The Wonders Of Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires has many faces from faded grandeur to modern skyscrapers. Sharon Stephenson discovers a city peopled by those with passion – for wine, dance, football and meat… lots of meat

Halfway down one of Buenos Aires’ main thoroughfares, sandwiched between a museum and 12 lanes of traffic, is an enormous steel flower.

No-one quite knows why the 23m high sculpture is there, or even its relationship to the Argentinian capital. But everyone seems to love its shiny ‘petals’, which unfurl during daylight and close at night.

When they work, that is. “Sometimes the flower remains closed during the day and opens at night,” says our guide Esteban with a shrug that could mean resignation, indifference or anything in-between. “You just never know what’s going to happen.”

Which perfectly sums up Buenos Aires, a sultry city of 17 million that surprises at every turn. Will you stumble across a couple tango dancing in a cobbled backstreet or a speakeasy bar in an old church? Will you think you’ve passed through some kind of timespace continuum and ended up in Europe? Will you eat more meat than you’ve ever eaten in your life, or get swept up into a street parade or protest? It’s all in the roll of the dice.

BA, as the locals call it, combines the charming architecture of Europe – a hotchpotch of faded but gracious buildings shaped by waves of homesick Spanish and Italian immigrants – with a sophisticated Latin vibe and hot-blooded locals (BA has more psychologists per capita than any other city on the planet). And thanks to the wobbly peso, the Paris of the South is now more affordable than ever.

GET YOUR BEARINGS

We arrive in BA at the end of a 10-day G Adventures flit through Chile and Argentina. We’ve climbed active volcanoes in Chile, ridden horses across arid Patagonian plains and drunk our bodyweight in pisco sour cocktails. But they left the best until last.