We had four more days in Buenos Aires during which time we tangoed, demonstrated and ate meat. The tango show was in the basement of a lovely old café called “Café Tortoni”. We were led through the actual dining room which was all high ceilings, crown moulding and crystal chandeliers down a narrow winding staircase to a small room in the basment with exposed brick and about 20 tables set facing the stage. The show was nothing like what we had expected, being much more of a show rather than just a tango dance. I’m sure we would have got a lot more out of it if we could actually speak Spanish, but not much of what they said had to do with ordering dinner or booking hotel rooms. The lighting, however, seemed to have been purposefully designed to make taking a decent photo impossible as it changed about twice every second.
The demonstrations were daily, but that is just part of life in Buenos Aires and we learnt to pay them no mind. Although it was interesting to see how quickly the police could block off a street.
The meat in question, was a traditional pasillo or grill… basically all the meat you can imagine and that’s basically your dinner. We managed to identify beef, chicken, pork, kidney, spicy sausage, blood sausage and there were a couple of other things that defied identification. It was an incredibly nice dinner though and more than even Jason could eat!! (At least here in Argentina. But he is eating about a third of what he was eating in Canada. When we first arrived in Canada we were eating similarly to what we would eat in Australia, always a little hungry but not that worried about it until we realised that Jason was down to skin and bone weighing less than he ever had as an adult. So, we started eating more. We were mildly worried we had just become gluttonous pigs, but on arrival in South America we reverted to more normal eating habits – or eating even less as the heat seems to suppress the appetite, so the conclusion is that being cold burns calories like there is no tomorrow, “The new fad – the freezer diet!”)
We also explored the Sunday San Telmo market which went and went and went, it was about 10 blocks in length and a three wide in places. There were street performers and tango music giving a wonderful atmosphere. The other thing of note was the Evita museum which gave us the incredibly saintly history of Eva Peron. Finding the other side of the story... now, that's not in any museum.
We also had our first pick pocketing incident in South America, and only the second for the whole trip. We had gone to buy our bus tickets and while ducking into the train station which was quieter to consult the map Jason felt someone brush against him but thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until I went to get out a bottle of water that we realised two of the pockets on the daypack were open. The first has the USB drive in it, which luckily she didn’t find. The second had the ipod in it, which luckily she didn’t find. What she did take was our medication pouch, so she made off with a couple of immodium and a packet of zyrtec. Whilst we learnt to lock the pockets on the daypack, because even apparently blind pickpockets can take worthless items and it's a pain.
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