The streets, architecture, stories and characters of Buenos Aires have a lot to tell and thanks to the rise of thematic tourshave found new voices.
Tours around the City have become increasingly personal experiences where both the guides and the public share the desire to live a special experience, unique.
Hampa Tour, Bue Pizza Tour, Buenos Aires Rock Tour and the Landscape Walks are four thematic activities that are presented as spaces of connection with the urban, its characters, its stories, its future, its music and even its flavors.
Empty Tour
Buenos Aires is home to thousands of stories, and although only those linked to figures in politics or art tend to transcend, there are also hundreds of police chronicles that deserve to be told in detail given that, ultimately, they are also part of its social fabric.
Mariano Vidal and Nahuel Gallotta, creators of the Hampa Tour, are renowned police journalists and understood that their experience in the newsrooms and especially their daily practice of covering the underworld of the underworldmade them two ideal narrators to reveal characters and events that occurred in the city.
“Police journalism involves being on the street, going to a prison, a neighborhood, having a coffee with people who commit crimes, because to understand that world, it is necessary to go to these places and deal directly with them. So, when recounting the events on the tour I feel that stories regain their place because, precisely, they were born on the street,” explains Nahuel Gallotta.
To design the Hampa Tour routes, Mariano and Nahuel selected cases in which they could have direct contact with one of the protagonistswhether it be the criminal himself, a victim, the prosecutor who investigated that case or even one of the police officers who participated in the operation.
“We go to the sources, we interview them, we go to the newspaper library to read the newspapers of the time and then we put together a script,” says Nahuel Gallotta. And while we tell the story, we also explain what it is like to work on these issues in writing a newspaper.”
The Hampa Tour walks cover around two kilometers, and have, at the moment, three routes: Congress Route, San Telmo Route and Recoleta Route. Each tour tells seven stories about murders, millionaire robberies, scams or unsolved crimes that occurred in the cityand of course, it passes through the places where the events occurred, such as, for example, a Police Investigation Division, “which gives us the opportunity to tell attendees how the case was investigated, who was detained there, how it was that “The investigators got to the criminals, the history of these characters and, finally, if it was finally solved.”
Lovers of real police cases will find on the Hampa Tour routes stories with information about the court recordstestimonies of protagonists, details about media coverage and a unique and detailed vision of each police story.
To find out the dates of the next tours and sign up to take the tours, more information can be found on Instagram @hampatours or on the website https://www.instagram.com/hampatours.
Bue Pizza Tour
Bue Pizza Tour was born from the union between the fanaticism for pizza and the challenge of a group of friends who He set out to find out which was the best music in Buenos Aires. “At that moment, I told the kids: let’s take a pizza tour to find out!” says Ariel Santillán, creator of Bue Pizza. The truth is that the group of friends never took the tour, but Ariel always had a hunch that his idea could work. And it worked.
Two decades later, the dream began to come true with the purchase of a combi that was reconditioned with facing seats and a table with plate rests and magnetic cup holdersto prevent pizza slices from falling or drinks from spilling.
Inside the van, which in another life was used as a school transport, everything is arranged so that up to six passengers/diners can be taken to three iconic pizzerias in the city and, of course, try the house specialties.
Bue Pizza Tour offers four tours: Tour 1 takes place in the downtown area and includes the Güerrín, Las Cuartetas and El Cuartito pizzerias. Tour 2 visits the Angelín, La Mezzeta and Imperio pizzerias in the Palermo and Villa Ortúzar neighborhoods. Tour 3 passes through Banchero, Pirilo and Los Campeones, from La Boca and Barracas. Tour 4 includes El Fortín de Monte Castro, Pizzería José de Devoto and El Cedrón de Mataderos.
These four-wheel circuits have become an excellent excuse to celebrate birthdaysto meet with family or friends, to get to know the city and even to propose.
“I remember finishing the tour with a couple, I offered to take their photo and they insisted on showing me their hands. Then they told me that they had gotten engaged during the journey“, recalls Ariel.
The pizza tour begins at a meeting point set by the diners and Ariel, and lasts two hours. Besides, includes three slices of pizza per diner (one from each pizzeria)two drinks per diner, karaoke, lights, games and Bluetooth speakers to liven up the journey with the group’s favorite music.
To reserve or request information about the tours, you need to visit @buepizzatour o www.buepizzatour.com.ar.
Scenic Walks
Paisajeante walks are designed so that city residents have the opportunity to see their surroundings from a new perspective. Furthermore, their tours seek to provide key information that encourages more conscious and detailed observation and, above all, encourage a critical look at the space we inhabit and we enjoy.
“In general, the people who come to my walks, with the perception that they are not touristic or historical, although there is something historical and there is something of nature because we talk about the trees, we talk about architecture, the structure of the streets, the micro landscapeof vestiges of antiquities such as covers of service companies that ceased to exist a century ago or tram remains, discover places that, sometimes, we think are not at all attractive,” explains Fabio Márquez, known on the networks as Paisajeante, graduate in Landscape Design, university professor and guide for hundreds of walkers who escort him, with great attention, through the streets of the city.
The routes, which usually cover between ten and twelve blocks, are carried out by traditional neighborhoods of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and, although they are generally not “postcard-attractive” places, according to Márquez, they allow discoveries to be made and vestiges of another era to be interpreted.
The curious thing is that not only the members of the walk are amazed by the information that Fabio provides, but the residents of the blocks he covers are also amazed. discover incredible details of their own environments.
According to Paisajeante, the walks, in addition to being a collection of anecdotes, aim to train attendees to observe, evaluate what they see and awaken a kind of playful curiosity that can then be shared with others.
The routes are always different because “the city is so big, so vast and so rich that it will be a long time before I have to repeat a route. I go to the same neighborhoods, but the paths are always different”explains Márquez.
The journeys last two hours, they are announced through Fabio’s social networks: @paisajeante (https://www.instagram.com/paisajeante), are always up to date and, generally, at the end of the journey, the group shares impressions about everything observed.
Buenos Aires Rock Tour
Marcelo Nusenovich and Dany Jiménez are music journalists and spread the history and imprint of rock culture through years of work, courses and, more recently, with walks that immerse themselves in the magic of hundreds of places that saw bands and soloists born, grow and shine such as Sumo, los Redondos, Soda Stereo, Luis Alberto Spinetta, Andrés Calamaro and Charly García, among many others.
“Do rock tours with musical content, that are not touristic and that are for people who like music and it becomes a true musical experience in which we can put our bodies to enter some places that cannot be entered because they are no longer in operation, it was a real journalistic effort.
It involved investigating, checking that the places were real, double-checking with the neighbors, tour the areas and, finally, incorporate them into the circuits,” says Marcelo Nusenovich.
For now, Buenos Aires Rock Tour has nine circuits: Hurlingham/Palomar, Microcentro, San Telmo, Abasto/Once, Palermo, Recoleta/Barrio Norte, Belgrano/Flores and Villa Ortúzar/Villa Urquiza.
The walks take place on weekend afternoons and last for five hours, in which Dany and Marcelo tell the story behind each place, while members of the public receive videos and images of the places in their WhatsApp. original contextstestimonies from musicians, producers and journalists and a playlist with songs from the bands related to the tour.
Another great attraction of the tours are the guests who join the tour, such as the artist Oscar Di Biase, who usually presents the mural by Gustavo Cerati that he created in the square that is right in front of the house where the musician grew up and that Lilian, Gustavo’s mother, dedicated to him; or Ismael Sokol, the son of Sumo “Bocha” Sokol, who tells incredible stories about Luca.
To obtain information or participate in the next editions of Buenos Aires Rock Tour, you can visit the Instagram of @somosfanaticus https://www.instagram.com/somosfanaticus.