Buenos Aires is a city that appeals to me, one I would like to revisit. I have only been there once, and at the time Spanish was just gibberish to me and my Portuguese was not much better (although it helped), but I have great memories of many lovely bookshops, enticing restaurants offering massive steaks, or roasting meat on giant skewers over a fire, some warming red wines – it was winter at the time – the mounting excitement of a football derby (River Plate were due to play Boca Juniors and their fans were draped in their team colours) and a generally exotic if somewhat ramshackle city environment. Yes, it did feel like a crazy Paris of the Latin Americas. Oh and there was the tango, of course – have you ever read a travel article on Buenos Aires that doesn’t go on and on about the bloody tango?. If I was in Buenos Aires today I would skip the tango sessions and go to a gig by local band Banda de Turistas. Now that’s more like it!

Banda de Turistas could probably be classified as whimsical Beatlesque Latin psychadelics. Check out their latest hit, Quîmica (Chemistry). It makes you wonder what music they listened to and were influenced by as kids. What LPs (that’s long playing records, to those of you who are unfamiliar with vinyl) were their parents playing? What chemical substances were in vogue?

Ever better is this breezy hum-along, tap-along, clap-along song, Dîas de Prosperidad (Days of Prosperity). I could drink to that with a nice Argentinian red. 🙂