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Published: January 27th 2006
Brazil geezer, BsAs
This guy highjacked our walking tour of Buenos Aires and gave us a performance of a crazy Brazilian dance. called La Paloma in Uruguay. It was so low-key and relaxing. It was perfect. A sweet antidote to the usual drunken, debauched, foul-mouthed, thumping-music and untenable hungover times of years gone by. And so here we are... 2006.
Buenos Aires: I travelled here, by super-fast ferry, from Colonia in Uruguay with Patrick the old Irish-American guy from La Paloma. I cannot say for a second that I particularly liked Buenos Aires; staying in the centre meant staying in the centre of the incredible din whipped up by the voluminous traffic, the hordes and hordes of flashy Porteños going about their daily business, the dirty streets and plazas and the smog and fumes of the backstreets. It was no different to living in an exhaust pipe of a Guatemalan chicken bus... But hey, you wouldn't get mugged in an exhaust pipe - like my friend Kiyoshi did on his second or third day there. Yes,
of course it's got its culture and music and sexy ladies and history and charm - but
The hostel in Mendoza..
Israelis, Argentinians and a Welsh fella. so has Rochdale in the north of England. I now know that all these guide books completley over-hype
all cities they describe; if you believed these books you´d believe that every single city in South America is undeniably, awe-inspiringly tremendous... When, in fact, the opposite is usually true. There would be a lot of culutre-vulture travel snobs out there who would thoroughly disagree with me on this one, but as if I give a toss what they think. I am not going to force myself to like latin music just because they tell themselves it's great and it's their culture and you
should enjoy it because you are in their country... I think it's generally pretty awful and would never listen to it back home, give or take a few songs. I would encourage them to visit Britain and see if they could force themselves to say our culture is ´great´, when in fact I admit it's awful, depressing and vulgar.
Wow, I was going on a bit there wasn't I? I like to have a rant now and again. Let off some steam.
And so readers, back to the plot. As mentioned, I stayed in the centre
Eva peron
The resting place of Eva Peron, Buenos Aires. at a place called The Milhouse Hostel. This place can get pretty bonkers and hectic. One of those just-a-bit-too-full-on hostels. If you want a relaxing time, by all means don't come here. It's just a place for getting hammered every night, loud music, reasonable breakfast, only two functioning internet computers between 160 people, a TV and one or two over-zealous rules about alcohol and room searches. At times it was like being on a club 18-30 holiday, all that was missing was some idiots doing the conga and singing ´Engerrrland, Engerrrland, Engerrrland!' Most people get fed-up there after two or three days and move out to find more relaxing hostels... All you do is get pissed-up and sometimes throw up; after seven months of backpacking it becomes dull and tiresome. You meet so many backpackers just starting out on their adventures who are really enthusiastic about ''partying'' or ''let's go party''... I mean ''party'' for Christ's sake! I now find myself using this word to describe going out for a drink. If I used it back home in Swansea with my friends I would be whole-heartedly mocked, be on the sharp receiving end of cynical and derisory comments and beaten-up
Plaza de mayo, Buenos Aires
Glory glory Argentina. Near the spot where my pal Yikoshi got mugged with the old paint throwing trick. pretty quickly for sounding like a Euro-idiot or pretending I was a character from 'Friends'.
In the end, I was so happy to leave Buenos Aires and headed for Mendoza on a comfy, overnight bus. Mendoza is wine country.
Mendoza: this is a lovely city set at an altitude of around 700 metres and is very famous for its wines and bodegas (where they make the wine). Mendoza was a welcome break after BsAs with its tree-lined streets and avenues, weak traffic and sweet climate. I decided here that I was going to do a few activities instead of just lazing around a hostel and reading/drinking (tea) all day...
On my second day there I signed up to do a day of white-water rafting and mountain biking with a local company. As some of you may remember I did some rafting in Costa Rica a few months back and enjoyed it very much.
But, that time the raft didn't overturn. As you can guess, this time it did. We were only three or four minutes into the trip when we came into some grade IV white water (when I say
whitewater I actually mean it was a
La paloma, new year's eve.
This is Patrick, the old Irish-American fella who stayed in La Paloma almost as long as I did! We were mistaken for father & son a few times... I can see why really, those glassy blue drunken eyes...although Patrick doesn't drink! filthy brown colour because of whipped-up mud and sediment), I had a great seat at the front again and so got a good bashing.
We came into a particularly big crushing rapid that we just couldn't fight our way over, the back end dipped down and everyone's weight fell backwards, so naturally the raft flipped over and dumped everyone in the rapids. Now the only way to describe the ensuing few minutes was
total panic. You can do nothing but let the furious fast-flowing water take you where it wants to and hurtle you into rocks if it wants to - which it did to most of us, all the while struggling for mouthfuls of air and swallowing the dirty water. For a few seconds I was trapped under the raft, panicking furiously, until a kayaker flipped it off me. Then it was back to the mercy of the rapids and praying for it to stop. I can honestly say it was some of the scariest few minutes I've had- you feel totally and utterly helpless and sorry you got into the raft in the first place. After a few minutes most people had been pulled in by the
The walking tour of Buenos Aires
This was our guide from The Milhouse hostel, very good she was indeed. second rafting group until it was just me and another guy left clinging to the kayaker and empty raft, still hurtling downriver. Now this guy was terrified, screaming at me in Spanish ''I am dying! I am dying!'' I mean what could I reply to that? Because he probably believed he was about to die.
Finally I felt a large pair of hands drag me into the second raft and was relieved it was all over. I sat shaking for many minutes afterwards and trying to warm up my freezing hands on the warm stones of the riverbank. Nursing my bruises and sore, sore muscles. We eventually got things back together and continued the trip downstream, but the other guy decided enough was enough and couldn't continue. Looking back, I'd still like to try rafting again somewhere but will be wary of what can happen. Although it was unpleasant at the time, it was a new experience all the same! The mountain biking wasn't quite as eventful as you can imagine...
Also, I did a nice kind-of-cultural day trip to a few wine bodegas near the city, which was interesting and did all that silly wine-tasting nonsense
Random bus in BsAs
Great. Why can't Swansea be as sexist as this?!? of swishing the glass and smelling it etc etc...
But get this one... One day I decided to use an interent cafe located very close to my hostel, a little away from the central plaza. I went in, as you do, and asked the slightly camp-looking guy on the reception for a computer to use the internet. I noticed that it was one of those cibercafes with the computers completely seperated from each other - in private booths. Now, I'd seen this type of set-up in other countries before and so didn't think anything particularly amiss. After logging into my yahoo account and looking at a few emails... A message box pops up from another booth. It said (in spanish) ''are you male or female?'' I replied ''male'' and ''why do you ask?''. This person then asks ''What are you looking for? Male or female?''... It was now I realised what was going on and being stuck for words replied ''information about hostels on the internet!''
It soon clicked as to what this cafe was all about and so I logged out pretty quickly and left. Getting back to the hostel, I asked the guy on
Colonia, Uruguay
Waiting for the fish under a setting sun. recpetion what the f**k was all that about in that internet cafè?!? To which he replied ''Oh, you want to stay away from there. It's full of transvestites and
strange guys! It was probably the guy on reception sending you a message to see If you were
interested !! hahaha!!''
Would you beleive it? An internet cafe for transvestites and swingers?!
You have been warned!
Jamie,
Mendoza,
Argentina. p.s. During the writing of this diary, no offence was meant to people who use the word 'party' or to transvestites in general.
p.s.2 Today I head for Chile for a few weeks before cutting back inside to Argentina to go see Patagonia, some little Welsh towns, some glaciers and the end of the world at Ushuaia (near Antartica).
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ang and bev
non-member comment
raft
sounds like to us you had more fun than the boats in singlton park, or there again may be you should stick to the ones in the park lol