The humid summer air sits heavily on Plaza Mafalda. The mid-day sun, high in the crystal blue sky washes the little urban square in a white heat.
Under the spreading plane trees, young couples barely clad, have spread white sheets on the beaten grass, playfully photographing each other with cell phones and sharing cups of hierba mata. Young parents clack by in flip-flops, pushing a carriage with a black-haired baby that could be cartoon Mafalda herself.
In the far corner of the park, a group of young men, stripped to the waist and drenched in sweat, have just finished a friendly game of futbol and are jostling loudly over attentive girlfriends and sweating bottles of chilled cola.
Nearby, an older, white-haired couple sits primly on a hard wooden bench, gently gesturing in conversation. Two attractive middle aged men walking fancy dogs exchange cheek kisses, revealing nothing.
The thick air is both quiet, and filled with a distant soundtrack that mingles the screams of excited children in a nearby community pool with the ceaseless barking of confined, frantic dogs.
This is not one of Buenos Aires’ show-piece plazas. It’s not pretty. A few trees have died, the grass has been beaten to dirt in places. Freshly poured concrete walkways lead to a construction fence where the central plaza is torn up. The barely stirring breeze carries pungent waves of dogshit.
No, it is a middle class park, a back yard for the hard-working Portenos who live in the airless towers around; those who can’t join their wealthier compatriots on a summer exodus to the 
beach. It is here that they come as the air cools at the end of a hot Sunday afternoon to walk their dogs and see their neighbours.
beach. It is here that they come as the air cools at the end of a hot Sunday afternoon to walk their dogs and see their neighbours. I spend the afternoon sitting in this worn little park below my apartment window, listening to the italian musicality of the Argentinian accent, starting to pick up more than a few isolated phrases. For a moment, I try hard to believe that I’m not a tourist anymore, but a resident; a still-isolated new-comer unable to strike up a conversation with the sweating neighbourhood around me.
