trying to wrap up ….. but the words just keep coming

.. as everybody knows I live by the code of ‘why use a sentence when a paragraph will do’ and abbreviation is not a word i am overly friendly with …. given those two basic facts it shouldn’t surprise me so much that i’ve stuck with the blog all the way… considering i was in two minds about it at first… nor how much i’ve enjoyed doing it… not once has it felt like a chore or an obligation … although getting the fotos uploaded did prove a challenge at times… .nor has it really bothered me if people have read it or not… i am so used to wittering away to myself…, (quietly.. obviously.). the fact that anybody may be ‘listening’ is almost incidental ….in a way the blog became as much a part of the journey as the journey itself…  and i use the word journey advisedly… i have never seen this trip as a holiday… although it could be said it was a holiday from real life…  it was most definitely a journey, because there was never a final destination……

….in the end there are many posts that didn’t make the final cut and i had to start getting ruthless about what i wrote about otherwise i would have spent even more time in cafes/drunk even more red wine (gets the creative juices flowing you know!!!) than i did .. and i wouldn’t have actually got out and seen the scenery/met people…as it is i have a roll call of over 70 people, that i can give you at least 3 basic facts about, that i’ve met over the past seven and a half weeks, i’ve slept in 19 different beds, spent more than 5 days solid on buses, blubbed on more inopportune occasions that i care to remember…eaten somewhere in the region of three whole cows (including bits i really don’t want to know about) and several kilos of pasta/pizza/alfajores… and i don’t even want to think about the quantity of wine i have drunk….

i remember saying at the beginning of this journey that the idea of doing a blog seemed self indulgent, but at the end of the day this whole adventure has been extremely self indulgent… how many of us get the chance at the age of 40 to run away and stare at mountains for a couple of months without a care in the world … ok i haven’t got a job, a man, nor do i have a clue about what my next move will be, and in the next month i will be technically homeless…. i.e. of no fixed abode… and yet i am feeling surprisingly upbeat about it… it’s really very liberating when you have precious little else of the big stuff to loose… and you have nothing to define you (wife, girlfriend, mother, salesperson, manager, volvo driver…) i have my health (more or less… although my liver might disagree) and miraculously only a kilo more on each bum cheek, and materially i have a hell of a lot more than many of the people i met on my travels…. i consider myself extremely blessed …… blessed enough to be thinking about the next adventure….. ??

….. don’t cry for me Argentina

…. aaarrrggghhh..!! I made it all the way to the end before i crumbled and used this for a blog title…. but given that i spent the last couple of days of my trip sniffling at every given opportunity i just couldn’t resist… if North Face and Kleenex could get together and do some kind of marketing campaign for Argentina… I would be their woman… i cried quite a lot and in some very strange places, but on packing up my rucksack for the last time i howled my eyes out….

….before i set out on my adventure everyone said to me that the time i had would not be enough and that i would want to go back… how right they were and how right they were…. one month or five it will never be enough to fully explore such an amazing country, and i would hop on a plane back there tomorrow without a second thought or a backward glance… i would do the whole circuit again.. stopping off longer in some places .. and just calling to say ‘hi’ in others.. and i would go see the places i didn’t manage to get to… i really only scratched the surface in what was a whistle stop tour of a HUGE and extremely diverse country…. and when i look back at what i managed to cram into those seven and a half weeks it’s no wonder i’m feeling just a little bit tired… i honestly don’t know how some people manage to keep going on these year long backpacking adventures… my trip was small fry compared to many… but everyone i spoke to who was doing a ’round the world’ or a full south american adventure seemed to get a new lease of life when they hit Argentina and without exception they had it in their top 3 of countries visited…

but it isn’t just the scenery…… my perception of Argentina also changed quite dramatically the more i people i talked to and the more i saw of the country…. once you get out of the sugar coated, goretex wearer funded south and head further north … you really start to see the real Argentina, the day to day struggle to make a reasonable living… the fact that even for your average educated person with a reasonable job there is very little spare cash to go round, and many supplement their incomes with a second or third string to their bow just to be able to afford the things that i have certainly taken for granted…. There are lots of things wrong with Argentina, none of which i am informed enough to make an educated comment about… however you talk to any local about the current global economic crisis and most will shrug their shoulders and tell you that this kind of crisis happens pretty much every six or seven years in there, they are used to it and they know they will get through it just like the last time… and they tell you this with a big smile on their face whilst sharing their ‘mate’ drink with you on the bus.. or whilst taking you on a private tour round Buenos Aires just because you are a friend of a friend …. or whilst cooking you a mega asado having only just met you for the first time that morning…. and that’s what made this whole experience so so special…

… I got Tangoed

…… not for the first time on this trip did something quite unexpectedly moved me to tears…

milonga... buenos aires

.. one of the things i wanted to make sure i did before i left Argentina was to see a bit of tango .. and I had two options… go to the full blown ‘espectaculo’ and pay lots of pesos for the pleasure… or do it local style and take myself off to a ‘milonga’…

….. so on my last afternoon I found myself sitting at a table on the edge of the dancefloor in ‘Confiteria Ideal’ one of Buenos Aires oldest dancehalls watching the locals practice their steps … think Al Pacino in the film ‘Scent of a Woman’ …but a bit more warts and all… one of the ladies was wearing the most raucous pair of leopard print leggings i have seen in my life!!! and a young man  swept past in his converse allstars grasping the waist of a woman at least three times his age… the film was perhaps up until now about my only reference point for the tango.. but even without Al Pacino the dance doesn’t loose any of it’s enchantment…

.. the dance itself has to be one of the most sensual and intimate i have ever seen and as the couples move along cheek to cheek you can’t help being mesmerized by their moves as they glide across the floor deep in concentration as they try to find harmony and synchronize their steps.. and when they do get in sync it really is poetry in motion..

… So for some reason all of this is made the tears roll down my face… (not a good look in a public place) it wasn’t the red wine because I filled up before I even had a sip, maybe it was the melancholy music.. it transports you back to a bygone era when things were so much simpler and everything had it’s place.. or maybe it was because i was heading home and facing reality… i don’t know… all i know is i’m awfully glad i went…

… back in Bs As

…….my arrival in Buenos Aires this time was highlighted, like my departure seven weeks ago with a very entertaining taxi ride… I have heard it said several times over on my trip that the porteños ( people from buenos aires) are Italians who speak Spanish and think they are English… I don’t know how true this is but Claudio my taxi driver who picked me up from the airport…definitely wasn’t letting his Italian roots go… looking like a sidekick to Don Corleone he spent the entire journey giving me his life story, I must have been wearing my best ‘tell me everything’ face because in the space of 20 minutes I got his view on Argentine politics, Argentine women, love, life, the universe punctuated by a lot of bashing of the steering wheel and the occasional ‘what do you think Verity?? .. I am saying your name right aren’t I Verity?? if you don’t want to talk Verity just say so..Verity …or if you like we can talk about something else … I am saying your name right arent I Verity’… before launching into his next tirade…somewhere in all of this he managed to squeeze in the fact that, before he lost it all in 2001 (money, friends, hot chicks) he had the only Dodge Viper in Argentina ( it was red by the way)…

….having managed to utter about three words in the entire journey I parted company with Claudio telling me how much he had enjoyed my company   ’… not all my passengers want to talk so much Verity… it’s been a pleasure for me too Verity .. I am. saying your name right aren’t I Verity… Verity, Verity ciao ciao enjoy Buenos Aires’

…. I was still chuckling to myself as a checked into The Art Factory hostel ( the place I stayed when I arrived)…. and my smile only got bigger when I discovered they had given me the funkiest room of them all….. I got the cow room!!!!  

…. iguazu part 2

approach to 'la garganta del diablo'

….another hostelling hazard that i haven’t yet mentioned is the tourist trip tout… most hostels are on commission to sell whatever trips and tours that are available  in the surrounding area… and in some cases if you have a short space of time and a lot of distance to cover these trips are a necessary evil… you have to make do with bus window photos and somebody elses idea as to when the bus should stop to take the best picture (it NEVER EVER coincides with my point if view… i am so not interested in having the same foto as the 4937 tourists who have passed by this spot in the last few weeks, i can buy the postcard if necessary.. but try convincing the tour guide that sometimes the best view is the one behind you….)

…. up until now i have more or less got it right but when i arrived at my hostel in iguazu i either had the word ’sucker’ (invisible to me) tattooed across my forehead or i was so deleriously happy to rediscover the use of my limbs after a whole day on a bus i would have parted with pesos for pretty much anything…. so long as there was a hot shower and a bit of a sleep somewhere on the horizon…. 

… so somehow on my first day in Iguazu National Park i found myself on a 12 minute boat trip and ended up VERY VERY wet as the boat proceeded to pass underneath (not once .. but twice) one of the waterfalls … i foolishly thought i would get few additional Kodak moments by doing this trip … and even when i saw people disembarking the previous boat looking like drowned rats i wasn’t overly alarmed as i even more foolishly thought my trusty waterproofs would save me from the worst… how silly was that??  (i do love my unwavering optimism sometimes…!!)… underneath a waterfall, the water reaches places you didn’t even know you had places… and what i can’t understand is why people think this is FUN… you can’t see anything.. you get wet and then you spend the rest of the day squishing and squelching all over the place… throw in a bit of thigh chaffing and the whole experience is far from pleasant …and some people part with even more pesos to buy the DVD….. needless to say as soon as i climbed off the boat i quickly bypassed the man trying to sell me my commemorative photo/dvd/mug/ashtray/panpipes and went to find the nearest place i could to go and make a star shape and try and dry out as quickly as possible, impossible in this humidity…  so it was about six hours later when i finally got back from the park and managed to peel off my sticky sweaty clothes….

Iguazu

la garganta del diablo falls... iguazu national park

.. i can quite happily report that the Iguazu Falls haven’t dried up… nor is trickle a word that iwould use to describe them…. i’ve spent the last couple of days looking at them from every angle from the various trails and walkways around the iguazu national park and they really do defy description.. the sheer magnitude and power of them is something to behold…once more I am overdrawn in the adjective bank and my photos fail to capture the scale…

… but the park is so much more than than just the falls…. while the thundering cascades give themselves a rapturous applause there is a whole load of nature going on on the trails… on the furry side you have everything from monkeys to coatis ( a kind of raccoon) with a couple of big cats thrown in if you are lucky enough to spot them …. oh and a weird rodent thing with a big fat arse and long hind legs ( yep I’ve forgotten the name of it and i’m not connected to wikipedia right now). … feathered friends include toucans and humming birds.. both of which i saw but wasn’t quick enough to capture with the camera…. and then there is a whole battery of bugs, spiders and the most amazing variety of butterflies i have seen in my life… rainbow coloured and in huge quantities… they dance in front of you, lining your path making you feel like you are in some kind of magical fairy tale.. they sit on your shoulder, your rucksack, your boob …your camera ( just to tease you) prodding and probing everything with their proboscii… (or is it their proboscises…?)  i have discovered the macro function on my camera in the last couple of days and then proceeded to use and abuse it to the max….

pretty blue butterfly

…on the home strait

… well after 26 hours on the bus, countless ham & cheese sandwiches, four awful films (almost as cheesy as the sandwiches) and .. NO WINE .. but yes there was bingo… i finally arrived in Puerto Iguazu, the very northeast tippety tip of Argentina which meets with Paraguay and Brazil where the rivers Parana and Iguazu converge…

.. my mobile phone has gone into a bit of a tailspin because you only have to move 5 yards here and it switches operator.. from one country to the other..

….i’m here (like every other tourist and his dog) to see the Iguazu Falls… although i have been warned it’s more of a trickle at the moment due to the complete lack of rainfall recently.. we shall see.. the one thing i have managed to do today is wander up to aforementioned tippety tip of the town to take the token tourist snap of each country!!

.. yet again the landscape has changed dramatically.. from the dust and aridness ( or is it aridity?) of the north west .. it’s all a bit lush and junglified here.. it’s hot and humid.. and the hostels have swimming pools!!!.. and this afternoon i skipped over to the sister hostel of the one i’m staying at for a massage… (all of a sudden i’m starting to like hostels) my body had pretty much taken on the permanent form of an Andesmar bus seat.. and i needed a bit of pampering…

… back to the bus journey… these long haulers really aren’t bad… especially if you go ‘coche cama’ class… you’ve got buckets of room (nothing like being on an aeroplane) and the seat almost fully reclines … i’ve worked out that seat number six is the optimum seat… it’s a single seat so there’s no one to climb over and no one climbing over you and you don’t have to crane your neck to watch the film… ive found the forced naval gazing is extremely therapeutic… you almost take on a bit of a zen like state usually just before you start dribbling and knocking your head on the window (unless of course you are armed with your inflatable neck pillow which allows you to avoid both embarrasments .. but you still look like a bit of a dork when using it)…i’ve met some really interesting people on these buses too so i’m actually a bit sad this was my last bus journey today.. i decided to fly back to buenos aires from iguazu because time is running out and i  just couldn’t afford another 17 hour bus trip…

… summarizing salta

salt flats - jujuy province

... jokes aside about the Pacha Mama and her party pants… the Salta leg of my trip has really blown my socks off… for the first time in the six weeks i have felt like a stranger in a strange land…

… as i said in the last blog this area is made up of a largely indigenous population and what’s more it is a UNESCO world heritage site because of the culture and tradition that has been preserved over the centuries.

Many of the villages in this area are so remote that the inhabitants live a subsistence existence and in some villages there is very little evidence that we are in the 21st century… i met countless children who thrust scraps of paper with their addresses on into my hands so that i could send them clothes, notebooks, anything…. my heart melted on several occasions because these kids were so pure, unaffected and happy… they recited local poetry, sang, played music for us … in return for so little … it was a very humbling experience…

The culture carries with it many rituals and traditions and also a local folk music as well as the typical pan pipe music of the Andes… ( of which i will never tire…  it lifts the soul even in the darkest moments)

Many of these rituals are dedicated to worshipping mother nature … but others are designed solely for courting purposes… we will ignore the one where the guy gets a trial period with a girl to see if she will make a good wife… my favourite is one that was told to us by a local guide (Oscar) of the village of Humahuaca.. basically if a guy is interested in a girl he sends a messge using a mirror and if she is interested she sends one back and a meeting is organized… this is all well and good … so long as the right sister replies… Oscar has recently discovered that SMS is much more reliable than mirrors!!! … i’m sure he made it all up… but hey, why let the truth get in the way of a good story …!!

pumamarca

...tomorrow i head off to Iguazu on my longest bus journey yet…. 26 hours of contemplating my navel….!!!

with the children in san antonio de los cobres

La Pacha Mama

Quebrada de Cafayate

…..La Pacha Mama (mother earth) figures heavily in the culture of the indigenous people of salta and jujuy provinces (which accounts for about 90% of the population) .. and la pacha mama was having a field day when she got here… after creating the breathtaking beauty of the south of Argentina and the soul soothing serenity of the lakes, mother nature put on her party pants and went and painted the town red, and orange, and yellow, and green… the marble cake mountains around Mendoza and Aconcagua were just preliminary sketches for the masterpiece that tops off the north west corner of Argentina.

There was a whole lot more ‘o’ level physical geography going on when all of this scenery was thrown up over the last 250 million years… And I’ve spent the last three days running the length and breadth of the two provinces that curl around one another and tuck themselves in next to Bolivia and Chile getting to see it all up close and personal, surreal rock formations, natural amphitheaters, salt flats and the most vivid colours you can possibly imagine.

… And it’s not just the scenery… la pacha mama was clearly onto her

llama

third gin and tonic of the night when she created the llama … these animals are quite mad, even the wild ones pose for the camera. They have ridiculously long eyelashes which they flutter continuously and a natural underbite which makes them look as if they are always smiling and saying ‘hey there….i’m a llama, i’ve got a cute face but i am completely unaware of how woolly and ungainly the rest of my body is…. and i taste nice!!!!’

…… hostel highs and lows … part 2

…. i have finally stopped giving myself a hard time about not fully embracing the whole hostel thing… my name is Verity and I am hostel hostile…. i’ve been lucky… i’ve stayed in some really nice ones, but i have walked straight out of almost as many because the urge to scratch has been almost overpowering…. and i discovered my scratchometer is fairly accurate when talking to Mel the manic german (she made me look laid back folks…. and that’s saying something) in Cordoba.  She had stayed at the one i’d walked out of when i first arrived in the city…. And she’d had the dubious pleasure of having to fumigate and deflea the entire contents of her rucksack… and this is a hostel that lonely planet describes as spotlessly clean!! …. but saying that… a cockroach has just strolled past me as write this having just tucked into my dinner in one of the better restaurants recommended by lonely planet in Salta…. upps make that two cockroaches…. ah well so long as it’s not dengue carrying mozzies i suppose it’s ok…

…. so back to the hostels,  however you go about booking your fleapit for the night.. be it via the guidebooks, other peoples recommendations or the various hostel booking websites… every opinion is totally subjective.. and its tricky to get it right … if a hostel is rated with a 98% fun factor then you are pretty much guaranteed a game of naked twister at 2 in the morning if thats what floats your boat (for the record…. no i didnt) … but usually these places are located centrally and close to restaurants should you (shock horror) want escape the perpetual party and dine alone… which when you are a little girl travelling on your own puts you between a rock and a hard place….

….i’ve pretty much found a happy medium staying in private rooms in lively (but not too big) hostels which means if i want to meet other travellers i can without getting too closely acquainted with their bathroom habits.. and I can still escape to the sanctuary of my own space if I need to….

….. but in Salta i decided to treat myself in and booked myself into a delightful little boutique hotel…. and it’s the same price as ive been paying for a private room in a hostel… and it’s just been renovated and everything is modern and new and it’s got a lovely quilt that has no nylon content whatsoever on the bed and big fluffy towels….. and a tv and, and, and its bliiiiissss!!!