Random BA I

So, as it was pointed out to me, I´ve been living here in Buenos Aires for 6 weeks now and yet have neglected to put up any photos of the city itself. I have been snapping quite a few as I wander the city exploring parks, plazas, and various other things but they are anything but organized at this point. Thus, I figured I would just throw them up at random as the opportunity arrises.
In this edition, we have a shot of the very urban view out the kitchen window of my appartment where I lean on the window-cill and look out whistfully while waiting for maté water to boil. Next is a close up of these absolutely gorgeous flower they have here (still haven´t figured out what there called. Appologies to any botanists who might be looking at this). They have been bursting vividly off of trees in every part of the city and are only now (as we have officially enterred autumn) dropping to the ground, leaving an other-wordly pink carpet over the concrete landscape.


Next is a shot of the observatory where I went to hear a public lecture called ¨Borges and math¨ which had a much more interesting title than it actually deserved, I assure you. Next is a slightly more artistic take of the observatory after the sun went down.

The silhouette shot is from the Recoleta cemmetary which is one of THE coolest things in the city. I took a ton of photos from there that I plan to post up in a bit. This is just a taste so that the antici---pation might build a bit.


The green dome is the Congreso Nacional de la República de Argentina and the plaza leading up to it. It´s an interesting contrast to our capital dome in DC which is gleaming white to suggest the purity of our neoclassical democracy. The BA version on the other hand is overly ornate and stained with soot and pigeon droppings, suggesting the less idealistic attitude Argentines tend to have of government and its role in relation to the people. It´s also a great visual metaphor for the acceptance and quasi-celebration within the Argentine psyche of their turbulent and chaotic development (and a darn good land mark when trying to make it home from the club).


The

The towering monstrosity is the Universidad de Buenos Aires Facultad de Ciencias de Medicina. It´s part medical school, part public hospital, and all Argentine. Surrounding the plaza from which I´m taking the picture are severally equally monolithic and decaying towers of various other faculties.

Finally are two shots of the wonderfully-seculded little plaza ¨La Plazoleta Roberto Arlt¨ just a few blocks away from my appartment. Something about the stone and vivid pink trees and its hidden away quality really made it stick out to me and I´ve sort of adopted it as my home away from home (away from home). I go there for reading, yoga, reflection time, and the weekday afternoon reggae band (I think they´re skipping their high school classes to be there, bless their hearts) that sets up there. Speaking of which, I think I´ll head there right now...

concieving Concepción

After Santiago and a failed attempt to hook up with some friends south of there we decided to head off to the college town of Concepción, Chile on a whim to kill a little time before Christine´s bday. There wasn´t a whole lot to do there except go out and drink at night, which we certainly did, although, somehow we kept accedentally choosing the karaoke bars instead of the ones with live music (they had cheaper drinks anyway!). The last night was the best when we stumbled upon an amazing jazz show featuring a trumpet player who played a Chilean version of ´Summertime´with a huge wine glass to muffle the sound. Very cool!

The highlight of the whole town was definitely the museum at the Universidad de Concepción. It featured a huge mural painted in the 60´s by Mexican muralist José Orozco, a contemporary of Diego Rivera. The theme of the mural is ¨América Latina en todo¨ so basically tracking LA culture form México to Chile. It was REALLY COOL. A Latin American Studies student´s fantasy. The whole story of a culture told in a single intricate image (a lot like One Hundred Years of Solitude did in literature).

pictures soon!

El Parque Nacional Puyehue - explosively beautiful!

After Santiago, we headed down south another 17 hours or so to the little town of Entre Lagos. The town is aptly named, finding itself between two gorgeous lakes that were formed by the multiple volacanos lining this stretch of the southern Andes. The raison d´être for this town is the nearby Parque Nacional Puyehue, which hugs the Chilean border with Argentina. We took a nice hike through some seriously dense and beautiful forest (very Fern Gulley-esque) with some of the fatest trees I´ve ever seen. The trip offered great views of two of the major volcanoes in the area (Puyehue and CaboBlanco, guess which one is which). We also got a really cool view of the whole valley from atop a mountain that we spent a good hour climbing up and picnicked on top of (where I took the self-portrait). After all that we hit up the best part of all, the hot springs, which are approximately 135 degrees ferenheit yipes! but it felt soooooo good. That night we happened to be hostelling across the street from a ¨alternative rock¨ exposition, which turned out to be five teenage garage bands who were somehow ¨touring¨ the area south of Santiago. It was a very ¨bless their hearts¨ moment as they put on their best Nirvana covers. We stayed for about a beer´s worth and headed back to the hostel. It´s amazing how US music really dominates the world, even more than Coca-cola, McDonalds, or CO2 emissions I think.

The next day we waited out alongside the ¨highway¨ leading to Argentina which is where I snapped the volcano photos. We had to literally chase down the bus which had had no intention of stopping for more passengers, contrary to what the lady at the office when we bought the tickets in a nearby town had told us, and they let us on. It´s amazing what you can accomplish with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of sweat.

Bariloche ¡qué barbaro!

After two fabulous weeks in Chile (posts pending) we FINALLY enterred Argentina by way of el Parque Nacional Nahuel Huapi. The national park boundary is actually the official international border although you don´t arrive at the checkpoint for nearly half and hour. The first thing I saw after enterring the park was an enormous and very distinctive mountain peak. ¨Argentina, estoy llegado¨ I said to myself. Note, the bus pictured was something I found at the border crossing station, NOT the bus we took, so no worries. Perhaps someone had their papers seriously out of order... The town of Bariloche itself is amazing, or ¨¡barbaro!¨ as the porteños say. It literally means ¨barbarous¨ as in barbarians, but somehow it´s used to mean cool or excellent. It reminded me quite a bit of San Franscisco (if San Franscisco had a population of 200,000 and were surrounded by ski resorts and ranches). It also had a very Alpine flavor, which is probably due to the massive influx of German imigrants who settled the area in the 1800s. Thanks to them, Bariloche is known as the ¨chocolate capital of Argentina¨ and with good reason! There are chocolate stores lining the main street ranging in size from boutique to chocolate supermarket. We definitely got or groove on with this bit of culture. The best place was called Mamushka and was fittingly adorned with Russian dolls. Note the pic of Christine demonstrating the fine quality of Bariloche chocolates alongside the Lake Nahuel Huapi. To work off all that chocolate, we decided to do something active for Christine´s birthday. In the land of guachos, what could be better than a horseback riding tour of the area. I found a great operation (thank you Lonely Planet) called Carol Jones tours. Carol Jones is a third generation Argentine who´s grandfather emmigrated from Texas in the 1800´s and bought up a huge 10,000+ acre estancia in the Andean foothills of Patagonia. Today the entire estancia is actually within the national park boundaries so we had prime access to some amazing Patagonian views. After about 2.5 hours riding, we were ready for a break and man did we get one! The guides brought us to a little outcropping of trees in the middle of a vast valley and proceeded to cook us a traditional Argentine asado. Needless to say, the beef (which I ate willingly, since it was all from cows that were raised traditionally on the estancia which means no chemicals or antibiotics. You can´t get it more local and free-range than that!) was fantastic and we washed it down with some malbec the guides had brought in nalgene bottles and ice-cold water from the little mountain stream running nearby. Somehow after all the wine and ridiculous amount of meat (sorry, Texas, but everything is WAY bigger in Patagonia), we got back on the horses and enjoyed the spectacular mountain views back to the ranch house where we were treated to cookies and beer (man, they know how to show us a good time). On the ride, we made friends with Cecillia, a 50-something woman from Port Aransas who was travelling by herself and was our only companion on the horseride, or ¨cabalgata¨. She invited us to join her in a car she had rented to tour the surrounding areas the next day, which being Christine´s bday, was perfect! Cecillia is a very nice lady, but couldn´t drive a stickshit for beans so I wound up chauffering for almost the whole day trip. We drove through more of the national park and arrived at a little town/self-described ¨ecological village¨/ex-pat hippie community called El Bolsón. El Bolsón is famous for two things: 1 - the weekly artisan market and 2 - beer. 70% of all the hops in Argentina are grown around this town and they had the produce to prove it. We enjoyed the market and enhanced our experience by trying several of the local varieties. Note the pic of Christine enjoying hers in the town plaza and the pic of my scruptious waffle/cream/strawberry treat! On the way back to Bariloche we stopped at a mountain-fed tuna farm and bought the freshest fish I´ve ever had, which we cooked up into a masterful birthday feast that night at the hostel and downed with further ridiculous amounts of Argentine wine (note the before and after shots).

Isla del Sol and Copacabana

Last week we took a gorgeous journey to the Isla del Sol in the middle of Lake Titicaca, where the Inca and Aymara people believe the sun god first emerged to bestow man, woman, the stars, and the sun and moon upon the earth. There is a boulder there shaped (though you have to look hard) like a puma's head. This is where the name Titicaca comes from. In Quechua titi = puma and in Aymara khar'ka = rock. Yay educational travelling!

Later on that night in the little lakeside town of Copacabana, we encountered a huge brss band playing loudly in the streets. After a gorgeous sunset over the lake we headed back to the squae where the band played on all night in preparation for Bolivian Carnival which is Feb 2. The most amazing thing was seeing all these little Bolivian women in their traditional skirts and bowler hats getting tipsy of liters of beer and dancing in the streets!

From there we took a bus across the straight of Tiquina where the bus is actually loaded on to a tiny decreped wooden "ferry" and sent across the chopy and rainy waters. That was pretty wild. We were also stopped by some very sketchy "police" on the highway who said they wee loking for drugs and then confiscated a carton of coke bottles some Bolivian women had been transporting. I have no clue what that was about, but I'm glad no money was involved.

At peace in La Paz

Following a bus journey through the Altiplano, ¨the Tibet of the Americas¨ we've been having a very chill time in La Paz, the semi-capital of Bolivia. There is quite a tense polticial situation here with the resource rich Sant Cruz province wanting to break away and the La Paz government issuing a new constitution that is very much like the one in Venezuela (if that means anyting to anyone). As a compromise negociations are taking place in Sucre which is the judicial capital. Here in La Paz though, Evo Morales and his semi-socialist agenda are extremely popular and I even bought a wrist watch with his face on it to prove it!

Otherwise this city is shockingly beautiful. It's emormous, cosmopolitan (we've been eating at an awesome 100% Natural food restaurant) and full of life. It must be what Mexico City is like. We're staying in this palacial old hotel that rents out as cheap as a hostel because it's falling apart. For us though, it's serious luxury and is right next to the main plaza. We're touring some art museums, such as the Museo Contemporanio Plaza yesterday which is a private gallery in an amazing old decorated house here and had some really amazing pieces, and just getting ready for some serious travelling across Chile. It's 8 hours to the beach in Arica from here and then 28 hours to Santiago and another 18ish to Puerto Montt from there. All that in about 10 days. Yipes! More from Chile... and photos will be up to illustrate all this blabbing very very soon (I hope).

treking the top of the world!

We explored Machu Picchu yesterday and were totally blown away (almost literally a few times, those stones are slipery and it´s windy!). In addition to the beautiful ruins themselves, we also hiked up the nearby Wyna Picchu which is a couple hundred feet taller than Machu Picchu. It was 2 hours of pretty intense hiking but totally worth it. The peak of the mountain is actually above the clouds, so it´s extremely surreal. Occasionally the clouds would blow away and there was a perfect view of the main ruins on the other mountain. Christine and I had been joking about how you want to reach out and touch the clouds as a kid. It´s unbelievable that there´s a place in the world where you actually can!

We spent about 6 hours there all together, including the hike through gorgeous tropical jungle back down to the little town at the bottom of the mountain, Aguascalientes. The town gets its name from the thermal hotsprings located here. We spent pretty much the whole day there when we arrived. It´s pretty awesome soaking in naturally hot mineral waters surrounded by amazing mountains that scrape the clouds. We met up with a Portuguese lobbyist there who we had met in Cusco at dinner the night before and had a great time with him eating out again here. He introduced us to a really cool Chilean couple who told us to look them up when we get to Santiago. Yay travelling connections!

Otherwise, things are going wonderfully. The Peruvians (Peruanos en Español) are great people. Friendly, chill, and beauftiful in a really servere mountain way and we´ve been enjoying living off the mercados in each town. Today we made some delicious avacado and cheese sandwhices (which cost about 2 dollars for everything) and ate them in the little plaze here next to a big statue of some Inca king. We´re just killing time here until we catch the train back to Cusco and then the bus from there to Bolivia. Execpt for the copious gangs of tourists, it´s pretty much a paradise.