Shamblin'

Friday night milonga? The computer says, ‘No.’ Overcome by the slings and arrows of public transport (colectivos and the subte), private transport (tired feet) and fifty odd mosquito bites, I’m settling for a solitary steak and salad, washed down with Quilmes (my favourite) and an early night, smeared in tea tree oil.

Transport is the bane of my existence in Buenos Aires.

The subte is the lesser of the two evils, but it ends around 22.15. There’s lots of ‘life’ on the subte. Invariably a hawker, frequently a child or someone with a disability, will be selling you wares in the carriage, typically hair clips, stickers, pens and tube maps. Or there might be a musician performing or someone trying to raise money for a personal cause. It brings you face to face with your humanity or lack of it. Then there are the silent reminders of people's struggles to survive: loads of personal advertisements with tear-off phone numbers, tucked into window frames or stuck on the walls.

Provided you don’t need to change lines away from the city centre, which is the only place they intersect, the subte is pretty good. The city is planned on a grid system, so it is easy to find your way as the streets between stops are indicated on the tube map. The stations can get horribly congested. Don’t expect to rush up escalators: here, they stand on both sides. However, the entrances and exits of the different lines are decorated in distinctively coloured, ceramic tiles, some of which are rather beautiful. I can handle the subte.

Both the subte and colectivos are extraordinarily overcrowded and not just at rush hour. The buses make a range of cruel and unusual noises. There seems to be a strictly no silencers policy. Then there’s the great centavo drama. People can’t wait to rid their purses of their five and ten centavo coins. They are as annoying as mosquitoes and it is equally impossible to be free of them. To make matters worse, the minimum bus fare, which was ninety centavos last year, has risen to one peso and ten centavos. So, either you have that ten centavo coin, or you risk getting a whole load in change, every time you take the bus. Just when you think you’ve seen the last of yours, you spot the gleam in your grocer’s eyes and you just know your bill is going to come to X pesos and the obligatory ten centavos, which means you might be lumbered with anything between nine to eighteen of the little bastards again. Five and ten centavo pieces are virtually indistinguishable and you don’t check your change - though you know you want to, because coins are like gold dust if you are in the habit of taking colectivos. Also, they are minuscule, so that they slip between your fingers as you count out your bus fare and it would be positively infra dig to chase a five centavo coin as it rolled away under a bus seat. But when it’s a toss-up between your dignity and getting there, you just might reconsider your position. Or you can’t get on the bus. Now multiply this drama by ten for the ten or so people that get on at each stop. It’s a farce. Just not that funny.

You could walk everywhere, but be prepared. Buenos Aires does not respect the white man. (The ‘Walk’ light at street crossings is generally a white man, and occasionally, a green one.) White, green or red, the average Buenos Aires driver’s reaction is, ‘Am I bovvered?’ Walking more than is strictly necessary is not an option for me at present. My toots are all tangoed out. They want to be plunged in ice water and then forgiven and put to bed.