By now I have a backcatalogue of blags and articles longer than Chile so all semblance of chronology can go BYE BYE!
Enjoy the lamentations of a gringo enamored with Argentina folks.
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It´s almost impossible to get a decent meal in Buenos Aires between 3.30 and 7. I walked for an hour before I found somewhere. As I walked I plotted my fame as the leader of a new journalistic movement. A little beat, a little gonzo but new. And as I walked I plotted the meal I would have. It would be junk. Food to comfort me in my final hour in my city. The starter would have to be something crisp, fried to perfection. And there would be steak. And whisky. It´s hard to get a decent whisky in the southern hemisphere too. I don´t drink much these days (which may be a problem in my later career when my alcohol fuelled antics would give my book sales a second wind and made my name tattoo worthy) but I like a good whisky. And i mean a good whisky*. None of that blended crap.
I found somewhere eventually. With one good whisky and steak. I'd passed it before but passed it up. I hadn't much Spanish to my name at the time. Didn't know what an empanada was. Nowadays it looks like a paradise.
I picked an outside table. A challenge to the rain. Real rain, something I'd almost forgotten about aside from that night in the Peña, fell today. Strange it fell today, my final day in a city that felt more like home than home. Wherever I go normally sees record rainfall. Egypt, Turkey, most of the Med, everywhere my parents took me when I was little. It all lead to me feeling we were rather victimised.
I ordered whisky and water and something I thought was a steak, but they'd cooked the soul out of that poor hunk of meat and added a little pyramid made from shitake and what looked and tasted like tater tots.
It'd been a strange last week. Everyone I'd known here seemed to be in Chile or Thailand or Patagonia or Brazil. Tranquil was one word. Lonely might've been another. I'm not sure. But I{d spent the week doing silly things I knew they wouldn't have been interested in. Went to the zoo and had my heart wrenched by a sorry looking polar bear, got excited about petting baby llamas and was briefly stalked by a beaver-looking critter. And I'd spent an afternoon hanging out in a punk record store condemning men and drinking matê and talking music with the girls who worked there. I went to China town and I fully embraced the siesta. I visited a marxist newspaper and called my grandma simply because I could.
Part of me doesn't want to go to Peru tomorrow, I was at home here. And I still knew enough people to have lunch in good company everyday and to find a beer with on a Saturday night. I know the people and the lay of the land, where not to go with more than a couple of pesos, where the political tourist in me can catch a good protest. And I know Graciela, my land lady, and her dogs and cats and uncontrollable rooftop garden.
I'd only come here to get a bit of Spanish before I hit Peru and...
I finished my whisky and steak and headed back to the flat. I'd told everyone left who knew me I didn't want to go out tonight. No one left to say goodbye to now.
Thousands of miles away I felt exactly as I had sitting just through customs back in the tiny Humberside airport. No goodbyes left. Just waiting to vanish.
*at didn't know at this point but the one good whisky I can find would become my traditional latin american farewell tipple. Bye bye Susan, Meike, minor Canadian celebrity, Cusco and all you wonderful people, Uruguay, Bolivia, and probably hasta Pronto to Argentina again in a few days.
Monday, 16 March 2009
Saturday, 14 March 2009
Happy Birthday Bolivia
Just a quickie, penned in a lovely little gringo haunt while I waited for my bus home to Argentina. As a result of this article I got dessecated coconut on my arm so please don´t be too harsh. Also forgot to take my camera to the night in question. Smoooooth.
This un needs a little more tying together and work... and a spell checker.
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As luck would´ve had it we arrived in Sucre just in time for the Bolivian Bicentenial. The sparkling and thoroughly un-Bolivian city had decked out it´s colonial to Washington looking buildings in luminescant blues, reds and yellows boasting food festivals, puppet shows and drunken frivolity, covering the usual no to the constitution grafiti.
It was the friday night we arranged to meet somewhere along the food festival. Turned out to be an impossible plan though I´m well aware he tried. From a vantage point on some poor generous fool´s table I managed to see the bleach blond and ripped denim vanish from the crowd half an hour after i was meant to have arrived. Sometimes I medically depend on a milkshake, whatever my plans. Especially in Dulce de Leche country.
I decided I couldn´t possibly catch him so treated myself to some more tiny tamal and fake marzipan and tried to work out what else was going on.
I found a bBolivian folk band and a puppet show; exactly what i needed in the old capital it seemed. The show seemed to be a combination of Bolivian independence and original and uncensored Punch and Judy, complete with high voices, casual violence and a Spanish-Colonial crocodile-looking creature.
The real problem with Latin American cities is it´s almost impossible to differenciate between a firework and a gunshot, especially if you´re a nervous gringo. Before I knew it the number of people in the plaza had doubled. Banners waved and someone was talking through a megaphone about workers and constitutions and unity. I was too tired to get involved in this one, political tourist as I may be. I watched another flare hit the sky and the mad dash of parents dragging children into cafes and puppeteers dragging their theatres into buildings.
A crazy left and dearly loved friend of mine asked me the general consensus on Evo before I left La Paz. I´m guessing outside the propaganda and chilled protests of the new capital he´s not well loved.
I took the nearest side street and headed back to my labyrinthian hostel in some old colonial villa.
I sat on the balcony for a while listening to the shouting and banging drifting on the mountain breeze. After a while of playing guess what made the bang the music and the chatter came back and tipsy party goers, excited children and tired protestors wandered back down the street. I hit th hay and watched CNN world for a while, lamenting the lack of Latin American coverage and of the John Stewart story. Fan girls never die. They just go backpacking.
This un needs a little more tying together and work... and a spell checker.
-----
As luck would´ve had it we arrived in Sucre just in time for the Bolivian Bicentenial. The sparkling and thoroughly un-Bolivian city had decked out it´s colonial to Washington looking buildings in luminescant blues, reds and yellows boasting food festivals, puppet shows and drunken frivolity, covering the usual no to the constitution grafiti.
It was the friday night we arranged to meet somewhere along the food festival. Turned out to be an impossible plan though I´m well aware he tried. From a vantage point on some poor generous fool´s table I managed to see the bleach blond and ripped denim vanish from the crowd half an hour after i was meant to have arrived. Sometimes I medically depend on a milkshake, whatever my plans. Especially in Dulce de Leche country.
I decided I couldn´t possibly catch him so treated myself to some more tiny tamal and fake marzipan and tried to work out what else was going on.
I found a bBolivian folk band and a puppet show; exactly what i needed in the old capital it seemed. The show seemed to be a combination of Bolivian independence and original and uncensored Punch and Judy, complete with high voices, casual violence and a Spanish-Colonial crocodile-looking creature.
The real problem with Latin American cities is it´s almost impossible to differenciate between a firework and a gunshot, especially if you´re a nervous gringo. Before I knew it the number of people in the plaza had doubled. Banners waved and someone was talking through a megaphone about workers and constitutions and unity. I was too tired to get involved in this one, political tourist as I may be. I watched another flare hit the sky and the mad dash of parents dragging children into cafes and puppeteers dragging their theatres into buildings.
A crazy left and dearly loved friend of mine asked me the general consensus on Evo before I left La Paz. I´m guessing outside the propaganda and chilled protests of the new capital he´s not well loved.
I took the nearest side street and headed back to my labyrinthian hostel in some old colonial villa.
I sat on the balcony for a while listening to the shouting and banging drifting on the mountain breeze. After a while of playing guess what made the bang the music and the chatter came back and tipsy party goers, excited children and tired protestors wandered back down the street. I hit th hay and watched CNN world for a while, lamenting the lack of Latin American coverage and of the John Stewart story. Fan girls never die. They just go backpacking.
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