Buenos Aires, Argentina

Thursday morning starts early. Being four hours behind the UK there's already a heap of emails backing up needing to be dealt with by 6am, which puts paid to my good intentions of a dawn visit to the gym, so I plug in the laptop and plough through them all with ferocious speed. A long phone call to the manager of another band who’s currently in Peru and about to catch a plane to Mexico, means that by the time I belatedly meet Todd and Tom for breakfast at 9.30, I feel like I’ve almost done a day in the office already.

Alex is similarly under the cosh, as his magazine is on deadline, so he’s yet to eat when we convene downstairs at 11am for a little tour of the city, laid on by the local promoter. Some of the band were thinking of joining us, but in the end it’s just Alex, Tom and myself who get in the van with Bianca, one of the promotion team.

We leave the hotel and drive down Ninth of July Avenue, apparently the widest road in the world, comprising as it does 18 lanes of traffic. Buenos Aires is a massive, sprawling city; the third largest in South America, after Sao Paolo and Rio. But it is very well-organised and this super-avenue flows with precision from traffic light to traffic light, with none of the horn-honking and hand gestures that are common in other Latin cities.

We drive past the enormous obelisk in Plaza de la Republica, to commemorate independence, and come into Plaza de Mayo, the main square which has been the focal point for the city since that independence was won in 1810. Parking the van, we hop out for a little wander around, seeing first the white façade of the Cabildo, the old colonial government building which is one of the few Hispanic touches to the city, and then head into the Metropolitan Cathedral.

From the outside it appears almost like a civic construction; you’d never know it was a house of God, but inside it’s a typically Catholic affair, ornately decorated, with a solid silver altar and a tomb to St Martin, the patron saint of the country, who crossed the Andes on horseback 200 years ago to help the country gain independence. Two guards stand to honour by the entrance to his chapel, while his mausoleum is draped in a huge Argentinian flag. Alex walks around, taking it all in, his tall dark appearance suggesting more of a Satanic presence than a holy one and he jokes about not staying too long inside a church, lest his skin should start to burn!

Next stop in the square is the Presidential palace, Casa Rosada, a large pink building, famous for its balcony where Eva Peron would wave to the crowds below, and which has been graced by everyone from Clinton to Madonna repeating the feat. Bianca tells us that the film 'Evita' is very one-sided as many people hated Eva Peron and she’s not a loved figure for a large proportion of Argentinians. In fact she sounds more like Imelda Marcos, although without as many shoes! Bianca loves Madonna though, so I take a few snaps for posterity’s sake.

Walking back to the van we see a demonstration before us, which is apparently common as this is the heart of the Argentine state. Turns out this is for army veterans from the Falklands War complaining about their treatment from the government. This leads us to talk about the Malvinas and Bianca thinks that to be honest, no-one really cares about the lumps of rock in the South Atlantic and that if the Brits want them, good luck to us. "It’s not worth people dying over," she concludes. Quite right. What a waste…

From here we enter San Telmo the oldest part of town, with cobbled streets and at its heart Plaza Dorrego, which boasts old colonial buildings and a profusion of bars and cafes where people tango away at the weekend. It’s dead when we drive through it though so we continue on to La Boca, the Italian quarter, which is apparently the most colourful district of Buenos Aires.

Dominating part of it is La Bombonera, the football stadium of Boca Juniors, one of the top football teams in South America and a place of pilgrimage for soccer fans across the continent. It’s in a deserted bit of wasteland in what looks like quite a rough part of town, and Bianca tells us that we should leave all our valuables in the van as we wander round La Boca’s streets, which are a prime target for pickpockets due to the amount of tourists who congregate here.

Not giving a toss about football, I’m happy to drive on, but fortunately it’s not the stadium we’re here to see but Caminito. Named after a famous tango tune, this area is full of brightly painted houses, shops, museums and open-air cafes where tango dancers perform. In amongst all the souvenir stalls, and artists selling their wares, I find a couple of handmade little fridge magnets to add to the ever-growing collection, and we grab a seat for twenty minutes to watch the world go by with a cool drink out of the sunshine.

Slowly the sky is becoming more overcast and as we return to the van it looks like rain may not be far away, so we decide to grab some lunch. We opt for a pizzeria named La Piccolo Italia, which serves us enormous dishes far too big for the four of us to work our way through, so we ask for a doggy bag and surprise our driver with a bunch of luke-warm pizza for him to enjoy. Hopefully his tolerance for salt is higher than mine, as the pizzas seem drenched in the stuff, which combined with the huge swathes of cheese mean we’ve effectively gifted the poor man a heart attack on a plate, but hey… it’s the thought that counts!

Little drops of rain are starting to fall but not enough to deter us from a final destination. Driving past the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and the floral sculpture beside it named Floralis Generica, we come to Palermo’s wide open parks which are the lungs of the city. In the Jardin Botanica, we enter the Japanese Gardens, gifted to the city by a large Japanese ex-pat community in 1967. It’s beautiful and tranquil, but fatigue, the heaviness of the pizza and some rising humidity is starting to take its toll and we mooch around with heavy feet and little conversation before heading back to the hotel for 3pm.

The original plan was to start the interviews today, but that’s been pushed back to tomorrow now, the day of the show, so Alex heads up to his room to prepare his questions and I go back to the laptop to get a couple more hours under my belt. Outside the heavens open and rain is unleashed upon the city and the horde of fans patiently waiting outside the hotel for a glimpse of the band. By now the crowd has tripled in size but they get drenched as the thunder and lightning rockets around the sky.

“I told you I shouldn’t have gone inside that church,” remarks Alex later once God stops throwing thunderbolts down. Hmmm, he may have a point!