¿De Donde Son?

¿De donde son?

Seeingly innocuous, those three little words, but what pain they can encompass. For the monoglots out there, ¿de donde son? is spanish for 'look it up'. Just kidding. It of course means "where are you from", and the starting point for all verbal interaction for travellers and natives alike across this vast and diverse continent. We are usually asked three or four times a day. When you're travelling for almost a year, that adds up to quite a lot of repetitions. It looks like a simple question- it is in reality a simple question, but handling it is troublesome.

First, the basics. Let's narrow this down to nationality. We'll be sidestepping the whole English v British issue, merely noting that the debate is particularly vexing to border police in remote areas: or maybe they just want to screw with your mind by holding onto your passport for an eternity while noting the discrepancy between the 'english' on your immigration card and 'british' in your passport. There are distinct times when you really don't want to have to admit to being a denizen of the sceptred isle. Standing in front of the Falklands/Malvinas War memorial when they are changing the guards (who have pointy swords) is one such time. Booking a hostel room anywhere in Argentina the day after England have beaten Los Pumas in the rugby is another one. English, your interrogator will repeat, with a scornful glint in their eye. English, he will say again, pondering the matter gravely- as if unsure whether it would be appropriate to have you arrested on the spot. (this is particularly worrying outside military or government buildings) English, he will repeat again even more slowly, and rather sorrowfully, as if he had been quite prepared to like you, but now of course that is out of the question.

At the other end of the spectrum you may meet a street peddler, drunkard or - most dangerous- lunatic anglophile who will take your admission as an opportunity to regurgitate their entire knowledge of England. 'David Beckham', he will say 'oh, and that fat one whatsisname Rooney. Whine Rooney.YES'. He will then either seize your arm and shake your hand until your elbow is dislocated, or follow you down the road saying 'Big Ben!Bobby Charlton!Prince William's Royal Wedding!'. A rogueish glance, if you happen to still be in Argentina- 'Do you know who Diego Maradona is?' (The appropriate response to that one is to look rueful and make the hand of god gesture). If you are lucky, or patient, they will eventually tire of this game and wander off with a wink and a Cheerio!

If you are at a bar or a football game, or anywhere else where the exits are blocked, the next stage of the conversation will attempt further subclassifications . English, your new Argentine friend will say. Do you like Manchester City? You will confess that you don't, because you're from London. Ah, London. A knowing nod. London is Chelsea fans. If, at this stage you manage to refrain from pouring your drink over his head, (perhaps because your fiance is restraining you), you will tell him that actually, the majority of Londoners are not Chelsea fans (and incidentally, that the majority of Chelsea fans aren't Londoners. Or sentient lifeforms.) And your team is... Fool Ham? What is this Fool Ham? They do not have Argentinian players, I think.

Well no, not yet. You smug git.

All this goodwilled quizzing is naturally part of the rich cultural tapestry of travelling and it would smack of rank ingratitude to criticise a nation for taking an interest in the lives of its visitors (Heaven forbid we tried this in London!). The real tedium of ¿dedondeson? comes from the thousand or so times you have to explain to another tourist from the English speaking world. Picture the scene: You are hanging your knickers to dry on the radiator or cutting your toenails in a dorm room and someone new and chatty walks in with a big rucksack. You glance up, fatally, and make eye contact. One of you has to break the awkward silence- they've seen your pants, you have to acknowledge their existence now. Etiquette demands that the invader offers the verbal olive branch. So whereyoufrom has replaced hello as the default conversational opener, backing the victim into a corner from which there is no escape. You simply can't ignore a direct question unless you pretend to be deaf. For this reason you should never drape your freshly scrubbed gussets in public areas unless you have headphones in. Don't say you never learnt anything from me.

Now everyone knows where London is. Two Londoner can dispense with this nonsense pretty rapidly- west?east.borough?tower hamlets. me.too.no,surely notwhatanextraordinarycoincidence which bitwhitechapelextraordinaryi'mwappingwellwellsmallworldnicetomeetyoubyebye. The fun and games start when you take someone earnest with a San Diego zoo baseball cap on and put them next to someone from, well, let's say for the purposes of example, Yeovil.

Hi, I'm Chip. I'm from San Diego, California. Whereyoufrom?

Yeovil, England
(blank look)

It's a very small place.
(blank look)

It's in the southwest of England, in the county of Somerset
(blank look, kind of wishing they hadn't asked now)

Near Stonehenge
Is that near London?

Yes, yes, I live in London.

(then why didn't you say so?)

The heart of the matter is this: No one gives a tiny mouse's fart where you actually live. It's just one of these odd things that backpackers do, like building up collections of plastic bags, and stealing toilet rolls, and growing unsuitable beards. Is it tedious in the extreme? Certainly. Do I secretly want to kick the next person who asks you sharply in the ankle? Indisputably. Or maybe this is all perfectly normal, pleasant human interaction and I'm the one with the problem. Einstein famously said 'Madness is repeating the same action over and over, hoping for a different result'. He was almost right, I think. Madness is repeating the same answer again and again and hoping for a different question.

Capital Times Part Two

You have to feel for Montevideo, really. A stone's throw away across the Rio Plata from Buenos Aires, the result is that almost the entire population moves to Argentina as soon as they are old enough to catch the ferry. Consequently what is left feels a bit like a leftover or an afterthought. The tourist board does their best, but you can't really hide the fact that there's very little to see in the Old Town. A few months ago we were confidently told (by a Canadian) that you can exhaust all Montevideo's possibilities in five hours or less, so we thought we'd put this theory to the test. This also gave us a good opportunity to continue our game 'I Spy Diego Forlan', the Uruguayans paying homage to this particular national patron saint with multiple advertising campaigns and a selection of tasteless crockery*.

If you don't like football, there really is- I must confess- no good reason to visit Montevideo. There's nothing much wrong with it- wide streets, lots of trees, a few good shops- but there doesnt seem to be anythng really right with it either. The one claim to interest is that it houses the Estadio Centenario, the location for the first World Cup in 1930 (or thenabouts-it was a hot day) and a small but interesting Museum of Football which exhibits amongst other trophies, the very shirt worn by Geoff Hurst for England in the 1966 World Cup Final.

Can someone explain this to me? I would have thought such a pivotal item of footballing memorabilia would be residing somewhere in London, with an armed guard, some dimmed lights and an outraegous entrance fee. I made enquiries to this effect and was informed that the British Foreign Office had donated the shirt as a gesture of friendship towards the Uruguayans. Ok, fine- I'm happy to be friendly towards the Uruguayans but surely the Foreign Sec. could have given them some Cornwall fudge and a paperweight instead of a crucial part of the nation's sportng heritage? I was so peeved that I drank almost their entire water cooler (it was a very hot day)

It's possible that I over-reacted slightly due to a lack of sleep. This was caused by a lunatic man in the dormitory who set his alarm clock to go off at 3am and then went to sleep with earplugs in. Happily, he also snored like a rhinoceros on steroids- the sort of snoring that makes the walls vibrate, and was impervious to all my hissed promises to make him eat his own testicles if he did not immediately cease and desist. Eventually I actually got out of my own bed and went and kicked his repeatedly. That didn't work either, but someone else must have said something as he checked out after breakfast. Good riddance.

We left the next day for a dinky little beach town called Punta del Diablo, where I managed to get sunburnt through a thick layer of cloud on the first day, followed by two days of pretty consistently rubbish weather. Not a problem- the bar was well stocked (less so by the time I had finished with it) and all our friends from Buenos Aires and Ushuaia showed up, so we had a jolly old time watching sport and being raucous. The only real downside, apart from a dangerous lurch towards cirrhosis, was the presence of a mosquito in our dorm room, which gorged itself upon my tender flesh. So now I itch like a demon and look like a bubonic plague victim. But I do have the best news to report: The Museum of Corned Beef is back on. We arrived in Fray Bentos just this evening. The Old Pie Factory awaits us tomorrow. And if you're really lucky I won't write a whole blog about it.

* seriously- if you don't know who Diego Forlan is- stop reading my blog. You and I have nothing in common :-)

Capital Times Part One

When we last met, I was in a state of post-cetacean bliss and inner peace. I know where that ends: incense-sniffing, indian print smocks and trying to have sex with a bongo. No thank you! Goodbye, Nature! Hello, Buenos Aires!

To say that the city had a lot to live up to is an understatement- I had lost track of the amount of people who had told me that Buenos Aires is my sort of town, the highlight of the continent, vibrant, sexy, cool, fountains of beer, party all night, art, culture, history, madness- and for this reason it was bound to be a let down. I'd also been warned about the natives- the biggest snobs on the planet (outside of Paris- the perpetual worldwide champions of uppity) Incidentally we'll not be following the crowd and calling it BA for the simple reason that it encourages Chris to do his rather poor Mr T impression.

Happily, it's a wonderful city. The only tosser we met was a travel agent. Hurling ourselves headlong into the action we did a guided city tour, inspected the presidential palace ('The Pink House'), and the balcony where Evita/Madonna did their respective thangs. I resisted the urge to break out into song- the security guards didn't look at all like Lloyd-Webber fans, and there was a feisty looking Falklands/Malvinas demonstration outside, of the sort that didnt inspire extroversion.

All that pent up singing had to go somewhere though, so we headed down to La Bombonera, home of the mighty Boca Juniors. I've wanted to go here for ages: apparently the maddest, most passionate football fans on earth. Craven Cottage it certainly was not- I learnt an awful lot of rude spanish words for lady bits. That said, our neighbouring fans were most obliging, teaching me all the words to the (really quite complicated) football chants and reassuring us that yes, it was normal for the whole stadium to sway because of the jumping and drumming. Later we went to a bar and then another and got hopelessly, horribly drunk, resulting in a World's Top Five Hangover. Happily, despite their fiery reputations not one Boca fan decided to murder us. Happy Days.

A few days breather seemed to be the ticket and so we headed off to Uruguay. Hands up anyone who knows anything about Uruguay that isn't football related? Thought not. Our first stop was Colonia, an old smuggling port directly across the Rio Plata. This is a seriously lovely place to be, with beautiful sunwarmed cobbled streets and colonial buildings, fabulous fish restaurants, a huge expanse of sandy beaches, and smelling bewitchingly of jasmine. Despite being the jewel in the crown of this part of the coast, it is surprisingly unspoilt. They do have an odd fondness for golf carts though. We watched a gorgeous sunset and had some beers, and wondered if it was worth going to Montevideo- billed as 'a smaller, crapper Argentina' by practically everyone else.

To be continued...

Whales and the Welsh

Time for a quick lesson on the history of the Welsh settlement of Patagonia. Several or more years ago the welsh pioneers (who for the purposes of national stereotyping we shall call Dafydd and Llewelyn, along with their sheep, Myfanwy) decided to up sticks and leave Wales- an understandable decision. They chartered a lovespoon and, using leeks for oars, crossed the dangerous and wild Atlantic ocean. Turning their noses up at the tropical beaches of Brazil and the gleaming spires of the Southern Andes, they fetched up upon a grey, flat, rainy and windswept peninsula, whereupon they narrowly bested the natives at rugby and, after an Eistedfodd of Thanksgiving, stuck a daffodil in the ground and claimed the land for the Welsh Empire.

I know all of this because we visited the Museum of All Things Welsh in Puerto Madryn. Actually, that's a lie: we had intended to visit, but it was too far away. Instead we went to the oceanography museum where they had a giant squid in formeldahyde, so I have filled in the gaps in the above historical narrative slightly.

However or whyever the Welsh arrived, apparently they did and their lasting legacy is a number of Welsh teahouses selling 'torta galesa' at ludicrous prices and an unshakeable devotion to Diana, Princess of Wales (you see what they did there). The tourist blurb promises an authentic welsh village experience. I suspect the tourist board were rather banking on no-one from Real Wales ever coming to check the veracity of this claim. Although I suppose there is a passing resemblance to the outlying buildings of the power station at Port Talbot. Anyway, there was little of the Pembrokeshire villages to coo over on the rainlashed Friday morning we visited. No one was speaking welsh either, although there was a school in which people were taught in both welsh and spanish. In vain we searched for alumni- imagine the accent!- but there was no one about. Even the tearooms were shut;they don't open until 3pm when the tourist horde arrives- another fact carelessly overlooked by the guidebook. Reasoning that we weren't going to pay for these anyway, since we required all our arms and legs, and since we were becoming dangerously hysterical at the underwhelming nature of the trip we had embarked on, we bought a welshcake from the supermarket and determined to get as much value from the experience as possible we conducted it around town doing an impromptu photoshoot before we caught the next bus home. Supplemented with wine, the welsh cake was rather good. Later the Welsh won the rugby and we didn't, which seemed reasonable revenge for all my sniping.

From Wales to Whales, the other reason that people flock to the Valdes Peninsula. This is a breeding and feeding ground for the Southern Right Whale (look it up). They spend half the year here having babies and congregating offshore. On a clear day you can walk out from puerto Madryn to a beach where they come in close to the shoreline and watch them gliding around like friendly submarines, or you can go out on a boat to get a bit nearer. We did the walk first and were rewarded with several wonderful whales. We were close enough to hear them breathing. They make a weird sound when they do- like someone with a deep voice saying 'whoooooooorrrrr' down a metal dranpipe. For all I know, there could be someone hiding in the dunes with a metal drainppe, but the sound seemed to go with the whale. Later one followed us along the beach waving his flippers at us.

If this was as far as we got with the whales it would have been pretty damn cool but of course it got much better than this when we finally made it out onto the water for a close up encounter. The weather had been crap for several days prior to our trip, sending us slowly mad with cabin fever, and we had decided that come hell or high water we were going on Monday. Fortunately the sun came out although the sea was choppy enough to make Chris distinctly queasy and green. Fortunately as we all know I am exceptionally brave and was wearing a Captain Birdseye rubber cape so I managed to hold onto my sea legs.

If you ever get a chance to do whale watching, just do it. It is quite simply one of the most extraordinary things you will ever see. Southern Right Whales win no prizes for beauty, being knobbly all over and covered in patches of what look like barnacles, but the majesty and elegance with which they glide through the water is utterly compelling. You can feel your heart rate slowly down and all your muscles relaxing as you watch them. Whales are, it turns out, giant floating tranquilisers for the soul. I couldn't take my eyes off them. Eventually after some jumps and tail flicks we were rewarded for our patience when an inquisitive calf the size of a family car and its gigantic mother swam right alongside the boat. I could just about have touched them, if I was willing to fall in the ocean. I think I would have been.

Later we walked along the coast path to a look out point where you can see over the entire bay. From here you can watch distant waterspouts of twenty or thirty different whales and watching them rolling over in the sun and waving their fins in a slow salute. Argentina has declared the whales a natural wonderand part of the patrimony of humanity. Quite right too, and it quite made up for the tearooms.

Land of Fire and Ice

I was a bit angry at the end of my last post. I’ve calmed down now. Having left the monstrous carbuncle behind and passed a not-altogether uncomfortable night on the bus station floor, we finally arrived at El Calafate and let out a huge collective sigh of relief. We were back in Patagonia again. There were the lakes and mountains . There was the melting snow and the cheerful streets. There were the souvenir spoons. And best of all, there at the bus station was a backpacker type with a flyer offering us a cosy logfire in a cabin for a reasonable price. We were back on track.

El Calafate is a smallish town perched on the shoreline of Lago Argentino and within striking distance of Los Glaciares national park. It positively screams for you to spend the days doing wholesome rosy-cheeked outdoor activities before settling in with a good book in front of a fire. We took some bicycles and cycled for miles round the lake on one of those afternoons where the sun dances on the water and makes your heart sing. Later we ate a barbecue. As previously noted south Americans do this quite differently. On the menu for this one, marinated beef intestines (“it’s alright! they clean all the shit out of them!”) and kidneys (bleurgh). The more conventional meat was very tasty although it transpires there is an awful lot of meat on a cow and it is really best not to try to eat it all in one go.

The real reason to come to El Calafate is of course to visit the glaciars. On the way we pooled our combined knowledge: to wit, glaciers (not sure whether you pronounce with long ‘a’ or not) make U-shaped valleys. And are cold. And quite powerful. Erm… that’s it. We had decided against a guided tour which would have answered these questions, on grounds of cost. Fortunately it doesn’t matter whether you know how the things are made or why or what they do because the Perito Moreno glaciar is just awesome. We had been given varying reviews ranging from ‘the best thing ever’ to ‘it’s just a big block of ice’. It IS a big block of ice- bigger than the city of Buenos Aires. It does some wicked shades of blue. And it makes the most incredible noises because it is still advancing and bits crack off it with a gunshot noise). It is enormous and immense and you can stare at it for hours. Then you can look it up on Wikipedia if you wish to become enlightened. If you are not a big girly weed frightened of falling into a crevasse and having to gnaw off your arm you can walk on the thing, and drink it (they mix it with whisky. Fortunately that's about the one drink I won't walk on ice for). Or you can wander around its perimeter on ten kilometers of metal walkway constructed for the purpose examining it from different angles and in different lights and listening to it creak and groan. There is even a bit shaped like a dragon’s face on one side. Cracking day out.

There was nothing left now except to start the long, long run into Tierra del Fuego. Feeling like we had earned another break from gorgeous scenery and reasonable prices we broke the thrity hour journey in an irritatingly expensive hotel in Rio Gallegos, mainly because the other choices were a bit too reminiscent of Chernobyl. The next part of the bus journey- they don't seem to mention this in the guidebooks- involves crossing into Chile and back out again. This means four tiresome bag checks searching for apples and/or kidnapped children. Fortunately the second fifteen hours of journey through Tierra del Fuego itself involves some of the flattest, most non-descript scenery on the continent, enlivened by one miserable ham and cheese sandwich with the crusts cut off and an endless loop of Vin Diesel films. Against the odds, we made it to Ushuaia. We looked and smelt like corpses, but we had finally reached the southernmost city in the world.

We made a lot of friends in Ushuaia, although I tried my best to ruin their goodwill by spending half the week in advanced states of obnoxious drunkenness. Five of us hired a car and got up very early on a tip-off that if we got to the national park before the park rangers, we could avoid paying the park entrance fee. of course this is morally reprehensible and very bad indeed because everyone should pay park fees but we reasoned that the Argentine government had had enough of our money by this point. The cunning plan worked beautifully and we had the place to ourselves for hours until the fee-paying daytrippers turned up and we smugly left them to it. We then spent all our savings for the day on beer and sweets and I learned to make sushi and craft wasabi leaves from an Argentine chef in the hostel while also preparing the ingredients for a Top Five hangover the next morning. Bleurgh.

There's another glaciar in the mountains that overlook Ushuaia and over the course of the next few days we visited it a couple of times, trying to decide whether the weather was good enough to pay the 55 peso fee to go on the flying chairs up into the mountain. Eventually, it was, so we did. Fourteen minutes of rather scary chairlift later Chris and I were standing on the top of the world at the end of the world in the most amazing snowscape I have ever seen, looking down at the Beagle Channel miles below. The silence was incredible. If you listened hard enough you could hear the snow melting and trickling away.

Of course, what we had really come all this way to do was to slide down the glaciar sitting on plastic bags. I believe I may have actual approached the landspeed record on my first go, shredding the plastic bag and most of my arse before wiping out and fetching up in a heap a mere foot from a patch of exposed rock. Figuring that this was about the funnest way to die I had another go and it was even more brilliant. We ran out of plastic bags long before we ran out of enthusiasm. If I lived here, I would do it three times every day before breakfast. Reluctantly we set off back down to civilisation through the forest with the icicles glinting in the sun. It was like Narnia up there, I tell you.

So, unforeseen trips to Antarctic research stations notwithstanding, we will never be more south than here. We're officially on the return leg of the trip. Cry me an icicle.

Postcard from Patagonia

One thing I have noticed on this trip is that generally when confronted by a spectacular landscape, the Argentinians like to mess with it. In most places this means stringing telephone wires across nice views, but occasionally they find a place so arrestingly beautiful that they really have to go for it. Bariloche is one of these places, with gorgeous sapphire lakes ringed with snow-topped mountains and dappled forests. How can we naff this up, then? you can imagine the town planners of yore debating amongst themselves. Fortunately they called in the Disney corporation and the 1980s, so the resulting effect is all faux swiss chalets, stone cladding and triangular Smurf houses. The town is a heady mixture of ski shops and souvenir shops selling novelty items made of wood-, huge curly handled spoons, cute hanging signs for the bathroom showing winsome children with their sweet little buttocks sticking out, and that sort of thing. There is also a bewildering array of local collectible goblin-gnomes. I hate goblin-gnomes, and these ones are particularly toothy and malevolent, causing me to yelp and leap backwards when I find one peering at me from a shop corner. Added to this for some insane reason the shop mannequins have labrador heads where there should be human faces. This is really, really scary.

Currently Bariloche is suffering from the after-effects of a nearby volcanic eruption over the border in Chile, which tipped piles of ash everywhere, rather as if someone had up-ended the contents of a hoover bag over the whole area. This weird gritty stuff, combined with freezing temperatures and all those ski lodges, gives Bariloche a sort of perma-Christmas après-ski vibe. At night everything is lit up with warm golden lights and becomes rather lovely. Of particular note are the chocolate shops which are like little jeweled palaces crammed to the ceilings with every possible size, shape and flavour of the good stuff. These, and the hot chocolate served in the tea parlour at Rapa Nui Chocolate, which came in a cup and saucer with pink roses on it, are worth the journey to Bariloche on their own. Throw in some excellent hiking in the surrounding area and you can forgive the town itself for its fondness for fondue and kitsch.

Pleased with Patagonia we caught an overnight bus to Comodoro Rivadavia, 15 hours south, where we hoped to break up the epic journey to the Perito Moreno Glaciar at El Calafate, 1000km to the south. The minor pleasantries of welcoming Bariloche had left us completely unprepared for this horrible little hell-mouth attached like a veruca to the atlantic coastline. I have seldom experienced such an instant and violent hatred for a place. It wasn’t just the setting- a gruesome parody of the alpine setting we had just left, with the mountains replaced by a wind-whipped, petrol stained sandbar strewn with plastic bags and dirty nappies. It wasn’t even the fact that there was a huge concrete car park squatting like a toad in the middle of town, where everywhere else has a leafy tree lined plaza. What really took our breath away was the prices. Without even the slightest embarrassment the patrons of various hostelries asked us the most ludicrous prices for their shabby accommodations, perhaps 3 or 4 times the going rate anywhere else in the country. Comodoro Rivadavia- let’s be clear on this fact, in case you are ever in the vicinity, is an unrepentant shitsack of a location. It makes even-tempered people (Chris) laugh mirthlessly at each new thoughtless oversight or carefully contrived rip-off. It made not exactly even- tempered people (me) positively psychotic. Had it been in my power I would have called in an airstrike. And the people! Why don’t fat people realize that leggings are not for them? Why do people with a huge trolley full of shopping push in front of you in supermarket queues when they can see you only want to buy a packet of crisps? Do you so lack even a drop of human kindness that you cannot put a left luggage area in your capacious bus station so people don’t have to lug their backpacks around? Why yes, you do! By this point I was actually hurling expletives at passing cars and crossing the road on purpose to kick locals and dogs. Even the murals on the playground wall at the kindergarten looked like they had been painted by demons instead of normal human children.

‘We are LEAVING!’ I stormed at Chris ‘Why aren’t you taking better care of me? Take me to a pub at once!’ (It was 8.30am). Instead, we decided to go to the bus stop and buy the first ticket out of there. The choice we were given was to stay until 9.45pm and then catch the overnight bus, or to leave at 3pm and spend the night on the bus station floor at Rio Gallegos. No contest. I childishly flicked V signs at passersby as we glided out of town on the 3pm bus. And I say to the municipality of Comodoro Rivadavia and its inhabitants and I have never meant this sentence more sincerely- FUCK YOU.

Teargas before bedtime

"...So, you need to take a scarf for your nose and a lemon for your eyes"

"And tell me again, how do I know if I'm about to be teargassed?"

"Well, you'll see a big tank coming, and lots of people running the other way".

I am sitting in the upstairs room of a pub in Barrio Lastarrias, Santiago, picking up survival tips from my friend Liz, who is married to a Chilean guy and who has rather wonderfully invited us to stay with them and their crazy dog Mousetta. Santiago looks and feels like the last place on earth which is likely to be the scene of a riot, but the students are protesting again- the cheapest university entrance is twice as expensive as the minimum wage, and they want cheaper and better education. Sound familiar?

Staying with locals is a completely different experience to the guidebook route and we were totally and utterly spoit, with wine and cheese every night and beautiful food. We were also given an insight into the real Santiago, where people live and work, as well as all those secret little places that no one from the guidebooks ever finds out about. And steak. And wine. Did I mention the wine? My God, the wine. It practically comes out of the bathroom taps in this country. Many times I have wandered off in the supermarket and had to be fetched out of a dreamy reverie in the booze aisle.

In between slugs of wine we visited the house of Pablo Neruda, the Chilean Nobel prize winning poet (look him up). In between admiring his furniture and art (with me mentally cataloguing which pieces I would have stolen and put in my own house) we learnt about the Pinochet regime and the purges and disappearances of the intellectual class in the 70s and 80s. Recent South American history really is quite disturbing, especially when you think that it happened while you were in primary school. The national football stadium was used as a torture centre for twenty years under the regime, and is now the football stadium again. Chileans believe it is cursed and that is why national team keeps losing there.

Bit depressing, no? The next thing we did was a four hour walking tour led by a chain smoking maniac. Despite giving the impression of being an inveterate glue sniffer he gave a surprisingly lucid and thoughtful tour of the city, helpfully pointing out earthquake damage and points of historical interest, as well as the odd bit of social commentary or insider knowledge. For example, ever heard of cafe con piernas? It means 'coffee with legs'. I thought this meant take away coffee, but apparently it's more literal than that- it's the men-only stand up cofee bars all over town where businessmen go for a midmorning caffeine hit and 20 minutes of flirting. The waitresses wear tiny little tight skirts and high heels- hence the legs bit. In the olden days they used to pull down the shutters for 'happy minute' and strip on the tables although apparently this is now frowned upon. Sort of a cross between Starbucks and Spearmint Rhino. Naturally this offends my feminist principles, or would if I had any, but it makes a good story nevertheless. The tour thoughtfully included a break for sandwiches and a large glas of SauvignonBlanc so of course gets a very high rating here. No sign of the student rioters in town, which was a bit disappointing. Although we later realised we had no idea what to do with the lemons. Over a perfect afternoon of Chilean asado/South African braai- in short, the best woodsmoke barbecue in the world- we debated whether you suck on lemons for teargas or squeeze them in your eyes (yikes). We also discovered that the weird, throat burning and runny nose 'chemical spill' we had walked through on a street in Valparaiso had (probably) BEEN remnants of teargas! As you all know I am exceptionally brave, and had apparently been so without even realising it. Obviously this called for more wine.

So that's Santiago for me: rich, full-bodied, sophisticated, great with red meats and cheese, and with a slight indefinable aftertaste. Definitely worth a visit, people.


P.S We also went to a chavtastic tacky theme park called Fantasilandia and went on loads of roller coasters- but this was such a guilty pleasure that I am typing it very small...