Dynargh dhe'n Blogofrob

Friday 4th February 2011

We´re in Tierra del Fuego, el Fin de Mundo: Ushuaia is the most southerly town in the world, and looks out on the Beagle channel, a stretch of water within which the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific merge, surrounded by Argentine and Chilean mountains. The town itself still has a bit of a frontier feel, but to be honest, it´s better described as a cross between a mid-range Alpine ski resort and a Cornish tourist village. The main street is packed with sportswear and gift shops, the latter´s windows filled with quartz (?) penguin figurines.

A lot of the activity is bloody exhausting. Today, we scrambled up a mountain to a glacier, which I trudged over in order to get as high as possible, while George admired the views, before a long woodland trek back to town. But yesterday was more leisurely. We took an old pleasure boat (the Barracuda) onto the channel, and were rewarded with a three hour cruise that took us past, amongst other things, rocks covered with cormorants and stinking guano. Other rocks were occupied by lounging sealions, flapping and belching as they crawled over each other. I was very proud of George resisting the impule to say, "Actually, I´m a zooologist" in the face of the woman who was trying to explain the difference between male and female sealions to her.

132 - posted at 00:15:12
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Wednesday 2nd February 2011

On Sunday, after drifting up and down the huge market on Defensa, we left the other tourists to dodge the pickpockets, and found ourselves a tiny cafe for lunch. It was tucked away in an old building, on a long balcony above a courtyard. As we were tucking into our jamon y queso sandwhich (pretty much the central theme of all our lunches to date) a couple started tangoing up and down the balcony, in the narrow space between the tables. The guy was dressed in a flash large collared shirt, grey waistcoat and rakishly tilted wide brimmed hat, the girl a tight red dress. I remarked to George that the girl had a stunning figure. George assented, but added gleefully that she also had an incredibly boss eye. In fact, so gammy eyed was this beautiful woman, that George thought that the offending organ must be made of wood.

Wooden eye or no (I went for "no") the dancing (which was brilliant) whet our appetite for the tango, and that evening we found ourselves in a deserted bar, in a beginners´ tango class, being taught basic steps by Marta, a dancer of 10 years´ experience. She opened the lesson by stating that "the tango is all about infidelity". Despite this, my partner for the evening was George. We muddled through, although every now and again, follwing a mis-step by one or the other of us, George rained down blows on my shoulder, which I didn´t consider to be in the spirit of things. I suspect that George may have been deliberately making mistakes, so as to attract the attention of Marta, who would then cut in, take George in her arms, and show her how it should be done. After each one of these episodes George would return to me in paroxysms - "Her skin, it´s so soft!". I had the pleasure of dancing with Marta later on - blurry photos are on Flickr. We left the lesson full of good intentions, resolving to try and continue learning. Time will tell, but whatever happens, we´ll definitely be a bit better informed at the next Gotan Project gig.

131 - posted at 02:38:01
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Tuesday 1st February 2011

Crucially I forgot to pack the lead that allows me to download photos from my Sony camera to a computer. As result, I trawled BA´s immense pedestianised shopping street, Florida, trying out my nascent Spanish, until I managed to buy a USB stick into which I can shove my memory card. As a result, photos are now up, here. In order to make sure I keep all my photos in the event of a mugging/dropping/smashing or forgetting, I'm uploading everything for the moment. Sorry.

130 - posted at 04:43:41
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What San Telmo lacks in pleasantly on-trend eateries and shops, it makes up for in dog shit (and, according to a girl I just spoke to, street based armed robbery of tourists). The narrow pavements are full of steaming piles of lovingly curated turd pyramids, just begging for an unwitting flip-flop sole to crush them and disburse smeary fragments throughout the neighbourhood. But, of course that´s a little unfair. To date, I´ve neither trodden in poo, nor been mugged - but have been advised by a number of people to avoid certain streets after 10pm (I enjoyed Kate´s description of passing through a neighbouring barrio, La Boca: "we thought we'd ended up in the Wire"). As well as petty thugs, San Telmo is full of narrow streets bursting with ancient and beautiful crumbling blocks cut through with elegant Parisian style avenues, both housing a weird and fascinating variety of shops, restaurants and apartment blocks.

One such block houses the Art Factory hostel, where we currently reside. I haven't stayed in a hostel since interrailing in 1999, and even then I felt a little beyond that kind of thing. I think I stayed in my last dormitory in Kuala Lumpur in 1997. Coming back into the hostel world for the first time in 11ish years was a pretty easy undertaking. There are differences - now everyone sits around tapping away at their laptops (how do they fit them in their rucksacks?) but the place is still generally populated by newly bearded europeans and excitable gap year students (me: "do you know what the worst thing about youth hostels is? The youth" George: "yep, those who haven´t had their spirit broken yet".) But, it's a good place to be, and I enjoy staying here. That said, there was a little dreadlocked white guy, in long shorts, juggling on the roof terrace earlier. Is that such a terrible thing? It has a similar effect on me as does Glastonbury. There a city lawyer can grow a bit of a beard, forget about work and pretend to take an interest in sustainable dry stone-walling. Here it is the same, and that is, from my current perspective (and considering what I am taking a holiday from) a good thing.

129 - posted at 04:20:36
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Sunday 30th January 2011

Everyone loves Palermo. Its quiet cobbled streets, the pavements marked every few yards by large leafy trees that bend over the road (I should know the species, but no), are packed with gently trendy restaurants, bars, shops. When George and I risked dissolving into puddles of salty water as we ventured out into other nearby barrios in the baking heat, it was always a pleasure returning. For me, the art, sanctioned or otherwise, that creeps up the walls of the buildings is a particular attraction. I found a couple of amazing shops with the same kind of feel, being, as they are, exercises in pointless graphic design. I resisted the impulse to buy useless books of pictures and random bric-a-brac at a particularly good one (the unfortunately named "Trippin´") and limited myself to a sketchbook, with a whimsical cartoon monster on the cover.

I wish I could say the George exercised similar retail restraint in Buenos Aires. But I can´t. What should have been a 30 minute walk along the shopping street Santa Fe, turned into a 2 hour expedition, and we bounced in and out of malls and shops. This was supposedly in the name of finding me some flip-flops and a hat, but the number of dresses tried on (not by me) led me to suspect otherwise. However, it was good to have an air-conditioned break every now again again. It really is unbelievably hot.

The trip down Santa Fe was part of a longer walk to BA´s VIP corpse-city, the walled Recoleta Cemetary. It´s not exactly "labyrinthine" (as the guidebooks would have you believe) but its crammed full of tombs, each one in a different style, all laid along streets and around plazas, and I loved it (although, philistine that I am, the only name I recognised in there was Eva Peron´s).

128 - posted at 20:36:27
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