So I’m into my final week here in Buenos Aires, and following last weeks cold cough which wrote off a few days entirely I need to make the most of it. Last night I went to “La Bomba de Tiempo”, which is a live music performance of seventeen drummers in a old warehouse that’s been converted for shows.

It is the only thing I’ve done more then once here as I had such a good time on the first occasion. I went with four friends last night who had not been and I had been raving about how good it was, luckily they all agreed after the show and had a wicked time to. All the music is improvised on the night and they have a conductor who leads them through it by a hundred different hand signals. The music is a mix of central American, African, Samba and Argentine beats. Each week they have a couple of artists join them and they play along with the artist. My first visit they had two violinists, last night they had two older guys who were incredible tango dancers, and then later a guitar player who also sang. The atmosphere and crowd are brilliant. A real mix of locals, students, professionals, travellers and one of the friendliest places I’ve been. When I return here at the end of my trip to fly home I will definitely try and go again!
La Bomba de Tiempo

I arrived here in Buenos Aires back in early September late on a Thursday night, on the Saturday I met a few people at a bar including an Australian chap who I found out would be at the same Spanish language school as me. And on the Monday morning when I turned up at the school he was in my class. So after class we went for lunch and then planned to head over to La Boca. At lunch he told me how the previous weekend he had been attempted robbed twice in an hour in the early hours of the morning whilst he was pretty wasted, and had managed to fight off, get away both incidents without losing anything. I was slightly shocked, and made a note to myself that its probably best to get taxis late at night rather then walking and waiting for buses.

After lunch we headed to La Boca. The actual tourist area of La Boca is literally only a couple of streets “Caminato”. We were really lucky as it was a really lovely sunny spring day which made for great photos really capturing the colour of the houses in the area. Within the first five minutes we were encouraged to have a photo taken each with a tango dancer, I knew there would be a charge for this but theres not too much you can do about it! I was only really annoyed because the couple that were working at the time were not great looking, and the guy I had to pose with was about three foot and looked like a nine year old, so in my photo my thigh is twice as wide as he is!! And two minutes later a different couple took up the spot and the guy was much taller and better looking!

After looking around the area and taking photos we found a parrilla restaurant at the back which was a bit less touristy and had a lovely courtyard. So we sat in the sun drinking beer and wine doing our Spanish homework. It was a pretty chilled afternoon, and it felt pretty decadent. About four we decided that we should make a move as our Spanish school had warned us of a couple of areas not to be around after dark as people that were there after dark would be “up to no good”. We then realised we didn’t have any coins for the bus, so we popped into a shop to try and change a note, the man couldn’t help us but said if we just walked one block we’d get to bus station we could buy a ticket anyway. We were a little tipsy, and I don’t know if we misunderstood him but after walking a block we turned down a street that we jokingly said to each other looked really dodgy and we so shouldn’t walk down there, but did anyway. We gave up looking for the bus station and started to circle back to the main area. We were walking along the train tracks at the back when we passed two young guys. As we walked past them they grabbed my friends rucksack, he gave chase and after clambering over a fence grabbed it back and then they started chasing him briefly. His camera had dropped from his pocket which I retrieved, and as we got back on to the main street a guy in a car that was passing was shouting at us. Blatantly saying, “what are you two idiot tourists doing in this area, get back to Caminato!”

Back in the area we still needed coins for the bus and were a little shaken up to boot, so we dropped into a bar for a quick tequila. I might add the shots we near enough half pints!! Nerves slightly calmed or muted, and coins obtained for bus we left and headed back to the relative safety of Palermo Soho for a quick dinner. We were sat outside after whilst he had a cigarette, only about eight in the evening, talking about how unlucky he was to have been targeted three times. At that moment a man pretended to stumble into our table and then ran off….with my friends camera! The restaurant didn’t charge us and a helpful Spanish language teacher who was passing wrote a couple if things down and told us where the nearest police station was. We didn’t expect the police to be able to do anything but needed to report it for his insurance. So a painful hour was spent at the police station filling in a form and we sobered up pretty quickly and called it a night.

Most people that I have met here that are studying or travelling have either been victims, attempted robbed, or been with people that have been. My particular friend was without doubt hugely unlucky to have that happen four times, and the place his camera was taken is about as safe as you can get. For me I’ve been able to use it as a lesson, you need to watch all the time, you can’t sit down at a cafe or restaurant and leave your mobile or anything on the table, you always have to carry you bag in front of you. You don’t put your bag or rucksack on the floor at cafes or restaurants, always have it on your lap. And the other method I’ve had a couple of friends nearly fall victim to is when someone squirts cream or something that smells disgusting on your coat or bag, and then someone else comes over to help you clean it off and as you put your bag down or take it off then it’s gone. I’ve also know a girl who was in a group of seven (male and female), when they were stopped and wallets and mobiles were demanded. But it’s not just tourists that are targeted and when I speak to locals they all take the same precautions. I don’t feel unsafe here, but I have to be constantly vigilant which is pretty tiring!

This was a tour I did a couple of weeks ago in Buenos Aires. I’d heard and read a lot of good reviews about it, and it appealed to me as it was cultural without being inside and walking round a museum which I’ve not quite got myself to do as yet! Sorry mum and dad…

We met in area called Palermo Hollywood and started off on foot, and then from time time we jumped in a minibus to move to other locations. Without going into too much detail, it was pretty interesting to hear how the graffiti or street art movement began here, and how it has progressed. We saw quite a few works by the same artists, and now if I see other pieces I can tell which are done by some artists. What’s appealing to me about street art is that it’s not forever, it’s for the here and now to be seen by anyone and in a few months or years it will be painted over by some new street art. In that sense it becomes more precious as its not permanent. And the scale of some of the pieces was immense! I’m not pretending to be any type of expert in the area, but it certainly a sparked an interest in me.
Graffitimundo