Words and Phrases: Settling in to SA

Bienvenida Sudamerica

So my day has started with a list. It goes as follows:

(a) Org. bus to Salta from Tucuman (b) Book hostel in Salta (c) Update A2SAAB blog (d) Finish Treasure Island.

Tonight Sarah and I will be catching two buses, one to Tucuman and from there another through to Salta. We are travelling with Hester and Rachel for now and are currently having a swell time in Puerto Iguazu (we have just been to the falls yesterday). Come the end of our time in Salta and we will go our own ways, though will see them both for a day or so at Christmas in Sucre.

BA

Up until 23 November 2009 we have been in Buenos Aires. This has been a great city to start the trip in as it has (a) had many freinds already there and (b) it is, as all the books point out, a very European city; in the sense of the latter this has meant that culture shock has been negligible. My first impressions of BA were of course in the negative. Dog shit rules the pavements, the pavements are distressed and crumbling throughout, the people we had to deal with at customs, the flight attendants, and most notably the taxi driver from the airport were surly and distant in the extreme. There was very little to take away from this other than a feeling that this country has seen enough tourists this side of the millennium. Our presence is an inconvenience.

The Taxi Driver

When we arrived at Ezeiza airport we found ourselves waiting over an hour to get a taxi due to a crash. When we finally got on one we were bumped up in the cue because the people before us had too much luggage. Our driver, with his squinty eyes, laconic interpersonal skills and hunched posture was the opposite of amiable. Once on the motorway he was on the tail of a other taxis in the fastlane, within inches of their bumper, sitting on his horn. When he finally overtook a more bourgeois looking taxi he spent a good period of time with his eyes off the road stearing the slower driver down.

Lanes did not exist on this motorway and the driver swerved in and around cars with a confidence that, to some degree or another, softened Sarah and my fears that this dude was homicidal. That was up until he had to exit the motorway. He did so my accelerating accelerating at full speed through the painted shoulder of the off-ramp in an attempt to overtake the vehicle in front of him. The vehicle was an ambulance with its siren on. I looked meekly over the seat in front of me and we were heading straight for the median barrier. Exhausted and, for some reason frightened, I got in touch with the slow motion sensory that executes when you think you are going to die. So we make it in front of the ambulance and pull to an abrupt stop at a set of lights. We stop right behind a cop car. Not a blink of an eye from our driver as he stared out his front windscreen (which was broken long before we ever got in the cab on that day).


Porteños

By the end of our time in BA we are much more familiar with who you average porteño is. People have frequently been uncommonly patient and helpful to Sarah and I. We go buy some epanadas and the old dude who runs the place explains to us in Spanish about the problem with counterfeiting. A female notices that our spanish is egregiously shit and steps into translate with smile on her face. I go to buy a CD off a street performer for mum (Iranian-Spanish music) and the same thing happens again. We go to a Boca Junior game and a guy - old enough to be my father - hugs me, high fives me and pulls me up off the ground when I fall from all the left-to-right jumping that goes on when they score their third goal of four. The cleaners at the Tango Hostel are super friendly and when they are checking the sheets while we are out they re-hang our clothesline more profeciently than we had (I, not we, had done a pretty average job). We went out to the museum at midnight. Why is the museum open at midnight? When we get there we find dozens of families going through looking into their city and countrys history. The people giving the guided tours are men who, although I could not understand them, impress as knowlageble, passionate and engaging. There are many, many more examples like this of how conspicuously “nice” porteños all seem which sits in stark contrast to our first impressions.



General

Overall it is safe to say that there is too much to write about now that we are on the road. Everyday it feels like there are so many crazy little things that happen or observations made. A blog like this could quickly become monotonous in the extreme. We have had a great time so far and have been spoilt for activities while taking each day at a reletively measured pace. We are on holiday right now, there is no other way to describe it.



While in BA we have drunk coffee and gone to spanish lessons from a guy who has heard of JPS and loves Christopher Knox, no shit. We have been tourists (I have really enjoyed this aspect of the trip much more than I expected) and visited Recoleta cemetery, Malba art museum (that has a Warhol exhibition on), La Bomba de Tiempo which is a very fucking out-of-town-gringo kinda of thing to do but had a blast enjoying the precussive mastery of the group and drinking out of a one litre plastic cup of Quilmes. I have been enjoying Quilmes (also known as Kill Me´s by James and I) plenty. On this point James and I had a good day spent doing guy stuff which basically equated to sitting on his rooftop getting pissed. We had a dope conversations and dropped some “where we at” type monologues which was very wothwhile. Later that night we went to Post and continued to drink to much. Sarah, Hester and Rachel turned up out of the blue and we finished the day with them. Prior to there arrival we saw a pizza delivery boy get run down by a blond haired lady in a car at a dangerous intersection (about 15 metres away from us). He got up right away and started called her a whore (“puta” ). He was in the right and actually had a compound fracture so it was not pretty, but at least we didnt see a fatality.

I finshied Old Man on a Bike which dad gave me before I left. The writting was humble and postive in that self-helpy kind of way that I appreciate, the glass was always half full for Gandolfi and that is something that I can respect. It has also made me think that I will make more of an effort to talk to older travellers over the next year. Treaure Island has 30 pages to go. Between this and Raised Fists song Words and Phrases I am feeling good.

Finally, my spanish is going foward all the time and I am enjoying learning but the reality is it has a very long way to go. I am realizing more and more that pronunciation is just as much of a challange as building up a vocabluary. Me and Sarah (The Elephant and The Cheetah) will be spending the following week working on this with a lot more intensity. I look forward to it.

Thanks James, Lauren, Hester, Rachel and Sarah, as well as all the portenos for making the start of this trip a good one. Aroha Nui.


Time to go cross some things off my list. For more photos of the trip so far follow this link.