Last saturday we did a little more cemetery strolling, this time to the chcacarita cemetery. The place is enormous, one side is a city of the dead, mausoleums and the tombs of the rich and famous, the othere side is a more conventional looking (to our English eyes at any rate) graveyard. But underneath the whole place (about the size of... erm well, it's about 12 blocks by 6, pretty big, here, look for yourself.

So we were wandering along and there, in the distance, was the faint tinny sound of tango, being played, as it turned out, on a battered red sony walkman with a speaker which sounded like it was made of tin foil and glue. It was at the tomb of Carlos Gardel (that sounds like a Longfellow poem, or at least the start of one) the most famous tango singer in the world (who looks like George Formby, a bit). There was an old fellow who stank of stale urine, in a coat that looked as old as he was. He was handing out photocopies of pictures of a grinning Gardel, and in return he expected a couple of centavos in his collection plate made from a tin of hair pomade.

He launched into some unintelligible Spanish, pointing to different 'we love you Carlos' signs, but we couldn't understand a word, I suspect even if we were fluent the results would have been the same.

On the other side of the cemetery it's like some underground crypt, what am I saying, it is and underground crypt. Under the grass are three floors of subterranean vaults, each 12 coffins high. You need a map to find your way around but we were enjoying the sun too much to explore down there. Another time.
  ¶ 7:06 PM