Argentina´s Moneda Situation, horn honking, and Welcome to Bolivia

I think that I have already mentioned that Argentina is having a presidential election later this year and that the current president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, have tried to win some popularity points by creating some federal holidays. (She also is advertising herself via photos of her hugging her late husband, the president before her. He was pretty well loved prior to his death and is much more loved since he passed away. Clearly trying to gain some points from his memory). However, if Cristina REALLY wants to secure her re-election she should find a solution to the moneda, or coin, situation in the country. The problem is scarcity. There just aren´t very many coins. In B.A. this problem is exacerbated by the fact that the bus ONLY take coins. People horde them B.A. Sometimes a shopkeeper won´t sell you something if they have to make change and in Northern Argentina you end up getting lots of carmelos (candy) because the shopkeeper owes you 50 cents but doesn´t have it, so they just give you that much candy. Why the problem exists? I have no idea. But if Cristina could fix it I´d vote for her.

My last days in Northern Argentina were good. They involved some relaxing time in the town of Tilcara and some time exploring the interesting landscape of Quebrada Humahuaca. The area is a desert and the rocks are multi-colored, streaks of red, yellow and green catching your eye and bending and twisting with how the rocks have been moved over the ages. (You´d get pictures, but there is no way that this computer or internet can actually handle it). A girl from my hostel (who I´m actually with in Bolivia now) and I walked between the town of Maimara and Tilcara one afternoon along the road. Practically every car driving towards us honked and the men driving them waved or made some sort of signs. I understand that this is a cultural thing, a simple difference in gender relations maybe, but I just DON´T get it. I DO NOT understand what these guys are trying to accomplish. Are they expecting me to wave them down and climb on top of them? Are they just trying to express some sort of appreciation for having been able to ogle my breasts for half a second as they passed? Why would they think that I would appreciate it? Do Argentinean women appreciate this? And I have to say that I find this different than the people who mutter comments to you or whistle at you when you walk past them on the street. At least those people can actually SEE me, whereas these guys can only tell that I´m woman and really have NO time to determine if they think I´m attractive or not. Which makes their honks meaningless in the appreciation department, I mean really. Interestingly none of the cars going the same direction as us honked, just the ones going the other way. We got so annoyed by it after about an hour that we waded across a river to take a secondary road.

So I have escaped Argentina and am now in Bolivia. My last few days in Argentina it was evident that we were getting closer to Bolivia. The looks of the people, the food, and the handicrafts all changed some and the buses weren´t quite as nice. But crossing the border was still interesting. It was exhausting and simple all at the same time. I was stupid and kept putting off getting American dollars to pay for my $135 visa. For some reason the Argentine border town had NO casas de cambio (there were dozens on the Bolivian side, but that did me no good) and the bank had no American dollars (probably the only Argentinean bank with no US dollars) so I ended up paying for my visa half in Argentine pesos and half in US dollars and getting ripped off by the exchange rate. I knew better, its my own damn fault. In the Bolivian border town I was told that there was no cash machine (though a traveler in the town we are in now says there was one. Dammit). Luckily I had gotten 40 Bolivians in change from the border guard so we had enough to buy our bus tickets to Tupiza, where we expected to find a cash machine...expected... Our bus broke down on the way to Tupiza (it took about 20 minutes to fix), a far cry from the luxurious double decker semi-camas of Chile, Argentina, and Peru. Then we arrived and found out that not only is there no ATM here but Monday is a holiday so the banks are closed until Tuesday. For a moment we thought we were going to have NO way to get money, but thankfully the banks were open for 4 hours this morning so we were able to get cash advances...Ah, the joys of travel. BUT, on the flip side, for a grand total of $20 a night we have our own room in a lovely hotel with a pool and a GREAT breakfast. And we spent a grand total of $11 (put on my credit card) for two pizzas, two fresh squeezed juices, and a big salad in a nice restaurant.

Tomorrow we head off on a for day tour of the salt flats. Very excited.

Addendum: Argentinean Spanish has completely screwed with my head. Argentines pronounce "y" and "ll" sort of like the "s" in treasure and they don´t really understand you if you pronounce those sounds like they do in nearly all other spanish speaking countries. Plus they use "vos" rather than "tu" and the conjugation of some verbs changes (ie vos tenes instead of tu tienes or vos podes vs tu puedes). Bolivian spanish is music to my ears; they speak slowly and they pronounce things the way I´m used to. BUT I keep pronouncing things like an Argentine and using vos. Sigh.

I just had a conversation with a Bolivian shopkeeper who let me pay 7.50 instead of 8 for Snickers bar (mmm dinner) because of change issues. Apparently Bolivia has the same problem as Argentina. In response to my question "Why?" he said that the coins are taken across the border, apparently to Brazil, and melted down. That is the word on the street apparently.

"Trapped" in Northern Argentina

For about the last week I´ve been saying "In a couple of days I will be in Bolivia." Those "couple of days" are stretching themselves out far past even a few days. From Cordoba I was planning on going straight to Salta but changed my mind at the last minute and went to Mendoza. This was not actually the best idea logistically or in practicality and, largely because of this, Mendoza was a wash. Part of the problem was that I got sick the day I arrived in Mendoza so I wasn´t motivated to do anything. The other part of the problem was that last week was Semana Santa, which is basically a week of vacation for Argentinians. This meant that (1) the hostel I stayed in was booked up past Thursday and (2) the receptionist freaked me out when I arrived by saying that all of the buses to Salta might already be booked up so I went and booked my ticket to Salta the day I arrived in Mendoza. I really needed one or two more days in the area to have made the trip (Mendoza was out of the way) worth it. But, I´d already booked my ticket...so meh.

Salta. Salta is the real reason that I haven´t made it to Bolivia yet. I say that I am leaving tomorrow to head to the small Argentinian town of Tilcara for a few days...but...I haven´t booked my ticket yet...Why am I "trapped" in Salta? Simply because my days here have been wonderful. The city itself is one of the most beautiful cities in Argentina. Unlike Mendoza, which was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1800s, or Buenos Aires the architecture is largely colonial. In the areas around the city there are also a number of small towns with colonial buildings and cobblestone streets. It feels like a different country (its only 400km from Bolivia and you can see that in the people and feel it in the atmosphere) in some ways and is still very Argentinian is others.

My first full day here I took the bus to a town called Chicoana. This is a small town just 50km from Salta that is known for its "gaucho" culture. Gauchos are the Argentinian equivalent of an American cowboy. The town was cute enough but didn´t have much going on. While I was eating lunch at a plaza side restaurant a group of people, two adults and a bunch of kids, rode up on horses. As I watched them I thought "You know, I´m in gaucho country, I really should´ve booked a horse ride, but I already booked a tour for tomorrow and then I´m going north..." Then the people came up to me, handed me a business card, asked me if I wanted to go for a ride, and told me the price (which was way cheaper than any of the tours from Salta). So I went and it was magically perfect. It was just me and the Argentine guide who had lived his whole life in Chicoana. We rode up in the mountains and it was beautiful. He could tell that I´d ridden before so we galloped and ran the horses, it wasn´t just a boring, slow walking, trail ride. Up in the mountain we reached a meadow where there was this ageless old Argentine man with his cows and his goats and his dogs. The sun was perfect, lighting the place up golden, and there were hundreds of butterflies flitting about the purple flower bushes. It was just marvelous. On our way back down we crossed paths with the other guide, a dutch woman, who asked if I wanted to go back up the mountain with her and the non-spanish/english speaking french woman she was guiding. I said yes so I went back up the mountain and got to see just how perfect my first trip had been. Now the meadow was in shade and the butterflies and old man were gone. But the ride was still wonderful.

The next day I took a guided tour to a town about 150km from Salta. The tour was great, a really good tour guide and driver. The first hour was a bit rough cause I went out the night before with some folks from my hostel and only got like 3 hours of sleep...but after that it was just great fun. Most of the people on the tour were Argentinians who were on vacation for Semana Santa. Somehow that made the tour feel less "touristy" and more like I was really experiencing Argentina. It was just a great day! Back in Salta a few people from the hostel and I went out to a parilla and ate a lot of really good meat for not that much money.

Today and Israeli girl and I went out to the mercado and bought a bunch of food and then came back to the hostel and prepared an amazing feast for a group of us. The food was soooo good and the conversation was just as nice. There has just been this wonderful, relaxed, comfortable, smooth, happy vibe permeating my entire stay here. Which is why I´m having so much trouble leaving. But I´m pretty sure I´m going to leave tomorrow...pretty sure...I mean I only have 7 more weeks in South America before I return to the states and I still have to do Bolivia and Peru and I´ve been in Argentina for quite a while now...

Random comments on random things

I went to Che Guevara´s hometown, Alta Gracia, the other day. It is a pleasant little town about an hour away from Cordoba. I liked it. There is a museum in one of the houses Che grew up in. I have to admit that the museum puzzled me. Here is this quaint little town, clean streets, tourist office by a park with a grand lake, a big ole hotel with a garden park area open to all, a seemingly middle class, rather straight-laced place paying homage to their most famous citizen, who happens to have been a revolutionary who essentially rejected his hometown and native country. I wondered what Che would´ve thought. There are photos of Che with Fidel Castro, Che in military garb in the factories of Cuba, in the Congo, in the jungles. There are copies of letters he wrote to his children (did you know he had 6, I didn´t) telling them to be good little revolutionaries and there are photos of Fidel himself and Huga Chavez visiting the museum at its opening. I found myself wondering how Che became the figure, the face plastered on so many shirts and displayed in so many college dorm rooms. Is it because he was killed by the CIA in Bolivia (I can´t find the question mark on this keyboard). I have a hard time picturing the same people who put up a poster of Che putting one up of Fidel but why wouldn´t they. I mean, Che was just as, if not more, radical than Fidel. He helped Fidel come to power in Cuba, he was an integral part of Fidel´s early government in Cuba. Do the people who wear his face on their shirts know that. And while Fidel stayed in his own country (please note that che was not Cuban) to rule and govern his own people Che went off to fight in a jungle of another country he wasn´t from. No matter what you think of Fidel´s politics you have to admit that staying to govern the country you were born in, grew up, and care about is far more conventional than a doctor becoming a soldier and fighting revoutions in countries that weren´t his own. (I should state here that I do not believe in the pan-latin americanism that Che espoused so, yes, in my eyes he was fighting in foreign countries. In my uneducated opinion a middle class argentinian has as much to do with the struggle for indigenous rights in bolivia as I do in the rights of a native navajo, less actually). So, yeah. those were my thoughts after visiting the che guevara museum.

I will be leaving Argentina in a few days. I am in Mendoza currently, a location I added to my itinerary at the last minute. It was probably a silly idea, but oh well. I am headed to Salta in Northern Argentina tonight and then on to Bolivia. I have been thinking about Argentinian men during my last few days here. Following with the stereotype of latino men they cat call, but there is something different about Argentinian cat calling that I´m not sure I´ve quite put my finger on. There is little threatening about their cat calling. It isn´t the whistling or the "hey pretty baby" that you associate with the cat calls of construction workers, for example. No, its more that when you walk past them they murmer a few sentences about how beautiful you and your friends are (I´ve noticed that this tends to happen more when I´m not alone, this may be because groups of women attract more attention or I´m just not to the tastes of most Argentinian men). Cars will honk their horns or guys will call out to you as they pass, but its almost always a complete phrase. Its innocent and annoying all at the same time and I wonder how its tied to other things I´ve noticed. For example, yesterday I overheard a woman try to get the attention of a waiter by calling out "flaco!" (aka "skinny!") Today I was buying some stuff and the first shop attendant asked me what I needed by calling me "hermosa" (pretty) a few minutes later another shop keeper questioned if I´d been helped and refered to by "linda" (another way of saying pretty). There is nothing meant by these comments, these men weren´t hitting on me and the woman mentioned above wasn´t being rude. This is just the Argentinian version of sir or madam I guess.

That is all for now. I´ve got a bag to pack and a bus to catch.

On the Road Again

After a five week rest the red backpack has been dusted off and hoisted onto my shoulders once again. It was odd packing up the tiny bits of my life that had scattered themselves across my B.A. apartment, it was as though I'd forgotten that it could all fit in one bag and I was disappointed to discover that, in fact, it did all fit with room to spare. I am finding that I am not as in love with life on the road as I once was. I take a new pleasure in the tiny normalcies of life: showering and sleeping in the same place, walking to the subway each morning to go to school, recharging my phone or buying my fruits and vegetables at the same corner stores, going to the same Mexican restaurant twice or three times in a week, getting to know the people who run the laundromat. Maybe it is because even while it becomes a routine I know that it is temporary so I don't become bored or bogged down by it. In short, I was sad to leave my little B.A. home bubble and, though looking forward to going to the places I'm headed, I'm not vibrating with excitement the way I did on some past travels.

Saying goodbye to people has become an all too normal part of my life. The goodbyes to my fellow CELTA teachers was drug out over a few days. All 10 of us + one spouse went out to dinner on Friday night at an all you can eat steakhouse, Siga La Vaca, in B.A. The all you can eat menu included either an entire bottle of wine or a liter of beer per person.  No one ever hurries you out of restaurant in Argentina so our feast was a nearly four hour long affair, starting at 8 and ending at midnight, which was good cause 11 bottles of wine is a lot to drink, even when there are 11 of you. Some goodbyes were had at dinner and then the rest of us went out to an awesome bar in Palermo (my neighborhood) which was decorated in a funky Portlandesque style and had games like Pictionary, scrabble, and jenga for all the tables. It made me a little homesick to see all of these people playing games at a bar. Every table was playing a game. We played pictionary in spanish, which was challenging because half of the time we had to have Gabriela (who is Argentinian and now certified CELTA english teacher) translate the cues for us. It was pretty hilarious. I spent the weekend soaking up my last bits of BA. I did a decent amount of exploring in my time there, but I was so busy with the CELTA that I didn't go out at night much and there was lots that I didn't do. Our trip to the game bar and some of my wanderings my last few days there made me want to get know the city even more. On the one hand, I know my way around and have seen a lot. On the other hand there is so much MORE to discover! Alas, you can't do it all.

Two of my fellow CELTA folk, Ollie and Kari, and I traveled to Uruguay to visit another CELTA cohort, Christel. Christel is marrying an Oregonian diplomat and they are stationed at the US Embassy in Montevideo. It was the perfect trip, even Kari and I almost getting in like five car accidents in the taxi on the way to the ferry terminal was great (and by great I mostly mean hilarious because we didn't actually get in an accident and the taxi driver was singing along to 80s tunes in English the whole time and blaming the other drivers).

We took the slow, 3 hour long, ferry from B.A. to Colonia, a small colonial town on the Rio de la Plata in Uruguay. The sun was shining and we spent the entire time out on the top deck, soaking up the sun and playing backgammon and cards. Everyone I asked about Colonia pretty much had this to say about it, "Yeah, Its pretty but....you just need a few hours there and that's enough." We spent just a few hours there, loved it, and could've stayed longer. This is probably mostly due to the fact that we rented scooters and had an amazing time zipping through the cobblestone streets of the old town and up the coast (the river is so wide it looks like you are already at the Atlantic), stopping at beaches and an abandoned bull ring before taking backroads back into town. Poor Kari kept switching between riding on the back of my scooter and Ollie's because both of us kept saying things like "wow! Its so much harder to drive this thing when you are on it." The old town of Colonia is beautiful and we went a little picture happy.

We slept the entire 2.5 hour bus ride to Montevidea, which meant we were wide awake when Christel picked us up at the bus station in her pink Chinese knock off of a mini cooper. We picked up two other CELTA peeps, who were staying at hostel in Montevideo, and forced the poor pink car (which I named Lola) to cart all six of us up the hill to Christel's beautiful apartment where her husband-to-be had an amazing dinner and wine waiting for us. We stayed up late, talking, eating, drinking and playing the guitar.

The next day we wandered along the beach, had lunch with Christel at a cute little restaurant, and then wandered around the old town of Montevideo. Most guidebooks describe Montevideo as a city that seems stuck in time or as a quiter, tinier, tamer, older looking version of BA. This is true but also a little unfair. The downtown, Ciudad Viejo, area of Montevideo does sort of look like a quiet, slightly run down neighborhood of B.A., with French Art Noveau turn of the century buildings that are a bit run down looking, but the city is growing, developing and expanding outside of the city center. That said, it is MUCH smaller and quieter than BA. There are only 3 million people in the entire country of Uruguay and a third of them, 1.3 million, live in Montevideo.  That night we went to a sleek, modern, new Brazilian bar in the shadow of the sleek, modern, new World Trade Center not too far from where Christel lives to hear the wife of a US diplomat sing. Picture a sassy, blonde, buxom, 40 something year old from Kentucky. Now picture that woman winning the Urugayan equivalent to American Idol when she'd not really had a musical career before and then launching a music career by playing at local bars and venues. Boom. That was our concert. It was great.

The entire trip everything seemed to just fall into place for us and the next day was no exception. The weather was perfect for a beach day, which was what we had planned. We spent 3 hours just relaxing, reading, and sleeping on the beach and then ambled back to Christel's to watch a movie in which Christel starred. Christel is Dutch and she was a teenage actress so we got to watch the first movie she was ever in (and she had the starring role). It was really fun to see. That night we went to a parilla (grill house) just around the corner from her house and I had the best steak I've ever had in my entire life. Delicious!

The next day was the last round of CELTA farewells. First saying goodbye to Christel, then to Ollie, and then, finally, to Kari. On to a bus I went and now I am writing from the apartment of my Swedish-Argentinian couch surfing host in Cordoba...and now I have to figure out what comes next...I'll keep you posted.

Buenos Aires

Two weekends ago was a national holiday in Argentina and everyone got a four day weekend. The reason? There is a presidential election coming up and the current president, in an attempt to gain some popularity votes, gave the entire country a few extra days off. I had considered leaving Buenos Aires for the long weekend, but laziness won out and I stuck around the city and pretty much did a whole lot of nothing.

After a few weeks of long days spent in classrooms getting outside to soak up some late summer/early fall sun seemed like a wonderful idea. A fellow CELTA trainee met me at this massive park area between our apartments. At one end of the park is a botanical garden and a zoo. Then there are typical large, tree dotted, grassy fields one usually finds in a park. Past that there was a large lake (which we determined was man made) encircled by a wide avenue of sorts for people biking, walking, running, and rollerblading.

Rollerblading. In the United States it went out of fashion sometime in the late 90s. Rollerblades were relegated to roller skate rinks and off-season hockey practice. Here in Argentina they are still in vogue. I could not get over how many rollerbladers there were. The park was full of families and couples and I swear that half of them were probably on rollerblades, decked out with knee and elbow pads. There was even a place that you could rent them! The 90s are still alive in Buenos Aires.

In addition to renting rollerblades you could rent peddle boats or row boats and paddle about the lake. We decided to rent a peddle boat, which was mildly entertaining. We tried to run over the geese (they were very slow to get out of the way, Argentinians must not operate peddle boats in the same manner they drive, cause if those geese were pedestrians in this country they would´ve known to move it) and at the end discovered that peddling backwards (and in circles) was much easier and more fun.

The park also had a lovely rose garden, which made me a little nostalgic for Portland. It was really a beautiful and wonderful place. As we were starting to leave we noticed a guy, wearing a fur coat without pants, setting up a stage. He was going through an elaborate miming of smoothing out a circus like mat and we decided to sit down on the hillside, buy an ice cream from a guy selling them from coolers strapped to a bike, and see what the show was all about. It was a treat, really wonderful "street" theater. Underneath the fur coat were various "cave man" outfits, which the performer took off in a strip tease of sorts that would never have been tolerated in an American park with kids in the audience. He mimed strutting like a model and even when he took of the last item pretended that he was naked, before revealing leopard print panties. The conclusion of the show was an acrobatic routine on a rope slung between two poles.

On Saturday night Buenos Aires had a city wide arts festival called Noche en la Vela. There were free events, concerts, and shows all over town. A fellow CELTA trainee, Ollie, and I spent hours wandering around the city taking in different shows and missing plenty of others. We saw a large scale tango band and could see many couples dancing tango in the street. We saw a group of people dancing to Reggatone on a street corner, following the instructions of a gym like instructor. We caught the end of an amazing outdoor concert with an accordian band and energetic music that you couldn´t help but dance to. People were dancing in circles and starting folk dance style chains where you went under arches formed by peoples´arms. We also listened to wonderful tango music in a little cafe that looked like it belonged in turn of the century Italy. It was crowded so we couldn´t see the band at all (if we moved away from the bar to try and get a better look the older Argentinian women would yell at us for blocking their view, even though they couldn´t see the band either). At the very end of the evening we caught the end of an outdoor Argentinian folk concert. It was incredible because it seemed as though everyone in the audience knew the words to the all the songs. The band was cheered on stage for an encore and the crowd went wild when they began the song. All of sudden handkerchiefs appeared out of peoples´ pockets and all over the street and plaza people were dancing an old folk dance that clearly was well known. There were probably 10 couples dancing right by us and there were handkerchiefs fluttering in the air all throughout the crowd. Ollie and I looked at each other in disbelief, where did all of the handkerchiefs come from!?!

I´ve been very bad about blogging lately. I started this post a week ago and even then I was writing about things that had happened a week or so earlier. Today is the end of my Celta course. Yesterday was my last teaching practice. We all just shared a glass of champagne with our Celta tutors and most of us are meeting up for dinner tonight. It feels so odd to know that this is probably the last time I will sit in this computer lab. I will most likely never see these people again. My life has been incredibly structured for the last month. Every morning a subte ride to school, school followed by lesson prep...repeat. Monday I start traveling again. I haven´t touched my backpack in over a month. It feels very odd to be in this position, to know that I´m going to have to figure things out day by day again. If my plans don´t change I have about 2 months of traveling left. When I landed in Peru three months ago five months seemed like forever, it felt too long. When I came to Buenos Aires two months ago I felt as though I had already been on the road for ages, much longer than two months. But now the last month has flown by. It honestly feels as though I just started this course two weeks ago, not five weeks ago. I know that the next two months are going to fly by as well and in the blink of an eye I´ll be on my way back to the United States. Or who knows what.