El Calafate, Gauchos and peckers

My hostel in Puerto Madryn was the Maranata and its proprietor was Felix; a nicer person you could not meet. Just before I leave for the bus I give him a present of a bottle of wine. He declares that he is a tee-totaller and then he tells his story. He was a drunk as a kid and then he hit the bottle big time and spent 8 years living in the country entirely dedicated to scratching enough money together to service the habit. He is also a minister at the local church and so I go out to get him a new present from the chocolatier! He then gives me a wonderful talk about the church and a new testament which I have in my bag. I intend to read it perhaps but its burning a hole in my case. Actually it makes a great mat for writing postcards and perhaps a mosquito swatter.

I take my leave of the church and off to the bus station. The bus journey to El Calafate is very cosy and we stop at Comodoro Rivadivia and a whole host of smaller towns down the coast until we hit the road for Rio Gallegos! I jump up front with the driver and get a great view of the Pampas which strtches as far as the eye can see. Guanacos stumble across the road, there are many thousands of sheep but the grass looks so spartan but the sheep graze purposefully. Every so often we hit an Estancia with large barns and they look very businesslike. The Benetton farm that is mildly controversial is just to the west of us and a little further down. They own a huge tract of land which includes some land claimed by the Indigenous Indians.

The bus driver, Manuel, has been driving this stretch of road for 15 years. In fact he is dropping us off in Rio Gallegos and then driving straight back to Trelew. He is not married and has no children which is almost unheard of in this area. He declares that he is married to his boat ad fishing!

We are really late and so Manuel tells me he is going to drop me off at the Police Checkpoint and I can catch the bus for El Calafate from there. The police are charming and I get a cup of coffee; the bus arrives 20 minutes later.

El Calafate hasn’t changed and the main drag is as busy and vibrant as usual. Hundreds of trekkers, climbers and casual backpackers hang out before they go off in various directions. I check in at the Hostel Buenos Aires, Carlos and Angeles who run it are charming and helpful. I go for a drift around town, a bit of lunch and a stroll down to the bird sanctuary. It is so windy you can hardly walk across to the hides but I get there and watch the birds battling against the wind. The Flamingoes, not the most nimble of birds, have all kinds of difficulty taking off, landing and even just trying to feed. They all tuck their heads into their winds and tough it out!

The next morning I take the trip to Perito Merino glacier. There I a huge group of people and we get across to the glacier side of the lake by boat. The guide gives us the brief, don the crampons and set off up into the glacier. Its beautiful, but the day is a little overcast. The ice of the glacier we are standing on is probably 25,000 years old. The glacier is the fastest moving in the world at 1.5m a day, sometimes a little faster. It moves this fast partly because of the lakes of meltwater under the glacier and also the low altitude (1800ft or so) with the pressure of the snow supply from the snowfield which is the largest in the Andes.

I meet up with Austrian Alex, the cosmetic surgeon, and a couple of Canadians from Vancouver and we go back to the café and have a coffee as the clouds come down and a blizzard crashes in on the glacier. That night we all meet up and have a good wine fueled evening in La Cocina, a veritable ‘gastronomique’ of an Italian restaurant in downtown El Calafate.

I am off the El Chalten the next day. A little further up the valley it is quieter and the starting point for the day walks up to the miradors for Mount Fitzroy. The town is ver y small, the Rancho Grande hostal is cosy and they do the best Lemon Meringue and ‘dulce de leche’ cake which comes in brick size wedges. Just what you need after an 8 hour hike to the Lago Ingles or Lago Capri and round and abouts. It is great walking here and there is a great camaraderie between all the walkers all along the paths, all day, which keeps the pecker up. The bird life is low profile unless you go off the trail a bit, sit quietly and wait for the birds to come to you, which they do eventually.

The Magellenic Woodpeckers are the real ‘cartoon birds’. Despite the walkers the noise of them reverberates around the woods and they go about their business without a care for the numerous ogglers. The male has a large red head the female just a patch of red on her black crown. They take turns digging grubs from the bark of the trees and then disappear to another part of the forest where you can clearly hear them. I get accosted by a ‘Cachana’, the Patagonian parrot, who talks gibberish to me from the tree near the entrance to the path.

The first two days are gloomy but the third is beautiful and the sun and blue sky give a fantasticly clear view of Mount Fitzroy. It looks so tame and friendly compared to when it is sheathed in black cloud which sweep around it and roll off the summit. Today it looks like you could walk up it in an afternoon, which is marginally optimistic as few people each year attempt the climb. Predicting the weather would be impossible and dangerous and he cloud drops in seconds bringing with it freezing rain or snow.

The hostel is really noisy and full of people tramping in off the walks. There is a host of people to catch up with off the trail and the food is carbohydrate rich!

El Chalten is truly the king of the day trekking in the area although a lot of people visit Los Torres de Paine as well. You can camp on the trails at El Chalten and some of the campsites have incredible views, especially up at Lago Ingles which has a view of the Fitzroy glacier.

I go back to the Hostal Buenos Aires in El Calafate and am lucky enough to catch the Rodeo which is only the second year of the event for the region of Santa Cruz. The Gauchos are extraordinary horsemen. They get on the horse without any helmets or any other sort of protection. The horses are unbroken, wild and run around the ground bucking the Gauchos who remarkably stay on in most cases. They only grip with their legs and seem to be stuck to the horse. Even when thrown off they get up, brush themselves down and stroll off to the corner where equipment and girlfriends wait for their return, usually to a heroes welcome. The smell of parillas is all around and the ‘Cholitos’, large chorizo sausage in a roll, are delicious, so spicy and greasy, marvellous!

I have some extra days in El Calafate so I check into a posh hotel off Hostelbookers which has gorgeous rooms and banos privados, the kiss of luxury.

Just £15 pounds a night. Tourism is down here by 50% because of the recession and you can tell. Many empty hotels and great deals to be had.

I have to leave for Ushuaia and another bus journey awaits…El Calafate is a special place and a quiet frontier town for the minute, this will change in the future although the feeling of authentic Patagonia hangs in the air around the town, and the Gaucho still rule!

Photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/ElChaltenToElCalafate13112009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/ElChaltenClearDay13112009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/ElChalten12112009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/ANightAtTheRodeo15112009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/PeritoMorenoDay215112009#

Puerto Piramides for a while

I repeat the bus ride to Puerto Piramides and meet a couple of people from Puerto Madryn who look familiar, we are all off for intense whale watching.

Stop in at the estancia for a café con leche, still off the menu, and wander up the road to the Hostal Nomade.

www.ecohosteria.com.ar/

Laura is beaming in reception, check into the room and its off for some more whale watching, this time with Botazzi, one of the companies who run a venture down here. It’s a much smaller boat, a rib, and we get right up close to the whales, close enough to get covered in whale snot. There are many mothers and calves hanging around. The mothers dive and the calves hang out around the boat waiting for the mothers to return from the depths. We get back in time for some sunset whale watching from the shore. There's a collection of people who brave the brisk wind and chill to watch the whales bathe in the golden light. They come close to the shore and there is a merry dance of Fins; you can hear the breathing quite clearly. It’s a beautiful bay and the sunset is really dramatic. Its back to the Estacion Restaurant for a dish of the best spaghetti de mare that I’ve had for a long time. Huge whelks and other unidentifiable legs and flesh, but a real creation. It’s a welcome change to slip into a bed that hasn’t had a thousand backpackers in it. I sleep like a baby, the breakfast is bread and jam with a little queso but I have to nip back to the room to get some fruit which I’ve squirreled away, that should stem the scurvey. Today it’s a trip along the coast, which is a wave cut platform, exposed until the very last point of high tide. The beach is exposed and there are a couple of dead whale pups that didn’t make it lying in a mound on the beach with a few opportunist gulls chomping away on the blubber.

The cliffs are dramatic around here, great shear walls of friable limestones and arenaceous sandstones mingled with occasional beds of fine clay. The upper most beds are highly fossiliferous and contain some exquisite cross bedding and g-zillions of shells of all types. The platform right out to the western end of the beach is littered with the fossils of giant Oysters, bigger than your hand; in fantastic condition. There’s a wonderful collection of marine birds feeding on the exposed seaweed, including some regal herons which are incredibly shy and stay well away as you approach them. I get out my Patagonian wildlife guide and they are not mentioned, which isn’t much of a surprise as most of the birds I have seen don’t make it into the hall of fame. Also the illustrations are done by somebody who clearly smokes too much weed and freelances for Viz…or do Oystercatches have unreasonably large testicles?? There’s a few people on the exposed part of the platform watching a whale and pup who are close to the shore and being harassed by guls, (in a similar vein to trying to eat chips on Brighton sea front without being mobbed by voracious, predatory Herring gulls) Get some great shots of the whale riding gulls and get back to the beach before the tide cuts off the headland.

Its very tempting to have a swim, the waters not brassic, and besides the obvious Orca shorties flicking through the consciousness, you would be the only person and this arouses suspicions. I question La-La about it over breakfast and she says you’d have to be mad or English to attempt it.

I have various chats with the L’s (that’s La-La, Laura and Lauren who all work as general managers, breakfast hosts and anything else that needs hotelling) and the same old gripes surface about the way that Argentina is going (and has gone on) They have all been to University, which is all very well except that there is no job opportunities, very little well paid work and so there is a brain drain to Brazil, Europe and anywhere else you can work in your chosen vocation. This is echoed by all the professions, particularly Doctors, who qualify, but there are no hospitals to work in, they go abroad or drive taxis or develop a tango routine.

To exascerbate the situation, the President is corrupt, lining his pocket in the good old tradition, and attention is really deflected away from the plight of the average person. Take the “Veteranos Malvinas’. Turns out that most of the guys (and gals) who fought in the rather embarrassing “Falklands conflict’ were not regular soldiers but conscripts, and thus are not entitled to the benefits afforded to regular soldiers, pensions, WIA compensation. Hence the camps set up in most of the plazas near government buildings at the moment in Buenos Aires.

One of the most famous sons of the area is ‘Roberto "Beto" Bubas’ and he is the Orca king. A park ranger, he has developed a unique relationship with the Orca as you can see on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecXK_p7FW7M

Surprisingly he is not allowed on the beach any more to serenade the Orca, don’t know the reason but if the Orcas had a vote, he would be reinstated.

Its time to leave PP and its been a real wilderness pleasure, its unlikely that things will change too much here due to the limited flights, hotels (at present) and primarily, its remoteness.

Photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/PuertoPiramidesMorphologyOfACoastline031120092053#

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/PuertoPiramidesOnHigh05112009#

Puerto Madryn, Whales and Presbytarians

Well, I wasn’t expecting anything other than a long uncomfortable bus ride to Puerto Madryn with Andesmar, but I was looking forward to it as you get to see the countryside and meet other travelers. It turned out to be quite easy, especially with the ‘cama’ seat, although most unlike a bed, it was quite comfortable. The views as we ventured south were fabulous and on leaving BA we passed the Argentinean national football training ground which, in comparison the surrounding area, was lush, the grass bright green and appeared in stark contrast to the surroundings which were generally dusty and parched.

On the journey behind me sat Dave, (Daveed said with a strong French lilt) a very unlikely Parisian, of Jewish Polish extraction and very anti-French, well, anti Parisian French, which was most noble. Next to me sat a couple who it was difficult to place as they spoke English like Helen Bonham Carter but they must have been Scandinavian as they did rather well in the Bingo and won a bottle of Wine from a bodega in Mendoza whilst everybody else tried to unravel the rules. The Bingo card was four numbers square and the winner had to fill the outer line. No ‘legs eleven’ or ‘all the threes’ and no hen nights.

The difference traveling on buses now is that you seem to stop rarely, but they are still cheap relative to the flight costs. They have increased efficiency to such an extent, and the bus has a toilet, so stops, breakdowns, dirt road services for a mate are a thing of the past. Thus we only stopped once in the evening for 10 minutes, a couple of hours after we had left, and then it was straight through. The charm of the old trips was an unscheduled stop in TMON and a couple of hours to stand around, share biscuits, dulce de leche cakes and various humorous bus anecdotes, this has all but gone with the charmless drive towards ultimate efficiency, profit and comfort.

Dave (alors…Daveed) and I got talking at the first stop and we agreed on a suitable end for the Parisians, then we were back on and subjected to loud, somewhat salacious films (some were taken off after a few minutes or so for being too bawdy) so talking, sleeping, relaxing was a little tricky. If you had a seat under the screen, epilepsy was not an option.

In the morning we awoke, if you had slept, and we had to watch ‘the Bourne Supremacy’ which was a little strange at 5.30 in the morning and it repeated so I now know the plot. Somebody does something that somebody doesn’t like so the Psychopath wipes out all the wrong-doers and becomes a killer with a conscience and something of a hero, meanwhile there’s a change of President and the Simpsons do a first very successful run on HBO. The message being, don’t fuck with the guy who has no basis in reality and always go to church.

We arrive in Puerto Madryn, ‘whale central’ in Patagonia and Dave and I get a coffee and some Media Lunas and decide to meet later for a bike ride around the town with a sojourn in the Eco-Centre. We cycle to the end of the headland on the gravel road which is tough going, especially on a bike with 3 of the 18 gears working, I dream of my Ellsworth!

The Eco-centre is closed but the walk along the beach with the bikes is beautiful with the usual S. Easterly wind blowing at the back. You can cycle all along the front with the plethora of restaurants and new builds readying for a tourist explosion, I hope the whales know this.

Hunger strikes and we stop at the Lizard café for a Lizard pizza and some more Guilmes as the sun sets over the back of the town and then off to one of the famous Heladerias for a quarter litre of vanilla and dulce de leche ice cream which is just a ‘taste sensation’, comparisons:

(£1.00 = 6.00 Argentinean pesos)

1 café con leche – 8,50 pesos, ¼ litre of mixed dulce de leche/ vanilla – 5 pesos

All you can eat Parilla (barbecue with hunks of meat cut from whole carcasses from the parilla barbecue – 35.0 pesos

1 litre bottle of Quilmes beer: shop 5 pesos, bar 12 pesos

Bus from Buenos Aires to Puerto Madryn – 265 pesos – 23 hours – 1465km

The Plaza des Armas is full of strollers and young girls with prams catching the early evening sun. The hoards of young mothers suggests a good population explosion in an area where there is no population or bad sex education, either way it’s the fashion here, Accessorize has missed a beat.

There is not much in the way of industry here but a recently, much opposed, aluminium factory has opened to the north of the town and the population has swelled to take up the slack on jobs. The bauxite is bought in from Campo Grande, or north somewhere, and there are ships docked at the new pier, fresh ones arriving daily. The cancer rate here is the highest in Argentina although it has been vociferously denied by the government as being to do with the new Aluminium smelter, plus ca change, in a land of corruption and serial Presidential nihilists, nothing is surprising.

Next day is the first trip to the Peninsula Valdes and ‘whale central’, Puerto Piramides (PP). PP sits on the northern cup of a huge bay, which is frequented by Southern Right Whales, ballenic (filtering) whales, as they pup. The mating took place a year ago in the same place and the pups have now arrived and being given their first strides in the comfort of the bay. The whales like it because the bay is deep in part - 100m or so - and has food in the silt on the seabed which the mothers dive to, stir up and filter. They need to feed a little as the pups drink 55 litres of good milk a day and gain hundreds of kilos in a short time, preparing for their impending trip south to the feeding grounds in the Antarctic. The mothers then mate again to hopefully get pregnant for the next season; there is no shortage of mates.

The thing that strikes you most as you leave the town north, past the aluminium smelter, on the road to Puerto Piramides, is the plastic that is caught in the short bush that makes up most of the vegetation here. There is an open tip for all the rubbish from Puerto Madryn, which then gets blown by the constant wind to be trapped by the bushes…pif paf.

We stop at the whale information centre and to pay the entrance fee. I start chatting to somebody from the bus who turns out to be from Shiplake, was an inmate at Reading Blue Coat School (RBCS), and did a paper round in Shiplake and formative spent in the Baskerville Arms…we cluck all day about Henley, RBCS and put a lot of seal, penguin and whale watching under our belt. He is on honeymoon with his new wife, the honeymoon is due to last 8 months and this is the second week…

Its fantastic whale watching and the mothers and pups loll around just near the boat; the Southern Right Whales are some of the most inquisitive. We get covered in whale snot as they clear their vast nostrils or breathing holes repeatedly by the boat, something you would be tempted to do as a whale if you had the oppo to snot on irritating revelers in a persistently whining, smoking boat which tailed you half way around the bay.

Punta Delgado was the viewing point for the Fur Seal Colony, just to the south east point of the headland. You can walk down quite close to the colony which consisted of distinct sections with a very large male, many seals from his harem and an abundance of pups (Orca snacks). The males, as they do, patrol the seas in the shallow channel off the beach and bark purposefully, manfully and threateningly at other males in adjacent areas. They females pet their pups adoringly, sunbathe on the shingle and move periodically; to the indignance of the small black pups who look like large black slugs. Many of the older pups are shedding their fur in preparation for the long watery period coming up. Apart from 4-5 weeks spent on the beach now, the rest of their time will be spent in the ocean fishing In deeper waters so the pups have to fatten up fast on mums triple thick fish-o-shake.

The last stop is Punta Cantor a little up the coast for the Magellenic penguins, who are funny little things that spend a lot of their time in burrows rolling in their own poo, the rest of the time swimming miles for a fish supper. If I didn’t know better I’d suggest they were confused rabbits with webbed feet and life belts but Darwin knows best.

That night the ‘Old Blues’ of RBCS meet for a pint (of Quilmes) or so after I have a light fish supper with Dave and his mate from his own trip, Barrack. an Israeli. He is as funny as Barbara Streisand and we talk penguins, whales, fur seals and the ’68 war…inevitable…and other solid travelers stuff.

The combined forces of ‘Old Blue’ James and Imogen beat the Quilmes fueled

Cue Baron and we cross cues ‘til late and decide to take a car to the Welsh town, Gaimen, near Trelew the next day.

Gaimen is a good place to go with a hangover and we set out late with the car, a full tank and plenty of full fat coke. Firstly we visit the cemetery in Puerto Madryn as Imogens family have origins in the area but despite many graves devoted to Davies, Williams and the odd Jones, there is no trace of the rellies which is frustrating…the lady in the office says that she knows most of the graves recorded in the old leather binders but unfortunately if the family don’t pay the annual for the grave cleaners, you get moved on. Where exactly wasn’t clear but one can only hazard at a mass grave under the new aluminium factory.

Gaimen is a little oasis In the middle of the parched Patagonian desert. It sits in the river valley and is tidy and I suppose, vaguely Welsh looking.The Lonely Planet says little but makes reference to tea shops and a reference to ‘quite often being able to watch local youths swimming in the river’. We carefully do a river check first but hanging around too long could get you into trouble and the youths had obviously grown up and moved to Tredaegar.

We wander around looking for a road that doesn’t exist and plump for the only pizza joint in the village. A charming waiter who looks disarmingly welsh serves us up some food and a couple of lines of ‘la lengua culpa’, the next table all break into welsh patter, its glorious. We don’t move from this spot for much of the day and wallow in a little Gaelic pride.

On the way home a visit to ‘ La Playa Bonita’ which does have a certain windswept, duney presence and its back to ‘the Lizard’ for more ‘Guilmes’. James and Imogen are off to Mendoza the next day and I am off to Puerto Piramides for a rest up at the Hotel Nomade…an eco-lodge of some repute.

Photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/PuertoMadryn01112009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/ADayInPuertoPiramides02112009#

Buenos Aires by gum

Notes:

£1 = 6 pesos ARG

1 night @ Ayacucho Palace Hotel – 215 pesos including breakast

Argentina population – 23 million

Buenos Aires population – 12 million

Buenos Aires, the Paris of South America and with good justification. I arrived after a 23 hour trip on Air Canada via Toronto and Santiago de Chile. Toronto was just an airport stop and the most striking thing was that all the men and a considerable portion of the women were bearded: the cold or perhaps the cereal? On the Santiago leg I sat with a fellow and his father. The father seemed very ill and the son told me he had been to Toronto for treatment but it did look like he might expire at any minute notwithstanding the usual trials and tribs of a long flight.

It felt strange to be in Santiago airport again as the last time I had been here, Fo and I had slept at the airport awaiting the trip to Juan Fernandez Island. Indeed, the flights here run all night and the usual collection of bug eyed people were sitting around the sleepy end near the sculpture of suitcases made from the list of unfortunates who never did receive their lost baggage.

I said goodbye to the son and father who lived in Santiago and wished them good luck.

Arriving in Buenos Aires was a relief and once I got the baggage it was off to the old café in the airport for the first taste of good coffee in Argentina. A steaming café con leche, a demi-luna and to the taxi rank. Buenos Aires hosts half the population of Argentina, 12 million of the 23 million total and the city is large and sprawling with the recognized centre a small raft in the east of the conurbation. The Ayacucho Palace Hotel, in Recoleta, was little changed and I lucked out, a room with a balcony on the street, the roaring of buses and traffic on Avenida Ayacucho below was loud, but not unpleasant. The buses in BA are many, frequent, smoky, driven by enthusiastic boy racers and extremely cheap. They come and go along well defined lines but unscrambling the exact route is difficult, but if you have time its great to cruise around and pick up buses to random places and accept the destination as a new adventure. The tube is limited but is of two distinct engineering schools, the French section with the charming rubber wheels and the English section with the old carriages which still hack around the Central and Northern Lines in London.

The Boulevards are wide, in fact the Avenida 9 de Julio is the widest in the world, but there is 'big traffic' like every other large city. All the other minor streets are wide, pleasant and link plazas and parks all over the city which makes it one of the most open, green cities in the world, and one of the most accessible. This is helped in some part by the yankee grid system which breaks down in places and also, surprisingly, some of the streets change their name at random points along their length. The distinct districts vary in their look and feel; San Telmo, Monserrat, La Boca, Recoletta all confined within the historical central part, with distinct histories of immigration and development. The Ayacucho Palace Hotel is in the Recoletta district and indeed, Recoletta cemetery is just up the road. The Plaza San Martin de Tours is next door with the famous Biela café and the enormous Gum tree, which shades it, is older than BA itself. The Biela café is where the ‘elite meet to cafe’ in the area and with the beautiful weather, its a great place to hang out and watch the porteños go about their business.

On Saturday and Sunday it hosts a fabulous market with a whole host of ‘artesania locale’ which is really quite good, most of the arty jewelry being original and modern, the art isn’t completely ghastly either (although some of the street scenes look like a side of beef with a sombrero on).

Hanging out is a popular pastime here and looking good is part of that. You don’t see too many overweight people here although they eat ‘late and a lot of red meat’. Its very fashion conscious and much like London without the massive variety of fashion and much of it is ‘ivy leage’ USA. The shopping is great and varied with a lot of independents. Whilst you are browsing there is always the great coffee houses to punctuate the aquisition-fest. There isn’t too much of the Macs/Starbucks/Dunkin’ frat going on which is such a pleasant change from most European cities.

The first day I confined myself to Recoletta; a parilla, coffee (strictly off the diet) and a gentle walk up to the old church on Plaza San Martin de Tours, in fact the only colonial church in the whole of BA. In the afternoon it rained quite hard and I caught up with a game of ‘squelch’. This is a hazardous watery game where the contestant steps on random paving slabs and if he is unlucky the corner tips and the corresponding diagonal corner issues black water up the trouser leg. The pavements in BA are studiously untended and looking down to anticipate holes, gravelly watery patches and precarious ravines is a good idea. I turned my ankle on the third day and spent a couple of days limping without any thought, or possibility, of litigation.

It is a town with much cultural activity, music, dance, theatre, café society and of course football. On average the younger and much of the older population eat out quite often in the many restaurants and in the evening this may be as late as 10 – 11 o’clock with a later diversion to the clubs or bars, arriving home at 3 – 4 am for a light sleep before work. This is augmented with a snoozette at about 8 or 9 in the evening before the out. It is a punishing schedule but also means that many restaurants don’t really open until about 9pm. I am, of course, in bed by then.

Each day I got up and was met by the smiling face of Maria in the hotel café. She has three children, lives near the Aeropuerto Ezeiza, takes an hour and a half to get to work, works 12 hours, then goes home. She doesn’t look a day over 22. Her most endearing feature is she blushes each time you ask her a question and is studiously efficient.

From the café window each morning at breakfast I watch the husband and wife team put together their vegetable store across the way. They have a small section of the front of an oriental 24 hour kiosco. I am guessing they rent it from the Chinese owner (who chain smokes) and peddle the fresh produce, which definitely enhances the meager offerings of the kiosco. He is ‘Jagged Edge’ in his preparation of the shop front, fruits and vegetables are manicured for display and stacked in distinct groups of colour and shape. They are, I am guessing, Indigenous Indians, they work every day including Sunday. He parks his old Ford pick-up just up the street and drives out of BA to get the vegetables fresh every day. They are ever industrious, patient and do a favourable root and fruit crop and most of all, he looks like the guy who cuts my hair in Twyford who is from Slough, only slightly spookey.

Each day is a walk to a different area always crossing 9 de Julio and each time I gaze at the building with the Mercedes Icon on the top, which dominates the Avenida and is the first thing I remember about Ba when I came here 25 years ago or so. I also remember we went to see Ben Hur in the old cinema on Lavalle Street which was the first time I had seen it on the big screen. It was spectacular, especially the chariot race, although I can’t hold Charlton Heston in the same idolatry, the man’s ultimate man, all chest and loin cloth, since ‘Bowling for Columbine’ where it turns out, he’s a bit of a twat about guns.

There is only one Che Guevara. He was Argentinian, a doctor and a host of other things, moralist, philosopher, skilled combatant, and he did a extraordinary things for Cuba but got killed for his troubles. Above all, his belief of personal morals above personal wealth was his most enduring and stayed with him until he was executed in Bolivia. He will be forever be the choice poster pinup for discerning students and he is still the most recognisable face of the 20th Century. His story is a breath-taking rise from doctor to revolutionary hero and a riveting read on Wikipedia:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_guevara

He seems forgotten in Argentina as one of their most successful sons, replaced perhaps my Maradonna who is a god to all football fans and perhaps bridges the divide.

San Telmo and particularly, Plaza de Dorrego, is still bohemian, shabby chic and full of traveling wire benders, or jewelers, artesans as they would like to be called. They make beautiful jewelry, mate pots, and do a bit of juggling, trickery and cigarette rolling on the side. All the cafes have Tango mats and the Tango rolls all day. Today of all days there is a couple who really put their souls into the dancing…probably helped on his part by her obvious beauty, matched only by Aphrodite, Helen of Troy etc (i’m guessing) i.e. you would sacrifice half your DVD collection…anyway the dance was beautiful, they moved as one, many ships were sunk. I tipped heavily, doh. I finish with a beer in the Bar San Telmo, one beer gets you a plate of Monkey nuts which would keep a whoop of Plebosus trim for a month, and catch up with some good Argentinian music. Quilmes is the beer of choice although I vowed not to touch the stuff after revelations about Macchu Picchu. So apparently, the aforementioned is not owned by the Peruvian people any more but by a fellow called Quilmes, who lives I Switzerland, is Venezuelan allegedly and makes a packet (3000x365x$55). So by association, don’t drink Quilmes…who knows?

I had always wanted to see a game of football at La Bombanera, the home of Boca Juniors, and again I was thwarted so I visited the ground itself. It is in the middle of the Barrio and a collection of small streets that lead down to the port, which have now become Disney-Boca, the inevitable move from authentic dive with related drug dealing, prostitution and excellent food to parody of itself. You can’t even get assaulted and robbed authentically here any more as the police outnumber the locals 2:1. The ground was small and the pitch terrible, ‘our’ Dave wouldn’t risk his ankles on this surface, it looked like Hackney fields. You could feel the intensity it inspires by just standing near the pitch, which you can touch from the front seats, if the 30’ fence hadn’t been erected to stop the rioting.

Anyway, went to ‘Superclásico, Boca vs River Plate. The atmosphere built up over two hours (due to a ‘B’ game before the main feast) and the sentiment between the two sets of supporters was one of mutual hatred. This is not due to the upper/lower class differential (Boca being the Barrio, lower class) as most people think, the areas are very similar in demographic, but an intense rivalry that comes from the fact that either one usually takes first or second spot in Primera División. Well, forget the cathedral (silence) like Old Trafford or Stamford Bridge. The noise, flares, confetti and drum bands rock for the whole game and the football is secondary. In fact the game was average apart from Riquelme (No. 10 shirt) who is class, the flare event was something to remember. A family on the bus had come all the way from Mendoza to see the game, and although Mendoza is in the Primera División, the whole country, really, either supports Boca or Plate. In fact 15 of the top 22 teams or so in the Primera División are from Buenos Aires. That leaves a few small metro cities scrapping for the bottom few places and not much silverware (or share of the TV rights).

So many Parillas and Cafes later it was time to get the bus to Puerto Madryn, a 22 hour hike south but away from the big city and the smell of the buses and humanity.

Photos:

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/BuenosAires23102009#

http://picasaweb.google.com/marco.nails/TangoInBlackAndWhite31102009#