Hi! I am Richard Shpuntoff, a professional private tour guide dedicated to helping visitors share in the energy and charm of daily life in Buenos Aires, my adopted city since 2002.
In my tours, we walk the city, experience it and talk about daily life, history, art, culture, politics and whatever else we want. My aim is to weave the narrative threads that have shaped this city and the culture of its people in all their complexity and contradictions, so that visitors can form their own deeper understanding of this very particular metropolis.
I love learning and sharing stories about Buenos Aires and Argentina. Why is Eva (“Evita”) Peron still such an important figure to this day and what does she represent to Argentines? Why do Argentines eat so much beef? Is tango really that important to the culture of Buenos Aires? What does it mean to locals today? How and when did Buenos Aires get the reputation as “the Paris of South America”‘?
I profoundly believe that travel and stories can make our lives richer. Through my tours I am always looking to create opportunities for visitors to explore, gain different perspectives, and consider other ways of seeing. As we traverse the city, I am guided by a Scottish traveler proverb: “a story should be told eye to eye, mind to mind, heart to heart”.
On TripAdvisor, I have over 100 five star reviews putting BA City Guide in the top ten “Tours & Activities in Buenos Aires”. Please, click this link if you want to read what others have said about my tours.
More details about my life experience. Born and raised in Queens, New York, along with being a tour guide, I am a translator, scriptwriter and documentary filmmaker. I have translated an enormous range of work including academic papers on tango lyrics, Latin American childhood policy, the history of the Argentine dictatorship and gender issues, as well as films. I have subtitled some 300 films, and am currently the translator for the Mar de Plata International Film Festival. My partner is originally from the Argentine province of Entre Rios, and our two daughters were both born and raised here. Yes, they take great pleasure in making fun of my accent in Spanish. I earned my undergraduate degree at Columbia College where I majored in Urban Studies.
Though I give the large majority of tours myself, I do work with a network of really wonderful guides from the U.S., England, and France, as well as a few super knowledgeable Argentines who specialize in a number of topics.
If you want to know more about the tours offered by BA City Guide click this link.
If you have questions about BA City Guide, or even about Buenos Aires or traveling Argentina, please do not hesitate to contact me. It is my pleasure to help visitors have the best experience they can here.
You can write to me at: BACityGuide@gmail.com .
Or you can call me via my US phone number: 1-718-701-1839 .
Or WhatsApp me at: +54 911 5101 4236 .
Buenos Aires Tour Guide 