One last night spent walking in the streets and avenues of Buenos Aires, to breathe one last tango and enjoy the autumn breeze that colors of yellow and red the green spaces of the big city.
Then the long transfer to the airport ezeiza, always a long journey full of intense emotions. The memories of the last months jostle between the check in and the long wait in the silent and empty corridors of the airport.
A goodbye…
The porteño stay, that is in Buenos Aires, is an opportunity to discover the pure Latin American magical realism corners. One such place is the San Telmo neighborhood, the oldest in Buenos Aires, like the history books narrate.
The night in San Telmo is a spectacle of life, clubs open until late at night, music and tango, until the last breath of darkness. Around the Plaza Dorrego focus all these nocturnal activities, but also during the day, the San Telmo district never rests, including restaurants, antiques fairs, street musicians and visitors.
In the morning we are on the hostel’s roof, from where we dominate the San Telmo district, which finally looks up a short rest before the fatigues of each day, and the entire city of Buenos Aires. We exchange the latest impressions of the day’s events and eat magnificent parrilladas (BBQ), a must for anyone visiting Buenos Aires especially if it is the delicious lomo (loin).
In these conniving glances, hides wild ecstasy. In these eyes black and deep like pitch, they mingle long and black hair. Like a painter does with his models, I find myself mystified by these exotic figures.
I stop to drink a drop of water in lezama park, near the boca, when on my side sits a friendly octogenarian, who greets me presenting herself as a retired professor of philosophy, named Edith. The result is a conversation of five hours, about all religions of the world, no religions, animism, atheism, about Argentina, Buenos Aires and the future of the world… She made me think a lot and showed me how much you can learn in months of travel always in contact with different cultures.
What a sight Buenos Aires, here it is my appointment with the myth! First positive impact, but it’s only been an hour and I have to eat something and then sleep…
Buenos Aires is a huge metropolis, but the heart is as hard as gentle. The casa rosada is a fitting metaphor. It looks strikingly like Paris, with its majestic monuments, the endless avenues, parks where it is very easy to get lost, but weighed down by thousand sufferings… In Buenos Aires there is not that typical contrast between exaggerations that is observed in the mega-cities of Brazil, between modern and ancestral, rather everything seems suspended in a decadent atmosphere, even bohemian. Everything remains stationary at the time when Buenos Aires was one of the cities at the center of the world.
In Buenos Aires even the food smells of a tasty and velvety history, everything reminds its Italian roots. Here you walk a lot, and you think a lot as well: I like the idea of spending these days suspended in a cloud over the air waiting for the arrival of my moment.
