Leprechauns, Hornswagglers, and Fizzywinks!
Greetings from Buenos Aires, Argentina, a city which (according to the cabbies) has the widest city street in the world - 14 lanes. Ah, but the city´s charms go far past the width of it streets, and thus I have been here for over a week.
When I last wrote, I was in wine growing region in the northwest part of the country. From there I rendezvoused with my friend Rafa in Tucuman and we set our compass south for his hometown of La Cumbre, then Cordoba, and finally Buenos Aires.
Tucuman was a rather bland city with little to offer any sort of traveller, though I did have a chance to eat ungodly amounts of meat and familiarize myself with Argentinian cafe culture. The latter consists of stopping for a tiny espresso about three to four times per day. Not being a coffee drinker, the caffeine intake zipped me up like Gary Busse on speed. But the thing I enjoyed most was watching the old men watching the young ladies.
Whereas in the US all men apparently get a small package in the mail on their 70th birthday containing:
1.) A pair of black, knee-high socks be worn only with pleated shorts.
2.) A license to rip gas in elevators.
3.) The title to a 1982 Buick LeSabre.
the Argentinian men come of age at around 65, at which point they are entitled to abandon tact and subtlety in blatant appreciation of the female form in a public setting. The cafe, then, is their playground. I spent a lot of time hanging out with friends of Rafa´s dad (who I found out later was arrested in the 80´s for taking over an airport in a failed coup and tying a Colonel of the Armed Forces to a chair in the control tower with a telephone cord after hitting him in the face with the butt of a rifle...somehow Rafa did not know all the details...that would not be the case if my old man was into shenanigans like that), so that meant trying to find a chair at a sidewalk cafe and introduce it into the perfect half-circle that they would form around one portion of a table so as to have strategic visual access to the most heavily traversed sidewalk. These were well-dressed older men with cool names like Sergio, Gabriel, and Guillermo, though they said little else after I sat down, as the games were underway. When an attractive young woman would enter the horizon, all small talk would end, the elbow nudge would be shared, all men would attain missile lock, and they would shamelessly follow the woman with their eyes until she disappeared from sight, at which point conversation would clumsily resume.
Truth be told, they are still more tactful than most other younger Argentinian men at bars, though that is only when alcohol is involved. In that case, a group of guys openly cheers or claps for each girl that goes by that they like. Sweet style.
But as I said, Tucuman wasn´t much of a tourist paradise, so Rafa and I left as soon as his shady responsibilities moonlighting as a bidder for governmental powdered milk contracts had concluded. From Tucuman we drove to the small, Door County-esque town of La Cumbre, where Rafa grew up. Time there consisted of exploring the small mountains and rivers in the vicinity, hanging out with Rafa´s friends (nearly all of whom live the sweet life in their late 20´s or early 30´s by living with their parents and somehow not working), and celebrating Halloween. Since La Cumbre was for a time a British colony, that holiday remained after the Brits left.
I had no costume, so Rafa´s girlfriend gave me a bag of clothes and told me that she thought they would fit. I went to go put them on and was less than delighted to find a halter top, some sort of burgundy vest that didn´t go past my rib cage, a mini skirt, and a gold wig. We hit a number of clubs before hitting ´´the real party´´ held at a club located in a residential area named Toby´s (and enigmatically owned by one of Rafa´s very entertaining friends who had no job and lived with his parents), which people strangely started to fill as soon as the clock struck 4:30 AM. Not accustomed to the hours of the nightlife and a party that was still rolling at 7 when I left, I started kicking back a number of Speed Unlimited (like a poor man´s Red Bull) and Vodkas. The 80´s rock ballads being strummed up by Lucho (30, unemployed, lives with his parents, very funny, dressed as Flavor Flav) and the tight crowds did not mix well with my out of place doh-see-doh meneuvers, so I headed home as it was getting light outside. In the morning I woke up in my golden wig to learn that that the Speed Unlimited had somehow numbed half of one my fingers. This is making typing somewhat difficult right now.
Oh, I forgot to write about Rafa´s girlfriend. Shortly after arriving in La Cumbre, we went to pick her up. Her name was Desiree, and I must admit that she was very good looking, though that confession will sound strange in a minute. She lived with her parents, but this was obviously par for the course. So we stepped in and her Mom and Dad peppered me with all kinds of strange questions. Later, while she and I were talking alone, we had the following awkward exchange:
Desiree: ¨Wow. So you´re really travelling for a long time. How old are you?¨
Me: 27. (glad she asked because I can never tell how old Latin people are but feel stupid asking since it sounds like such a Spanish textbook type of question) How old are you?
Desiree: 16
Me: (Thinking I didn´t hear right) What?
Desiree: 16
(Awkward silence...doing the math...right...so Rafa is 29...she...is 16...and that means...right...)
Me: Oh...how´s high school?
Rafa assured me later that it was ¨normal¨ in Argentina and that her parents were ¨cool with it¨. Hmmm. Indeed. Long live the true Ponce de Leon.
From La Cumbre we passed through Cordoba and wound up in Buenos Aires, which immediately blew me away due its size. Argentina is the 8th largest country in the world in terms of landmass, yet it only has 38 million inhabitants. Nearly 13 million of those live in the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires has been the priciest city of the trip so far, and most of the money I have shelled out has been on food and drink. For the first time on the trip, I truly look forward to every meal. In fact, I had the best steak of my life at a manly restaurant with the Sally name of Cabin of the Lillies.
A friend of Rafa´s came in from DC, so over the course of a few days we did some salsa dancing, played Bingo in a huge casino with a bunch of enthusiastic locals, toured the city, and a bunch of other details that I won´t belabor right now. Sadly, the two most entertaining things to write about are also the most unfortunate for me. First, I was robbed. And, second, I flirted with the possibility of serious personal injury.
The robbery took place in the morning at a small park in one of the three medians that separate the lanes in the 14-lane avenue I referenced earlier. I was reading the paper, enjoying some breakfast, when I suddenly realized that a bird had just pooped in my yogurt and on my leg. I figured this to be revenge for not sharing my donut with the crowd of birds gathered around my feet. At right around this time, a man in his 50´s walked by and motioned to the birds in the tree directly above me. I stood up to survey the breadth of the poop, at which point the man directed me to a cement post a short distance away where he claimed there was water. Near the post a woman in her thirties noticed my leg and offered some of her Kleenex while addressing me in an apologetic tone. I was not in the mood to have people wiping poop off my leg, so I brushed them away. It was on the way back to the hotel that I realized that my camera was not in my pocket.
I also had had a video camera and some cash on me, so they didn´t fleece me completely But I was pretty irritated, and I had evil thoughts of breaking all of that woman´s fingers one by one. Strangely, the more I thought about it, the less upset I got. It´s one thing to be robbed, but to be bamboozled by a three-person (including the deuce squirter in the grassy knoll) squad in an elaborate artificial poop ploy is quite another. I admired their audacity and originality, and, as an aside, I believe that the fake poop recipe involved a spicy mustard.
The brush with personal injury took place at a sort of communications center (mixture of telephone booths for international calls and computers for Internet access) two days later. The place was packed, and the only remaining computer was near the entrance at a small desk.
Sitting down in a chair is a fairly routine practice, but on this day everything went horribly wrong. As I attempted to squeeze into the spot and my left butt cheek touched down on the aged swiveling office chair, something buckled and the chair zipped away with me positioned loosely along its periphery. What stopped it was the 8´ x 8´ storefront window...but it didn´t stop me. It was LOUD, and when I opened my eyes my hands were on the outside sidewalk holding my body up (along with a leg draped over the chair). I was a little scared to turn around for fear of seeing a denim-clad Patrick Swayze looking at me pitifully as he would utter, ¨Oh, Carl...¨. But despite my arms and shoulder being covered in shards of glass, I had not a scratch.
Also strange was the reaction of the other customers and the management. I would like to think that if something like that happened in the US, people would stop what they were doing, women may scream, and those in the immediate vicinity would rush to my aid. Not here. Everyone was so perversely cavalier that you´d think someone fell through that window everyday and my little piece of drama was old hat. ¨What´s that, honey? I didn´t hear you. Oh, the sound? Yeah, some foreign guy fell for the old rickety chair scheme and went through the front window. Sure. So, when´s dinner?¨
As for the girl that worked there, she asked me if I was cut, and nothing else was said until I went to pay for using the Internet. ¨1 peso (33 cents)¨. I said I was sorry about the window, but she had already gone back to reading her magazine.
I am actually no longer in Buenos Aires, as I have been writing this on and off for a few days. Instead, I am in the small town of Azul, south of Buenos Aires on the way to the southern tip. Yesterday I finally got my Ted Danson-bald rear tire replaced, and the shop doubled as a sort of sanctuary/rest stop for motorcycle travellers from all over the world. Last night I did my part to polish off five bottles of wine with two older guys from Cyprus as they jammed out on a guitar called a buziki they brought with them and sang some unusual tunes in their native tongue. The sleeping area was already booked up when I got there, so I ended up sleeping in a garage amidst about 25 motorcycles. And thank God for the wine, as it was a little brisk and the owner dug up a somewhat unusual Argentinian military cot from the ´20s for me to sleep on.
The march to the south continues...
- Tom
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