Jaunted Embedded Travel Guides: Buenos Aires Grass
6/12/2007 at 3:11 PM
Tags: Embedded Travel Guides, Matt Chesterton, Buenos Aires Tours, Parks (all tags)
Embedded Travel Guides: We are searching the world for folks who can take you on a field trip of their "backyard." When we find these folks, we then stealthy embed them into their local travel scene and ask them to be our eyes and ears out in the field.
We are expecting the same sort of grainy video, choppy sentences, and snapshot photos that you are use to seeing from embeds. The rub is, at the end of the day we should be left with a backyard travel guidebook like no other.
Our first embed is Matt Chesterton of Buenos Aires. You might remember this x-Time Out Travel star from HotelChatter's hit series The Thinkers' Guide to Staying in Buenos Aires.
You may have got the impression from my last report that BA is some kind of Blade Runner-esque dystopia with no green spaces worth mentioning. Not the case. While asphalt definitely trumps arboretums in the Argentine capital, there are plenty of gardens, parks and plazas that Porteños frequent regularly, kids and dogs in tow. But it's not like Manhattan where you simply walk towards the middle until you hit the park: you have to work a bit harder and schlep a little farther to score some grass in BA, but it's definitely worth the effort.
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BA's closest equivalent to Central Park is Parque Tres de Febrero, usually just called 'Bosques de Palermo' (Palermo Woods) after the sprawling, affluent barrio that encircles it. Sounds like a nice spot for a quiet stroll away from the madding crowds, right? Fuhgeddaboudit. At weekends half of Buenos Aires descends on this 25-hectare patchwork of gardens, groves and artificial lakes (the other half is still sleeping off Friday night-slash-Saturday morning) and the queues to rent a leaky pedalo are almost as long as those at the choripán (hot dogs Argentine style) stalls. Be prepared to get larruped by a Frisbee, press-ganged into joining a soccer game, covered in dog shit, sold a balloon animal, entertained by musicians, invited to drink some mate with total strangers who will become firm friends within 30 minutes, slapped by your partner for ogling the locals, and rescued by a hot lifeguard when your pedalo sinks.
The scene gets weirder after dusk, particularly in the Rosedal (Rose Garden). Often the venue for free concerts in summer, this is also the de facto HQ for BA's transvestite and transsexual communities who ply their trade here at night, leaving the kids, dogs and Frisbees at home. Having dozens of she-males humping their hearts out on his stunning Andalucian patio probably wasn't what superstar landscaper Carlos Thays had in mind when he designed the park in 1914, though he was French, so one shouldn't prejudge. Tour Experience runs a 'Trava Tour' that, in their words, allows tourists to meet the 'cream of the cream' of BA's sex professionals. Refreshments are included.
Thays also designed BA's Botanical Garden, just up the road on Avenida Santa Fe. The law of unintended consequences has kicked in here too: these days the Garden is more famous for its thriving community of feral cats than for its flowering cacti. The cats are cool; but the folks who go there every day to feed them are about as fun as a barrel full of smashed assholes.
The zoo is just across the road. It's not a great zoo. Most of the inmates look pretty sorry for themselves, except for the monkeys who seem to spend all day whacking themselves off. (What does a monkey spank?)
Much better (and still in Palermo -- you can blitz all these places in one afternoon) is the Japanese Garden. BA's sizable Japanese community created it in 1967 as a show of gratitude for the welcome they'd received in Argentina. (Relations between the nations are so strong that former president Carlos Menem once seriously floated the idea of a stratospheric jet that would link BA and Tokyo, one of those rare ideas that would still be stupid even it were plausible.) Here you'll find crazy carp, cute bridges, esoteric tea ceremonies, bonsai workshops and a top-notch sushi restaurant. Cats, hookers and horny primates are barred.
Specific questions about Buenos Aires? Ask away in the comments area below or by electronica.
Think you have what it takes to be an embed? Send us an email and pitch us.
[Photos: MattyC]
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