We went looking for street tango. I had thought that there was plenty of tango available to watch and so we went to view in San Telmo, just a short walk from the centre of the city. It turned out that it was a 10 block street market that sold every kind of tourist trinket imaginable; the kind that gets bought as a souvenir (because you have to, don’t you?) but when it arrives home it gets revealed for what it is and gets put in a box or a darkened corner to gather dust. The streets were thick with slow moving Sunday shoppers wandering and meandering millimetrically along the road. The shops here are not open on Sundays and most restaurants and bars are also closed giving the city the feel of a disaster movie the day after Armageddon. With not much else on offer, the street market gained a large number of people making it the busiest, most bustling part of town.

Any tango was difficult to find, one or two very small areas where tourists were encouraged to have their photos taken with scantily clad girls or macho-looking men and the dancing was restricted to a quick five minute twirl before the hat was passed around for contributions. I succumbed to the lure of the girl in a split dress for the requisite photo but Debbie declined to be photographed climbing all over some fellow with brylcreem-ed hair.

As well as the stall traders and tango hustlers, there were bands giving impromptu performances, locals selling homemade cakes, empanadas (a kind of pasty), ice creams and drinks. It was a fun place to while away Sunday afternoon.

Late in the afternoon, we were attracted to a side street that was blocked with people standing around a drumming band that was making a lot of noise. The band and its troupe of dancers all wore painted faces, red clothes and sandals and were arranged around a fire made from broken wooden pallets. There were yet more drums placed close to the fire, their top ends called ‘lonjas’ closest to the flames to tighten the skins. This was a marching ‘Candombe’ band; it turned out that they were one of about 30 bands all gathered to parade in an annual celebration of Candombe that happens once a year on this Sunday in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. They parade through the streets in the early evening in celebration of their religion which crossed the ocean from Africa with the slaves in the 18th century and is at its strongest in Brazil.

The parade was rather chaotic in that different factions set off at random intervals with the minimal of stewarding so that the marchers battled for street space with the watching crowd and dancers had to strut around people who had gone into the road to take photos. On one occasion three cars tried to move through the street against the tide of the parade and everything ground to a halt until the motorists finally gave way and reversed in slalom back the way they had come.

We stayed for an hour or so before leaving to find some dinner but we needed to move 3 or 4 streets away before it was no longer possible to hear and feel the rhythm and the noise, which is so strong and vibrating and the hum of the street market reasserted itself.

On Monday morning, we heard that the polo semi-final was rescheduled for the afternoon and, after a morning’s shopping for a pair of riding boots for Debbie, we excitedly took our seats in the stadium. The game resumed on 52 seconds with a penalty that Cambiaso, reputedly the best player in the world, missed and thereafter the game became a battle between Dolfina’s attacking ambitions against Aguada’s breakaway, counter-attacking strategy. The underdogs, Aguada (combined handicap ‘only’ 37) took a three goal lead after the first two chukkas and an upset looked as if it might be on the cards but Dolfina (combined handicap 40) came through to win by 4 goals in a high scoring game full of great skill and supreme class. We watched all eight chuckers over the two hour duration of the match and we enjoyed every second!

After the game, while we were enjoying a glass of South American Chandon champagne, Debbie spotted Cambiaso in the crowd and, deciding she must have a photograph with him, she homed in on him like an exocet missile. He never stood a chance.