On dad’s penultimate day in Buenos Aires I took him to one of my favourite places, San Telmo market on a Sunday. San Telmo is an old part of town with cobbled streets which remain fairly quiet most of the time. However, on a Sunday the place comes alive. The streets are closed to traffic and a huge market extends about fifteen blocks along Defensa street. It is made up of artesans selling jewellery, paintings and crafts, and also antique dealers selling everything that is old. It is a great place to spend a few hours pottering, unless you are my dad, whose least favourite pastime is shopping. We decided quite quickly that he would leave me some cash and I would buy the presents he needed to buy (perfect situation for me since I get to shop with someone elses money!). After a quick visit to a cashpoint, I spent a happy afternoon wandering the scorching cobbles of San Telmo buying gifts, whilst dad went home to enjoy some air condicioning.
Poetry in a taxi
After shopping in the heat I was exhausted and found a taxi to drive me home, and what a character I met in the taxi! My taxista was 73 years old and had lived in Buenos Aires all his life. He told me all about the good old days in Buenos Aires and how he should not be working at his age, he moaned about Christina Fernandez and her government, and told me the only riches in Argentina these days are in nature. I tried to keep up with what he was saying and ask appropriate questions and we managed to chat (well, him mostly) all the way home. When we pulled up outside the apartment he stopped the car and turned to face me. He told me he was not just a taxista, he was also a poet. He asked my name and when I told him, he made up a poem off the top of his head, each sentence beginning with the letter of my name, F, I, O, N, and A. It was very complimentary about a girl he met in his taxi. I thought he had finished and I gave him a round of applause and showed my gratitude. He then asked for my surname! And again he continued the poem with each line beginning with the letters M, C, C, R, E, A, D, Y. It was somewhere around the line beginning with R that his eyes welled up with tears and he began to cry. It was very touching and it almost had me crying along with him. I don't know what moved him to tears but he squeezed my hand very hard when we parted.
Coackroaches
That night we celebrated dads last meal in Buenos Aires by going out for steak. Christian and dad sat opposite Emily and myself. We had a good meal and bad service (I am now used to this). During the meal I saw something crawling up the wall behind a table at the other end of the restaurant, it was the size of a mouse and it took me a while to realize it was a cockroach. By the time I realized this, the creature had fallen down from the wall (presumably the weight of it's massive body had become too much for it), and no-one seemed to believe me. I soon forgot about it. Towards the end of the meal, Emily let out a loud scream, grabbed my arm and pointed at Christian, just above his head on the wall was a huge cockroach. I also screamed and we both stood up scraping our chairs along the floor. Everone looked at us, assuming something must be really wrong, but when they saw the cockroach on the wall, everyone continued eating as though it was normal! Luckily a waiter took action (eventually, probably because the noises Emily and I were making were putting people off their food). He knocked the cockroach to the floor and stood on it.
Fakes
We decided that we should probably go somewhere else for dessert and after we had paid up we went outside to get our bearings and decide where to go. On our way out of the restaurant an older lady pretended to jump at Emily like a cockroach, her and her husband then laughed their hearts out. It was pretty funny I have to admit. Once we were outside, out waitress ran after us. We had paid her with fake money! She passed back the fake notes, and we realized that it was the money dad had withdrawn from the bank machine at San Telmo. She gave us all a valuable lesson in how to spot a fake 100 peso note (which I actually learnt last time I was here) and we went to a cash point to get her some real money.
It had been an interesting day, and I think the pieces of it are quite representative of Buenos Aires as a city, there is the romantic side of Buenos Aires (taxi poetry) which is countered with a seedy side (fake money), and however nice the people are, there are some cockroaches around. Fortunately, the cockroaches and seediness are invisible most of the time, we were just unfortunate (or fortunate?) to experience the full range on dads last day.
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