Simultaneously enchanting and infuriating, Buenos Aires is easily the most seductive and exhausting place we have ever lived. The humidity for half of the year is horrendous, which as our air conditioner at home dates back to the 1960s and is as noisy as it is ineffective, is but one of a number of reasons why getting a good night’s sleep is the ultimate luxury.
Office hours are famously elastic, with the bulk of work usually performed after four in the afternoon between an enormous lunch and a late night dinner. Go to any restaurant before 9pm and you’ll be handed the Afternoon Tea menu, and at 1 in the morning you’ll find families with kids in strollers wandering the streets or on the terraces of cafes -many toting baby bottles or ‘sippy cups’ full of Cola, no doubt to keep them awake, so their parents can stay out on the town as late as possible. Elementary schools even pander to these night-owl parents, by offering a choice of ‘shifts’ for their kids, with the ‘late shift’ starting at 11 in the morning!
Buenos Aires is the only city I’ve ever been to where the biggest traffic jams in the city on weekdays seem to be from 4 to 5am, as the night clubs empty and people head home for a few hours, before going into the office. How do I know this? From catching dawn flights to go on business trips from Ezeiza airport. Time here is an elastic concept at best, with business meetings routinely starting at least an hour late (I have learned to carry a book in my briefcase). No apology will ever be given for this tardiness, but woe betide if you are a minute late yourself.
So it’s no wonder that at weekends, like many a stressed out and sleep-deprived family we head a few miles north of the city to the island town of Tigre, a little slice of languor on the Paraná delta. Imagine a cross between a romantic Mississippi bayou with a selection of crumbling Belle Epoque mansions, and a raffish, scruffy, tropical cousin of England’s Henley-on-Thames with its rowing clubs and vintage wooden launches, and you’ll get some idea of the unique flavor of this beguiling place.
We go and mess about in boats piloted by gruff, moustache-toting sea dogs, exploring the streams and tributaries of the delta, inevitably rendezvousing with friends at the old dockside fruit market (Puerto de Frutos) for a late lunch at our favourite little restaurant ‘Lucifer’. Here we share a barbecued suckling pig and then waddle contentedly a few blocks down the riverside towpath for some of the finest gelato you’ll find outside of Italy - fortified anew for the maelstrom of the coming week.
Spit Barbecued Suckling Pig: Serves Eight to Ten
1 15lb Suckling Pig
Vegetable oil
1 head of Garlic, peeled and finely chopped
Salt and Pepper
1 tbsp Chinese Five Spice
Mix the garlic, five spice, salt and pepper together. Rub the cavity with the spice mixture, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours. Let the pig stand out of the refrigerator for at least an hour before cooking.
Tie the pig to the spit; rub the skin of the pig with vegetable oil; put the spit in place and turn it on in a barbeque pre-heated to 350 degrees F. Cook until the internal temperature of the thickest part of the shoulder and rear haunch has reached 145-155 degrees F (test frequently with a meat thermometer).
Let it stand for 30 minutes before carving.
This city has been at the top of my list of places to visit for years...reading this only reinforces my wish to go there!
Memories memories!!!! such a lovely place to visit apart for the enormous mosquitoes !!!