About

I’m English and live at Sinclair 3168, in Palermo, Buenos Aires. I have lived in the city on and off for six years, first arriving eleven years ago as a fresh-faced 20-year-old. My impressions of the city keep changing, as I have changed over this decade too.

I remember my first taxi journey from Ezeiza airport into the city when I first arrived in 2003. I was studying away for a year from University College London, and came with a good friend. I didn’t understand one bit of what the taxista was saying… What was this weird strain of Spanish he’s chatting away in? I thanked my lucky stars for Camila sitting nearby, whose mum is Argentine and therefore could understand everything. She helped me out a lot that year.

We lived luxuriously off our big fat student loans, renting a smart penthouse flat in swanky Recoleta because we knew we’d probably never be able to again. Argentina’s financial meltdown had happened just two years before and the economy was still reeling from the impact. For us sporting the British pound, it was ridiculously cheap.

We were out for dinner every night and feverishly ran between Buenos Aires’ bars and clubs as only hyperactive and overexcited 21-year-olds can. Many a night we were propping up Milión, Gran Bar Danzón and The Shamrock, all just round the corner, and dancing until dawn in Mint, The Roxy and Club 69 on Thursday at Niceto long before it became so pricey and touristy. Podestá was one of our regular haunts for flinging ourselves about to 80s hits and vacuuming up revolting cheap drinks. So much uncomplicated fun!

We dated unsuitable Argentine charmers, quickly learning about the power of chamuyo – Argentine verbal seduction – and marvelled at the strength of the trademark Argentine mullet hairstyle on the city streets. I met JP, now my husband, in the first couple of months of arriving. I remember him being brought round to our flat by a mutual friend and his babbling on in excellent English. We eyed each other shyly, a barely 21-year-old English girl and a 20-year-old Patagonian boy, and then lost contact on our individual whirlwinds of youth.

During the daytimes, behaving more respectably, many a teatime was spent eating delicate sandwiches de miga with Camila’s granny nearby. She would ask the surnames of all the men we were meeting/dating to see if she knew the families and could rate them as worthwhile. Hilarious moments those. She made the most incredible homemade dulce de leche I’ve ever had. I was extremely grateful to be included in these get-togethers, it meant a lot to me. I took a fantastic manual SLR photography course at Recoleta Cultural Centre while I wrote my university dissertation on Argentina’s lunfardo argot.

We travelled up to Iguazú on a hot and dusty 18-hour bus ride and stopped off at the deep red Jesuit ruins of San Ignacio Miní on the way back. We spent three weeks in Brazil, zipping up from Rio de Janeiro to Salvador de Bahía to meet friends there for the carnival. WHAT an unforgettable carnival that was.. Separately we travelled with visiting friends and family, me going up north to Salta and also to Uruguay, Chile, Colombia and Peru and Camila reaching down to the glaciers in the south.

By the end of those 12 months here, I was desperate to return. I went back to London for my last year of university and came straight back out in 2005, when all my far more sensible friends were considering the first steps of their careers. Buenos Aires’ electric lure pulled me back. I rented a flat in Villa Crespo, completely empty of furniture but I was over the moon to have it. I hared about the city teaching English to Argentine businessmen, them finding me as amusing as I found them. I travelled alone to Peninsula Valdés, Trelew, Bariloche, Jujuy, Chile and Bolivia and with friends to Cordoba and Brazil.

It was such a unique time, being young and free to go wherever I wanted and meeting all sorts of wonderful and fascinating people. I met one of my closest friends in life in that second year in Buenos Aires, a Californian girl who had felt the same pull down to this city and taught English at the same time as I did. We laughed a lot and formed a strong friendship in just a few months. I also met up with JP again during this year. We only saw each other the once, spending a long night of talking and laughing with a mutual friend until dawn. We still eyed each other shyly.

My third return was two and a half years later, in early 2009, as a freelancer for a British company. I was a bit older, a tiny wee bit wiser, with enough well-earned money in my pocket every month. More fun to be had! I met my closest Argentine friend soon after arriving, she has been a rock these past four years and I was honoured to be one of her bridesmaids at her wedding last year. It was nice to recently spend four months in the rural paradise where she grew up, in Bariloche. If there’s a new restaurant or recipe to be tried, she’ll be as enthusiastic as I am.

During that year, I met lots of expats doing the same thing as me and managed to escape winter for a month in Mexico, meeting up with my Californian-born Buenos Aires-made friend for the last week. Fantastic memories of warm blue sea, cocktails, plenty of laughter and snorkelling off Isla de las Mujeres. I was out exploring the city’s art circuit a lot too, attending piles of vernissage to get to know galleries I’d never been to. I twisted and grinded at a sweaty Brazilian dance class run by a carnival dancer from Salvador de Bahía, who called me ‘London’. I took the train up to Tigre to spend a long midsummer’s day with a Colombian friend and his daughter, at the house they’d rented on one of the tiny islands. I flew up to NYC for an important family reunion and had a fantastic time visiting north and south Chile with my mum over Christmas. I stayed with a very close Belgian friend in Santiago during that trip, who still lives there to this day. We have since visited each other in both Chile and Argentina and we’re planning a boozy Mendoza wine trip before one of us leaves the continent. It’s important having her close by. JP was off the radar for this year I spent in Buenos Aires, we had lost touch.

After leaving the city in 2010, I never thought I would return. Three years is plenty, I thought, I’m done with this place. I had spent more of my twenties in Buenos Aires than I had in London. Just a month after returning to England, I reconnected with JP via email out of the blue. It was a chance encounter, and we haven’t looked back since. We spent a year of intense long-distance contact, making each other laugh and eventually falling in love while on two different continents. He visited London for an October weekend in 2010 and I moved back to Buenos Aires to be with him in April 2011, a whole 13 months after we had rekindled contact. I never thought I would come back here, it just goes to show. Now I’m amazed to realise I don’t speak English with anyone in this country, only Spanish, after barely being able to communicate in 2003. Six long, different, unforgettable and spread out years, exactly half of my twenties, and counting.