Buenos Aires

Introducing Buenos Aires

While it may be the home of Pope Francis, Argentina’s pleasures come in hedonistic packages. Buenos Aires, capital city and home to three million people aptly assumed the moniker of “Paris of South America.” True enough, Buenos Aires’s allure resides in its fiery commingling of Latin sensuality with European cultural chic. Along broad avenues lined with gracefully aged neoclassical buildings, the city’s intelligentsia debate the nations’s woes in venerable parrillas (steakhouses), where bold Malbec from Mendoza complements thick slabs of grilled meat fresh from the plains of La Pampa. The city’s fortifying afternoon tea ritual (the uninitiated soon learn that dinner is absolutely not served before 10pm) is served by suited waiters in Belle Epoque cafés dripping with bronze and marble.

Along the cobblestone alleys of San Telmo, the sultry sounds of the Tango erupt from milongas (tango salons) as slinking bodies tease and tantalize crowds of rigid hipped tourists. From the hip nightclubs of Palermo Viejo—BA’s answer to Soho—to the football frenzy that ignites in the raucous bars of La Boca when Boca Juniors clash against local rivals River Plate, Porteños work hard and play even harder.

For more divine inspiration, the good, bad, and ugly of Argentina’s history, from Evita Perón to former president Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín, are laid to rest in the extravagant mausoleums of La Recoleta. Beyond the cemetery walls, La Recoleta is a moneyed quarter where fur-clad dames with coffered poodles emerge from sumptuous mansions and apartment buildings. The city’s political heart is the Plaza de Mayo, the central square that has played host to innumerable protests over the years. This is also the site of the iconic Casa Rosado (the bubble-gum pink government house) that is forever entwined with the iconography of Evita.

Executive airports within a 50-mile radius of Buenos Aires:

• Ezeiza International Airport (officially Aeropuerto Internaciónal Ministro Pistarini) lies 22 miles from the city centre
• The Jorge Newbery Airport is located in the Palermo neighborhood, five miles from downtown.

Popular aircraft charters* in the Buenos Aires area include:

• Learjet 31 (light)
• Citation V (lightt)
• Learjet 60 (midsize)
• Citation III (midsize)
• Falcon 900 B (large)
• Challenger 601-3A/R (large)

*This is just a sample. Zephyr Jets provides access to aircraft at every end of the spectrum, from luxurious VIP airliners, to ultra long range business jets to helicopters, and economical turboprops.