Christmas and New Year in B.A.

Feels like it´s been a busy time. And it has. And it gets harder to update this the longer I leave it. I moved into the apartment, in the city centre, sharing with a girl from Colombia, and guys from Germany and England. I took some Spanish lessons at a school in town, just a few blocks from the apartment. I had group lessons the first week but there were only 2 of us in the beginners class. The first couple of days we were going over stuff I already knew from my time traveling here so that was pretty slow. My second night in the apartment, after my first day of school, I was out with my flatmate and a mate of his from Germany. That somehow turned into a 5am finish without there being much going on.

The next night I went to the final of the football playoffs here. In Argentina, at the end of the season if there´s more than one team on the same points at the top of the league, they have a playoff to determine the champions - goal difference doesn´t come into it. This year, for the first time ever, there were 3 teams on the same points, so there were 3 playoffs between Boca, Tigre and San Lorenzo, all held on neutral ground at Racing´s stadium. I didn´t go to either of the first 2 but this was the final, between Boca and Tigre. What an experience.

I never thought I´d find myself at a championship final in South America, but the spectacle was what I'd hoped to see. For safety reasons they didn´t sell the ground out, and there were only 30,000 or so in the crowd, but they made the noise of a full crowd. Especially the Tigre fans, who were far outnumbered by the Boca section but who sometimes drowned the Boca support out. It was their first time challenging for the title and you could see (and hear) how much it meant to them. They were up against it - following the other playoff results, Tigre needed to beat Boca by 2 goals to be champions. Boca could draw or lose by 1 goal and still win the title. So the game needed a Tigre goal to make things interesting.

And it came, but with only 25 minutes remaining. It was a frenetic finish to the game but Tigre couldn´t add another, and Boca took the title. We wanted Tigre to win, as their fans were better and Boca get all the kudos anyway, but being in the Boca section when they won the league was amazing. A pissed local tried to rob one of our group of his camera when we were leaving but he was swiftly dealt with.

After the football we went to a house party way out in the sticks. We didn´t get back until 5 again and I slept through my alarm, so missed my classes. I was pretty pissed off with myself so needed to find a way to go to bed earlier last week. It didn´t happen. Morning classes should be banned here. This is a late night city and you want to get out and experience it, so in hindsight afternoon classes would have been a way better idea.

We had no classes on Christmas Day, so we went round to some Colombian friends apartment in the San Telmo neighbourhood. Their apartment was amazing, on the top floor of a converted old mansion block, with a big balcony overlooking the city. At midnight there were fireworks going off all over the city, so you could sometimes see some splashes of colour in the sky and the noise was like downdown Baghdad on a bad day. People don´t usually go out to late bars and clubs until 2am here, but on Christmas that gets even later. We went out at 4 to a club and it was heaving with the people there to see a live band. I called stumps early and was home by 8.


Boxing Day I had classes again and think I made them. Then was the weekend so we met up with a big crowd and went to Palermo to a bar, club and after party til 10 on Sunday. Another night out in San Telmo on the Sunday which again was something like 7am but I made it to my class. Last week I was the only person in my class. It would have been a good opportunity to make a lot of progress on my Spanish but between xmas and new year was amazing here. Again out every night until day. We were going to try to have a quiet night on the 30th to save it for new years eve but after my class I met up with a bunch of people and we ended up going for a walk around the cemetery in Recoleta and having a big night again.

I missed classes again on New Years Eve and slept most of the day. That night we went to my old hostel in Palermo for an asado (barbeque) til around 1 or 2 then headed to a loft party which was really good and reminded me a lot of some parties I´ve been to in London.

I´ve met a lot of people in the last 3 weeks. The locals have really surprised me too. After liking Santiago so much, I thought they might be a bit cold here but they're nothing like it. They want to know your story and they´re supportive when you´re trying to speak Spanish and making a hash of it. I haven´t been working so hard on my Spanish the last week but a lot of people I met are on the road again for a few weeks so I´ll change school to afternoon lessons closer to home and hopefully get back on track again. And I´ll continue going out and chatting to locals, as that's the fastest way to learn. Besides, a language can reveal something bigger about the people who speak it, so you learn more than just the Spanish translation of English words.

Pictures to follow, and more about the city, the language, and a potted history of Argentina.

Happy New Year!

Back in the city

I said my goodbyes to Ed and Mum on Sunday and flew back to BA. It was hard saying goodbye to Ed after such a good time the last few weeks.

The first couple of nights in BA I stayed at a hostel in the city centre, but wasn't interested in swapping life stories, so I just used those 2 days to adjust to being on my own again and getting a feel for the city. Then I moved to a hostel in the Palermo neighbourhood, not too far from where we stayed last time. The hostel was fantastic. The other place in the city I found too big, but this one was perfect, a nice size with big balcony, barbies, good recommendations for nights out, really nice staff and other guests.

Today I went and looked at an apartment in the city centre sharing with some other people. Great room and the other people seem nice too. A German guy, a girl from Colombia and I think another kiwi guy is moving in too. So hopefully I can get a reasonable rent on that and move in.

I also enrolled at a language school yesterday, starting next week. I´m excited about learning some lingo. No doubt you can get more out of a place if you know the language, and if I go to other countries after this it'll be essential to be able to know more than how to count to ten, order a beer, and (for reasons known only to language teachers) observe that the cat is on the table.

Went to a couple of awesome places this week as well, on Wednesday we went to a tango music show, which was 4 guys sitting on chairs playing accordians, and behind them 4 guys playing violins, and others playing cello and double bass with bows, plus piano and occasional vocals. A very cool and unique show, as the place being packed out would suggest. Last night a bunch of us went to a good little club, which had dancers and drag queens knocking around, pretty funny. Good music too. We got back to the hostel when it was getting light and there were heaps of people still up or getting back, sitting on the balcony chatting.

Today I moved to another hostel closer to town, which I´d booked thinking of using it as a base to check out various neighbourhoods and find an apartment I like. But having found one already, I may as well have stayed in Palermo.

South America #3 - El Calafate & Ushuaia

7 December: Buenos Aires - El Calafate
Seeing as we were heading 2,000 km south (and then a further 1,000 afterwards) Ed and I opted for a flight. That took around 3 hours, which gives an idea of how big this country is - BA isn´t anywhere near as far north as you can get and El Calafate is 1,000 km from the furthest south. So sitting on a bus, lovely as they are, for a day or 2 didn´t seem like a great idea.



El Calafate´s claim to fame is that it´s where you spring from to go and see the Perito Moreno glacier. Apart from that it doesn´t have a great deal going on. In the winter the town clears out and all the seasonal workers head elsewhere, leaving the clutch of local residents behind.


The glacier itself is quite a sight. An incredible blue colour - depending on the angle of the sun you see every shade of blue imaginable - and enormous. While most of the world´s glaciers are receding, this one is stable, advancing some 2m every day. Huge chunks of ice fall off the face of the glacier (called "calving") which is an amazing spectacle. You can hear the creaking and groaning as the ice at the face weakens and begins to tear away from the body of the glacier, and when the chunks calve into the water they hit the surface with an almighty sound.

There are 2 faces of the glacier, forming an "L" shape as it reaches Lago Argentgina.

This is the "South" face...



... but most of the calving action happens at the North face:



The "terminus" of the glacier, to give it the apparently correct name, is 5km wide, with an average height of 60m. At its deepest, the glacier has a depth of 700m. We took a boat out towards the North face to get a better look. It was a kind of optical illusion. The boat takes you 300m from the North face. Ed and I didn´t think we were anything like 300m away, or that the face looked anything like 60m high, but when we went to the lookout you could see that must be right. From the lookout the boats look tiny against the glacier, and tend to position themselves with their ass toward the glacier, presumably so they can get out of there sharpish if a huge chunk calves off unexpectedly.



We were looking at the North face from the lookout after lunch and I saw a massive tower of ice that looked a bit precarious. We thought no more of it and turned to head off down the walkway, when that same tower calved off and crashed into the lake. Cheers and whistles went up, and we turned to see the huge splash created by it. It was like an impossibly fat man had bombed off the top of the face. We didn´t have our cameras out in time to catch it, which was a shame, but Ed got this picture of the afters from another calving (thanks Ed!)


Bosh!

I also got a wee video of another small bit that fell off. Not very exciting but what the hell.


In other exciting news, I discovered the "take pictures of small stuff" feature on my camera so no doubt I´ll be taking pictures of all sorts of random shit now...



10 December: El Calafate - Rio Gallegos
Lago Argentina is apparently the biggst lake in Argentina and the 3rd biggest in South America. It´s a brilliant turquoise colour in parts and a magnificent sight when compllemented by the mountainous backdrop. This was the view from the back of the bus as we left El Calafate:


Rio Gallegos was just a place for us to break up the trip to Ushuaia for a night and get some admin done.
12 December: Rio Gallegos - Ushuaia

The bus from Rio Gallegos to Ushuaia was the least pleasant travel experience we´d had in Argentina, but still wasn´t all that bad. There were several stops for police to board the bus and inspect everyone´s passports. Which seemed totally unnecessary, given the geography (see the map above) meant we had to pass through the border into Chile for a while, and then back into Argentina further south, and go through all the attendant border control procedures. The first border post out of Argentina was probably the most disorganised setup I´ve ever seen. If you´re dead set on smuggling contraband into Chile from Argentina, this is surely the place to do it.

While in the Chilean part of the sandwich we crossed the Magellan Strait on this bad boy.


Which was nice. Actually it was, there were some of these kicking around:

And so late doors we got about as far south in the world as it´s possible to get by road. Ushuaia´s a pretty cool and odd little place. In the arly 1970s the population was around 7,000 but now it´s nearly 10 times that. It´s debatable whether in fact it is the southernmost city in the world, but it´s done a good job of marketing itself as such. Chile´s Puerto Williams is further south still, and amusingly calls itself "Más alla del fin del mundo" (farther even than the end of the world).

Our first day we went for a wander from the top of a chairlift up to what is supposed to be a glacier, but there was no sign of one. Whatever, it was a nice hike and the views back down over Ushuaia weren´t too shabby.


The next day our mum arrived so we hired a car and went for a drive to a lake we´d passed on our way into Ushuaia and another road round the bay.

I saw a sign that cracked me up. This guy looks like he´s doing a dance my mate Fraser pulls out every now and again, the Anti-rhythm. I thought he also looked like a lego man. And camp. (Not Fraser, the dude in the sign.)

The following day we went to the nearby Tierra del Fuego National Park. There are allegedly beavers there, and we did see a few dams, but sadly no beavers. Or beaver. I thought the park was a letdown, there wasn't much wildlife on show, beavers or otherwise. We had a nice feed at a fancy restaurant that night as it was mum´s birthday. What a random place to have it.

My final day down south took us to see some wildlife that made up for the lack of it in the park. Plenty of sea lions on a rock, in the middle of shagging season. Nearly saw a couple of fights between males, it was like being at Brannigans in Reading on a Friday night.

And the highlight for me were these cute little fellas, Megellanic penguins. Funny to see them waddling around on the each but boy can they swim fast. Like little torpedoes they were.

"excuse me sir, would you like to try the house white?"


So that´s a wrap for the south for me. Back up to BA and the end of my trip with Ed. It´s been a fantastic few weeks with him and it´ll be strange to be back on my own again. He and Mum are off to Antactica tomorrow for xmas, so I hope they have a sweet time and see some amazing things. Next post from me will be in BA.

South America #2 - Bariloche, Puerto Madryn & Buenos Aires (1)

25 November: Mendoza - Bariloche

Our first longer distance bus trip saw us head 17 hours south and it wasn´t too bad at all. Enough leg room to be able to sleep, plus 2 (bad) movies, dinner, breakfast, lunch and a game of bingo as we neared Bariloche. Which was encouraging, as the numbers being in Spanish didn´t present any problems. Maybe there´s hope yet.



We took Ruta 40, which is Argentina´s Route 66, eventually taking the 7 Lakes Road into Bariloche, in Nahuel Huapi National Park and at the foot of a lake bearing the same name, all of which is in the north west of the Argentine side of Patagonia. We left when night was falling but when day broke the next day the scenery was stunning. The lay of the land and the water alongside the course of the 7 Lakes Road was what I imagine bits of North America must look like.

We had a very chilled out hostel, right on the lake. The town itself is a fairly standard mountain town - kind of unremarkable except for being not exactly cheap. It's surprising how much it´s costing in Argentina so far. All the hype about this country being dead cheap may have been true 3 or 4 (or especially 10) years ago, but not now. And especially not in Patagonia.



Bariloche´s even got a Pacha but it wasn´t opening until the height of the high season, so we made do with another ludicrously over-priced place to drink.



The area surrounding Bariloche is loaded with stunning lakes and mountains, some shared with Chile. We wanted to kayak down a nearby river, but apparently the national park authorities were restricting the number of concessions to operators to offer kayaking which made it too expensive. So we hired a car for a couple of days and, assisted by some locally sourced produce, headed to the hills for a couple of mini roadie day trips.


(not the car we hired)

It´s amazing how similar much of this area is to some of NZ, about the only giveaway that you´re not in NZ is the absence of ferns. Which, on reflection makes sense, as NZ split off from what is now Argentina before the continents split apart and took shape. The major exception to this similarity was a black glacier, which had some of the most bizarre landscape and colours I´ve ever seen.

The bits that break off float around in a milky coloured lake at the foot of the glacier, creating an enormous milkshake with ice cubes to scale, before eventually melting away into the river beyond.

29 November: Bariloche - Puerto Madryn

After Bariloche, we headed cross-country, to the east coast of Patagonia. Not the sort of place you'd expect there to be a Welsh heritage, but this area's got heaps of it from way back.

Puerto Madryn sits by the Península Valdés, which is apparently a bit of a hangout for whales and penguins. I'm convinced there's a global cartel operating, so any arrangement where passengers get in a regular boat and head a little way off the coastline to see whales surfacing for a few seconds, should be really expensive. Do these people actually pay the whales? Have the whales formed a union? We didn't go to see whales.

Apparently at some times during the year you can see them from the beach (maybe this is their equivalent of a free sample) but we weren't there at the right time.

what a whale might look like

There didn't seem to be a great deal else going on in Puerto Madryn, but the beach is nice enough and we went to an Ecoparque too, which was a museum giving all sorts of interesting information about local wildlife.

2 December: Puerto Madryn - Buenos Aires

So after our northern Patagonia jaunt it was time for the bright lights. I didn't know how I would react to Buenos Aires (or BA as everyone seems to call it) after enjoying Santiago so much, but I was looking forward to dipping my toe in.

Where do I start? It's a fantastic city. We were staying in an apartment in one of the wealthier suberbs - Palermo - which had everything we needed within a 5 minute walk. Wide, uncrowded streets, clean, and loaded with parks and trees, good places to eat, and beautiful women.

Our first afternoon saw us take a walk from Palermo to a neighbouring, also well-heeled area, Ricoleta. First stop was the most bizarre cemetery I've seen. They don't have simple grave stones here, but elaborate sarcophagi in which the dead are interred. The great and the good are buried here - former presidents, heads of trade unions (no whales, mind), military heroes etc, but the most popular one is where you'll find Eva Peron, aka Evita. From there we wandered to a nearby park which was very relaxed, and then an art museum containing some Rembrandts and various other old and new works, which was also pretty cool.

Day 2 and we were off to San Telmo, which is a fairly touristy, bohemian area. It used to be where the rich folks lived, but years ago disease pushed many of those who could afford it further out to Palermo, and the massive houses they occupied were subdivided into apartments. Again the streets we saw gave an impression of being relaxed and unhurried, without massive amounts of noise or traffic. Like Palermo and Ricoleta, you wouldn't know walking around here or sitting having a beer that you were in a city of 13 million people. We went to look at the Museum of Modern Art but it's being renovated and was closed. Someone had tagged the top of the sign for it, which I guess you could argue is a small expression of modern "art", so maybe we didn't come away entirely empty handed.

The third day we headed to the centre of the city, which I guess does what it says on the tin. Much more chaotic and what you'd expect a big city like this to feel like. That night we headed out in Palermo, first to a great little bar called Campobravo, then to a club called Crobar. The bar had as many beautiful women under one roof as I've seen anywhere, as probably did any number of bars down the same street. The club was okay without being superb. The music was pretty good and wouldn't be out of place in Ibiza. The crowd didn't seem as up for it as they may have been and the layout of the club wasn't such that you'd go off on little wanders checking out different rooms. Still, the drinks weren't as pricey as feared and, though I doubt I'll go back to that club next time, if that's an average sort of spot then some others in BA are sure to please.

Our final day had a proper little random treat lined up for us. The guy we rented the apartment from came through with some tickets for the national polo championship final. I didn't see myself going to polo ever, let alone a big event in Argentina. My preconception of polo was that it was a bunch of toffs on horseback playing glorified croquet. I still think it's a bunch of toffs on horseback playing glorified croquet, but it was a great day out and I'd go again given the chance. It was a strange kind of setup for what is essentially the equivalent of, say, an FA Cup final. The surrounding area wasn't brimming with pre match atmosphere and entertainment, and even afterwards there didn't seem to be a massive amount going on. We didn't stay out that late, as Ed and I were off south the next day.

I will definitely come back to BA, maybe for a month or so, live in an apartment and learn some Spanish. I've been getting by just fine on limited Spanish and whipping out the phrasebook now and then, but that's not enough. I want to be able to really dive into South America, and that's impossible without having a decent grasp of the lingo. One very noticeable thing here is how good most tourists are at Spanish. In other parts of the world people use English as the lingua franca, as I found in eastern Europe, but here Spanish is the only currency in town. Many locals, particularly younger ones, understand a little English, but to get anywhere here you have to be speaking their language. Besides, Spanish is a great language, pleasant to listen to and fun to speak. I might still have no luck with the girls here when I've learned their language, but even less if I don't.

Next up, we're off back down south. In Ed's case, a long, long way south...