Corrupt Cops and Defiled Corpses

As all things must come to an end, we finished our trip by spending a week and a bit in the capital, Buenos Aires, a metropolis of roughly three times the population of New Zealand. So this will be our last blog posting, written from the grey drizzley climes of Vancouver where we are staying with my cousin Glyn and currently trying to find jobs and set up a new life.

Needless to say we were pretty busy during our time here exploring the city and getting used to the extreme nocturnal time frame of the Portenyos (folk from Buenos Aires). Our first stop was the Evita Museum, set in a former halfway home that she had set up in a rather plush part of town. On our way we passed the botanical gardens complete with it's large population of contented stray cats which were cared for by the local community, there were little shelters and piles of cat biscuits spread throughout the park. Having not seen either the musical (I cant stand Lloyd Weber) or the movie, neither of us had much idea of what Evita Peron had done or why she was particularly famous, so the museum was an eye opener in terms of the politics of the time, all the social programs she set up, and the wierd corpse napping and defilement of her body after she had died of cancer.

Later in the week we visited the Recoleta Cemetery, which sounds rather morbid but was actually pretty cool. It is basically a small city of crypts for the elite, famous and historical of Buenos Aires dating back to the early days of the city's history. It is filled with crypts in various states, from the brand new which resembled a Prada-ish high fashion store to the deteriorating plaster and bare brick of the neglected. Everywhere there were ornate carvings, grieving marble statues and intricate stained glass messiahs. The key attraction was Evita's grave which was surrounded by punters trying to get a sentimental photo of her modest crypt battling with the nosy types who kept getting in the way by peering in through the heavily tinted glass to try and spy the coffin itself. I was more fascinated by all the gothic carvings and statues, and spent most of my time wishing I was a better photographer with a better camera.

A true South American experience that we had foolishly put off until the end of our trip was to see a live football (soccer) match. When we arrived we started asking how we might get tickets to the upcoming Boca Juniors (one of BA's top club sides) home game but we were consistently told we would need to join a tour group because; A: it wasn't safe for tourists to go to the rowdy games by themselves and B: because there was no way we could get tickets otherwise. These tour group tickets were typically around five times the original price of a ticket, and who needs a guide at a football match anyway? So we figured we would try and buy tickets at the gate on the day with some other folk from our hostel. By the time we finally found the ticket booth we learned that we had just missed out on gate sale tickets and after wandering around hopelessly trying to find a nearby pub that showed the game we thought we may as well try our luck with the dodgy scalpers in the streets surrounding the stadium. We asked a guy who appeared to be quite drunk and who promised us he had tickets and we began to follow him towards the stadium. He soon got "nabbed" by a cop and scarpered while the cop told us of the dangers of buying fake tickets from scalpers. The cop, who was obviously in on it from the start, then offered to sneak us into the game for a price. He handed us dodgy tickets and then led us through all the ticket checks to the turnstile where the ticket guy grabbed our dodgy tickets and helped us jump over the turnstile. We were a few minutes late to the match and stuck right in the "dangerous" supporters zone but we had made it in! The atmosphere of the game was fantastic especially when Boca took the early lead, the stadium was filled with chants and shaking fists but it never even came close to becoming violent or dangerous. Boca eventually lost 2-1 to Estudiantes and the crowd left feeling disappointed, apart from us because we had a good story to tell...

The area surrounding La Boca is meant to be also quite dangerous but also has a quaint arty, working class, area of tango bars and art stalls. Unfortunately I think we arrived there a decade too late because it had been converted into some kind of tourist hell. Although the few streets of the caminito were very colourful, it was packed with naive, middle aged tourists with shorts, sandles and expensive cameras and annoying street hawkers trying out their english and trying to annoy you into going to their restaurants. Outside these few streets (in the "dangerous" working class areas) the streets reverted to a normal city setting. About the only genuine part of this spot was the pungent smell eminating from the 100 year old stagnant water of the old harbour.

The highlight of Buenos Aires for me was our trip to the School of Trapeze Art for a, aerial theatre show that we had seen advertised. Its a little difficult to describe and we weren't able to take any photos but this was possibly one of the coolest shows I have ever seen. The show was done almost entirely with UV light effects and with the performers clad all in black. This took the focus of the show away from amazing acrobatic tricks that the performers were doing and blended to whole thing into one great spectacle. While we sat back in couches below the action, there were dayglo pois and people abseiling down dayglo sheets and crazy visual effects made simply with a huge curtain of fabric. It was all very Cirque du Soleil and very, very cool.

For Tessa the highlight was the weekend designers fair that we stumbled across in the centre of Palermo. Essentially they set up stores with spaces for individual clothing designers to exhibit and sell their wares. Even the bars in the area clear out their dancefloors to pack the place out with racks and racks of trendy, cheap clothes. We were both whipped into a strange shopping frenzy by this discovery and jostled our way through the packed out fair to pick through the endless racks of cheap designer clothes. Tessa says "it had clothes". Insightful...

The central area of town was worth a look around. We walked past the roman parthenon style engineering school and found ourselves at the pink house, the argentine presidential palace. Nearby was the moshpit of Av. Florida, the main shopping street which was so crammed with streams of people that we had to start adopting road rules just to get through the crowd. We wandered up to the congress building past the monolithic obelisco. Outside the congress buildings were packs of professional dog walkers wrangling handfuls of tetchy hounds.

One french guy we met happened to have spent the last three years living in Wellington, just around the corner from our old place in Newtown, and spent a month working at Tessa's old work!

We met some great folk at our hostel and went out on the town in San Telmo on a few occasions. We went out for parillada and wine with our new found crew, and I foolishly ordered the ribs which turned out to be much much bigger than my head. This sheer amount of meat wrote me off for the rest of the night and put me on a week long meat detox but Tessa kept partying till the not-so-wee-hours. We also found a cool jazz bar with delicious platters not far from our hostel which had a live band every night and by the end of the week we were pretty much regulars.

But just as we were getting settled into the groove and grind of the life of a traveller in Buenos Aires, the time came for our flight out to Canada. We were both excited to be starting the next chapter (and to not have to pack our bags again for another arduous bus ride) and also a bit sad that our adventure had come to end...

SO this brings to an end to our story. The blog comes to an end here, I hope you've all enjoyed reading it, your comments and emails have kept it going. I could keep writing about us settling into normal boring lives here in Vancouver but that just wouldn't be as much fun, would it? Sleep tight and don't have too many nightmares about lightning strikes, giant condors, creepy shaman and burning roadblocks. Thanks for joining us through the blogging medium on our adventure. If you want to keep in touch you can reach us through facebook or post a comment on the blog and I'll get back to you.

That is all.

Surreal

With a day of bus riding, Wilson celebrated his birthday in style. We had planned to catch up with Hannes, a guy we met in Cordoba, at Iguazu so we quickly legged it there to meet him only to find he couldn´t make it. Once we arrived in Iguazu we went out for "parillada" (argentine barbeque) and wine at a fancy restaurant in town. The meat fest was delicious and included all the usual goodies like steaks, blood sausage and intenstines as well as a few unidentified parts that we thought may well be cow anus.

Iguazu is located in the most northern point of Argentina, wedged in between the borders of Paraguay and Brazil. Its famous entirely for the enormous waterfalls. After spending a day relaxing by the pool at our hostel, we got up early hell bent on exploring the trails and tracks around the falls.

Our day turned out to be remarkably surreal in many ways. We were regretting our sunny day by the pool as the dark clouds were increasingly ominous but we hoped that it would clear up. All hopes were dashed shortly after our arrival at the falls park by multiple rolls of deep booming thunder. The good thing about this was though that the weather was keeping the crowds away and for a short time in morning we made the most of exploring the complex with barely another soul in sight. The place felt deserted but it meant that the birds were out in numbers and we saw a wild Toucan up close.

The falls were absolutely astounding. The huge volume of crashing water is spread across hundreds of falls dropping onto plateaus or pounding straight down the 60m drop. Despite the grey clouds I went crazy taking panoramic shots to try and capture the beautiful scenes. As the rain began to spit down we took the boat over to the island between the two main sections of falls only to find the island was chock full of birds of prey. There were dozens in almost every tree eyeing us up and wondering if we were going to die soon and become their lunch. Very spooky.

It was shortly after this that the inevitable happened and the heavens opened completely and let loose an intense tropical downpour. We were almost blasted into the river as we headed along the catwalk towards the enormous Garganta del Diablo and when we arrived we could barely differentiate clouds from waterfall spray. Many of the other tourists wihtout jackets, bought matching white plastic rain ponchos and it seemed as though the place had been invaded by laboratory scientists. The last bizarre thing that happened this day was, as we were soaked and freezing and on our way home to the hostel, we ran into some guys we know from uni, Dave and Spud. After a massive double take we found out they were travelling with four other kiwis around latin america and would also be heading to Canada afterwards... coincidence huh? This encounter also doubled the number of other New Zealanders we have seen on our trip.

The next day we went back to the falls to see what it was like when we weren´t facing a waterblaster. The weather was fantastic and accordingly the tourist hordes were back in full force. The worst thing about guided tours is that all these people who would normally move around to different parts of the park at different paces are all stuck in one place at one time and we got stuck right in the middle of three of them! The guide always walks around with a coloured umbrella and everyone in their party has a little name tag with their guides name, so there were all these old men walking around with name badges saying "Shirley". It was pretty much tourist hell while we were stuck there.

But we managed to get away from the rude, pushing, thronging crowds and found some cracking views of the waterfalls. On the complex of boardwalks it was possible to get really close to the falls and feel the spray and watch the birds flying in and out of the cliffs.

Losing our Memory

Awright, so we changed scene completely from the idyllic lakes of northern Patagonia for the sunny spring vibe of Rosario, which is a few hours west of Buenos Aires. This only took 26 hours of bus travel, the longest haul of our trip. What I should clear up now is that there are no photos of Rosario as we foolishly left the memory card at the hostel when we left! Rubbish eh?

Anyway, I´ll try and describe it as best I can and maybe you´ll be able to picture it. We happened to arrive on the national "Day of the Student", and being a beautifully sunny Sunday afternoon, the riverfront park area, which stretched for miles along the length of the city, was packed with around 20,000 students sipping maté, shooting the breeze and just generally hanging out and enjoying the weather. This seemed like a pretty good idea to us so we pulled up a patch of grass and soaked up the vibe. We spent the next few days exploring the city on bikes, heading to the sandy river beaches, and shopping for some low-crotch, alladin-type, babucha/hammer pants for Tessa.

Another overnight bus only just brought us to Resistencia in the north (we very almost missed our stop!). We found ourselves in the poorest place we had yet visited in Argentina, (the bus terminal was located next to a sprawling shanty town) and also certainly the least touristy. The folk at the tourist office seemed to think it a real treat to actually get to talk to some tourists and people were constantly asking us where we were from. One kid of about 17 stopped us in the street to try and sell us something or get us to sign up to something; the conversation went a little like this:

Kid: Where are you from?
Us: New Zealand
(Kids eyes get real big and a look of sheer confusion crosses his face)
Kid: What?
Us: New Zealand. It´s a country in the southern hemisphere, near Australia.
Kid: What?
Us: New Zealand. Like the All Blacks and rugby (this often works in these sorts of situations in Argentina)
Kid: I... I don´t understand.
Us: New Zealand. Its a country.
Kid: I don´t... I don´t understand. (He´s getting a little panicky at this stage)
Us: Maybe you can look it up on a map. (And we left it at that)

So Resistencia decided one day that it would be the sculpture capital of Argentina. Its not as though there is a thriving community of sculpturers and artists in Resistencia, they had to get them in from other parts of the country, but its pretty cool all the same. Of the 530 sculptures dotted around the city on every street corner, park, and median strip, we managed to see around 100 of them. They range from tiny wee brass figures on podiums nestled behind trees on the footpath to giant monstrosities that are lit up at night. It definately added some interest to an otherwise fairly quiet town.

From Resistencia we went for a short trip over the river to its twin city, Corrientes. We were a little curious to see what the town was like after reading a particularly unprofessional outburst in the lonely planet guide book that went something along the lines of "F*ck Corrientes!" It was actually a really nice town with a great waterfront area along the river which was busy with people sipping maté, walking dogs and enjoying the sunshine. We arrived at the bridge just in time to catch the very pretty sunset.

We walked into town for some dinner and found out why Resistencia was such a sleepy town. All the young people go to Corrientes and on a Friday night they invade the centre of town. It was a madhouse, we had to try and push our way through hoardes of teenagers loitering about and filling all the restaurant tables to drink soft drinks. After pushing and shoving our way around for an hour, we hadn´t found a single decent place to eat so we gave up on the madness and settled for the quiet life of Resistencia.

Panorama City

Wow I´ve just been having a flick through the blog from the start. What a ride! But time is steadily ticking on and we are coming close to the end of this wee chapter. I´ll get started with a little observation about business and parties in Argentina. Here it is the overwhelming fashion for guys to always arrange to have their business at the front and their party at the back. If you´re completely lost, I´m talking mullets baby, the hairstyle that was the bane of 80s fashion in NZ which traditionally went hand in hand with short shorts, singlets and a can of DB. We´ve seen all manner from the traditional curly hair mullet, to the tinted twin tail mullet. Fantastic!

We boosted from Mendoza on our longest bus extravaganza to date. It turns out Argentina is actually really really big, and we had only begun to see it. Our initial plan was to head towards Bariloche and the northern part of Patagonia while stopping at a few places along the way, only there wasn´t really anywhere on the way, just miles and miles of flat plains. We arrived at last at the town of San Martin de los Andes, winter haven for the elite and famous. The fancy town houses were built almost entirely of stone and stained timber and the place had the midweek desertion of a holiday home town. While we were there we decided to trek up to a lookout with views of the surrounding mountains and lakes. We got pretty well abysmally lost as the path split into dozens of tracks all over the hills and my theory that "the lookout must be at the top of the hill so we should climb up" only really works when there is only one hill, in this case there wasn´t... We eventually made it to the top just in time for the sunset over a scene very reminiscent of Lake Wanaka.

Our next stop took us to the town of Villa de Angostura, so named for its location on a thin strip of land and the beginning of a peninsula which juts out into the lake. It was a small town and seemed much more relaxed, although just as touristy as San Martin. We were well into panorama country here, pretty well wherever we went there were cracking views of snowy mountains draped with lush pine forests towering over crystal clear lakes. We spent the next few days walking and cycling around to various lookouts for fantastic views of all the mountains, trees and lakes. A few weeks previously, a huge storm had dumped piles of snow in the area and some of the tracks (including the one out on the peninsula) were wrecked and closed by landslides, debris and fallen trees but we didn´t let this slow us down. There was also plenty of time for our new favourite pastime, lazing around by lakes.

In these picturesque resorty towns we discovered something that we hadn´t counted on. From a lookout near Angostura overlooking Lake Nahuel Huapi, we spied a beautiful wee bay with a few bobbing fishing boats and a small boardwalk which looked like the perfect place to stop for lunch. But when we walked down to it we discovered it was private land and we couldn´t access the waterfront. This was the case all over the area, we found that most of the best spots were owned by hotels or private houses and coming from NZ where anyone can lawfully wander the waterfront this was a bit of a surprise.

Our last stop in the Lake District was the ski resort city of Bariloche, famous for having the largest ski field in South America, Cerro Catedral, and just across the lake from Angostura. Bariloche was a strange town in many ways. During our stay there seemed to be an invasion of rich high school kids on organised trips who were staying at fancy hotels and would wander the streets at night in huge packs yelling school chants. Another wierd aspect was the noddy town like city centre, which seemed like some tacky mockery of Swiss architecture, while the rest of the city looked like a pretty normal city. Obviously some resident felt they needed to clear up any confusion because outside the centre was graffitied "Esto no es Barilcohe" (This is not Bariloche).

Our trekking around the Bariloche area took us out on a peninsula on the lake that had another lake within it which was really quite spectacular. We headed away from the road following a track marked on the map which showed a way through the forest to a beach at the head of the peninsula. Unfortunately this track had been nailed by the storm and we spent the next four hours bush bashing our way through debris, snow and thickets of thorns to find ourselves at a lookout far above the coast. It was here that Tessa decided that there must be a track down to the beach shown on the map and we further bush bashed our way down the cliff, through private property and past barking guard dogs, Tessa took a detour through the lake, and finally to a tranquil and nearly deserted beach with the obligatory fantastic vistas of trees, lake and mountains.

Being so close to such an enormous ski field we were obliged to head up and give it a go, despite bad reports of the slushy spring snow. As we have become budget hounds in our travels, we found the cheapest place in town to rent gear and proceeded to get decked out for our retro ski day. Fitted out with our straight skis, space boots, battered red poles and me with toilet paper jammed between my googles to stop them fogging up, we were absolutely the least stylish people on the mountain that day and possibly all season. The ski field was huge and criss crossed with gondolas and lifts of every variety. It took a couple of hours for us to figure out where we were and where we were going. After battling with the shoddy gear, white out conditions and nasty icy snow for a bit in the morning we eventually found our way to some really good runs and went flat out for the afternoon.

Wine and Snow

One can´t write about Argentina for too long without mentioning the Argentinians obsession with maté. Maté is a particular blend of tea brewed strong and sipped from small cups through a straw with a strainer fitted at the end. The cup is stuffed full of leaves and a small amount of hot water is added. Everywhere you go you see people sipping on their straws, any outing to the park or beach isn´t complete without a thermos of hot water and a couple of maté cups. Che Guevara would sip maté while playing chess as it would "lubricate the mind".

Anyway back to the action....

One thing we had missed out on doing in Cafayate, surrounded my all those vineyards, was to go on a wine tour and we were quite determined to remedy that in Mendoza, the heart of Argentine wine country. We hired some bikes and set off along the Ruta del Vino on a sunny spring day with another NZer, a scot and an irish girl we had met at our hostel. As it turned out, most of the wineries charged for tastings so it was much cheaper for the five of us to go shares in a bottle so this is precisely what we did. By the 3rd winery we became tired of the gruelling cycling part of the day and set up camp on some bean bags in the sun surrounded by vines and almond trees. Over the course of the rest of the afternoon we moved only to avoid the shade cast by the setting sun and we polished off another four bottles, mostly malbecs and a rather nice aged syrah.

Mendoza itself was a bustly town which was all geared up for outdoor adventures. There were streets lined with outdoor stores, ski gear hire shops and tour agencies as well as huge bare deciduous trees which served to remind you of the countryside surrounding the city.

Our other big adventure in Mendoza was going skiing in the Andes. We hired our gear and took off for three days at Los Penitentes, a small field nestled between towering cliffs near the Chilean border. We were at the field mid week so, apart from queues of trucks thundering their way past towards the border and a squad of army guys training on the slopes, the place was very quiet. At times we had the place to ourselves and there was certainly nothing resembling a lift queue but equally things were pretty boring off the field at night.

The highlight of our days on the slopes was on the last day, following some rubbish weather the previous day, we woke up to find a decent covering of fresh powder on the field. We had planned to ski only half the day and go and see a natural bridge in the area but that plan was quickly flagged as we rushed up the mountain to gouge our tracks in the fresh snow. Great time all in all and it was awesome to finally get in some skiing this year.

Poi Polloi

After our lazy days in the countryside we made a bee line for the big city. After stopping briefly in Tucuman (where the girl at the hostel advised us to move on cause there was nothing to do there!) we made our way to Argentina´s second biggest city, Córdoba. We arrived to find tumbleweeds rolling through the main streets while the sounds of our footsteps echoed from the buildings. Yep you guessed it, we´d arrived at siesta time on a Saturday afternoon and most of the shops wouldn´t open again until Monday morning. That night after I found us a really sweet hostel to stay in, we wandered across a very cool arts market nestled within a block of boutique clothing stores and fancy wine bars. This was pretty much the trendiest place we´d been in South America.

On Sunday we figured we would join the rest of the population in having a chilled out day. We took a picnic lunch (including our giant block of cheese) to the huge San Martín park and lazed about while people peddaled boats in the lake and kids played hide-and-go-seek. It was also a chance to delve into our hippy sides and show off our limited poi skills. Afterwards we went to the beautiful fine arts museum to see a somewhat overrated and small Picasso exhibition as well as the more interesting local permanent displays. Also while in Córdoba we chanced upon a spooky 18th century former Jesuit crypt that had been rediscovered beneath a main road in the 80´s.

We celebrated Tessa´s birthday in Córdoba exploring the mazes of malls and shops in the main shopping district and later went out for a fancy-ish dinner followed by some drinks in the bar district by the river with Hannes, a german guy we met at our sweet hostel.

We did a bunch of day trips from Córdoba to smaller towns in the area. The first of these was to a town called Alta Gracia which had a small museum in the former house of its most famous resident Che Guevara. I wanted to get a picture of us on the famous motorcycle (although I might´ve had to rename the blog) but they had obviously seen us coming and it was rigged to the teeth with alarms. The museum was an interesting run through his life and death (another famous person done in by the Bolivian military) and included some letters he had written to his family showing just what an intense wee commie he was. Che is a bit of a hero in South America, his clichéd face is on t-shirts and backpacks everywhere, there are even simpson knock-offs "Che Homero".

The resort town of Carlos Paz was in fact pretty sleepy and quiet being midweek during the "low season". As on Sunday we just spent time by the, quite pretty lake working on our poi skills and afterwards got icecreams that were as big as our heads (never eat anything bigger than your head!!). We also visited one of the towns premium attractions, a giant cuckoo clock, designed by two engineers (need I say more?). This garish monster had been pulling the crowds for 50 odd years!

Our last mission took us to the town of La Falda and, feeling a bit more active and because there was no lake to laze by (only a grimy duck pond), we hiked up to the top of a hill overlooking the area. We battled high winds at the top to practice pois before heading back to town for a hot Submarino (hot milk with a whole chocolate bar dunked in).

Summery Days

Factoid: Argentina is a country riddled with an epidemic of broken toilet cisterns. We have not come across a single toilet without some makeshift flushing mechanism utilising everything from electrical wire to used matchsticks. At least all the toilets have had seats though!

Well we came into Cafayate not knowing what to expect and it was full of very pleasant and sometimes wierd surprises. The town itself is small enough to be very relaxed and in the surrounding countryside there was heaps to do. We were lucky enough to experience fantastic weather which was reminiscent of late summer days in Hawkes Bay.

We were able to take full advantage of the weather at our hostel which was slightly out of town and oddly enough, mostly abandoned. The hostel had a huge backyard with gardens and a rambling grapevine which made a great setting for breakfast. Also because there were virtually no staff at the hostel, which was an offshoot of a larger hostel in the centre of town, the place felt like our own.

On our first night we wandered to explore the town a little and aside from dozens of designer mullets, we came across some sort of youth group performance on a huge stage outside the cathedral. After a rendition of "If you´re happy and you know it" in spanish, some of the older kids launched into lipsynching to dreadful love songs. Tessa was transfixed but I managed to pull her away before the kareoke got too much for me.

We went on a few trips from Cafayate. The first was a trip to the Quebrada (gorge (I think!)) north of the town which was a collage of layered rock formations whittled out of protruding cliffs by water and wind. The highlight for me was a formation called the Ampitheatre which was exactly that, a huge circular, acoustically brilliant hollow complete with a guy cranking out tunes on a pan pipe. We cruised around the formations in a spacious tourist van with a few others including a really cool italian couple, Jacobo and Serena, who were staying at our otherwise deserted hostel. These guys were basically our flatmates at the hostel and we shared some good yarns (and chocolate!).

Our other trip saw us renting bikes for the day and cycling past sweeping bare vineyards to a lush green river valley. We hiked up the valley and, losing the track several times, scrabbled over huge rocks and up small waterfalls. I was silly enough to go for a quick dip in a freezing cold pool.

After a few days in Cafayate, soaking up the great weather and cooking delicious food from the local market, we finally managed to force ourselves to move on from our relaxing paradise. Still not wanting to face the bustle of the city, we boosted on to another small town called Tafí del Valle. Here we went on a few big walks on the recommendation of one of the hostel staff. The first of these took us eventually to a local cheese factory where we were hoping for some free samples. We were met however, with an almost hostile attitude when we arrived. After being curtly told there were no tastings, we were taken on a tour of the factory which consisted of the following:

"This is where we make the cheese. That is some cheese we made this morning. This way to the shop."

Because we are suckers and because we had walked for hours to get to the cheese factory we ended up buying a kilo of their cheese! It did last us a good few sandwiches and pasta dishes.