Sometimes, our body has the wisdom that our head doesn’t. As my 15-hour flight from Paris circled the moonlit skies of Buenos Aires, I felt my stomach plunge almost instinctively, understanding that it had moved far, far away from its comfort zone. I was hesitant to wake up my slumbering heart for fear of finding that I was really at the tip of the edge of the world or, at least, my world.
Buenos Aires airport reminded me of rusty Delhi airport in the 1980s—mismanaged and overflowing, with snaking lines of displaced travellers running on low battery, and rheumy-eyed customs officials. But once I headed out to explore the streets of the Latin American capital, I understood why this was the haunting muse of Jorge Luis Borges’ languid words.
Buenos Aires has elaborate resting spaces for the rich and the revered (for instance, first lady Eva Perón at the Recoleta cemetery, a moth-ridden empire of despair); it is the stomping ground of the Fuerza Bruta dancers; home to gelatos meant for the gods; and brims with stories that belong inside the library of Babel. But Borges may as well have been writing only about San Telmo, the oldest bohemian barrio (neighbourhood) in the city, dating back to the 17th century. As I walked on to San Telmo’s cobbled pathways and began soaking in its smells and sounds, its buildings, which borrowed their instagrammed beauty from a forgotten era, kept pulling me back.
