Local Expat Guides of Buenos Aires

All of us guides here at BuenosTours are expats living long-term in Buenos Aires, who are originally from the UK and the US. This means you get the best of both worlds when booking with one of our guides:

1.) A local who knows Buenos Aires inside out and can tell you the best of the city as an insider so that you make the most of your time here

But ALSO:

2.) Someone who is an English-speaking NATIVE, like you, so you can be assured that you will understand everything they say. You have no guarantee that Argentine tour companies will have guides that speak a high level of English, so why take the risk? Also, having a guide who was born into your culture, but who has also lived in Buenos Aires as a local does, means that you have someone who acts as a bridge between two cultures - we will help you to understand the history and culture of Buenos Aires and Argentina, because we have seen things from both sides.

Tour Reservations Policy

• To make things easier for our clients, we now accept payment for tours by credit or debit card. You can either pay the full price of the tour by card up front, to be safe in the knowledge that your tour is set in stone and all you have to do is wait at your accommodation at the agreed time to be met by your expert guide, or pay a small deposit up front, and then the balance of the fee at the time of the tour.
• All credit/debit card payments and deposits to us are processed through Google Checkout or Paypal. By using these market-leading online payment systems, from two of the biggest and most respected internet companies around, you can be sure your payment and details are 100% safe, secure and private at all times. It is also possible if you request for us to take your card details over the phone to process your payment – in this case we will never store your card details after the payment has taken place.
• We offer a 100% satisfaction money-back guarantee for all of our walking tours

Private Walking Tours on Offer

In addition to our most popular and well-received tour, the 3 hour walking tour of the historical city center of Buenos Aires, we also have the following offerings to help you make the most of your time in Buenos Aires:

Buenos Aires Day Tour

1.) This is the must see/do tour of Buenos Aires. Our most complete tour. Approximately 7 hours of touring to the most important areas of the city:

- San Telmo, the atmospheric home of tango, immigrant history, antiques, cobblestone streets and colonial architecture
- Monserrat, the oldest barrio in the city, full of beautiful churches
- The City Center, including the most important historical sites in Buenos Aires, like the Casa Rosada/Pink House, Plaza de Mayo, the Cathedral and the oldest subway line in the southern hemisphere
- A coffee/restroom break at Cafe Tortoni, the oldest and most ornate cafe in the city, founded way back in 1858
- Plaza San Martin, the most peaceful and beautiful square in the city, which has historical suprises lurking in every corner
- Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest road in the world, and home to the Buenos Aires Obelisk monument
- Lunch at a traditional Argentine restaurant together with your guide – at the kind of place where the locals eat, with a choice of tasty dishes that will have all tastes covered.
- Recoleta, the most prestigious area of the city, full of mansions and high class establishments, where we will stroll along upscale Avenida Alvear
- Recoleta Cemetery, last resting place of Evita Peron and many other rich and famous Argentines, plus the highest concentration of beautiful architecture and sculpture in the city.

This is a walking tour with some public transport involved, so it will be a pretty exerting (but healthy!) day – please note this before booking. However, exploring through walking and public transport is really the best method to see the city up close and personal, as the locals would, rather than opting for being herded around on an impersonal bus city/day tour of Buenos Aires.

Price: 200 US Dollars for small groups (of 1 to 3 people) and 300 US Dollars for medium groups (of 4 to 7 people). These prices are the total for the group, NOT PER PERSON. Note – transport to and from the tour is not included in the price, nor is any money you spend on refreshments or food for yourselves during the tour. However, travel, food and refreshments are very cheap in Buenos Aires, and the place we have carefully selected for lunch is very reasonable, even by local standards. The scheduled start time for this tour is 9.30am, however, as it is a private tour, you can request an earlier or later start if that suits you better. Please complete the following form to make a booking inquiry for this day tour:

Please use the following link to read about our other tour offerings and services:

La Boca and San Telmo Tour

2.) A 3 hour walking tour of San Telmo and La Boca, the atmospheric south of the city, famous for it’s antiques market, tango history, and local handicrafts on sale.

You will also be introduced to the history and culture of these fascinating areas with a past steeped in the immigrant culture that formed the city of Buenos Aires just over 100 years ago. Tour includes a coffee/restroom break in a traditional old cafe.

Price: 100 US Dollars for small groups (of 1 to 3 people). These prices are the total for the group, NOT PER PERSON. Note – transport to, during (one taxi journey is also required in the middle of the tour), and from the tour is not included in the price, nor is any money you spend on refreshments or food for yourselves during the tour. However, both travel and refreshments are very cheap in Buenos Aires. Start times for this tour are 10.30am and 3pm (however, as it is a private tour, you can request other start times if they suit you better).

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Recoleta and Retiro Tour

3.) A 3 hour walking tour of Recoleta, it’s world famous cemetery, and Retiro, the rich northern areas of the city, famous for it’s beautiful old mansion houses, lush squares and parks, luxury hotels, restaurants and designer stores, and of course, the last resting place of Eva Peron (Evita).

Approximately half of the tour is spent in the remarkable Recoleta cemetery, where in addition to seeing Evita’s tomb, you will also be regaled with tales of the most famous people in Argentine history, marvel at the intricate architecture of the wonderful mausoleums, and hear an intriguing ghost story or two.

This tour was recently recommended as one of the five best cemetery tours in the world by the UK’s Guardian newspaper, and listed by them in first position!

The tour includes a coffee/restroom break in a traditional old cafe OR ice cream at our favorite ice cream parlor in Buenos Aires.

Price: 100 US Dollars for small groups (of 1 to 3 people), and 150 US Dollars for medium groups (of 4 to 7 people). These prices are the total for the group, NOT PER PERSON. Note – transport to and from the tour is not included in the price, nor is any money you spend on refreshments or food for yourselves during the tour. However, both travel and refreshments are very cheap in Buenos Aires. Start times for this tour are 10.30am and 3pm (however, as it is a private tour, you can request other start times if they suit you better).

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Custom Private Tours of Buenos Aires

4.) Using the suggestions in the above tours, information elsewhere on this website, or any other request that you have, work with us to come up with a tour of any length to the parts of the city that you wish to visit. Consult with us by email and we’ll help create the perfect tour for you to make the most of your time in the city.

Price: 50 US Dollars per hour for small groups (of 1 to 3 people). These prices are the total for the group, NOT PER PERSON. Note – transport to, during, and from the tour is not included in the price, nor is any money you spend on refreshments or food for yourselves during the tour. However, both travel and refreshments are very cheap in Buenos Aires.

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Book a Private Guided Tour in Buenos Aires

If you are not yet decided and want to check some other opinions, then for testimonials from clients who took our tours in the past, please check the end of this page.

Once decided, please use the below form to make booking inquiries for all of the tours mentioned above. Complete it with your name, email address, accommodation in Buenos Aires, which tour/s you want to take, the date/time you would like the tour/s on, the number of people you are booking for, and any other comments/questions you wish to add. We can also organize tango-dinner shows and exclusive Argentine wine tastings, so please fill out the form to inquire about those too if you are interested. After submitting the form, we will get back to you by email as soon as possible to finalize your booking:

[Note: If you are interested in tours for larger groups than mentioned above, please contact us using the form to ask for further details/prices etc.]

Dancing Tango in the Confiteria Ideal, Buenos Aires [Photo credit: Gerrysan]

Note from Alan – We are lucky enough to welcome a seasoned Buenos Aires tango and milonga expert to the Buenos Aires Argentina Guide, in the form of Cherie Magnus, from the Tango Cherie blog (see the end of this post for more info on Cherie). Her first offering is an excellent guide to the types of tango salon in Buenos Aires, for those interested in the real world of social tango dancing in the city. So, over to you Cherie…

If you want to dance tango in Buenos Aires, where do you go?

Actually it depends on many things: your age, what style you dance, what day or night of the week you want to go out, if you go with or without a partner, and so on…

Dancing social tango in Buenos Aires has nothing to do with the Tango Show Dancing on the streets of San Telmo, La Boca, calle Florida, or Recoleta, or the many Tango Cena-Shows with an orchestra, stage dancers and dinner. The first thing to know about tango is that what you’ll see in those places is a different dance – Tango for Export. And that is another post entirely!

Experience Authentic Social Tango in Buenos Aires

If you want to experience authentic social tango, you really need to know the best places for you to go to watch and dance. You could pick up one of the many free tango publications from shoe salons and hotels which list all of the milongas (places to dance social tango), but unless you have lots of time and money to explore each one, you can’t tell which is right for you. And that’s why Ruben & Cherie (as well as other bilingual local dancers) provide a service to help tango tourists get the most out of their visits to Buenos Aires. They know where you can have the most fun and how to break the codigos, and will even take you there themselves.

If you are interested in their tango services, you can contact Ruben & Cherie using the following details:

• Email: BsAsMilonga@aol.com
• Telephone: 4932-5027 (from within Buenos Aires)
• Blog: Tango Cherie

Click here to view the embedded video.

Types of Tango Salon in Buenos Aires

First, a tip: when checking where to go to mingle with the locals in Buenos Aires on the dance floor, remember that dances in the same salon vary greatly depending on the organizer, day of the week, time of day etc. In other words, every milonga at Region Leonesa or Canning will not be the same.

The following is a general break-down of the different types of places to dance tango in Buenos Aires, with some examples of each…

Salon de Baile

A formal atmosphere especially for dancing, with predominantly elegant attire, tables with tablecloths, uniformed waiters, tango codes are strictly respected, professional DJs play tango, vals and milonga music of the 1930’s-50’s, often with tandas of Latin and Jazz music. The public here is older (50-80) with an intermediate to high level of dancing in the close-embrace milonguero style. Women and men sit on opposite sides of the salon and use the cabaceo. The afternoon milongas tend to be more formal and traditional than the late night dances.

Examples in Buenos Aires: El Arranque, Gricel, Salon Canning, Viejo Correo, Los Consegrados, Maipu 444, Lo de Celia, El Beso, Chique.

Confiteria bailable

This old-fashioned type of salon has many of the same characteristics of the Salons de Baile, but also has a restaurant. The public is more varied, with lots of groups. The only example today is the Confiteria Ideal, which is famous for its long life and its architecture. Nowadays only a few Salons de Baile have restaurants, such as Nino Bien and El Beso, but they are milongas first, and only very few of the clients order food from the kitchen.

Club de Barrio

The dance floors are cement basketball courts or the club restaurant. Meals are usually available. Predominantly attended by the neighborhood families and older married couples; the music includes tango, jazz and tropical.

Examples in Buenos Aires: Sin Rumbo, Los Bohemios, Sunderland, Club Chicago.

Baile Joven

Informal atmosphere, young public (18-30), variety of casual dress, often with live music and dance exhibitions. More relaxed standards, a more diverse level of dancing, and more salon-style than close embrace. You will hear the music of Piazzolla, some rock ‘n’ roll, as well as salsa and cumbia.

Examples in Buenos Aires: La Estrella, La Viruta, Parakultural.

Aire Libre

Outdoor milongas that attract a wide variety of dancers.

Examples in Buenos Aires: La Glorieta and Plaza Dorrego (year round) and La Calesita (in summer).

An Aire Libre milonga in Plaza Dorrego, San Telmo [Photo credit: nyluke]

Practicas

Informal, bare-bones ambiance, no professional DJ.

Examples in Buenos Aires: Cochabamba 444, El Motivo, Tangocool, Soho Tango.

Gay Milongas

Informal, relaxed atmosphere, anybody can dance with anybody, alternative music along with the classics.

Examples in Buenos Aires: La Marshall, TangoQueer.

Coming soon from Cherie – reviews of different tango milongas around Buenos Aires…

About Cherie Magnus

Cherie Magnus is a published travel writer and dance critic from Los Angeles, and an expat tango dancer and teacher in Buenos Aires since 2003. She and her Argentine partner Ruben Aybar also do bilingual Tango Tours. Last year they were finalists in the Campeonato Metropolitano de Tango de Buenos Aires. She’s working on a memoir, The Church of Tango, and one of her pieces is included in a soon-to-be-published anthology on San Miguel de Allende. You can read more on her blog, TangoCherie.

This roundup post is late, as usual, so no messing around this week folks… let’s just get straight into the Buenos Aires, Argentina linky goodness from last week…

Buenos Aires Argentina Blog Posts of the Week

• Matt Bites, who appears to be thoroughly enjoying a holiday in Buenos Aires and the general Rio de la Plata area, penned a mouthwatering review of the La Cabrera parrilla in Palermo Viejo, one of the best places to eat meat in BA. Although… drinking Torrontes instead of Malbec wine as an accompaniment to steak… don’t they kill for such crimes against Argentine sensibilities round these parts?
• Matt Chesterton, editor of the Time Out guides to Buenos Aires, has been writing a fantastic series about hotels in Buenos Aires… my runaway favorite has to be his post on classic hotels in BA, mainly for his wedding night anecdote from the Hotel Castelar.. seriously, a must read!
• I couldn’t find a third Matthew to make this a ‘Mattrick’ of top blog posts (were there any other Matts writing about BA this week?)… so we’ll have to make do with the closest I could find…a Marc. He recently announced on Asado Argentina that he has launched a new photo blog of southern Argentina. OK, so it’s not Buenos Aires… but from time to time we city dwellers need to be reminded that real life does exist outside of the metropolis, and his first few pictures provide some beautiful examples of that fact

Things to See and Do in Buenos Aires

• The Argentina Travel blog had some more great tips and reviews this week for things to see and do in Buenos Aires, including the slightly totally crazy Parque Tierra Santa, a Christian theme park that sees an 18 meter Jesus Christ (!) resurrected every half hour. They also have the lowdown on the equally aesthetically pleasing Flor de Metal sculpture and El Ateneo bookshop, both to be found in the barrio of Recoleta
• More lovely pictures from Karine this week, featuring the Palacio de Tribunales building, a pretty San Telmo antiques shop, the Falklands war memorial monument in Plaza San Martin, and some Palacio Barolo facts and pictures, one of my favorite buildings in Buenos Aires, on one of my favorite streets, Avenida de Mayo
• A new entrant to the now splitting-at-the-seams Buenos Aires blogosphere is Discovering BA. Their first few posts include one with a nice picture and comment on another of my favorite buildings here, the French Embassy, jutting out there down at the end of 9 de Julio. One thing though… their blog has me down as ‘A Blog about BA Blogs‘ in their link list… a sign that maybe I should be cutting down on these roundups and ramping up on my own posts, maybe?
• Robert keeps us bang up to date on the renovations and new shade of pink being given to the Casa Rosada (Pink House), the presidential HQ of Argentina based in Plaza de Mayo. Looks like things are coming along really nicely!

Buenos Aires Info, News and General Comments

• Diva has been ranting and raving a lot lately – but it is all very entertaining so I hope she keeps it up, even if it does no good for her blood pressure. This week, she reveals the secret language of Argentine girls, questions why portenos are so proud of themselves, defines the intriguing Argentine phenomenon known as El Chanta (watch out for even more ranting and raving from anonymous commenters!), and analyzes a range of porteno men in their twenties. Hard-hitting stuff, keep it up Diva!

Buenos Aires Restaurants, Food & Drink

• In between rants Diva also found time to review one of her favorite restaurants in Buenos Aires, an Armenian restaurant in Palermo Soho called Sarkis, which was also reviewed a long while back by Saltshaker – both of these recommendations means that this place is easily number 1 on my restaurants to visit list right now – I’m hungry just thinking about it!
• After our recent trip to the Buller Pub in Recoleta, Ken wrote down our ‘imaginative’ joint tasting notes on the six Buller beers, and I soon followed suit with my own review of the Buller’s Recoleta BrewPub, which kicks off what will surely be a very enjoyable (for me) series of postings on where to find the best beer in Buenos Aires
• Robert is trudging through a similar quest to my beer holy grail, that of finding the best wines available in the shops of Buenos Aires. Oh the hardships we go through in the name of good blogging! You can read his latest finds in Divino Vino 9 – this week all from a Patagonian winery called Bodega NQN
• Slightly less appealing, but still very much a feature of Buenos Aires cuisine, is the honest, humble Super Pancho. Ken gets into the local spirit and tries out this most inexpensive of Argentine snacks

Funny or Odd Stuff in Buenos Aires

• A very strange story to end with this week. Ian from Goodairs reports that La Doce (The Twelth Man), the hardcore supporters of Boca Juniors football team, are exporting their special brand of hooliganism to the rest of the world for profit. Today Columbia and Mexico are taking advantage, but who knows, soon Rochdale vs Accrington Stanley in English League Division two will be seeing chants of “you can stick your flatcap up your ar*e”, before mass riots ensue, whippets and pint tankards flying in all directions.

Sorry about the lame/irrelevant Northern England football jokes at the end there, I just get carried away sometimes! See you all next week for another Buenos Aires blog roundup!

Sorry I’m late with the Buenos Aires blog roundup this week guys… I have been busy as usual, and at the weekend wrote what would have been one of my best blog posts of all time (seriously!), only for my PC to crash just before I clicked publish, losing the whole thing! I was so annoyed that I couldn’t bring myself to try posting something again until now… that will learn me for not updating to the new version of Wordpress (my blogging software), which apparently has an auto-save feature. Silly me.

Anyway, onto the blog roundup, which this week inaugurates a new feature… a section for my most favorite posts of the week!

Buenos Aires Blog Posts of the Week

• I just loved Ken’s description of the dog walkers in Buenos Aires and the accompanying picture, though not quite as much as I love to see the dog walkers with their huge packs of mutts each morning as I walk to catch the bus to work
• I always like a good post about the prevalence of mullets in Buenos Aires. And Isabelle Lagarde’s blog entry in this field certainly doesn’t disappoint
• OK, so Buenos Aires isn’t Paris. But it does have some lovely Parisian-esque domes, which came into Robert’s ‘Line of Sight’ this week. I hope he didn’t get a crick in his neck…

Things to See and Do in Buenos Aires

• My favorite pictures from Karine this week were of colorful Caminito with La Boca’s symbolic old transporter bridge hiding away in the back, an amazing traffic jam on Av. 9 de Julio, the widest avenue in the world, a shot of the idyllic Palermo parks, and a nice collection of riverside Puerto Madero pictures, from the newest, and most expensive, barrio in Buenos Aires
• Being a lazy so and so, it certainly isn’t on my list of things to do in Buenos Aires, but the Argentina Travel blog wrote a post on where to run in Buenos Aires, for those who are that way inclined. Suitably, in this sweltering weather, the post was soon followed by advice on how to escape the Buenos Aires heat. At this time of year, I would certainly recommend the latter over the former
• Riding the bus in Buenos Aires, when it’s not too busy, is something I usually enjoy doing. Jeff evidently thinks so too, at least enough to start a blog post series called “On the Bus in Buenos Aires“
• Tango Cherie has a tip for those thinking of taking Tango classes in Buenos Aires: remember that you get what you pay for with Tango classes, as in most of life
• Ken has a nice post on the pedestrian shopping street Florida, where you can buy tacky Buenos Aires fridge magnets to your heart’s content

Buenos Aires Info, News and General Comments

• Karine notes that an International Living survey and article has rated Argentina in the top ten countries of the world to live in. Yet more good press for Argentina!
• Deby from Tango Spam provides some interesting food for thought for those thinking about coming to BA for good with her three post series entitled “Why do you want to live here?” Here is Part 2 and Part 3
• Apparently, Palermo Viejo is up there with the likes of Milan for fashion these days
• Diva gets a link to her blog from the official city of Buenos Aires government blog. I make my plea to them now: please link to me too! I would do a little dance…
• There is a new Buenos Aires blogger in town, with a great/lame (delete as appropriate) name to boot: Disco Shawn. He thinks that Buenos Aires is getting a little too over hyped, and I agree to an extent, though personally I always like to see BA getting good press, even if it is not giving a 100% true picture of the city

Buenos Aires Restaurants, Food and Drink

• The Argentina Travel Blog has two good restaurant reviews this week, of Business – Sushi Libre, a pretty good all you can eat Sushi establishment in Recoleta, and Manos Costumbristas, a place for simple Tucuman province food near the Microcentro, which sounds quite interesting in that they only have two things on the menu – empanadas and tamales, and apparently they have proper hot sauce too – a valuable commodity for expats in Buenos Aires
• Fernet Branca. Try it when you’re in Buenos Aires, if you dare. And yes, that’s me in the comments section saying that Fernet ‘tastes of Catholicism’. It does!

Funny or Odd Things in Buenos Aires

• ArJewTino has some fun putting last week’s Clarin story about Buenos Aires bloggers through the misfiring Babel Fish online translator. Although now he has me wondering too… maybe Ian of Goodairs really does talk like that?
• Diva writes in her usual irreverent style about the tourist dress code in Buenos Aires
• This strikes me as quite odd, but interesting all the same: the Buenos Aires Subte is holding a love letter contest, as noted by Maya of the Sexy Spanish Club.

Thanks again to my readers for reading and the other Buenos Aires bloggers for their continued hard blogging – without you, I would be nothing. Or at least this blog roundup post would be.

It’s back…what is surely already your favorite weekly round-up of the Buenos Aires blogosphere…putting aside the small issue that it is the only weekly round-up of the Buenos Aires blogosphere! We made it to a 2nd week, which is a mild surprise because last week’s instalment took so long to write due some heavy blogging in the Buenos Aires area.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint, there were less relevant Buenos Aires blog posts to report on this week, but still a fair amount for you to get through, partly thanks to my hyperactive blogging this week. Here they are…

Buenos Aires Sightseeing

• As I was saying in this week’s post on Caminito, there is more to La Boca than touristy tack, and these photos reveal some of the gritty modern reality of this famous barrio.
• I wrote a post about the history and modern day use of the wonderful El Mercado de Abasto building.
• All about El Cabildo, the government house during colonial times in Buenos Aires.
• The Buenos Aires Japanese Gardens are a nice place to relax in an oasis of Zen tranquillity. The Buenos Aires city government (blog in Spanish) also notes that the gardens are in a top ten list of the best places to read in peace in Buenos Aires, along with the Botanical Gardens and Plaza San Martin.

Info, News & General Comments about Buenos Aires

• Diva has her finger on the pulse of the BA festival calendar – urging us to go to Mutek for ‘emerging music, digital art & new technologies’, and Cambalache, a ‘non-touristy tango festival’, if there could ever be such a thing…
• News just in, it’s Christmas time….in Palermo Viejo! With snowflakes, despite the fact that temperatures here are in the mid 30s (Celsius)…
• Trendy Palermo Viejo also reports on the ‘Festival de Buen Dia’, it having occurred, where else but in Trendy Palermo Viejo, and not just any old place, but Plaza (Trendy) Palermo Viejo itself!

Where to Stay in Buenos Aires

• I suppose you could plan where you stay here depending on where all the famous people in Buenos Aires live. Many are in trendy Palermo, it seems.
• The Argentina Travel blog has some extra advice on renting an apartment in Buenos Aires, which will come in handy if you want to live near those celebs in Palermo, I guess.

Buenos Aires Food, Drink & Restaurants

• Winners of the hotly-contested (literally ’smoking’) Argentine Asado contest are announced.
• Saltshaker reviews the Empire Thai restaurant in the Microcentro, which is is one of the better Asian restaurants in Buenos Aires, and Chere Sophie, a decent restaurant attached to a school for hotel, tourism and restaurant management, just about in Recoleta.
• Yes, you can get Belgian chocolate and beer in Jumbo, the Buenos Aires supermarket with most variety = expat heaven. It imports Duvel and Chimay, two of my favorite beers of all time! Bit on the pricy side though…
• And if that isn’t enough good alcohol-related news for you, Robert Wright published the seventh instalment in his Divino Vino Buenos Aires wine review series, all (cheaply) available in supermarkets here.
• The best ice cream / gelato in the world, in Buenos Aires? Oh yes! And you can even just about see the place to get it in one of Karine’s daily photos this week!

Strange things in Buenos Aires

• The BA city government steals a Buenos Aires blogger’s photo of a milanesa napolitana.
• American adverts are being shot in Buenos Aires, presumably because of the nice cityscape, good looking actors, cheaper production costs and readily available supply of milanesas (if not their photos).
• Common pitfalls of using public transport in Buenos Aires
• While not stealing innocent blogger’s photos, the city government blog is telling us when we can watch meteor showers in Buenos Aires (in Spanish). Hang on, doesn’t that photo look familiar too?
• Comically astute social commentary on the differences between tourists and locals in Buenos Aires.

And what’s all this about a Buenos Aires ‘Meme’?

• I wrote a post about ‘My Perfect Day in Buenos Aires‘, and invited, no, urged, all other Buenos Aires bloggers to do the same. This is called an internet meme, IF it spreads. And I think out of it will come many interesting ideas for things to do and see in BA…
• No bites yet, although Diva, Karine and Laura have all kindly displayed an interest
• Come on the rest of you…please don’t ignore me, I won’t go away that easily!

Thanks for reading! Please add links to any interesting Buenos Aires blog posts I missed this week in the comments below…

Note – if you would like to book a private guided walking tour in Buenos Aires that includes a visit to Caminito and the surrounding area of La Boca, please click on the following link and scroll down to the section on our San Telmo & La Boca tour: BUENOS AIRES PRIVATE TOURS

Quite possibly the biggest mainstream tourist hotspot in Buenos Aires, the colorful Caminito street in the otherwise run down barrio of La Boca is often looked down upon as commercial, touristy, tacky, tango-ey rubbish by locals and travel guides alike.

However, I really think it is just trendy to say such things, because this small road and the immediate area around it do in fact have both an interesting history and the opportunity for taking some great photos, even though you will probably be surrounded by several American and Japanese tourists also happily snapping away before they quickly hop back onto their tour bus.

But give Caminito a chance! You might just like it…

What does Caminito mean anyway?

Hmmmm, translation is fun, isn’t it?!? Especially when your Spanish is as bad as mine!

Camino literally means ‘way’ or ‘walkway’ in English, and the -ito or -ita ending tagged onto Spanish nouns means little or small. And so Caminito is often translated as either ‘little walkway’, ‘little road’, ‘little path’, or ‘little street’.

All of these are correct. It is little! At less than 100 meters long, it was never going to win any awards for size, but then Buenos Aires claims to already has those in the bag – Avenida 9 de Julio for world’s widest street and Avenida Rivadavia for world’s longest! However, Caminito certainly makes up for its shortness with its amazing colors, and probably has won some kind of award before for greatest concentration of Japanese tourists per square meter.

But there is more to this small street and tourist attraction than first meets the eye.

Caminito and the ‘colorful’ history of La Boca

Around 6 million foreign immigrants poured into Argentina between the years 1880 and 1930, in which time Buenos Aires quickly turned from small town to heaving city. About 50% of these people were Italian, and many of those were from the port town of Genoa, Italy. To use a blatant stereotype, Italians are known for being lazy. Genoa was a port, La Boca was a port…things seemed familiar, and so the Italian immigrants did not move far from the immediate area where they first stepped onto Argentine soil, the port of La Boca (which means ‘the mouth’, as in the mouth of the Riachuelo river).

What has all this got to do with colorful Caminito, you ask? Well, the majority of these Italian immigrants in La Boca worked in the port, just as they had done in Genoa. The Genoese proudly brought their unique identity to La Boca, and one of their old traditions was to paint the outside of their homes with the leftover paint from the shipyard – as nothing else was available or could be afforded.

Conventillo Housing

However, they took things one step further in La Boca, and actually built the houses almost completely from materials found or discarded in the shipyard. This was because of the huge population explosion due to the immigration at the turn of the 20th century – there just was not enough homes for all of the people in Buenos Aires.

The answer to this problem was conventillo (tenement / shared) housing. Conventillos were long houses with small rooms that opened out onto a central outdoor common patio. Whereas in somewhere like San Telmo, for example, conventillos were generally old converted mansions large houses, in La Boca they had to be more inventive. Here the conventillos were hastily constructed from scrap corrugated metal and wood from old ships, and to spruce them up a little, the façades, doors and windows were then decorated in the famous bright color combinations with the leftover paint from the port, that tradition brought from Genoa.

Caminito is not strictly ‘authentic’, but ‘representative’

The main accusation that Caminito’s detractors throw about is that it is not authentic – in its current form, the street does not date back to the turn of the 20th century when the real conventillos were first built and lived in.

Instead, the history of Caminito is basically as follows:

• Early 1800s onwards: a small stream flowing into the Riachuelo river ran along the same route where Caminito street is now found
• Later that century, this area of the stream became known as Puntin, the Genoese diminutive term for bridge, because a small bridge allowed people to cross the stream here
• When the stream dried up, the General Roca railway to the provinces that ran past here (you can see the disused tracks at the end of Caminito, along Garibaldi street) a deviation from the track followed the dried-up riverbed, and was where train repairs were carried out
• In 1954 the train line went out of action, and the area where Caminito now is became a landfill and a bit of an eyesore
• But soon after, probably the most famous Argentine artist of all time came to the rescue…

Benito Quinquela Martin, The Architect of Caminito

By the late 1950s, La Boca had drastically changed from the turn of the 20th century – most of the colorful, ragtag conventillo housing that had been spread throughout most of the barrio had been pulled down, being replaced by dull houses and blocks of flats. But this was the very essence of La Boca being destroyed, its history, and not everybody was going to sit back and watch that happen.

Benito Quinquela Martin, an abandoned orphan who was adopted by a Genoese immigrant couple in La Boca, was the man to take action. He had become the most significant painter in Argentina, with his dramatic paintings of the port of La Boca, and achieved worldwide recognition. But as La Boca was his inspiration, and had provided him with family, friends and shelter after having been orphaned at an early age, he felt he owed the barrio something in return.

And so in 1959, Quinquela Martin and his artist friends created the street of Caminito, as a means of recreating the way old La Boca used to look – a reminder of where everyone had come from, not just in La Boca, but Buenos Aires, and Argentina, because this barrio and its port had been the gateway for many immigrants into this city and country (up until Puerto Madero & then Puerto Nuevo were built as replacements in the early 1900s), who then went on to make Buenos Aires and Argentina what they are today.

The World’s First Outdoor Pedestrian Museum

What Quinquela Martin did was to rescue bits and pieces of the original immigrant conventillos that were being torn down and replaced, and used them to create a concentrated conventillo community around this small street, in what is essentially an uninhabited open-air art and history exhibit, and officially the world’s first outdoor pedestrian museum. What an accolade!

And so Caminito is really a boiled-down representation of the old immigrant La Boca, and therefore, recreated by a master artist raised just around the corner, and so Caminito is actually a lot more authentic than most people will tell you.
It is still an exhibit, and so nobody actually lives in the Conventillos along Caminito. You will see washing lines strung between walls in the stereotypical Italian way, but they are just for show, and all part of Quinquela Martin’s intended work of art, which I think should be respected for acting as a reminder of this barrio and city’s immigrant roots.

Tango in Caminito

You will probably notice a lot of Tango around when you visit Caminito, in the form of street performers, tango dancers and musicians, tango music drifting through the air from bars and restaurants, and tango souvenirs sold by the dozen in most of the shops, some of them situated inside the actual conventillos. Of course this may all seem a little tacky. And of course, it is! However, there is a reason why the Tango is associated with Caminito and La Boca.

Tango music was born in Buenos Aires in around 1870 (sorry Uruguay, but this is a Buenos Aires blog so I will ignore your revisionist claims! ). However, it is still open to debate exactly where in Buenos Aires the tango originated from. Many say the arrabal (the suburbs / frontier between the city and the fields of the pampa) has the strongest claim. However, La Boca’s claim is up there with it, and also back in those days the arrabal would have started just south of La Boca, and so there was probably some crossover.

It is agreed that tango music first came out of the environment of immigrant-packed conventillo houses, where many different cultures and their respective types of music mixed in such close proximity, and from the melting pot of styles from around the world, tango music arose. It was on the outdoor patios in the center of the conventillos, where immigrants socialised together and played their musical instruments to each other after a hard day’s work, that this most probably occurred. And who is to say it didn’t happen in the conventillos of La Boca?

And so, as Caminito is representative of the old immigrant La Boca, it is also a representation of the genesis of Tango music that occurred at the same time here in history. Plus, for me, there has always been something very Italian about the Tango…its passion, style, arrogance, showmanship, and feelings of nostalgia and longing (for the homeland, Italy)…and of course the lyrics are usually infused with lunfardo, the porteno slang dialect of Spanish corrupted with the Italian language and accent. And where was the main Italian community of Buenos Aires? La Boca…I rest my case

Caminito, more than just a ’small walkway’

There is a little more to the naming of Caminito than it being a literal description of the small street. It also has a tango influence behind it!

The name Caminito was in fact first famous for a very popular 1926 Tango, by a famous La Boca musician and resident, Juan de Dios Filiberto. As the conventillos of La Boca were perhaps the true home of Tango, and the Caminito street was to be a representation of this, artist Benito Quinquela Martin felt it highly appropriate to name the street after a tango, and even better, one by a famous local resident. The name of the tango just so happened to also literally describe this very small street perfectly!

Another reason for the naming was that musician Filiberto had just fallen seriously ill at the time, and his good friend Quinquela Martin thought this homage to him would be the best way to try and cheer him up. These days, there is also a street in La Boca very close to Caminito that is named directly after Juan de Dios Filiberto, and of course, the lyrics to his tango song are also famously written on a plaque up on the first wall you see as you approach Caminito (although Filiberto only wrote the music, it was the Mendozan poet Gabino Coria Penaloza who added the words).

Buenos Aires Travel Guide Special Tip

If you come to Caminito at the weekend, you will also be able to do a little souvenir shopping the Feria de la Ribera arts and crafts market, which starts at the front of Caminito and goes around in front of the Riachuelo river. Here you will find handmade crochet scarves and shawls (see picture), traditional mate gourds and bombillas (the metal straws used for drinking mate), jewellery and lots of other interesting craft pieces, all at reasonable prices, especially if you are coming to Buenos Aires from the United States or Europe.

And if you work up a hunger after traipsing around Caminito and the feria, I can recommend an authentic Italian Pizzeria nearby in La Boca – which I have reviewed in an earlier post: Banchero Pizzeria. The restaurant also happens to have been a favorite of Benito Quinquela Martin, the architect of Caminito, so it is a fitting end to the outing – and delicious too!

For more information about La Boca, including a little something about the famous Boca Juniors stadium and football team, the Argentina Travel blog made a nice post recently about the neighborhood of La Boca, and also has some other good posts about Buenos Aires in general.

And please click the following link if you are interested in a Tango Show in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

[4th - 10th December 2006]

Hello and welcome to the first of my new weekly highlights posts covering what has caught my eye in the Buenos Aires blogosphere. Think of this a kind of a low-brow Global Voices Online solely covering BA.

Unfortunately, I can’t write in this blog as much as I would like to, but there are many other excellent blogs about BA out there – and so I am going to let them do some of the work for me! Most of the ones I know of can be found listed over at the excellent Bloggers in Argentina.

Each week I will link to the best blog posts I have read that I think will be of interest to visitors to Buenos Aires, and post the links up here, with a little commentary added. If I have missed something interesting out or seem to be overlooking a whole blog completely, please comment below to draw my attention to it. Here goes (warning, there is a lot this week!)…

Buenos Aires Sights

• To start proceedings off on a sobering tone, Line of Sight blogged about the building that once was the Argentine army’s intelligence HQ, the first stop for many detainees on their way to be tortured and ‘disappeared’ (i.e. killed) during the last military dictatorship here. Such a sad, horrible period in Argentine history.
• On a lighter note, Jeff Barry took some nice pictures of a replica of a Greek temple in Parque Lezama, San Telmo, which reminds him of a Borges story. Although a whole lot of things do seem to remind him of Borges. Then again, he is one of the greatest writers of recent times, and Argentine at that, so he is worth being reminded of. Borges that is, not Jeff, although Jeff’s excellent blog is indeed worthy too of a reminder now and again.
• The Argentina Travel blog put up an excellent review with pictures of the barrio of La Boca in Buenos Aires, including a little about the mighty Boca Juniors football team and the colorful Caminito street – a staple pilgrimage for most tourists in Buenos Aires.
• Buenos Aires Weekly has some useful facts and lovely pictures of both the Obelisk and the Pink House – two tourist attraction stalwarts of Buenos Aires.
• Tango Cherie has a link to an article she had published about lovely old Line A of the Buenos Aires Subway system. It’s British built, don’t you know, just like me, though the similarity stops there. I wrote a dirty joke here, and then remembered that children might read this. I’m sure you can imagine it!

Tours, Trips & Museums in and around Buenos Aires

• Expat Argentina gives tips on where to stay and what to do in Tandil, a place for a potential weekend getaway from Buenos Aires, about 3 hours away from the city by car. I’d love to go just to see their replica of a large rock that once (rolled and..) broke. Rock and roll, man!
• Trendy Palermo Viejo brought to our attention, in three languages, a new museum about the equine sport of polo in Buenos Aires. Every time I see it, I am more and more impressed with a blog that writes in three languages. Shame on my monolingual excuse of a blog.

Buenos Aires Info, News & General Comments

• El Sol Ardiente, who will sadly shortly be leaving his beloved Buenos Aires, gave a ceremonial run down on his top ten and bottom ten things about the city. Then he remembered a couple of extra things, but I’ll let him off for that original oversight…he must have been getting emotional at the thought of waving goodbye to this wonderful country.
• Line of Sight does some inventive things with planned subte (subway) maps, and shows us combined plans for the way the Buenos Aires subte system will look. Eventually, hopefully…
• More trilingual trickery from Palermo Viejo, with the impressive news that Buenos Aires is the second best city in the world for shopping. Eat that Paris, languishing down in lowly ninth place. Yes, I mean YOU, the ‘Buenos Aires of Europe’.

Places to Stay in Buenos Aires

• GoodAirs posted about a rather costly new addition to the burgeoning ranks of boutique hotels in Palermo, in this case, one that would eat itself if it were a jar of dulce de leche.
• Back at the Argentina Travel Blog, they have a nice review of the Milhouse Youth Hostel, in Montserrat for all you dirty, greasy backpackers out there. For the record, I am also a dirty, greasy backpacker. I just got lost in Buenos Aires and someone tied me to this computer chair until I wrote everything there is to know about Buenos Aires. The 1000 monkeys in the next room are currently beating me in this task. But only just, and they do have an unfair advantage…they can touch type

Buenos Aires Restaurants, Food & Drink

• I wrote an excellent review of the California Burrito Company restaurant, if I don’t say so myself! Check it out if you are missing spicy food in Buenos Aires! That was my only post this week; consider my wrists slapped for being such a lazy sod…
• Blog Pasa en Buenos Aires (in Spanish), the funky city of Buenos Aires government weblog, declared what all foodies have been anxiously waiting for. Yes folks, the milanesa napolitana, pizza con faina, and sorrentinos are all now officially part of the patrimonial culture of Buenos Aires.
• In case you don’t know what all of those foods are; a milanesa is a thin piece of breaded meat (usually chicken or beef), with the napolitana part consisting of tomato sauce, ham, melted cheese and tomatoes places on top of it. Pizza con faina is pizza eaten with a slice of chickpea-based pie (faina) on top of it. Sorrentinos are massive raviolis, usually filled with cheese and ham. Beware, soon there will be legislation declaring these foods the only legal meal options in Buenos Aires restaurants. Sorry, no sushi for you…
• That last part was a blatant lie. Please keep reading even though I have now probably lost your trust.
• If you are still reading, good. If you are still reading AND like fish, check out Saltshaker’s review of the fish at the Lo Rafael restaurant in the barrio of Montserrat. And if you ever want to read reviews of fish restaurants in Buenos Aires, check out Saltshaker and not this blog because 1.) He knows more about good food than I do, and 2.) I am viciously allergic to fish. Kind of puts a large, death-related obstacle in my way…
• Beer. I love beer. I miss beer. Mmmmmm….beeeeeeer. This is my kind of post: Beer. Thanks to the Asado Argentina blog for…beer. This blog post was also brought to you by the power of beer (can you notice?)

Funny or Odd Things in Buenos Aires

• Diva, over at Buenos Aires through my eyes, made a couple of interesting observations this week (well, she does most weeks I guess). Firstly she noted that only 4 people turned up for a ‘flashmob’ event where free hugs were on offer, whereas over 3,000 people had brought the pillows to the ‘lucha de almohadas’ in order to beat the hell out of each other.
• She also raised a smile by relating the heart-warming story of an American who thought McDonald’s invented that most Argentine of sweets, the Alfajor de Maizena, because of its uncanny resemblance to a miniature hamburger. Sweet!
• What’s that you say? Ricky Martin was in Buenos Aires this week? Why do I always miss out on all the fun? Luckily for us, Robert Wright had the pocket Latino popster in his Line of Sight, and in the line of his camera lens too. And he even threw an interesting conspiracy theory into the post for good measure.
• Robert also wins the workaholic blogger of the week award. He also posted some excellent pictures of stencils in Buenos Aires, with translations and explanations. He has posted many of these before, this was in fact number 34 in the series! Search back through his blog if they interest you.
• Miss Tango In Her Eyes and her female friend are given some enthusiastic appreciation from the chicos in Puerto Madero, for the sum of their parts, which I suppose must be pretty darn impressive.
• Daily snapper Karine did some rapid fire posting of different Buenos Aires Kiosks, in all of their magazine-bling glory, here, there, and even round the corner from my fiancée’s apartment! Small world, indeed…
• In her other blog, Buenos Aires Weekly, Karine was one of the first to break the exciting news that Barbara Bush’s cell phone, stolen recently in San Telmo, had supposedly been put up for sale on Mercado Libre (the Latin American eBay), with a bargain starting price of AR$1000. Not bad when you consider it contained the phone numbers of both George W Bush AND Michael Jackson, offering the once in a lifetime opportunity to conduct a ’stupidest person on the face of the planet’ contest, in real time. Unfortunately, the offer was soon removed, surely because the current owner realized that was a chance that couldn’t be passed up.

My plea to Buenos Aires bloggers: please write less interesting posts in the coming week so I can get some sleep!

However, as I am a glutton for punishment, if I have missed an interesting Buenos Aires blog post this week, please post a link to it in the comments below. Thanks!

[Also has branches at Av. Corrientes 1300 (City Center), Av. Rivadavia 5401 (Caballito), and Av Pueyrredon 123 (Once)]

Pizza is a serious business in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires was largely built on huge amounts of European immigration around the turn of the 20th century, with the large majority coming from Italy, not Spain, as many would believe (they came in second). In fact, according to a Yale essay on Argentine Immigration:

“Between 1857 and 1958 the main source of immigrants to Argentina were Italy and Spain accounting for 46 and 33 percent, respectively, of the total. The rest of the immigrants were made up of different nationalities, including French, German, British, and Irish.”

This amounted to almost 3 million Italians in that period, most of which arrived in the massive rush between 1880-1916. I never thought I would be quoting a Yale essay while talking about a plain old Pizza joint, but there you go.

The Italians and La Boca

Most of the Italians arrived into the port of La Boca, and they liked it so much, they stayed there. La Boca has since then been the main Italian community in Buenos Aires. In fact, the famous football team that plays here, Boca Juniors, has “Xeneizes” written on its shirt, which means “the Genoese” (people of Genoa, Italy), in an old Genoese dialect.

What do Italians love to eat? Pizza, pasta and ice cream. All of which, of course, are abundantly available throughout Buenos Aires. Some of it, arguably…controversially, better than back in the homeland (I can’t really comment, as I have only been in Italy once for a week, and Argentina for two years, but I have at least definitely had better ice cream / gelato in Buenos Aires than I did in Florence or Rome). And where better to sample Italian food in Buenos Aires, than in the main Italian community here, La Boca…

So, first up in my series of reviews of Italian food in Buenos Aires is Pizza, and a place in La Boca with a lot of history: the Banchero Pizzeria. As the tag line on their napkin pictured above says:

“Today a lot of places make Pizza. We created it…”

Quite a dramatic claim. Of course, it isn’t strictly true: Banchero in fact invented a type of Pizza that has since been popular in Buenos Aires.

The history of Banchero Pizza

Don Agustin Banchero arrived from Genoa to Buenos Aires in 1893, to try his luck in Argentina. He soon became one of the first people to sell Pizza in Buenos Aires, starting a little bakery with his son Juan in calle Olivarria, where the “Fugazza Con Queso” was born! (Fugazza was a Genoese invention of a sauceless pizza topped with caramelized onions, oregano and seasoning. It tastes nicer than it sounds! Banchero added the cheese, and this version is now more widely known as the Fugazzetta).

This was surely one of the defining moments in Argentine culinary history! And I say that without a hint of sarcasm, readers. Pizza is that important here.

Son of a Pizza maker

Agustin’s son, the Don Juan of the Argentine Pizza world (literally, that’s his name, Don Juan Banchero), soon took over the dough mantle from his father, and on 28th March 1932 opened the traditional Pizzeria Banchero here in La Boca, which he ran with his sons Tito and Antonio. The Banchero family are all about the Pizza. Note how I am using Pizza with a capital P!

Pizzeria Banchero soon became famous for it’s heavenly slices of pie, and yet more famous after stars like Argentine singer Tita Merello and ‘national-institution’ painter Benito Quinquela Martin began to hang out here on a regular basis.

It is still in the Banchero family, but has since ‘branched out’, adding three other locations, including a branch near the Obelisk on Av. Corrientes 1300.

But what about the Pizza?

Well, the Pizza is great. Deep dish, with LOADS of lovely gooey mozzarella cheese. I didn’t go for the Fugazzetta this time, because I wasn’t feeling particularly Genoese. What I did have instead was a ‘Chica Calabresa’, which is an individual sized Pizza topped with lots of mozzarella, tomato sauce, tomatoes, slices of calabresa sausage (a bit like Argentine chorizo sausage, only a little spicy, and interestingly with a faint hint of aniseed to it) and green olives. Have you ever seen a Pizza in Buenos Aires without olives?

It came in at a reasonable 15 pesos, and was way more than enough for one person. Here it is, in all its gooey mozzarella glory:

Nice prices…just don’t ask for Coca-Cola

There are also cheaper options if you are with company, for example at 17 Argentine pesos for the Grande Muzzarella, you will have more than enough for two people. Throw in a couple of AR$1.50 slices of Faina, a chickpea based pie that is eaten on top of a slice of Pizza here in BA, and you are set. Now, what to drink…?

Most groups of porteno friends like nothing better than a few large mozzarella pizzas washed down with a few litre bottle of Quilmes beer. Quilmes are one of the sponsors of Boca Juniors, so that is also a very safe choice of beverage in La Boca, where they are CRAZY about their football.

If you want a soft drink, you need to be a little more careful. Whatever you do, DON’T ask for Coca-Cola. See, one of the other Boca Juniors sponsors in Pepsi. And Coca-Cola just happen to sponsor their arch rivals in the north, River Plate. There is no love lost between these two teams and their supporters. Trust me, they want each other’s blood.

So, be warned. Asking for a Coke in La Boca is tantamount to slapping the waiter’s lovely old Italian grandmother in the face. If you value your life, do the sensible thing and choose Pepsi. Or a mineral water. Don’t believe me? Have a look round the cafes, bars and restaurants of La Boca and see how many serve the more famous alternative to Pepsi Cola, whose name shall not be spoken in those parts…!

A strangely eerie restaurant

So, some lovely cheesy Pizza and a Pepsi Cola, great. And the restaurant itself…?

Always deserted.

At least when I’m there, anyway. Most of La Boca has a sad, run-down, ghost-town quality to it these days, aside from the small touristy area around Caminito, as a result of there being very little work on offer in this area. Banchero adds to the deserted feeling; it’s like walking into a restaurant in a seaside resort during off season – and you wonder how, or why, they are still open. Maybe it’s because they feel they have a duty to continue the family tradition of providing the highest quality Pizza to the Argentine public. Or, less romantically, maybe the city center branch is where the profits are made, with the La Boca location kept on for authenticity’s sake.

All in all, Banchero is a great place for some top quality Pizza in Buenos Aires. It is one of my favorite Pizzerias, but not out and out my favorite – I can think of at least two others that probably edge it for that crown, which I will of course be reviewing sometime soon.

Banchero Pizzeria: the verdict

• Service: (4/5) As there is never many people to serve, the waiters are very attentive and friendly, and the service is extremely quick. Though I hear that the opposite is the case in its busy city center location.
• Food: (4/5) Delicious thick slices of Pizza topped with loads of lovely gooey Mozzarella cheese…mmmmmmm…
• Atmosphere: (2/5) About a dead as a River Plate fan that forgot where he was and asked for Coca Cola in a La Boca restaurant…the waiters are nice though, so they get some points for that.
• Value: (4/5) At 17 Argentine pesos for a mozzarella Pizza that easily feeds two, it is very good value for money.

Buenos Aires Travel Guide Special Tip

If you go late at night, which I would probably advise against, make sure you get a Radio taxi, because it is dangerous to walk around La Boca at night, especially for tourists. Probably best to be safe and go here for lunch, when it is just as safe as the rest of Buenos Aires.

Few will argue that spring (Sep-Nov, highs of 25C/78F, lows of 10C/50F) is the best time to visit, closely followed by autumn/fall (Mar-May, highs of 26C/80F, lows of 10C/50F).

Spring is the best time to visit Buenos Aires

During spring, the wonderful jacaranda trees that are found throughout much of Buenos Aires burst into a striking purple blossom, which ends up carpeting the streets to great effect. It is also a great time to walk around the many lush parks of the Palermo barrio. The portenos (people of the port, i.e. Buenos Aires), relieved that winter is over, are also generally at their happiest during spring, and these are two of many excellent reasons why this is the best time to visit BA. The sky is bright and crisp, people are already sunbathing as if summer is here, and yes, most people seem to have a ‘spring’ in their step.

Summer can be overbearing, but less crowded

The summer months can feel overbearingly hot because of the lack of wind inside the city to the relieve the heat & high levels of humidity, and therefore many portenos disappear off on holiday to the beaches of either Mar del Plata (in the Buenos Aires province of Argentina) or Punta del Este (across the river in Uruguay), usually for the month of January. This can make a midsummer visit to Buenos Aires less crowded, which may be of interest to some, if you don’t mind the hotter city weather.

Autumn means Argentine football!

During autumn/fall, the new Argentine football/soccer season starts, so if you are interested in watching a heated Boca Juniors or River Plate game, this is a good time to go to guarantee that they will be playing. Also, the weather is comparable to spring, even if the people are not so happy – which is understandable, as they are getting ready for their winter hibernation.

Pack warm for winter

Winter is fine if you don’t mind a little chill, but make sure you pack a coat, and maybe even a hat and gloves. It is also the perfect time of year to enjoy Buenos Aires café culture, safely warm inside enjoying your café con leche with medialunas (croissants) and indulging in some people watching. Also, it rains the least in winter here (an average of around 2 inches per month, compared to 4 inches per month in summer, usually in intermittent thunderstorms, and somewhere in between the two during spring and autumn).

Buenos Aires Weather Forecast

For an up to the minute Buenos Aires weather forecast, check out CNN Buenos Aires Weather, which should help you to make any last minute clothes packing decisions

In conclusion, really any time of the year is good to come to Buenos Aires in regards to the weather and climate, but as stated above, spring and autumn are probably your best bets. I’m sure you will have a great time here whenever you decide to make the trip!