Where to stay when you leave.
The Thinkers' Guide to Staying in Buenos Aires: Youth Hostels
2/22/2007 at 4:29 PM
Tags: Buenos Aires Hotel Reviews, Buenos Aires Hotel Guide, Buenos Aires Budget Hotels, Matt Chesterton
Travel writer Matt Chesterton may know more about the Buenos Aires hotel scene than anyone else on the planet, our words not his. When he isn't hiding from his creditors he is out and about in BA. For the next two weeks he will be busting myths and spouting off about the BA hotel scene. For starters, he has told us that La Cabaña is not the best steakhouse in Argentina, and rather, a national embarrassment, the kind of place that in previous epochs of "our" history would have been firebombed--reserved for Steakhouse Suckers, his words, not ours. This is exactly the kind of unadulterated sentiment you can expect to find here in the next couple of weeks--plus he is hilarious. If you wish to use this time to ask him a burning question you have about BA hotels, shoot it our way, and we will hand deliver it to him. Enjoy.
Ostinatto Hostel, Buenos Aires
Euphemisms rule. If an enemy accidentally drops high explosives on your home and wastes you, you're 'collateral damage'. If a buddy accidentally drops high explosives on your Humvee, and wastes you, you're a victim of 'friendly fire'.
We could drone on in this sub-Jerry Seinfeld vein for ever, but what's it got to do with accommodation in BA? Not a lot, except perhaps this. There doesn't seem to anything called simply a 'youth hostel' anymore. It may look like a youth hostel, it may sound like a youth hostel, it will sure as hell smell like a youth hostel. But the owners won't market it as such - not when they can call it a 'chill house', a 'design budget lodging' or - and this is our favorite because it sounds like a cross between a frathouse and a train station - 'party central'.
This isn't a sneer, it's a cheer. The youth hostels we remember from our distant youth had one thing in common: they all blew. The ones we remember from travels round our British homeland blew the hardest of all. They were owned by the kind of hippies other hippies avoided. The 'menu' was lentil stew for supper, tea with powdered milk for breakfast, lentil rissoles for lunch. The architecture could be described thus: one thing over your head to keep the rain from hitting you, four things surrounding you to keep the wind from hitting you. If you were really lucky there would be a ping-pong table in some freezing outhouse, with a sagging net and bats with the rubber peeling off. For the honor of flopping in such a hellhole you had to do 'chores'. At least in the army they give you decent food and some expensive lethal gizmos to mess around with.
So why do we feel a twinge of nostalgia for such places? Same reason people miss their brutal boarding schools. The more dismal the environment, the crueler the authorities, the more esprit de corps in the ranks. We were all in this shit together. The worse the conditions, the more fun it was to whine about them. Friendships forged in these old-school hostels would last for days, sometimes even weeks.
Fast reverse up memory lane to modern Buenos Aires. The youth hostel sector here has expanded with frightening speed since the 2002 currency devaluation, for obvious reasons. Quality has marched in step with quantity. The average hostel owner is more likely to be a slick hipster halfway through an MBA than a Deadhead in beige socks and Jesus sandals. He or she will offer you themed rooms, well-equipped communal areas, fat roof terraces with barbecues, sweaty parties in the basement bar, Wi-Fi, a DVD library, a decent breakfast, and the tacit promise that you're going to find it very difficult not to get laid. The net on the ping-pong table is restrung every month.
The kind of 'youths' you see in BA youth hostels are just like the ones you see everywhere else: stunning Scandinavian couples who don't say much; garrulous Israelis straight out of military service; orthodontically-challenged but friendly Brits: the cheeky Irish guy that everyone loves; the geeky German who's always losing his stuff; baseball-becapped Americans who pimproll round the city in packs, desperately trying to find a sports bar. All the world's a dormitory.
So here's a challenge for you. Seven nights in BA, seven hostels. A hostel crawl. You'd have to be crazy to try it, of course - but if you've read thus far through this drivel, you'll probably try just about anything.
You start on Wednesday. For no particular reason.
Wednesday
El Cachafaz
You've spend 14 hours on a plane, you've had an argument at customs, you've had a sweaty hour-long bus ride into town, your backpack is weighing on you like a guilty conscience: you need a nice quiet downtown pad in which to crash. El Cachafaz fits the bill. It's quiet, sophisticated, clean and friendly, and the living room, with its antique furnishings, kicks the crap out of most of the city's upscale boutiques.
El_Cachafaz Hostel, Buenos Aires
Thursday
Kilca
The blurb on the website sounds horribly like the premise for a Twilight Zone episode: 'Congratulations, you've just entered a unique environment where time seems to stand still.' Rest easy, this is just glurge: Kilca isn't moving at close to the speed of light; Newtonian physics apply, the five rooms open out onto nice patios, there's Wi-Fi, etc., and its close to the Microcentro. A good place to return to afer your first day's sightseeing.
Friday
Ostinatto
You've exhausted everything there is to do in the center and want to start hitting bars and meeting members of the opposite sex. Head south to San Telmo and dump your pack at Ostinatto, a 'designer hostel' which almost lives up to its hype. It's got a mini cinema, a rooftop barbecue, a bar and an art gallery. The website promises a Japanese translation which, inevitably, doesn't work. Hit the scruffy, raucous bars in San Telmo and stuff your face full of steak in a cheap parrilla.
Saturday
Chill House
It's Saturday night, the feeling's right, you want to blow half your remaining budget on a night out in Palermo Viejo, BA's hippest and most hyped barrio. For this mission you need a crashpad where the owners actually encourage their guests to return at six in the morning swaying violently and telling everyone within sight that they're their 'best friend ever'. That place is Chill House.
Sunday
Casa Jardín
Ouch! You need a calorific brunch and a stiff Bloody Mary. You can get an excellent version of both at Home Hotel, though you won't be able to afford to stay there. Instead try Casa Jardín, a civilized, verging on pretentious, hostel/guesthouse, with its well-stocked library, beautiful terrace and constant flow of 'interesting' (i.e. jobless) people. Ideal for nursing a hangover while pretending to read Borges.
Monday
Casa Unica
Trendier-than-thou Palermo Viejo is already starting to get on your tits; you want to explore the 'real Buenos Aires' as your guidebook quaintly puts it. There's no barrio more 'real' than Abasto, one of the true incubators of tango (lazy hacks always write that the dance was born in San Telmo, which is total bullcrap) and a genuinely atmospheric barrio with a bohemian edge. Casa Unica is owned by a pair of effusive and highly efficient lasses, it has a lovely central patio, and the furnishings look like they were designed by an acid casualty. Cute and kitsch.
Tuesday
Milhouse
Ok, enough 'authenticity'. You want to spend your final night in the kind of hip and hopping hostel that exists all over the world, a place where people prefer to stay in and party rather than go out and risk getting mugged. Milhouse is currently BA's liveliest dorm joint, always full and always buzzing. Last and best chance to get drunk/high/laid in BA.
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