A visit from dad; a little vacation

I was fortunate enough to have a visit from dad last weekend, and we both had a great time. It's nice to be able to show someone around city - makes one realize how much one has really absorbed - and I got to do some of the more touristy things that I often don't get around to. I had never even been to San Telmo on a weekend. Pathetic! Rather than narrate the whole trip, I'll just drop in some photos that we took, and add some commentary.

Colonia del Sacramento is a pretty and historic village right across the river from BsAs in Uruguay. It makes for a natural day-trip for porteños looking to escape the pace of the big city, and for gringos who need a new 90-day visa from Argentine immigration.

The beautiful Iglesia Matriz on the north side of the Plaza de Armas in Colonia.

Dad and I enjoying a parillada, which is a selection of various cuts of beef brought out on a little grill, which is visible in the centre of the table near the front. I enjoyed the bife de lomo and the bife de chorizo (both cuts of steak); I took down the chorizo (sausage) and was a little thrown by the morcilla (blood sausage), but I've developed a taste for it now; the liver and tripe I could only handle in smaller doses. But we did a pretty good job overall.

San Telmo on a weekend reminds me a lot of Las Ramblas in Barcelona, only with more tango.

Che says . . . "for love, use condoms". Thanks Che.

Here's the beginning of a series from Recoleta Cemetery. Recoleta Cemetery is more like a miniature village of masoleums in which Argentina's aristocratic dead are not so much buried as stored. It is said that a property here of just a few square feet costs more than virtually any estate in the rest of the country. Naturally, everyone buried here was born into one of Argentina's elite families, except for a common farm girl who managed to marry up and sneak in. Hardly proper.

More of the cemetery.

Needless to say, the architecture of the cemetery and the surrounding city are often incompatible.

No shortage of angels to keep watch.

Dad found the dog walkers quite funny. Since porteños are far too busy and important to walk their own dogs, they hire professionals who take large packs of them all at once throughout the city. The dogs are permitted to hang out in the park and make a mess wherever they see fit.

From the Plaza de Mayo.

We were there just before May 25, which is one of the Argentine holidays of independence. May 25 celebrates that day in 1810 when a group of citizens in Buenos Aires formed the Primera Junta to take charge of Argentine affairs for themselves. Later, on July 9 (though six years later), they declared independence from Spain, so that day is a holiday too.

Patagonia: El Chaltén & El Calafate

I left El Bolsón on yet another sunny and crisp afternoon, but by this time I was ready for the road and the long journey south. My destination - both in my mind and on my ticket - was Puerto San Júlian, a coastal town halfway down the country where I planned to catch another bus to El Chaltén, thus bypassing the standard and lengthy trip south to Río Gallegos, which is right in the corner of the continent. My Rough Guide called Puerto San Júlian "a convenient place to break the enormous journey between Trewlew and Río Gallegos", which is true, but I should have paid more attention to their other descriptions, including "treeless and barren to look at." Indeed. What's more, upon entering the bus station I saw that all of the bus service's kiosks were closed, which suggested that I may not find my connection to El Chaltén any time soon, if at all. The idling bus - of which almost all of the passengers were going to Río Gallegos - presented an opportunity, and while the driver was doing his paperwork in the office, I casually hopped right back on the bus and took my old seat. My first experience as a stowaway.

I don't like scamming Argentine corporations (I'm such a foreigner), so I felt rather badly for my decision, but at least they made me sweat a little for it. The last stop before Río Gallegos is Luis Piedra Buena, which is an even smaller and more desolate town than Puerto San Júlian, but for some reason it's also where a considerable number of new passengers chose to embark. I watched as the empty seats were steadily occupied, packed my bag, and began to make plans for staying in Luis Piedra Buena if the bus proved to be sold out. I was ever so relieved when we finally pulled out, every seat on the bus but mine claimed by a legitimate passenger. Thank you bus company; sorry about that.

By the time I arrived in Río Gallegos I had spent 27 hours on the same bus with only a few brief stops, but I was still a ways from my destination, and booked my bus to El Chaltén for 9:30am the next morning. Río Gallegos was typical of many of the Atlantic coast towns that I saw in Patagonia: wide roads and dirt sidewalks; makeshift shacks adjacent to cement houses; very few multi-story buildings; fences around every property; stray dogs everywhere; many properties in a state of partial completion, with piles of wood and cement blocks scattered about; faded colours. The town didn't appear to be good for much more than arriving, sleeping, and leaving, and that's about all that I did.

The trip from Río Gallegos to El Chaltén was beautiful and rather desolate.

It was quite a time-consuming journey from Río Gallegos to El Chaltén, and once again I found myself arriving in an unfamiliar town at midnight. I won the race to the nearest hostel though, and scooped up one of the last beds. Traveling can be stressful when one arrives somewhere, late, with no clue where one is going to stay, but it certainly teaches one to appreciate as simple a comfort as a roof and a few blankets. The next morning, El Chaltén would turn out to be a scattered town, easily the most rustic of any that I had visited, but perfectly situated next to Parque Nacional de los Glaciers, where lived many hiking trails and the area's star attractions: Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy Mountains. On a clear day, the twin spires of Torre and Fitz Roy, purple and orange as the sunlight oozes down them, jutting into the pure blue sky like the throne of a God, are an awesome marvel. Or at least that's what we've been told, for anyone who was there over just the same three days as I caught no sight of them for the clouds. That's okay though; the hike to Cerro Piltriquitron taught me to value the challenge rather than the reward.

El Chaltén certainly has its own vibe; a town that exists for no purpose other than to serve the needs of hikers and climbers, it lacks Bariloche's polish, El Bolsón's hippy spirit, and El Calfate's touristy manicure. What's more, the clientele matched the town's spartan character: here the hikers cooked their meals at 8:00pm in the hostel kitchen, perhaps allowing themselves a beer or two, but soon after set off for bed, alarms primed for 4:45am so that they could watch the shadow peel off of Fitz Roy as the sun rises. I stuck with my usual schedule, and won this round, as the early-risers received no reward but were only drenched for their dedication.

I spent one day relaxing - recovering, perhaps, after all that travel time - in El Chaltén, and three days hiking. Devoid of a nightlife, El Chaltén instead rewarded introspection, and I was happy to walk alone for a few days after a very social two weeks in El Bolsón. Not to mention that I had my hiking legs well under me at this point, and was able to cover as much ground in as little time as anyone there, I'd guess. It's difficult to describe the hikes, and I'll leave it to my pictures to even attempt it, but I'll just add that the reaction that many have to the Parque Nacional de los Glaciers is respect: respect for Fitz Roy, which despite its middling elevation remained unconquered by the world's best climbers for decades; respect for the weather, which is capricious and sometimes fierce; respect for the land, which offers as many challenges as one is willing to take on. Patagonia is many things but it's never mild. Parque Nacional de los Glaciers is the closest that most of us tourists got to knowing the hostility of the land.

Looking back towards El Chaltén.

Sometimes the scenery reminds me of Canada; sometimes it looks quite foreign. This swamp gave me a B.C.-ish vibe.

There she is: the majestic Cerro Torre, between the two visible peaks, coyly reveals its grandeur.

The last stop on this leg of my trip was El Calafate, which like Bariloche, is a popular destination for vacationing porteños and tourists, and is thus very touristy. Lots of hotels and hostels, chocolate shops, pricey restaurants with large slabs of meat proudly displayed in the windows, and of course many opportunities to buy a postcard or t-shirt. Not the kind of place in which I wanted to spend too much time, but before I passed through on my way to Ushuaia, I had to stop in at one of Patagonia's most famous tourist destinations: the Perito Moreno Glacier.

The Perito Moreno Glacier is a massive - just massive - glacier, one of only three in Patagonia that isn't receding, that stretches right across to the opposite shore of Lago Argentino, forming a natural dam between the two sides of the bisected lake. As a result, the water level slowly begins to rise on the Brazo Rico side of the lake, and can reach a height disparity of 30m with the other side before smashing through the glacier wall, restoring balance. This cycle occurs once every four or five years, the last rupture taking place only a few days before I arrived. Not that there's any shortage of activity on an ordinary day: pieces of the glacial wall are frequently falling off, making for quite an amazing noise, and splash.

The trip to the glacier eats up the whole afternoon and much of the evening, as they leave you there for about four hours. I was reminded of the Simpons episode in which they parody King Kong, and Mr. Burns (playing Carl Denham) is asked about the program for his show:

Reporter: What kind of a show you got for us, Mr. Burns?
Mr. Burns: Well, the ape is going to stand around for three hours or so. Then we'll close with the ethnic comedy of Duggan and Dirschwitz.
Reporter: Sensational!

In my case, I showed up, stared at the glacier for three hours or so, and then went for a brief hike. Sounds a little boring, but the glacier is so compelling that I was glad that I had the amount of time that I did. One can walk around a little and see it from different views, but really, you're mostly just watching it. Hopefully the pictures give some sense of why it rewarded such attention.

Like a frozen avalanche released from the mountains.

I had a strong impulse to swim over, climb up, and just walk into the distance. It was just so . . . naturey.

Pretty amazing.

Two liberated pieces that had swam away to freedom but became unfortunately lodged in a shallow part of the lake, where they now pose for pictures.

So that was about it for me and El Calafate, though I still had a fair amount of time to kill, as my bus didn't leave for Río Gallegos until 4:00am. The timing was ridiculous, and there were numerous buses between El Calafate and Río Gallegos, but I had seen a sign advertising a $25 peso fare, $7 pesos less than what was standard. I tried to buy a ticket for a trip at a reasonable time, like 8:00pm or 10:00pm, but was told that those cost $32 pesos; the reduced price was only available for the 4:00am trip. Trying to give me the old bait 'n' switch, eh? Well we'll see about that. So I was leaving for Río Gallegos at 4:00am. The bus, which was surprisingly busy, would take me to Río Gallegos by 8:00am, where I would catch another bus shortly thereafter that would make the long trip to Ushuaia. Just a 16-hour jaunt down to the end of the South American continent, into Chile, across the Magellan Strait, back into Argentina, to Tierra del Fuego, to the end of the world.

Veléz Sarsfield vs. Newell's Old Boys

Picked up a ticket on Tuesday night to go see Wednesday night's match between Veléz Sarsfield and Newell's Old Boys. First off, the patently English names for some of these teams is quite amusing, and I haven't heard anyone offer a satisfactory explanation other than that the Brits helped to make the game popular down here in the early days. Other anglo-friendly team names include Racing Club, Arsenal, Argentinos Juniors, Banfield, River Plate, and of course the Boca Juniors. Hearing an Argentine who doesn't speak a word of English try to spit out "Newell's Old Boys" is pretty humourous. Letters just aren't arranged like that in Spanish.

I've mentioned the Copa Libertadores before: it's South America's answer to the Champions League. The league stage pared the teams down from 32 to 16; those that remain now play two matches in a knockout tournament, away goals counting double. Four Argentine teams were able to make it to the round of 16: River Plate, Veléz Sarsfield, Newell's Old Boys, and Estudiantes de la Plata. Newell's is from Rosario, and were clubbed there by Veléz in their first match, 4-2, giving Veléz an effective 8-2 lead for the final game. Not quite a sure thing, but anything other than sound defeat would allow Veléz to move onto the next round.

I'm not sure how I decided to become a fan of Veléz. I had started by supporting Boca, but they're pretty popular, and have enough of real fan base as it is, the passion of which I can't match. I moved onto River, and I'm still into them, but I hadn't realized just how many of the teams in the Argentine Premier league come from other parts of BsAs. I thought it would be cool to find one of the squads that were a little off the well-established Boca-River axis, and a bartender suggested Veléz, which was so well off of the axis, it was almost out of the Capital Federal. I looked them up, and they had a good history, nice colours, and some success in the Copa Libertadores, so I decided to give them a go. Changing one's allegiances to a football team is tantamount to apostasy around here, so I suppose that I'm Veléz fan for life now, though I bought their jersey, so ensuring that my $100 pesos is well spent will likely be enough to keep my loyal anyway.

I made it to the stadium about a half-hour before things got started, which turned out to be a good idea, as we were slow-going getting in. The police were everywhere, and let only 100 or so people up to the entrance at any given time, where they were then patted down, and finally admitted after their ticket was scanned. Assigned seating doesn't exist in most of the stands, and certainly not in the cheapest seats, which I had chosen ($10 pesos was just too good a price to pass up). There are seats, sort of, but it's all first come, first served, so since I arrived near the start, I was off to the side a little ways. I expect that Boca games are well more packed, but there was a lot of room to move around at Veléz.

One of the most surprising aspects of the game is the complete disregard that the fans have for the sanctity of the pitch. At MLB games they have troops of men in dark sunglasses ready to eject any fan that snatches a blade of grass; at football matches here, the spectators are given more leeway. A staple in the fan's arsenal in stadiums across the country is the toilet-paper roll: compact, inexpensive, and effective. Simply hurl in the direction of the goal, and enjoy as it snakes along the pitch, getting caught up in the boots of whoever might happen to playing around it. The refs don't even warn the goalies when a roll of toilet paper slides behind their backs into the box; the attitude seems to be that it's your goal, and your responsibility to keep it toilet paper-free. Seeing a world class player try to shake toilet paper off of his boot is pretty amusing. I've been thinking that the Argentines must freak out a little when they go to Europe to play in the World Cup: "look how green the grass is, and the lights all work, and there's no toilet paper anywhere!" Beyond the toilet paper, other (probably improvised) projectiles are common enough, and in the 18th minute of the second half, someone from the Newell's side chucked some exploding noisemaker thing into the Veléz goaltender's box, which went off just as he was preparing to take a goal kick. That caused a two- or three-minute delay. It seems that every week there is at least one game that is called off partway through the match due to uncontrollable interference or violence by fans.

For the most part, though, everyone is well-behaved and just looking to watch the match and have fun. The singing is pretty well constant from one side or another; a few songs are adaptations of Argentine classics (an "ole, ole" chant that I first heard at the 30 años march was popular), though the catchy melody from "Pop Goes the World" also made its way in*, and a few that seemed to be originals of the Veléz hinchada (fans). Lots of noise too: the usual "oh" and "ah" whenever a player does something particularly skillful, the fanatic screaming of "gol!" when someone scores, and a lot of whistling, the shrill whistling that I associate with hailing a cab. The whistling is a convenient (and conspicuous) way to say "you suck"; one whistles when the opposing team takes the field, and when one of the players on the other side makes a poor play, that's a particularly good time to remind them that they suck.

The match was pretty good: Veléz brought a lot of offense in the opening 15 minutes, which surprised me, and seemed to surprise Newell's as well. They were looking, I suspect, for a quick goal to take the visitors out of it early, but were unable to take advantage of the pressure they generated, and the remainder of the half was a balanced and unexceptional affair. In the second half the action picked up considerably, however, and when Newell's scored at the 53-minute mark to pull within two goals of a tie, the massive delegation from Rosario opposite saw cause for optimism. That energy was sucked out of them just as quickly eleven minutes later when a Newell's player was sent off for what appeared to be rough tackle, though I'm uncertain that it was a red card-worthy offense. A Veléz goal on a penalty in the 77th minute rendered the prospects for a comeback rather grim. A goal per side in the closing minutes made little difference, and Veléz closed out the series victory with a 2-2 tie at home.

I've since learned that Veléz fans are considered to be amongst the most tranquilo in the league, which is at best a benign comment when referring to football fans. And to be fair, the stadium was busy but far from packed, and the Newell's hinchada made considerably more noise than the home side. I'm a hincha tranquila myself though, so I'm perfectly happy to stick with Veléz Sarsfield for life, or until I go to another team's game, or buy another jersey. My pictures from the evening didn't turn out too well, as I'm not much good at taking pictures at night, but here are a few, which I hope give a decent sense of what was going on.

About 15 minutes before game time. Everyone started blowing up those funny little white and blue long balloon things, and just before the game started, they all threw them, pretty much right onto the people in next row. I'm not sure what the point of that gesture was, but it was cool enough.

Everyone has 'em and are just about ready to toss 'em.

During the game. Again, pretty tranquilo.

*Men Without Hats are Canadian? Oye. I guess the Montreal scene had to start somewhere.