We were in Buenos Aries for my birthday. We did a city tour in the morning, and visited President Christina's pretty pink house. We joked that she should've baked me a cake for morning tea.
One of the saddest things about Argentina is the impact of the 'missing people' - those who disappeared during the unpleasant regime during (i think) the '70s. There are posters at airports with missing people's photos and relative's contact details. It's very poignant.
The main square, close to Christina's joint, was full of protesters. The military personnel who didn't go to the Falklands were discriminated against by not being paid the same as those who travelled to the Falklands.
We also visited the cemetery and saw Evita's tomb.
In the evening, we went to a tango show and dinner. We were shown to our table and a very dapper, elderly gentleman sauntered over and said ''ello, my name is Oswald Suarez. I will be your waiter for the evening'.
He was the highpoint.
We sat through a show that went for bout 2 1/2 hours. I am now seriously traumatised by tangos. And gauchos. There was one good, sensuous, impressive tango, and then they embelished by adding dancers, jazzing it up, making it silly. I nearly went to sleep.
The gaucho came out, banged a drum a bit and then whacked the floor with two ropes with percussive bits on the end. I had a headache by the end and wanted to throttle him with his ropes.
There was an awesome dude playing a small wooden stringed instrument similar in sound to the one at the start of Simon and Garfunkel's El Condor Pasa (don't EVER play that to me again - I've heard it a gazillion times over the past few weeks). He was a true virtuoso. How he could get the sounds he did from his tiny little 12-stringed gizmo, I'll never know.
Meanwhile, Oswald Suarez made sure we were plied with food and drink.
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