It's a Greatest Hits compilation from some of the world's most beautiful and interesting cities - the long cobbled leafy streets of Paris, the ornate balconies and decorative shutters of Barcelona, the hustle-bustle of Rome and the high fashion population of Milan. New York exists in the huge green city parks, where skateboarders and rollerbladers cruise expertly in between the joggers and walkers. On the one day that it rained it could've even been Edinburgh's Grassmarket. Something for everyone. Buenos Aires...
After an emotional reunion at the airport all were eager to get into the city and catch up .Our round little taxi driver was adept at driving at high speed while examining British coins and turning round to talk to his passengers in the backseat. He also managed to do a fair bit of over-excited clapping. Obviously not a subscriber to the 'hands at ten and two' philosophy. Order of the day was beer, wine and sunshine. Mum and sister in Argentina for a fortnight, me and Woody embracing the opportunity to steal more stuff from a hotel. A couple of days in the fashionable district of Palermo Soho - with three women keen on exploring every shop. Practically forced to get my gay on and be interested in dresses and shoes and curtains and doylies. And jewellery. By the end of the first day I was sipping champers and eating a lemon merangue cupcake (first stop - my thighs) like one of dem girls off Sex and the City. Tell you...
Nevertheless, Palermo is a beautiful and fantastic place to spend time, lots of street cafés for a cheeky lunchtime beer and plenty of attractive residents to watch - walking their poodles, having a fancy salad or generally swanning around in the Buenos Airesness of it all. My mother had rented an apartment for a week and it was phenomenal. High up, with amazing views out over Buenos Aires - at night there was a dusky blue and orange light over the city making it look like something from a Michael Mann film, one of his filtered Miami or Los Angeles cityscapes. On the roof, a pool, jacuzzi and running track. Sheer luxury, and worlds apart from the last few months of sparse hostels, snorers and weirdos. To go off track slightly, our latest weirdo was a diminutive Chilean in Bahia Blanca. He had a propensity for eating frozen pizza (still frozen) and drinking copious amounts of alcohol for his size - no doubt one of the contributing factors for the screaming night terrors he had while everyone tried to sleep. The other contributing factor could well have been his choice of underwear - straight off the toddler shelves at BabyGap, surely nobody has any business wearing pants so tiny. Y-fronts no less. He slept - or was at any rate unconscious - face down with no blanket so our first encounter with the pants was enough to give everybody night terrors. The sheer physics of those pants were baffling, and unfair to anyone unfortunate enough to see them. Couple this with a strange set of social skills and a floor length black trenchcoat and he was a real treat to share a room with. Some sort of tight-panted streaker, I'll wager...
Anyway we settled into the apartment and the Palermo lifestyle nicely. The horsey people all gathered on Saturday for the polo. "What handicap are you now, Miles?". The Yellows played equally as well as the Reds, and eventually sneaked victory. Everyone agreed that the real winner was the sport of polo. I think. Quite a confusing game really, but only a small fraction of the people in the crowd are watching the match so it doesn't matter anyway. Most of the girls there are trying to be seen by the next Prince Harry, hoping to be swept off their feet and into a Bentley or a private jet by some rich, toothy type. Others amuse themselves by watching the girls watching the boys watching the girls go by. Who would've thought that Andy Williams was writing about the sport of polo all along? All things considered a most excellent way to spend a Saturday afternoon.
Other great successes of the Buenos Aires campaign include a trip to the Recoleta cemetery where rich families have built luxury marble mausoleums for their dearly departed. Eva Peron and family are buried here. San Telmo antiques fair of a Sunday was a relaxing way to explore another borough of the city. Woody was a flippin' nightmare - absolutely in her element, the girl wouldn't move for looking at the stalls upon stalls of old jewellery, clothes and photographs. Generally the three women in question made thorough examination of the majority of products in the majority of shops and I'm glad they enjoyed it. I made use of my time by looking awkward and shuffling about knocking into expensive things. My dear ol' mum fed us up good and proper with some amazing meals - huge steaks the size of my arm, massive salads, delicious pasta and chunky pizzas. Our little stomachs hungered for nothing, and banter flowed around the balcony on the nights when all we needed was cheese, olives and wine. Cheers ma.
The crowning jewel of their visit was a trip to Iguazu Falls on the Argentine-Brazil border. Stunning and astonishing. The warm up was a walk along the smaller waterfalls followed by a 'shower' of sorts in the spray of one of the closer falls. All of the preceding waterfalls were blown out of the water by the Garganta del Diablo - The Devil's Throat. A mile-wide brown river drifts slowly past as we walk the mile or so over the bridges to the viewpoint. As the gigantic waterfall comes into view it does look as if the Devil has opened his mouth and is swallowing the whole river. Thunderous torrents of water crash into oblivion - it's impossible to see the bottom becuase of the huge amount of spray, and just as difficult to hear yourself think. The senses are bombarded. I think possibly my tiny little human brainbox is just too small to fully process and interpret the waterfalls. It was there long before we existed, and will outlive us all without even trying. Majestic, powerful, breathtaking. The agitated water looked like the topping of the world's largest apple crumble drifting in slow motion over the edge and into oblivion. Infinitely. It looks as though it lives, like an absolute giant - maybe an immortal being. Truly a head-spinning wonder, definitely puts you in your place in this world.
We returned to Buenos Aires just in time to see the Futbol Super Clasico between Boca Juniors and River Plate suspended due to inclement weather. The whole city was subjected to torrential rain for the entire day, which was a shame for my mum and sister on their last day. Our resolve wasn't dampened and we still managed a bottle of bubbly before heading into the night for a delicious last supper of tempura, cheese, ham and potatoes. Good times. Much love and many thanks to the two of them for trekking all the way out here and treating us to a bit of luxury mixed with great experiences and home comfort. A cracking two weeks had by all, it won't be forgotten...
"Were they just playing bingo on this bus?" Yep, they were playing bingo on nightbus. Yet another point scored for the nation in the Argentina vs. Rest of the World bus olympics. Currently we're in Mendoza (westside), home to the country's finest vineyards and as a result the wine capital of Latin America. Dangermouse...
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Monday, 8 March 2010
Penguins are the last birds I'd want to murder...
Trelew, Welsh Patagonia. Constantly looking for signs of Wales - checked the phonebook, about fifty Joneses, sixty Williamses - maybe a little above average for Latin America. Plenty of rugby paraphernalia in shop windows, lots of dragons, streets are called things like 'Edwin Roberts' and 'Abraham Mathews'. Not as many sheep as one might expect. The town couldn't be more different to Bariloche - really industrial, pretty grey and unattractive. Generally the people seem to be doing much more work and having much less fun. We explored in a day and by teatime we'd about got the measure of Trelew - not a bad place, but not much more than that either... To be kind, it does feel very authentic - very much a blue collar, working Patagonian town and it was interesting to take that in for a while, but really it's a convenient hub for more exciting activities...
Penguin day! Using our shrewd little traveller's brains we worked out that we could avoid a tour and save some money by hiring a car to head south to a nature reserve called Punta Tombo. If our festive red Dodge Charger was a wild stallion, the little grey Fiat Uno we hired was a sleepy donkey, huffing and puffing it's way round corners and up gravel paths... That said it beared up admirably as we drove down the straight roads of the Patagonian steppe in the rain listening to some classic 80's power ballads on the radio. "Forever Hits - 99.9FM" gets the seal of approval. As the wind buffeted our little tin can car tootling along we began to realise that this may be the 'harsh Patagonia' that people had been mentioning. We got out of the car - the horrible realisation that I didn't have a jumper with me and Woody's circulation could well just be a figment of the imagination at this point. We began to freeze. Flip-flops, I love you, but you're going to destroy me...
"Growl and go" as Shackleton would say. Our hearts were immediately warmed by the sight of thousands of penguins dotted around the hillside. Penguins may well be the most heartwarming of all the world's birds. They mate for life, share equally the fishing and upbringing of the young and they like brightly coloured pebbles to decorate their wee burrows. the ones we saw - Magellanic penguins - have no fear of humans and we could get so close to them. So close, in fact, that Woody got us in trouble by commiting the cardinal sin of stepping over the white line of pebbles that indicates the path boundary. Camera stuck to face, excited by the huge amount of penguins, maybe a few wee steps over - a hop, skip and a jump maybe. Park ranger, not a happy camper. Using the classic "No entiendo", "I don't understand" routine we managed to get away with it but strangely he wanted us to delete the two photos that had been taken from the wrong side of the border. Woody: "Rudeness and dickin' about with my camera - they're the two things that'll turn me against you. Touching someone's camera? It's like touching someone's child, y'know..." Well put.
But the penguins were hilarious and great fun. So curious with their little tilting heads and ungainly waddle, it was worth the chill to see them keeping each other company together in the colony. On the return journey we stopped in the small Welsh village of Gaiman. "You are now entering Gaiman". Yep, Gaiman. Very mature. Welsh settlers with a seemingly idealistic view of what their homeland is created this village, the centre of Welsh Patagonia. For us, the gem of Gaiman (besides the name) is a place called 'El Desafio' ('The Challenge'). It's a botanic garden made entirely out of rubbish - the attention to detail is astounding. Thousands of beer cans have been painstakingly and lovingly cut into flower shapes which cover the garden. Trees made from hundreds of glass bottles. Scrap metal welded and sculpted paying tribute to a variety of things; The Argentine institute that is Boca Juniors Football Club, the Taj Mahal, about fifty different species of dinosaur, a thirty foot whale, an old Citroen 2CV covered in metal can tops, the Flintstone's car. All over the park are phrases - inspirational, funny, touching, ironic: "The man who made no mistakes, made nothing" is a favourite. The garden's creator, Joaquin Alonso, began work on the 16th of January 1984 - making the park and our very own Woody the exact same age. He has created a legacy from nothing but a single idea. He wanted to do something, and just went about doing it. Simple. The name 'The Challenge' comes from the fact that most people thought he was crazy and that he'd never realise his idea to its full potential - but he surpassed it. The park made it into the Guiness Book of records as the largest structure created entirely from recycled rubbish. Up until the age of 85, Alonso was still creating and after his death, this legacy lives on, for his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, even for a couple of clueless travellers from the other side of the world. He still inspires...
Currently we're in Buenos Aires after a 15 hour midnight meat train from the quiet town of Bahia Blanca. We await a couple of familiar faces at the airport... Peace.
Penguin day! Using our shrewd little traveller's brains we worked out that we could avoid a tour and save some money by hiring a car to head south to a nature reserve called Punta Tombo. If our festive red Dodge Charger was a wild stallion, the little grey Fiat Uno we hired was a sleepy donkey, huffing and puffing it's way round corners and up gravel paths... That said it beared up admirably as we drove down the straight roads of the Patagonian steppe in the rain listening to some classic 80's power ballads on the radio. "Forever Hits - 99.9FM" gets the seal of approval. As the wind buffeted our little tin can car tootling along we began to realise that this may be the 'harsh Patagonia' that people had been mentioning. We got out of the car - the horrible realisation that I didn't have a jumper with me and Woody's circulation could well just be a figment of the imagination at this point. We began to freeze. Flip-flops, I love you, but you're going to destroy me...
"Growl and go" as Shackleton would say. Our hearts were immediately warmed by the sight of thousands of penguins dotted around the hillside. Penguins may well be the most heartwarming of all the world's birds. They mate for life, share equally the fishing and upbringing of the young and they like brightly coloured pebbles to decorate their wee burrows. the ones we saw - Magellanic penguins - have no fear of humans and we could get so close to them. So close, in fact, that Woody got us in trouble by commiting the cardinal sin of stepping over the white line of pebbles that indicates the path boundary. Camera stuck to face, excited by the huge amount of penguins, maybe a few wee steps over - a hop, skip and a jump maybe. Park ranger, not a happy camper. Using the classic "No entiendo", "I don't understand" routine we managed to get away with it but strangely he wanted us to delete the two photos that had been taken from the wrong side of the border. Woody: "Rudeness and dickin' about with my camera - they're the two things that'll turn me against you. Touching someone's camera? It's like touching someone's child, y'know..." Well put.
But the penguins were hilarious and great fun. So curious with their little tilting heads and ungainly waddle, it was worth the chill to see them keeping each other company together in the colony. On the return journey we stopped in the small Welsh village of Gaiman. "You are now entering Gaiman". Yep, Gaiman. Very mature. Welsh settlers with a seemingly idealistic view of what their homeland is created this village, the centre of Welsh Patagonia. For us, the gem of Gaiman (besides the name) is a place called 'El Desafio' ('The Challenge'). It's a botanic garden made entirely out of rubbish - the attention to detail is astounding. Thousands of beer cans have been painstakingly and lovingly cut into flower shapes which cover the garden. Trees made from hundreds of glass bottles. Scrap metal welded and sculpted paying tribute to a variety of things; The Argentine institute that is Boca Juniors Football Club, the Taj Mahal, about fifty different species of dinosaur, a thirty foot whale, an old Citroen 2CV covered in metal can tops, the Flintstone's car. All over the park are phrases - inspirational, funny, touching, ironic: "The man who made no mistakes, made nothing" is a favourite. The garden's creator, Joaquin Alonso, began work on the 16th of January 1984 - making the park and our very own Woody the exact same age. He has created a legacy from nothing but a single idea. He wanted to do something, and just went about doing it. Simple. The name 'The Challenge' comes from the fact that most people thought he was crazy and that he'd never realise his idea to its full potential - but he surpassed it. The park made it into the Guiness Book of records as the largest structure created entirely from recycled rubbish. Up until the age of 85, Alonso was still creating and after his death, this legacy lives on, for his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, even for a couple of clueless travellers from the other side of the world. He still inspires...
Currently we're in Buenos Aires after a 15 hour midnight meat train from the quiet town of Bahia Blanca. We await a couple of familiar faces at the airport... Peace.
Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Ambassador, with this Bariloche you are really spoiling us...
Just on the outskirts of Patagonia proper, Bariloche sits on the shore of Lago Nahuel Huapi in the Argentine lake district - although it is impossible to buy mint cake here. Curious. Snowcapped mountains and log cabins give the town a really alpine feel, and the cold sunny mornings make it more like maybe Switzerland or Italy. It is the most idyllic and tranquil setting, especially after last week's drama.
Waking up to the amazing green scenery and enticing mountains made us thirsty to get into the wild and see what we could find. Cerro Lopez (2076m) - a beast of a walk up sandy path, stony track and finally through snow to the peak. Richly rewarded with 360 degree views of the huge number of lakes glistening in the sun, snow-topped volcanoes against a cloudless azure sky. the day was so clear we could see all the way over the border into Chile and beyond. Quite incredible. And we also saw a snake.
The next challenge - how can we get as many samples of chocolate as possible without having to pay for anything? Walking around town we popped into chocolate shops here and there, browsed and made very good 'I-take-my-chocolate-very-seriously' faces and before we knew it we were being given the most delicious samples - tiramisu, macadamia nut and Patagonian honey, passion fruit, strawberry cream... Be cool though, can't look too excited. Mull it over, wait a respectable time (90 seconds seems about right), then move to the door. Then giggle and skip away like a couple of pixies. Be cool. Really I think that our eyes give us away - they're so hungry for luxury like that. We visited one shop with a factory in the back and watched as expert chocolatiers rolled chocolate into these flake-like designs called 'rama'. Like a pair of street urchins we waited patiently with wide eyes until they noticed us. One pointed us to a side door and came round with a plate of fresh rama for us. Absolutely insane how good this chocolate is - rich, soft, sweet. Everything you could possibly want from a chocolate. Indescribable, really, in taste and goodness. Sorry.
Our first week in Argentina has been filled with high quality flavour like that. Back where the supermarkets have fresh meat, cheese, bread, fruit, vegetables... in fact having a supermarket with a fridge is a good enough start. In fact, having a supermarket at all is a great start. We've been able to eat proper meals again, and enjoy them on the peaceful streets of town. Argentinians are attractive people. The women are beautiful - dark hair, olive skin and gorgeous in their sundresses. Stark contrast to the Bolivian women who I'm sorry to say (and this is only my opinion - and Woody's although she'll not admit it) smell like eggs and urine. And not in a good way. The men are stereotypically Latin American - red-blooded and dark, but warm and friendly. they are very tactile people, affectionate and smiley - in every way enhancing our Argentine experience whether it's buying a mince empanada or asking the time...
At the same time, Argentinians are as difficult to understand as they are attractive. I suppose if you imagine a Spanish speaker learning how to speak English from an Oxford professor, then trying to get directions from a Glaswegian bus driver. The words are mostly the same, but it's the pronunciation that's throwing us for a loop. For example the word for chicken - 'pollo', pronounced 'po-yo' everywhere else, in Argentina is pronounced 'po-Jo'. And every other time where there's a sound like that - when a double 'l' sounds like a 'y' it now sounds like a really big 'J'. I think it might take a little extra practice to grasp it but based on events in Chile it looks like we'll have plenty opportunity...
The earthquake has been huge news here. The light fittings and chairs were shaking in our hostel when it hit Chile probably 1000 miles away. We're counting ourselves lucky that we found the country too expensive and jetted off a little early. For the moment we seem blessed anyway. The day of the earthquake we were swimming in crystal clear lakes and jumping off bridges into even clearer rivers. Hardly seems fair but if anything it puts a lot into perspective and it reinforces the need for us to appreciate what we're doing at any given moment. Looks like we're skipping through avoiding these natural disasters as we go. Hopeful that it stays that way.
Latest address reads 'somewhere in Welsh Patagonia'. Quite like Wales in that it's cold, but unlike Wales in that it's not a craphole. Although a guy yesterday wondered what we were doing here in the 'asshole of the world' all the way from beautiful Scotland. It's great fun telling people where we come from, seriously, their faces change, they're more interested in what we're up to and even happier to see us. So it seems the status quo remains the same all over the world: everybody loves the Scottish....
Waking up to the amazing green scenery and enticing mountains made us thirsty to get into the wild and see what we could find. Cerro Lopez (2076m) - a beast of a walk up sandy path, stony track and finally through snow to the peak. Richly rewarded with 360 degree views of the huge number of lakes glistening in the sun, snow-topped volcanoes against a cloudless azure sky. the day was so clear we could see all the way over the border into Chile and beyond. Quite incredible. And we also saw a snake.
The next challenge - how can we get as many samples of chocolate as possible without having to pay for anything? Walking around town we popped into chocolate shops here and there, browsed and made very good 'I-take-my-chocolate-very-seriously' faces and before we knew it we were being given the most delicious samples - tiramisu, macadamia nut and Patagonian honey, passion fruit, strawberry cream... Be cool though, can't look too excited. Mull it over, wait a respectable time (90 seconds seems about right), then move to the door. Then giggle and skip away like a couple of pixies. Be cool. Really I think that our eyes give us away - they're so hungry for luxury like that. We visited one shop with a factory in the back and watched as expert chocolatiers rolled chocolate into these flake-like designs called 'rama'. Like a pair of street urchins we waited patiently with wide eyes until they noticed us. One pointed us to a side door and came round with a plate of fresh rama for us. Absolutely insane how good this chocolate is - rich, soft, sweet. Everything you could possibly want from a chocolate. Indescribable, really, in taste and goodness. Sorry.
Our first week in Argentina has been filled with high quality flavour like that. Back where the supermarkets have fresh meat, cheese, bread, fruit, vegetables... in fact having a supermarket with a fridge is a good enough start. In fact, having a supermarket at all is a great start. We've been able to eat proper meals again, and enjoy them on the peaceful streets of town. Argentinians are attractive people. The women are beautiful - dark hair, olive skin and gorgeous in their sundresses. Stark contrast to the Bolivian women who I'm sorry to say (and this is only my opinion - and Woody's although she'll not admit it) smell like eggs and urine. And not in a good way. The men are stereotypically Latin American - red-blooded and dark, but warm and friendly. they are very tactile people, affectionate and smiley - in every way enhancing our Argentine experience whether it's buying a mince empanada or asking the time...
At the same time, Argentinians are as difficult to understand as they are attractive. I suppose if you imagine a Spanish speaker learning how to speak English from an Oxford professor, then trying to get directions from a Glaswegian bus driver. The words are mostly the same, but it's the pronunciation that's throwing us for a loop. For example the word for chicken - 'pollo', pronounced 'po-yo' everywhere else, in Argentina is pronounced 'po-Jo'. And every other time where there's a sound like that - when a double 'l' sounds like a 'y' it now sounds like a really big 'J'. I think it might take a little extra practice to grasp it but based on events in Chile it looks like we'll have plenty opportunity...
The earthquake has been huge news here. The light fittings and chairs were shaking in our hostel when it hit Chile probably 1000 miles away. We're counting ourselves lucky that we found the country too expensive and jetted off a little early. For the moment we seem blessed anyway. The day of the earthquake we were swimming in crystal clear lakes and jumping off bridges into even clearer rivers. Hardly seems fair but if anything it puts a lot into perspective and it reinforces the need for us to appreciate what we're doing at any given moment. Looks like we're skipping through avoiding these natural disasters as we go. Hopeful that it stays that way.
Latest address reads 'somewhere in Welsh Patagonia'. Quite like Wales in that it's cold, but unlike Wales in that it's not a craphole. Although a guy yesterday wondered what we were doing here in the 'asshole of the world' all the way from beautiful Scotland. It's great fun telling people where we come from, seriously, their faces change, they're more interested in what we're up to and even happier to see us. So it seems the status quo remains the same all over the world: everybody loves the Scottish....
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