ROUTES TO CLOSE? COULDN'T CARE LESS -

BAD CHORIPAN IS THE WORST KIND

Government enforcer Luis D'Elia has been making some noise about taking back the routes by force if the countryside decides to shut down again, which possibility seems entirely possible at the moment. At least the smoke has stopped. Things are great here in Buenos Aires, even though I have been temporarily immobilized by a less than positive chorizo experience. 

I once had such a terrible case of food poisoning from a Bay Cities Deli sandwich that I hallucinated I was in the Mexican American war. That is to say I suffered from a feverish delusion that I was not  a 21st century anglophone, but a the commander of an isolated Mexican cavalry brigade in the 1840's. You see, I thought I was so sick because the Gringos - naturally inclined to cowardice and generally unaware of the principles of gentlemanly warfare - had poisoned our well. I passed the night unable to sleep, tormented by the thought that I would die of some womanly poison and not in a flash of Latin heroism. 

This time isn't so bad. Took a nap - dreamed about the White House renovation of the Truman administration. 

http://www.larazon.com.ar/notas/2008/05/13/01671381.html

SPECIAL UPDATE - DON'T TALK ABOUT THE WAR

GERMAN TOURISTS: WORSE THAN US?

Photo courtesy of Anastasia Ehrich

SOME MORE PICTURES

BUENOS AIRES

IGUAZU

A JOURNEY INTO THE MALARIAL JUNGLES OF MISIONES

THE LAST FERRY TO PARAGUAY, ROTISSEUR GAUCHESQUE, A WATERFALL ON THE IGUAZU AND OTHER OCCURRENCES

What did you do this weekend?

Gentle reader, I write to you now through the thick fog of the last stages of a very nasty reaction to a completely unnecessary vaccination against the jungle malady known as yellow fever. The reason for this unpleasant adventure in prophylactic medicine? A direct order from Global Student Experiences HQ in Irvine, California, where the dope smokers and hacky-sack champions turned millionaires organizing my exchange decided that no students would be allowed to Iguazu Falls without the vaccine. Never mind, of course, that there hasn't been a single confirmed case anywhere near Iguazu in years, the almost complete absence of the mosquitos that spread the disease at this time of year, and the near impossibility of healthy white people with health insurance dying from the disease. Anyway, I guard the bastards no rancor; Iguazu was the most amazing place I've been in years and a little yellow fever is just the price I'll have to pay. 

Ready to leave civilization behind - Jorge Newberry Departure Lounge

Before leaving, I was overcome by the desire to take advantage of the fact that Iguazu lies at what is known as "la triple frontera," where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet at the confluence of the Parana and Iguazu rivers. The region is as famous for its lawlessness than it is for the striking beauty of the waterfalls straddling the Argentina/Brazil border. For comparison, it is estimated that 1 million tourists visited the national parks in Brazil and Argentina last year, and I personally estimate that 1 million pirated DVD players were sold in Paraguay in the same period.  I wanted a slice of the pie. I wanted to buy stolen goods in Paraguay. Americans cannot legally enter Brazil without a consular visa, so I had decided to leave that for some other time and head to "Latin America's Mexico," Paraguay.   I became obsessed with Paraguay, and if I had to get some pointless vaccine on the whims of some birkenstock wearing post-feminists back in California, so be it. 

The people behind the organization of my exchange down here, to be fair, are giving me a lot more than the other programs with students at Belgrano, but all the same they tend to try to keep us in a very touristy sort of bubble. Iguazu, granted, is one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world. Really, people only go there to see the waterfalls, and the national parks very complete network of Jungle catwalks and narrow gauge railways do most of the work in taking some of the adventure out of seeing the waterfalls. The thing about the falls, of course, is that they are too magnificent to really diminish with a few catwalks, or the presence of a few other gawking tourists. 

I wasn't going to let GSE screw up the rest of my time at the Tri-Frontier, though, so I decided to get straight to Paraguay where no tour groups dare to go. I didn't want a regular tourist experience with a bunch of clueless Americans being lead by the nose by our program director to pre-approved frippery (It took something of a revolt, for example, to keep Alfredo from taking us to an American chain restaurant in Mar del Plata). Everyone I asked told me the same thing, though.

"It is impossible for you to go to Paraguay." 

I had arrived on a Friday. To go to Paraguay by Taxi, you need to cross though Brazil and it was already too late in the afternoon to catch the last ferry back until Tuesday. 

I was despondent. I was outraged. Upper middle class young white men like me are not used to having the law apply to us, and this rude assertion of Brazilian sovereignty was killing me. There was no Paraguay in the cards for me, it seemed. I resigned to do what the tourists do. I hopped into a cab with a few friends whom I had severely let down after talking up Paraguay to them the whole week before, and asked the driver to take us to see the three frontiers. 

On the way to the river port he put on a DVD in a little flip down screen about the history of some hydroelectric dam. I asked him for some local music instead. This seemed to spike his interest somewhat. I confessed to him that Americans of a certain class and disposition have an obsession with authenticity. He looked authentic enough to me, and I wanted to get as much about the reality of the region out of him as possible in three days.

My fried Anastasia put to him that instead of the port, he should take us to some kind of bar where the locals would be eating. He thought it over, and then he asked the question that made the weekend.

"How about a an asado in the jungle tonight?"

Matt Fox of Baltimore and our driver, Miguel, at dinner later that night.

Miguel, our driver, it turns out, is part of a smaller, weirder and better tourist industry in Iguazu. He took us to the port all the same, and while we waited for a futuristic catamaran tour down the Parana, he went off to talk to a friend of his. That's how we met Fabricio. Anastasia and her friend Natasha thought he was dreamy. Matt and I thought he was awesome. In short, Fabricio is a gaucho, and he was going to host us at his humble home in the Jungle after our catamaran cruise returned. 

Fabricio and I talked a little about literature, which he used to study before he became a gaucho/tree husbander. We made a deal for the dinner, and he went off to prepare while we watched the sun go down over the confluence of the rivers and the triple frontier. The last ferry to Paraguay, loaded with the boxy vans that move the third world, set steam without us, but I didn't mind so much anymore.

The catamaran tour was strange. We cruised down the river aways in this very futuristic boat (if the future hadn't been properly serviced in a few years, anyway) until we came to this beach on the Paraguayan side of the river. We beached. Finally I was in Paraguay, even if it was just for a few minutes. What were we doing here in Paraguay? We had come to observe an ancient Guarani ritual, carried out twice a day on the banks of the river in exchange for bags of food and medical aid from the catamaran company. Everyone went out to the front of the boat to watch the dancing of the indians, which was, to say the least, somewhat uninspired. The scene was starting to give me a bad feeling. Tourists from all over (mostly from Spain and Buenos Aires) were staring wide eyed. It was as if space aliens paid me to go back to church so they could observe homo sapiens' capacity for spiritual feeling.  We left the Guarani behind to be treated to a selection of everyone's favorite songs from all over the Spanish speaking world.

Miguel came to get us at the hotel that night, and we set off into the jungle for the most delicious barbecue that I've ever had. We left the town behind, passing some indigenous houses, a half built schoolhouse, the carwash and then we were in the jungle, going up a mountain. Miguel played with us once we were out of town, shutting off the lights and showing us how pitch black it was out there. Then we got lost. We stopped to get our bearings for a minute.

Then we saw a lantern light coming out of the Jungle. Fabricio had seen the lights from the car and come out to find us. We followed him on foot back to his place, a patch of land with a small shack for sleeping, a lean-too for cooking and a bunch of seedlings growing out of cut up soda bottles. 

Mostly, when we got there, we were speechless (unusual for me). Fabricio had set up everything beautifully. He told us all about his home, what he did out there, living in the Jungle. It was wonderful. Fabricio had been a literature student before he ran off to become a gaucho. He had worked a few years artificially inseminating pigs and cows before he visited Iguazu on a vacation five years ago. He fell in love with the place, and decided to stay.

The dinner he made us was fantastic. We ate like kings out under the stars. Everything was perfect. The meat of Argentina is known to be the best, and the meat in the countryside is even better. Meat cooked over a wood fire is better than charcoal, and the meat of Misiones grows out the famous red soil of the province, giving everything a special flavor. Fabricio had arranged everything  wonderfully. For desert we had fresh bananas, straight from the jungle, and special hand rolled gaucho cigars from Paraguay.

Of course, our authentic Jungle barbecue is only so different from paying Guarani to come out and dance. That was an authentic Guarani dance, after all. What does it mean to be a tourist? Does paying to see a waterfall make it less of a waterfall? Who knows, really. I like to think Miguel, Fabricio and I got on well, but the truth is that I still paid them. I got what I wanted, I got to get away from my program, hang out with a gaucho, smoke paraguayan cigars and eat a ton the best meat I've ever had in my life. They got what they wanted, and it's too base to say that they just wanted to make money. Fabricio is digging another well, and trying to start a business raising indigenous trees. Was I saving the rain-forest?  Maybe. My point is this - you can only get so authentic in one afternoon. 

A TRIP TO THE FALLS

They've got all these catwalks set up that take you through the jungles and over the rivers so you can get to the falls without damaging the rain-forest ecosystem. 

This is called the "Devil's Throat" waterfall. It's biggest one of the falls at Iguazu. Everybody in the crowd here was talking about death. This photo does not capture how epic it is to look down into the Devil's Throat. No joke, everybody was talking about death. So many people probably kill themselves here.

There are a million rainbows all over the place.

This boat took us right underneath the falls. Like, they just drove the boat straight into the waterfall. It was awesome. Everyone got so soaked, and everyone else was wearing jeans. The fools.

My mom just came back from Egypt. A lot of her pictures from the temples have "orbs" in them, that are allegedly the spirits of the Pharaohs or something. The spots in this picture are drops of water. 

Some photos come courtesy of Traci Fortier. 

SPRING BREAK!!!!!

As a respite from the gloomy subject matter of my last post, here are some pictures of my big trip to Mar del Plata. I went with the company that arranged my enrollment in the university, so it  was a pretty big America party the whole time.

THE COST OF SACRILEGE

20 PESOS

The North American traveller visiting this Buenos Aires landmark will promptly realize that the Recoleta Cemetery is not so much a cemetery in the sense that we understand the word in our own Protestant Republic, but rather necropolis built according to the baroque tastes typical of the Catholic oligarchies of the south. Even more valuable than the real estate in Buenos Aires' Recoleta barrio - where the gente decente live in conformity with Baron Haussmann's  ideals of urban planning - is the right to be buried alongside the father's of the nation and their legion ne'erdowell offspring.  The names on the mausoleums read like the index of streets at the back of a city map. Mitre, Lavalle, Sarmiento and Pueyrredón all lie in Recoleta; their tombs maintained at public expense and largely ignored by the tourists who want to see Evita.  

The government of Argentina, although at times prone to fruitless expenses, cannot afford to maintain all of the tombs in Recoleta, and the vast majority are the responsibility of the surviving family. It is the unfortunate tendency of oligarchies, however, to shrink with the passage of time. As more of the nation's great families disappear, their mausoleums in Recoleta fall into utter disrepair. The directors of the cemetery, in a fine display of Christian charity, take it upon themselves to close the doors that fall open with padlocks or zip ties, but little more. It is a wonder that the place doesn't completely reek of putrefaction (more on this later), but this unstoppable decay somehow suits the aesthetic of Recoleta. It reflects the encroachment of bourgeois pragmatism into traditional feudal superstition (or perhaps the manifestation of a latent infection - Buenos Aires having been a smugglers port long before it became a viceregal capital).

But what of the families whose resources remain such that they are able to care for the final (or at least, current) resting place of their antecedents? The task falls to a special group of men, who ensure that the cobwebs are brushed out of the corners, the handles of the coffins stay shiny, the priceless Byzantine mosaics are intact, the stray cats don't shit all over the place, and the hundreds of other jobs that maintain the crypt as a symbol of the family's eternal prestige get done. Much as so many of the cemetery's residents were no doubt used to a complete complement of domestic servants in life, they are looked after in death for however long the family fortune lasts.  The families do not tend to pay these workers well, but somehow, I do not think that many visitors to Recoleta are offered the same special tour that it was my pleasure to enjoy today. 

I was wandering the cemetery today, you see, when I saw a very singular looking man emerge from one of the tombs. I was quite surprised to see someone coming out of a crypt, especially, to be perfectly frank, someone with such an indian aspect about him that I didn't imagine very many relatives were buried in Recoleta. He caught me looking at him, and made a face that suggested a certain displeasure at the fact. I decided to play dumb, and I asked him what was down there (obviously, the only answer is "a bunch of dead people").  He motioned over to a worker in blue coveralls, and then asked me if I wanted to find out for myself. I took another look at the man. He had gold jewelry, big shades, American jeans, and a big mustache. I had met the godfather of the crypt-keepers. He was very clearly relishing my hesitation in answering.

He took me aside - 

"Make sure you give a nice tip so this guy can get a sandwich. Nobody's responsible for what happens to you when you're down there."

Now, I know certain of my relatives have read this blog and charged me with a certain naïveté, that perhaps I've gotten myself into things better left alone. To them I say this: accepting this offer might have been the closest I'd ever get to meeting Nicolás Francomano, and I was not about to let the opportunity pass me by. 

The man in the blue overalls was a friendly enough sort, considering he spends most of his time with dead people and stray cats. He told me to follow him, because he wanted to show me a nice one. We walked down the alleys of the cemetery until we came to a white marble mausoleum. He unlocked the doors and motioned for me to follow him down into the first level of the crypt. There were sixteen coffins in all, in niches in the walls. 

Each coffin is lined with steel, my guide explained, with two valves that prevent the accumulation of gasses from causing an explosion. These valves have some sort of chemical filter, that neutralizes the odor of decomposition and by the time they no longer function, the body doesn't really smell that bad anyway. He also told me that as more and more members of the family die, they make room in the crypt by taking out some of the older ones and cremating them, or putting the bones in an ossuary. Thank god that he didn't take me to see the ossuary, located underneath the floor of the lowest level of the crypt. 

As my guide took me down into the bottom level, we had to light a candle to see. The bottom of the crypt is practically identical to the upper, but creepier because of the darkness. I hesitated on the last few steps down into the crypt. 

"Don't be a coward. They're not going to bite." 

He showed me a picture of Jesus at the back of the tomb, and explained to me that recently the painting had needed restoration. The family had had it flown to England to have the work done, and only recently returned it to it's place in the dark where only he would see it once a week. I felt sorry for the painter, but, fortunately, he's probably dead too. I asked him how often people from the family came to visit, and the answer was hardly ever.  Looking around at the marble floors and the paintings on the walls, it wasn't that hard to imagine that their house looks fairly similar, anyway. 

I was somewhat relieved when he offered to take me up to the chapel. Fascinating as the crypt may have been, I was ready to see sunshine. It was a wonderful feeling walking back up and out of the tomb, considering that a lot of people don't get to come back out once they go in. Since the place was designed for people of average height 200 years ago, the ceilings are a little low. My guide warned me not to bump my head and fall, because they'd put him in prison if I did. Naturally, I obliged his request. 

He showed me the chapel,  which was lovely, but which doesn't really stick in my memory, probably because it wasn't full of the deafening silence of hundreds of dead bodies slowly moldering for all eternity. 

I slipped the guy a 20 peso note, and high-tailed it back into the world of the living as fast as I could. I can go back and see Evita some other time. 

SOME PHOTOS FROM THE FOOTHILLS OF THE ANDES

I've finally got around to having this pictures developed onto a CD. I took them on my trip to Salta before the start of this semester. 

I really wish you all could have seen what's in the left quarter of this picture. You wouldn't even believe it if I tried to describe it. It was so cool. The coolest thing I've ever seen, ever.

This is the boarding area for the cable car to the top of the mountain in the city of Salta, Cerro San Bernardo. Keep your eye on the married couple buying tickets.

Here they are again! A lovely French couple from the city of LeMans. They spoke neither English nor Spanish, and I relished this opportunity to be more cultured than a couple of snooty French people. Where do they get off, anyway?

Anyway, I was nice enough to them long enough for them to take my picture.

Do you see the cloud in this picture? That's how high up this cable car goes. I would have been terrified, but I saw a plaque that said the thing was made in Switzerland.

There it is, the city of Salta, Argentina. It's a nice town. The people are friendly, the streets are pretty convincingly paved (downtown), and they've got some beautiful colonial buildings (not pictured). The top of this mountain turned out to be kind of a bust, though. There were lots of bees, and some people selling the same Artesanal bric-a-brac available in tourist traps the length of the continent. Also, they had stopped making lunch by the time I got up there. I was starving. The lemonade was good, but a bee flew into it. 

Anyway, this is Stan, from Hong Kong. He was staying in my Hostel, and we decided to hit up the tour to the mystic city of Cachi. This tour was definitely the highlight of my trip to Salta. Stan and I were laughing it up in the back of the bus, because he's a pretty rad guy. He doesn't speak Spanish, he barely speaks English, and he decided to quit his job as an electrical engineer to travel all over South America doing landscape photography. 

This was our tour guide (Check out the super-official khaki outfit). Once these two old ladies stopped paying attention he started hitting on the two girls from Buenos Aires in the front. I took this picture right after he said, "The Black Widow is a small spider, but so dangerous." 

We'd stop every once and a while to hop out and take pictures. Some of the road was flooded out from the rains the night before, so every time I got out of the van alive I felt like I had accomplished something. This is another friend of mine from the Hostel.

Here's a little cemetery we passed on the way up the valley. 

That sign says "Put your batteries in me," which is a play on words in Spanish. It doesn't mean what you think it does. Also, when we were having coffee here the tour guide and I got to talking about studying German. When it turned out that we had both taken it in high school he said to me (not about the woman in the picture), "This chick has a totally nice ass." 

This is a FUCKING GAUCHO. This photograph is not staged. That's how much I keep it real. 

The road in the background is called "La Cuesta del Obispo." It was built by Indian slaves in order for an extremely fat Bishop to cross the hills and proselytize to the people on the other side. In addition to having to build the road, they had to carry the Bishop, who couldn't walk too far because of his gout.

Here's a monument to the simple faith of these decent country people. Painstakingly constructed on the top of this mountain. Note the clouds are actually lower than the chapel. Nobody lives up here. 

Anyway, we finally made it up the valley and into the high deserts of Salta. I bought a bottle of wine on the side of the road, guaranteed to have been stamped by genuine artesanal peasants. This is me with Argentina's national cactus, the Cardon. 

Cachi, principal street, noon. 

Llama.