After a twelve and a half hour non-stop flight from Madrid, we landed in Buenos Aires -- situated on confluence of the muddy Rio de la Plata and the Atlantic ocean. The transition between winter in Spain and summer in Argentina was jolt to the system. Suddenly fruit is in season and shorts and t-shirts the order of the day.

Buenos Aires is a comfortable, casual, cosmopolitan city, filled with tango parlors and tango'ing tourists and restaurants serving giant slabs of meat. On Sundays, the San Telmo District hosts an all day street party with musicians, food, and antiques. A 210 peso (70 cent) ride on the subte, a subterranean sauna during the hot summer afternoons, provides easy connections to all the neighborhoods. The real action begins late at night: no one eats dinner before nine, tango really gets going around midnight, and special shows begin at 2 am.