Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Argentina, Mendoza and Puesto Viejo

I have found the time to write this entry because I have put off sleeping, something I have come to do quite a lot and for prolonged periods of time due to the fact that this country is knackering.
So charged up on two old friends, diet coke and Bastille, and after a long Argentine lunch, here it goes.

I realise its been a while since I have updated-  since I have left Chile, left Biggy and Tom who went to San Pedro, had a hairy border crossing to Argentina from Chile. I realised that Argentina was to me what Brasil seemed to be to everyone else, the sole reason I came to South America in the first place. Weeks of Asados, beautiful people, vicious driving and long nights lay before me at this point- First stop was Mendoza where I met up with another friend from school Rosie, and we spent three days cycling through wineries, once on a tándem bike, getting awfully drunk but managing to stay in sync as we tasted exclusive Malbecs.
Mendoza was mostly a wonderful city with a huge beautiful park- San Martin. Really, with its beautiful entrance gates, huge fountains and lakes, you could have been in London.

I was still trying to sort out my internship at this point so carried on having to sneak off and skype various people- only once being ambushed in Spanish, which I somehow managed to gabble my way through. When Rosie headed north to Salta, I decided to head straight for Buenos Aires as my job was very close to starting. I was told only brief outlines as to how to get to Puesto Viejo, the polo club and the enstancia which did not sound particularly difficult. It is suitated only 60 kms from B.A

After the luxuruious cama journey I splashed out on, justifying the fact that I would be spending no money for the next month, I arrived in B.A horrendulously exhausted. There is definitely a pattern forming here! Hunting around and not finding the bus that was suggested to me I took, I took another which was supposably going to Canuelas. I had asked many people how to get to the right plaza in B.A Wheeling my huge bag along the crowded pavements, also having argued quite well I thought with a taxi driver because his meter was not switched on. Twice, two seemingly unassuming and friendly people, who were quite happy to help me, shunned me when I told them I was British so in the end, I told people I was German. However, this was not helpful either, because too tired to work on my Spanish, two girls rescued me when I thought I was on the wrong bus.
In the end, I ended up in downtown Buenos Aires, lost for the first time since leaving Bath but being looked after by the two kindest girls who allowed me to use their internet to contact the Estancia. In the end, a taxi was sent for me.

So thus far has been Buenos Aires for me- I cannot wait to get back to the true city that everyone will not stop raving on about. Getting to the Polo Club, I honestly had to pinch myself that I had made it. I had been given a Smart hotel room at least for my first week- its clean and utter luxury after slumming it in hostels...what a revelation that I do not have to sleep in my silk liner for fear of bed bugs!
So far, in between timing matches, preparing ponies for chukkas, babysitting and hacking out, they have given me five polo ponies to look after, I cannot be too long writing this because they need to do some stick and balling this afternoon.

This is definitely what I left home for...and its going to be very difficult to head back.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

San (Buenos Aires it ain´t) -tiago and Valpo

On getting to Santiago at eight in the morning, a good two hours before the rest of Chile wakes up, I realised I had absolutely no idea what I was doing among the smog and dirt of what seemed to be a grimey take on Birmingham. I sat in the bus terminal for an hour trying to pull myself together, still feeling the affects of prescription sleeping pills my friends had given me before I left San pedro. In the end, I opted for a hotel my guidebook from 1997 promised to be cheap, clean and in good order. It filled two of those brackets...but in the last fifteen years, prices had perhaps tripelled.

Still the place had hot water (luxury!) and I had my own room with clean sheets...I decided to crash. Having foreseen that it would be a case of ´mouse alone in the big city´ before I left the North, I´d used Couch Surfing to see if anyone would be around to hang out for a coffee and could offer some accomodation. A lovely human rights laywer called Sebastian got back to me and I spent a really fantastic three days in his company, staying on his sofa and hanging out with his friends. Sebastian joked to me that Peru was stuck in the fifteenth century. If this be the case, Chile is in the 90s with businessmen who have looked like they´ve walked out of the film  and kids who dress like nineties rappers and Fine Young Canibals and Paul Simon being boomed out of every cafe.

Sebastian shared my love of Sushi and Piscola and suddenly the grime and intense Santiago seemed a little less daunting. I´m still not convinced on any charm of Santiago (it had a few nice European styled cobbled streets but due to the amount of earthquakes destroying Colonial buildings, ugly estates and skyscrapers seem to dominate it) and am in no rush to head back. Buenos Aires it ain´t.

In Valpo, my friend Tom from school has a job at the YMCA hostel and invited me to stay with him. I realised I was pretty keen to see a famaliar face and so travelled the small 1.5 hrs to Valparasia, a coastal city outside of Santiago. After a wild goose chase around Valpo to find the hostel (which in fact isn´t a hostel but a series of floors with gyms and loud areobics music played through the day), I finally found Tom. In the last three or four days I have been discovering a city which is in fact two cities in one, one resembles a coastal Santiago with grid streets and grey buildings the other colourful, like how I´ve heard B.A is and Bohemian. In fact every Chilean here looks like they´ve stepped out of The Porter in Bath. Valpo really is a city I can´t get my head around at all and with the joining of another friend of mine, Biggy, tonight I am looking forward to experiencing the night life- the real gem of Valpo.

Northern Chile Continued

So it seems like I am finally blogging some of what I´ve been up to in Chile, whilst about to leave the country, ironically. I have come to appreciate Chile, not loving it but certainly not hating it, having been through a worldwind of emotions since I left Peru and struck out truely on my own. It is very difficult to describe Chile to someone who´s never been- it is truely no surprise that in Britain, people have little idea of what the country and its people have to offer because of the expense of variety and because of the links and contrasts it has to the West. To me, I feel like it was the beacon of South America (due to its protected economy and obvious wealth) yet still parts are horrendously dated and pretty ugly.

I figured that this would be a good time to update, as I feel that I am nearly on the verge of the next chapter of my adventures, with Argentina looming in the distance. San Pedro, having been promised to me by various people of being amazing, was just that- pretty spectacular. I grew fond of my hostel and of the locals in San Pedro that were, for some mystery, not hateful and distrustful of gringos but genuinely welcoming. In fact, I made a good friend there called Enrique, whom I booked my riding tour through, who was very informative about the local party scene, and all that that entails. Like Britain, there is a big north, south divide but unlike Britain, Northerners are not dismissive of the superiority of the South. Enrique, being a ´lake district boy (his words not mine) was convinced he´d hate the desert and miss the lush and expanse of greenery in the South, but it is impossible for the beauty of the Actacama Desert not to stir something in you. (Trying not to sound like a Lonely Planet pounce ...).

 One interesting thing in San Pedro, was that it lived up to every preconception I have of a Wild Western town including the odd drunk passed out on the pavement at one o´clock in the afternoon. Enrique told me, that whilst he was in to other drugs, the strongest cocaine you could get in northern Chile was in San Pedro and was as easy to come across as cigarettes. He informed me that the people passed out on the pavement were once respectable wealthy businessmen who´d made their fortune in Santiago but blown it all on the white powder. I left San Pedro after two days but frankly, if I were made of money, I´d have happily have stayed a week longer. The trouble is, is that absolutely nothing can be done independently, and as a little gringo, I was paying gringo prices for everything so I decided to cut my loses and head south.

From San pedro, having experienced the beauty of the salt flats and survived a 30 hr bus journey to Santiago with a broken seat and an addiction to sleeping pills, I arrived in Santiago. The Actacama Desert lost all of its appeal on this journey, with nothing to watch but miles and miles of sand reaching out to the horizon and the odd Condor here and there. I did a lot of thinking on this journey, mainly because my ipod died after two hours and Avengers in silence with Spanish subtitles could only hold my attention for so long. Still at least the Chileans have caught on to the fact that not everyone wants to watch violent movies through the night on top volumn, something their Peruvian counterparts have yet to realise.