Uh...Halloween

This is a post on the phenomenon of Hallowe'en, or rather, the lack thereof, in Buenos Aires. (Really, though, it's just an excuse to post this picture of my brother Mark dressed up as Bill Cosby for Hallowe'en. )

Hallowe'en doesn't really exist here. The only places I've seen with orange and black decorations are American chain restaurants. The only people that have Hallowe'en parties are ex-pats. And it's Spring here, so all the Hallowe'en related stuff is just so out of context.

Speaking of American chain restaurants, yesteday I was walking around Puerto Madero, the chic, new, slick, upscale neighbourhood that has recently been developed in what used to be the industrial port. It's pretty nice; there's all these fancy restaurants along the water in what used to be old warehouses. But, thrown in amongst all these fancy places are some random American chains, like TGI Fridays and frigging HOOTERS, pretending to be all fancy and stuff. And since no one here knows that these places aren't indeed fancy in their American incarnations, and get dressed up to go there, they effectively become fancy. Strange.

But, HOOTERS? I explained to the Argentinian friend I was with what the concept is and what the name refers to, and he was like, "So the waitresses just wear tight shirts and stuff? Like, what's the big deal? So does everyone in the street. Is the food good?"

I think this would be illegal in Canada

So last night I'm having a drink with a friend, sitting on the outdoor terrasse of a bar. We were in a part of Palermo Soho where there's like a mini-rotary with a little plaza and a playground in the middle, and all around it are bars and restaurants, most of which have patios out on the street.

Over the course of the evening several people approached our table - people selling everything from glow in the dark headbands to homemade scented massage oil to kids asking for change. So when this woman came up to our table and tipped an open pack of cigarettes toward us and asked if we wanted one, we were like, "No, thanks.." assuming she was selling them.

But then a closer look at her flourescent blue spandex pants and sequined jacket and purse, all emblazoned with the Pall Mall logo, clued us in. She worked for the Pall Mall Cigarette company, and as a promotion for their new Light brand or something, they were going to bars and giving away free cigarettes, getting people to try the new brand. After you took the cigarette and tried it, another Pall Mall girl came around with a survey, asking you what you thought of it, and asking for your name and address, so they could send you invites to special events, or something like that. Uh...yeah.

Pretty friggin' sketch, eh?

Madres de la Plaza de Mayo

I just came back from the Plaza de Mayo, one of the main squares in downtown Bs As. Every Thursday at 3:30pm, a group called the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo take over the square with a political march.

In a nutshell, the group came about during the dictatorship, when the mothers of men and women who had mysteriously "disappeared" in the middle of the night decided to take action. They started regularly protesting, demanding justice and the safe return of their children, in the Plaza de Mayo, white kerchiefs the "uniform" of their ranks. Since the dictatorship ended, the group has continued to be active in various social justice and human rights related causes.

The Madres are very well respected and are famous around the world. Their weekly march is, I learned today, a big tourist attraction. There were tons of foreigners there with digital cameras, filming, or just taking in the march.

But I felt mixed feelings watching the march today. On one hand, the fact that so many tourists are interested by the Madres, a political group fighting for social justice, is a good thing. Ideally learning about the Madres, snapping their picture, and taking that story back to your home country helps promote their cause - it's not the same kind of tourist attraction as the Recoleta Craft Fair or the beach at Mar del Plata.

But it was sort of weird. The Madres silently circle the statue in the centre of the Plaza. And there's tourists with their cameras everywhere; people taking pictures from afar, people walking backwards in front of the group to take a shot from the front, people going up amongst the women and taking pictures from there... One girl standing at the little table the Madres have set up with pamphlets and things, right in the woman's face with her digital camera, not taking a pamphlet or talking to her, but simply capturing her "quaint kerchiefed-ness" on film. And everyone else is standing around the plaza, just watching them walk.

Now, it's not meant to be a loud protest, and I don't even know how it's seen to just join into the march. But it still seemed really strange to me that everyone's standing around casually snapping pictures of these women and this march whose movement has deep roots in the dirty past of this country and is heavy with signification.

The whole scene just struck me as sort of weird. Are the Madres really no more than some kind of tourist attraction?

Teatro Colon

Could you imagine a group of Canadian elementary schoolchildren being taken to an opera house as a school trip? So important is the Teatro Colón in the history and cultural life of Buenos Aires that every time I go past there are at least a couple busses full of students or tour groups waiting to go in for a tour.

Mussorsgky's opera Boris Godunov opened last week, and so I thought it a good excuse to check out this landmark, not only because it's the last opera of the season, but that at the end of the season the Colón closes one year for repairs.

Waiting in the huge line to get a ticket didn't bother me - seeing so many people interested in classical music was a nice change from all those concerts I've been too where the audience consisted of 5 old ladies knitting in the back. But the guy at the box office told me the only tickets left for this Sunday's matinée were crap seats where I wouldn't see anything. So I decided to go for an entrada a pie, a $4 ticket in the standing section at the back of each of the three upper balconies.

Sunday afternoon I scrounged together something resembling "nice" from my collection of backpacker clothes and made my way to the theatre. As I climbed the stairs and entered the Cazuela level, I realized how much of a standing section novice I was. The best standing spots, at the centre back, had been claimed by people who had obviously arrived WAY earlier than I did, and who were fully equipped with little chairs and stools. I duly took my place at the end of the row, on the side.

As the show started, I fidgeted around, trying to see around unfortunately placed posts and peoples heads, and trying to take in both the stage and the Spanish supertitles of the Russian text at the same time. A decorative moulding hanging from the ceiling which must look quite lovely, but which partially blocked my view, meant that I had assume a stooped over position. ( Of course, this wasn't an issue for all the other petite Argentine ladies in the section. This must have been punishment for my tall frame blocking the view of everyone behind me at some outdoor concert or something...) In between acts, when one of the patrons who had paid for a seat but they'd had enough Russian and didn't make it back after the break, there was a mad dash for the empty chair.

It sounds uncomfortable, but it wasn't actually that bad. In the intermissions, I'd sneak down and take a rest in someone's plush seat, taking in the gorgeous, decadent interior of the theatre at the same time. And the production was pretty good and enjoyable, despite the soloists' distracting habit of coming out for a bow during scene changes, breaking character and the mood of the story.

And at the Colón, do not, I repeat do not, whisper to your neighbour, open a candy, let your cell phone ring, or start to clap at the end of an aria before the conductor has released the last note, or you will be greeted by the loudest "ssssshhhhhhhhhh" you've ever heard. From three levels up I heard someone down on the lower level start to clap at the wrong time and in unison a perfectly coordinated chorus of "shhhhhhhhh" from all levels reverberated throughout the hall. Dirty looks just don't cut it in Buenos Aires.

And when the opera ended, I thought I was at a football game, the way everyone started to freak out. With the typical Argentine lust for life, the audience erupted into applause, cheers, whistles, screams, and shouts of 'bravo', for like 20 minutes. But seriously, they were FREAKING OUT. A far cry from the restrained applause following a Canadian opera, but sort of cool, you know?

At the theatre

One of the great things about Buenos Aires is that it's one of the cultural capitals of South America. There's tons of cultural activity - concerts of all types of music, theatre, dance, galleries - and it's pretty accessible, unlike in Santiago where shows can be pretty expensive.

This weekend I decided to start dipping my toes into the cultural waters. I had seen a poster in the Subte for a documentary called Rio Arriba, that caught my eye because it took place in the communities north of Salta where I just visited. It tells the story of a young Argentine whose grandfather was owner of Salta's San Isidro Sugar Plant. Though now most are closed or automated, sugar used to be one of the region's, and the country's, important industries. But the plant owners culled their workforce from small aboriginal villages in the nearby Andes, practically forcing them to work hand-cutting sugar cane in back-breaking conditions and for pay that was less than ideal. And in the process, the aboriginal communities abandoned the traditional way of life they had known for centuries. The kind of story of exploitation of minorites for the sake of development that can be found in countless places around the globe. But what was interesting for me as a foreigner was learing about this particular incident in the context of Argentina. And the filmmaker told the story in a very personal way; his being the grandson of one of the men responsable for such exploitation, the film was structured around his coming to terms with his family history through the visiting of aborignal communites and farms and hearing the stories of those who had worked on the plantations.


Saturday night Jessica and her boyfriend Manú and I checked out a play called Isla Desierta by the Teatro Ciego at the Ciudad Cultural Konex. The Konex is this huge cultural complex converted from an old factory in an industrial part of town. There are a couple of theatre spaces, a cafe, a gallery, a huge outdoor space where they have festivals in the summer. They've really kept the rugged unfinished feel of the factory, and the spaces are huge.

Teatro Ciego means "blind theatre", and what was cool about the piece, besides the fact that some of the actors are blind, is that it all happened in the dark. Pitch dark. You enter the theatre in pairs, hands on the shoulders of one of the actors, and you go through a long passageway, through a some curtains, and then you are led to your seat. And there's not one speck of light - you can't see your hand in front of your face. And then the play starts, but everything happens in the dark, and the plot unfolds through dialogue, live sound effects, music, odours, sensations... The story was nothing extraordinary; a group of office workers on the 10th floor of a tower near the city port, who dream of travelling on one of the boats that continually enter and leave the harbour. One guy has travelled, and so he tells the stories of his travels to the group. As he recounts his adventures at sea, in China, and in the jungle, each of these worlds is created by the actors using all the senses except sight. I don't know how they did it, but they recreated live the sounds of a rowboat rowing through the water, people swimming ashore; they made a thunderstorm using some kind of fan and mist and when he arrived in China all of sudden you smelled what could only be what a busy Chinese street smells like.

My only complaint was that the story ended really abruptly and they flicked on the lights and you saw the actors and the theatre space, which everyone had imagined in their own way. It would have been nicer for the story to gradually wind down and the lights to come up slowly. The coolest part was less the story, though, and more the being in complete darkness.

While at the Konex I also picked up tickets for an aerial dance piece (!) for next Friday night. Cool!

I have joined the 20th..uh...21st century

I have something to announce. I just bought a CELL PHONE. Oh my god! Who'd have imagined that I would finally embrace the technology that inspires so much horrible social behaviour in normally intelligent people. But seeing as I'm living in a hostel with shared phone that doesn't work that well and that cell phones are SUPER cheap and rampant here ( mine cost $40 and came with a $20 prepaid credit), I gave in. It'll make life easier.

The slick, metrosexual yet somehow still very macho cell phone salesman that sold it to me set it up with a ring tone of some British pop song that had very vulgar lyrics. He told me I thought I'd like it because it's in English. Then he asked me to explain the lyrics to him and I was like, "Um, your mother wouldn't approve." Then the other salesguy told me that there was a special on today; buy a phone and get the salesman's number for free. Ah, Argentina.

Gotta go find a church or public restroom or something to test out my new phone.

Cara de Queso

Yesterday I felt like giving my Spanish a run with a subtitle-free movie. And obviously, I wanted to choose something local. I had seen some posters around town for a movie called Cara de Queso , which looked sufficiently funny and light to not be too hard for a non-Spanish speaker, so I decided to go for it.

At first glance, from the poster, it looked like some sort of Spanish Napoleon Dynamite rip-off. But it was far from it.

It as the story of a young Jewish boy named Ariel from Buenos Aires. Every summer his family escapes the heat of the city at their country, which is the Spanish word borrowed from English describing, from what I can gather, something like a country club slash gated community slash family summer camp. You have your golf course, pools, sports facilities, organized activites, etc, like in a country club, but there are a bunch of houses there, where people live for the summer. Sort of like a summer cottage, but not necessarily in the middle of the woods or on the beach. The particular country featured in the film was an exclusive Jewish club for Jewish families only.

The film underlines the parallel between the Jewish ghettos that used to exist in Eastern Europe and the self-created Jewish ghettos, such as this country club, that exist today. Though it was basically a mid- 90's coming of age story of this pre-teen boy and the wacky antics of him and his gang of friends, there were themes of exclusion and inclusion and abuse of power and being a minory woven throughout. So it was a little more enriching than your typical teen movie. Which showed in the crowd that came to see it, which included many middle-aged members of the very Buenos Aires Jewish community that the film examines.

(And in movie theatres here, you get an assigned seat! Of course, some old man was sitting in my seat, so I had to sit in someone else's seat...chaos could have ensued, but thankfully the theatre wasn't full...)

Recoleta

Now that I've resolved the problem of where to live, I can get onto really seeing this city. Today is a holiday here, so I've been wandering around Recoleta, taking in the big craft fair that takes place on weekends here. The grassy knolls that surround the craft stalls are filled with people sun bathing, hanging out, and drinking mate.

I also took a walk through the Recoleta Cemetery, where the who's who of Argentine politics and society is buried. But unlike any cemetery I've seen, instead of everyone being buried in theground and the grave marked with stones, every plot is actually a little mausoleum, with the coffins inside. Eerything's organized into aisles and rows, so the effect is like walking through this mini town, the mausoleums resembling mini houses seperated by narrow little streets.

The mausoleums vary in levels of ornateness and decoration, some being quite simple and somber and some decked out with crosses, statues, and domed roofs. Not being that familiar with Argentina's historical figures, what clued me into the fact that the people buried here are important are the last names, which are the names of streets not just in Buenos Aires but in every town in Argentina. Just like every town in Quebec has it's Rue Laurier or Rene Levesque, every town here has a Caseros, Sarmiento, San Martin, and the list goes on. they must have done something important.

I have a home

So, I finally found a place to live. If you are willing to pay out your arse, you can easily find somewhere to stay. But if you want to keep a budget, trying to find a place that's the right combination of nice, well-located and cheap can be a bit more challenging.

So after a week of making calls and visiting places, I moved into my new place Saturday. I have a little room in this hostel/boarding house on the edge of the Recoleta neighbourhood. It's this huge, crumbling old house, with three floors, several bathrooms and kitchens, and all kinds of nooks and crannies. The people that live there are a combination of international students staying for a couple of months, and travellers passing through. It's in a great location, close to downtown, the subway, and the chichi upscale neighbourhood of Recoleta, just in case I get an urge to buy some designer shoes. Oh yeah, and it's a short walk to the Teatro Colon, Buenos Aires' beautiful world-famous opera house and concert hall. My room's extremely basic, as are all the facilties, but the place makes up for it in its friendly atmosphere. The owner's this friendly Chilean-American ex-wannabe rockstar from LA who moved here 7 years ago to open the hostel.

I'd just moved my stuff in and was looking forward to a quiet night in, when this group of German guys having a drink on the patio invited me down. They had all studied here in Buenos Aires 4 years ago, one of them having lived in the hostel, and they had organized a reunion, and were going out to meet some of their old classmates and friends. So I tagged along.

They told me stories from back in the day of their wacky exchange student antics: How one of them only used to date girls with names that were also song names - he dated a Cecilia, a Lola, a Macarena and a Roxanne; How they once borrowed ties and suits and tagged along to the family wedding of the Argentinian girl one of them was dating and Grandpa still talks to this day about their crazy dancing styles; And how their time in Buenos Aires conincided with the economic crisis of 2001, and how they got to live first hand one of the most intense moments in modern Argentine history.

After a dinner of meat, meat and more meat, we went out for a drink in this bar called Milion. It's a huge multi-storey mansion that's been converted into a bar and restaurant. There was this interactive art exhibit going on, sponsored by Lucky Strike Cigarettes - (it's not just in Canada where tobacco companies sponsor cultural events.) There were all these installations set up with infrared lights; the tables had been covered with some kind of plastic that absorbed the light, so you could draw, with light, on the table with these pendulums hanging down from the ceiling. There was also this race track set up, the surface made of the same special plastic, and the wheels of the car setup with infrared bulbs, so that wherever the car went, it left this trace of light. Cool! A nice distraction in between Mojito Margaritas (whoever invented this drink is a genius.)

Of course, in typical Argentinian fashion, we left the bar at 2:30am and they all hailed a cab to continue the night out at a dance club. I'm still adjusting to 3am not meaning last call, so I went home.

Tomorrow my classes

El cuerpo del deseo

The last couple of days have been filled up with running around looking at places to live. I sure have gotten to see a lot of the city in the process. I'm going now to get the keys for the place where I'd like to live, but let's not talk about it now- don't want to jinx it.

Anyway, but I have had the chance to watch a bit of Argentinian TV. Now, I know it sounds lame to be sitting around watching TV while in Buenos Aires, but I have to admit it is a good way of practicing my Spanish. And since they don't show Chilean soaps here, I have to fill the void left by Complices.

Apart from the Argentinian remake of Married with Children ( Casados con hijos) that's really popular here right now ( seriously - and the Argentinian actress playing the daughter really looks like Christina Applegate), they're heavily promoting this soap operas called El Cuerpo del Deseo, which starts this Tuesday. The ads are so incredibly cheezy and hilarious, that I had to do a web search to find out what it's all about. Turns out it's a Columbian series they're remaking for Argentina. Here's the description, from the IMDB:

What person over 50 or 60 hasn't fantasized about being young again with all his knowledge intact? EL CUERPO DEL DESEO is about that and more.

Just as LA MUJER EN EL ESPEJO explored issues of beauty, EL CUERPO DEL DESEO explores issues of age, wealth, and power. The wealthy but aged Pedro José Donoso marries a beautiful but greedy young woman who already has a lover on the side. He has dreams about a strong young man performing heavy farm work and every time he wakes from these dreams he feels even more intensely that he has experienced them. He dies suddenly in his study one night, and the young farmer also dies within hours. However, Pedro José's spirit refuses to give up and enters the young farmer's body as it is being carried to the cemetery. When he breaks out of the coffin and is brought to a medical facility no one can explain what happened… and he is more confused than the others. He freaks out the people around him by displaying knowledge and abilities the young farmer never had. He is greatly confused as to what has happened and why. He gradually learns that the reason for this strange phenomenon is to learn the truth about what has been going on under his nose and behind his back. He then has to make a decision about what to do about it all.

The studly Mario Cimarro of PASIÓN DE GAVILANES is more than worthy of this acting challenge as he explores what it is to be what to all intent and purposes is an impostor. The scene in which he strips in front of a mirror and sees his new handsome face and perfect body is priceless; he manages to convey the humor, the irony, and the apprehension all at once. We later see the dark side of his personality as he uncovers the deceptions and hypocrisies around him. The beautiful Lorena Rojas, who also sings the theme song, is flawless as the greedy "widow" Isabella, while Martin Karpan of TE VOY A ENSEÑAR A QUERER is increasingly sinister as her controlling lover.

Hilarious!!! I can't wait to start watching it.

Linea A

The last couple of days I've been busy trying to find a place to live and trying to register for my Spanish class. Registration was this morning between 10am and 12pm, they told me when I stopped by the faculty for info the other day. So, I arrive at 10am and there's this huge line. I wait in line for an hour for them to give me a little slip of paper and tell me to come back at 5pm. Little did I know yes, registration started at 10am, but people came and started lining up at 8am. Of course they didn't mention that when I came by for information.

In the line I was chatting with this German girl and we were like, "This is so disorganized! Why did we have to wait an hour for a piece of paper? Why didn't they just hand it to us when we arrived? Why is there only one girl handing out the pieces of paper? Why did the Argentinian guy in front of us who went up and yelled at the girl get to whisk his foreigner girlfriend through they line and into the placement test? It would be so simple to organize this better.."

And then we looked at each other and were like, " Oh my God we're SO German and Canadian! We can't handle this lack of organization. We have to relax or it's going to be a long two months here in Argentina..." Of course then we went for a coffee and the waiter messed up our order and then ignored us when we asked him to fix it.

But my unexpected 6 hours to kill have given me some time to do something I've been wanting to do: ride the Subway Line A. Line A of Buenos Aires' Subway system ( El Subte) has wooden-panelled cars dating from way back, complete with dim lamps and doors you have to manually open yourself. One of the stations on the line, Peru, has been refurbished to look like it would have back in the day, with tiled walls and floors and advertisements from the 30's. My travel book described riding on Line A as rumbling down the tracks inside an old wooden wardrobe, and I have to say it's a pretty apt description. Well, maybe more like a wardrobe filled with businessmen commuting and youngsters listening to their iPods.

Buenos Aires!

I've now been in the capital for two days. It's a HUGE city. Well, bigger than Montreal in any case, at something like 5 million people ( 15 million if you take in the whole greater Buenos Aires area). But its hugeness is less about numbers and more about it feeling really big. I spent the day wandering down the heart of downtown; the avenues are, like, 10 lanes wide, the buildings are tall, and every street in the centre is just packed with people. And you have everything from the old grandma selling homemade empanadas for $.30 from her hole-in-the-wall storefront, like in Salta and Córdoba, to the Adidas superstore and the Zara outlet, with prices that match those in Canada, which you definitely didn't see in the other places I've visited.

Though I know that throughout my two months here I will constantly be discovering parts of the city, yesterday I dove headfirst into one of the most iconic parts of the city, San Telmo. It's a neighbourhood of crumbling ornate buildings and narrow cobblestone streets. On weekends a bunch of the streets are blocked off to car traffic and so the whole area is filled with street performers and people selling crafts and antiques and pop corn and just about anything you can imagine.

Jessica, (the Chilean friend with whom I'm staying for a couple of days), and I took the micro across town to San Telmo from her apartment in Palermo. We had a late lunch on the terrasse of a cavernous old restaurant ( I ordered mashed pumpkin, to celebrate Thanksgiving) and then just wandered around for the rest of the afternoon. Wanderings punctuated by street-side tango shows of varying quality, ice cream cones, and playing "wow, that would make a great souvenir if only I wasn't carrying all my worldly possesions across the continent in an already bulging backpack."

My Spanish classes start Thursday. Now I just have to find a place to live...

Córdoba Nightlife

Yesterday night, after a strenuous day of wandering aimlessly around Córdoba's historic downtown, I went out with Simon, Jimena's sister Augustina (a.k.a GuGu) and her Brazilian friend Felipe. At about 10:30pm we went for supper at this neat little place called Alfonsito - good food, and nice atmosphere. Lots of random and interesting stuff hanging from the walls.

And then we wanted to go for a drink somewhere. It was about midnight. But you see, in Argentina, the bars don't start to fill up until about1:30am or 2. And when people go out, they stay out until the sun comes up. It's actually not that bad of a system. You can come home in the evening, take a nap until about midnight, and then get up and go out until 7am. It just takes some getting used to.

So we checked out a couple of places, but it being only around midnight, they were completely empty - not a soul to be seen. But we decided to be those first early-comers and went into a bar called Club 990. This big, cavernous place with cement floors and sort of a mildly hippy reggae vibe - some pictures of Bob Marley on the walls, jazzy paint job, masks hanging on the walls, pool table... The guy at the door told us a rock band and a reggae band would be playing later.

So at about 2:30am the band takes the stage. And I seriously asked myself if Slayer were making a surprise underground performance. They were a metal band, playing super heavy stuff, and really loud. It was hilarious. These guys were INTO it. And more so than most of the people in the club; the clientele was more reggae than metal, and seemed just as peeved as us that the music was so loud it prohibited conversation. So after a couple of "songs" ( if you could call them that) we decided to call it a night.

And in an hour I get on the bus for Buenos Aires! Go east, young man!

Simon, Jimena and Manuel

My friend JO's sister set me up with some friends of hers who live here in Córdoba, and Wednesday night they invited me to their house for supper.

Simon's Québécois and Jimena's Argentinian and they met through the myriad of travels and student exchanges they've both done in South America and in Quebec. They had been living in Quebec, but came back to live here in Córdoba, Jimena's hometown, for a couple of years. They have an adorably cute one year old named Manuel.

We had a nice veggie dinner, a change from the constant intake of steak one gets used to in Argentina. Jimena's finishing a doctorate in Linguistics and Simon studied ESL education, so we had lots of interests in common. They also gave me a crash course in the last three decades of Rock Nacional, or Argentinian rock music. So now I know that though it's pronounced, "Espinetta", the classic singer's name is really spelled Spinetta. Good to know.

Quebrada de los Condoritos

I had been wondering why it had been so hard to find a place to stay in Córdoba. Usually, I just show up in a place, and call one of the hotels or hostels in my travel guide, and off I go. But Córdoba, I had to call 5 or 6 places, they were all full. Which was weird, because it's mid-week, and the off-season, and Córdoba's not exactly tourist destination #1. But I found out when the group with whom I was going hiking came to pick me up on Thursday morning; there is a pediatrician's conference in town, with 8000 doctors from all across the country attending seminars and the like. Two of the 3 other people in the group were pediatricians who had chosen to skip out on the day's proceedings in search of some fresh air. (I have to say, it's sort of reassuring to know you have two doctors along when you venture out into the wilderness...)

Martin, our tour guide ( complete with Argentinian mini-mullet) drove us in his little red truck the two hours on a twisting winding mountain road out to the Quebrada de los Condoritos national park. We were to hike 10km each way to this gorge with a combination of conditions that attracts Andean condors and their young, as well as all kinds of other birds of prey. The word condoritos in the title of the park refers to baby condors; the gorge being only a kilometre wide, it is the perfect place for condors to teach their young how to fly.

Now, I must admit that I'm not a huge animal buff. I mean, I think it's as cool as anyone to see a deer or moose or rabbit when I'm out hiking, but that's where it ends. And birds, well, they all look the same to me. So when I was inquiring about going out hiking and the only trip that was leaving this one, to see condors, I was like "Great, a bird-watching hike. Everyone will spend the whole trip polishing their binoculars and practicing their bird calls..."

But, condors are COOL! I was surprised. Their wing span is 3 meters, and they flap, like, once and glide for like 10 minutes. And when there's a bunch of them flying over you, it's quite impressive. And the hike was nice - through this exposed pampa grassland, and some small rocky hills. There were some nice views of the surrounding mountains and valleys. The long yellow pampa grass has this neat iridescent quality when it blows in the wind.

And of course, it was inevitable. I was asked, once again, the question I think I've been asked the most from the people I've met, after all the typical, " Where are you from, etc.." Remember the scene in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, where, to show the cultural differences in attitudes towards guns and violence, Moore goes to Windsor, or something and, like, walks up and into someone's unlocked house? I've been asked SO MANY TIMES, "Do Canadians really leave their doors unlocked?" Bowling for Columbine must have been really popular here, either that or no one has seen any other Canadian movies. Oh wait, I did meet a couple of people who had seen Les Invasions Barbares, and wanted to know if that's what Canadian hospitals are really like, and if the labour unions really have that much influence...

Bus to Córdoba

It rained for the first time in two months the morning I left Salta and got on the bus for a 12 hour journey to Córdoba, Argentina's second-largest city. Thought it took me a couple of days to get into Salta's rhythm, I was sad to leave - I really like the vibe of the people and the city.

The bus ride was your usual, with movies blasting over the sound system, and bus attendant wisecracking into the PA system, and the driver pulling manouevres with a double-decker bus I wouldn't dare do with a Honda Civic. A highlight was when they put on a ( clearly pirated) DVD of the most low budget, cheeziest music videos by the worst reggaeton artists I've ever heard. The volume at ten, I think the pair of old ladies sitting across the aisle from me where scandalized by all the girls in bikinis in the videos.

I was on the top level of the double-decker, which gave me wonderful views of the mountains, and then the dusty plains we crossed as we made our way southeast. My seatmate was a guy who had just been visiting his mother and girlfriend in Tucumán, and was now making the 24 hour trek to the south of Argentina where he's stationed in the navy. Quite an interesting guy, with his 15 years in the navy, we talked about everything from the geography of Argentina and South America to world politics. From what I have observed, if there's one thing that seems to unite the Chileans and Argentinians I've chatted with, no matter what the age, sex or social class, it's an extreme distrust, sometimes brodering on rage, of American foreign policy.

I got into Cordóba at 11pm and have been spending the day wandering the streets and taking in the atmosphere in the city's central square.

Pitcures from Cachi!

Well, the road can't go stright up the mountain, now can it? To get to the top you have to zig zag up slowly. Don't worry, I had Gravol with me.

Here's a shot of the plains and the cacti in Parque Nacional los Cardones.

This is me on the Recta de Tin Tin, this stretch of road in the Chaco Salteno ( plains), that has nothing to do with Tin Tin the comic character, but rather the sound two stones from the region make when you hit them together.

Cachi!

Monday morning it was up early once again for a trip to Cachi, this little colonial town a couple hundred kilometres from Salta, once again through a variety of valleys, gorges and desert. The different landscapes around Salta are in some ways similar, but in some ways quite different. Depending on the altitude, different plats grow ( for example, cardones, a type of cactus, only grow between 2000 and 3000 metres), and each gorge has it's own palette of colours, depending on the minerals present in the rocks. But everything is quite dry. It hasn't rained in Salta for 2 months - summer is when their rains come.

I was pleasantly surprised when Alberto, the same tour guide I had on Friday, came to my door to pick me up. I was hoping that he would lead this trip, actually. What a character, very friendly, extremely knowledgable about the region, and always ready with a funny story about something. And he was the ultimate local, too, born and raised in Salta, and in love with the region. That said, I couldn't understand the funniest of his stories, because he'd break out into the Salteno dialect. The Spanish speakers would be laughing their heads off, and I'd just sort of like do that fake laugh you do when you don't really understand....

As we went around town picking up the other people for the trip, we stopped at one hotel and a middle aged woman and her elderly mother got in the van. I thought to myself, "Looks like we won't be doing anything too strenuous today..." But she turned out to be the sweetest old lady, sharp as a tack at 82 years old and 3500 metres of altitude, and hilarious. Some of her comments rivaled Alberto's in inappropriateness...

The downer of the group was this guy named Horacio, this annoying, pale, nasally-voiced guy from Buenos Aires that wouldn't stop making condescending comments about the region, the people and the landscape. And he wouldn't stop looking at his watch. Picture the equivalent of the uptight, snobby Torontonian on a tour in Nova Scotia, dissing the downhome tour guide for lack of class and wondering out loud why the region's so backward. I tried to ignore him as best I could and did my best not to accidentally open the door of the van and push as we rounded a sharp corner on the twisting mountain road. But even his annoying personality couldn't take away from the swesomeness of the landscapes.....

I haven't mentioned what we saw yet, because Virginia, one of the other people on the tour, sent me some photos she took with her digital camera! For some reason Blogger won't let me put them in this message, so I'll post them in a seperate post.

Day of rest

Sunday I set aside to sleep in, rest up after all these excursions into the mountains, and do laundry and other errands. After breakfast on a cafe terrasse on the Plaza de 9 Julio, I made my way to the currency exchange place. Closed. Then I went in search of the laundromat. Closed. Come to think of it, there were very few people in the streets and most businesses were closed. Now, I know that Argentinians are night owls, but it was 2pm - I thought people would be up and about.

It turns out Sunday really is a day of rest in Salta. And as I took a shortcut through the Parque San Martin on my way to the bus station, I realized that no one was downtown because everyone was at the park! It was packed with families, vendors selling crafts, food and even pirated DVD's, kids running around and couples making out on benches.

In the park's amphitheatre there was a concert of local folkloric dance and music going on. It was my first introduction to these styles and I have to say I thought it was awesome! The music is something similar to Chile's cueca, given it's shared historical and colonial roots, but with different instrumentation. And the dancers, in full costume, did a range of dances, from partner dances to something resembling step dances to something like square dances. The men were dressed in the Argentinian version of a cowboy - a cowboy-style hat, gaucho pants, and these tall leather boots. The women wore big skirts and simple tops. I stood in the crowd for a couple of hours ( I finally found the advantage of being a head taller than everyone else...).

Salinas Grandes, Quebrada del Toro

Saturday morning it was up at the crack of dawn again for another excursion into the countryside surrounding Salta. Good thing there's a rooster in the vicinity of the place I'm staying that I can hear from my room.

As I waited outside on the street at 7am to be picked up, I was introduced to a Salteño custom. As every car came down the street, it would flick its high beams. I was like, "What are they flicking their high beams for? It's light out. It's a one way street so there's no opposing traffic. Huh?" But as the day went on, when driving on tiny winding back roads, as cars passed each other drivers would either wave to each other, or flick their high beams to say "Hi!" So when I was being "flicked" at in the morning, it was just guys passing in cars being like " Hey there..." They were also probably letting me know that they could give me a ride, assuming that since I was standing by the side of the road I was waiting for a bus. People driving by a bus stop will often stop and see if you're going the same way as them and give you a lift if you want.

Anyway, so our guide, a young little guy named Eduardo, finally arrived. With me on the excursion were a rather quiet and boring couple from Patagonia and this middle-aged British guy named Chris, who didn't really speak or understand Spanish very well. Though it was nice to be able to chat effortlessly in English for a bit, his unabashed Anglo-ness got a little old after a while.

We drove up through Purmamarca, which I had visited the day previous, and then out came the coca leaf as we drove up this incedibly serpentine road up all these mountians to an elevation of more than 3000m. This is the reason why it's better to go on organized excursions around Salta as opposed to renting a car yourself. Besides the obvious advantage of having a guide who can tell you about everything you go by and who knows where they're going, they know how to drive on tiny twisting dirt roads and up mountains and in the desert. And they have heavy-duty vehicles that can handle the terrain.

Or so I thought. We'd just finished visiting the Salinas Grandes, more than 200 square kilometres of desert-like salt flats, and were about 15km down a 70km stretch of rough dirt road in these deserted desert plains when the truck stalled. And then stalled again. " I don't like the sound of that," said Eduardo, and neither did I. We were seriously so in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing but desert, llamas and wide open sky for kilometres and kilometres around. And maybe a half dozen trucks go down the road a day and there's no electricity, et alone cell phone service, for kilometres.

So, inside my head, I'm trying to think how the apple I have in my backpack will sustain me for the two days we'll have to wait until a truck goes by. But after about 15 minutes of the men huddling around the open hood, they figured out it was a wire that had come loose on the bumpy dirt road, and so we headed on.

About 50 kilometres on we stopped for lunch of traditional food at this tiny village in the middle of the plains. Open plains for miles, with mountains in the distance on every side. We got a tour around the village - everything was made of adobe and we saw the animals that rpoduced the food we had just eaten.

We then drove a while more through the plains to San Antonio de los Cobres, a rather industrial village of 3500 that despite its idyllic location was pretty drab and ugly. I did pick up some sunglasses to repace the pair I lost ( They were $5 and they're Gucci! Really! That's what it said on the package!) at the general store and had a chat with the teenage boy working there at the same time, whom I assured that in Canada we don't speak Spanish, but rather English and French. ( I took his comment as a compliment on my Spanish abilities.)

As we drove back through more and more spectacular landscapes ( which are just to amazing to try to describe in) and the Quebrada del Toro as night fell, I realized I was really getting into Salta. It took a couple of days, but then it starts to grow on you.