Taxi mein Tacna tak - into Peru

Quiet morning in Arica – since I was leaving in the afternoon. While I was lazing in the afternoon, reading a book, met this guy called Paul from London. Tattooed, works in a shop and likes to travel. He’d just staggered off the bus after a 28 hour journey from Santiago. We spoke for a bit – particularly on how each of us was conducting a conversation in English for the first time in weeks. Shades of Doctor Livingstone??

Took a collectivo (share-a-cab) from Arica to Tacna in Peru. It’s a 1 hour journey in an ancient American gas guzzler. The boot of our Chevy comfortably took all our luggage (I remembered our Maruti 800 back in Mumbai!). Had 4 women for company; 2 quiet Chilenas and 2 boisterous women from Peru. They must have been in their late forties…One of them lived in Chicago (showed me photos of her son and daughter) – and she’d taken a month off to visit family in Peru. This was a side trip with her sister. The driver took care of the formalities at the Chilean and Peruvian posts – and then dropped me off at Tacna airport. A short flight later, I now find myself at Lima airport – en route to California. After a month of Spanish, I find myself in a land of American accents and the classic American tourist (pot-bellied laptop-carrying father in bermudas, loud angular-faced mother and spotty teenagers with their i-Pods; looking bored out of their wits). The staff in shops here too seem to speak more English than in Chile. And yes, you see Japs as well – tells me I am in tourist land. Anyway, California it is tomorrow – and meeting Vivek.

Clutching at Bodafel

Into Parque Nationale Lauca today. Carlos ran into clutch problems early in the day – and that sort of set the tone for the day. We limped across to Lago Chungara near V. Parinacota; just 5k from the Bolivian border. Stopped at Parinacota village – a pretty little place with a 17^th century church. The sun was out but it was a moody day and V. Parinacota was shrouded in clouds – carrying over from the previous afternoon. Lago Chungara is supposedly the world’s highest lake – at 4600m and looked sullen under cloud cover. The place was pleasant enough but a worried Carlos and a persistent drizzle meant we needed to make a fairly quick exit. The drive back to Arica was long and arduous – as we descended 4500m without a clutch. Some hair-raising moments, specially when you see those little crosses by the roadside while you yourself are struggling!

Got back to a warm welcome from my hosts, Marie-Jeanne and David, a French-Chileno couple. I told Marie Jeanne I’d pay my bill but she fussed over me and said “no, no – go have a shower and relax, you can pay later”. David didn’t speak English – but kept asking me “Bien?”..

Agnes had figured out there was a fireworks display in the main square – in honour of Arica-Parinacota becoming Chile’s XVIth region (a bit like Jharkhand and Uttarkhand I suppose). Which incidentally was the reason M. Bachelet was here. We met up after dinner for a Pisco Sour and went to the main square. It looked like all of Arica was there. The atmosphere was festive (vendors selling snacks and sweets, a band playing rock and fountains lit in neon) – but no fireworks. We finally called it a day at 11:00pm and walked back to our hostels. As I walked into my hotel – it began, the night sky was lit up for a good 20 min!

Surireal Stuff

Salar de Surir - and a tiring day; driving 150 km on dirt tracks. But the day was great. If the Andes in Patagonia have a glacial, other-worldly beauty and the Central Andes have a harsh, frightening quality, then the Andean altiplano has a softness to it; a watercolour of green meadows ringed by snow-capped mountains under a brilliant blue sky. This land supports life – the most visible signs of which were the herds of llamas and alpacas grazing on the bodafel. We also saw vicunas – which look like guanacos but are very delicate creatures. They also resist domestication unlike alpacas and llamas.

Driving through to Salar de Surir, the horizon is dominated by Vulcan Parinacota and Vulcan Guillatiri. Guillatiri is still active – spewing clouds of white smoke incessantly. Parinacota is this perfectly shaped volcano – looking like a giant pudding with icing on top. Parina in Aymara means flamingo and Parinacota is the ‘land of flamingoes’. Fittingly, the Salar is home to hundreds of flamingos. The salt flats themselves are immense (a circumference of 100km – with a borax plant blotting the northern end). On the southern side, there are cobalt-blue sulphur pools ringed by brown hills. Of course, there’s also a strong pong! Carlos talked of how he had got some European tourists here who stripped down and went topless into the pools. Wonder what it is about these grizzled driver guides and these stories – remembered the guide in Cairns many years ago who took us to this secluded waterfall and talked of these four Swedes who went starkers (luckily for them, they weren’t Germans!). Some kind of middle-aged grizzly man fantasy??

Got talking to Alain and Agnes – they are quite cute. Agnes has a dry sense of humour (some one had carved ‘Putre’ on the hills near the town and she said “now here’s a geoglyph”!) while Alain – though he didn’t speak much English – was just funny in an expressive French sort of way. The drive back to Putre was incredible – it had rained in the afternoon and the dirt roads were now raging rivulets which we had to negotiate carefully. The sky was black and the clouds were scrawling sheets of rain across the sky – over V. Guillatiri towards V. Parinacota. The sun made a mellow appearance later and the snow on V. Guillatiri glowed a pristine white.

Back in Putre, the town was getting a thorough spring cleaning and the police and military were out in full force – with Michelle Bachelet due for a visit the next morning. Curiously enough, she was visiting Puerto Natales too when I was there (“following me” as Agnes remarked)…

Went to Putre’s best restaurant for dinner (to make up for last night) – some decent veggie options including a nice quinoa soup. Back to my mucho frijo room for another uncomfortable night…

Oregano in the Altiplano

Writing this in a freezing (mucho frijo!) hotel room in Putre – 140 km up into the Andes from Arica. We stop here to get used to the height (it’s at 3500m) before heading further up into the altiplano.

It was a pleasant drive with Carlos, our macho driver and the Frenchies; Alain, Agnes and their pouting 12-year old daughter. Stopped at a museum where some pre-historic remains were displayed very elegantly (Chile’s museums are certainly very nice – like the Museum of Precolumbian History in Santiago). The highlight of the Azapa valley museum is the exhibit of the Chinchorro mummies – preserved from over 6000 years ago. The Chinchorros are the earliest known mummifiers; predating the Egyptians by a few thousand years.

Later in the afternoon, we also stopped at a charming village called Socorama (after a hair-raising drive down into a valley!). It might sound like a football-fest but it was a quaint village full of flowers and terraced gardens growing oregano – you can smell it in the air. Also had a 16^th century church with a wonderful flower garden. Then to Putre and this Antarctic room. Wandered around town in the evening and there seemed to be lots of Aymara women (hats and petticoats) with their kids – maybe getting them back from school. Had a truly pathetic dinner in the hotel at 7:30 and am in bed by 8:30. Didn’t know what to do, read a bit and am now writing this at 9:30 before lights out! Tomorrow is a long drive to Salar de Surir – salt flats in the altiplano; with prospects of loads of sightings; llamas, alpacas, vicuna, flamingos and spectacular altiplano scenery. Off to bed then...BTW, the room is actually in a garage – so I can expect a fairly noisy night, by local standards.

Sheekh Kababs in Arica

Had a day to kill in Arica today…

The original plan was to head out to the altiplano today for a 2-day trip. But couldn’t get the trip, so booked it for tomorrow (80% chance is what Charlie, the Belgian owner of the tour agency told me y’day). Charlie is like an expat character out of a Maugham novel - bald and moderately fat with a slightly cheesy toothy smile. He’s been in Arica for over 15 years now and runs the tour agency with his Chilena wife. Seems to get a lot of European custom...The smile suggests oiliness but he’s quite nice. He was relying on a French ‘party’ coming into Arica today – so we’d have a quorum for the trip; he got a few heart attacks (along with me) before they finally came into his office at 7pm. Agnes and Alain are school teachers from Tahiti – she teaches French and he History & Geography. They’d been to Australia a few times and loved it (like everyone seems to!). Seemed a nice couple…

Yesterday morning, it was 4 hours to Arica from Iquique - through some more shockingly arid landscapes. Rock, gravel and sand. Mountains of it...We actually went through a pass about a km high and the landscape looked lunar. Grey, dull-brown and black; the Atacama is at its harshest here. After 2.5 hours of this, out of nowhere came this tiny settlement, Camina Camione, a dry dusty hamlet that seemed to serve no purpose (though it did have the right idea – roadside, there was a faded lifesize cut-out of a girl in a bikini spruiking the local cerveza! Felt like hopping out and grabbing a cold beer). Reached Arica at 3pm and realise a blazing afternoon is never a good time to enter a town; it’s probably at its least attractive.

Anyway, on closer inspection, Arica turned out to be a patchwork of streets; with a cheerful melting pot feel to it. It’s a border town after all – so its streets are flooded with roadside markets peddling cheap clothes, plastic toys, el cheapo electronics et al. Also seems to have an inordinate number of roadside sheekh kabab sellers (chicken on a skewer). In some ways, Arica seems to show more character than other Chileno cities; which can be quite dreary in their orderliness (and their O’Higgins plazas). Wandered around today - thanks to the postponed altiplano trip. Other than streets piled high with cheap goodies, also saw the train station (there’s a train from Arica to La Paz and an Ikea-like iron church that Eiffel built. He built it in his workshop and then shipped the parts to Arica where it was assembled and riveted together.

The highlight of the day was watching a football match in the evening (on TV). The entire town was watching it – and the local team won. Then the celebrations began - with mobs of kids lighting fireworks and carrying the team flag down the main street. BTW, Arica also seems to have large numbers of college kids with paint/mud smeared all over their bodies with strategic spots suitably covered with black plastic bags (the kind you get it daru shops in India); asking passersby for money. What the….

The Tragic Tale of La Tirana

In Iquique. Off to Arica tomorrow for Chile’s last leg – the altiplano. The altiplano is a high plateau between the two ridges of the Andes. On average, it is around 4000m high (roughly the height of Tibet). Have heard of altitude sickness ‘soroche’ – and don’t have any warm clothing – ditched that useless heavy black jacket in Santiago. So will also need to shop for a jacket and coca tea tomorrow!

Reached Iquique at noon yesterday. It’s a dusty city sprawled at the edge of a dry brown coastal mountain range. Managed some sleep on my semi-cama and awoke at Antofagasta to find ourselves on a tarmac right next to the sea – rocks, brown sand and strange formations beside us; bleached hills to the right and a steel-grey ocean to the left. It’s surreal – black lunarscapes literally blending into the sea. Welcome to the Atacama – the driest place on earth. The spookiest part is that you don’t see ANY sign of life – so animals, no plants, not even cacti! All you see are occasional colonies of cormorants; and we pass a solitary large black bird with a brilliant red head perched on a rock. That’s it. For 7 hours. We pass some towns abandoned and rusting like beached ships on the shore; desolate cemeteries and one ugly, grim mining town. On the subject of cemeteries and crosses, the number of roadside shrines has increased dramatically since we left La S. Wonder if that says something!!

One of the high points of Iquique is the Zona Franca –a duty-free zone to which Chilenos flock in their thousands. My taxi driver pointed out there are Indians here – “Rakhu”, “Rames”…trust the Indian trader to go anywhere. Not in Santiago, not in Buenos Aires but in Iquique, in the middle of nowhere – because it has a duty-free zone for them to do their import-export business!

Wandered down the main street of Iquique looking for lunch and (on a Saturday afternoon), it seemed as dead as its neighbouring nitrate ghost towns. Finally managed to get lunch and a solitary tour operator to book a tour of the (other) ghost towns for the next day. Spent the evening strolling around town. Comes a bit more to life after 8pm – mainly promenading down the street). Iquique also has a Croatian club – the last one I saw was in Punta Arenas; some 4000km South. Some similarities between Croatians and Indians? O’Higgins is reduced to a street name while Capt. Arturo Prat lords over the central plaza. He’s a national hero – but also the local lad. He was a naval captain who fought a hopeless battle against a Spanish battleship in the war with Peru in the 1870s and died in the process; leaping onto the battleship and being cut to ribbons. And all this leaping and dying happened off Iquique – a vital port given the nitrate boom in those days.

The day trip today was a bit of a let-down. It began in a minibus full of Chilenos and yours truly. So all the ‘guiding’ happened in Spanish. Yo entiendo muy muy poco! Saw the ghost towns of Santa Laura and Humberstone – Humberstone is pretty much preserved as is from the time it was abandoned around 1960. Was a bit eerie walking down empty streets and squares and markets with the wind clanging away at doors and windows. Humberstone even has a grand swimming pool now rusting away.

Then a very long trip to Pica – an oasis town in the Atacama, famous for its limes and hot springs. Springs they certainly were - everyone in the bus whipped out their swimmers and sprang into them. Apparently Chilenos come in droves to cram into the springs – and it seems to have been the principal focus of the trip! I was clearly unprepared and swimmer-less; thinking I would be seeing geoglyphs, nitrate towns and the Atacama. We spent 3.5 hours in Pica – and I soon got bored of walking up and down the one main street while the others splashed about. Lunch too was at Pica – I picked at my soup which had a whole chicken in it – wings and all (thankfully no feet!). In all this, we never made it to the geoglyphs which I thought would be the highlight of the trip. The saving grace was an impromptu stop at a town where a local fiesta was in full swing; complete with band and colourful costumes.

Oh yes, we also stopped at a Marquez-ish town called La Tirana. It’s a dry and dusty town with shabby houses and peeling whitewash on streets named Esmeralda and Santa Maria. And in the centre is this incongruously huge square and a church that has a roof of tin; gleaming in the blazing afternoon sun. In the languorous heat of the afternoon; with the local old fogeys and stray dogs flopped in the shade of a couple of old trees in the plaza, the Marquez feeling was even stronger. There’s a story too to La Tirana – she was a local Indian princess who terrorised the Spaniards (hence her name La Tirana). But she fell in love with a handsome Spaniard she captured. She delayed killing him but her people felt betrayed and forced her to do so. She ordered the execution but chose to kill herself beside him (of course, she was baptized by the dying Spaniard – just so there was a happy ending!). It could well be ‘The Tragic Tale of La Tirana – and other stories’ by Marquez!

Photo album for this post available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/shivmoulee/IquiqueAndTheAtacama

Semi-cama to Atacama

Scrawling this on a semi-cama to Iquique – its an 18 hour journey from La Serena to Iquique, passing through the Atacama; I reach tomorrow afternoon at 1pm.

Took a Pullman bus to La Serena yesterday morning. The bus was on a 30-hour journey up to Arica in the far north; a distance of 2100km but I was going ‘only’ 500 km up to La Serena, Chile’s second largest city. My neighbour was an Aymara woman heading up to Arica – complete with billowing petticoat and bowler hat. Travelled on the Pan American Highway (Route 5 in Chile); which runs from Ecuador straight through to as far south as it can go in Patagonia; that’s a mere 7000km. It was a fairly uninspiring 7-hour journey to La Serena bus station on the southern outskirts of the city. Headed inland to Vicuna in the Elqui valley right away. This area is awash in observatories – the skies above Northern Chile are some of the clearest in the world and most of the world’s largest observatories are here; from the American Tololo to the European Paranal and La Silla. And that was the main reason for my trip here.

Vicuna is 60km east of La Serena; the bus quickly filled up with schoolchildren on their way home – after the driver confirmed there were no more paying passengers. He seemed to know the kids and their families and cheerily waved them goodbye after dropping them off. Had a village bus feel to it – stopping every 2-3km to drop the kids off!

Vicuna is the main town in the lush Elqui Valley – a thin strip of green created by rivers and streams that flow westward from the Andes to the ocean. Elqui is also home to the Pisco Sour, Chile’s favourite cocktail (and one they hijacked from Peru). Vicuna is also the birthplace of Gabriella Mistral, Chile’s ‘other’ Nobel laureate. She replaces friends O’Higgins and Prat as the statue in town plazas. She looks a very severe woman with a face like the woman on the cover of One Hundred Years of Solitude. Vicuna is a pleasant enough place but the high point (literally) was a trip that night to the Mamalucca observatory. It is run by the Vicuna municipality – and is the only observatory in the world which allows night visits; or so they say. You need to book a month in advance and there are a limited number of tourists allowed each night.

The sky is so amazingly clear up here that you can see a million stars, nebulas and even the milky way – even without a telescope. We had a very informative guide who showed us Saturn, Sirius, a nebula near the Belt of Orion and clusters of stars. There are open and closed clusters – open where the individual stars are far apart and closed where they are close to each other…The high point for me was seeing Saturn’s rings! Also figured out what those white domes in observatories are. The dome slides to reveal a rectangular opening in the ceiling – almost like a skylight to the stars. The panels of the dome can be rotated so the skylight faces the celestial object you want to see through the telescope mounted at the centre of the dome.

This morning was spent having a quiet wander around Vicuna and taking a country bus to Monte Grande – a village some 30km away, just to get a feel of the valley. A newspaper vendor got talking to me at the tiny Vicuna bus station on the delectably named Avenida Las Delicias. He asked me if I had a photo of Krishna and whether I did yoga. When I was leaving, he said Ciao, Hare Krishna!! Even the people at my hostal were friendly with Ricardo, my host, showing interest in where I was from and how India was. Of course, given yo hablo muy poco espanyol and Ricardo no hablo inglesi, we couldn’t communicate much. Later, as I walked around town, I heard someone shout ‘Shiv’ and turned to find Ricardo waving cheerfully from across the road. The hostel (and many houses in Vicuna) was set around an open courtyard; a bit like our ancestral home in Thiruvidaimarudur, Tamil Nadu. The courtyard in my hostal had paisley printed power blue sofas and interesting paintings and plants on the walls – felt like a place out of a Marquez novel.

Decided to head out to Iquique in the far North tonight; that’s an 18 hour journey; passing through Copiapo (4 hours from LS), Antofagasta (7 hours from Copiapo) and finally to Iquique (another 7 hours from Antofagasta) with pretty much nothing between these towns except the Atacama desert. The drive out of La Serena this evening was magical – there was heavy cloud cover as we drove along the ocean – and you could see the mists rolling in and dispersing the last rays of sunlight.

Photo album for this post available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/shivmoulee/ElquiValley

Crossing the Andes: BA to Santiago

Back in Santiago after a day trip to Valparaiso; Valpo as the locals call it. Off to the Grande Norte tomorrow – working my way upto the Peruvian border 2000km away…

The bus to Mendoza was a super-cama and was great. Seats like business-class that reclined all the way and a service that began with brandy and aperitifs and worked its way to dinner and wine, coffee and finally liquers. The trip across Argentina was uneventful – just a lot of pampa dotted with uninteresting towns. An interesting point is that all distances in Argentina are measured from BA (a la Roma!). Also highways have not just maximum but also minimum speed limits – which varied from 50 to 60kmph. Reached Mendoza in the morning with no specific plan. Took a taxi into town after a long wait at the taxi rank; tried my luck with a hotel – but found it was fully booked. Decided to push on to Santiago. Mendoza is a pleasant enough town with leafy cobbled roads and many cool, inviting and lush parks but it didn’t do anything for me. Had a leisurely breakfast, wrote out a few postcards and then spent another 30 minutes trying to locate a cab (confirmed I was right in pushing on!) – managed to get onto the 1330 bus to Santiago.

Thought it was a 4-5 hour drive but discovered it was 7 hours! Got talking (Inglesi+Espanyol) with a Chileno who was sitting next to me. He was a surveyor – who had spent a lot of time in mines including Chiquicamata in the Atacama – the world’s largest open-pit mine. He typically spent 10 days every fortnight in Santiago and 4-5 days in Mendoza (his wife was Argentine). He’d been doing this for 5 years. He too promptly pulled out a photo of his family and showed it to me. He seemed particularly proud of his daughter. She was finishing uni next year – doing something in agricultural/biochemical engineering (at this point neither English nor Spanish worked!). He said his daughter could get a good job in Oz and that there were many Chilenos already there. He and his wife planned to travel next year (Europe, maybe Australia?) after her graduation.

The trip to Santiago involved crossing the Andes – and they were magnificent in their desolation and bleakness. It was in this remote rugged region that a Uruguayan plane crashed in 1972 – leading to one of the greatest dramas of human survival. The road passes through some of the world’s most isolated terrain – and is a mosaic of burnt brown, grey and black with a dirty autumn snow on the towering mountain tops. My Chileno friend (naturally) pointed out places where petroleum had been found and that the tiny railway hugging the mountains around us was built by the British – trust the mad Brits! It linked Los Andes in Chile to Mendoza and was built to haul mineral ore and coal. The railroad is not used any more – the Andes saw to that with a series of avalanches and earthquakes. In fact, in parts, the track is completely covered by rockfalls.

The Chilean border post is at the highest point in the mountains and I soon realised why the trip takes 7 hours. It’s a tedious border crossing involving trudging along to 3 checkpoints; one for an entry stamp, one for a customs stamp and one to scan all our luggage for organic matter. After the Chilean post, there are a series of hair-pin bends (I counted 27 in a row) to get us back near sea-level. As in Patagonia, the Chileans side seemed more fertile while the Argentine side was bleak and sparse. The Andes seem to block anything that even looks like a raindrop! Got into Santiago at around 8pm local time – Chile had just moved an hour back from DST. Got a nice shot of the evening sun reflecting off a Santiago chawl.

13th was a quiet day in Santiago – went to Providencia, the biz district where the expats and yuppies hang out. Naturally, similar in feel to Palermo in BA.

Valparaiso is a 90 min bus ride from Santiago. It’s a quirky city – and that feeling sets in as soon as you step off the bus and see those green trolley buses trundling along the busy streets. Took one these across the city to the western end – where the main port is. And then took one of the city’s 15 ascensors (lifts) up one of its three dozen hills. Valparaiso straddles some 40 hills over a spectacular curve of the bay. Its colourful houses are perched everywhere on these hills – it’s almost as if the city is falling into the ocean.

Felt like a kid – rushing up and down the city on those ascensors; up El Peral; down Concepcion. Up and down Artillera and Baron…Hiked around one of the neighbourhoods, Cerro Alegre – those brightly painted houses and little gardens full of flowers against the backdrop of crowded hills made for a pretty picture. Took a collectivo to La Sebastiana – Neruda’s Valpo house. Bright, airy and filled with his aesthetic of seemingly different pieces all fitting together. Had a lunch of salad and coffee at a little café with a homely feel (later discover this is a trademark of Valpo). The waitress was chatty and the manager came round from his table where – like the King – he was counting all his money; just to say Hola…and enquire about the commie symbol on my t-shirt (was wearing the shonky green t I picked up at Chatuchak market in Bangkok). As we drove back to S’go, the evening fog was rolling in from the sea and soon we seemed to be enveloped in clouds – surreal feeling. Valpo is the kind of city I could have spent a couple of more days exploring but I had a date with Mamalucca observatory in La Serena the next day…

Photo albums for this post available at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/shivmoulee/BuenosAiresMendozaAndOverTheAndesToSantiago and http://picasaweb.google.com/shivmoulee/Valparaiso

Buenos? More like an aires of Huzun

Writing this from the sprawling Retiro bus station in Buenos Aires; on my way to Mendoza in western Argentina.

Spent yesterday morning exploring Recoletta cemetery, where the graves of the rich and famous are guarded by customised architectural follies. Scenes from Ozymandias – many of those massive tombstones were overrun with cobwebs, rust and weeds. It is here that the Duartes family (and Evita) are buried. And that’s where the crowds were headed. Also a surprising number of cats lounging around in the cemetery. What’s with cats and cemeteries? Recoletta itself is this leafy upmarket neighbourhood with smart cafes, well-dressed people and equally well-groomed dogs being walked by professional dogwalkers.
Went to a local ‘art’ market and bought a black-and-white sketch of the tango off an Argentine woman who could easily have passed off as a medium with her sharp features, colourful bandanna and flowing skirts. She in turn told me I had a sensitive face (more like sucker – buying her stuff without bargaining!!). Had a late lunch at Lomo’s – a popular veggie joint. The girls across the counter seemed Chinese – a fact confirmed when they said Zai chien to customers. Discovered they were from Taiwan. In fact, one of them sat at a table with an elderly Argentine woman – obviously giving her weekly Mandarin lesson – exercise book and all.

Later took a bus (what else!) to the Retiro bus terminal to book my ticket to Mendoza for the next day. Its in a fairly run-down part of town and is next to the Retiro railway station (confusing – all these retiring places). It is HUGE – and has over 100 booking counters and 70 bus ports spread over 5 zones. My guide book warned it would be a labyrinth but it was relatively easy to navigate. Took the Subte to 21 de Mayo Plaza – that’s where the Madre de 21 Mayo gather every Thursday in a silent requiem for their children lost in the dirty war. I went on a Saturday but the gathering clouds and late afternoon gloom lent it a brooding atmosphere. It wasn’t helped by my noticing a guard atop the pink Presidential Palace aiming his rifle directly at us. Incidentally, it was from the balcony of this palace that Evita spoke to the adoring crowds below.

This morning went to San Telmo, a southern inner-city suburb. It’s quite an old neighbourhood with tram tracks that faded into cobbled streets, leafy roads and crumbling mansions. The Sunday market was in full swing; quite touristy but looked like there were a bunch of locals around as well. The market’s speciality seemed to be old gramophones and radios (felt nostalgic for our hulking 1960s HMV) and a lot of general antique junk - silverware, cutlery, locks, figurines. Lots of performerson the streets – the usual tango, musicians, puppetry, Juan and Evita Peron look-alikes. There was an old man in a frayed suit and a boater with a huge viola but playing his tunes on a tinny tape recorder; surrounded by press clippings of him in his heyday, 20 years ago. Felt vaguely depressed...

Went in the afternoon to Palermo – a yuppie neighbourhood with trendy cafes and boutique shops with names like orangeblue; couples with strollers, Lebanese/Mediterranean/Indian cuisines, organic food stores – its like McYuppie; the same everywhere in the world! Craving Indian food; went to a place called Krishna which for lack of a better word had an eclectic ambience. Divans, Tibetan prayer flags, Ganeshas, the usual Hindi iconography and some arbit chanting music. The menu seemed strange too – same same but different. Seemed like some offshoot of HRHK though the guys running the place were decidedly Argentine. The woman who sat next to me on the divan was very excited at actually meeting an Indian – and promptly spoke of Santa Theresa. Headed off to Retiro in the evening and attempted a conversation with my taxi driver; he’s heard of Mumbai – we managed to actually converse – my espanyol is becoming bueno! Now its 14 hours to Mendoza.

Buenos Aires seems a vaguely melancholic city. The grand Subte with its glazed over mirrors, huge boulevards lined with crumbling mansions, the viola musician, Recoletta cemetery, beat-up VW taxis lined up outside that massive pink Presidential palace…Then again, maybe its because I am reading Ohran Pamuk’s Istanbul – and the concept of huzun! Buenos Aires may not be as old as Istanbul but it too is living in the past.

Photo album for this post available at: http://picasaweb.google.com/shivmoulee/BuenosAiresMendozaAndOverTheAndesToSantiago