Channelling the Cane Spirits

Saturday 22.12.07

Christmas was just around the corner. It is not a holiday that I particularly follow with the greatest fervour, partly because I am not religious, and partly because of its rampant over-commercialisation. But I do like a good excuse to party, and the holiday period, that week or more of indulging in food and alcohol with friends and family, may be the best excuse we English-speakers have. Especially I might add, in the Southern Hemisphere, where things begin to heat up weather-wise. The temperature in Buenos Aires was rising too, but something was amiss. I realised there is an air about this time which makes it special, and it's probably due to being surrounded (and sometimes hounded) by loved ones. In short, I was missing my family and friends back in Australia. Nevertheless, I had a family in Buenos Aires with which to celebrate, and this passage is about how we passed that time in Argentina.

On the eve of the aforementioned feast, I was finally moving out of the Lime House hostel into an apartment in the inner-city barrio of San Telmo. When the previous tenants of the house, a couple of Ecuadorian friends of Anahí had left the house in a shocking mess I was more than a little annoyed, and Christmas was off to a shaky start. With her mother Maria, sister Carolina and Carolina's boyfriend Nico, we went to her aunt's apartment in Palermo after nightfall. I had the pleasure of discovering not only that Christmas is a very similar occasion in our two countries in regards to general table banter and laughs, but also that Argentineans have some unique interpretations of Christmas cuisine. Featuring strongly was Matambre (mystery processed meat with egg and traces of vegetables) and Vitel Toné (thin beef medallions in a tuna sauce). These eccentric but tasty offerings were washed down with glass after glass of bubbly sidra (cider).

Christmas Day we met Carolina and Nico and the four of us made our way out to a house in the pueblo of Marcos Paz, hanging a little like a loose thread off one of Buenos Aires' outer skirts. This triple-tiered trip included my first ride on the Subte Linea A, which is what you would get if you put the ancient W-Class trams on the City Loop. When we arrived two and a half hours later, I discovered that the girls' extended family were talking over the top of one another with such incredible pitch and tempo that I couldn't understand a word that was being said. I instead busied myself with much the same food and sidra as I'd indulged in the night before, and discovered Nico, an Argentine himself was also completely lost in the cacophony. After another two and a half hours, bone-tired and bulging unattractively, it was time to make the long ride home, similar in duration to the journey out, if not longer.

Beige is not the kind of colour to stir up the deepest of desires. It's not the colour of the flag you would display proudly from the top of your mast, nor can it be described as dazzling, devilish or even dangerous. It is just well, beige. Argentinean cuisine is decidedly beige, but that's not to say it can't be delicious. I have mentioned in previous passages the two most succulent steaks which have ever crossed this critic's lips had been born and bred in Argentina, and of course Argentina's pastries, from sweet facturas to savoury empanadas also taste wonderful. It's just that you hope they would throw a vegetable or fruit into the mix now and then. And a bit of spice wouldn't go astray either. It appears at least the porteños are beginning to branch out a little, as the growing popularity of international fare like sushi may attest.

Alfajores are one such beige delicacy that won't blend into the background. Every country has its vices. Australians are fanatics about chocolate, crisps and biscuits to name a few. Argentineans have Alfajores. They are best described as regular Wagon Wheels, stacked three high and the jam substituted for dulce de leche. There can be found a mucus-secreting selection of these treats just in front of the counter at every corner store, and due to overwhelming popularity, chocolaty giants such as Oreo, Cadbury and Chips Ahoy! have jumped in and produced their own lines. By far the most popular is the ubiquitous Havanna, hailing originally from Mar del Plata and available for purchase by the boxload in seemingly every fifth store in the Microcentro. It was to Mar del Plata that we would be sojourning next, not in search of the humble Alfajor, but of salt and sand and fresh air and everything that wasn't available in Buenos Aires.

Monday 10.12.07

Every working day in Buenos Aires brings a new protest, rally or call to arms, and more often than not, the parades thrust towards 20-lane Avenida 9 Julio to cause as much upheaval as possible. A yawning chasm splitting the city's skyline down the middle, the world's widest street requires two light changes to span its immense girth on foot. An entire north/south column of city blocks was put to the floor in its conception, and the resplendently phallic Obelisco erected in the middle of its three-way intercourse with Avenida Corrientes and Avenida Roque Saenz Peña.

Along with the cloth banners and chanting of the typical protest comes the drum beating, snare rolling, whistle blowing and exploding firecrackers. I initially believed it all to be just pre-election ranting, but even after Cristina Kirchner succeeded her husband to the presidency, the streets of the Microcentro continue to be blocked periodically by taxis, sanitation trucks or throngs of labourers, construction workers and university students. One day I had the privilege of witnessing a protest traffic-jam at the obelisk, where a two-tone blue 9 Julio rally yielded to an angry red and white Corrientes mob marching perpendicular to their forward motion.

Today's rally took the proverbial cracker as almost half a million people lined up for the whole day along Avenida Mayo to watch 'La Presidenta' Cristina pass after her inauguration in the late afternoon. For its entire length from Plaza de Mayo to Congreso (just over one kilometre), the avenue was blocked by metal barricades with only two places to cross. In the end, I had to cross 9 Julio up and back at the junction of the two super-roads to find the crossing heading in the right direction, and even that required becoming an honorary member of a frenetically-drumming group known as the Octubre Movimiento. In fact, every person watching the parade seemed to be part of a political organisation or lobby group, often with the words nacional, liberación or frente planted somewhere on their movement's banner.

A spare change funded circus of sorts thrives outside the cinema centre in cash-riddled Recoleta. With an auspicious location across the road from one of planet earth's most glamorous cemeteries and only a coin's flip from the restaurant strip, the complex draws a significant amount of prestige foot traffic every night. Attracted to this jingle-jangle of foreign and local plata comes the street performers, grubby children selling roses for "One money please" and a blob-like character lying on a rug who bawls at passers-by in the hope they drop a couple of monedas into his Itty Bitty Bin.

Thursday 06.12.07

There are places in this world where the alcohol flows like water, where perfect strangers get along, cultures come together (though often nullified within moments) and no-one complains too much if you come home stinking drunk and a little noisy at 7am. I'm talking about the typical youth hostel. For those who have never backpacked, it might be a fairly alien concept, but it does become your home when travelling, albeit one you share with a few dozen or more like (or loose) minded individuals.

Single travellers make up the broth of the hostel soup, the core ingredients of which tend to be of English, Australian, Kiwi or Irish stock; a handful of Scandinavian, North American, Israeli and those of Germanic roots are then thrown in and a sprinkling of other nationalities adds the final touch. The English and Irish are happy to get drunk every single night, and usually spend their afternoons watching football on TV. The Aussies and Kiwis will be scouring the town come evening for nightclubs they haven't been kicked out of yet. They sleep all day. Everyone speaks English, and there are always more males than females. You will hardly ever run into a person from France, Spain, Portugal or Italy at a Latin American hostel, even in Buenos Aires. Since bathroom, bedroom and living room are shared; belongings litter the floor; and beds, clothing and hair often stay unkempt for the whole day, it doesn't pay to obsess that your roommates' personal hygiene portfolios aren't as impeccable as yours.

Not all hostels are the same. Some tend to be quiet affairs - somewhere to stay while studying or escaping everyone else, meanwhile others are the complete opposite, encouraging group excursions and long-lasting drunken orgies where one may not see the light of day for more than half a week. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Buenos Aires, where the two hostels Lime House and Milhouse stand on opposite banks of huge Avenida 9 Julio. The Milhouse rates very highly with many English and Irish travellers, because here the alcohol to weight ratio is very good. For non-vampires though, the Lime House offers somewhere light, relaxed and a lot more worldly, but still with a lively social scene.

The weekend saw Buenos Aires play host to another big music festival, Personal Fest. Me, Anahí and her friend Camila all had tickets to the Friday night show, which kicked off for us with Tego Calderon, a famous Reggaetón artist who was accompanied by a couple of sexy African dancers. In the interim I took the others to see the Dandy Warhols, proponents of cool psychedelic prog-rock before we headed back to catch Electronic Tango group Gotan Project on the main stage. We fought our way through the crowd, filled with tattooed Latino gangsters (in clothing ten sizes too big) waiting at the same place for B-Real from Cypress Hill. Surely this couldn't be right - the stage was double-booked, and when finally Gotan Project's members, immaculately suited in white took the stage, it was to jeers and whistling from the crowd. The organisers had made a big mistake, and the several thousand-strong audience turned on the Tango group, hurling water bottles and the glow sticks that had been ironically handed to every paying punter. During their third song, the lead singer was struck by a pink torpedo in mid-note and they walked off the stage in disgust. Boldly they returned minutes later and finished their set to greater applause than they had begun with, all the while deftly sidestepping the remainder of the glowing missiles.

I wandered off to catch some electronic music, and returned after an hour or so to the main stage to watch B-Real. With bi-lingual rhyming over funky beats and old-school stoner hits that everyone knew, he rocked the place, all while smoking joint after huge joint. With most of the crowd having BYO'd especially for the occasion, it's a wonder the fire brigade weren't alerted by nearby residents.

I migrated back to the dancefloor where seminal New York tech-heads Fischerspooner played an hour of great tunes and then returned for Snoop Dogg, but having had my fill of the crowd, I sat on the grass at the back. Without warning, two hundred people or more began running in my direction, and I did the only thing I could - I bolted too, hiding behind a tent as others leapt fences or fell over in the dirt. It was over as soon as it had begun, but only a few minutes after everyone returned it happened again, and then a third and final time. No one around knew what had transpired until after the event, when we found out someone had been stabbed. The Snoop Dogg show went on, and in typical fashion, he kept the crowd chanting his name repeatedly in several different ways throughout all his famous tracks for over two hours.

A Kiwi friend Ricky joined me on Sunday evening to meet up with Anahí and another friend Elisa at a lake in Parque Tres de Febrero in Palermo. The streets winding through the park were lively at this time, devoted to joggers, rollerbladers and bike riders. Rented four and six-seater cycle buggies trundled past, often filled with singing or guitar-playing porteños, but the lake they had all flocked to definitely looked cleaner from a distance. The four of us departed to Palermo Hollywood in the later portion of the evening, and there was a feeling of finally breaking into the Buenos Aires underground music scene as the Afro Mama Jam session began. Rapping, singing and beatboxing were layered over improvised funk, while guitars, brass instruments and drums changed hands and rhythms. A pair of tapdancing twins augmented the eclectic collection of sounds and the crowd, squashed in between the bar and stage, held dance-offs of their own until management finally told everyone to pack up at 4am.