Channelling the Cane Spirits

Monday 17.03.08

After returning from Mar del Plata early January, my life began to settle like the contents of a packet of cornflakes in transit. In fact I was barely undergoing any transit whatsoever, save for the odd trip to the shops during the week. Mar del Plata had swallowed my remaining cash and the bank account was nigh-on empty; any extra-curricular activity for my two final months in BA would have to be more like a soft caress than a heavy pet on the hip pocket. I did have one unavoidable journey to make, across the Rio de la Plata to Uruguay for a night in February to renew my tourist Visa. Colonia de Sacramento, just across the estuary is a really pleasant place to visit though, and I was happy to spend another couple of days wandering its cobblestoned streets.

Buenos Aires is what you might call a 'Wetropolis'. Whether it be sunny or overcast, the Capital Federal's very top-heavy concrete:tree ratio keeps summer's humidity high enough to brew sweat soup at any hour; while spring and summer storms bring near-relentless precipitation, leaving the calles (streets) like the canals of Venice and the underground Subte akin to the New York sewers. Like a drowning prospector, the city has struck ironic gold: 'Fair Winds' (Buenos Aires translated into English) is no longer by nature as it is by name. Where was that fresh breeze on a warm sunny day I had been missing? Where was that smell of springtime or the call of birds? Not in San Telmo. We had cartoneros at 10pm, garbage trucks after midnight and city buses bugling the sunrise.

Between blokes from the Lime House hostel, several porteños and the odd ring-in from the semi-despised Milhouse, the other ex-pats and I were able to scrounge enough players each Friday for five-a-side football. In Rio de Janeiro the football action is often found on the glamorous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema; in Buenos Aires, the fields are found underneath the elevated freeways. With my dribbling skills not proficient enough to earn me a starting spot in the Boca Juniors' midfield, I planted myself squarely within the goals and tried to block anything that came my way. I enjoyed my five-month stay in Buenos Aires. It's dynamic, cultured, proud, and there is always one reason or another to celebrate. This giant city of thirteen million inhabitants is one place I will miss more than most. My last morning - a Tuesday – was a little surreal; I packed my things and farewelled Anahí after four delightful months together. I boarded the bus for the airport and by evening was flying north toward Peru's capital, Lima.

Due to the lateness of my arrival, I caught an official taxi from the airport toward a rich coastal barrio of Lima named Miraflores. While taking the coastal road for part of the way, a great white glowing cross on a distant hill gave me my first conformation that religion was far from forgotten in this part of the world. In fact, I was in Peru for that very reason – to take part in and document Semana Santa, the celebration of Easter. There couldn't be a more appropriate Latin American counterpart to Buenos Aires than Lima. Even in wealthy Miraflores the buildings are constructed in such a different way to those of the 'Paris of South America'. For a big city, Lima is just so....Latin American. In search of photos the following day, I descended the cliffs toward the Pacific where a busy highway separates the beach from the city's rocky plateau. The term 'beach' is one that could only be applied rather loosely, since its composition is that of rocks, mostly fist-sized or bigger. Nevertheless, and in disregard of the water-borne contaminants, this place is popular with the surfing population of Peru and elsewhere because of its easy to reach medium-sized waves. I wasn't convinced.

In the afternoon of Easter Thursday, I booked a pew in the Business Class coach to Ayacucho about ten hours away in the mountains. Thanks to Argentina's first rate bus lines, I had expectations of a heavenly ascendance to the town, but those above bestowed unto me instead a hole(y) cushion. Two seat changes later, I at last achieved a fair amount of comfort; though twice in the night I awoke to find my legs up over the backrest and arms out at weird angles. The work of poltergeists, the devil or just R.E.M sleep? Be your own judge, but leave me out of it.

Monday 31.12.07

It was a relief to leave the claustrophobic confines of Buenos Aires and head south toward bluer waters. We left for Mar del Plata in the morning, and though we were able to escape Latin America's third largest city, we still found ourselves well within the boundaries of the Argentinean province of the same name. The inter-city coaches in this country are among the finest in the world, and we opted for Cama class, best described as 'fully reclining all-cow comfort'; as an added bonus coming garnished with free Havanna Alfajores. Mar del Plata (meaning Silver Sea) was just five hours away, merely a trip around the block by South American standards, and not a long time after the little hand ambled past the upright position we were aboard a local bus heading out along the southern Atlantic coast to where we'd be staying.

Anahí's friend Elisa lives with her family in the northern and more tranquilo part of the city, and I have to say we received a red-carpet foreign diplomat's reception, complete with free bicycle rental (pre-puncture only), all the 1kbps internet we could handle and the promise of a mutually beneficial Mar del Plata/Melbourne free-trade agreement at the end of it. We would have the bungalow to ourselves, and our every need pandered to by Elisa's mother. But the best was yet to come, as the smell from the approaching New Year's feast began to waft seemingly halfway across the neighbourhood. After darkness had fallen on the last day of 2007, the feast, big enough to feed a stable of starving greyhounds, began featuring at least four varieties of stuffed whole chicken and naturally plenty of other meaty offerings. Enormous too was the variety of alcohol on offer, with cratefuls of beer and wine and enough bubbly sidra (cider) to propel oneself to the upper reaches of Willy Wonka's fizzy-lifting room. Explosions overhead heralded the approach of midnight, and we all ran out to the street to get a better look. The suburban fireworks display is not a part of Australian tradition, mostly because of the impossibility of attaining the equipment, but Latin Americans will find any excuse to make a loud noise and some pretty colours.

Having spent many a holiday on Australia's fine stretches of sand, I was a smidgeon disappointed when I first laid eyes on the beaches of Mar del Plata. The northern beaches are all tiny half-moon shapes, strung together by a series of breakwaters and looking like they had spent time on the Atlantic continental shelf before being hauled to the shore for human enjoyment. From the colour of the city's main beaches fronting the boardwalks and ice-cream parlours, they could've been dredged from the asteroid belt. Whatever sand is left on these weathered shores is obscured by rows upon rows upon rows of beach huts for rent and the remainder covered bumper to bumper by the sunbathing masses. Hundreds of thousands of Argentineans make the journey in summer to get away, though when every second porteño from Buenos Aires is breathing over your shoulder, you may wonder exactly what they are escaping from. In fact the climate in the capital over January becomes unbearable, and for someone that has spent even a single summer there, it's really no surprise why everyone wants to leave.

Capitalism comes snapping at the heels of all these beach-goers, a fact which cannot be escaped unless one flies a couple of parsecs away from the popular zones. While all points of sale downtown - including pharmacies - are almost entirely cloaked in Coke Zero or other fizzy beverage signs (one even cheekily named Farmacia Zero), aeroplanes promote hygiene products by buzzing overhead the beaches, which themselves are often named after various local and international corporations. The town is slowly disappearing under the waves of its own national popularity, though because of stiff competition from the more famous beaches in Uruguay and Brasil, it is fairly unknown to foreigners. In spite of all this, Mar del Plata is a relaxing place to visit, helped in volumes by the locals, who are a helpful and friendly bunch.

Perhaps sporting hang-overs (or is that hangs-over?) from the previous year's excesses, we took turns at being ill the first couple of days into the new year, but were ready to party by the fourth. Good timing too, as a Japanese DJ named Satoshi Tomeii was billed to play at a venue on one of the city's more beautiful southern beaches. The best of the night was saved until last, when we spilled out onto the balcony for the final two hours of his marathon set. The solar system's most-favouritest ball of superheated gasses rose over the sea as the bacchan boogying continued, this time with forward rolls, comet tails streaming from the tips of my fingers and fancy but sometimes disastrous footwork from some of the local lads on the dew-soaked deck. The vibe and music of the party left us with a nebular afterglow that shone as bright as the morning sun, or maybe it was just wonderfully blissful to be breathing at that point in time.

After a week relaxing on the coast, it was time for me to leave on the seventh, to make my way back to the helter-swelter of Buenos Aires in January. For want of hard currency, future mentionable moments would be fewer and farer between than ever before, and I would have to sit patiently, often for hours on end trying to find them. Or myself.