Fjordy Days and Fjordy Nights

I'm back on terra firma after three days spent on a boat and off the radar.  My mind is officially blown.  The things we saw were absolutely spectacular, and I'm realizing that I'm rapidly running out of superlatives to describe my experiences on this trip.  I think I have a lot less insight to offer into things when it's just "this naturally-occuring phenomenon is awesome" and there's not any cultural stuff involved, but I'll take you through my time aboard the Mare Australis.

The first day began with a sunrise stop at Cape Horn, the southernmost point in the world--not including Antarctica.  The view from the largely unspoilt cliffs of Isla de Hornos out over the vast southern seas was one in a long string of glimpses of the humbling power of nature.  From there we headed over to Wulaia Bay, where we disembarked and hiked up a hill to a viewpoint.  It was up there that I turned to Todd and Valerie, possibly the only other people on the boat traveling with a backpack, and said "yeah, I think I'm starting to understand this whole Patagonia thing."  I took some massive panoramic photos up there if you're curious as to what I mean.

Wulaia Bay also offered some excellent wildlife sightings.  Patagonia is one of the few places in the world where the most aggressive resident is Canadian.  And indeed, on the way up the hill, we saw many telltale signs of beavers, and eventually caught a glimpse of one swimming around its dam.  Beavers were brought to Patagonia from Canada over 100 years ago in the hopes of giving the area a fur industry as strong as its wool trade.  Apparently, however, beaver fur requires stressed-out beavers--the adrenaline makes the fur usable somehow through the magic of endocrinology.  The beavers in Patagonia found the region much more accommodating than Canada had been, and instead of providing a stressed-out foundation for the economy, they grew from a population of 50 to about 50,000.  Seriously people.  Stop bringing invasive species to places because you think you're smarter than millions of years of evolution.  I don't care how adorable they are.  It messes things up.  Though, that said, the beaver was adorable.  On the zodiac boats back to the ship (yes, I do feel like a character from LOST), a few dolphins swam around us and jumped around in the water.  I got one decent video of them and a whole lot of videos of looking for them.

Day two involved a drip to the Alacalufe Fjord in Chico Inlet, where we got to take zodiacs over to Nena and Piloto Glaciers.  This was where I learned that glaciers and the fjords they create are some pretty impressive geographical formations (understatement alert).  What's completely daunting is the total loss of spatial perspective.  You sit in a boat next to this enormous thing, but you're far enough away that it's tough to tell how far away you are, and just how massive the thing is.  Our guide said the glacier runs about 1800 meters up to an ice field.  It's basically the world's largest freezer.

The glaciers were comprised of mostly blue ice--meaning that the ice is very old and has spent centuries being compacted by the glacier's enormous weight.  On that particular day, there had been a tremendous amount of calving, which happens when part of the ice underneath melts down, and the glacier can't support the weight of a large chunk, which falls into the water.  The water was so full of icebergs it looked like you could get out and walk.  In some places, you probably could.  There were icebergs twice the size of our zodiacs (which hold about 14 people each) that had apparently fallen off the glacier earlier in the day.  We got to see a small amount of calving, as a piece about 3-5 feet high fell off and landed with an astonishingly thunderous crack.  Again, humbling.

The fjords themselves are extremely impressive.  The sheer basalt cliffs carved out over millenia look downright forboding, and the waterfalls cascading down in places from the ice fields on top give the whole thing an otherworldy feel.  In places, one can see moss, grass, or even small trees, giving a sense of how relatively long ago the glacier receded from a certain section of the rock.  The water that winds its way through is the most reflective I've ever seen--presumably relating to a high mineral content.  In a lot of places it looks like a mirror.  I tried to get some pictures that captured this, which came out okay, but suffice to say it's really an incredible phenomenon.  Remarkably, the ferociously salty and incredibly cold water has a very healthy jellyfish population.  I saw one from the boat that was a good two feet long.  I guess they're the ocean's cockroaches, durability-wise.

I'm fairly certain everyone who's reading this is intellectually honest enough to recognize the threat that global warming poses.  I just feel the need to mention that having now seen just some of the world's smaller glaciers, I realize not just how much more water that will mean in the ocean, but also what a magnificent thing it is that we're slowly losing.  Our guide told us that just in the last couple years since he started coming to these glaciers, they have receded immensely, melting and falling into the salty seawater, and it is truly a tragedy.

Our last stop was at Magdalena Island, home to a colony of 50,000 or so Magellanic Penguins.  This might sound a bit silly, but the thing that was most striking to me was, when you see them in the wild, just how clear it is that they are birds.  I note this simply because I remember being a kid and learning that penguins are birds and being completely confused.  But they waddle around like ducks, they have feathers and beaks, and they really just look like birds that haven't bothered to figure out how to fly.  They are also some of the loudest creatures I've encountered.  They wander around braying out loud--it sounds like donkeys--in the hopes of tracking down their monogamous partners.  To be clear, it's not to find a new mate, it's to get back in contact with the old one, who they sometimes lose in the crowd of 50,000 other birds that look almost exactly the same.  Somewhat amusingly, they mate for life unless they really just can't find their partner, in which case they find another.  They are also, as it happens, criminally adorable.

What's also pretty cool about Magdalena is that the penguins don't really care much about the human presence, so they'll just walk right by you.  If you're walking faster they'll run out of the way, but generally speaking they'll just sort of assume some unspoken terms of feigned mutual ignorance.  They're obviously wrong about whether we're paying attention to them, but that's another issue entirely.

I'm now in Puerto Natales in Chile, home of a giant ground sloth cave and the base for trips to Torres del Paine national park.  I am also hungry, so I'm going to do something about that.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Cabo de Hornos - Cape Horn

Wulaia Bay

Alacalufe Fjord

Magdalena Island Penguin Colony

Tierra del Blogo

Today, for the first time in two and a half months it was colder where I was than it was in New York.  I arrived this afternoon in Ushuaia, the main hub of Argentine Tierra del Fuego.  Technically, Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world.  I say technically because that relies on a strict interpretation of the word "city," as Puerto Williams is further south, but claims only 2,000 residents to Ushuaia's 64,000.  Whatever the case, it's far enough south to be pretty freaking cold, even as the Summer is just starting to turn to Fall.  Today was mostly in the 40s and 50s, which meant busting out the cold-weather wear that had been going mostly unused for the last few months.  Given that this trip was motivated in part by a desire to escape Winter, my decision to come down here initially caused me a bit of cognitive dissonance.  The rationale I ultimately settled on is that if you're going to be somewhere cold, it might as well also be pretty freaking amazing.  So far, so good.

Ushuaia is surrounded on all sides by jarringly jagged peaks that are draped with snowy glaciers.  The effect of this is that you end up with a surprisingly dramatic vista anytime you're looking down any street in town.  The town is built on a hill, with the top part at the northern end and the Beagle Channel--named for Darwin's boat--at the southern border.  The Beagle Channel's royal shade of blue forms a striking contrast with the gray, brown, and white peaks all around, meaning that one can just stand by the water and take in the beauty, and nearly forget that your hands are starting to feel a bit numb.

The main street in Ushuaia, San Martín, has a surprisingly familiar range of gear shops for outdoors activities.  Hiking and ski shops are more common than basically anything aside from food and lodging.  In a lot of ways, Ushuaia resembles a ski town in the states--at least in part because it's a ski down down here in the Winter.  It's pretty populous--much more bustle than, say, Penn Yan, NY, but most of the people are just here as part of the tourist economy, be it on the supply side or the consumption side.  There isn't much else to rely on, resource-wise.  Ushuaia gets most of their basic goods on boats from the mainland--Tierra del Fuego is an island, after all.  Most of the early population growth here came out of its service as a penal colony, and the prison remains a tourist destination (which I'll likely visit tomorrow).

I feel like I got through my Buenos Aires wall before I left, and started to appreciate it as a city that really does have a lot to do if you live there.  After spending much of my time there feeling sort of underwhelmed (and perhaps overwhelmed at the same time), I left feeling a bit sad to be leaving it behind, though obviously excited for this next phase of the trip.  Tomorrow I'll be starting a three-day boat trip down to Cape Horn* and then across the Magellan Strait to Punta Arenas in Chile.  I should have some time to explore a bit more of the Land of Fire before I go, but until then I need to get some shut-eye.  I doubt I'll have internet on the boat, so I suspect I'll check in a few days from now feeling amazed and seasick.

Saludos,
Seth

*Cape Horn is called Cabo de Hornos in Spanish.  This translates as "Cape of the Ovens," which is obviously different from the English meaning.  I'm not sure what the origin is, but if I find out I'll pass along the info.

**Tierra del Fuego means "Land of the Fire," an odd name for such a cold place.  It gets its name from when Magellan sailed through and saw the many fires the region's indigenous people lit to keep themselves warm at night.

Fotografía:

Tierra del Fuego

Holy Guaçu, Sethman!

I spent the last two days at Iguazú Falls on the Argentine-Brazilian border.  It was among the most awe-inspiring things I've seen in my entire life.  Supposedly, when Eleanor Roosevelt visited Brazil, she went to the falls, and exclaimed, "Poor Niagara!"  Poor Niagara indeed.  If you can imagine dropping a tropical jungle into the Grand Canyon, and then having 275 individual waterfalls springing out everywhere you look, that gives a bit of a sense of the place.  What I had never quite comprehended from pictures was the scale of the thing.  On the Brazilian side, your first peek is of a very impressive torrent, which I initially mistook for the entire falls.  I was left standing there, jaw agape, from what turned out to be less than a fifth of the whole thing.

Note the rainbow to the left of my legs.

As I continued walking along the path, stopping at increasingly impressive lookout points from which increasingly more of the falls were visible, I could not stop exclaiming "wow" and "oh my goodness" to no one in particular.  I sounded like Beaver Cleaver on hallucinogens.  The best way I can think to sum it up is in a way that brings back the Grand Canyon comparison:  When I was a kid, my family took a trip to Arizona.  One of my father's friends explained before we left, "you always hear that the Grand Canyon is cool, and you think 'okay' but you don't realize until you get there that it's this big freaking hole in the ground!*"  Well, Iguazú is a big freaking hole in the ground**, with a big freaking river*** flowing through it, to boot.

Let's get some basic facts out of the way.  Iguazú has the greatest average annual water flow of any waterfall in the world.  At its highest (about 269 feet), it is 1.6 times the height of Niagara, and it is two and a quarter times as wide (a mile and two thirds).  It is comprised of 275 individual cataracts, but you can't see them all at once from the ground.  Although the border between the two countries cuts down the middle of the river, the shape of the basalt shelf is such that the water roughly flows from Argentina to Brazil.  As a result, the Brazilian side offers the more spectacular panoramic views, while the Argentine side, sitting behind the falls, allows one to see the individual falls from up close.

I had the benefit of nearly perfect timing with the weather, arriving after several days of steady downpour--meaning spectacularly high flow at the falls--and on two straight days of glorious sunshine--meaning rainbows and what seemed like half the world's population of butterflies, especially on the Argentine side.  My friend Praz pointed out that if one were to design paradise from scratch, a verdant subtropical forest filled with waterfalls, rainbows, and butterflies would probably be a good place to start.

I wasn't expecting to be able to go to the Brazilian side, because American tourists need a visa to enter Brazil, and by all accounts this has to be done in advance.  It turns out, however, that "in advance" can also mean "the same morning" if you go to the Brazilian consulate in Puerto Iguazú, on the Argentine side.  There are rumors that Brazil unofficially tolerates a day trip if you have both directions of the voyage arranged beforehand.  Unfortunately, I didn't know this until after the fact, so I ended up getting a visa.  On the plus side, in so doing, I managed to avoid violating any international treaties.

I always mostly just thought of Brazil as a big country with a blue cheeseburger on its flag, but there's clearly a lot going on.   My five-hour visit to Brazil turned out to be a pretty serious culture shock.  After so much time spent learning and practicing Spanish, entering a country where it's not spoken was a major challenge.  I've been to countries where I don't speak the language before, but never without any kind of phrase book, or without even knowing how to say "hello."  So it was pretty challenging.  My conversations would generally go like this:

Employee of Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: [unintelligible].
Me: [blank stare].
Employee of Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: [unintelligible and louder].

Me: [blank stare].

Employee of Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: [blank stare].

Me: ¿Hablas Español?

Employee of Parque Nacional do Iguaçu: Não.

Me: [blank stare].

Fortunately, I managed to get through the day without any kind of major linguistic disaster, and even managed to order ice cream (twice) and a beer.  I eventually managed to learn the exchange rate, which was not posted anywhere near the ATM.  In the interim, I avoided accidentally overspending on anything, which I consider a major victory.  Needless to say, however, I was very happy to get back to good old Spanish-speaking Argentina.

The Argentine side covers a lot more ground than the Brazilian side.  We devoted about six hours to it, and still didn't see the whole thing.  This isn't actually that surprising given the sheer volume of waterfall one can see, but it's impressive nonetheless.  We managed to get pretty lucky in terms of the crowd, as there were a lot of people, but not so many that we had to wait in long lines at the various viewing stations--something I'd seen from the Brazilian side the day before.  It felt a little bit like Disneyworld if the main attractions centered around the awesomeness of nature and not Space Mountain.  There's even a little electric train--controversial, but ultimately sparing the park a great deal of vehicle traffic--that takes you out to the trails.

The eternal question before going to Iguazú/Iguaçu is whether one really needs to see both sides.  My answer would be that the Argentine side was probably a bit more spectacular, and worth visiting if one really only has one day, but I would definitely have regretted missing the Brazilian side.  I think the order in which I did it was just about perfect, getting the scale of the whole site on the first day, and then getting to explore it up close the second day.

This is a bit off-topic, but I think I should also take a moment to follow up on my Buenos Aires post from last weekend.  I have to say, if I thought that complaining about being unimpressed by things would ensure three days like the ones that followed, this blog would be the whiniest collection of words the internet has ever known.  Fortunately, as a stats geek, I know a thing or two about correlation and causation, so I'll just stick to being extremely grateful for the incredible experiences I've been fortunate enough to have.

And now, it's time to find some lunch and figure out my last few days in Buenos Aires, before leaving for Patagonia on Tuesday.

Saludos,
Seth

* Language cleaned up in case any children read this.
** Not as big as the Grand Canyon, but still freaking big.
*** See "*".

Fotografía:

Parque Nacional do Iguaçu (Brazil)

Parque Nacional de Iguazú (Argentina)

Bloga Juniors

Buenos Aires has delivered.  This morning I hopped on a bus with my flatmates Elizabeth and Marty, and we headed to La Boca.  La Boca is an old immigrant neighborhood, sort of the Buenos Aires version of the Lower East Side.  It originally drew so many immigrants because of the port, which provided a number of jobs in the shipping industry.  La Boca is perhaps best known as the birthplace of tango (although San Telmo makes the same claim), but it has much more than just that to commend it.  Because the economy centered so much around the port, the houses were built from scrap zinc, and were painted with paint leftover from the ships.  Thus the extremely specific sheet-metal-and-bright-paint Boca aesthetic was born.

Boca has a bit of a reputation for being one of the tougher areas in the city.  While I'm certain that there are parts that one is best off avoiding, I'd spoken to a number of people who reported that the areas just off the extremely touristy El Caminito (little road) are perfectly fine, and in fact more pleasant.  I probably wouldn't wander around there at night, but it was a lovely place to walk around on a Monday morning.  Although El Caminito is full of the usual touristy schlock, the surrounding areas were downright tranquil.  What's more, the look and feel of the place held firm, and in many ways felt more authentic.

An interesting thing about Buenos Aires that I hadn't really picked up on until my trip to La Boca is the role of direct-marketers in the street.  Just as in New York and plenty of other places, one encounters an endless sea of people handing out flyers.  And just as in New York, my initial instinct is to just ignore them--usually saying "no, gracias"--and keep walking.  But twice today, Marty, Elizabeth and I found ourselves stopped to figure out where to go next, while standing immediately adjacent to one of these hawkers.  And both times, after it became clear that we weren't going to take their flyers, they started talking to us.  It turns out that they're extremely friendly--especially if you speak Spanish.  One ultimately directed us to a lovely little courtyard parilla where we had lunch.  I also got to try a proveleta, which is literally just a 5-inch diameter circular slab of grilled provolone cheese.  I paired it with a salad of course.  Sort of the Mitch Hedberg philosophy of  eating.  (e.g. "if you eat something healthy, the unhealthy stuff you eat with it doesn't count.  It's like the lettuce says 'don't worry, he's with me.'")  It was delicious, but definitely made me feel like I needed a nap. 

Boca is also home to Boca Juniors, one of Argentina's two most popular soccer teams (along with River Plate*).  Boca Juniors was the team for which Diego Maradona used to play, and they play in the famous La Bombonera stadium.  La Bombonera, decked out in the team's classic blue and gold, is an architecturally interesting structure.  When they built it, they didn't have enough room for a traditional bowl-shaped stadium.  So it's as though they built one, and then just pressed it in from one side--one of the long sides of the pitch has vertically-tiered seating like boxes in an opera house.  The stadium also houses the "Museum of Boca's Passion," which is the very excellent official name for the soccer museum.

At any rate, I was thrilled with the whole experience because I had been looking around for something that distinguished Buenos Aires from any other large city.  For all I had heard of how European it feels, it seemed to be sort of a recreation of a generic European city, as opposed to its own unique entity.  Having been to La Boca, I no longer feel that way.  Although the touristy parts were almost Disneyesque, the historical authenticity of the neighborhood couldn't help but come through.

I should also add that yesterday I went to El Zanjón, which is a recent archaeological find.  It was a mansion in the late 19th century, but the owners fled it during the yellow fever outbreak around that time.  San Telmo, where the mansion was, was originally one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires.  But the threat of disease caused a lot of wealthy families to uproot and move to Recoleta, paving the path for that neighborhood to become the upscale home of dignitaries living and deceased. Excavations of the house also revealed a series of tunnels underneath that date to the 16th century, and which were part of the original canal system to bring water to the houses of settlers.  Some historians speculate that the original settlement of Buenos Aires--both founded and abandoned in the first half of the 16th century--started in this area, and it's possible that these canals were part of it.  Of course, this is yet another historical claim over which La Boca and San Telmo are in dispute--the Boquenses think the settlement was in their neighborhood at the mouth (boca) of the Riochuelo.  I have no real interest in getting in the middle of this fight.  So, I report, you decide, as it were.

Anyway, now I'm at a hostel in Puerto Iguazú, which is a base for a trip into the park tomorrow to see some of the world's most spectacular waterfalls.  It is in the jungle, which means that in the first ten minutes that I was outside, I got bitten by about fifty bugs.  Anyway, the hope is that I can get a visa from the Brazilian consulate, and see the Brazilian side tomorrow, and the Argentine side on Wednesday.  Whether that will pan out remains to be seen.  The park does apparently offer a great deal in terms of wildlife and natural beauty, so even if I'm "stuck" on the Argentine side, I'll be more than happy with that.  Now I just have to figure out what to do about dinner.  Preferably, it won't be a giant hunk of grilled provolone--I'm looking for some variety.

Saludos,
Seth

*River Plate gets their name from "Rioplata," the name for the region surrounding the Rio de la Plata--the river that runs between Uruguay and Argentina.  Rio de la Plata actually means "River of Silver," an optimistic name chosen by Spanish explorers who were expecting to return home with ships full of precious metals.  Therefore, "River Plate," the English term that is sometimes used to describe both the region and the soccer team (as well as Uruguayan and Paraguayan teams of the same name), is actually a mistranslation.  Although, given that the explorers never did find any silver here, it probably makes more sense.

Fotografía:

La Boca

El Zanjón

Buenos Aires

Blognos Aires

I haven't been writing much lately for two reasons. The first is that I've been a bit under the weather. I got some sort of stomach flu, which is always fun. I'm mostly better now, probably around 80-90%. Anyway, the other reason is that I haven't had a whole lot to write about. The truth is that, although I've certainly enjoyed Buenos Aires so far, it hasn't grabbed me in quite the same way that Montevideo did. I was talking with my parents last night, and trying to figure out why that was, and I think there are a few reasons.

First off, I haven't yet encountered the things about Buenos Aires that make it uniquely Buenos Aires.  Right now, most of what I've seen is more big city culture than anything else.  Obviously I love big city culture, having lived in New York for a while, but it's not as exciting a thing for me to visit.  Another thing is that I happen to be exactly halfway through a four month journey, so I've been needing a bit of a breather.  It's obviously impossible to go full-bore for that long, so I just haven't been as active here as I was in other places.  The third reason is that I think I just haven't seen the best of this town yet.  I've seen a lot of staples--Recoleta, the Casa Rosada, Puerto Madero--but I haven't yet found whatever it is about Buenos Aires that is unique, the way that Murga was in uruguay or Ometepe was in Nicaragua.  I still haven't been to La Boca, which is touristy but apparently pretty incredible, so that may well change things.  And I have some other good stuff planned for the next week, so I certainly remain optimistic.

I should add that I don't consider this a criticism of Buenos Aires.  Among other things, it strikes me as a wonderful place to live.  It's extremely cosmopolitan, and full of great food and culture.  I think the circumstances are just such that right now it's not grabbing me.  What's funny about it is that it might just be that it feels a bit too much like a South American version of home.  I've been stopped on the street for directions more times than I can count.  In part that's because, unlike in Nicaragua, there are actually locals here who look like me.  But I think in part it's because I feel pretty at home walking down a city street.  So I think that keeps me from looking like a tourist, even if I am in flip flops and carrying a backpack.

At any rate, I managed to get an excellent big city cultural experience today, when I went over to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.  It was smaller than your Met or your Louvre, for sure, but still very impressive.  In particular, there was a Goya room, which featured some of his works that I've never seen before.  Goya is best known for his Black Paintings, which feature extremely dark subject matter.  One of my particular favorites is his painting of Saturn.  Anyway, it turns out that at the end of the 18th century, he did a series of prints called "Caprichos" ("Caprices"), which were almost like editorial cartoons, satirizing the lightheartedness of Spanish society.  The museum had a few prints--you can look through them here--and they were pretty captivating.  In addition to an excellent impressionist collection--Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Degas, and Gaughuin are all on hand--there's an excellent little satirical drawing of Picasso's, entitled "Sueño y Mentira de Franco" ("Dream and Lie of Franco").  I like these all less specifically because they're satirical cartoons, and more because they're so far outside the normal realm of what we're accustomed to from these artists.  Additionally, I always find well-done political protest art to be incredibly potent.

The museum, it happens, is just across the street from Recoleta Cemetary, where I went last weekend.  This gave me another opportunity to stroll through the little market that pops up there on weekends.  The thing that I'm most struck by about the market is the range of goods.  Not in terms of just that things are different, that's not what I mean.  I mean there is a serious range, to my mind, of likelihood of someone wanting to buy a certain thing.  On the one hand, one can find beautiful handmade jewelery, lush handknit scarves, and really interesting paintings.  On the other, one can choose instead to buy miniature sculptures of mate gourds that say "Argentina" on them--the Buenos Aires equivalent of the Empire State Building pencil sharpener.  Another option is chintzy pewter dragons for high schoolers going through a goth phase.  There are also people who sell individual dreadlock extensions.  I'm not kidding.  And the thing is, the handmade goods are sold by the people who actually make them.  And they are all there at the same market.  And I sometimes wonder whether the guy who's done all of these incredible watercolors might be setting up on a Saturday morning.  And maybe the mass-produced mini-mate guy shows up a half-hour later (tell me I'm wrong) and sets up next to him.  I wonder if, at that moment, the watercolor artist just thinks, "#$&%@ you."

Anyway, given my ongoing state of illness, I'm going to head to bed.  I'm off to Iguazu National Park on Monday, at which I'm expecting a total mindblowing.  So I'll talk to you all soon.

Saludos,
Seth

Fotografía:

Buenos Aires

Ciudad de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre (Buenos Aires, for short)

Buenos Aires is for lovers.  Well, perhaps I should rephrase that.  Buenos Aires is for teenagers who are apparently out of sight of their parents for the first time in weeks.  Walk down any street and you're very likely to see two kids in their mid-to-late teens aggressively sucking face.  For me, the pinnacle of this phenomenon came during my trip yesterday to Recoleta Cemetery--an old historic cemetary with some truly beautiful tombs, as well as the resting place of several Argentine presidents and one extremely famous first lady.  I was walking down one of the pathways amid some intricately crafted family vaults, when I happened upon two kids, probably about 19, determining each other's tonsillar textures.  Nothing too noteworthy there.  Until I noticed that there was someone about 5 feet away from them, taking a photo.  A little strange.  I then watched as this initially-creepy-seeming photographer fellow handed the camera back to the couple.  They thanked him, he said "you're welcome," and he walked away.  It was so important to them to have an action photo of themselves that they stopped a stranger in a cemetery!  It was at precisely that moment that, for me, Argentine-teenage-lung-consolidation went from minor nuisance to minor amusement.*

Setting aside the raging hormones of its youth population, Buenos Aires definitely requires a bit of getting used to.  At 13 million people, it is the second biggest metropolitan area in South America (after Sao Paolo) and seventeenth biggest in the world (ahead of London, Beijing, and all U.S. cities other than New York and Los Angeles).  And it has all of the bustle accordant with such a ranking.  Arriving here as a tourist is a bit comparable to being dropped in midtown Manhattan and told, "ok, go."  There are so many options it can be tough to know where to start.  Moreover, the moment you hit the street, there are thousands of people walking with a purpose, and you're just another one of them.  It's almost enough (I said "almost") to make me understand why some tourists never leave Times Square.  It's certainly a significant change from Montevideo, which the orientation literature from my new school refers to with a single somewhat dismissive sentence: "Montevideo is a small, quiet city and it has a beach."

Argentinos have a bit of a reputation for arrogance, and it does seem to show up when they discuss Uruguay--although one of my teachers said they could learn a great deal from the recent successes of the Uruguayan government in enhancing the quality of life of its citizens.  The distaste, as it happens, is mutual.  A taxi driver in Montevideo told me "Argentina is a beautiful country.  It's a shame it's full of Argentinos."  The people I've met here have generally been perfectly nice, although it does seem a bit more closed off and inaccessible, as a culture.  It's probably just a city size thing, of course, but, just as an example, in Montevideo, one rides in the front of a taxi, and the drivers are always gregarious and talkative.  In Buenos Aires, when I sat down in the front seat of the first taxi I took, the driver looked annoyed, and grunted his way through the trip.  Subsequent taxistas have been more neutral, at least, but nothing close to the welcoming feel on the other side of the Rio de la Plata.

Fortunately, Buenos Aires is a fantastic walking city.  I've walked almost everywhere I've been, though the subway and bus systems are thoroughly useful as well.  But walking gives one a much better sense of the overall geography, as well as the structure and interaction of the neighborhoods.  So far, I've really just been to the most touristy areas, as evidenced by the fact that I've heard more English spoken on the street here than I've heard in quite some time.  Fortunately, as is the case in most places other than New York, the touristy areas often get to be that way by virtue of being places that are worth visiting, so I've seen some good stuff.

The layout of Buenos Aires reminds me a bit of D.C., in that it's a very orderly grid with the occasional surprising diagonal slashing through, and a number of wide-open plazas plopped in for good measure.  To further the comparison, the architecture of congress was based on the U.S. Capitol building, and it sits directly opposite the Casa Rosada (literally, "Pink House," pictured above), which houses the president's offices.

The Casa Rosada sits with its back--and its many famous balconies--facing the Plaza de Mayo, home to the one of the more tragic and compelling stories I've come across.  During the late 70's and early 80's, the Argentine government--a military dictatorship that seized power from Isabel Perón, Juan's incompetent widow--ruled with a brutally oppressive iron fist.  In what's known as La Guerra Sucia ("the Dirty War"), General Jorge Rafael Videla's regime kidnapped, tortured, and/or killed an unknown number of people, with estimates as high as 30,000.  Anyone who was suspected of dissidence was dissappeared.  Many of the Disaparecidos, as they're called, were ultimately drugged and thrown from planes over the Atlantic Ocean or the Rio de la Plata to drown.  Starting in 1977, a group of women met at the Plaza de Mayo to protest, and demand that the government account for their disappeared children.  Three of these women were, themselves, disappeared, and eventually sent on a "Death Flight" over the Atlantic.  The mothers, however, kept coming.  Although the mothers are no longer protesting the government--they announced about five years ago that they no longer had any enemies in power--they still show up to remember the crimes of their former leaders, and to call attention to the ongoing search for their grandchildren.  To this day, every Thursday, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (now the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo) gather and keep a vigil in memory of their lost children.  I'm not sure how long it goes, but last Thursday's started at 3:30 and was still going when I walked past again at 7:15, so it clearly lasts a while. Videla, meanwhile, will spend the rest of his life in prison--though this after having been convicted and pardoned, and having his pardon subsequently deemed illegal and overturned.  I don't know if hell exists, but Videla is one of those people who makes me hope it does.

These days, Argentina's political woes are a lot more tame.  They went through a major financial crisis at the start of the 21st century, when a Peso pegged to the U.S. Dollar gave the appearance of increased wealth where there was none (sound familiar?).  They have also been hit by the recent crash, and are trying to pull their way through that now.  My buddy Matt, who I met in Montevideo, put it very well.  The Argentinos carry around this angst of having had all the potential of being a major player on the world stage, but never having achieved it.  Regionally, they're being surpassed by Brazil, and though many Americans come here for tourism now, I've had it pointed out to me more than once that Obama still hasn't been here, and that Hillary usually seems to stop at Brazil and head back.  I don't really have a lot of advice for them.  My ability to lead a nation onto the world stage has never been tested, but I doubt it would go well.  But, especially in comparison to Uruguay, which seems quite comfortable with its role in the world, Argentina does seem to have a bit of a chip on its shoulder.

That said, I'm having a lovely time here.  The city has a heartbeat that you can feel while you walk, and it's not without its share of quirks (forgot to get that sign made before getting on the subway?  No problem!), both of which are things I enjoy.  I will also add that the rumors of even-better-than-Montevideo-steak-and-ice-cream are turning out to be true.  And, unlike in Uruguay, you can even find the occasional green vegetable, along with some delicious slow food.  So, needless to say, I'm looking forward to exploring the city more in the coming weeks, and then going out and seeing what the rest of the country has to offer.

Saludos,
Seth


*It also reminded me of a Mitch Hedberg joke about the song "We Are the World," but that's another thing altogether.

Fotografía:

Buenos Aires

Recoleta Cemetery

Buenos Aires Botanic Garden

Buenos Aires Zoo Note: The Buenos Aires Zoo, as with most zoos that are not the Sonoran Desert Museum, is a particularly potent combination of totally depressing and utterly mesmerizing.  For more on Zoo science and philosophy, check out this Radiolab episode.

Bye Guay

"I've never heard of anyone going to Uruguay.  That's a pretty aggressive move."  That's what my buddy Sam said to me back in Costa Rica, about a week before I headed south to Montevideo.  I definitely felt the same, except that for me it was a bit more of a concern, because I was the one who would be heading off into the unknown.  I could not have hoped for a better experience.  Having finished my three week stay, I can unequivocally say that I am smitten.

I absolutely adored Montevideo, its people, and the Uruguayan culture in general.  To some extent, this was a function of fortuitous timing.  I managed to arrive right as the summer was cooling down a bit, so it was warm but generally not unpleasantly hot, and smack in the middle of the Carnaval season--which gave me the opportunity to see two Murga shows.  I also arrived just in time to attend the inauguration of the new president.  In a lot of ways, however, this was a near-perfect match of tourist and culture.  For a winter-hating, ex-musical-theater-camp-going, city-dwelling, political wonk, it's hard to think of a better place to be than an urban center with temperatures in the mid-70s, passionate political involvement and a rabid scene in support of what amount to local musical theater sketch groups.  And I haven't even mentioned the copious amounts of delicious steak and ice cream*.  Top it off with some of the more consistently outgoing people I've ever met, and you get a pretty giant smile on my face.  Outside the city is lovely too, as Colonia offered a connection to the region's history, and the eastern shore has some breathtaking natural landscapes (even if I did find the scene at Cabo Polonio a bit irritating).

I came away thoroughly impressed by the political involvement of the Uruguayan populace.  I thought I had a pretty decent handle on it, but yesterday's trip to Mujica's inauguration really drove home just how sincere it is.  In part, it may just be easier to keep everyone involved in a country of only three and a half million people.  But the rabid fandom persisted well past Mujica's official assumption of office, into chants for every member of the cabinet.  Can you imagine legions of people going nuts for Janet Napolitano?  The spectacle of the thing was truly impressive, with flags and patriotic fervor everywhere, and people overcome with happiness.  A taxi driver the other day told me "I'm going because I feel like this is the first time it's really my president."  Given that I cast my first presidential vote in 2000, and watched the next eight years thinking "not my president," I can certainly relate to that sentiment.

The one other thing I can't seem to stop thinking about is the remarkable nature of the many stories I heard about Uruguayan history.  Given its location stuck between the two regional superpowers, Uruguay is often completely neglected by the rest of us, and so its history is just completely unfamiliar.  Plenty of people could tell you at least one thing about most of the other countries in South America.  But we know very little of the Uruguayan history.  The thing about it is, even just the recent history is completely enthralling.  I've talked about about the political upheaval of the 70s and 80s, the Punta Carretas prison escape, and Pepe Mujica's fourteen years in prison and six bullet wounds.  These stories are amazing.  And they're just completely not a part of our world knowledge.  What's particularly odd is that even when Uruguayans mention these things, a lot of it is presented as a throwaway fact, e.g. "oh, yeah, 111 inmates escaped from Punta Carretas."  The details are just skipped.  My guess is that there's an assumption that as an American, I wouldn't really be interested.  So I personally am extremely grateful to have had the opportunity to come into contact with this history, and to learn about it up close, and I hope you've enjoyed hearing about it.

Obviously, there are downsides to Uruguay, as there are with any country.  The conspicuous absence of green vegetables is a pretty noteworthy issue.  Sure, one could get eggplant or squash, or any number of things on the starchy side of the spectrum.  But leafy greens, green beans, asparagus, and their ilk were pretty tough to come by.  Cilantro is also, as far as I can tell, nonexistent, which I consider to be an enormous drawback.  If you ask for cilantro, you get coriander, which is the same plant, of course, but a very different life stage (and flavor).  The dearth of vegetables is a health issue too, obviously, as it makes it pretty tough to have anything but an extremely protein-and-fat-heavy diet.  I love steak more than any reasonable human being should, but the first week of the Uruguayan diet left me googling "angioplasty" on a daily basis.

All told, Montevideo is the first city I've been to where English is not the native language in which I could honestly see myself living.  That's not to say that I'll likely move there--the odds of the opportunity presenting itself seem a bit long.  But it is pretty remarkable to visit a place where you only understand about half of what is being said to you (on a good day), and still feel so completely at home.  Last night I was talking with my buddy Matt, who also took classes at Academia Uruguay, and we agreed that Montevideo was an extremely comfortable place, and it would have been easy to extend my stay such that it took up the bulk of this journey I'm on.  But the purpose of my trip is to see and experience new things, and, frankly, to keep moving outside my comfort zone, so I think to stick around for longer would be selling myself short, as lovely as it might be.

And so it is that I find myself in Buenos Aires after a three hour boat ride, preparing to eat still more steak, and to continue pronouncing my "y" sounds as "sh."  I'm very much looking forward to exploring the vast range of experiences this city and this country have to offer.  I walked around for a few hours tonight, and it's clear that I'm not going to get bored any time soon.  I'll check in at some point in the next few days, once I get my bearings and have a few new experiences.  Until then, hasta luego.

Saludos,
Seth

*neither sold nor consumed simultaneously, to be clear.




Fotografía:

Montevideo

Mujica Inauguration

Uruguay, I'm a guay cinco - Todavía más notas

I've been running around the last few days trying to get in my last fill of fun before I leave for Buenos Aires tomorrow, so I don't have much to report outside of "I did this cool thing and then I did this cool thing."  But in the interest of keeping this up to date, I thought I'd check in with a little summary of said cool things.

• On Thursday, I went to Castillo Pittamiglio, which is a house built by the extremely eccentric architect / alchemist Humberto Pittamiglio.  I had no idea there were practicing alchemists in the twentieth century, but apparently there were.  The place is full of Masonic symbols--circles, squares, and the like.  It has a number of odd things like doors, windows and staircases leading nowhere.  My personal favorite thing was the sign indicating that Pittamiglio left the house in the custody of the city of Montevideo upon his death, to be given back to him upon his return by reincarnation.

• Thursday night, I attended a tango concert at Teatro Solís, one of the oldest and most beautiful theaters on the continent.  The concert was a bit odd, in that the three singers never sung together, but rather did five songs each.  Something else that seems fairly uncommon about tango is that when the songs ended, there wasn't really a clear ending with a final note, so much as the musicians would just sort of stop playing in turn, and the song would die out over the course of a second.  It sort of has the feel of "I've been playing this entire song for five minutes, but actually never mind, I think I'm done."  The songs all seemed to be standards, because the audience would start applauding moments before the songs were done. My favorite piece of the night was actually an instrumental, Adiós Nonino, which came during the break between the first two singers.

• I twice went to Estadio Centenario, one of the world's great soccer stadiums, and host of the original World Cup in 1930 (Uruguay won, defeating Argentina in the final).  The first trip, on Friday, was to the Futból Museum.  The second trip was on Saturday, to a game between River Plate and Peñarol.  Peñarol is probably the most popular team in the league, and is also currently the best, at 6-0-0 on the season.  It was a pretty crazy game, with Peñarol scoring twice in the first 10 minutes, losing a player to a red card in the second half, giving up two goals to let River Plate tie it up, and scoring on a free kick in the last ten minutes to win 3-2.  It was also just amazing to see a soccer match in one of the game's cathedrals.

• Yesterday I went to the Feria de Tristán Narvajo, a public market that stretches across about ten square city blocks on Sundays.  It is a completely crazy affair, with people selling pets, vegetables, home improvement dvd's, clothes, antiques, bootleg clothes (Gioven Kelvin underwear?) and other stuff.  My friends Matt and Liz went a few weeks ago and saw a bird vendor selling, along with several canaries and parakeets, an owl and a falcon.  The Feria is probably the closest thing I've found here to a Walmart, one-stop-shopping-wise.  It is definitely a preferable experience to Walmart as well, although it is a bit overpriced.

• Last night I went to another Murga show at Cine Teatro Plaza, an indoor theater.  It was a very different way of seeing Murga from my experience at Teatro de Verano, which is a large outdoor amphitheater.  We went primarily to see Agarrate Catalina, one of the most popular groups in the city, and the favorite to win this year's competition.  They put on an incredible show, and featured two of the most stellar tenor voices I've heard in my life.  I now know a bit more about Murga, so I think I'll take this moment to elaborate on it a bit.  The season lasts through all of Carnaval, which is from mid-January to mid-March.  The Teatro de Verano is the big venue, and each of the groups take turns passing through to be judged.  There are three rounds there, so the winners will perform three times at the largest theater.  However, there are also theaters and tablados (makeshift stages, often with pretty cool scenery made by the local community) all over the city.  Each group will perform their forty-five minute show several times in a given night, taking a rented coach bus from venue to venue.  Last night, Agarrate Catalina performed their show seven times.  If you're wondering, that amounts to five hours and fifteen minutes of performing.  And they do that more or less every night for two months.  It's really nothing short of incredible, particularly considering the precision of everything--from the singing and choreography to the costume changes and lighting.  In the second group we saw, El Gran Tuleque, there were a few performers who were no younger than sixty.  What's also remarkable about it is that it is almost impossible for all but a select few groups to make any kind of profit on it.  In fact, El Gran Tuleque had some lyrics about how they're so in debt that last night's show was just paying for the show on February 17th, and tonight's will pay for the show on the 18th.  Though this was intended to be tongue-in-cheek, there is a good deal of truth to it.  So it really is just a labor of love.

• Today is the assumption of Mujica to the Presidency.  Hillary Clinton is in town for it, and visited with Mujica this morning.  Interestingly, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales are also here.  Ceremonies kick off at about 2pm, in the Palacio Legislativo, house of the Uruguayan Congress.  Then there is a parade down to Plaza de Independencia, where, for the first time in Uruguayan history, the handing over of the sash--the formal act of changing presidents--will occur outside.  I'm planning to head over at about 2:30 or 3, in the hopes of getting close enough to see it.  Avenida 18 de Julio, the main commercial street through Montevideo, has several barricades and large video screens set up to handle the crowd.  I'll be coming from the opposite direction though, so hopefully that will help.  I definitely saw a lot of security last night around the plaza, including U.S. Secret Service agents.

Tomorrow I'm off to Buenos Aires, and I suspect I'll have some closing thoughts on my time here, as per usual.  For the moment though, I need to get ready to head to the Plaza, so that's all I have for now.

Saludos,
Seth


Fotografía:

Cine Teatro Plaza Murga Show

Peñarol Game

Estadio Centenario Museum

Castillo Pittamiglio

Montevideo