Chicho

With no flashes allowed, this photo was a real test of my miserable photography skills... still I like it. This could well be one of the last ever photos of the famous couple Mariano "Chicho" Frumboli and Eugenia Parrilla. We all left with the feeling that they were done. It was a passionate performance though, despite a few slips on the tricky floor, it was amazing to see up close and personal (I was zoomed right out for this one).

This is the End

I think that was Jim Morrison that said that...?

Anyways, Meg has already mentioned that it's all done and dusted. I spent a few hours in at work clearing out a backlog of emails and doing the catch up walk around, now I need to pull my end of the bargain along back here at home and get things up and running again.

No major dramas in Auckland. Never been to NZ before, so it was nice to see it, but Auckland really is just another city and we were not armed with any tourist information. Didn't matter for 2 reasons:

1. The weather sucked... Topical cyclone what's his name that flattened Innisfail (spelling probably wrong) dropped into the north island while we were there.

2. The whole point was to catch up with Meg's sis and bro in law. It was fun to catch up and vegetate over coffee, chai lattes and beer .... and wine ... and a bloody big bowl of mussels... and all the other stuff we ate (including a big snapper landed by our hosts themselves).

Besides veging out I was the lucky recipient of a personal brewery tour of the Auckland Lion Nathan brewery, as arranged by Andy (pulled a few strings he did). It was pretty cool (and hot by the kettles) to see a full scale brewery under full steam, being guided by the big guns. One of the guys was also the "microbrewer" who does little 40 litre batches to test out new hop and yeast varieties... Just a perfect size to bottle up a few to take home after the taste tests one would assume...

So now it's back to reality - something I'm not really fond of at the moment. And managing the aftermath of the insurance claims for lost luggage and robbery. Dang theif made a call on Meg's cell phone for 13 minutes and it came up to 70 bucks. Bastards.

I think we should shift right back into Adelaide sleeping patterns OK, the up at 1pm and in bed after 4am regime seemed to allow us to settle into NZ.

Ummmm.... that's really about all. I'm not going to write much more, but I do plan on sticking up a few photos before I archive this thing as my diary (as I got a bit lazy on that handwritten deal).

Thanks to all those who read and commented, we had stacks of people checking the site... yay!

Blog Signoff

That's it, we're back in Adelaide.
Got up at 2:30am this morning in Auckland to get to our flight...Andy and Midori were crazy enough to get up to wave us goodbye! Had a relaxed couple of days hanging out with them in NZ, nice to see where they live and the places they are hanging out in. Managed to bypass the Krispy Kreme stand in the Sydney airport.
So, am back around the corner from the central markets....wandered over to look at the fresh weird green stuff apparently known as vegetable matter, and have begun to wade through the mail (bills), the emails, the washing and other tasks. Lovely to hear from friends and family, reassuring to be back amongst our 'stuff' and disconcerting to think about the alarm going off tomorrow morning for work!
Now I can start planning for the next adventure....
Thanks for coming travelling with us through the blog.
M!

Cheap Clothes...

Only just realised how cheap the clothes are here... I had to replace a few more laundered items... Brand names like puma nike etc., sell their t´s for about 20 australian dollars, back home the equivalent stuff is 50 to 100. Don´t understand.

Wrongness

Mark and I finally jumped and tried the mixed parrilla.... Guts and all.

Mark had it in a word: POSION

Kidney´s have a text that is not unlike meat, but they taste like chemicals. Gross.

Hanging with Sebastian

Again, I can´t reiterate how great some of the people in the tango world have been to us. Yesterday, Mark and I spent an hour in a tango music shop getting an experts opinion in all of the works from all of the orchestras from Sebastian Arce. He´s only in Buenos Aires (his old home) for a month or so per year and he happily spent this time sharing his great depth of knowledge with us.

I return to Australia with 26 tango CDs not already in the extensive Siempre Tango collection, with not much time to study them before my next DJ gig.

Parillas, Practicas and Packing

Final few hours in Buenos Aires.
Really enjoyed the last few days in Palermo, a completely different part of the city with lovely parks, great cafes....and shops.
The divide between the haves and have-nots here is extremely sad. Watching people at 4am going through the rubbish on the side of the road to pick out the cardboard to sell for recycling, or the guys on the subway trying to sell stickers or aspiring...or the kids on the streets hocking sad bunches of flowers at 5am.
Heading out for dinner tonight with Mark and Tiz, they have been great company the last two weeks. Going back to a great parilla. We went to a practica last night run by Chico and Sebastian - again, just happy to watch people who really know what they're doing! We did have a go at some of the stuff....in our self-named beginners corner.
Feels kinda crazy to think that 6 weeks is coming to an end. Looking forward to seeing Andy and Midori in Auckland on Saturday, and to giving my feet a rest for a few days.

The Tub

I almost ater a quater kilo tub of ice cream on my own (small amount of help from Meg).

Is that bad?

Battling the Plague

I´ve not had much luck with illness on this trip. I´ve been just fending off a cold for 3 weeks - hit me big time last night so I had to bail on the milongas... The smoke and late nights were replaced by 13 hours of sleep and litres and litres of water (oh yeah and some 3000mg of vitamin C and the odd hit of pseudoephedrine)

Smokey internet cafe´s not doing much good tho...

Moved to Palermo

Due to some confusion with our booking, we had to move out of our San Telmo guest house to an apartment in the suburb of Palermo. I now have an entirely different feeling of BsAs. Not as polluted, much cleaner, greener, quieter, and ...well.. nicer.

The apartment itself, however is a disaster. Not only was it not clean when we arrived (the previous tenant was clearly a slob... floor was barely visible through the sh!t they´d left behind), but it certainly wasn´t as advertised to us by the guest house. We´re not sure if that´s just our perception of what´s nice and appropriate and that this is common or if we were sold a dud, but anyway we´re only there for 2 more nights...

My top five greivances with the apartment

5. The window rattling when it´s closed (so we have to sleep with it open, luckily it´s quiet in this neighbourhood)
4. The door rattling when it´s closed
3. The shower filling up like a bath
2. The bed feels like sleeping on a matress of sand

... but most of all...

1. The bathroom floored with carpet and the cistern leaking so the carpet is permanently wet... Well I´m telling myself it´s the cistern and not something else... Of and there is also the soap holder with drainage holes that empty straight onto the carpet...

Carpet in a bathroom????

Sharing Their Passion

I´ve already mention that Adrian and Alejandra have been exceedingly generous in various ways with Meg and I. Today we had the pleasure of spending about 3 hours with Sebastian Arce. It all began when he gave Tiz and Mark the wrong address for a practica and he felt guilty and offered us all a private lesson. He normally does not do privates in Buenos Aires and prefers people to study with the local teachers (he is now living in Paris).

Before the and after the lesson he spent a long time chatting with us over coffee, interesting in hearing about Australia, but more importantly for us, sharing his extensive knowledge of Tango. It´s clear it´s his passion, he lives it, always reading books, listening to music (all types, old and modern), and studying bio mechanics to help him discover new movements in the dance.

The lesson itself was another back to basics, but gave us 2 new ways of dancing the same stuff we´ve been doing for years... more information to integrate and understand, but I can´t help feeling once it happens I will always look back on that lesson as one of the most significant moments in tango for me.

It´s hard to imagine a footballer or rock star sitting down with a fan and chewing the fat. These people are treated like rock stars in the tango community, some of them live that lifestyle, behave that way too, but others like Sebastian are very down to earth.

Getting There

CITA has been pretty good, except for a few minor gripes about the theatre shows and people pulling out - but I'm over that now. THe workshops have generally been great, but still full of people who have over estimated themselves... they all seem to have the same accent too, funnily enough. We will walk away with a bag full of new tricks that are half baked and will require many hours of tweaking to get right... But the most valuable thing has been the technique feedback - often this has been contracdictory between different teachers, but now we are aware more of what is possible and armed to make our own decisions on what works for us. Dancing should be back to normal after about 2 years solid practice!

Rocking Practica

MEg and I went to Sebastian Arce and Chicho's practica last night, packed full of awesome dancers it was great to watch them and borrow ideas. Chicho was in step invention mode and would stop the practica to demonstrate his discoveries, he's pretty amazing to watch... but so is Sebastian.

Palermo Class

Adrian and Alejandra took Mark, Tiz, Meg and I out for dinner in Palermo, a decent suberb with stacks of restaurants... Naughty buggers wouldn't let us pay - another example of how crazily generous they are. It was great to have more meat, except this time it was served with a delicious sauce, salad and roasted potatoes instead of the standard pile of meat and chips (of which Ive had more than i could remember since getting here)

Ice Cream

The ice cream here is great, and there are ittle shops everywhere. Each one seems to have 50 or so flavours all completely unmarked and covered with stainless steel lids... somehow the ice cream man always knows which lid to lift without making a mistake...

Catos y Perros

Rain came a tumbling down agin today, umbrella was useless in the torrent. Wasnt too bad though as I needed to buy new clothes because of the damage done by the last laundry.... All dry again!

Mean Spirits

As usual there was someone on the subway today, hawking cheap goods to try and make a living, in this case sets of coloured pens. The asking price was only 2.5 pesos for about 6 pens, or about 1 dollar aus. Some budding pick pocket managed to grab some while the destitute guy wasnt watching and escape off into the next carriage before anyone noticed. Took me a second to realise exactly what happened, not that my spanish would have been able to alert any one anyway.

Memories of Roma

The other day I saw something that reminded me of a common practice in Rome: "Can't fit your car into that parallel park??" Just park head first and leave the back end of the car in the middle of the street... photos to be posted soon.

My friend Erin in Whistler called this "Stunt Parking"

Blocked

It seems that all the internet cafes here are really strict with their internet p#rn blockers. I can't generally access my email because someone must have sent me something with a word that might be construed as rude. Even when reading smh.com.au or theage.com.au it sometimes tells you off because maybe there's a headline with a potentially word. Look out side on the street and half of the massive billboards contain barely clad women.

Double standards.

The Man

Last night we attended the first theatre show as part of Cosmo Tango. It was OK, but not superb. Many different couples, but they weren't the cream of the crop (and the best couple reused stuff we'd seen before)... The all did an improvisation at the end, which was pretty good, but on the whole not great.

Then we headed off to a milonga at La Viruta, expecting some performances and hoping maybe Chicho would strut his stuff. Satisfied we were. At about 3:30 am Chicho and Eugenia did two long performances that were simple stunning. Cosmo Tango has now offically been worth it. We've now had 2 lessons with these maestros and also one with Sebastian and Mariana, Chicho and Eugenia's lessons are awesome. His understanding of the positions of the two bodies and their possibilities from any position is second to none (we've seen anyway).

Currently very satisfied.

Mark and Tiz

Mark and Tiz have arrived safely, we caught up with them in their ritzy apartment last night and took them out to our crazy little tango parilla, from which we managed to escape before being forced to perform again (he got a bit upset as we left, but hey)... At least we got to hear one karaoke performance and his friend on the keyboard.

We took Mark and Tiz to Villa Malcolm after that to see Color Tango. I don't think they (COlor TAngo) were in their best form, but it was a good night none the less and finished at a reasonable 2:30 am. The crowd at this place had changed significantly for the orchestra, normally a very young crowd - much older this time.

Was good to chat to some familiar faces and get the gossip back from Adelaide.

CITA starts tonight (the festival we've come here for)... opening night milonga and performances by some of the masters... Hope it will be good.

Dont drink the water

OK, Im usually pretty careful about not drinking water in places I dont trust, but everything seemed fine here, excepting the fact it is South America. THis place used to be super rich and I figured that the water treatment would be up to scratch. I think it actually is, but the bugs that remain are probably different to those in Adders. Anyway, my advice after 3 days of food poisoning (either the water or the dodgy pasta from the other day) is always buy bottled water and drink that. Even if the place has good water... stomaches can take some time to adjust and its not always what you want to be doing when on holis :)

Tango Parilla

The other night we caught up with an old friend of Megs from Canberra, Sarah. Sarah was involved in the tango social club there (started it) and has sinced move here to live and teach tango (brave girl). She took us out to this little grill (parilla) near her apartment. THe super friendly owner proceeded to block the doors before we could leave and demanded a tango performance. SO Meg and I had to dance in a space the size of one or two tables for a packed restaurant. Very funny. THen the old guys got up and tried to show us up with their partners. Even funnier. One more "performance" by myself and Sarah (whom I had never danced with before, but it went ok) before we were able to escape the crazy little restaurant and the owners karaoke efforts...

Bizarreness

More Taxi Madness

THe taxis here generally dont have any seat belts. Combine this with the fact they all drive super loco and it is actually illegal not to wear a seat belt it makes for interesting journeys.

Bad Floor Craft

Ive been very disappointed with the floor craft here in the busy milongas. Im told it is because of the percentage of tourists here at the moment. Stand still on the floor for a second because you have no space and people smash you from all sides.

Having been told its the tourists, a few of the better local dancers (one being an up and coming new guard dancer) do insane turns and space hogging moves just to show off irrespective of the damage done.

I think next time we will come out of tourist season.

Australians Everywhere

One of the nice things during the travels has been catching up with a couple of old Canberra friends. Naomit Toth in Paris, and Sarah Bonnar here in BsAs. Have also run into Rod Daniels who I knew from Canberra and is now living in Perth. Sarah lives here now and teaches tango. Rod, like us, is here for the festival and to cram his head with new tango stuff....and shop for shoes. Don't worry Andy, we've looked at an extra bag, I might still need it!

Dodgy taxis

We know about the taxi drivers here driving you around in circles to crank up the meter a bit more, which is not really that annoying when they rip you off 50 cents Australian, however when they expect to get a tip also - that annoys me. Last night I had to rip 50 centavos out of the taxi drivers hand because he wanted a tip after driving us around in circles for 10 minutes, thinking we wouldnt notice.... somehow him reading out the street names he thought would justify his deception.

Im pretty generous with the honest ones, at least a peso tip, but the dodgy ones can b!ugger off!

Color Tango

Last night we ventured back to the super touristy Confiteria Ideal, not my favourite venue, primarily because I´ve not managed to find a local there yet... Anyways, the amazing Color Tango played and had a superb vocalist working with them. His voice was amazing and sounded just like the classic tango signers working for the great tango orchestras of the past. Spine tingling stuff for the tango afficionado.

There were also 5 couples performing in intermissions, the first of whom were terrible, and I might say embarassing. The other 4 couples were excellent, the final couple bringing back memories of Roberto Herrara in his hey day of Perfumes de Tango. They were super young too, maybe 20 at the oldest. The girls had obviously had some ballet or gymnastics training, and the balance of the men was supreme. Again not sure if this is enough to enspire one or make one give up completely...

Good fun though.

Shoes and Coffee

Aaahhh yes, I have found tango shoe nirvana land! Shoe shops like candy stores, where you go and sit on a lounge, tell them your size and the height of the heel that you want and they start bringing out boxes and boxes of all different colours and materials and patters and all sorts! Thank goodness the exchange rate is working in our favour!!

Ben thinks I've finished shoe shopping now, but Tiz gets here on Saturday and then I'll have to visit them all over again....and each time you go they have different stock! :)

And have found a great little coffee place we've been wandering to each morning, the guys there are getting to know us but are laughing I think as we arrive later each day!

So much tango, my legs and feet haev never been so sore. It's great, but I'm looking forward to my towels, my shower, my toaster, a pale ale, fresh vegetables, family and friends (not necessarily in that particular order!).

Still Alive

Yep were still ticking, just dont have a lot of time to update. Things have been good but frustrting in regards to tango. Instructors are great but they have been pulling apart our technique. Probably necessary, but feels like going backwards.

My clothes got bleached by the moron laundry across the street, that was kind of annoying...

We had the worlds worst lunch today pasta floating in a bowl of water with a touch of sauce ordinaire.... having said that all of the other food has been superb... the chorizo sausage here is absolutely divine, and the bife de chorizo (rump) is nuts!

Anyway, better run, off to COnfiteria Ideal for Color Tango live.

Mark and TIz must be getting excited as they leave very soon.

Oh and weve also seen Otros Aires live and Mario Chicho Frumboli has been burning up the floor a bit in the places weve been visiting (he is unbelievable to watch)

MOre soon

(oh and the table legs here are getting worse)

lucky the coffee is good.. so are the media lunas... or croissants for you frenchies

Tight Pants and High Heels

Milongas in Buenos Aires. Apparently, this is the place to be for some serious butt viewing! I've never seen so many women wearing such very, very tight tights! The men don't seem to follow the same fashion.... It's far more casual here than I was expecting too: jeans are around at the milongas, t-shirts, and at the practicas there were a fair number of tracksuit pants. We went to La Nacional on Wednesday night and luckily caught Nito and Elba performing. Last night we saw Mariana Dragone performing with her new partner, it's kinda crazy looking in the paper and seeing all the orchestras and performances happening. It's quite a surreal existence though. The milongas run until 6am - what do all these people do during the day??

Curse of the Buenos Aires Table Leg

The tables here all seem to have 4 legs instead of one central one and because the tables are so small you end up banging the table continuously, putting everyone's drinks in peril. I figures though, because everyone here is quite short! This is perfect for me dancing, but Meg towers over a lot of the men!

Adrian y Alejandra

Last night we were taken out to the famous Confiteria Ideal by the original Siempre Tango postcard models, Adrian and Alejandra. They chose the venue because one of best (if not the best) current day orchestras played: Orchestra Los Reyes del Tango. This orchestra had 4 bandoneons, and their sound was so powerful, it was a hard decision as to whether we should just sit and listen and watch them and overcome the urge to dance. So of course we did some of each.

Adrian and Alejandra are one of the best new tango couples in the world, and I would put my money on them being one of the nicest. For them to take us under their wing and introduce us to their friends and even the performers of last night was really great. We have a lesson with them today at 3 pm, which will be excellent.

Oh yeah, and I got to dance with Alejandra... muhahaa...

www.adrianyalejandra.com

U2 in BsAs

They played here the last 2 nights, we were very tempted to go, but having to get scalped for tickets at the stadium would have been difficult... also they play in Adelaide the night we get back, so that will be enough.

We also just missed the Stones by a week.

Practica and Milonga

On Wednesday we ventured out for our first real tango experience. Firstly we went to Tangocool, a practica full of young people dancing mainly the nuevo style. AS usual more women than men, but there was a lot of rejection of invitations for a dance which I found amusing. There is a real pecking order of tango here that's much stronger than at home. The best dancer in the room had his little harem who were more than happy to sit out most of the night as long as they were free for him if he so chose.

After the practica finished at 1230 am we headed off to the milonga la Nacional, it was packed and we hung around there until after 230 am before running out of steam. The process of cabecao (attracting a woman's attention for a dance through eye contact only) is quiet intimidating the first time. Anyway, I had some success...

The dance floor was incredibly packed, like a busy night at the banque but on a greater scale. Many people out of control crashing into each other, I didn't expect that here, but perhaps they are tourismo!

Through to the Bone

I went to the tellar machine to get some cash a minute ago and the skys opened up ala Queensland wet season. I am saturated... it was amazing, I haven't seen rain like it in years. I didn't think BsAs would be able to get so much rain. One good thing about it was that it stripped all the smog from the air (BsAs is almost as bad as on HOng Kong in that respect). I can breathe again!

Second Stomach

Last night Meg and I went to La Bariada, a grill restaurant here in BsAs. It was magnidicent food and in classic Argentine style it was mostly meat! I had Bife Especial, which was the biggest piece of meat I've ever eaten. I was about 30 cms long 15cms wide by 6 high. THis thing would have weighed a kilo easily with no bone at all. Considering I'd eaten Veal Thone, half od Meg's entree, some salad and fries before hand I was amazed by the capacity of my stomach to eat high quality cows.

We meet some Portugese lads there, anglasised names were John and Arthur (who became known as King Arthur and St John for the rest of the night). They ordered a steak so tender the waiter cut it with a spoon (yes a blunt one). After dinner, some cognac and whiskey we hit the streets of Buenos Aires with these guys and ended up at some club next to the massive cemetary in which Eva Peron is buried. I vaguely remember returning home at 5 am and then having to get up for a tango lesson with Fabrizio...

Ben in Bs As

I have arrived well and excited here in Buenos Aires, has a great vibe about the city, and Meg found a great little coffee place with you guessed it, more good croissants!

I had been emailing with a tango instructor Fabrizi Forti while back in Australia, he said we could have some lessons with him in his San Telmo studio, little did I know it was actually the same place we are staying in (he runs our hotel as well!)... More proof the world is tiny.

My flight from Dallas to Bs As was uneventful, except this time they actually provided some food (dodgy of course but at least we did not have to pay for it), however I handed the wine back when they wanted 5 US dollars for it... Sneaky yanks.

Buenos Aires

Have made it from Paris to Madrid to Buenos Aires - not without Iberia doing it's best to interrupt the process! Never mind, am here, and wandering the streets - Ben will be pleased to know tomorrow that I have already found a good beer bar! The trip in to the centre took us past an enourmous slum area, the driver informing me that they are made entirely of people 'without papers' - it looked just horrendous, a place you would never hope for an enemy to have to live. I caught up with Naomi in Paris before I left, which was great - and she spoke about this side of Bs As. It will be interesting to see the ongoing contrasts while we are here for the next month.

Dallas Fort Massive

Currently milling around wasting time in Dallas Forth Worth airport. This place is seriously big, more restaurants than you can poke a stick at. I don't know whether lunch should take the form of a gourmet burrito, texan bbq, french sandwich or if I should just gorge myself on gelati and ben and jerry's.

I wandered into a book store here (which was impressively big for an airport) and was looking for something to read because it seems American Airlines don't have any form of in-air entertainment (and yes they charge $4 for a small snack even on international flights - I mean, hey, it's offensive enough airline food, without having to pay for it, but I digress)... so in this bookstore they have a sectional called "famous authors", it's full of Jackie Collins, Dan Brown, Michael Crichton (sp?) etc., around the corner in which must be the "other authors section" you'll find "lesser known" authors like Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and Hemmingway. Funny.

I must have a really thick accent because the information guy couldn't understand me saying "internet terminal", oh dear, reminds me of trying to order a bagel in New York (I had to repeat myself 5 times and on the 5th I whacked in my best attempt at an east coast accent and it seemed to work).

The north and central western parts of the US seem to be all white still, we flew over them for a good 3 hours and it wasn't until the 4th and final hour did the landscape turn the more dirt brown. Maybe this place needs to be investigated in the future for its skiing opportunities. Next time.

Cruising into the airport to land I was staggered by what looked like some kind of "ranch suburb" for lack of a better term. Massive houses on massive blocks all neatly subdivided with dams etc., was all a bit to orderly to have been an accent. I could tell the houses were massive because the SUVs parked outside looked tiny in comparison. The size of the houses didn't diminish closer to the airport, just the side of the blocks when it got to the point of a 2 or more storey mansion butted against another. They really like big stuff here.

Hmmm., perhaps it's time to explore this crazy airport some more.