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Hang-gliding in Salta
Don't believe the smile... it's just frozen on. What do you mean I told you all to read my blog and then didn't touch it for months? I've been busy...
Right, let's see what I can do here then. After all the fun of freezing to death in the middle of a Patagonian winter, I jumped straight on a three hour flight back to
Buenos Aires, and stayed there just long enough to go to SouthFest, a house festival for 20,000 people down by the docks. The line-up included Plump DJ's and LCD Soundsystem and was headlined by Deep Dish. Now I've got enough of Deep Dish's CD's to know I can no longer stand them but I thought I'd give them one last chance. On the whole the night wasn't too bad. I rocked up with about 15 Argies and we had a decent enough time but despite my best efforts I was still pretty bored with the music by the end of the night.
Seeing as my flight home's from Buenos Aires, it seemed pointless spending any more than a couple of nights here this time around so jumped straight on a bus to
Santiago. I know what you're thinking; 'Why the fuck would you
Central Park, Mendoza
When I saw this picture, I almost wondered if my camera had gone off accidentally in my pocket. Nice half a bench, though. want to go and visit a gash country like Chile again?' and there's not really much of an answer. It's right up there with Chinese water torture and eating my own head on my 'Only for very very rainy days' list but I had a couple of people I wanted to catch up with and a replacement credit card to pick up from there so thought I'd pay a flying visit. On a bus. With the firm intention of staying as little time as possible in that miserable skinny country.
My Chilean itinerary this time around consisted of a couple of nights in Santiago (my card still hadn't arrived), a night in each of ViƱa del Mar and Valparaiso - effectively two halves of the same conurbation - then another night in Santiago to give my card one last chance to turn up in the post. It still hadn't. By this time I was really feeling like I'd had enough. I'd been feeling increasingly jaded by travelling anyway, it turned out some guy had done an impressive job of doing me out of a fair few quid (though that's another story) and it looked like I was never going
to leave Chile (which in case you've been following my blog for less than the last 17 seconds, I'm not really a fan of). In fairness to the British Embassy - who were to receive my card - they were more than happy to help me out (within the mountains of red-tape that exist) though I ended up handing over a wad of cash and asking them to FedEx the card to the embassy in La Paz, Bolivia if it ever arrived.
Grrrrrr, Chile. And stuff. A night in Santiago's bus station later and I was finally back to Argentina. Zooooooom! 18 hours or something later and I'm in
Mendoza. Founded back in 1561, Mendoza makes something like 70%!o(MISSING)f Argentina's wine. It's a beautiful, leafy city set amongst yet more stunning mountainous scenery and surrounded by vineyards. After feeling bombarded by what seemed like an endless string of little ordeals, I'd never felt more ready to meet up with old friends. Thankfully, it felt as though about half the people I'd ever met were still due to be waiting around in Mendoza by the time I arrived. Once I'd got there, most of them had befriended one another
Ummm, A Cactus
between Salta and Cafayate and fucked off together, the cheek of it! (as I understand it, the conversations generally started "Hey, dont you know Graham?", and I think everyone just sort of hit it off from there)
As well as this, I'd had the luck to check into a hardcore climbers' hostel. Unfortunately I'm not even joking. And I had the top triple bunk with about two foot clearance from the ceiling and a deliberately precarious wooden-slats-up-the-window set-up to get me up there just for the 'fun' of it.
Thankfully, I still had about half a dozen friends in town so I spent the next couple of days with them hanging out and cycling around the vineyards tasting wines. A lot of Argentina's wines are world class, although I'm hardly a connoisseur. I'd have gladly turned to the tour guides and struck up some sparkling gourmet conversation, replete with savvy vernacular but for the most part the Spanish for 'juicy' eluded me.
Anyway, you can't really go wrong with my version of wine tasting; listen to some gumph, swizzle your glass while staring at the colour with your pensive face on as if to say "Is this light red? Or dark
Wine, Wine, Wine
Another north Argentine city, another wine tour, this time in Cafayate. red? Or yellowy-white?!" Close your eyes, knock it back, wait for about three seconds and go
'siiiiiii!' which, if done confidently, will be taken by the tour guide as a ringing endorsement of whatever bollocks he's just come out with.
So in short, a nice couple of days spent taking it easy in Mendoza before heading another 18 hours further north to the city of
Salta, a, city not too far from Bolivia.
Although I didn't realise for the first few days spent here, Salta's actually quite a thriving little city (I had to get a cable car up a hill to appreciate how big it is; a little over a million inhabitants) I'd planned to stay for just a couple of nights and then head on up to Bolivia though in the end it took me the best part of a fortnight to drag myself away from the hostel's delightful receptionist. Most of the time was spent doing what seems to come naturally in Argentina: good meals, decent bars and clubs etc. I also managed to haul my lazy arse up a hill and go hang-gliding, which was ok. The first day I went there was so
More Rock Formations
on the road back from Cafayate to Salta. little wind that I took up the guy's kind offer of putting it off for a day since according to him it was highly unlikely that the conditions could be any worse.
The next day, the conditions were even worse. And they'd spectacularly managed to lose all the keys to the gate blocking the path up the hill. Before long everyone was having these stroppy little Latino arguments with one another until I lost it and screamed at them to be professional. At this point everyone fell about laughing and in all seriousness we had a pretty good time. Which is more than can be said for the paragliding itself. Apart from take-off and landing it's a bit on the dull, chilly side so I wasn't all that bothered that the whole thing was over almost before it had begun.
Another day I spent taking a tour from Salta to
Cafayate. Cafayate is a beautiful tranquil little town full of little wineries and with far kinder weather than Salta had given me. The 120-or-so mile road between the two places is full of just stunning scenery. Crazy natural rock formations and amphitheatres abound, while the simple colours -
A Yellow and Pink Building.
somewhere in Salta. Looks a bit religious to me. Reckon it's a Church. the sky's clear blue down to the reds and pinks of all the rocks dotted with sparse vegetation here and there - can't fail to leave an impression.
Before I knew it the time had come to head on up to Bolivia. As I've mentioned, and I think it was brought about by a combination of an almighty Brazilian hangover, Argentina's remarkable sense of homeliness and just general travelling malaise, I'd really been pining that almost tangible magical feeling that the indigenous populations, customs and cultures seem to bring to places around Central America and Mexico. For this reason I was practically falling over myself to get to Bolivia, essentially a country full of tiny little brown people, tee hee! Variously, the country's been described to me as 'good', 'shit' and 'the armpit of South America' so I guess for now the jury's still out on that one. Vamos a ver...
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sara
non-member comment
bloggin brilliant
i've been awful worried about you gray-pot, wot with you being so quiet and in colombia and the like. now i know you're ok i feel i can sleep once more. My opinion on Bolivia - 'alright'. FYI.