Don't cry for me: Eva Peron's tomb in Recoleta Cemetery

Recoleta Cemetery is the resting place for Argentina's great and good, and presidents, though I'd never heard of them. You know the sort of thing: Presidente General Doctor Jose Ignacio Rodriguez Lopez Rodriguez Rodriguez, founder of something in 1844 etc.

What's interesting about Recoleta for the gringo is not who's buried but what they're buried in. This is no line-up of headstones: it's a whole village of deads, each in their kiosk-sized mini-mausolea, terraced like a village, complete with streets and little squares: a genuine Ghost Town.



Actually, there is one person buried here famous even to the clueless such as me: Eva Peron. Apparently there was some opposition to her being interred here - not because of the appalling songs she sang in the Lloyd Webber musical, but something to do with her family, the Duartes, being of low birth.

This is her tomb, anyway. It's not signed and rather tricky to find. Luckily I tagged along with Xavier, a Spanish guy who did the asking. After a half-hour unintentional tour and conflicting instructions from guides, tourists, cleaners and chaps digging up the pavements, we found it: the Familia Duarte.

Dogged work: Buenos Aires's dog-walkers

One of Buenos Aires's most distinctive sights is the paseaperros: the dog-walkers.

The conurbation has a population of around 13 million - more than London - and they're just as keen on pets as Londoners.

And for all those who have dogs but live in flats and have busy city jobs, the paseaperros are there to exercise their companion animals.

Stroll around the parks'n'museums area of Recoleta and you'll see plenty of them, taking a friendly pack of hounds round in a fistful of leads.

The well-behaved dogs, mostly strapping biggish breeds such as labradors and alsatians, certainly seem to enjoy it - a social outing for them, no doubt - and in some of the parks you'll see them let off the leash and doing what dogs do.

More pictures (Flickr)

Playing statues in Puerto Madero

Multiply replicated statues in city centres, each painted differently by an artist, seem to be all the rage these days.

Already this year I've seen elephants in London, lions in Bath, and toads in Hull (a homage to a poetic refernce by adopted local boy Philip Larkin).

So what have they done along the same lines in Buenos Aires?


Well, you can see for yourself: oh how Latin.

They're in Puerto Madero, the new dockside development that's eerily similar to that stretch of Thames just west of Canary Wharf, complete with similarly overpriced waterside restaurants.

I think I preferred the elephants, actually. Even the toads.


And yes, I know this one's sideways. It's a bug in blogger.

And no, I've no idea what the young lady is doing with an electric guitar when she doesn't have an amplifier.

Putting the liv into Bolivia

There was a big Bolivian parade yesterday celebrating two hundred years of Argentinian independence with a joyfully noisy show round the Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires’s equivalent of Parliament Square.

Those delightfully gaudy Bolivian costumes were much in evidence.

The women looked like they had donned a bowler hat, or sometimes a lampshade, and then covered themselves in glue, and run through a curtain shop.


Some of the chaps, not to be outdone, had magnificent hooped skirt things, which put me in mind of the toilet roll covers my gran used to have.

All did some lively formation-whirling, accompanied by marching bands with very loud timpanists who thumped out a steady two-two spiced up with the odd bar of four-against-three.

At fifteen thousand feet, perhaps crossrhythms are what keeps the circulation going.

You know when you've been tangoed...

So here I am in Buenos Aires, and yes, it’s tango city. Stroll down Florida St, the centre’s favourite pedestrianised shopping boulevard, and the hawkers (present, but not too persistent) try to entice you into this or that Tango Show.

The going rate – for floor show, meal, transport there and back from your hotel – seems to be about 360-odd pesos, or about sixty quid. Put one way, that’s ten bottles of very decent Malbec in a restaurant here. Put another... well, it’s still too much for me.



Still, if you buy into the tango schtick, there are shops for your passion. Some areas – such as Suipacha St near the Obelisk (above right), or the Abasto near the Carlos Gardel statue out along Corrientes (below right) – have plenty catering specifically, for example, for tango shoes and clothes.

And tango lessons are easy to come by: along with free wi-fi and complimentary breakfast rolls, even budget hostels offer such things.

So, if you dream of coming out here to meet a tall dark handsome stranger who will sweep you off your feet in a slow-moving clinch across a dusty dancefloor, then you’ve come to exactly the right place. Because you’ll meet lots of other people who are hoping for exactly the same thing.

Reputation at steak: Argentina slips from beef-eating top spot

My flight out to Argentina is sorted, thanks to the helpful people at Air Europa. This time next week I'll be in Buenos Aires, starting my update of the 2011 Bradt Guidebook. Obviously, in only four months, I can't visit every bar in a country the size of Europe, but I'll try.

What to put on the cover of the new edition? There are three cliche images for Argentina. First is obviously tango, probably a close-up of a fishnet-stockinged thigh bent round a male leg. Second is a gaucho hurling his horse across the pampas. Third is a steak the size of a duvet.

Well, I love the nuevo-tango music of Astor Piazzolla et al, but I dad-dance like Mr Bean after a shandy too many. I rode a horse once, in New Zealand, but couldn't steer the darn thing and couldn't find the cruise control. And I'm not that fond of steak.

And Argentina's reputation as the world's biggest carnivore is under threat. The Guardian recently reported that drought and restrictions have seen annual consumption of beef slump from 70kg per head to 56kg.

Shockingly, those quiet cousins over the river in Uruguay have taken over the the top steak-eating spot, with 59kg.