argentina, part one
our journey to salta was long but unremarkable, due to a distinct lack of the annoyances and discomforts that characterise more or less all bolivian bus rides, and to which we were apparently still accustomed. and thus, having slept surprisingly well, we arrived in the first destination of our last new south american country.
we went to hail a cab, passing the waiting time by observing that intriguing south american practise of queue-jumping. it is said that no one queues like the british, but i'd never really had a reason to consider such a claim until this trip. it seems that any slight curvature in a queue here is seen as an invitation to those with an apparently more urgent need to do whatever it is that necessitates the queuing in the first place to branch off from the queue tangentially, and from there, to slowly but surely slip in front of those who intersect the newly-formed bypass. there is a trick to it: he who is joining the queue at a tangent has quite skilfully (and non-verbally) to attempt to convince those with a legitimate place in the queue that he is unaware that he is cutting in front of them, thereby excusing him from committing the heinous act. the main challenge to this technique is robustly ignoring the glares of the relegated, who know that you know that they know that you're cutting in front of them, but who are for some reason too polite to say anything (which is something on which the jumper relies).
it was finally our turn to get in the taxi (having cunningly cut ahead in the queue by joining it perpendicularly, thereby undercutting both the original line and its tangent). our driver turned to me, pointing at the stereo. 'cumbia', he said, as though he too was aware that the only sound we'd heard since lima 2 months ago was that of the ubiquitous reggaeton. he eagerly sifted through the seemingly identical tracks on the cd, glancing up to look at the road now and then, and i got the impression that this was to be the new artistic form of auditory communication that would plague us for the remainder of our south american trip.
i enjoyed argentina immediately. there are numerous reasons for this, such as being able to achieve better than level 7 on the bristol stool scale, the continuation of the love affair with ice cream (which began in chile), and public bathrooms being fully equipped with soap and toilet paper. beyond this, the country so far just has a very agreeable feel to it.
i've often worried during this trip at the realisation that i get excited by the idea of visiting a european-esque place, because it makes me wonder why i'm bothering with south america if i'm so interested in europe. but i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. i think it's easier for me to anticipate a place if i have a reference point for my pre-visit imaginations, and i do find it interesting to note how a place can look european but feel nothing like it.
iguazu was one of those insanely hot places where one is forever covered in a fine layer of sweat. it almost seems planned that one of the largest waterfalls in the world would be located here, to shower its refreshing, happiness-inducing spray upon its visitors as welcome respite from the unforgiving sun and suffocating humidity.
although the falls are an undeniably spectacular site, the sheer sound was one of the things that impressed me most. i tend to find an unbroken wall of sound to be as perfect as complete silence, in the same way that unspoilt silence can be deafening. it feels as though one can almost bathe in unbroken loudness, as with the roar of a hovering harrier jump jet, the tinnitus-inducing vignettes of a loud rock band or, as in this case, the sound of water cascading at a rate of up to 12,800m3 per second. the result of standing next to the garganta del diablo - the largest cataract at iguazu - was that of bathing in the sound, the sight and the cool embrace of the engulfing mist in one soggy assault on the senses.
because a gentle bathing of three senses simultaneously wasn't enough, we went on a brief speedboat trip around the falls. the main point of this trip was to get everyone soaked, and it didn't fail to deliver. we also did a more leisurely dinghy trip along a less plummeting part of the river, to have a bit of an introduction to iguazu and its environs. our captain (the bloke with the oars) casually indicated to an alligator that was swimming no more than 2 metres from us. i wasn't expecting that.
buenos aires is hot (43.5c the other day), noisy, and very very big. thinking about it, that doesn't sound like a particularly appealing combination - but it definitely works. it comprises the world's largest thoroughfare - 20 lanes wide, by my count - which is something that i find unaccountably and inexplicably interesting. our hostel, located on the corner of this gargantuan avenue - avenida 9 de julio - and avenida mayo, has probably been my favourite so far. i can't express what a difference it makes to have the basic luxuries of toilet paper, soap and a hand towel provided by a hostel. there was also no 'lights-out' time, unlike at other hostels where ABSOLUTE SILENCE AND DARKNESS must be attained from the hours of 10pm to 8am. it all just had a very relaxed feel.
in the last 4 months that we've been travelling, we've met only two other english people. so it was with a mite of surprise that we found around 10 english travellers all in the same hostel. at the beginning of my travels i'd been thinking how i wasn't particularly interested in running into fellow britons, but now that i have, i'm quite enjoying it. it just seems so much easier and automatic than trying to explain everything in a way that can be understood by everyone all the time.
on the monday we all went to 'la bomba de tiempo', which is a brazilian street samba show in an arts venue that wouldn't look out of place in east london. it was very loud, and very fun. there were even members of the audience who took it upon themselves to go up to the front and dance in a trance-like state as though for the benefit of the remaining throng of us in the audience who weren't feeling the music as much they were, which was very kind of them.
despite the architectural beauty in its microcenter (downtown bit), there is no escaping that about 75% of buenos aires looks identical. and a typical walk along one of the constituents of this giant grid will generally result in being dripped on by one of the countless overhead air conditioners, an offer to see a tango show that night, and a wade through the aroma of the ubiquitous empanadas.
there are numerous other quirks about buenos aires which, for me, are an intrinsic part of its character. on the metro there seems to be a strange tradition in which vendors traverse the length of each metro carriage, carefully placing generally undesirable items (lemon-flavour gum, thick wool socks, swedish crossword books) on passengers' laps, and then coming back about 3 minutes later to collect money for whatever the item is. i have yet to see anyone buy one of the items, which results in what must surely be a fairly humiliating experience for the would-be salesperson.
another curious pastime occurs in the early hours, when people come out of their homes to sift through the rubbish bags that adorn more or less every street. it's unclear as to nature of the quarry - whether it's a desire to sort the polyethylene terephthalates from the low-density polyethelynes, a search for an item accidentally disposed of, or if they're just looking for food. either way, it usually requires the unceremonious tearing open of refuse bags, and results in an unsightly cascade of rubbish - including all manner of poly-ethylenes, -vinyls and -styrenes - to be caught in the wind.
taxi journeys are exciting in buenos aires. they adhere to the generally-held taxi-driving maxims of the rest of latin america, which are:
1) do not stop for anything, ever
2) prepare for gratuitous use of carhorn in the event that stopping/slight braking is necessary - even when it's not
and given that the majority of roads in buenos aires are one-way, at least 6 lanes wide, and fairly well-paved, it seems the perfect arena for a perpetual 40,000-strong race. additionally, all of the taxis here are corsas - albeit of the chevrolet saloon variety. i told our driver that i drove a corsa back in the uk, but he didn't appear to share my enthusiasm on the matter.
booking bus tickets is always an enjoyable task, as my surname, when being entered into the database, is always invariably likened to that of harry potter. i guess potter and porter sound the same in a spanish accent.
the last interesting point about buenos aires (and something that is the case in all of argentina, for that matter), is the curious shortage of coins. i've read that inflation in argentina is such that the value of the metal that makes up the coins themselves is now more valuable than the coins' face-value, which means that people are hoarding them to sell on at profit on the black market. whether this is the reason or not, it makes day-to-day transactions a lot more interesting. shopkeepers hound customers for a peso or 50 cents, and it becomes increasingly obvious that customers are lying when they say they don't have that sort of small change (it takes one to know one), with an audible, guilty jingle emitted with every expressive gesture that accompanies the customer's proclaimed innocence. it's priceless, as it were, to see the cashier's expression when attempting to buy a 3-peso empanada with a 100-peso note. all of this means that buying a bus ticket, which is 1 peso and 20 cents, can be very awkward/impossible. as a tourist, i think it's an interesting quirk, but i expect that this coin-shortage encourages everyone to hoard a little, which i suppose can only cause the problem to snowball further towards a coinless world of doom, not unlike that of post-war germany.
this last point makes quite an interesting contrast to bolivia, where the smallest denomination is 10 cents, even though supermarket products are still priced at obscure values such as 10 bolivianos and 67 cents. someone must be losing out significantly somewhere over the years.
on a side note from, well, nothing - south american football commentary is great. i'm going to start timing how long they can shout 'goooooooaaaaaal' - but i'm already sure that they can exceed 30 seconds.
despite being the second largest city in south america, i never felt unsafe in buenos aires. but after hearing on the day we left that an american friend of ours had that day been drugged, taken to 8 ATMs to draw out over 1000USD without his knowledge (but, due to the drug, with his consent) and left in a park face-down 4 hours later, i realised that we may just have been lucky. it's slightly alarming to consider that there is a drug that can leave you completely coherent and compliant, yet completely unaware and unable to remember anything that happens to you for the duration of the drug's effect.
it was always going to be difficult for another big city to seem exciting immediately after buenos aires, and there is a certain something about cordoba that hints at being the neglected younger sibling in this regard. the architecture lacks the opulence and diversity of its buenos aires counterparts, being mostly homogeneous towers of tan-coloured brick; the parks seem unfinished and rough around the edges, as though they could have been pristine once, or that they may yet be that way again; and the river is a sorry, dried-up trickle that barely justifies its high, optimistic stone banks.
nonetheless, cordoba does still hold some sort of indeterminable appeal. perhaps it's the vast array of patisseries, which sell pastries for as little as 1 peso (circa 15p) a pop, or the intriguing regional accent in which the double l sound is replaced with 'sh' (resulting in poisho, amarisho and asha). or perhaps it's simply the fact that cordoba doesn't HAVE to be one of the most amazing cities you've ever visited, because it doesn't have the same preceding reputation that can sometimes thwart a destination (though, thankfully, i didn't find this to be the case with buenos aires). one thing that i can say for cordoba is that it has, without a doubt, the most truly astonishing cathedral i have ever seen.
a lady in a patisserie yesterday looked at me as though i'd just piddled on the floor in front of her when i asked "hay empanadas?". i eventually realised that my vowels have become too lazy, and that it needs to be more "em-pah-nah-dass" than "empernarders". still, my accentual rectification did little to better her facial expression.
we ventured to alta gracia, a small town an hour or so to cordoba's southwest, where che guevara lived in his youth. we had a look around the house in which he had lived as a boy, but our main interest was the 'todo el mundo' festival, which is a celebration of international food, accompanied by music. considering it's supposed to showvase all of the world's food, it was surprising to see only about 20 countries with stalls - with a notable absence of anything english. it was also interesting to discover just how many countries had empanadas as one of their national dishes. armenia, iraq, the united states and germany all have empanadas as their national dish, apparently.
despite this apparent inaccuracy, we did our best to work our way through the world, and between us managed armenia, brazil, cuba, france, italy, spain and the united states. it was confusing to see an argentina stand. i mean, why would you go to a festival of world food and eat the food from your home country?
the following day we spent a lazy saturday afternoon by an equally lazy river by a small town called cuesta blanca. the highlights were being laughed at by the locals (presumably for being english), and falling asleep on a rock.
kirsty, the director of the film i most recently scored, has been in touch in the last couple of days to ask if i will work with her once again to provide the soundtrack for two acts that she will be taking to the edinburgh fringe festival in september. i'm currently seeing if i can get hold of the software i need, and trying to decide whether it will be a viable option to be producing a soundtrack from a tiny netbook in some noisy youth hostels in the southern hemisphere. it will probably be quite difficult, but it would make a good story!
i finish on a sad note. i've just learnt of the death of victor - a friend and fellow drummer from guatemala - who was shot twice in the head as he was leaving a hip-hop practice in guatemala city earlier this week. i feel as though a distant yet great light has just gone out, and been replaced by a gaping, unfillable void. i knew him for only a brief time, but i will never forget the effect that his unwavering passion for music and his warmth for everyone and everything had on me.
we went to hail a cab, passing the waiting time by observing that intriguing south american practise of queue-jumping. it is said that no one queues like the british, but i'd never really had a reason to consider such a claim until this trip. it seems that any slight curvature in a queue here is seen as an invitation to those with an apparently more urgent need to do whatever it is that necessitates the queuing in the first place to branch off from the queue tangentially, and from there, to slowly but surely slip in front of those who intersect the newly-formed bypass. there is a trick to it: he who is joining the queue at a tangent has quite skilfully (and non-verbally) to attempt to convince those with a legitimate place in the queue that he is unaware that he is cutting in front of them, thereby excusing him from committing the heinous act. the main challenge to this technique is robustly ignoring the glares of the relegated, who know that you know that they know that you're cutting in front of them, but who are for some reason too polite to say anything (which is something on which the jumper relies).
it was finally our turn to get in the taxi (having cunningly cut ahead in the queue by joining it perpendicularly, thereby undercutting both the original line and its tangent). our driver turned to me, pointing at the stereo. 'cumbia', he said, as though he too was aware that the only sound we'd heard since lima 2 months ago was that of the ubiquitous reggaeton. he eagerly sifted through the seemingly identical tracks on the cd, glancing up to look at the road now and then, and i got the impression that this was to be the new artistic form of auditory communication that would plague us for the remainder of our south american trip.
i enjoyed argentina immediately. there are numerous reasons for this, such as being able to achieve better than level 7 on the bristol stool scale, the continuation of the love affair with ice cream (which began in chile), and public bathrooms being fully equipped with soap and toilet paper. beyond this, the country so far just has a very agreeable feel to it.
i've often worried during this trip at the realisation that i get excited by the idea of visiting a european-esque place, because it makes me wonder why i'm bothering with south america if i'm so interested in europe. but i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. i think it's easier for me to anticipate a place if i have a reference point for my pre-visit imaginations, and i do find it interesting to note how a place can look european but feel nothing like it.
iguazu was one of those insanely hot places where one is forever covered in a fine layer of sweat. it almost seems planned that one of the largest waterfalls in the world would be located here, to shower its refreshing, happiness-inducing spray upon its visitors as welcome respite from the unforgiving sun and suffocating humidity.
although the falls are an undeniably spectacular site, the sheer sound was one of the things that impressed me most. i tend to find an unbroken wall of sound to be as perfect as complete silence, in the same way that unspoilt silence can be deafening. it feels as though one can almost bathe in unbroken loudness, as with the roar of a hovering harrier jump jet, the tinnitus-inducing vignettes of a loud rock band or, as in this case, the sound of water cascading at a rate of up to 12,800m3 per second. the result of standing next to the garganta del diablo - the largest cataract at iguazu - was that of bathing in the sound, the sight and the cool embrace of the engulfing mist in one soggy assault on the senses.
because a gentle bathing of three senses simultaneously wasn't enough, we went on a brief speedboat trip around the falls. the main point of this trip was to get everyone soaked, and it didn't fail to deliver. we also did a more leisurely dinghy trip along a less plummeting part of the river, to have a bit of an introduction to iguazu and its environs. our captain (the bloke with the oars) casually indicated to an alligator that was swimming no more than 2 metres from us. i wasn't expecting that.
buenos aires is hot (43.5c the other day), noisy, and very very big. thinking about it, that doesn't sound like a particularly appealing combination - but it definitely works. it comprises the world's largest thoroughfare - 20 lanes wide, by my count - which is something that i find unaccountably and inexplicably interesting. our hostel, located on the corner of this gargantuan avenue - avenida 9 de julio - and avenida mayo, has probably been my favourite so far. i can't express what a difference it makes to have the basic luxuries of toilet paper, soap and a hand towel provided by a hostel. there was also no 'lights-out' time, unlike at other hostels where ABSOLUTE SILENCE AND DARKNESS must be attained from the hours of 10pm to 8am. it all just had a very relaxed feel.
in the last 4 months that we've been travelling, we've met only two other english people. so it was with a mite of surprise that we found around 10 english travellers all in the same hostel. at the beginning of my travels i'd been thinking how i wasn't particularly interested in running into fellow britons, but now that i have, i'm quite enjoying it. it just seems so much easier and automatic than trying to explain everything in a way that can be understood by everyone all the time.
on the monday we all went to 'la bomba de tiempo', which is a brazilian street samba show in an arts venue that wouldn't look out of place in east london. it was very loud, and very fun. there were even members of the audience who took it upon themselves to go up to the front and dance in a trance-like state as though for the benefit of the remaining throng of us in the audience who weren't feeling the music as much they were, which was very kind of them.
despite the architectural beauty in its microcenter (downtown bit), there is no escaping that about 75% of buenos aires looks identical. and a typical walk along one of the constituents of this giant grid will generally result in being dripped on by one of the countless overhead air conditioners, an offer to see a tango show that night, and a wade through the aroma of the ubiquitous empanadas.
there are numerous other quirks about buenos aires which, for me, are an intrinsic part of its character. on the metro there seems to be a strange tradition in which vendors traverse the length of each metro carriage, carefully placing generally undesirable items (lemon-flavour gum, thick wool socks, swedish crossword books) on passengers' laps, and then coming back about 3 minutes later to collect money for whatever the item is. i have yet to see anyone buy one of the items, which results in what must surely be a fairly humiliating experience for the would-be salesperson.
another curious pastime occurs in the early hours, when people come out of their homes to sift through the rubbish bags that adorn more or less every street. it's unclear as to nature of the quarry - whether it's a desire to sort the polyethylene terephthalates from the low-density polyethelynes, a search for an item accidentally disposed of, or if they're just looking for food. either way, it usually requires the unceremonious tearing open of refuse bags, and results in an unsightly cascade of rubbish - including all manner of poly-ethylenes, -vinyls and -styrenes - to be caught in the wind.
taxi journeys are exciting in buenos aires. they adhere to the generally-held taxi-driving maxims of the rest of latin america, which are:
1) do not stop for anything, ever
2) prepare for gratuitous use of carhorn in the event that stopping/slight braking is necessary - even when it's not
and given that the majority of roads in buenos aires are one-way, at least 6 lanes wide, and fairly well-paved, it seems the perfect arena for a perpetual 40,000-strong race. additionally, all of the taxis here are corsas - albeit of the chevrolet saloon variety. i told our driver that i drove a corsa back in the uk, but he didn't appear to share my enthusiasm on the matter.
booking bus tickets is always an enjoyable task, as my surname, when being entered into the database, is always invariably likened to that of harry potter. i guess potter and porter sound the same in a spanish accent.
the last interesting point about buenos aires (and something that is the case in all of argentina, for that matter), is the curious shortage of coins. i've read that inflation in argentina is such that the value of the metal that makes up the coins themselves is now more valuable than the coins' face-value, which means that people are hoarding them to sell on at profit on the black market. whether this is the reason or not, it makes day-to-day transactions a lot more interesting. shopkeepers hound customers for a peso or 50 cents, and it becomes increasingly obvious that customers are lying when they say they don't have that sort of small change (it takes one to know one), with an audible, guilty jingle emitted with every expressive gesture that accompanies the customer's proclaimed innocence. it's priceless, as it were, to see the cashier's expression when attempting to buy a 3-peso empanada with a 100-peso note. all of this means that buying a bus ticket, which is 1 peso and 20 cents, can be very awkward/impossible. as a tourist, i think it's an interesting quirk, but i expect that this coin-shortage encourages everyone to hoard a little, which i suppose can only cause the problem to snowball further towards a coinless world of doom, not unlike that of post-war germany.
this last point makes quite an interesting contrast to bolivia, where the smallest denomination is 10 cents, even though supermarket products are still priced at obscure values such as 10 bolivianos and 67 cents. someone must be losing out significantly somewhere over the years.
on a side note from, well, nothing - south american football commentary is great. i'm going to start timing how long they can shout 'goooooooaaaaaal' - but i'm already sure that they can exceed 30 seconds.
despite being the second largest city in south america, i never felt unsafe in buenos aires. but after hearing on the day we left that an american friend of ours had that day been drugged, taken to 8 ATMs to draw out over 1000USD without his knowledge (but, due to the drug, with his consent) and left in a park face-down 4 hours later, i realised that we may just have been lucky. it's slightly alarming to consider that there is a drug that can leave you completely coherent and compliant, yet completely unaware and unable to remember anything that happens to you for the duration of the drug's effect.
it was always going to be difficult for another big city to seem exciting immediately after buenos aires, and there is a certain something about cordoba that hints at being the neglected younger sibling in this regard. the architecture lacks the opulence and diversity of its buenos aires counterparts, being mostly homogeneous towers of tan-coloured brick; the parks seem unfinished and rough around the edges, as though they could have been pristine once, or that they may yet be that way again; and the river is a sorry, dried-up trickle that barely justifies its high, optimistic stone banks.
nonetheless, cordoba does still hold some sort of indeterminable appeal. perhaps it's the vast array of patisseries, which sell pastries for as little as 1 peso (circa 15p) a pop, or the intriguing regional accent in which the double l sound is replaced with 'sh' (resulting in poisho, amarisho and asha). or perhaps it's simply the fact that cordoba doesn't HAVE to be one of the most amazing cities you've ever visited, because it doesn't have the same preceding reputation that can sometimes thwart a destination (though, thankfully, i didn't find this to be the case with buenos aires). one thing that i can say for cordoba is that it has, without a doubt, the most truly astonishing cathedral i have ever seen.
a lady in a patisserie yesterday looked at me as though i'd just piddled on the floor in front of her when i asked "hay empanadas?". i eventually realised that my vowels have become too lazy, and that it needs to be more "em-pah-nah-dass" than "empernarders". still, my accentual rectification did little to better her facial expression.
we ventured to alta gracia, a small town an hour or so to cordoba's southwest, where che guevara lived in his youth. we had a look around the house in which he had lived as a boy, but our main interest was the 'todo el mundo' festival, which is a celebration of international food, accompanied by music. considering it's supposed to showvase all of the world's food, it was surprising to see only about 20 countries with stalls - with a notable absence of anything english. it was also interesting to discover just how many countries had empanadas as one of their national dishes. armenia, iraq, the united states and germany all have empanadas as their national dish, apparently.
despite this apparent inaccuracy, we did our best to work our way through the world, and between us managed armenia, brazil, cuba, france, italy, spain and the united states. it was confusing to see an argentina stand. i mean, why would you go to a festival of world food and eat the food from your home country?
the following day we spent a lazy saturday afternoon by an equally lazy river by a small town called cuesta blanca. the highlights were being laughed at by the locals (presumably for being english), and falling asleep on a rock.
kirsty, the director of the film i most recently scored, has been in touch in the last couple of days to ask if i will work with her once again to provide the soundtrack for two acts that she will be taking to the edinburgh fringe festival in september. i'm currently seeing if i can get hold of the software i need, and trying to decide whether it will be a viable option to be producing a soundtrack from a tiny netbook in some noisy youth hostels in the southern hemisphere. it will probably be quite difficult, but it would make a good story!
i finish on a sad note. i've just learnt of the death of victor - a friend and fellow drummer from guatemala - who was shot twice in the head as he was leaving a hip-hop practice in guatemala city earlier this week. i feel as though a distant yet great light has just gone out, and been replaced by a gaping, unfillable void. i knew him for only a brief time, but i will never forget the effect that his unwavering passion for music and his warmth for everyone and everything had on me.