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After writing so many articles and books on Buenos Aires, I started to get a nickname......many started calling me "Mister. Buenos Aires" the one everyone turned to for the latest information on this exciting destination.
When I made the decision to move to Buenos Aires to write the Frommer's Buenos Aires First Edition, America's best selling guide book on the Argentine Capital, my Italian-American father let me in on a family secret. His father had long planned to move to Argentina from Italy, rather than the United States and always regretted his decision. I don't know if I would have ever been born if the circumstances were different, but one thing is for sure: I might have been born in the United States, but my soul found its way to Argentina one way or another.
My name is Michael Luongo, and I am one of America's most prolific writers on Argentina. In addition to my Frommer's work, I have written about or photographed Argentina for the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, National Geographic Traveler, Town & Country Travel, Bloomberg News, Budget Travel, Business Traveler, Out Traveler, the Advocate, and many other publications.
Some of my experiences in Argentina seem like dreams, or myths, and like that of no other travel writer.
When Juan Peron was reburied in October of 2006, I rode with his coffin through the streets of Buenos Aires. It was surreal beyond belief to experience first hand, and at the coffin itself, the love and the agony of hundreds of thousands of Argentines paying their respects, decades after his death. I was in the crypt of the new mausoluem itself in San Vicente, surrounded by the violent masses fighting for his body. It is hard to explain to Americans back home in my country what it was like to see men with blood pouring all over their faces shouting, "Peron, Peron."
Another only in Buenos Aires experience was wearing Evita's favorite perfume, dabbed from the bottle she last used before her death more than half a century ago. It gave new meaning to the phrase the scent of a woman, for it was the scent of Evita herself I was able to experience for an evening, her spirit seemingly around me with every breath I took.
Beyond the mythic Perons, my experiences in Argentina fall into the pop and now.....I have hung out with Dutchess Fergie during the Polo Championships. Lord knows, the war more than 25 years ago means nothing to the Brits and the Argentines when it's Polo season. And I sat down at the piano with Charly Garcia. If you're an American, Canadian or a European reading this, you might wonder, who is that? And so did I at first. But ask your Argentine friends....it's like sitting down at the piano with Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen, he is Argentina's preeminent rockstar.
It is these experiences and more which suffuse my writing on the country, and which keep me coming back. Explore my links, peruse my photos, buy my books. Then you'll know why they call me "Mister Buenos Aires"!!!
P.S. I am returning once again, living there November 2006 to February 2007. If you're visiting Buenos Aires with my guidebook and I see you, I'll make sure to say hello....
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