“You gotta spend at least a week”, came the nagging refrain from friends aware of our destination.

So, we did, happily, because there is so much to see and do in Buenos Aires. It’s difficult and unfair to boil this bustling city of 14 million “portenos” – people of the port – down into a few trite cliches. But hoping for dispensation from those more knowledgeable, let’s get right to the highlight reel.

New Year’s Eve Tango Dinner Show

This Latin dance, birthed in the rough-and-tumble immigrant quarters of B.A. known as La Boca, is as emblematic of Argentina as hockey is to Canada. You may not be a player, but you can enjoy as the national pastime plays out in nightclubs and in broad daylight on some streets.

Most of these club shows are very professional and worth the price of admission. On the streets, it’s a different story. Sometimes, aspiring professionals start out here, dancing for tips. On the other hand, a Tango experience can be no more than a tourist photo-op in La Boca. Still, your orthopedist will sigh in relief.

Gaucho Ranch – La Estancia Portena, San Antonio de Areca

Okay, so it’s touristy, but not as hokey as slapping on chaps and a ten-gallon hat for a week at an Arizona dude ranch. No one walked away from this day-long experience convinced they had the makings of a gaucho. But it did require effort: a two hour bus drive out of town into the Argentinian pampas to get there.

Those of us who wanted could go horseback riding. There was also a nice lunch, and plenty of distracting friendly farm animals. Well, the ram and the dog had their issues, but the others were curious and welcoming the new visitors.

But the day’s highlight – and in this writer’s opinion the entire reason for coming – was to witness a unique, even extraordinary performance between a Horse Whisperer and his steed.

The lunch, of course, was Asado-style, with plenty of beef, sausage and some chicken slow-grilled on a wood fire. Some vegetables even found their way onto the menu. And of course, there was lots of red wine.

Google correctly distinguishes gauchos from America’s gun-slinging cowboys. “While Gauchos were also hunters and frontier people who lived off the land and hunted game, they were more famous as knife-weilders than gunmen.”

Out there on the pampas northwest of Buenos Aires, we met one of these old-timers. His name, or nickname, is El Mosquito. Now retired, Mosquito spends his days reminding visitors of that history. He was a quiet, gentle soul who seemed happiest just playing music in his old age.

The Food

Argentina’s reputation for fine dining probably owes itself to the country’s European roots: the Spanish obviously, but also the generations of Italian and French as well. The latter’s influence shows up throughout Buenos Aires in broad Parisian-like avenues, tree-lined streets, and even a center-of-town obelisk.

On our first day, in search of an empanada-and-cerveza lunch, we got sidetracked by a charming French-styled café, Fervor, right next door to our destination. Our mistake led to our best meal on this visit: great steak, a super Malbec, and plenty of street-side Parisian vibe. This gastronomic delight was finished off by the establishment’s offer of Italian limoncello. This USD $125+ meal anywhere else rang up at a mere USD $59 because of Argentina’s unfortunate rampant inflation and currency difficulties.

A similarly good dining experience can be had throughout Argentina at almost any local parilla (think of the parilla as you would the neighborhood bistros in France). This meal of steak, wine and veggies at Parilla Pena, rang up at just USD $38. Fewer frills but plenty of atmosphere and good food too.

Futbol

Did you hear that Argentina won the World Cup?

Okay, dumb question.

For days, Argentina had come to a standstill as Lionel Messi and his teammates gave struggling Argentinians something finally to cheer about. By the time we arrived in Buenos Aires, the raucous victory celebrations subsided, the trash disappeared and people were back at work, but still futbol crazy.

Which leads to a segue into the next topic …

Messi made a claim in a pre-or-post-game media interview that Argentina owed its performance to the stimulant nature of a tea-like drink called mate. Although likely tongue-in-cheek, Messi’s admission touches on the role of mate in the lives of many in Argentina and to a somewhat lesser degree, elsewhere in South America.

Mate

               Google’s take on this Argentine obsession: “Mate is a popular beverage in several South American countries and ubiquitous in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. It is made using leaves and twigs from the yerba mate plant, a holly-like shrub, which are steeped in hot water to make mate or cold water to make tereré.  Mate is an integral part of Argentinian life, and its ceremony is tied to feelings of friendship and kinship, with both friends and strangers. The act of pouring and sharing mate is an act of love and dedication, governed by certain unwritten rules for those participating in the round.”

               Since Covid, the sharing part came to a temporary end. But you can spot mate devotees easily: the metal cup jammed with mate leaves, the metal straw to ingest the tea, and under the arm or nearby a sizeable thermos of hot water.

Eva Peron

Today, even in death, Eva Peron remains the dominant historical figure in Argentina, her likeness and spirit looming over the nation’s past and its present. In idle conversations, many portenos trace the country’s current economic woes, fairly or not, on a widespread aversion to work induced generations ago by a scheme of trading generous handouts to the poor in return for votes for President Juan Peron, who came to rely on the instincts and appeal of his wife with the rural upbringing for his political future.

So, a visit to Buenos Aires requires a stop at La Recoleta Cemetery, Eva Peron’s final resting place. The BBC describes her arrival here this way: “Three years after Eva Peron’s death, her embalmed corpse disappeared, removed by the Argentinian military in the wake of a coup that deposed her husband, President Juan Peron. It then went on a global odyssey for nearly two decades.”

Twenty years later, the odyssey ended in a small alley in La Recoleta where Eva Peron was entombed alongside her father in the Duarte family mausoleum. Without the daily trail of curious visitors, its bronze door and desiccated flower bouquets would go unnoticed in this warren of small alleys and fancier mausoleums. Not the resting place most visitors expect for Eva Peron, given the number of lesser-knowns nearby who laid claim to more grandiose quarters. Yet hers is the one that draws thousands on pilgrimages every year.

Teatro Colon

Months before we arrived, we’d inquired about attending a show of some sort at Teatro Colon, the stand-out B.A. arts venue. As described by Wikipedia, “The Teatro Colón is the main opera house in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is considered one of the ten best opera houses in the world by National Geographic.”.

It is utterly magnificent. The day we showed up at our hotel, our concierge greeted us with the fabulous news: two tickets had come available for the final performance of The Nutcracker. The next night we were ushered into a curtained loge on the 2^nd tier of El Teatro Colon, directly facing the stage. The theater’s beauty was breathtaking, as were the acoustics for this mesmerizing performance choreographed by Rudolph Nureyev.

We can thank Argentina’s World Cup victory for our prime seats. The ensuing pandemonium that day forced the theater to reschedule that evening’s performance to the day after our arrival. The original ticket-holders apparently could not attend on the new date and we were able to claim their tickets. Our hotel concierge earned himself a nice tip for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Cathedral of Buenos Aires

Finally, if you are Roman Catholic, or like to visit Churches for their historical significance, add the Cathedral of Buenos Aires to your itinerary. It is impressively gold gilded. But its claim to relevance dates back to its previous archbishop, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, today known to the world as Pope Francis.

And with that…

“Hasta luego, Buenos Aires, y mucha gracias”.