Journey with maps

Buenos Aires October 2012: Journey with maps

We have come equipped: the guide book, the yellow-bordered tango map from the first trip, plans for various further journeys which we will never make... Pip and Maggi are heading for Tierra del Fuego in a week or so.  Meanwhile Francesca and I struggle to make it beyond the borders of San Telmo.

Part of this is the inertia that seems to absorb us each time we arrive in the city.  Is it something that emanates from the brickwork or the cobbles beneath our feet? Or something that is generated by the country’s lumbering bureaucracy? Pip has come up with the term NFBA to account for the impossibility of ever, it seems, completing a simple task.  It took John and Nancy two days (not including hours of preparation studying the formidable Guia T) to buy a SUBE card.

It’s also easy to get lost here.  Even though the city’s streets are organised on a grid, it’s hard to remember whether Chile or Defensa run parallel or at right angles to where you happen to be. Or you can find yourself walking in the opposite direction to the one you intend, so that suddenly you’re deep into an unknown neighbourhood, reluctant to get out the crumpled map and search for the right section, to identify you firmly in the eyes of passers-by as a tourist and therefore easy prey.

Parts of the city are off limits, so we are told.  They don’t actually appear at all on the tourist maps: look for Villa 21 near Barracas, for example, and you will find a blank space where Calle Luna should be.  And La Boca, its rich cultural history repackaged for the tourist trade, is part of a barrio of real material deprivation.  Stray off the central streets, you are warned, and you are in danger.  In any case the maps themselves seem out to confuse.  One guidebook has street maps orientated towards north, whilst its subte section is swivelled through 100 degrees or so.  Or perhaps it’s the other way round. In most north is pointing out somewhere towards the bottom left of the page.  The dangers, though, evaporate, or are overshadowed at least by – we struggle to pinpoint what it is – something about the way everyone here seems aware of others, us, what we might need.  ‘You can cross now,’ the old woman said as we chattered at the junction, oblivious of the green man. Or a different kind of need: ‘Hola Princesa,’ a man murmured as we passed yesterday.  I’d like to think it was directed at me.

Bus routes form an intricate jigsaw.  The rattling colectivos, coloured from a child’s palette according to line, rattle and smoke along, nudging pedestrians at crossings, squealing to a halt at the corner of a street.  There might be a pole with a sign, or a sticker on a wall, or simply a tell-tale straggle of would-be travellers to mark the stop.  The Guia itself (10 pesos, or 30 for the deluxe edition, spiral-bound) demands serious study, matching maps and number grids and route details in an elaborate through-the-looking-glass bingo. Mornington Crescent? Francesca says.

So we venture occasionally beyond the confines of our small world to a milonga on the other side of town or, as yesterday, braving Cumbrian rain, to Sarmiento and then Arenales for the compulsory shoe shopping pilgrimage.  Mostly, though, we are diverted by the everyday wonders of San Telmo: wine-tasting, sign- ordering, sun after rain and a cleaner called Milagros.