Few journeys offer such a stunning introduction to a city as the
aerial approach to Buenos Aires . The city - the third
largest in Latin America, with around eleven million inhabitants -
may not enjoy the dramatic scenery of, say, Rio, but what it does
have is space; lots of it. Surrounded by the seemingly infinite
pampa, Buenos Aires' sprawl is checked only to the northeast by the
River Plate, an estuary whose great brown expanse in turn suggests
a watery extension of these flattest and most fertile of lands.
Just as impressive as this expansive vista, however, is the
incredible regularity of the city's layout; with no geographical
quirks to overcome, Buenos Aires is practically a blueprint for the
strict grid system according to which the Spanish colonial
administration built their New World cities.
On the ground, Buenos Aires initially seems to live up to this
aerial impression of uniform vastness: the entire conurbation of
Gran Buenos Aires covers some 1400 square kilometres, much
of it taken up by nondescript suburbs, divided and subdivided by
hectic motorways and flyovers. At the centre of the conurbation,
however, sits the city proper or Capital Federal and, at its
heart, you'll find a city on an eminently human scale. Buenos Aires
is a city of barrios (neighbourhoods). In the downtown
district these barrios merge somewhat - commerce and finance are
the real defining boundaries of this area - but away from the
city's compact core they assume strong individual identities. The
strongest identity of all is worn by the highly idiosyncratic La
Boca , the city's famously colourful southern port district and
possibly the only place in the world where it's regarded as normal
to paint houses, telegraph poles and trees in the colours of your
football team. Adjoining La Boca to the north is the charming if
occasionally crumbling cobbled neighbourhood of San Telmo ,
a bohemian mix of tango bars, antique shops and artists' studios.
To the north of the city centre, there's the exclusive
neighbourhood of Recoleta , synonymous with its fabulously
aristocratic and ornate cemetery, and patrolled by designer-clad
ladies-who-lunch and professional dog-walkers. In all there are 47
barrios in Capital Federal, forming a fascinating patchwork quilt
of identities and provoking fierce loyalties in their inhabitants.
For many people, these neighbourhoods are Buenos Aires' best
sights, more intriguing than the majority of the city's museums,
churches or monuments and requiring nothing more than a bit of time
and walking around to be enjoyed.
Even more important than divisions between barrios, though, is
that between north and south . Ever since the city's
elite fled the southern barrio of San Telmo in 1871, after a yellow
fever epidemic, the north has been where you'll find Buenos Aires'
monied classes, while the south is largely working class. This
division of wealth shows itself clearly on the streets of Buenos
Aires: the north is dominated by high-rise constructions and grand
late nineteenth-century mansions and apartment blocks, whilst in
the south low-rise buildings predominate, marking the area's much
slower pace of development. The centre is perhaps best
regarded as a kind of buffer zone between these two; no one feels
out of place on busy pedestrianized Calle Florida or bookshop,
cinema and café-lined Avenida Corrientes. Equally, the west
of the city is a kind of neutral zone, largely middle class with
pockets of both wealth and poverty.
For the tourist, all these areas of the city have something to
offer. As well as the glamour of Recoleta, the main draw in the
north are the city's best museums, and the landscaped parks,
botanical garden and zoo of Buenos Aires' largest and greenest
barrio, Palermo . The south is much more about soaking up
the city's most traditional atmosphere while the centre is a kind
of mixture of both these attractions, wrapped up in a sometimes
hectic atmosphere but with plenty of welcoming cafés, bookstores
and cultural centres to ease things along. The attractions of the
west are scattered through various barrios and include one of the
city's most enjoyable events, the Sunday gaucho fair in the
outlying barrio of Mataderos.
Buenos Aires is one of Latin America's most culturally
distinctive cities and there is both cliché and truth in its
popular image as the home of tango, football and Evita. All make
their presence felt on the streets, and no one witnessing the mass
celebrations after a major football victory would doubt its
importance in local life. Yet to sum up the city in terms of its
most famous cultural icons would be to do an injustice to its
diversity and subtlety. The city's elusive quality was perhaps best
captured by Argentina's greatest writer, Jorge Luis Borges, who
said it "inhabits me like a poem that I haven't yet managed to put
down in words". Far less elusive, however, is Buenos Aires'
linguistic identity; the heavily inflected, almost Italian-sounding
Spanish of the city's inhabitants - liberally peppered with
lunfardo , the capital's idiosyncratic slang - is one of the
Spanish-speaking world's most instantly recognizable accents.
Above all, the capital is an immensely enjoyable place: one of
the world's great 24-hour cities, it is perhaps one of the few
where you'll find yourself with standing-room only on a bus in the
early hours of a weekday morning. Whatever time you hit the
streets, you'll find Porteños , as the city's inhabitants
are known (from puerto, meaning port), in animated conversation
over an espresso in one of the city's ubiquitous confiterías, or
cafés. And unlike some of the continent's more Americanized cities,
such as Caracas or São Paulo (and despite the ever-increasing
traffic), Buenos Aires is still a great city to walk around. In
addition, you'll find its central streets agreeably populated at
most hours of the night: not only with revellers but with people
walking their dog or nipping out for a coffee.
Around Buenos Aires are a number of worthwhile
attractions. To the north lie wealthy suburbs such as Olivos, home
to the presidential residence, leafy villa-lined Vicente
López and San Isidro whose winding cobbled streets look
down on the silvery brown waters of the River Plate. Beyond San
Isidro, and only an hour from the city centre, you'll find one of
the region's most beautiful and unexpected landscapes: the
Paraná Delta where traditional wooden houses on stilts sit
amongst lush subtropical vegetation. The Delta is reached via the
town of Tigre , from where boat trips can also be taken to
Isla Martín García , a former penal colony and now a nature
reserve, as well as to the Uruguayan coast. Just across the River
Plate, the Uruguayan town of Colonia del Sacramento makes an
excellent overnight trip from Buenos Aires, as much for its
laid-back atmosphere as for its stunning colonial architecture.