, but people were still happily dining on pasta/grills on the streets, with the waiters still setting tables in hopes of more customers coming. That’s crazy….