Once Upon a Time, Diego Maradona Actually Liked the English...

Back in 1981, the 8th of March 1981 to be precise, the Falklands War hadn't yet happened and Diego Armando Maradona was a famous young footballer in his homeland, about to gain global recognition for his talents.

In later years the 'Hand of God' incident would sour relations between him and the English. But this was the day, 27 years ago, when Diego met his heroes, the English rock band Queen before their gig in Buenos Aires. Later that night he joined them on stage as a special guest during their rendition of 'Another One Bites the Dust' and posed for this amazing photo, a photo which makes us question things which we'd previously taken for granted about the famous man's loyalties.

Yes, quite incredible...I never thought I'd ever see the late great Freddy Mercury wearing an Argentina shirt!! Listen to an audio recording of the concert by clicking on the following link:

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=zQsFt-YoyjQ

Colonia de Sacramento, Uruguay

One hour to the north of Buenos Aires by high-speed boat lies Colonia de Sacramento, the oldest town in Uruguay and a popular spot for day-trippers from the Argentine capital. The two towns are seperated by the tea-coloured Rio de la Plata.

Whilst the high-tech new port terminal in Buenos Aires is overlooked by giant glass skyscrapers, in contrast the port in Colonia consists of an old, rusty jetty surrounded by quiet beaches and woods. The neighbouring streets are full of brightly painted houses, all of which have their front doors open in sharp contrast to Buenos Aires, where all of the doors are firmly closed and covered by iron security bars!

As with small towns almost everywhere, the people are very friendly. It was a great place for us to practise our Spanish, because almost everyone had the time (and patience) to have a chat. Strangely enough, almost all of the locals carry a thermos around with them, containing hot water, together with a cup made out of either wood or pumpkin skin. They use a metal straw to drink a brew called 'Mate' (pronounced ma-tày). Mate consists of herbal leaves mixed with hot water. It's so typical of Uruguay that in Buenos Aires they say that you can tell a Uruguayan because they'll have a thermos under one arm and a hot cup of mate in the other hand. Having said that, the Argentinians drink a lot of it, too.

Mate drinking was taught to the Spanish settlers by the South American Indios, especially the Incas. Daniela laughs at me because I've bought some mate, together with a distinctive wooden cup and metal straw. I drink mate from time to time. She says it's disguisting. I think it's all a bit of fun. I'm not intending on 'going native', but you know what they say....when in Rome....

Anyway, back to our weekend. After several hours pushing Sophia's pram around the historic cobbled streets of Colonia, we were surprised to bump into a street band and dancers, who did a circuit of the whole town in the evening. The star of the show was an elderly woman in a white dress, carrying a walking stick who danced for hours on end. The locals say that she's over 90-if so she's a great advert for dancing as a form of fitness!

Then, all too soon it was time to head back to Buenos Aires. After this taste of Uruguay we're planning a trip along the coast to Brazil in the car, stopping off at different places on the way.

You can view more photos of our weekend in Uruguay, including a short film of the elderly woman dancing in the parade, by clicking on the following link:

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/rickoromano/Colonia?authkey=8lhZUmCy79A&feat=directlink

Costanera Sur Ecological Park

This is Buenos Aires' only ecological park, and the only option for people looking for a bit of nature without leaving the city limits. It's located between the skyscrapers of the city's new Puerto Madero district and the southern bank of the river, the Rio della Plata, the widest river in the world. It's so wide that the northern bank up in Uruguay is more that 200 kms away! The park is full of sunbathers, cyclists and joggers. For us it provided a welcome break from the concrete jungle of the city.

Living on an Island

I've always loved islands. When you holiday on them, you feel like your everyday life can't creep up and touch you. Big ones, small ones-I've had my best holidays on them. I even came up with a list of my personal 'top ten' islands from the few that I've been lucky enough to visit, while I was trying (unsuccessfully) to get to sleep the other night. My list is as follows:-

1st place Sardinia, Italy Great people, great food, great beaches

2nd place Ischia, Italy Thermal paradise

3rd place Tavewa, Fiji Can the sea REALLY be that colour?

4th place Gili Trawangen, Lombok, Indonesia Don't tell everyone how lovely it is

5th place Margherita, Venezuela Caribbean beaches at a fraction of the cost

6th place Flores, Indonesia Unbelievable coral reef but look out for the dragons

7th place Tioman Island, Malaysia What a rain forest

8th place Venice, Italy Does it qualify as an island? Hope so

9th place The Whitsundays, Australia First world plumbing with wild third world landscape

10th place Curacao, Caribbean I've never seen so many stars in the sky anywhere else


On an island I always feel safe. That's why I'm happy with our new home in Calle Copernico in the Recoletta area of the Buenos Aires. First of all, it's one of the most elegant and select parts of the whole city. What's more, the area immediately surrounding our house is known locally as la isla (the island) because it's peaceful and free from traffic and chaos, kind of like being in the eye of a storm. We're surrounded by embassies-the British one's about 150 metres away and I can see the Union Jack fluttering in the Embassador's garden when I pass to go running in the park. Makes me feel at home.

People say that there's less crime here that in the rest of the city, but time will tell. We're practically next door to the headquarters of the Argentinian Secret Services, so if security isn't tight here it won't be tight anywhere!

Truth is that this house is genuinely beautiful. What's more it's costing us little more that what we're getting for renting out our home on Italy. How is this possible? Well, after the 2002 financial crash in Argentina the peso lost a lot of its value, meaning that people like us who pay in Euros or dollars get better deals. In 2001, 1 peso was equal to 1 dollar and the city was very, very expensive, even for europeans. Today, 1 dollar equals 3.42 pesos. Back in 2001 it would have been impossible for us to afford a flat like this.

So we're benefitting from the financial crisis, whilst the poor street cartoneros, who I see working away whilst I'm sipping a cold beer up on my balcony, are still suffering the consequences of the same event. Many of these cartoneros worked in 'normal' jobs until the 2002 meltdown, and now the only way they have to make a living is by looking through everyone's household rubbish when it's put out on the street each evening to find cardboard and paper, which they then sell for a small sum to a middleman, who then sells it on to recycling plants. This is why they are called cartoneros. It pays very little, 5 or 6 dollars a day, but its enough for them to live on.

The poor cartoneros seem to have a social position similar to that of the untouchables in India. No-one wants to associate with them, and people seem to ignore their very existance. They even have their own trains to carry them from exclusive areas like mine to the poor suburbs where they live each night. These trains are provided because other citizens don't like having to put up with the smell of them. I suppose that a person who's spent 10 hours in 30 degree temperatures wading through rubbish skips does whiff a bit.

One of the interesting aspects of the architecture of our house is a kind of 'upstairs-downstairs' arrangement to the rooms. We're on the 9th and final floor of the building, and there are two lifts, one for us and the other is known as 'the service lift'. It was designed to be used by the servants and opens onto the kitchen, whereas the 'residents' lift opens onto the sitting room. The door between the sitting room and the kitchen is disguised to look like a continuation of the wall, thereby making the kitchen invisible from the 'residential' sections of the apartment. The kitchen was designed to be totally separate from the rest of the house, very different from modern European and North American homes in which the kitchen is the life and soul of the house.

We like to think that we're more 'modern', so we use the 'service lift' with pride, and I'm writing this blog on my computer, which has a permanent home in the room originally designed for the servants to sleep in.

What with servants entrances and untouchable cartoneros, the place seems even worse than Britain for class-consciousness. In fact, it brings to mind a saying that many visitors to Argentina are told by Argentinians themselves. The saying is that "The Argentinians are Italians who speak Spanish but would like to be English". Maybe this desire to be English is reflected in their class-consciousness? Indeed, a lot of South Americans from other nations think of them as snobs, in the way that many people thought (think?) that the British were (are?).

I still haven't worked out whether the British are respected or hated here. While we travel around the city in taxis, speaking Italian, it seems that almost every taxi driver says in Spanish "My mother comes from Italy!" Indeed, the Italians seem to be very popular here and people have in idealised image of Italy as a nation. They often assume that I'm Italian as well. At first I used to always say "No, I'm from England". This clarification was normally greeted by an awkward silence, following which my interlocutor would turn to Daniela and continue praising Italy and the Italians.

OK, so I got fed up with this and started to say "We're here from Italy", which is kind of true, because we normally live there. I didn't actually say that I was Italian, just that we lived there. This ploy worked well for some time, until an awkward incident at the local laundry which I'll now explain.

Daniela had previously dropped off our dirty clothes there, and when I went to pick them up the worker assumed that I was Italian. I must confess that I went along with this, if only because in Italy everyone knows instantly from my accent that I'm English and it was a novelty to be able to pretend. However, things started to go wrong when they changed the conversation, finished saying how much they loved the Italians and had so much in common, and went on to how much they hated the English. They still thought I was Italian and now I'm worried that they'll find out that I'm really English and cause a thaw in our relationship. It would be a shame because it's the only place in town that manages to clean Sophia's bibs well.

Still, my ego did receive a timely boost later the same day. For years my Italian friends and students have pulled my leg about how I maintain such a strong English accent when I speak Italian. I went to the bank to change some money and chatted with the bank clerk. She asked me for my passport and expressed great surprise on reading that I was British. ".....but you speak Castillano with an Italian accent!" she added, refusing to believe that I was English. I left the bank with my sense of identity extremely confused but happier that ever about my Italian language skills!

Please Sir, can I have some more?

Yesterday in Buenos Aires there was yet another mass demonstration which attracted gunfire from the massed ranks of police present and brought the afternoon traffic to a standstill. The name of the demonstration caught my attention instantly...'The Hunger March'. Thousands of trade union activists, social organisations and groups from far-flung corners of Argentina came together in the centre of the city, waving banners carrying phrases such as 'Hunger is a Crime' and 'Every child needs food and clean drinking water'.

Now in europe I'm more used to trade unionists marching because they are concerned that their members might loose their jobs, or because they need a pay rise to maintain their standard of living. But neither in the UK nor Italy can I remember a trade union demonstration that had such a striking objective: to raise awareness that millions of Argentinians workers couldn't even feed their families.

But was this rhetoric or fact? In a country in which many people are unemployed, surely it is they, the unemployed, who really have difficulty in making ends meet. Surely not those in paid employment, these marching trade unionists? Was this yet another attempt by an interest group to exaggerate the extent of a problem, in order to score political points?

Well, yesterday Argentina's President, Cristina Kirchner, announced a new policy. She was going to reduce the tax burden for Argentina's high-earners, those who earn above 7,000 pesos per month (about €1,600). In doing so, she hoped to stimulate the countries struggling economy and get these people spending again.

Whilst left-leaning, Cristina's newest policy appears to be extremely pragmatic, especially if many of the countries workers really are struggling against famine. To understand their situation we need to look at how much your average Argentinian worker earns, and analyse food costs as well.

An unskilled, full-time worker in Buenos Aires earns about 1,500/1,700 pesos per month (€340/385). If this worker lives in the poor suburbs of the city, pays a rent and has two young children, then they would probably have the following expenses:-

Rent 300 pesos
Clothes and essential furniture/household items 150 pesos
Transport (bus tickets) 50 pesos
Energy costs (heating, electricity, gas) 100 pesos

These costs leave low paid workers about 900 pesos (€200) per month to feed their families. But what can you buy in Argentina for 900 pesos?

I visited a mid-range supermarket in Nunes, a barrio of the city which is neither rich, nor poor. There I wanted to see what our hypothetical Argentinian working family of four could buy with their weekly, 210 peso food budget.

I was instantly amazed to see that the prices of foods in the supermarket were at least equal to those in Italy, if not superior. A litre of milk cost 3 pesos, a bottle of drinking water the same. Remember that in many parts of Argentina tap water isn't drinkable. A loaf of bread 5 pesos. A basic frozen pizza was a real luxury at 15 pesos. Steak an impossibility at 15-20 pesos for a decent joint (in Argentina!!).

That night as I ate my 15-peso-luxury frozen pizza and watched Newell's Old Boys against Racing Club on TV, I realised that in our hypotheticial, low-paid, working Argentinian family I was eating a third of my weekly food budget! Three pizzas a week is certainly a starvation diet, and suggests that the marchers weren't axaggerating when they said that Argentinians couldn't afford to feed their families.

Probably the clearest insight into the problem of hunger here was provided whilst I was leaving the supermarket itself. A security guard came up next to me and started shouting at a young girl, who must have been no older that 10, who was standing close to my trolley. The child went away, and the guard informed me that the girl had been planning to rob me. But planning on stealing what? I had no wallet, no mobile phone nor expensive gadgets on me. I had been warned about going out looking like a rich european and had intentionally 'dressed down'. "No, She wanted to take the food from your trolley" the guard replied. Her parents had sent her out to get food knowing that, being a child, she couldn't be prosecuted if caught.

Maybe Cristina Kirchner should be concentrating her thoughts on other matters than tax breaks for Argentina's high-earners.

Buenos Aires Floods

During a sudden heavy rainstorm on the 29th November the streets became flooded...watch the results!

One for the Road, Please

Here in B.A. we've been using the city's taxis to get around. Whilst driving along the Avenida Libertadores I've rediscovered my previously lapsed Catholicism, praying desperately as I wince at our taxi driver's courageous overtaking and try to ignore various HGVs speeding towards us in the middle of the road.


To tell you the truth, I've seriously considered drinking something strong before taking a cab, but my general sense of Brit just arrived in south-america paranoia has prevented me from doing so. However, I'm sure that if I was tanked up with something strong I'd maybe even quite enjoy the trip. As it is, it's a nerve-racking, white-knuckle ride.


Apparently, according to yesterday's cabbie, B.A. is one of the world's main centres of psychoanalysis. A famous psychologist once said that you could analyse peoples' minds by how they drove. I'm sure that's true, and what's more I'm sure that you can judge a society by how it drives. Do you want to see some examples?


Well, let's start with the Brits. They are really obedient, obeying the rules 100% of the time and maintaining their lane discipline. You get the feeling that they'd love to do something daring, break a rule here and there, but they only bring themselves to do it if they're on a motorway relatively free of traffic. If someone does break the rules, however, thereby going off programme, they are considered fair game and, in the case of pedestrians who cross unexpectedly far from pedestrian crossings, will even be mowed over by unrepentant drivers. "Serves them right" you can hear the drivers say, "should have obeyed the rules!".

It's like something deep down inside the British driver hates having to be so obedient, and when he (or she) sees someone breaking the rules the resulting sense of jealousy prevokes a desire to see the rule-breaker punished.

Now the Italians. Boy oh boy, I could write a book about Italian drivers.

First of all, for them driving is a way of letting off steam in the way that heavy drinking is for the Brits. So otherwise civilised, mature, responsible people (yes, both men and women) will act in otherwise impossible ways when they are behind the wheel of a car, and other people will make excuses for them! The British "Oh, he was drunk. He's not normally violent" is echoed by the Italian "Oh, it was a really fast car. He didn't mean to run into that young family at the pedestrian crossing. He loves kids!"


In Italy, women run the home and for men, the only place to let off steam in an increasingly frustrating world is on the road. The faster a man drives the more courage he is seen to have, although I suspect that the more accurate rule that the faster he drives, the smaller is his primary sexual organ.

So. on to Argentina. I can't claim to understand the nation's psyche, but I have spent the last two weeks being driven around B.A. Maybe I can understand certain aspects of their mentality from my on-the-road observations? Let me make some suggestions, which I'll then be able to test against my future experiences.

First of all, they don't consider it risky to drive close to the car in front. This isn't the Italian "Drive faster of get out of the way". No, it's less aggressive. It's more of a "Look, I'm here. Whatever you do, you need to take me into consideration". Is this the south american inferiority complex at work? "Yes, we are tucked away down there, but you must take notice of us!".

Secondly, they seem to demonstrate more lane discipline than the Italians, but then incredibly, as if there was a form of common unconscious linking them all, simultaneously cut the same corner allowing a matter of inches to be left free between each vehicle whilst travelling at high speed-kind of like the red arrows. Here they seem to be less individualistic than the Italians, instead able to work as a team. The resulting order isn't anal like the British one. After all, they are breaking the rules but, significantly, they're all breaking the rules in exactly the same way and in perfect harmony. Strange, but true. Think it'll take me at least five years here to work that one out!

Finally, they seem to have a sense of devine destiny which Italians had in their rural, Catholic, poor past and Brits had until we stopped going off to fight wars but seem to be losing in our urban peace-time present. For example, in B.A. it seems that at most crossroads the rule is this; he who arrives first, passes. This rule seems to apply irrespective of the road markings.


This rule, inevitably, leads to accidents. Indeed, our taxi was involved in one the other day in which thankfully no-one was hurt. We arrived at a crossroads, and both our taxi driver and the driver of the car arriving from our left believed to have arrived first. They both continued and inevitably collided, slowing to only about 20mph at the moment of contact.

I think it'll be safer if we buy our own car.