You know when you've been tangoed (2)

Caminito is the place to come for tango kitsch.

The tiny alley, in one of the dodgiest and poorest areas of Buenos Aires, was tarted up with a few pots of paint some decades ago and reinvented itself as a tourist postcard.


Each weekend, the pavement cafes and restaurants ring to the sounds of tango performed live, often by an old boy with a wavering baritone.


Lavishly-fishnetted young Latin ladies with rakish trilbies try to persuade passers-by to eat here or have their photo taken there with your head poking through one of those painted headless boards - for a few pesos, of course.


Models of Diego Maradona are everywhere. The lying, drug-taking, tax-evading, cheating football genius is one of Boca's most famous sons.

Here's an effigy of him on the balcony of the Havanna cafe in Caminito, doing what he's most famous to English fans for: handling the ball.


The restaurants have live tango dancing, and sometimes the diners join in, such as this lady. Not me, of course: dancing's not my thing. I was more interested in the disused Transporter Bridge just up the docks road.

And I had a bus to catch back. It's only a few blocks north back to San Telmo, the cobbly artisan district, but everyone warns you in dark tones NOT to walk, even by day - Boca is evidently a place of cutpurses and brigands. Well, the tango has always had that edge of danger...