Today we were sad to bid farewell to Tina. Not being overly keen on doing this at 7am, I did so at 4am before going to bed.

But I was very happy to welcome Maria and Antonio, who I hadn’t seen for a very long time! They arrived at around 9.45am, but were kind enough to go drink coffee around the corner until we’d crawled out of bed …

Laura’s father also kindly lent them the money to do so! They were arriving without local currency, so we gave Tina the money for M&A’s ride – then he gave some of it back to them to buy coffee and media lunas.

We let them get settled in before heading off to meet some random dead people at La Recoleta Cemetery. We’ll visit some non-random dead people in La Chacarita Cemetery another day.

An expensive lunch followed, at over £6/head.

Anthony and Maria walked to Palermo; and absolutely no prizes for guessing what I did.

Milonga 15: La Rosa

Held at El Beso, La Rosa is a very different Milonga to El Abrazó. Much younger crowd, heavy on the rhythmical music. It mostly wasn’t my music, but I danced about half a dozen tandas.

Tango is an odd creature. I danced one tanda with a follower who danced well but whose facial expression gave every impression of being supremely bored throughout. After the dance, she gave me a huge smile and asked me where I was dancing that night. (Viva la Pepa. Maybe.)

I also had another experience of the deceptively tall follower, who looked moderately tall when sitting, and much more so when standing! I danced a lot of left turns.

The small town effect kicked in again, when I bumped into Luis just as I was about to leave! We’ll arrange to meet up properly at another milonga (and I will try to talk him into a wafer-thin private).

The plan for the evening was Viva la Pepa. However, it only started at 9.30pm, which meant even if we arrived on the dot, I was going to get maybe an hour’s dancing if all went well. Given I got three or four hours’ sleep the night before, I decided I’d be better off getting a decent amount of sleep in the hope of being fresh(er) for the following day.

Impressively, Maria and Antonio headed there, while I steeled myself for the next 6.30am start.