Last Sunday afternoon I set out for a 4 weeks’ journey to Argentina to join the tour of Dr. K. Parvathi Kumar through different parts of the country. At Zurich airport I met an old friend with whom I had already been traveling several times in India. In Frankfurt, we were supposed to meet two other friends for the flight to Buenos Aires but we did not see them there, neither when we landed in Argentina after a long night flight of over 13 hours. We searched all around in the arrival hall, asking at different offices but in vain. However, we found another lady of the group , from Spain. We finally decided to leave the airport without the two German friends.
The elderly taxi driver corresponded totally to my cliché of an “Argentinian”. He was very jovial, spoke a lot about his country and gave each one of us a small Argentinian coin as a souvenir and for good luck.
In the hotel we came to know that the feeder flight of our German friends had been cancelled shortly before the start due to a technical problem. They had to take a taxi instead and arrived some minutes too late for check-in. Though we were a bit tired, we decided to join the group of friends who already was at the hotel for a bus trip through the city. Deborah, an Argentinian friend, whom I had met 2 years ago in India, was our tour guide, and it was very nice. We took a 24 hours tourist bus ticket and sat on the top of a double decker. It was a bit chilly but the weather was fine – after days of rain.
At several places we got off the bus to see some old quarters with art markets and colourful houses. We stopped at an art center where the World Tango Festival going on. We had the good luck to get tickets for free and just arrived in the hall for a Tango concert – an outstanding event. 5 musicians plus some special guests enchanted the audience with their enthusiastic representation. It was a concert without Tango dance but of a great allegresse. The festival went on for the rest of the day but we left after this section. We had a look into an improvised Tango hall set up under a highway, where many people were dancing to the music in rapt attention.
The trip continued to some other quarters of the city. We finally got off near the Rio de la Plata, had an Italian dinner, went along a channel for a while before going back home.
Later in the evening Dr. Kumar and his wife arrived at the hotel, where we awaited him together with some Argentinian friends. It was a warm welcome. Afterwards we dropped into our beds, very tired from the jet-lag and the long day.
