Christian's posts with tag: argentina
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|  | I had a faboulus time in the National Park. And the weather was most un-patagonian. Sunshine all the time! Very little wind...
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Not much news. I managed to go straight through to El Chaltén on Thursday, avoiding having to stay a night in El Calafate. Since then, the weather has been spectacular almost all the time - few clouds and lots of sun. And most amazing - very little wind! Besides a little day trip on Friday I have been perfectly lazy, though, reading my book and chatting to the climbers which mostly populate the hostel I am staying at. They all get excited about the next 'window' of good and (hopefully) stable weather just opening up after what now is a day of mixed weather. According to the climbers, some of which are here since months, the last time the weather has been that good was at some stage in November. Even Cerro Torre has been without a cloud for several days now, which is a very rare event.
I might head out into the mountains myself tomorrow or the day after, so don't be surprised if you don't hear much from me for some days.
"Es difícil, dijo, no ser feliz en Buenos Aires, que es la mezcla perfecta de París y Berlín." When I came across this sentence I knew I had to buy the book... (It's by Roberto Bolaño and contains some really good short stories). That was when I spent the afternoon hanging out in that book shop con cafe in Palermo, chatting with Nestor, the owner, and John, the young American working there. We talked about a lot - literature, life, cities... as you would on a lazy afternoon. I guess Nestor had adopted John, who was working for him for a few months, to give him the opportunity to read a lot, to think about what he wants in life and what to do next. And that was, what John was doing. I only got to know them through Mattheo, the guy who now lives in "my" room at Veronicas, who had taken me to the book shop to meet his friends there.
Hard to believe I had only 24 hours in Buenos Aires. And hard to believe how much I felt at home immediately again! I even bumped into acquaintances in Palermo - Trixi, Paula and Christian, the latter university colleagues from Berlin who had been living near Tokyo for the last years - until a few weeks ago that is, the former I had met two years ago at a gig of Veronica in Buenos Aires. Small world.
| | Last impressions from Buenos Aires.
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| | Beginning of the military dictatorship 30 years ago. Event on the Plaza de Mayo.
Found this while "cleaning up", had forgotten to upload at the time...
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As you might guess looking at the picture taken a few minutes ago - I am not suffering too much from the winter. At least when it is sunny it is actually quite pleasant. If it is not, I admit, it is not always so great. But still no comparison with German winter. In short, the winter hereabouts is almost as good as the German summer! Although the main news a few days ago was the "coldest day of the year!" - 11 degrees during the day and 2 at night.
Talking of German summer, I hope you can spare me some - since I will be in Berlin, soon! It turns out that direct flights from South America to Australia are ridiculously expensive and going via Europe is really much cheaper. Plus, I obviously get to see you folks home for a bit! Yippee! (And then there are some other "pleasures" to take care of - my mail of the last 10 months, last years tax declaration, dentist etc.)
I am arriving Wednesday, August 16, at 11am - and will be around in Berlin for a couple of weeks, I suppose. Anybody feeling like having a cup of coffee and a chat?! Looking forward to seeing you soon (those of you in Berlin)! Only sad I have to leave fabulous Buenos Aires behind... You can't have it all, I suppose.
Haven't I just been raving about the great winter weather here in Buenos Aires? Well, I might have to revise my positive impression... Just about an hour ago I have experienced the worst hailstorm I have ever seen! Lumps of ice bigger than golf balls, no exaggeration!
I was just about to leave the flat when I heard a rattling and hammering outside as if all the percussion groups of Brazil had decided to give a concert outside at the same time. Dozens of car alarms went off straight away.
I have seen whole streets where every car had at least one broken window, not to mention the dents... Also windows of buildings broken everywhere.
The following tormental rain flooded part of the apartment, but it did not last for long. So there was no major damage. Whow. Maybe the winter in Buenos Aires is actually not so great?!
Yesterday I had breakfast in my favourite bakery in tropical Puerto Ayora where they sell the bread rolls straight from the rack, still hot. Tonight I have already arrived "home" in winterly Buenos Aires. And a few hours ago I had breakfast in "my" kitchen with proper coffee from my Italian coffee maker. This journey was much quicker than I had hoped for, and certainly much faster than I had dreaded - being prepared for possibly having to go all the way from Ecuador to Buenos Aires by bus! That would have taken me more than a week of continuous travel. But I was lucky - when I arrived in Guayaquil yesterday I could book myself on a bearably expensive flight via Lima to Buenos Aires leaving just a few hours later in the afternoon, et voilà - here I am again in the country of totally mad driving. I had forgotten about the latter, but already the taxi drive from the airport made me fully aware of this Argentinian peculiarity, again!
The winter hereabouts turns out to be slightly chilly, at night that is. During the daytime it resembles what in Germany we would happily call a "Golden Autumn" - about 18 to 22 degrees and bright sunshine. Extremely pleasant. It is funny, however, to see the Argentineans walk around dressed as if they expected a Siberian winter! And what a pleasant feeling to be able to blend into the crowds again and not sticking out as the obvious "gringo" for a while.
And then there are real supermarkets, I mean places where you can buy everything! I had already almost forgotten about the existence of these institutions. More than 50 different brands of toothpaste (who needs this actually?!), 80 different types of jam (including my favourite flavour - tomato, yum!), about 300 different kinds of pasta...
In short, I am quite happy to have arrived in Buenos Aires and to be able to take some time to think about all the impressions and experiences of the last four months. It is a shame, there would have been a lot more to see in Ecuador than just the Galapagos Islands, but I feel there is only so much I can take in one trip. I am actually looking forward to a little "break" from travelling. And then I will have to arrange my travels to Australia... But that will probably have to wait a week or two.
An other world.Tilcara in the Quebrada de Huamahuaca surrounded by beautifully colored hills in all shades of red and yellow, barren landscapes which turn out to be densely covered with surprisingly many different species of cactus and other plants that can withstand the climate. Some of the cacti are enormously big - up to 9m!
Found a quiet hostel with beautiful shared bungalows with deck chairs and hammocks under big trees on the slope of the hills, an ideal place to spend a few days. Went to see the Gargantua del Diablo, continued to walk along a dried out river bed, and finally a little hill well above the village. Stunning views! And even a Condor flying relatively close by...
Will stay a few more days to enjoy this pleasantly chilled place where the lady from the sandwich shop has to go next door to get some change for the 10 Pesos I gave her to pay my bill of 3 Pesos. And where you can have a chat with the guy working in the "supermarket" who is also waiting for it to open - at half past four... (supposedly open from four o'clock).
 
Quick update, not much time right now... Time flies! Now I am finally continuing my journey up north. Life in Buenos Aires had turned into a true and pleasant normality, which I realized saying good-bye... Already looking forward to coming back in a few months from now!
Took the night-bus (20h) from Buenos Aires, very comfy. Lots of food and drinks on the bus, very nice leather seats... Jujuy - rather grey (due to the clouds) and very crowded! A nice little place to get my travel plans sorted, the last real city before the Puna and the Bolivian Altiplano! I am not quite sure if I will be able to access the net in the days to come, so maybe you will just hear from me when I arrive in La Paz?! We´ll see. That´ll be all for now. Take care everybody!
Done. Finally. Uff. After two very intense weeks in front of the computer for at least 14 hours a day, I have just now released the first version of my stock photography website! As I do not expect to become rich (or even earn money at all, really!) this is more an experiment and it certainly has been a very welcome brain exercises for me. Given that I did not have any knowledge whatsoever of how to set up a website and / or a picture database, I think two weeks are actually not too bad. And no, it is not just a template I use. (Wish it was!) Certainly the work is based on templates, but so severely modified and extended that it actually does not have to do much with the starting point.
Many desired features are still missing. To start with: galleries, more pictures and an automatic ordering facility. But I feel these are not major issues, since I have a few possible solutions in mind. Most of that, however, will have to wait for a few months until I reach decent and accessible computer infrastructure again.
Of course, the site is currently still rather plain and does exhibit a few quirks. Watch it preferably with Firefox, Internet-Explorer does not like some details. And yes, I know, the logo sucks. But the whole thing works. Let me know if you should spot any problem, feedback welcome! (Oh dear, just spotted a really weird issue. Let's see if anyone finds it.)
If I had actually known how much effort this would cost me, I would probably not have started the whole business. But now it's done, I feel truly relieved. I can finally start to live again. There was not much "life" during the last two weeks, but I should not complain. My own choice, really. Poor Veronica, she had to put up with this computer-zombie in her living room for two weeks... This page would certainly not have been possible without her kindly letting me occupy her computer full-time for this period!
So time to leave and get on the road again. And time to take more pics! Will let you know about my trip as soon as there is anything to report. Hello world, here I am back again! Time to re-start my journey.
P.S.: Right, I almost forgot - you might want to have a look: www.ck-images.com
Thought I had disappeared?! No, wrong! Still life and kicking. Almost a month since I have been writing last, though. But since, for the first time in a while, my life has been a little bit more regular again, there was not much to report. Most of my time has been occupied with Spanish lessons, homework etc., anyway.
Besides that, only a few small discoveries - as, e.g., tomato jam. Yes, you read that correctly! I became quite a fan of this stuff, almost all my breakfast toasts now are covered with this fabulous spread. And then there are the "licuados" - banana or strawberry (or what ever is available) milk shakes. Yum! And then I finally managed to get a shot of this traffic light in Palermo with the marijuana leaf shape in the green light. What's the message?!
What else to speak about? Well, the weather. After a few weeks with maddening heat, the early autumn now makes life a true joy. Crisp air and a slight breeze render the heat during the day very bearable. And it almost never gets any hotter than about 28 degrees anymore. It does feel slightly fresh, however, when the temperature drops to about 20 degrees at night. But certainly nothing to complain about! ;-) I understand that most of you, being up there in Europe, had plenty of fun with snow and ice this winter.
An other reasons for my silence is that I have been very busy the last weeks to learn about advanced digital photo processing (awfully time-consuming!) and website-building (a science in its own right, as far as I can tell). I see it as an 'interesting project' for the moment, rather than a possible source of income, though. In the nearer future, I hope, I can put up a website with a few stock images for sale. Let's see! All this is, at least, something new to learn and some brain exercise for me.
I keep postponing my departure to the north. Life is just so pleasant in Buenos Aires at the moment. But this inertia is not going to take long anymore. My current plan (might change - that is the beauty of long-term traveling) is to get going again around mid of March. This time up to Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Provided I am not changing my plans...
Also I have been pretty lazy with my camera - even leaving the good thing at home most of the time! So I can only present you these two snapshots. One of a the bird-life present in the neighborhood and one of the traffic light in Palermo.
 
Since Friday last week I am back to Buenos Aires and enjoy city life and a social environment. I am staying with a friend of a friend of mine who happenes to have a room to let. This accomodation turns out to be the greatest luxury in all my traveling so far! Not only do I have my own room with wardrobe, bookshelf, and a little table, but also my own bathroom! And, even better, a grand roof terrace right next to my room!
But all this is topped by the joy of sharing the house with Veronica who is truly amiable and very patiently puts up with my shaky Spanish. This brings me to the subject of language classes which I started taking again last Monday. What a pleasure! But very exhausting, too. Besides school - four hours a day - and homework, I did not do that much during the week, except maybe the odd conversation with Veronica. Being an actor and singer, she invited me to a gig she gave last Sunday in a bar in Palermo, which was truly great. She has an impressive voice and sings a repertoire of Latin-American folk songs.
Even more impressive was the gathering in our house last night. Veronica had invited a group of friends for dinner, many of them musicians and singers themselves. What a special bunch of people! We ate and chatted on the terrace and then someone brought out the guitar and some percussion instruments around midnight... Without even a single repetition and without a break we kept singing Latin-American songs until way past five in the morning!!! Well, I should really not include myself here - as some of you may know, I am musically rather challenged. But I did help out a little with the percussion. All sorts of genres were brushed; sambas, boleros, well-known Argentinan songs, as well as songs from all over South and Central America, even compositions of some of the people present, and - of course - many Tangos. I felt quite embarrassed for not even knowing a single German song. Unfortunately we do no have a culture of meeting up with friends and spending whole nights singing. Before five nobody left. And after many people had gone around then, we kept chatting with the few remaining souls. I hit my pillow a little before eight in the morning, the time I normally get up and ready for school. What a night! Certainly a highlight of all my time so far in South America.
When I arrived in Iguacu - after 28 hours on the bus(es) - mainly one thing I noticed; heat! The last hours on the bus going through perfect rain forest, tropical flowers everywhere, palm trees, bananas bushes growing as street trees in the villages... Plenty of bird life. After lugging my backpack to the hostel a few blocks away from the bus terminal, and after a first shower, back to the terminal and straight into the bus to the national park Iguacu in Argentina. Arrival at about lunch time. The little gas train takes me to the different walks in the park. Impressive views, colorful (and huge!) butterflies, parrots and other birds. Get to see my first toucan in the real world. At the visitors center a few leaflets on the park; one of them explaining in detail what to do (and what not) when encountering a puma. Very reassuring! The falls are truly impressive! I do what I have to do and take too many pictures. After about five hours walking around the falls I am very close to heat stroke, though. Only copious amounts of water which I have to buy in half-liter bottles for ridiculously expensive 4 pesos each (about 1,20 €) seem to save me. I sweat like hell... Most people walk around without shirts, girls in bikini tops. Back to town. I book my return bus ticket to Buenos Aires straight away for the next day in the afternoon. To much heat. This, and there is not so much more to do besides the falls. I decide to skip the Brazilian part of the falls. Falls are falls, I think. I do change my mind spontaneously after a good nights sleep and get going to Brazil early next morning. Officially I am leaving Argentina, but the Brazilians can not be bothered with the day tourist and deny me an entry stamp. The Brazilian side of the park has great panoramic views of the Argentinian side. I am glad I went! Get to see more wildlife, a Iguana feeding on berries next to the walk, more birds, more butterflies. After a couple of hours in the heat again, the journey back to Argentina. Again close to heat-stroke. I save myself in a cafe with air conditioning. But the heat must have impeded my thinking. I am leaving late with only ten minutes to go until the bus leaves. I end up having to run for the bus terminal. Uphill. I reach the terminal just in time, but totally drenched in sweat. Just enough time to change my T-shirt before I get on the bus. At the moment I plummet into the comfortable seat, my fresh T-shirt is already drenched again. Thank god for the air conditioned buses, I think. Yes. As it turns out, the air-con is not quite up to the heat and gradually breaks down after half an hour or so. Sauna on the bus... Of course it is a modern bus of the type without any windows to open - it has a brilliant air-conditioning, nobody needs windows! Some passengers bitterly complain with the drivers. So after a couple of prolonged stops to let us passengers cool down in the 35+ degrees outside (it is evening already), the bus company decides to send a replacement bus. We talk about hyper-modern double-decker buses with better-than-business-class-seats! We meet the new bus somewhat later on the road, while the air-con seems to have miraculously recovered. Or is it just the absence of the sun?! Anyway, we change the bus, our luggage remains on the first bus. As it turns out the new busses air-con is even weaker... Again sauna. Interesting conversations with my fellow passengers - nobody understands what is going on. So a couple of hours later, we change back into our first bus which has been following all the time, and hope the air-con is not breaking down again. Which, thank god, it did not do until we arrived in Buenos Aires.  
| | Sorry - I know the fotos are quite monotonous. Always water and a few falls... But there are so many! And they are truly impressive. You get the picture. |
After a 12 hours long and visually quite spectacular bus journey across the Paso Jama (4200m), I have now come back to Argentina. From the bus I got to see many snow-clad volcanoes and some peaks above 6000m, salt lakes, spectacular canyons, lamas, flamingos, and giant cactus trees up to 6m high!
The bus trip would have been a perfect treat, if I had not been surrounded by this family of six (three boys of about 3 to 7 years, a baby and the parents), who all took turns in throwing up during the journey. Yes, all of them! Other than this, they were quite lovely, but not worrying much about cleaning up the mess they left on the floor and also leaving their "used" plastic bags in the bus for someone else to remove... The highlight was when father and one of the sons where puking together into the same bag - a real duet, so to speak. Besides the slightly repugnant smell and the distracting noises, I truly enjoyed the ride.
Salta turned out to be - hot! Arriving arround midnight the temperature had barely dropped to 30 degrees. Not to speak of the humidity. But the city itself has a very pleasant atmosphere and the colonial architecture contributes a lot to that. Unfortunately I could only spend a day here, otherwise I would have had no opportunity to travel to Iguacu directly. So sorry folks, no city pictures.
 
One of the greatest pleasures of traveling is meeting people you would
never come across otherwise! And I feel, I should try and share some of
those travel acquaintances with you - when I find the time. So far, I have to
admit, I did not... And I have already meet so many really great people.
Yesterday, I had a very interesting and educational chat with Evan. He
really did a great job in explaining to me what he was doing and why. I had
never thought Fly Fishing would be such a complex (and fascinating, I
must admit!) thing. I do feel, I lack the knowledge to explain properly
what I have learned yesterday, but I will nevertheless try. (Evan,
should you be reading this, please correct me where I err!)
So where to start? Let's try to understand what you see in the attached
pictures. Fly-making is an art of its own - and Evan certainly is a
master in his profession!. On the huge table he had about twenty
zip-lock bags scattered around, all stuffed with materials such as Elk
hair, Fasan feathers (one single bag just dedicated to about thirty
different sort of chicken feathers!), UV reflecting synthetics, thread,
beads, and what not. All raw fly material. Depending on the area, the
time of day (different bugs hatch at different time of day!), fish,
season and all sorts of parameters you choose the right fly to fish. So
at any time Evan would carry around a stock of about 300 - 400
different flies (with many copies each) so he can choose the right
species. And they are all delicate little pieces of art! And all handmade by the
fisherman. It is probably very hard to see, but on one of the pictures you
can see some examples in the foreground; 'Tschernobyl Ants' (big black things in front) an a few more
other - more conventional - flies behind from the ongoing production.
Then there is the set of dedicated tools for the fly-making. It was
actually a pleasure watching Evan putting the flies together - every
tiny little move obviously practiced many thousand times! A
semi-trancelike process, it seemed.
I blundered and showed my ignorance by asking if he liked to eat
the fish he caught. But his explication that the whole process of
preparing, getting to know the river and the setting, and the actual
fishing would be spoiled by killing the fish after he caught one, does
make sense to me. It is all rather a meditative practice (a way of life?!), than a way to
come by food. There are supermarkets around for the latter purpose, I guess.
This is why a dedicated pincer is used to remove the barb from the
hooks, in order not to harm the fish more than necessary.
I feel there
is a lot I have been missing and forgot to mention. If I have time, I
might catch up with Evan, ask more questions, and even go for a couple
of days fishing with him. I would certainly like to! This is to say, if
our trails cross again in the future, since he has already left today
for El Bolsón in the south... We will see.
  
At least we got it all in one serving! We rented a car between the four of us - Ronni, Fenella, Anna, and me, and set out for a supposedly very scenic two to three-day drive to El Bolsón and the Ruta de los Siete Lagos. ´Supposedly´ since due to the weather the views were rather limited... But well, it could have been pouring with rain all the time!
So we stayed a night in Hippie-El Bolsón, went to the market (kind'a nice) and up to the Refugio Piltriquitrón and the Bosque Tallado (a few wooden sculptures). The next day we drove back to Bariloche to 'do' the seven lakes. Let's say the weather was not horrible all the time...
During the night in San Martin de los Andes the wind was literally howling. The next morning we found our car in quite a bad shape (see picture below) - the windscreen broken and a big dent in the roof. Probably a fallen branch or something flying around. So we went to the Police to get the damage recorded. And then we drove the 250 km back into Bariloche, partly on the scenic, but very curvy gravel road through the lakes. Bypassing Valle de la Angostura, a very pretty little (tourist) town we got actually some sun - just after having taken the decision to cut the tour short by one night. As it turned out, the dent was easily mended by a slight push from the inner side of the car and replacing the windscreen would not cost us a fortune.
Well, I suppose it could all have been a lot worse. In hindsight it was not so bad, actually.
  
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