Well, another South American experience, which lives up to the description on the tin, the falls at Iguazu, set in a Raiders of the Lost Arc setting are, physically overwhelming. I have never seen such a massive display of power, with endless torrentsof water pouring over cliffs and down crevices, blinding white foam contrasting with blue skies, rainbows and bucolic landscapes. I like to think I can reasonably capture what I am seeing with words , here I am struggling not to resort to cliche (I've failed on two counts in this paragraph alone). Poor Niagra, Eleanor Rosevelt is supposed to have said when presented with this natural wonder. You're not kidding, is the only appropriate response. If you're into the power of nature then this is a must see. Ps if you come here you're going to get wet.
As I've said there isn't one fall, but scores of them, of various power being fed by a confluence of rivers and streams, which straddle the Brazilian and Argentine borders, Paraguay being a couple of miles down the road, as befits its historical luck, misses out on the oportunity to make money out of the local scenery.
Its two South American neighbours, however don't miss a trick, both have set up national parks on each side of the border, and both have to be visited to get a real appreciation of this marvel. Unfortunately it means crossing borders getting stamps two enterance fees and a thirty kilometer detour to get to either side of the falls. This is such a pain that some seek to minimise it by ignoring border formalities on the Brazilian side, thats risky: I've seen a few people being invited for a chat with the local officials for doing that, dont know what the result of the conversation was but it could easily be a financial loss.
As a bonus the national parks dont just supply you with opportunities to look at fast moving water there is also, especially on the Argentine side, lots of trails providing opportunities to see lots of jungle and wildlife: (should that be flora and fauna?) weird plants, strange trees, monkeys, ant eater like creatures, multi coloured birds and butterflies. Unfortunately you also have plenty of opportunities to donate your blood to the local insects.
After a natural wonder a man made one sitting on the border of Paraguay and Brazil supplying 90% of the former's electrcity and 20% of the latters: the Itiapu damm. This edifice, 8 kilometers long and almost 100 meters high is like a Soviet wet dream, nature being forced to submit to mans supremacy, improving the lives of millions. Another view is its an environmental abomination, submerging miles of jungle, displacing long standing communities and destroying a waterfall bigger than Iguazu. Now its not like me to give the eco warriors position a hearing but if you listen to the message your given at the damm's visitor centre you would be forgiven for thinking you had entered a Greenpeace seminar. The list of things they were doing for the environment was endless and the hypocrisy was rank: eight kilometers of concrete, while impressive, is just that, no matter how you pretty up its surroundings. Why dont they just say on balance we placed greater value on connecting millions of poor people to the power system through this dam than we did on maintaining the local environment as it was? Why bend the knee to the green orthodoxy? They're never going to get the environmentalists to accept the damm. Is helping millions of poor people not a pretty powerful justification for the changes to the local environment?
The Fact is what you think of the dam is influenced by your politics: on the whole the middle classes are upset at the loss of some natural wonders, while the local poor are grateful they now have electricity. One thing' for sure its not a zero sum game.
Monday 6 June 2011
Saturday 21 May 2011
Ciduad del Este
This place is in Paraguay, on the border with Brazil and Argentina. The whole city is a tax free zone, which is visited by every nationality in Latin America. City isn´t really the word to describe this place it is more a giant bazzar in the sun, a bizzarre, noisy and smelly one at that, with every nationality, language and shade of skin under the sun. The streets of this free market Nirvana consist of miles and miles of street traders selling everything from lighters, watches duvets, clothing, knocked off goods and counterfiet items through to coal sack sized bags of Cheezy Watsits (honest). In front of the stalls are roads chronically jammed with traffic, behind them seperated by public walkways are shopping malls of various sizes and types.
These walkways are feral: you can´t move without people accosting you either to provide you with a mugging experience, or to you to try and sell you whatever they can. On the sales front, one guy tried to sell me a pair of socks for two peso´s; I said no and walked on; two pairs of socks then, same price; no I said and walked some more. This went on until he was offering me 8 pairs of socks and I was halfway up the street.
On the mugging front? Well to avoid partaking of this experience I took in some of the malls. The contrast was incredible: the public walkways stunk of shit and piss, with flies congregating around piles of waste. On passing the large security type gentlemen, who held the doors open for me, I entered a world of luxury: marble floors, air conditioning, gold leaf, mahogony sales displays, comlimentary drinks and stunning female sales staff, wearing very short skirts. On sale was every type of expensive item and brand you can think of, and food from restaurants where Gordon Ramsey couldn´t get a job. Figuring it wouldn´t be long before my lack of purchases resulted in somebody making a decision to cast me back to Hades I took the oppotunity to use the bathroom. It´s not often going to the loo can be called an event but this one was a chamber, which would challenge Versaille, all marble and mirrors and manned by a uniformed attendant.
I repeated this exercise with two other malls with pretty much the same experience.Methinks, if the divide between the malls I visited , amazing where a white skin gets you in, and the streets is the norm, then there may be trouble ahead down Paraguay way.
These walkways are feral: you can´t move without people accosting you either to provide you with a mugging experience, or to you to try and sell you whatever they can. On the sales front, one guy tried to sell me a pair of socks for two peso´s; I said no and walked on; two pairs of socks then, same price; no I said and walked some more. This went on until he was offering me 8 pairs of socks and I was halfway up the street.
On the mugging front? Well to avoid partaking of this experience I took in some of the malls. The contrast was incredible: the public walkways stunk of shit and piss, with flies congregating around piles of waste. On passing the large security type gentlemen, who held the doors open for me, I entered a world of luxury: marble floors, air conditioning, gold leaf, mahogony sales displays, comlimentary drinks and stunning female sales staff, wearing very short skirts. On sale was every type of expensive item and brand you can think of, and food from restaurants where Gordon Ramsey couldn´t get a job. Figuring it wouldn´t be long before my lack of purchases resulted in somebody making a decision to cast me back to Hades I took the oppotunity to use the bathroom. It´s not often going to the loo can be called an event but this one was a chamber, which would challenge Versaille, all marble and mirrors and manned by a uniformed attendant.
I repeated this exercise with two other malls with pretty much the same experience.Methinks, if the divide between the malls I visited , amazing where a white skin gets you in, and the streets is the norm, then there may be trouble ahead down Paraguay way.
Friday 20 May 2011
No Mercy for the master race in Misssiones Province
Corrientes? Well there is a reason that Graham Greene set his novel the Honourary Consel here: his novels are about alienation, loss of faith and an abrupt change of circumstance. Well I was alienated from, and lost my faith in my Lonely planet guide for suggesting I stop here. Unfortunately there was no abrupt change of circumstances, so I created one and got out of there asap. Posanda ditto, except to say the bridge across to Paraguay revealed some rather good Japanese restuarants. Why is there great sushi 1500 miles inland and why did so many Japanese immigrate to Paraguay?
On to Iguazu falls and, well the only word to describe them is, incredible: 3km of falls in a dense jungle, with all sorts of weird wildlife. So other worldly was this that I was looking for dinosaurs, thankfully I didn´t find any. As in so many previous instances I have magnificent photographs but can´t share them with you due to my technical incompetence.
The falls themself straddle the Argentine Brazil border and getting to see both sides of them means crossing two borders andtravelling about thirty miles either side of a river about a 100 yards in width and paying to get into tweo different national parks. So much for Mercosur.
As I had to cross into Brazil I thought I would visit the Itiapu dam, currently the biggest hydroelectric works on the planet. As you would expect with such an introduction, it is absolutely massive. Its like something out of Star Wars: it supplies 90% of Paraguay´s electricity and 20% of Brazils´. As an example of public works it would have Albert Speer creaming himself.
So now that I have introduced the National Socialists, why do I think there is no mercy for the master race in Missiones province? Well, from Corrientes to Iguazu, I have never seen so many blonde, blue eyed beggars in my life. Anybody wanting to enter the nature nurture debate would do well to visit here. There were schools of these young predators each watched by, and I love the irony, a Tuetonic Fagan. Their heritage reflected in the names that dominate hereabouts: Schmidt, Kreutzfeld, Schumaker etc, etc. If Adolf had been alive he´d have a hard job persuading Jesse Owen to allow for circumstance before judging them. Needless to say they approached me for money, and in the great Scottish tradition of generosity I told them to fuck off.
A propos of nothing, I have noticed in the bookshops in every country I have been in, that a best seller in Latino Americo is a book by somone called Craig Russell: " A Besom de Glasgow". Now initially I thought Besom might have met Tits and thought if knowing tits from Glasgow can make you money round here then I know scores of them. But no, it turns out the novel is about Glasgow in the fifities and was titled a Glasgow Kiss in English. Ah well. So near yet so far.
Next post is Ciduad del Este in Paraguay a town which can only bhe described as the free market gone mental.
On to Iguazu falls and, well the only word to describe them is, incredible: 3km of falls in a dense jungle, with all sorts of weird wildlife. So other worldly was this that I was looking for dinosaurs, thankfully I didn´t find any. As in so many previous instances I have magnificent photographs but can´t share them with you due to my technical incompetence.
The falls themself straddle the Argentine Brazil border and getting to see both sides of them means crossing two borders andtravelling about thirty miles either side of a river about a 100 yards in width and paying to get into tweo different national parks. So much for Mercosur.
As I had to cross into Brazil I thought I would visit the Itiapu dam, currently the biggest hydroelectric works on the planet. As you would expect with such an introduction, it is absolutely massive. Its like something out of Star Wars: it supplies 90% of Paraguay´s electricity and 20% of Brazils´. As an example of public works it would have Albert Speer creaming himself.
So now that I have introduced the National Socialists, why do I think there is no mercy for the master race in Missiones province? Well, from Corrientes to Iguazu, I have never seen so many blonde, blue eyed beggars in my life. Anybody wanting to enter the nature nurture debate would do well to visit here. There were schools of these young predators each watched by, and I love the irony, a Tuetonic Fagan. Their heritage reflected in the names that dominate hereabouts: Schmidt, Kreutzfeld, Schumaker etc, etc. If Adolf had been alive he´d have a hard job persuading Jesse Owen to allow for circumstance before judging them. Needless to say they approached me for money, and in the great Scottish tradition of generosity I told them to fuck off.
A propos of nothing, I have noticed in the bookshops in every country I have been in, that a best seller in Latino Americo is a book by somone called Craig Russell: " A Besom de Glasgow". Now initially I thought Besom might have met Tits and thought if knowing tits from Glasgow can make you money round here then I know scores of them. But no, it turns out the novel is about Glasgow in the fifities and was titled a Glasgow Kiss in English. Ah well. So near yet so far.
Next post is Ciduad del Este in Paraguay a town which can only bhe described as the free market gone mental.
Sunday 15 May 2011
I dont do dormitories: Salty in Salta
Well it had to happen the first full and frank discussion with a fellow traveller. And honest it wasn´t my fault.
But before going on to describe this vicious attempt to cower me into subnission. I´ll give a brief description of Salta. A pleasant town, about the size of Edinburgh, with great weather, numerous squares with fountains and palm trees; surrounded by low hills, which are covered in trees. A really terrific setting. One of the hills has a cable car to the top where you can see some of the high Andes. It is also a base for treks into the Argentine Alto Plata. But as you can imagine I have had enough of high altitude, so there was none of that.
Where Salta really excelled for me was the grub: I have had the best empenadas so far, stuffed with chicken, egg, mince, cheese, onion and grilled fish and as for the ice cream? Absolutely marvellous. But even these were topped by the bif de chorizo, a pound and a half of fillet steak, cooked rare and piping hot with a side dish of mashed spuds, all for less than a tenner. Bliss.
As for the full and frank discussion, well that came about on the last night of my stay in Salta when the management in the hostel I was staying in told me they had double booked my room, well as I was already in the room my view was it wasn´t my problem. They got quite persistant saying that this was a regular and they didn´t want to let him down. Still not my problem. They then suggested that I move to one of their dormitories. Nope was my reply, they then offered to let me stay for nothing for the three nights I was booked with them, if I moved to the dorm. This was strange who was this person that they would make such a suggestion? But I figured how bad could one night in a dorm be?
Well I should have known better. There is a reason I dont do dorms: six beds in a room usually means people turning up pissed at four in the morning and other people leaving on trips at five in the morning, while the other guests would be subjecting me to burps farts and snoring´, but for three nights free acconodation I foolishly made an exception.
Things started well enough, two of the other guests were aussies who seemed ok, there was a third absent `room mate´ who I was told went out on a bender each night and came back in the early hours and snored like a pig for the rest of the morning. Great, I thought, but its only one night. I did wonder hy they didn´t dig the snorer up about his behaviour but put little weight on it. Any way, three in the morning in comes the person in question, Chinese in appearance, a big boy, and pissed out of his head as described he collapsed onto his bunk and snored the rest of the night away.
I was patient: I didn´t do anything, or say a word. That will teach me, I thought. Anyway I was leaving to get a bus at 7.30 I could catch up on my sleep then. I get up and go for a shower in the on suite bathroom . When I return I am faced with one irate oriental fellow, who shouts at me, in an American accent, `could I not keep the noise down as people are trying to sleep`.
At this point I should say some of you have commented on my frequent use of sweary words so I´ll paraphrase what followed. You can use your imagination to figure out what was really said.
´Sorry´ I repled.
` You heard me`.
`You´ve got a nerve` I said, `given you´ve kept everybody awake, banging in here in the middle of the night and then snoring like a pig for the rest of it `.
He then told me to `go fornicate with my self you scottish fellatist`.
I responded to this request by calling him an oriental vagina.
For some reason this upset him even more and he made a move towards me.
If he expected me to withdraw he was dissapointed. I shortened the distance between us even more, and shoved my face into his, informing him that if he wished to discuss this matter further I would be more than happy to comply.
By this time the two antipodeans had risen , increasing the noise even further causing the the night porter to visit us.
Amazingly Charlie Chan´s bigger brother ( is that racist?) said to the porter I had threatened him because he had asked me to reduce the noise I was making as it was stopping people from sleeping. At this point the two Aussies showed more testes than they had previously, by saying to the porter that it was the large oriental fellow who had started the debate and that he had been insufferable for several nights previous.
All the eastern aggressor could say to this was `why didn´t you guys say something earlier?`
Anyway it didn´t come to blows though it came close. I got ready to leave and my correspondent chuntered away under his breath, though I got the feeling he wasn´t used to rigorous debates.
As I say, I don´t do dorms. This one almost spoiled my bif de chorizo.
I´m now on my way to Iguazu falls, via Corrientes, the setting for Graham Greene´s ``The Honourary Consul`. Ah´m as literate as fuck me, eh? Or I would be if this Argentine keyboard let me punctate properly.
But before going on to describe this vicious attempt to cower me into subnission. I´ll give a brief description of Salta. A pleasant town, about the size of Edinburgh, with great weather, numerous squares with fountains and palm trees; surrounded by low hills, which are covered in trees. A really terrific setting. One of the hills has a cable car to the top where you can see some of the high Andes. It is also a base for treks into the Argentine Alto Plata. But as you can imagine I have had enough of high altitude, so there was none of that.
Where Salta really excelled for me was the grub: I have had the best empenadas so far, stuffed with chicken, egg, mince, cheese, onion and grilled fish and as for the ice cream? Absolutely marvellous. But even these were topped by the bif de chorizo, a pound and a half of fillet steak, cooked rare and piping hot with a side dish of mashed spuds, all for less than a tenner. Bliss.
As for the full and frank discussion, well that came about on the last night of my stay in Salta when the management in the hostel I was staying in told me they had double booked my room, well as I was already in the room my view was it wasn´t my problem. They got quite persistant saying that this was a regular and they didn´t want to let him down. Still not my problem. They then suggested that I move to one of their dormitories. Nope was my reply, they then offered to let me stay for nothing for the three nights I was booked with them, if I moved to the dorm. This was strange who was this person that they would make such a suggestion? But I figured how bad could one night in a dorm be?
Well I should have known better. There is a reason I dont do dorms: six beds in a room usually means people turning up pissed at four in the morning and other people leaving on trips at five in the morning, while the other guests would be subjecting me to burps farts and snoring´, but for three nights free acconodation I foolishly made an exception.
Things started well enough, two of the other guests were aussies who seemed ok, there was a third absent `room mate´ who I was told went out on a bender each night and came back in the early hours and snored like a pig for the rest of the morning. Great, I thought, but its only one night. I did wonder hy they didn´t dig the snorer up about his behaviour but put little weight on it. Any way, three in the morning in comes the person in question, Chinese in appearance, a big boy, and pissed out of his head as described he collapsed onto his bunk and snored the rest of the night away.
I was patient: I didn´t do anything, or say a word. That will teach me, I thought. Anyway I was leaving to get a bus at 7.30 I could catch up on my sleep then. I get up and go for a shower in the on suite bathroom . When I return I am faced with one irate oriental fellow, who shouts at me, in an American accent, `could I not keep the noise down as people are trying to sleep`.
At this point I should say some of you have commented on my frequent use of sweary words so I´ll paraphrase what followed. You can use your imagination to figure out what was really said.
´Sorry´ I repled.
` You heard me`.
`You´ve got a nerve` I said, `given you´ve kept everybody awake, banging in here in the middle of the night and then snoring like a pig for the rest of it `.
He then told me to `go fornicate with my self you scottish fellatist`.
I responded to this request by calling him an oriental vagina.
For some reason this upset him even more and he made a move towards me.
If he expected me to withdraw he was dissapointed. I shortened the distance between us even more, and shoved my face into his, informing him that if he wished to discuss this matter further I would be more than happy to comply.
By this time the two antipodeans had risen , increasing the noise even further causing the the night porter to visit us.
Amazingly Charlie Chan´s bigger brother ( is that racist?) said to the porter I had threatened him because he had asked me to reduce the noise I was making as it was stopping people from sleeping. At this point the two Aussies showed more testes than they had previously, by saying to the porter that it was the large oriental fellow who had started the debate and that he had been insufferable for several nights previous.
All the eastern aggressor could say to this was `why didn´t you guys say something earlier?`
Anyway it didn´t come to blows though it came close. I got ready to leave and my correspondent chuntered away under his breath, though I got the feeling he wasn´t used to rigorous debates.
As I say, I don´t do dorms. This one almost spoiled my bif de chorizo.
I´m now on my way to Iguazu falls, via Corrientes, the setting for Graham Greene´s ``The Honourary Consul`. Ah´m as literate as fuck me, eh? Or I would be if this Argentine keyboard let me punctate properly.
Wednesday 11 May 2011
frozen and burnt at the same time
Travelled from San Pedro in Chile to Uyuni in Bolivia, which took four days.
The sun was scorching, the air was bone dry and at night the wind was howling and at night it was down around minus 15. All this with accomodation that was to say the least basic, forget about electricity, internet, mobile phones air conditioning or heating. Oh and the altitude varied from 4300 to 4900 meters ( thats 14,700 to 15,300 feet in old money). To say I was gubbed at the end of it was an understatment. Fortunately other than tiredness and my skin drying up and scabbing, I dealt with the altitude ok, unfortunately this wasnt the case with some others. God knows what I would have been like if I hadnt spent three days acclimatising to the altitude at San Pedro.
I cant comlain about the organisers of the trip, as they warned me about the nature of the accomodation, and the potential effects of the altitude and the trip delivered everything they said it would: unbelievable scenery comprising salt lakes, snow capped mountains, multi coloured lakes and weird wildlife. But there is only so much scenery you can take before the misery inflicted by the environment starts to undermine it. I am glad I went onto the Alto Plano but there wont be a second go. Oh and I dont want to see or eat another llama in my lifetime, it tasted ok, but I now associate it with purgatory.
First impressios of Bolivia to follow at a later date.
The sun was scorching, the air was bone dry and at night the wind was howling and at night it was down around minus 15. All this with accomodation that was to say the least basic, forget about electricity, internet, mobile phones air conditioning or heating. Oh and the altitude varied from 4300 to 4900 meters ( thats 14,700 to 15,300 feet in old money). To say I was gubbed at the end of it was an understatment. Fortunately other than tiredness and my skin drying up and scabbing, I dealt with the altitude ok, unfortunately this wasnt the case with some others. God knows what I would have been like if I hadnt spent three days acclimatising to the altitude at San Pedro.
I cant comlain about the organisers of the trip, as they warned me about the nature of the accomodation, and the potential effects of the altitude and the trip delivered everything they said it would: unbelievable scenery comprising salt lakes, snow capped mountains, multi coloured lakes and weird wildlife. But there is only so much scenery you can take before the misery inflicted by the environment starts to undermine it. I am glad I went onto the Alto Plano but there wont be a second go. Oh and I dont want to see or eat another llama in my lifetime, it tasted ok, but I now associate it with purgatory.
First impressios of Bolivia to follow at a later date.
Friday 6 May 2011
More Atacama
Well late evening in San Pedro de Atacama is very pleasant about 7 celsius, no wind and plenty of eating and drinking places not to mention a backdrop of a whole pile of 6000 metre mountains. This looks not bad thinks me.
Well it isn´t bad, technically it isn´t that warm, about 18 to 20 degrees, but the intensity of the sun is unbelievable: it feels like forty degrees out of the shade. I now know what it feels like to be a meal for one in the microwave, and this is with sun factor fifty cream liberally applied . As if that isn´t bad enough when you step in the shade it becomes cold. As a result I am darting to and from different sides of the street like some obsessive jaywalker.
As for what I am going to do here sun allowing, well I am going on a tour of the salt flats, geysers and at night, when there is a uniformity to the suns influence,to an astronomical institute. Then on Sunday its on to Bolivia, where I am reliably informed I will be spending my first night in a byre, I can´t wait.
There has been a gap in this epistle and that is the town of Iquique, near the Peruvian border, where I stayed a few nights, but there wasn´t anything to report there except 600 metre sand dunes, massive waves, a city centre with sidewalks (and I do mean sidewalks) made of wood, lorries that deliver liquid gas like like ice cream vans in Scotland (yes to music), beautiful one storey wooden buildings, tsunami evacuation signs in the streets and a giant multi storey department store called Ripley´s, which believe it or not was quite Alien to everything around it.
Well it isn´t bad, technically it isn´t that warm, about 18 to 20 degrees, but the intensity of the sun is unbelievable: it feels like forty degrees out of the shade. I now know what it feels like to be a meal for one in the microwave, and this is with sun factor fifty cream liberally applied . As if that isn´t bad enough when you step in the shade it becomes cold. As a result I am darting to and from different sides of the street like some obsessive jaywalker.
As for what I am going to do here sun allowing, well I am going on a tour of the salt flats, geysers and at night, when there is a uniformity to the suns influence,to an astronomical institute. Then on Sunday its on to Bolivia, where I am reliably informed I will be spending my first night in a byre, I can´t wait.
There has been a gap in this epistle and that is the town of Iquique, near the Peruvian border, where I stayed a few nights, but there wasn´t anything to report there except 600 metre sand dunes, massive waves, a city centre with sidewalks (and I do mean sidewalks) made of wood, lorries that deliver liquid gas like like ice cream vans in Scotland (yes to music), beautiful one storey wooden buildings, tsunami evacuation signs in the streets and a giant multi storey department store called Ripley´s, which believe it or not was quite Alien to everything around it.
Thursday 5 May 2011
Atacama desert
On my way up to Iquique, which has taken me through the Atacama to calma, the town which does schopp con piernes this takes me through the town of Calma, a mining town, which does schopp con piernes. How well it does it I will investigate later.
Going through the Atacama is to the least strange, initially there is a desert spilling onto the sea, with a backdrop of quite high mountains. At this point there is some flora and fauna especially on the coast. Strangely enough its totally overcast, despite the fact it hasn´t rained in years. When the road starts to climb the signs of life decrease until you are through the cloud cover and there is no signs of life at all other than the tarmacadam and the power cables that fringe it. As the road gets higher the desert changes form in that hundreds of little volcanoe like mounds appears appear, shaped like upturned scallop shells. It instead of the earth being a mucky brown the power of the sun makes the surface appear almost white. This goes on for hours until I arrive at Calma. Without a doubt this is the harshest landscape I´ve ever seen.
Next stop naked women and beer.
Going through the Atacama is to the least strange, initially there is a desert spilling onto the sea, with a backdrop of quite high mountains. At this point there is some flora and fauna especially on the coast. Strangely enough its totally overcast, despite the fact it hasn´t rained in years. When the road starts to climb the signs of life decrease until you are through the cloud cover and there is no signs of life at all other than the tarmacadam and the power cables that fringe it. As the road gets higher the desert changes form in that hundreds of little volcanoe like mounds appears appear, shaped like upturned scallop shells. It instead of the earth being a mucky brown the power of the sun makes the surface appear almost white. This goes on for hours until I arrive at Calma. Without a doubt this is the harshest landscape I´ve ever seen.
Next stop naked women and beer.
Monday 2 May 2011
May day
Well its international workers day, and here in Santiago everythings shut down for the big demonstration. In preparation the authorities have behaved in the same manner as Thursdays demonstration: put lots of men in body armour and with shields on the streets, backed up by lots of armoured vehicles with rather ominous attachments.
The demonsration was to say the least huge, Lots of banners, boistresness and shouting but , with one or two exceptions, peaceful. The demonstrators made the usual appeals to the tenents of dialectic materialism: "the workers united etc etc", which the authorities generally met with a bored here we go again sort of response. One incident stood out a demonstrator was making an appeal of proletarian brotherhood to one policeman who responded by waving his baton and shouting at the representative of the workers, probably along the lines of "fuck off you bell end, or I´ll shove this baton up your arse so hard and so deep you´ll be tasting shit of your teeth for a fortnight". But in Spanish. Divide and conquer thats what I say.You´r probably wondering how I got so close to the action, easy I watched it on television. If you think I was going out in that your off your head. L a Serena and then the Atacama next.
The demonsration was to say the least huge, Lots of banners, boistresness and shouting but , with one or two exceptions, peaceful. The demonstrators made the usual appeals to the tenents of dialectic materialism: "the workers united etc etc", which the authorities generally met with a bored here we go again sort of response. One incident stood out a demonstrator was making an appeal of proletarian brotherhood to one policeman who responded by waving his baton and shouting at the representative of the workers, probably along the lines of "fuck off you bell end, or I´ll shove this baton up your arse so hard and so deep you´ll be tasting shit of your teeth for a fortnight". But in Spanish. Divide and conquer thats what I say.You´r probably wondering how I got so close to the action, easy I watched it on television. If you think I was going out in that your off your head. L a Serena and then the Atacama next.
Saturday 30 April 2011
Of to Valpariso with detergent in hand
This daystarted of well and then got weird. Got up took my stuff to the laundry, bought an open ended ticket to Valpariso and got some breakfast all without mishap. I was finally getting the hang of this Spanish thing: I was cooking on gas.
Well the gas must have been infused with acid. I got on the bus, took my seat and took a trip that could not have been foreseen. On the bus came some ladies who announced something about Proctor and Gamble and a promotion. They then gave everyone a box of Ariel "Seven Solutions" clothes washing capsules. Normally I would have been grateful for such largess as it would have been one less item in the shopping for one queue at Tesco`s, but I didn`t need it. I tried to say no but the enthusiastic middle age lady wouldn`t hear of it, so eventually I gave in and placed the box on the adjacent chair.
Now I had seven solutions to problems I didn`t know anything about and one problem that the box couldn`t help me with. The obvious remedy was to leave the box on the chair, well no, I tried that, and the driver came shooting off the bus and gave me them back. I said I didn`t want them, he said I wasn`t leaving them on his bus.
The next obvious solution was to stick it in the bin. Well I wasn`t too keen on that idea I`m a waste not want type of person, I also would like to preserve the planet, protect the environment, reverse global warming and hug a polar bear - metaphorically speaking-and here was my chance. I would give the capsules to the first lady I walked into ( Sexist stereotyping I know, but this is a Latin American and Catholic country and when in Rome..).
Well the first lady I offered the box to looked at me like I`d asked her to fellate me, what did I say wrong? I ran over what I`d said. Mmm, there was a chance I`d asked her to wash me with this detergent, maybe I was being to optomistic about my Spanish, I dont think I asked her to do anything strange. I tried again with another lady. Result, after asking me If I washed, I told her that I was a tourist, I`d been given this and I didn`t need it. With a quick gracias she was away box in hand. And what did she do once she was a reasonable distance away? She stuck it in the bin.
The motto of this saga is to avoid embarrassment fuck the environment and waste everything.
As for Valpiriso, its exactly like it is in the guide books, set on a bay with a backdrop of steep hill it also has a beach resort Viña del Mars next to it. A bit lie Malaga. Like Malaga it is also a working port and naval base. Consequently its full of seafood restaurants, markets and sailors of a merchant and military bent, mean looking bastards who look like they would smash your teeth in if you as much as said hello to them ( There`s a pun and a joke in there folks). One difference from Malaga is the hills are a lot steeper and the buildings cling to them like gulls to a cliff side. How they deal with the earthquakes they get around here? It was using the funiculars, that save pedestrians having to negotiate the punishing gradients, that provided the answer: they dont, the buildings often fall down, often onto the buildins below them, which is not nice.
I did not notice any micro breweries here, a first on this trip.
Well the gas must have been infused with acid. I got on the bus, took my seat and took a trip that could not have been foreseen. On the bus came some ladies who announced something about Proctor and Gamble and a promotion. They then gave everyone a box of Ariel "Seven Solutions" clothes washing capsules. Normally I would have been grateful for such largess as it would have been one less item in the shopping for one queue at Tesco`s, but I didn`t need it. I tried to say no but the enthusiastic middle age lady wouldn`t hear of it, so eventually I gave in and placed the box on the adjacent chair.
Now I had seven solutions to problems I didn`t know anything about and one problem that the box couldn`t help me with. The obvious remedy was to leave the box on the chair, well no, I tried that, and the driver came shooting off the bus and gave me them back. I said I didn`t want them, he said I wasn`t leaving them on his bus.
The next obvious solution was to stick it in the bin. Well I wasn`t too keen on that idea I`m a waste not want type of person, I also would like to preserve the planet, protect the environment, reverse global warming and hug a polar bear - metaphorically speaking-and here was my chance. I would give the capsules to the first lady I walked into ( Sexist stereotyping I know, but this is a Latin American and Catholic country and when in Rome..).
Well the first lady I offered the box to looked at me like I`d asked her to fellate me, what did I say wrong? I ran over what I`d said. Mmm, there was a chance I`d asked her to wash me with this detergent, maybe I was being to optomistic about my Spanish, I dont think I asked her to do anything strange. I tried again with another lady. Result, after asking me If I washed, I told her that I was a tourist, I`d been given this and I didn`t need it. With a quick gracias she was away box in hand. And what did she do once she was a reasonable distance away? She stuck it in the bin.
The motto of this saga is to avoid embarrassment fuck the environment and waste everything.
As for Valpiriso, its exactly like it is in the guide books, set on a bay with a backdrop of steep hill it also has a beach resort Viña del Mars next to it. A bit lie Malaga. Like Malaga it is also a working port and naval base. Consequently its full of seafood restaurants, markets and sailors of a merchant and military bent, mean looking bastards who look like they would smash your teeth in if you as much as said hello to them ( There`s a pun and a joke in there folks). One difference from Malaga is the hills are a lot steeper and the buildings cling to them like gulls to a cliff side. How they deal with the earthquakes they get around here? It was using the funiculars, that save pedestrians having to negotiate the punishing gradients, that provided the answer: they dont, the buildings often fall down, often onto the buildins below them, which is not nice.
I did not notice any micro breweries here, a first on this trip.
Thursday 28 April 2011
Santiago
Well first impressions of Santiago are boring, grey, smoggy and full of high rises: like Birmingham on steroids. And then all of a sudden it isn`t, well boring that is; it was still grey and the smog hadn`t thickened enough to obliterate my view of the high rises. The reason for Santiago`s change in presentation is a demonstration in the centre of town, taking place between two large statues of men on horses. It`s full of loud students with one or two elderly types among them, many waving peculiar flags: " Estudiantes contre los Pedagouges"; blue and white ones with U C on them; and green and yellow ones with the word Fleche. Just in case all this wasn`t enough to get them noticed there was also a liberal use of loud hailers to chant out the rythms of the workers united etc etc..
It all seemed good natured, but there were a few signals of how things are dealt with here if the authorities get fed up. Down the side streets there were a lot of guys with batons shields and Darth Vader helmets. Alongside them a whole range of vehicles, which looked as if they had been diverted from the Falls Rd: armoured cars, water cannon and a whole fleet of green buses with slits for windows and the exhausts coming out of the roofs. Overhead helicopters flew in circles. It all passed peacefully and no skulls were cracked, well none that I saw. If there was I will see it on TV because there were cameras everywhere..
As if that wasn`t enough for one day things got even more interesting when I met with a friend of a friend here, who introduced me to a concept that I`ve never heard of before: "Cafe con piernas". These are coffee shops where you are served coffee by very shapely ladies who happen to be wearing not a lot, and I mean not a lot. There is a whole string of these places in the centre of Santiago: they are well lit, cheap and don`t have any bouncers. Amazingly they are not allowed to sell alcohol, only coffee, fruit juice and soft drinks, well in Santiago anyway. Furthermore the lady serving you gives you a hug and a kiss when you go. It is possible there is more to these places than I have hitherto discovered, only time will tell. I have also been informed further north there are premises called "Schopp con piernes" which is the same idea only with draught beer.
It all seemed good natured, but there were a few signals of how things are dealt with here if the authorities get fed up. Down the side streets there were a lot of guys with batons shields and Darth Vader helmets. Alongside them a whole range of vehicles, which looked as if they had been diverted from the Falls Rd: armoured cars, water cannon and a whole fleet of green buses with slits for windows and the exhausts coming out of the roofs. Overhead helicopters flew in circles. It all passed peacefully and no skulls were cracked, well none that I saw. If there was I will see it on TV because there were cameras everywhere..
As if that wasn`t enough for one day things got even more interesting when I met with a friend of a friend here, who introduced me to a concept that I`ve never heard of before: "Cafe con piernas". These are coffee shops where you are served coffee by very shapely ladies who happen to be wearing not a lot, and I mean not a lot. There is a whole string of these places in the centre of Santiago: they are well lit, cheap and don`t have any bouncers. Amazingly they are not allowed to sell alcohol, only coffee, fruit juice and soft drinks, well in Santiago anyway. Furthermore the lady serving you gives you a hug and a kiss when you go. It is possible there is more to these places than I have hitherto discovered, only time will tell. I have also been informed further north there are premises called "Schopp con piernes" which is the same idea only with draught beer.
Wednesday 27 April 2011
Off to Santiago
There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth as I told the Prussian princeses, it was time for me to go. It took a full twenty minutes for me to dry my eyes, compose myself and get ready for yet another bus. They strangely enough were ok about it. As the bus took of I had a sense of deja vu, well as sods law would have it, the route this bus took to Santiago was the same one as the bus took to the base camp of that big mountain I was at on Tuesday, wot I cant spell the name of. You couldn`t invent it.
A fter several hours of doing the same thing I did a few days ago I was mildly entertained by customs, which was an example of Fordism gone wild. You had two adjacent booths next to each other, one for Chile and one for Argentina. You waited in a long queue at the Argentine booth, the person with the uniform took the bit of paper you recieved on entering the country, stamped your passport and gave you another load of paper, which you took to the next long queue at the next booth, where a person in a different uniform took the load of paper `from you stamped your passport and gave you one of the bits of paper back. Why didn`t they just give each other the load of paper? I wouldn't have objected.
Well as much as the climb to the customs post was straightforward, the descent on the Chilean side was terrifying: it wasn`t a descent but a drop, a fucking big one, the road wound beneath you for at least a couple of thousand feet towards what looked like a little resevoir, but was probably a big massive one. There must have been at least thirty tightly bound switches on the road, every one with a unreal gradient, What was worse was there was little leeway outside of the macadamed surface, no crash barriers and we would be going through some clouds. I dont know what was worse, watching the front of the bus overlapping with the end of the road, or wondering in the murk if we were about to lose òur footing.
Heights usually dont bother me, but I`ll tell you I`ll not be doing that again. Any way I am now in Santiago, I have changed my underwear and am chugging down sedatives.
A fter several hours of doing the same thing I did a few days ago I was mildly entertained by customs, which was an example of Fordism gone wild. You had two adjacent booths next to each other, one for Chile and one for Argentina. You waited in a long queue at the Argentine booth, the person with the uniform took the bit of paper you recieved on entering the country, stamped your passport and gave you another load of paper, which you took to the next long queue at the next booth, where a person in a different uniform took the load of paper `from you stamped your passport and gave you one of the bits of paper back. Why didn`t they just give each other the load of paper? I wouldn't have objected.
Well as much as the climb to the customs post was straightforward, the descent on the Chilean side was terrifying: it wasn`t a descent but a drop, a fucking big one, the road wound beneath you for at least a couple of thousand feet towards what looked like a little resevoir, but was probably a big massive one. There must have been at least thirty tightly bound switches on the road, every one with a unreal gradient, What was worse was there was little leeway outside of the macadamed surface, no crash barriers and we would be going through some clouds. I dont know what was worse, watching the front of the bus overlapping with the end of the road, or wondering in the murk if we were about to lose òur footing.
Heights usually dont bother me, but I`ll tell you I`ll not be doing that again. Any way I am now in Santiago, I have changed my underwear and am chugging down sedatives.
Tuesday 26 April 2011
Mendoza
Reading through what I wrote about Mendoza I was maybe a little harsh. Before I go on to say why I just need to make sure Hector, a frequent correspondant has his dictionary, atlas, bumper book of facts, and someone next to him to interpret those nasty things called sentences, got them. Good I´ll carry on.
Its a relatively small town, it claims a population of lose to a million though god knows where it keeps them: the city centre is small, with a few high rise buildings and there doesn´t appear to be a lot of suburbs. The centre is built on a grid pattern. You would think that would make getting lost difficult; wrong. While the streets north to south keep their name throughout their length the streets running east to west change their name every block; thats town planning for you, its also a bloody nuisance. Every street in the centre is lined with trees whose branches stretch over the roads giving them a bucolic tunnel like appearance, which is broken only by a central square and four peripheral squares full of the usual fountains and guys on horses; none of whom are called William. Together with all the bodegas, coffee shops and outdoor cafes it makes the town a pleasant place to walk about in. The place is obviously prosperous, though the quality of the streets, like all the Argentine towns I´ve been in, declines markedly the further you get from the city centre or the wealthy suburbs.
One aside which makes you ponder how much the dear green place has declined in economic importance is the gate to the main park in Mendoza, which is a massive piece of fabricated iron and gold leaf, which according to the plate on the main columnm was manufactured by McFarlanes of Glasgow, wonder what happened to them? This is one of many capital items I´ve seen in Argentina that have been manufactured on the Clyde. I doubt we´re exporting them much these days, apart from whisky. Sad really.
Its a relatively small town, it claims a population of lose to a million though god knows where it keeps them: the city centre is small, with a few high rise buildings and there doesn´t appear to be a lot of suburbs. The centre is built on a grid pattern. You would think that would make getting lost difficult; wrong. While the streets north to south keep their name throughout their length the streets running east to west change their name every block; thats town planning for you, its also a bloody nuisance. Every street in the centre is lined with trees whose branches stretch over the roads giving them a bucolic tunnel like appearance, which is broken only by a central square and four peripheral squares full of the usual fountains and guys on horses; none of whom are called William. Together with all the bodegas, coffee shops and outdoor cafes it makes the town a pleasant place to walk about in. The place is obviously prosperous, though the quality of the streets, like all the Argentine towns I´ve been in, declines markedly the further you get from the city centre or the wealthy suburbs.
One aside which makes you ponder how much the dear green place has declined in economic importance is the gate to the main park in Mendoza, which is a massive piece of fabricated iron and gold leaf, which according to the plate on the main columnm was manufactured by McFarlanes of Glasgow, wonder what happened to them? This is one of many capital items I´ve seen in Argentina that have been manufactured on the Clyde. I doubt we´re exporting them much these days, apart from whisky. Sad really.
Up the mountains
The base camp for Aconagua is 90 miles from here so I thought I would do what all intrepid outdoor types do and get the bus to it. After all I´d never seen a 7000 metre mountain before (The pedants can stop right there, I know its just shy of the 7000 mark).
Fortunately the sky was cloudless, though the first 40 minutes of the journey were pretty uneventful, unless you have a vineyard fetish, then a sharp right, a change of roads, and there is the first sight of the big beast. It is enormous, trouble is you have no real sense of how big it is as there are other brutes stretching out on either side of it as far as the eye can see; some of them obviously volcanoes, all of them covered in snow. This new road was also plumb straight. After a half hour the high peaks dissapeared: obscured by the foothills.
Then the climb started, this wasn´t one of those alpine climbs where the road switched back on itself time after time. This road followed the river Mendoza and only bent when the river did. The bus went on and on, the gradients got steeper and steeper, the river carving canyons out of the mountainsides, which were striped horizontally by yellows, reds and blues and intermittently with vertical bands of black and green. Every so often the climb would reach a valley where the river would split and form delta like strands over the gravel bed then it would coalesce and strike out to carve new canyons. Relentlesslythe climb continued, the bus overtaking lorries that were wheezing, coughing and belching out black smoke with the exertions of the climb. The montains towering higher and higher with every mile.
After four hours of this the bus came to a halt in a place called Puente del Inca, which is a multi coloured tunnel carved in the rock by the river, the colours formed by the various ores contained in it. Unfortunately for me the entrance to the base camp was another hours walk and four hundred foot higher, so off I went. At this point I was about 9000 foot high, the wind was howling, the sun was opressive and it was getting colder all this combined to make a short walk tougher than it should´ve been. Then finally base camp and through another canyon a closer view of the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas.
Now I had a sense of perspective, Anacongua atill seemed huge, the snow line was still thousands of feet higher and the moutain seemed totally covered in the stuff. There are a few guide books that say all you need to climb this mountain is an experienced guide, proper equipment and a good level of fitmess. To my mind that would be madness: God alone knows what the conditions are like up there. It was getting bad enough where I was. Attempt to climb 22,000 feet to get planted six foot under? No thanks.
Anyway after a few hours wandering about it was time to return to Mendoza. After the journey to the base camp the descent was an anti climax. Back at my digs I was greeted by the Teutonic temptresses who told me they went horse riding and that they were sore because of it and wouldn´t be able to walk properly for days. After a brief enquiry about my day they went on to ask me what I did for a living, so I gave then the old semi retirement spiel, which was met by the blondest of the teutons with the response: " You are really lucky, your about the same age as my dad, and he will not be able to retire for years". Back to Earth with a thump.
Fortunately the sky was cloudless, though the first 40 minutes of the journey were pretty uneventful, unless you have a vineyard fetish, then a sharp right, a change of roads, and there is the first sight of the big beast. It is enormous, trouble is you have no real sense of how big it is as there are other brutes stretching out on either side of it as far as the eye can see; some of them obviously volcanoes, all of them covered in snow. This new road was also plumb straight. After a half hour the high peaks dissapeared: obscured by the foothills.
Then the climb started, this wasn´t one of those alpine climbs where the road switched back on itself time after time. This road followed the river Mendoza and only bent when the river did. The bus went on and on, the gradients got steeper and steeper, the river carving canyons out of the mountainsides, which were striped horizontally by yellows, reds and blues and intermittently with vertical bands of black and green. Every so often the climb would reach a valley where the river would split and form delta like strands over the gravel bed then it would coalesce and strike out to carve new canyons. Relentlesslythe climb continued, the bus overtaking lorries that were wheezing, coughing and belching out black smoke with the exertions of the climb. The montains towering higher and higher with every mile.
After four hours of this the bus came to a halt in a place called Puente del Inca, which is a multi coloured tunnel carved in the rock by the river, the colours formed by the various ores contained in it. Unfortunately for me the entrance to the base camp was another hours walk and four hundred foot higher, so off I went. At this point I was about 9000 foot high, the wind was howling, the sun was opressive and it was getting colder all this combined to make a short walk tougher than it should´ve been. Then finally base camp and through another canyon a closer view of the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas.
Now I had a sense of perspective, Anacongua atill seemed huge, the snow line was still thousands of feet higher and the moutain seemed totally covered in the stuff. There are a few guide books that say all you need to climb this mountain is an experienced guide, proper equipment and a good level of fitmess. To my mind that would be madness: God alone knows what the conditions are like up there. It was getting bad enough where I was. Attempt to climb 22,000 feet to get planted six foot under? No thanks.
Anyway after a few hours wandering about it was time to return to Mendoza. After the journey to the base camp the descent was an anti climax. Back at my digs I was greeted by the Teutonic temptresses who told me they went horse riding and that they were sore because of it and wouldn´t be able to walk properly for days. After a brief enquiry about my day they went on to ask me what I did for a living, so I gave then the old semi retirement spiel, which was met by the blondest of the teutons with the response: " You are really lucky, your about the same age as my dad, and he will not be able to retire for years". Back to Earth with a thump.
Monday 25 April 2011
Heading up north
I am now in Mendoza, which is the heart of Argentinian wine country and guess what; I have found another microbrewery, called Mackreprang. I know I have been twittering on about these breweries, but the thing is I haven´t been looking for them, which means there must be a fair amount of them. Oh as an addendum this mob make quite nice stouts and ales again all very strong. Argentine breweries seem to like their alcohol content.
As for the town itself, its pleasant, laid back, but non descript, it has plenty of tree lined avenues and leafy squares, but few striking buildings, unless you count a poor attempt at the Chrysler tower in the middle of the city: nowhere near as good looking and less than half the height. Apparently an earthquake accounted for the old buildings a few decades back, which let the planners in.
While the town is non descript the surrounding countryside is on a different level entirely. once you get past the vineyards, the mountains are like nothing I´ve ever seen: Mendoza isn´t very far above sea level but some of the peaks are over 6,500 metres: thats 20,000 feet in old money.
As an aside I booked into a backpackers here, I´m sharing a room with three German ladies in their twenties. On one level I can only dream, on another I can pretend to be asleep for a while. Anyway I´m getting tired so I´ll sign off.
As for the town itself, its pleasant, laid back, but non descript, it has plenty of tree lined avenues and leafy squares, but few striking buildings, unless you count a poor attempt at the Chrysler tower in the middle of the city: nowhere near as good looking and less than half the height. Apparently an earthquake accounted for the old buildings a few decades back, which let the planners in.
While the town is non descript the surrounding countryside is on a different level entirely. once you get past the vineyards, the mountains are like nothing I´ve ever seen: Mendoza isn´t very far above sea level but some of the peaks are over 6,500 metres: thats 20,000 feet in old money.
As an aside I booked into a backpackers here, I´m sharing a room with three German ladies in their twenties. On one level I can only dream, on another I can pretend to be asleep for a while. Anyway I´m getting tired so I´ll sign off.
Saturday 23 April 2011
That was Patagonia
Finally had enough of the cold weather and of Patagonia, I am down as Trevelin and have decided sod this how do I get out of here. The cloud level is about six iches most of the time, it is bitterly cold, the wind is howling and it started to snow yesterday. You cant go out. So I watched some TV, which consisted of House, Greys Anatomy and Reality TV shows. It felt like a bad January in Scotland. This is early Autumn. God knows what midwinter is like.
It has to be said when the visibility is greater than the length of your arm and the wind allows you to walk at something approaching vertical, the landscape is truly stunning: either full of mountains and lakes or, flat and preternatuarally bleak..Oh and somewhere in the murk I´ve been told there are coal mines. Is it any wonder the welsh tried to colonise Patagonia.
Given the influence of our celtic cousins you would think the English transaltions of the tourist infornation would be better. Some of it is hilarious. Now I know trying to get a cheap laugh out of an attempt to make things easier for me is innappropriate, and that it is also hypocritical, but that´s never stopped me before, so here goes.
You will be stunned by the intrepid seagulls as they frame your lifetimes experience. (not too sure what this refers to, I think it´s a view)
Enjoy a parridilla with us as you chew on a meaty sausage.
Have a romantic week with your loved one as you learn to do different things with snow.
I could say what do you expect of somebody called Diego Santamaria Del Bosque who claims authorship of the above Bon Mots, but then I wonder how I might try to translate into Argentine Spanish, I want to fetch a wet seashell.
Got a bit of a cosmic message from Hector. Is he back on the Acid? I did figure out Homer Simpson T shirts were for tourists and there was no decent beer in Argentina. Well I am a tourist and there is some great beer down here.
Any way warm weather beckons. Next stop Mendoza.
It has to be said when the visibility is greater than the length of your arm and the wind allows you to walk at something approaching vertical, the landscape is truly stunning: either full of mountains and lakes or, flat and preternatuarally bleak..Oh and somewhere in the murk I´ve been told there are coal mines. Is it any wonder the welsh tried to colonise Patagonia.
Given the influence of our celtic cousins you would think the English transaltions of the tourist infornation would be better. Some of it is hilarious. Now I know trying to get a cheap laugh out of an attempt to make things easier for me is innappropriate, and that it is also hypocritical, but that´s never stopped me before, so here goes.
You will be stunned by the intrepid seagulls as they frame your lifetimes experience. (not too sure what this refers to, I think it´s a view)
Enjoy a parridilla with us as you chew on a meaty sausage.
Have a romantic week with your loved one as you learn to do different things with snow.
I could say what do you expect of somebody called Diego Santamaria Del Bosque who claims authorship of the above Bon Mots, but then I wonder how I might try to translate into Argentine Spanish, I want to fetch a wet seashell.
Got a bit of a cosmic message from Hector. Is he back on the Acid? I did figure out Homer Simpson T shirts were for tourists and there was no decent beer in Argentina. Well I am a tourist and there is some great beer down here.
Any way warm weather beckons. Next stop Mendoza.
Thursday 21 April 2011
Argentinian Spanish
I´ve got nothing to do, its pissing down, the visibility is three feet and its cold. Why am I in Patagonia again? Well now seems the best time for that brief examination of the local version of Spanish I promised. Given I speak about three words this will be somewhat brief.
As you can imagine the old Español has mutated somewhat in its time down here, you only need to look at American English to realise that some sort of mutation was inevitable. Its how its mutated that is if not interesting, then confusing and at times dangerous..
When I took a Spanish for tossers course a few years back I was told that the word for Spanish was Español, well in Argentina Spanish is Castellano (I sense colonial sensitivities here), sandwich was boccadillo, here the word for sandwich is, er, sandwich. draught beer is chopp cerveza (sometimes it is even called chopp birra), potatoes are not patatas but papas. So what I hear you cry none of this should cause any problems.
Well not those words, but consider the verb coger: which in Spain is used to say pick up, fetch or catch, as in catch a bus: coge un autobus. Well in Argentinian Spanish goger means to fuck. I´m sure you are now juxtaposing all sorts of words with coger that provide hilarious results, but to help you ´ll give you the Spanish word for seashell, concha. Innocent enough in Europe, but down here it means c**t. Can you guess why no females in Argentina are called Conchita?.
Throw in the different pronunciations: y is prounounced sh, ll is prounounced sh, in fact a whole lot of consononts seem to be pronounced sh, except for sh itself, which is pronounced s.
These are some of the mines that I´ve uncovered in less than two week, God knows what other ordanance is out there. In short unless you are fluent dont bothere so I dont. Habla Inglese anyone: that means Do you speak English. I think.
Its now time to talk about town planning, well actually it isn´t but Howard asked me about the Argentinina version, well they are just as fucking useless as they are in Scotland. Consider the town I´m in now Bariloche. This has a wonderful setting at the side of a lake looking out to majestic mountains. Well the planners have put in a byepass seperating the town from the lake. Fort William anyone?
As you can imagine the old Español has mutated somewhat in its time down here, you only need to look at American English to realise that some sort of mutation was inevitable. Its how its mutated that is if not interesting, then confusing and at times dangerous..
When I took a Spanish for tossers course a few years back I was told that the word for Spanish was Español, well in Argentina Spanish is Castellano (I sense colonial sensitivities here), sandwich was boccadillo, here the word for sandwich is, er, sandwich. draught beer is chopp cerveza (sometimes it is even called chopp birra), potatoes are not patatas but papas. So what I hear you cry none of this should cause any problems.
Well not those words, but consider the verb coger: which in Spain is used to say pick up, fetch or catch, as in catch a bus: coge un autobus. Well in Argentinian Spanish goger means to fuck. I´m sure you are now juxtaposing all sorts of words with coger that provide hilarious results, but to help you ´ll give you the Spanish word for seashell, concha. Innocent enough in Europe, but down here it means c**t. Can you guess why no females in Argentina are called Conchita?.
Throw in the different pronunciations: y is prounounced sh, ll is prounounced sh, in fact a whole lot of consononts seem to be pronounced sh, except for sh itself, which is pronounced s.
These are some of the mines that I´ve uncovered in less than two week, God knows what other ordanance is out there. In short unless you are fluent dont bothere so I dont. Habla Inglese anyone: that means Do you speak English. I think.
Its now time to talk about town planning, well actually it isn´t but Howard asked me about the Argentinina version, well they are just as fucking useless as they are in Scotland. Consider the town I´m in now Bariloche. This has a wonderful setting at the side of a lake looking out to majestic mountains. Well the planners have put in a byepass seperating the town from the lake. Fort William anyone?
Tuesday 19 April 2011
Its a bus Hector but not as we know it
Right, I left Buenos Aires for Biroloche in Patagonia about 1 o´clock. Hummed and hawed about flying down there but then decided to get the bus because if I took the plane I would see nothing of the countryside. Even the fact the journey would be 20 hours did not put me off. I can already sense the cringing, but this was a bus like no other. The locals call it a cama. Not only does your seat convert into a well padded bed even an elephant could fit into, you are alsoserved food and drink throughout the journey along with a selection of DVD´s to view on your own private screen . Have to say my first thoughts were I could get used to this especially as the roads were quite good and there wasn´t too much bumping about.
As for the Argentine countryside I hoped to see? Well thats when it went horribly wrong, after about two hours of "urban sprawl" I hit the Pampa. The Romans would have loved the Pampa: it is ideal for building straight roads. For the first hour there was nothing but grass. I took to the DVD´s Jean Claude Van Fucking Damme? No chance. For the second hour there was nothing but grass and the occasional cow. After four hours we came to a roundabout, God knows what it was doing here, maybe the engineers got bored. This monotonous, purgatory went on untill 7 O´clock, after which it got dark. I gave in and put on the muscles from Brussels. It was in Spanish. Magic. 11 hours later, when the sun rose there was still nothing, then, after about seventeen hours, mountains started to appear: hundreds of big cone shaped fuckers with snow on them; lakes scores of them. Awesome. Then, after an hour the weather closed in , it started raining going on sleety, it was cold and I could see nothing.
Well that was the Andes I can hear you say. Well no, two hours after getting into Biroloche the skys cleared, the sun came out, the air warmed up, lakes appeared along with the mountains and I went to a micro brewery , of which there are several round here. This one makes eight different beers, none less than 5% and serves them on a terrace overlooking fantastic scenery. Tegernsee kiss my arse.
Now it has occured to me I have spent quite a bit of time writing about micro breweries. Why? I dont drink much. I do like a beer, but for well rehearsed reasons I have to watch what I´m doing. Then it occurred to me: I´m doing what I do best and that is being a c**t. I´m trying to make you miserable in return for all the texts about the great beers you were having and I wasn´t. Oh and Stan I´ve found the perfect pint. It´s cheap, it´s down here, I´m not telling you what its called and even you can´t walk this far.
Next I intend to write abour Argentine Spanish, which is more entertaining than it sounds, but that´s for another post.
As for the Argentine countryside I hoped to see? Well thats when it went horribly wrong, after about two hours of "urban sprawl" I hit the Pampa. The Romans would have loved the Pampa: it is ideal for building straight roads. For the first hour there was nothing but grass. I took to the DVD´s Jean Claude Van Fucking Damme? No chance. For the second hour there was nothing but grass and the occasional cow. After four hours we came to a roundabout, God knows what it was doing here, maybe the engineers got bored. This monotonous, purgatory went on untill 7 O´clock, after which it got dark. I gave in and put on the muscles from Brussels. It was in Spanish. Magic. 11 hours later, when the sun rose there was still nothing, then, after about seventeen hours, mountains started to appear: hundreds of big cone shaped fuckers with snow on them; lakes scores of them. Awesome. Then, after an hour the weather closed in , it started raining going on sleety, it was cold and I could see nothing.
Well that was the Andes I can hear you say. Well no, two hours after getting into Biroloche the skys cleared, the sun came out, the air warmed up, lakes appeared along with the mountains and I went to a micro brewery , of which there are several round here. This one makes eight different beers, none less than 5% and serves them on a terrace overlooking fantastic scenery. Tegernsee kiss my arse.
Now it has occured to me I have spent quite a bit of time writing about micro breweries. Why? I dont drink much. I do like a beer, but for well rehearsed reasons I have to watch what I´m doing. Then it occurred to me: I´m doing what I do best and that is being a c**t. I´m trying to make you miserable in return for all the texts about the great beers you were having and I wasn´t. Oh and Stan I´ve found the perfect pint. It´s cheap, it´s down here, I´m not telling you what its called and even you can´t walk this far.
Next I intend to write abour Argentine Spanish, which is more entertaining than it sounds, but that´s for another post.
Monday 18 April 2011
lowering the tone of the neighbourhood
Being fond of quasi fascists I went to the Recoletto cemetery, in the north of La Poteña, where various genaralissimos and their groupìes are intered, including one Evita Duerte (or Peron to those not on familiar terms). To say this place is over the top is, well, lets say I will always associate the dead with bad taste. Nobody is buried, all the bodies are stored in crypts, where those in the next world show they´re still trying to compete with their peers for our attention in this one.
Now an interesting fact about Evita´s ossiary is the crypt next door is up for sale, even more interesting is next door to the cemetry is a brew pub, Bullers, which does Stout, IPA, Lager and a wheat beer all of which are over 5%. Now it occured to me that this would make organising a wake pretty easy as the hearse could dump the mourners and those who are really only there for the beer of at the one time and at the one place. The ultimate one stop shop: in buying buying this investment opportunity you will never be lonely (there´s always mourners next door), lower the tone of the neighbourhood, upset those of a master race persuasion and your pals can have a bevy. Magic.
I also went to a Sunday market, in San Telmo, where I saw the greatest tee shirt ever: Homer Simpson done up like Maradona in the hand of God goal against England only instead of a ball Homer is reaching for a doughnut. A must buy. Teeshirts apart this market is like stepping back into the forties.One shop sold only HMV record players complete with trumpets, with accessories like 78´s and wax cylinders.
Good to hear from Howard and Hector. Hector I have taken photographs and will seek your wise counsel on how to put them on line at a later date.
Now an interesting fact about Evita´s ossiary is the crypt next door is up for sale, even more interesting is next door to the cemetry is a brew pub, Bullers, which does Stout, IPA, Lager and a wheat beer all of which are over 5%. Now it occured to me that this would make organising a wake pretty easy as the hearse could dump the mourners and those who are really only there for the beer of at the one time and at the one place. The ultimate one stop shop: in buying buying this investment opportunity you will never be lonely (there´s always mourners next door), lower the tone of the neighbourhood, upset those of a master race persuasion and your pals can have a bevy. Magic.
I also went to a Sunday market, in San Telmo, where I saw the greatest tee shirt ever: Homer Simpson done up like Maradona in the hand of God goal against England only instead of a ball Homer is reaching for a doughnut. A must buy. Teeshirts apart this market is like stepping back into the forties.One shop sold only HMV record players complete with trumpets, with accessories like 78´s and wax cylinders.
Good to hear from Howard and Hector. Hector I have taken photographs and will seek your wise counsel on how to put them on line at a later date.
Saturday 16 April 2011
beer and bookshops
Yesterday I tried one of the brew pubs down this way, a place called Breoghans in the area of San Telmo, which despite the name has nothing to do with Ireland. They had vom fass and from source, as the anoraks would say, IPA, Cream Stout, Kolsch and Scotch Ale. All except the Kolsch were eight per cent and over and sold by the pint. As I dont care for Kolsch I had a pint of each of the others and the rest of the day was cancelled.
There´s another brew pub called Antares at the opposite end of town I want to try, but I´m in recovery, so that will have to wait. (Bier Today! Eat your heart out. Munich, Sheffield, Hippelstien, we´ve entered a whole new world here).
Before I committed sensory hari kari a walk round town revealed an incredible amount of bookshops, I´m talking hundreds covering every area imaginable. I even found a converted opera house with every tier in immaculate condition with thousands of books on each level. I took a picture and if I could work these things I would have attached it to this.
Still pissed off at the free yellow fever innoculations down here, I wonder if I should get another one? After all its for nothing and I would be doubly protected. I think.
A short post today as I have a sore head and these argentine keyboards are a nightmare at the best of times.
There´s another brew pub called Antares at the opposite end of town I want to try, but I´m in recovery, so that will have to wait. (Bier Today! Eat your heart out. Munich, Sheffield, Hippelstien, we´ve entered a whole new world here).
Before I committed sensory hari kari a walk round town revealed an incredible amount of bookshops, I´m talking hundreds covering every area imaginable. I even found a converted opera house with every tier in immaculate condition with thousands of books on each level. I took a picture and if I could work these things I would have attached it to this.
Still pissed off at the free yellow fever innoculations down here, I wonder if I should get another one? After all its for nothing and I would be doubly protected. I think.
A short post today as I have a sore head and these argentine keyboards are a nightmare at the best of times.
Friday 15 April 2011
Boca Juniors
On my quest for cheaper tickets for the Boca River Plate game I took a trip down to Boca´s stadium, which was nice. Actually it wasn´t: the ground is located in a poor area that has been slightly tarted up for tourists in order to give them the real porteño "experience". The area was obviously a dock at one time, today it has tables in the street, tango dancers for hire and an ancient Maradona look alike who asks you if you want your photograph taken with "Diego". Our equivelant would be to have the residents of wine alley in Govan selling Haggis and offering pictures with a Jim Baxter lookalike (OK I´m stretching it a bit but you get my point). Tragic and exploitative; especially when you consider that I´ve been told the area is quite dangerous at night when there isn´t a tourist to be seen .
Anyway back to Boca Juniors. There is no chance of cheaper tickets, the only ones available are through companies who sell them to the likes of me. You´re driven to the ground and kept in your own sector of it away from the great unwashed. Dont know about you but I dont call this a real football experience. Its more an anthropological study. Still might go though.
As for the ground itself, I took the tour, which showed it to be a magnificent stadium for football: right on top of the action, three tiers of terracing at alarningly steep gradients that would not be allowed in Europe. Imagine being eighty feet in the air standing on steps with a one in three slope and you will capture some of the flavour. It´s incredible nobody has been killed.
On this tour the guide makes apoint of asking what team you support, touchingly when I told him there were two teams in Glasgow he affected not to have heard of Rangers.
This lack of knowledge of the forces of darkness overwhelmed the impressive history of Boca. There was something missing and I could´t put my finger on it. Then as we visited the player´s changing rooms all was revealed: there was no religous sectarianism. The catalyst for this revalation was the huge statue of the Virgin Mary standing between the changing rooms and the entrance to the pitch, placed there to give Boca good luck. Now how I hear you ask did I remedy the absence of Glasgow style bigotry? Well it was a challenge given the local population is 95% Catholic, however it was a mission I chose to accept.
My approach was that from little Acorns grow great oaks. Talking with the tour guide I explained to him that Rangers played in blue and white, the colours of the Virgin Mary and that Rangers supporters had very strong feelings for the said icon, feelings verging on fanaticism. I went on to tell him if any other Scottish people visit the ground and they happen to be Rangers supporters he should make a special attempt to bring the statue to their attention. It´s a small step I know but an important one. Certainly if he does bring this little gem to the attention of any of my fellow countrymen he will remember the reaction.
Anyway back to Boca Juniors. There is no chance of cheaper tickets, the only ones available are through companies who sell them to the likes of me. You´re driven to the ground and kept in your own sector of it away from the great unwashed. Dont know about you but I dont call this a real football experience. Its more an anthropological study. Still might go though.
As for the ground itself, I took the tour, which showed it to be a magnificent stadium for football: right on top of the action, three tiers of terracing at alarningly steep gradients that would not be allowed in Europe. Imagine being eighty feet in the air standing on steps with a one in three slope and you will capture some of the flavour. It´s incredible nobody has been killed.
On this tour the guide makes apoint of asking what team you support, touchingly when I told him there were two teams in Glasgow he affected not to have heard of Rangers.
This lack of knowledge of the forces of darkness overwhelmed the impressive history of Boca. There was something missing and I could´t put my finger on it. Then as we visited the player´s changing rooms all was revealed: there was no religous sectarianism. The catalyst for this revalation was the huge statue of the Virgin Mary standing between the changing rooms and the entrance to the pitch, placed there to give Boca good luck. Now how I hear you ask did I remedy the absence of Glasgow style bigotry? Well it was a challenge given the local population is 95% Catholic, however it was a mission I chose to accept.
My approach was that from little Acorns grow great oaks. Talking with the tour guide I explained to him that Rangers played in blue and white, the colours of the Virgin Mary and that Rangers supporters had very strong feelings for the said icon, feelings verging on fanaticism. I went on to tell him if any other Scottish people visit the ground and they happen to be Rangers supporters he should make a special attempt to bring the statue to their attention. It´s a small step I know but an important one. Certainly if he does bring this little gem to the attention of any of my fellow countrymen he will remember the reaction.
Thursday 14 April 2011
arrival im buenos aires
Unfortunately no disasters to report, the flights and exit from the airport were relatively straightforward. Unusually for this part of the world there were no touts in the airport lounge offering taxis: the authorities have cleared them out.
As for the city itself nm first impressions are pretty positive: its nothing like as intimidating as Mexico City by that I mean as feral. It´s like a huge and less wealthy version of Barcelona: a lot less wealthy. The population is made up of every nationality under the sun, the people are helpful, there are great old buildings and the roads are perpetually jammed. Oh and the public transport system works.
Right thats the lonely Planet shit out of the road, like every other place on the planet they want to part tourists from their money: 200 quid for a ticket for Boca vs River Plate and a hundred for a tango lesson. Tango lesson? I here you ask; well from the outside it appears to be the opportunity for some sweaty old goat to rub up against some nubile young latino for an extended period of time, and it appears to be an honour for a young woman to be asked to dance by an older man. Is this right up my street or what? Unfortunately I am torn: the sweaty old goat part of me is straining at the leash, the Scottish part of me doesn´t want to pay for it. I will report back on the resolution of this quandary later. As for the football, I am hunting for a cheaper ticket.
I know that some of the people who may eventually read this will be wondering why hasn´t he mentioned beer yet? Well give me time, despite being jet lagged out of my box I have located six brew pubs in the last 24 hours, including one that sells an 8 per cent IPA and a ten per cent stout. I will visit these premises over the next few days. Still on the subject of beer I tried a bottle of the local beer Quimes. Drinking this can only be described as a metaphysical experience: there is a bottle, there is liquid in it, it pours into a glass, you can see the liquid being discharged from the glass into your mouth but you don´t taste or feel anything. ( I was going to say sense anything but no doubt some smart bastard would comment that sight is a sense).
Right I am signing off this latin keyboard is driving me nuts nothing is where it is supposed to be and I haven´t figured out how to put pictures on this yet.
As for the city itself nm first impressions are pretty positive: its nothing like as intimidating as Mexico City by that I mean as feral. It´s like a huge and less wealthy version of Barcelona: a lot less wealthy. The population is made up of every nationality under the sun, the people are helpful, there are great old buildings and the roads are perpetually jammed. Oh and the public transport system works.
Right thats the lonely Planet shit out of the road, like every other place on the planet they want to part tourists from their money: 200 quid for a ticket for Boca vs River Plate and a hundred for a tango lesson. Tango lesson? I here you ask; well from the outside it appears to be the opportunity for some sweaty old goat to rub up against some nubile young latino for an extended period of time, and it appears to be an honour for a young woman to be asked to dance by an older man. Is this right up my street or what? Unfortunately I am torn: the sweaty old goat part of me is straining at the leash, the Scottish part of me doesn´t want to pay for it. I will report back on the resolution of this quandary later. As for the football, I am hunting for a cheaper ticket.
I know that some of the people who may eventually read this will be wondering why hasn´t he mentioned beer yet? Well give me time, despite being jet lagged out of my box I have located six brew pubs in the last 24 hours, including one that sells an 8 per cent IPA and a ten per cent stout. I will visit these premises over the next few days. Still on the subject of beer I tried a bottle of the local beer Quimes. Drinking this can only be described as a metaphysical experience: there is a bottle, there is liquid in it, it pours into a glass, you can see the liquid being discharged from the glass into your mouth but you don´t taste or feel anything. ( I was going to say sense anything but no doubt some smart bastard would comment that sight is a sense).
Right I am signing off this latin keyboard is driving me nuts nothing is where it is supposed to be and I haven´t figured out how to put pictures on this yet.
Monday 11 April 2011
day1
This is the first time I have dipped my toe in the blogosphere. As could be predicted before my toe even got wet there was the usual litany of incorrect passwords and wrong e mail accounts. Anyway the point of this particular blog is to record my wanderings through Aregentina and Chile as from tomorrow the 12/4/11. Warts and All
Vamos
Vamos
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