This sophisticated city with its European charm is full of surprises. It's both beautiful and blowzy, international and insular, the birthplace of cruel despots and kindly crooks.
By JOHN HENDERSON
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 23, 2000
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- I couldn't see the bullet holes that pockmarked Casa Rosada no matter how hard I strained. A uniformed, heavily armed guard looked at me sternly as I aimed my telephoto lens at Juan Peron's old balcony.
I was left with only newsreel images: the old dictator barking to the masses gathered in gargantuan Plaza de Mayo, jackbooted soldiers high-stepping across the picturesque grounds and, finally, warplanes strafing the pink-colored presidential palace as Peron fled from a coup.
The Buenos Aires I found in 1999 has changed a lot since the early '50s, when Peron transformed Argentina through intimidation and torture. Now,portenos (people of the port), as Buenos Aires residents are called, don't run like mice when men in black suits and shades pour out of jet-black sedans. This city of 10-million-plus has a festive air about it, and it remains festive every night until dawn.
Buenos Aires is the most sophisticated city in the Southern Hemisphere, the lone pocket of civility in a continent of chaos. That's what the visitor sees, a Buenos Aires that is big, beautiful and boisterous. Scratch that surface, and you see a city that is also costly, crowded and corrupt.
However, Buenos Aires remains one of the top destinations in the Western Hemisphere for both tourists and businessmen. They do not just visit: They move here.
People like Andreas Lohmeier, a 27-year-old German who has worked for an import-export company in Buenos Aires for about three years. He recently re-signed for three more years. I asked why.
He had just told me a story of gun-toting thugs kidnapping him in La Boca, one of Buenos Aires' most popular neighborhoods. As he put it, they "took me out to the provinces." That's an old threat of the Mafia, which is making inroads in a city where nearly half the people are Italian immigrants.
But in Buenos Aires, even the crooks are friendly.
After they took Lohmeier's money and laptop computer, the thieves gave him cab fare to get home.
The city "has a Latin atmosphere, but it's still a mix of Europe," said Lohmeier, sitting in a German restaurant. "English, French, German influence all parts of their lifestyle. This is a melting pot."
A visitor can find many ways to drink in the real Buenos Aires atmosphere. I made a beeline for Cafe Tortino, the oldest in a city where cafes are as central to the social scene as they are in Paris or Rome. Opened in 1859, Cafe Tortino was named for a bar in Paris. It looks as if it would fit in on the Left Bank of the Seine just as well as on Buenos Aires' huge Avenida de Mayo, within shouting distance of Peron's old palace.
I sat in a long, expansive room at a round table with white tablecloths. Wood paneling and oil paintings decorated the walls and art nouveau lamps hung from the ceiling. This is where Buenos Aires' large circle of artists and writers, including famed Peron-critic Jorge Luis Borges, used to hang out.
At night, I paid a very reasonable $10 and heard a beautiful local tango singer in an evening gown croon in Spanish, Portuguese, English, Italian and French. It was a wonderful evening, one of those rare nights overseas when you experience a city's colorful history melding with its flashy present.
"Buenos Aires surpasses everybody's expectations," said John McNamara, a Rhode Island native who has taught English in Buenos Aires for four years.
"People don't know what to think. What they find is a little Europe. . . . And people are pretty nice."
Portenos are huge park mavens. Palermo Park is a sprawling 415 acres on the city's east end and once served as the private retreat of Juan Manual de Rosas, Argentina's ruthless president in the early 1800s.
After an opposing party forced him from power, his estate became public land, and the people erected huge statues of Entre Rios and Justo Jose de Urquiza, the men who overthrew the president, thus mocking his legacy.
Today, the park features a golf club, a tennis club, an equestrian course, a race track, botanical gardens and even a cycling course. It also boasts Lago de Rosedil (Lake of the Rose Garden), a body of water that meanders through rose bushes, under arches and past huge expanses of lush grass. I rented a rowboat for $10 and paddled aimlessly around the lake for an hour in 80-degree weather, docking under a shady tree to bury myself in a book for another 60 minutes.
Few tourists come to Palermo Park, but it is one of the many wonderful neighborhoods in the city. Neighborhoods in Buenos Aires are called barrios, which in America carries the connotation of ghettos. Some of these barrios are fascinating.
San Telmo, for instance, is a chameleon. By day, it is Buenos Aires' arts center. Porteno painters sell oils of street scenes, shops bulge with expensive antiques, tango dancers twirl and bend to local musicians as tourists wildly click away. I bought a beautiful painting of Cafe Tortoni there for all of $15.
By night, San Telmo turns into a pulsating, shadowy tangle of bars, tango halls and rough saloons. It has a long-standing reputation for toughness. Its residents fought British troops during an 1806 invasion, even pouring boiling oil and firing cannons from rooftops.
After yellow fever hit the once-fashionable neighborhood in the late 19th century, the wealthy left and many of the thousands of European immigrants who poured into Buenos Aires in the early 1900s settled in San Telmo's cramped quarters.
The neighborhood has not changed much. Musicians, artists and students live in graffiti-covered, crumbling buildings, and gangs of youths hang out on dark street corners at night. No need to worry, however. Crime in Buenos Aires is minimal.
I wandered down one dark street -- smelling a whiff of marijuana -- and stumbled onto a dingy bar called Sarajevo. Here I found $2 wine, loud rock and friendly, laughing portenos with wild, long hair -- a bohemian scene.
The next neighborhood south is La Boca. Possibly the city's biggest tourist attraction, La Boca lures thousands every day with architecture right out of a coloring book. Long rows of wooden buildings painted in every pastel in the Hawaiian rainbow: bright, BRIGHT aqua, pink, yellow, red, purple, green.
The Italian working-class neighborhood is in a constant state of re-painting after the neighborhood's internationally renowned artist, Benito Quinquela Martin, illustrated the neighborhood in paintings and murals.
However, the mishmash of colors exists because the poor residents earlier this century painted their homes whatever color they could find. Wander past the tour groups, readjust your eyes and you will see other homes made of corrugated steel and crumbling wood.
The only Indians I saw in Buenos Aires lived in this neighborhood, in the shadow of Estadio de Boca Juniors, home of the Boca Juniors, the most popular of the city's eight pro soccer teams.
The atmosphere in La Boca did not differ much from that in the tony neighborhood of Recoleta. It is teeming with outdoor cafes, parks and piazzas, where lovers snuggle under the shade of massive trees.
"Buenos Aires people live at night," said German emigre Lohmeier.
No kidding. After eight days, or nights, in Buenos Aires last January, my body clock was thrown out the window and replaced with an alarm that went off at 10 p.m. That's when portenos go eat. They eat leisurely until 11:30, hit a tavern for a few cocktails, then head to a nightclub, where the music often does not start until 1:30 a.m.
The only night I remember getting in before 4 a.m. was my first one, before I realized that eating before 10 p.m. means eating in an empty restaurant.
The food is worth the wait. Argentine meat is even better than its reputation. The Spanish settlers turned the Pampas south of Buenos Aires into huge cattle ranches, and today steak is everywhere. Buenos Aires bursts with parrillas, neighborhood steak houses specializing in a mixed grill of meats. I went to La Caballeriza (The Horse House), a big, brightly lit restaurant where the waitresses all wear gaucho outfits and carry slabs of lean, delicious beef.
"I studied political science," said transplanted Rhode Islander McNamara, "and I never studied a country quite like this."
He was sitting in Henry J. Bean's, an American sports bar in Recoleta. Henry's represents the contradiction that permeates portenos' existence. On the one hand, they have always longed to be someone they're not. Borges, Argentina's most famous writer, said as far back as the early 1900s, "There wasn't a single Argentine whose utopia was not Paris."
Today, Buenos Aires' architecture is a mixture of Paris' parks, Rome's piazzas and London's
commercial buildings. Buenos Aires is said to lead the world in per capita breast reductions and psychoanalysts.
Yet residents are so proud of their country and are such isolationists, some businesses shun American dollars. I found cashing a traveler's check easier in remote sections of Indonesia. In my eight days, I had to make three trips to the American Express office downtown to get Argentine pesos.
It's a city that combines New York prices with South American wages, and the government never seems to have both hands on the table.
"A friend who works at the (U.S.) embassy has five CEOs visit a week," McNamara said. "He tells them it's corrupt. Some walk out; some ask, "How do we do business?' "
How corrupt? President Carlos Menem spent about $3-million to remodel his quarters, $16-million for a helicopter, $66-million for his own Boeing 757 and placed eight relatives in government jobs.
"People here don't trust the government," Lohmeier added. "People still keep money at home instead of in the banks."
Then again, Buenos Aires is wonderful in a reduced dose. I kept thinking back to that Casa Rosada guard, how he symbolized his city's dichotomy. Because beneath his scowl and regimentation was some true Latin charm. He let me take his picture.
Then he smiled.
-John Henderson is a writer who lives in Denver.
Getting there: No visa is required to visit Argentina.
United, American and Aerolineas Argentinas fly direct from Miami to Buenos Aires. Expect to pay anywhere from $765 to $1,300, depending on the carrier and the season (January is summer in the Southern hemisphere, so this is the expensive high season.)
Check two or three months before departure for discounts, and also contact consolidators through travel agents for cheaper fares.
Language: Buenos Aires is a sophisticated city and most portenos study English as a second language. In tourist centers such as Boca, Recoleta and the market in San Telmo, English is widespread. However, learn some Spanish. Few taxi drivers speak English, and many portenos don't get to practice their English, so their vocabulary can be limited.
Daily costs: Buenos Aires may be the most expensive city in South America, but bargains can be found. In nice restaurants, particularly in popular areas such as Recoleta or in hot nightspots such as Ribera Este, expect to pay at least $20 for an entree. At Ribera Este, however, dinner allows you to waive the $15 cover charge for the adjacent nightclubs. For cheaper, more local fare, Buenos Aires is crawling
with parrillas, traditional Argentine restaurants serving cuts of various meats for less than $15.
Drinking can also be expensive. Beer goes for up to $5 in popular spots, and a plate of hors d'oeuvres at an outdoor cafe in Recoleta can run up to $15. Go to the laid-back Bohemian bars in San Telmo and glasses of good local wine go for as low as $2.
Staying there: The range of accommodations is huge. Small, cheap hotels can be found just as easily as five-star hotels. Youth hostels run about $10 a night, cheap hotels range from $15-$25 for a single to $25-$35 for a double. Moving up to cleaner, nicer accommodations will run from $30-$60 for a single to $45-$75 for a double. Five-star hotels, such as Gran Hotel Colon and the Sheraton, will run from $80-$250 for a single and up to $300=plus for a double.
For more information: Contact the government tourism office at 800 Brickell Ave., Penthouse, Miami, FL 33131; call (305) 373-1889. The office in Buenos Aires is at Callao 235; call 371-7045.
The Embassy of Argentina in Washington is at 1600 New Hampshire Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20009.