It`s around 4pm on Saturday afternoon in Buenos Aires.  My flight home leaves in  few hours. Think I`ll defer  my final round-up post until I get home.

 Plane lands in Melbourne Monday, 8.20am.

See y`all soon.

I`ve seen a claim elsewhere on the web that Caminito deserves respect as the worlds first outdoor pedestrian museum. Maybe the claim has some merit.

Maybe.

Regardless of the verdict, in terms of photo opportunities, the faux-tango-clinch-with-tango-busker-on-Caminito is up there with holiday snaps of folk standing in front of the Big Pineapple.

The view looking away from Caminito.

There`s a famous tango song about fog on the pungent river Riachuelo.  No fog around today, just a light diesal haze.

Cafe Tortoni is one of Buenos Aires` tourist musts. The first two times I went I couldn`t get in because there was a busload of people queuing at the door.  Today I managed to actually get in the door, and then settle in for a sugar fix of chocolate and churros.

It`s a heavily polluted city, the traffic is fast and crazy, and still there are cyclists; invariably without helmets! I`ve only seen one cyclist with a helmet on since I`ve been here, and that was a (were talking singular) guy with a slick racing bike and lycra jammies.

The Museo de Belles Artes Nacionale has a great collection of Argentine art, with some nice pieces from other parts of Latin America. The rest of their collection is patchy and mostly mediocre. The full size plaster of Rodin`s Kiss. in the first room kind of sets the tone.  The plaster gave me a bit of a giggle, as did the bronze of Rodin`s Hand of God taking centre stage at the entrance to the collection. It`s a soccer joke, folks.  

The gallery allows photos without flash, but on the whole, the lighting in the Latin American section was too low for me to take any clear pictures of the works. Strangely, the lighting in the European is considerably brighter.  The above photo is of a work that actually did catch my attention in the European section…  Alas, I failed to record the details. From memory, it`s a 16th/17th century Spanish thingy.

Tango Brujo, dark brown suede with bronze stamp. I had these made up for me. I like how they look, they have a nice flexible sole, the heel is a good height for me, and most importantly, the shoes feel good!

Men will tango with me here,  Men will waltz with me here.  In fact, I`ve even found a couple of buddies who specifically like to tango with me, and one who likes to waltz with me.  Until last night however, I`d only managed to score one milonga, at Canning, my first Friday night in Buenos Aires. It was a perfectly nice nice milonga, but didn`t have the Aaahhh factor of some of the tangos and waltzes that I`ve had here since. 

Thing is, everyone seems to have their especial favourite partners for milonga. It`s a tough nut to crack. Last night however, I finally managed to get a memorable milonga.

Marisa has been doing a show a couple of nights a week at one of the swanky hotels in town.  Last night she asked if I`d like to come along to watch.  The show consists of a good standard tango trio, Marisa and her partner Claudio dancing tango, Claudio doing a brief Manly Argentine Folkloric demo, and a couple of very average singers.  The show is in the hotel lounge/bar, and very strangely, the dance surface is carpet!  Remarkably, Marisa and Claudio still did a good job at pulling off a decent tango performance.  The audience talked through the singing (I understand this).  They also talked to a lesser extent when the musicians were playing by themselves (which I found frustrating).  Everyone however was attentive for each dance number.

The show has a locutor who does a spiel bewteen songs.  At one point he talks about how tango has travelled all over the wold, and then he walks through the audience asking people where they`re from, whether they have tango in their country, and whether they dance tango.  At the end of the show, he talks about how tango is a social dance, and invites a couple of tango dancers from the audience to dance with Marisa and Claudio as demonstration.

Of course, the night I was there, I was invited up to dance.  The trio started playing - a milonga!  So, my second milonga in BA was in a five start hotel lounge bar, on carpet, in my street shoes, in front of an international audience *chuckle* , with a fantastic dancer!  At the end of the show, a few of the people in the audience came up to me a told me I was a lovely dancer *preen*

It was crazy. It was fun. And yes, it was memorable.

A common theme I heard before coming to Buenos Aires was that in general, the men who dance at the traditional milongas prefer dancing with pretty young things.  At a milonga a bit over a week ago, I sat next to an older porteño woman who was grizzling bout exactly the same thing. Look, she said, they only want to dance with young women! I dont think she meant just young; she meant young and showing a bit of midriff.

She`d arrived af the milonga after me, and for her first twenty minutes or so, didn`t get one dance. Sitting next to me, on my other side, for the first part of the evening, was another older woman, Marta, who was up for practically every dance. Marta was not showing midriff. Looking around the room, there were other older women who were also in high demand. 

So the `pretty young thing`story is not entirely true.  What is true, is that as a general rule, the better dancers prefer to dance with someone else who dances well.  At the same time, they`re more likely to give an unfamiliar face a chance, if that face is young, smiling, and comes with some bonus bare flesh.

To a certain extent this works to my advantage.  Although I dress conservatively, and am an introverted grump, I look sufficiently young to get a reasonable number of offers to dance.

Is it about sex?  Yes, in a way it most definitely is not in Melbourne. In Melbourne, I haven`t once been directly propositioned while dancing tango. I`ve been on the receiving end of some subtle inuendo from a couple of people, but nothing that`s not easy to shake off.

In two and a half weeks of dancing in Buenos Aires I`ve been blatantly hit on several times.

Some of the men in question were average level dancers, obviously on the look out for a sex starved tourist. These are the men who disregard the cabeceo, and walk right up to the foreigner and ask them to dance.

A couple of my `ìnvitations` however have come from quite good dancers.  Are they also on the prowl for unwary tourists?  After a chat with Alanis the other day, I suspect that it`s not just foreigners that they`re after.

I`d gone in to pick up the shoes she`d made for me, and she asked how I`d been. Had I been dancing a lot?  I explained that the flu had slowed me down. Ah, she said, you need to get the Fullgrip T.  She wrote the name down on a piece of paper for me.  Is good for flu, will make you feel much better.  Is also, she added as an afterthought, very good for the sex.  When you meet a man at the milonga, you should take some before you have some sex with the Argentine man, and the sex will be very, very good.  Lots of energy.  Be careful though.

 I explained that I had a boyfriend in Australia, to which she said, then you shouldnt take for the sex, but is still good for the flu.

So not only are the milongas a pick-up place, they`re also fueled by pseudoephidrine. That explains the 70 year old at Confiteria Ideal who took a shine to me, and who danced like the energizer bunny.