The Sunday market at Mataderos is fantastic. It takes place at a T-junction in an outer suburb of Buenos Aires, beneath a town hall of pink stucco with white borders, arched galleries on the ground floor and high shuttered windows above them, surmounted by a grand clock tower. A stage had been set up beneath the aicazor trees and a band was playing. The first thing I saw was an older couple dressed in gaucho clothes – pantaloons, hat, a black jacket and belt studded with coins for him, a red shawl black cravat for her, performing a handkerchief dance, hooking hands, twirling, then breaking off to twirl some more while waving their hankies in the air. I thought it was some kind of performance for tourists until the song ended and they just wandered off. More couples, mostly in everyday clothes, got up to dance at the next number, and so it went on, more or less, for the next eight hours. At twelve there was a ceremonial raising of the flag and an impassioned singing of the national anthem by a moustachioed MC, himself in full gaucho regalia with a patterned caramel-and-white blanket thrown across his shoulders. About half the crowd sang along. They are very proud of their country.

A dance troupe took the stage and I looked at the stalls. They ran for half a kilometre along the top bar of the T. You could buy all the ponchos and woollen hats you could possibly want, or take a ride on a miniature pony or llama, if you were under ten. Handmade knives and hand tooled leather were in plentiful supply. But the thing that really interested me was the food. And the drink. You could buy homemade wine, branded and labelled, for 7 pesos (that’s about $2) or grapa for nine. There was homemade cheese, homemade chocolate, homemade chorizo, and an abundance of flavoured ‘licores’, limonchello, orange, mandarin, chocolate, white chocolate, aniseed – even one labelled ‘baileys’. I bought a couple of bottles for 18 pesos, one of which seems to have disappeared already. There was a stall selling cubanitos – rolled up waffles coated in chocolate and filled with sweet cream – and a two or three selling toffee apples. Not just toffee apples, but toffee figs, toffee strawberries and, my favourite, a stick with an assortment of toffee banana, kiwi, pear, strawberry and mandarin, dipped in popcorn. Exquisito. Over it all, sweet and heavy, hung the smell of grilling meat.

A troupe of gaucho dancers had taken the stage. They barrelled back and forth in a flurry of petticoats and purple bombachas, whirling and stamping and flinging their arms in the air. The men were whiskered and the women were raven haired, and they looked like they loved what they were doing. Each of the men came out to perform a solo, cocking their legs in and out and kicking high in the air while bouncing up and down and performing extravagant leaps. There was a stool dance, and a wine bottle dance, and the troupe leaders did a romantic solo, and then the show was over. It was time for the musicians to take the stage again, with multiple guitars and drums. The dancing in the street took up where it had left off.

I made my way past parrillas where families were tucking into plates heaped with ribs, blood sausage, chicken and steak, brought to their tables on mini-grills, and stalls selling empanadas and tamales where the queues were thirty deep. At the end of the market, sand had been sprinkled along a hundred-metre stretch of road, with a rectangular steel frame at the far end. A family of gauchos was holding a riding display. Wheeling their horses, they tore off down the street in practice runs, until the contest started: a small ring, slightly larger than one you’d put on your finger, was suspended from the frame. The trick was to catch the ring on a short metal rod as you galloped through as fast as you could. There were ten or so riders, and they managed the trick about eight per cent of the time. The youngest looked about ten, while the eldest were probably pushing fifty. They were dressed in black waistcoats and bombachas - or fawn in one case - with the occasional red neckerchief or billowing white shirt. They had aquiline faces and long black boots tucked into large discus-like stirrups, and they looked like they’d been born on horses.

They packed after a couple of hours of energetic galloping back and forth, and it was time to head back to the stalls and buy some produce. The dancers were taking up most of the square as they reeled and grasped shoulders and raised arms in a final all-out fling. As the music ended, small groups gathered beneath the arches of the town hall to strum guitars or blow on pan pipes. Men and women of all ages joined in, just as with the dance. I made my way home, after eight hours of non-stop entertainment.

The weather has improved, and I take back my earlier comments about it. It’s been pretty pleasant since the initial days of freezing winds – which is a relief. Buenos Aires is incomparable. What a city. We’ve been to a tango place – in the Armenian Club, of all places – and today it’s the agricultural show and if we can manage it the theatre of ‘percussion’ – apparently it’s a theatre run by blind people, where the audience is blindfolded and the performance is in sounds, smells, and sensations. Should be interesting.

If you think it´s been a while between blogs, you might be right. Argentina is a little, well, internet challenged, at least in my experience. Tonight´s post is the result of several days frustration. I hope it´s appreciated. I´m not sure when the next one will appear, as I head for the interior on Thursday.