a travelogue in the time of the information superhighway

1994

My story starts in drizzly, dreary, grey England. I worked as a nurse in a specialist cancer hospital in Manchester. One day, I suddenly entered her world, there she was. At once beautiful, but decaying visibly. Eyes that melt you, fumbled for reasons. High on morphine, she slumped on the chair. Her legs, previously long and graceful, were now fat and full of fluid. She was loosing her hair, something that upset her most. We all witnessed her struggling with the remains of her dignity and modesty, but she carried on fighting. Her mother applied facial cream like a corner man at ringside, her father just looked lost. She was a twenty seven year old woman, right before us, dying in her prime. She seemed to hold up a mirror to the thoughts sailing across my mind, a metaphor for what we've all become and what will become of us. So much potential, so much waste. It is at moments like this that we can take the looking glass to our own fragile existence, and ask questions of it. Cancer had infiltrated her womb, the very giver of life. I became aware of a feeling that her death had released something else, a thirst for living itself. She haunted me. Four months later, I set out on an adventure to view the world that she would no longer see.

Posted by don quixote

Thursday 11 October 2007

villa giardino, argentina

Life here is wonderful, the weather at the moment is the only down side. We can have a week of sunny days in the 26´s and then it will revert back to cold and rain around the 10´s. But it´s still only the spring, summer isn´t until december when it will be hot but can rain a lot. This is a beautiful place, it´s surrounded by green mountains and rolling hills, you can walk from here directly into them. We are nestled amongst trees just off the main street and a five minute walk into the village. Gauchos on horseback ride by several times a day and horses roam about grazing at their leisure. The people are incredibly friendly and don´t appear to be resentful of foreigners because they are helping the local economy and bringing in more tourists. Also, because this is a land of immigrants, it is open to more and there is land aplenty. This is still emerging as a tourist place, the main people being from buenos aires(porteƱos), many with second homes here and some who have moved here permanently. A 2 minute walk away is los caminos del artisanas, which runs to la cumbre(15k) along a rough track, an already established tourist centre. Numerous artists and handicraft shops are located there, selling fantastic things at absurdly low prices. This whole area is a centre for walking, mountain biking, horse riding and paragliding. The economy in argentina, while improving and rising out of the 2002 crash, is still slow to recover and especially in buenos aires, there is significant poverty amongst the lower middle and working classes. David and JP´s business is a small tapas restaurant, selling things like spanish tortilla, meatballs, beef in beer, pork and apple , cheese and jamon plata, etc in small bowls. Lovely ambience and outside seating area. Katherine is nearly trained up as the comis chef working with david and I am the runner, taking the orders to them in the kitchen, delivering the food to JP to serve and looking after the bills. JP is the front man, explaining about the food and generally chatting them up. This weekend will test our new systems as its a long weekend holiday and we expect to be busy, stress could be high and we might all end up killing each other! So wish us luck! Standard of living is cheap, though inflation is rising, and property and land are incredibly cheap. There are 2 properties right by davids that we could be interested in. One is set back from the main street, has about an acre of land and already has the floors and walls built, we think work stopped when money run out. 3 bedrooms, space for an internal court yard and a roof terrace. This could be going for 17000 pounds and with low labour and materials costs, could be done up for as little as 5000 pounds. Another, is a similar size and has the house built already but would need work. Nestled amongst trees and overlooking horses in a field and on the other side a view of the mountains, just back from the main street, 15000 pounds.We are seriously considering to buy here and return to the uk for the summers to nurse, keep our registration up and earn money that will go along way here. So we could do a place up slowly and to our design, each time we come out. We could end up with a house that would cost 1/2 a million at home in an emerging tourist area and a growing national economy that hasn´t seen the generals for over twenty years. There are risks, but when the investment isn´t too huge, there isn´t too much to loose.

Thursday 4 October 2007

argentina

We arrived in this beautiful land two weeks ago, exhausted and bruised from our tour of the salar de uyuni in Bolivia. The boarder crossing didn´t present too many problems, however the bus to Salta was a big disappointment. Every traveller, without exception, heading northwards from Argentina had said the buses were the best in SA. We got herded past the posh bus to another shitsville imitation and told it to was going to Salta. It wasn´t the chicken bus but luxury, would not be an adjective I would use. More to the point, it wasn´t going to Salta. No, it was going to Jujuy, where we were supposed to change on to another bus for Salta, that information never relayed to us, so consequently we miss the connection and wait around the bus station for four hours at night time. Lot´s of negotiation, in limited Spanish, eventually get´s us on the last bus for Salta but now we will arrive in the early hours. This was a posh bus! so tired and stressed, we sat back and enjoyed front top seats and cruised off into the night.

First impressions from the bus(?) window were interesting. Heading south from the boarder, faces, landscape and buildings weren´t as different as I´d expected. The indigena were still present in smaller numbers but also in the faces of the landino´s. There were still mud brick houses and poverty in abundance. The difference was in the infrastructure, the roads were paved and so many more private cars. From Jujuy to Salta, gradually the differences with Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia ironed themselves out to reveal a country that could place itself in southern Europe with ease. As the bus entered Salta from the hills, the lights of the city welcomed us into it´s valley and introduced us to a bus station that was better than any I have seen in England.