I find myself feeling rather apprehensive about Argentina. For start there’s the language thing, sure, but everything is just looking slightly different. As we bus the 16 hours south from Iguazu to Buenos Aires, the palm trees are replaced by terrain that looks more like Britain – flat, green, scrubby, there are ‘real’ buildings to keep the winter out (in Brazil, having holes in your house was no big deal). It doesn’t help that it’s overcast this morning, and looks windy outside (I'm writing this section on the bus to BA). The days of lying on beaches and drinking coconut water may be over for the time being.
The buses are also different. In Brazil, you stop every few hours for food and to stock up on supplies. Here, you get fed and given drinks, but you lose any control over what and when! But...you do get wine with dinner. Oh yes. There’s an entertainment system like there was on the very nicest of Brazilian long distance trips, but they didn’t give you headphones – it just came out of the speakers. There was no choice of whether to listen to the movie or not. Luckily it was in English with Spanish subtitles.... Unluckily, it was ‘Made of Honour’.
We arrived in BA at lunchtime, to a grey, windy, polluted and COLD (14 degrees! Iguazu was 25+ every day) city. Ah – feels like home. Within a day I’d had a Spanish lesson, a tango lesson, the weather started to warm up and I started to think I might like this city.
I’m starting to realise that I’m being a cultural parasite, latching onto anyone and everyone I meet who I think is cool. Eg – ‘oh, you’re a surfer – I’d like to give that a go’, or ‘oh, so you’re into football – I could be a football fan for a while’ and lately ‘ooh – hippy scene, hmmm’ (don’t worry mum, as of today I am still tattoo and piercing free for the time being). I feed off their obsession for a while, then dislodge when I or they move on, and sit around waiting for the next victim to wander too close to my blank page personality.
I feel like it’s a bit like all my possessions and clothes were burned in a fire, I’ve got the insurance money, and now I can go out and buy whatever I want – starting from scratch with a new look. I’m currently hogging the changing rooms, trying things on to see what suits.
Apologies where due to any all weary hosts to my parasitic behaviour- thanks for letting me into your worlds. It’s been really fun (me gusta), but I’ll go away and think about it and maybe come back and purchase at a later date.
It’s a fun way to live, but I can’t help thinking that by the age of 24 I should maybe have a better idea of where I fit into the world. Am I actually the artsy type, or is that just an outfit I adopted as well? Or will I ultimately turn out to be a business type, or even a travelling hippy type?! I like the idea of the lifestyle, though not sure if I’ll eventually miss doing anything intellectually challenging (for the moment there’s always learning Spanish) or if parts of my brain will eventually just lapse into a coma or rot entirely if I stay here. I’m doing a lot of thinking – asking a lot of questions to which I don’t have answers yet. But that’s ok, and this is good. This is why I’m here. And there are lots of other people similarly confused and directionless, looking for guidance at the tops of the mountains and middle of the oceans and in the midst of city culture and in the new and exciting people you meet, and, quite often, in the bottom of a beer bottle.
On which note I either have to take up some more serious exercise than tango, or just stop eating if I want to drink. I swear I’ve put on a ton of weight since arriving in BA – you don’t do all the physical activity here that you would in the countryside. And PAX hostel and it’s dungeon bar are bad influences. It’s too easy to stay up drinking until 6 or 7....or 9...in the morning, sleep the morning away, Spanish in the afternoon, then back in the bar for happy hour (and, glory be, free popcorn) at 7pm.
In addition to hangovers, having a Spanish lesson in the middle of the day, plus homework kind of puts paid to any major sightseeing, and the weekends are, ahem, often hangover days, so I do need to get a wriggle on and actually see some sights!
But, I think I’m sticking around here for a bit – there’s so much cool stuff to do: gigs and tango and parties and Spanish learning and such. It turned out that the hostel is looking for a receptionist for the busy Christmas and new year season. I ummed and arred for a while: (reception? Again? That job is going to haunt me forever) but I figured that: no I’m not time limited, yes it’d be great if I could recoup just a smidge of the overspend I’m currently ignoring from Brazil and all the expensive cultural activities I’m shamelessly engaging in here, yes I like this city, no I’m not done seeing it yet, and yes I have some friends here that it’d be nice to hang out with more, and yes it’d be wise to take hostel-work-experience when it’s offered to me so that when I really do need a job to pay my way, I have that experience under my belt....
Photos tell a better story, but highlights so far have been my two walking tours of the historic architecture and the like.... the boca vs river football match (voted as the top football experience of all time in the observer...if it was at the boca stadium. Shame it was at river, but it was still amazing... I’m definitely a footie convert...or am I? Was that about the people I was hanging out with again???), splashing out at the best BA cocktails at the marriot plaza hotel bar (still good value at £5 with free caviar and smoked salmon canapés), la bomba de tiempo percussion group at Konex, and ‘la grande’ playing at club aráoz (imagine riff based, live arrangements a la grand union or connect projects, but way funkier and actually filling a 700 pax night club full of young arty types dancing their little latino hips off), tango lessons (and HOT tango instructors – you can lead me anywhere, baby..), and too many fun nights to mention in the pax bar hostel (cop out touristy nights, but I’m not going to feel guilty....). The bits I always really hate are the goodbyes when you’ve had a really good time with someone, or a group of people, it’s so frustratingly unfair when they get taken away from you. I’m building up a good facebook collection but it’s not quite the same. The only two things that are currently annoying me about the city though, are 1) continuing gratuitous smoking in public places: clothes stink, and 2) the grid system the city’s laid out in. Everyone knows I’m a fan of patterns and mathematical simplicity, but I’m of the opinion that cities should be organic, not geometric. It’s just wrong. Wrong. However, I will leave you with a quick maths problem, courtesy of James from my tango class (royalties in the post):
There’s this native American indian called Walking Horse who needs to transport his three wives over a river. Clearly the way this is done in their culture is by riding a hippo across (bear with me). There are also hungry lions prowling on each bank, so the chief has to always be shooting at them with a bow and arrow to stop them eating him and his wives.
Anyway, the smallest wife goes first, and the hippo has no problem easily swimming across the river with her on his back. The next wife, however is a bit bigger, and halfway across, the hippo starts to struggle and drift downstream. Walking horse abandons his bow and arrow and dives into the river to save wife number 2, however meanwhile the lions have taken their chance and eaten both the other wives. When he got back to his village, the chief asked him: why did you sacrifice two wives to save one? Surely that doesn’t make sense? Ah, but Walking Horse replied: the squaw on the hippopotamus is equal to the sum of the squaws on the other two sides...
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