Enchanted by Argentina

The old man must have been 80 years old. He was short, stooped and he didn’t speak English.

But that didn’t stop him from trying to give us directions to MALBA, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, one of the Argentine capital’s most celebrated art museums.

Using my rudimentary Spanish skills, I knew only the general direction we were supposed to head. But as I turned away, the man asked me a question.

“De donde es?” he asked – where are you from?

“De los Estados Unidos,” I replied.

At that he smiled, waved goodbye and walked away with a woman every bit as aged as he.

Fifteen minutes later, we stood in front of MALBA, and once again I reflected on the fact that good manners, not to mention friendliness, are the best way to bridge cultures.

And in Buenos Aires, friendliness is as easy to find as Argentine pesos are easy to spend.

There are so many good things to report about Buenos Aires that it’s hard to figure out the best place to start. You can talk about the food, about the museums, about Porteño (the pet name for a Buenos Aires resident) pride, about the European feel that the city exudes on every street corner, about Argentina’s trademark dance – the tango.

Let’s begin with good news for the budget-conscious traveler: Buenos Aires, indeed Argentina as a whole, is the best travel bargain in the Western Hemisphere – maybe the world.

When my wife, Mary Pat, and I, accompanied by our friend Leslie Kelly, visited Buenos Aires in early May, the exchange rate was a little more than three pesos to the U.S. dollar.

We rented a spacious two-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment in Recoleta – one of the city’s most exclusive areas – for the budget price of $640. Which meant that we paid an average of not quite $43 a day.

Any equivalent lodging in London, Paris, Rio or Rome, much less New York, would cost easily four times as much, assuming you could find something even remotely similar.

And the prices remained consistent in virtually every way we could find to spend money.

Half-hour cab drives from Ezeiza International Airport to the city center cost 43 pesos – or less than $15 U.S.

Internet shops, which are on virtually every corner, typically ran less than two pesos an hour – or less than 75 cents U.S.

Dinner for three, with appetizers, a couple of bottles of good red wine (Leslie writes about food and wine for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, so we ate out a lot), mineral water and maybe dessert, ran around 120 pesos – or about $40 U.S.

And these aren’t just any restaurants. One of our best meals came when we had lunch at a popular eatery called the Tancat. Not only were we ushered in and placed immediately at a table sheltered from the lunchtime rush (a rare occurrence, the guidebooks say), but our waiter proved both courteous and competent – dealing with my broken Spanish without the arrogance of, without a doubt, his Italian counterpart in Florence.

Here’s what the British business newspaper The Economist has to say about the Tancat: “The tapas (small plates of various types of food) are as fresh and tasty as ever, but the real attraction here is the varied and well-prepared selection of fish and seafood dishes – a positive rarity in Buenos Aires.”

You get the point, right?

Aside from budget considerations, however, what is there to do in Buenos Aires? Easy answer there: too many things to pack even into a two-week stay. Let’s tackle the question by topic area, beginning with:

How to get around: If you’re up to it, Buenos Aires is a great walking city, whether you prefer nature (see more below) or wide boulevards such as Avenida Libertador. Buses (“collectivos”) are numerous and cheap, as are the numerous radio-controlled taxis. There’s also a modern and efficient subway (the “subte”).

Bone up on your Spanish, though. We expected to find far more English-speakers than we did (though I did manage to carry on a conversation with a cab driver in my elementary-level Italian).

Neighborhoods: Each of Buenos Aires’ several barrios has a different feel. Recoleta, for example, is like New York’s Upper West Side, a bit upscale and bustling with stores and restaurants and tree-lined avenues. Palermo Hollywood is where the young enjoy the nightlife, eating, drinking and dancing until the early hours of the morning. The traditionally working-class La Boca features the brightly colored buildings that can be seen in all the guidebooks. Puerto Madero is the portside section whose warehouses gradually are being renovated into restaurants and office space.

If you have time, you should try to tour as many as you can, including the Microcenter, San Telmo, Belgrano and more.

Museums: There are two that you shouldn’t miss. Admission to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes is free (though donations are welcomed), and its collection is nothing to smirk at. Its 10,000-work permanent collection features an impressive array of international art: Rembrandts to Rubens, Goya to Van Gogh, plus Argentine painters such as Ernesto de la Cárcova, whose 1894 landscape “Sin pan y sin trabajo” is a powerful testament to political art.

MALBA, mentioned at the beginning of this story, opened its doors in 2001. For architectural beauty if nothing else it is the match of any big-city art museum. Its mission is to promote Latin American art, which it does through the private Constantine Collection of more than 200 works and which allowed us to enjoy exhibitions by two Argentine artists: paintings by Antonio Berni (1905-81) and his contemporaries, and a fascinating photo exhibit by the late photographer Alejandro Kuropatwa (1956-2003).

Eating out: Breakfast in Buenos Aires is seldom more than a couple of medialunas (small croissants). The coffee is good in virtually any cafe, and for a contrast you might try yerba mate – an herbal tea drink that is immensely popular throughout South America.

The Florida Garden is all the guidebooks say it is – a tourist spot that, though typically crowded, boasts killer hot chocolate and strong coffee. Leslie kept taking us back to the Café Le Pont, where the waiters were as polite as they were competent.

For midday meals, I’ve already mentioned the Tancat. La Brigada is a renowned steak house, and Il Rigoletto offers a decent Italian menu.

But we also had good lunchtime luck at the ritzy outdoor cafe La Biela, which featured what my wife liked to call “the world’s slowest waiter.” That was OK, though, because it gave us more time to people-watch, which is one of the reasons people have flocked there since the days of Eva Peron (1919-52), the wife of former Argentine strongman Juan Peron and subject of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Evita.”

When it comes to dinner, remember: Argentines eat late. At one restaurant, we arrived at 9 p.m. and the place was empty. People started trailing in as we were paying for the check.

Cabaña Las Lilas is a guidebook favorite that sits in the spiffily renovated Puerto Madero district. It serves steaks that carry an international reputation (but which Leslie and Mary Pat thought were a bit tough and gristly) and an impressive range of wines, including many from Argentina’s own Mendoza region.

Cumaná is so popular among the young that we had to wait more than an hour to get in. But it was worth it, particularly for its delicious selection of empanadas, which are kind of turnovers filled with a variety of treats, from cheese to mushrooms to every kind of meat imaginable.

Omm is a trendy kind of bistro in the Palermo neighborhood, and Patagonia Sur, in the colorful La Boca district, is a small but stylish restaurant whose waiter spoke not a word of English. Even so, he was one of the most accommodating servers I’ve ever encountered (even if my dish of baked ravioli didn’t exactly match the place’s reputation).

Must-see sights: The day after a street-filling protest by angry workers, we walked through the Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires’ main square that sits in front of its version of the White House – La Casa Rosada. The area was still full of police.

That may have been our first experience of reality during our stay, which reminded me that it’s impossible to write about Argentina without referring to recent history – the military junta that between 1976-83 conducted a “Dirty War” against its own citizens, the ill-fated war with Great Britain over the Falklands, the fall of the junta and the subsequent trials, charges of government corruption, the economic crisis of 2001 that resulted in widespread unemployment and poverty.

The Plaza de Mayo is a testament to all that and more. Platted out in 1580, the plaza is considered the city’s heart. Surrounding the expanse of grass, benches, fountains and the Pirámide de Mayo, you’ll find the Casa Rosada, the Metropolitan Cathedral (where the remains of Gen. Jose de San Martin, aka the Great Liberator, are entombed) and the Cabildo (first seat of city government).

This is the spot, too, on which white-kerchief-wearing women – the Madres de la Plaza Mayo – march on Thursday afternoons to protest those who were “disappeared” during the “Dirty War.”

Nature: There are parks all over the city, one of the most interesting being the Jardin Botanico Carlos Thays, which contains examples of plants from all over the world (Asia, Africa, Europe). But more fascinating were the scores of feral cats that roam freely through the park’s interior.

The expansive Plaza San Martin, a prime lunch spot, is only a couple of blocks from Calle Florida, site of the city’s most upscale shopping area.

For lovers of the outdoors, there’s the Reserva Ecologica Costanera Sur, a 3,500-acre nature reserve that is within walking distance from all but the most remote parts of the city’s central neighborhoods (it took us a half hour to walk there from Recoleta). In a 90-minute circuit of any of the major paths, you’ll likely run into joggers, walkers, cyclists and even families pushing strollers – as early as 9 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Tango: Buenos Aires is the home of the tango, the sultry dance that emanated in the city’s brothels but now is the symbol of fashion. You can find dancers practicing their art everywhere, from the plazas near the legendary Recoleta Cemetery (where Eva Peron’s body is entombed) to establishments such as Café Tortoni, which offers a kind of lounge-act series of shows nightly. (Café Tortoni certainly was atmospheric, but I preferred the street performers.)

Outside the city: Uruguay is less than a two-hour ferry ride away, which allows you plenty of time to walk through either old village of Colonia or to explore the Uruguayan capital, Montevideo. We opted for Colonia and found the place easy to navigate by foot, though you can rent cars, scooters and even golf carts.

If you’re ambitious, you can arrange for longer trips. Patagonia to the south is a popular spot, as is the wine country of Mendoza. But we chose a three-day trip to Iguazu Falls, the scenic series of jungle waterfalls in the extreme northeastern corner of Argentina, near the juncture of Brasil and Paraguay. Flights are easy to catch at Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, the Buenos Aires airport that serves domestic air travel only, and lodging is available both on the Brasilian and Argentine sides.

We stayed at the venerable Tropical das Cataratas, a colonial-style hotel that sits inside the Iguazu National Park and is only 100 yards from a jaw-dropping view of the falls. Full- and half-day excursions can be arranged in Buenos Aires before you go. (Americans need a visa to visit Brasil, so make sure to get one before you go; doing it in Argentina can be time-consuming and expensive.)

And so on. We missed so much – we never even made it to the Teatro Colon, which some critics call one of the important opera houses in the world – that we’re going to need a second trip just to say that we’ve done the city justice.

When we do, I’m going to try to find that elderly man.

In Buenos Aires, you can’t say gracias nearly enough.