Around South America – Patagonia

So why then, and this is not only my particular case, does this barren land possess my mind? I find it hard to explain… but it might partly be because it enhances the horizons of imagination. That’s what Charles Darwin had to say about Patagonia and I wouldn’t want to dispute his theories. I certainly shouldn’t try to elaborate on them either but I’ll try in this case. For his theory On The Origin of Species, Darwin spent five years travelling the world on board the Beagle, a ship that had the pleasant task of charting the South American coastline, including the Galapagos Islands. I spent a few days travelling there and back on a bus and a few hours driving around, so you’ll forgive the lack of depth in this article. I’m not sure I needed much more time though, there isn’t a lot there.

Excluding the Andes and Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia consists of almost a million square kilometres of flat, treeless landscape, broken only by the rivers that work their way from the mountains in the west. The steppes are covered in scrub with waist-high bushes giving each other a little breathing space. There are genuine tumbleweeds too, I saw my first one rolling across the road in front of me. Normally these bushes are used to show that every body has left a one-horse town. In Patagonia, there aren’t any towns.

At least not many for tumbleweeds to roll through, blown by a constant wind that has nothing to break it down, no trees, no houses, no hills and no valleys. The wind is free to blow where and when it chooses for hundreds of miles in every direction. If I’m making it sound like the Siberian wastelands or the Mongolian Steppes, that’s probably because they sound very similar. So why the romanticised view of Patagonia? There are other featureless landscapes that inspire fear as much as respect – the blinding polar ice-sheets; the burning Australian deserts; the emptiness of the Botswana salt-flats; and the claustrophobia of the open seas. It is hard to find life in such places, and being there is a constant reminder of mortality. Patagonia doesn’t have that fear factor attached to it. An English sailor shipwrecked in 19^th Century Tierra del Fuego walked across Patagonia to Buenos Aires. It took him five years, but he managed it. Perhaps the clear, cloudless skies and the vivid colours of a thousand Patagonian dawns and a thousand Patagonian sunsets kept his spirits up as he dream of returning home.

Is it the knowledge that survival is a possibility that allows you to relax as you stare at the distant horizon? With nothing to distract it, your mind is free to drift away into a dreamland. The chance to dream while awake is rare and therefore precious, it allows you to collect your thoughts and expand on them without interruption. Patagonian Dream Therapy. In my case, it allowed me to stare at the horizon for hours, wondering at the appeal of the area to Darwin, to me and to many more. Perhaps Patagonia only appeals to the dreamers of the world, but isn’t everyone a dreamer?

Around South America – Montevideo, Uruguay

I had a weekend in Montevideo recently, having decided to go on a visa run from Buenos Aires. The ferry over the Rio de la Plata stops at Colonia, which has a lovely little historic part to it, and cobbled streets where you can eat paella under trees in the square, or eat calamari by the river. Colonia has the air of a church or a museum, the kind of place where everybody walks around with their hands joined behind their backs and nobody ever shouts. It’s a relaxing day away from the big city across the brown water but not much more than that. So having been there twice before, we decided that we had to go to Montevideo this time.

It was a Saturday. It was raining. It was grey. There wasn’t anybody else around. The first stop was the Solis Theatre. Signs outside mentioned opera, we had visions of a cultural weekend instead. There was nothing on. Nothing. Saturday night. We went for lunch across the road. The café was empty of customers, a bit of a surprise as it was the only one open. Nobody passed the windows either. The rain didn’t ease. The old town seemed to be so old that nobody lived there. The Iglesia Matriz was open though, so we paid some money to an old woman and wandered inside. A service was taking place in the little chapel to the right so we wandered around the church in the dark until we were politely asked to leave. It was closing.

The night was no easier. We’d asked the waitress in the café where we should go at night. She recommended the cinema. We went back to the pedestrian precinct by the theatre (behind the large building in the photo) and wandered around looking for a restaurant that had closed down. There were a few kids hanging around outside and a few adults in the bars. We walked past a group of similarly baffled Brazilians and headed for the bright lights. A shout from behind us made us turn. A couple of the kids were scuffling on the floor, no big surprise. One of them got up and made to run off. The other one on the floor had grey hair. His companions were shouting, they were older too. The kid turned around and held both hands up, like he was apologising for bumping into the man. Then he ran up a dark street as the people started to complain. The man patted his pockets. He still seemed to have his wallet. We checked that they were ok and walked on. Ten seconds later, another yell. Again, somebody on the floor. Another kid was running away. I shouted at him and started to run. He stopped and looked at me before heading up the same direction as his mate. A dark street, two of them there carrying who knows what and with other friends around – these are the things that you have to be aware of, if only to excuse your own cowardice afterwards.

The woman’s bag had gone and so had our night. We went to the beaches the next day, where we were advised to go the night before, but still found nothing. No bars, cafes or kiosks along the beach road, nowhere to have lunch with a view of the water. The whole place had the air of a tired English seaside town stuck in the 1940’s on a Tuesday afternoon in early February. Even the mugging couldn’t make it interesting.

Around Brazil – The Amazon

It’s just one of those names, isn’t it. You hear the word ‘Amazon’ and immediately think of all kinds of dramatic scenery, exotic people and odd occurrences. As far as I’m concerned it definitely lived up to the hype. I had such an amazing time travelling up the River Amazon and I will never forget it and will recommend that everyone takes a journey up the world’s mightiest river.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite how you may have been led to expect - no indigenous warriors lining the banks with blowpipes and poison darts, not many caimans or anacondas following us around, and no sign of the piranhas that aren’t anywhere near as dangerous as legend has it. All of this is a shame but never detracted from the experience. The absence of the candirú (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candir%C3%BA ) was an obvious bonus, but you can´t be too careful. The reputation of this fish induces so much fear that even going to the toilet on a boat on the River Amazon is a nervous experience. Always move from side to side, just in case. (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010907.html)

It didn´t stop me swimming in the river though. To the layman, swimming amongst vegetation to escape mosquitoes that have savaged every passenger on a broken-down boat in the knowledge that they´re not likely to encounter humans again for many years in that part of the river might be difficult to romanticize, but it was easy for me. I was swimming in The Amazon!

What I did experience there was a total sense of culture shock that I´d never had in other places in Brazil. The cities and beaches of the south are a little different to back home, but not amazingly so. The lifestyle of the caboclo people who live alongside the Amazon River and its various channels towards the mouth is an incredible thing to behold. Somewhere between Ilha do Marajão, with its buffalo-riding policemen, and Santarem, hundreds of houses built on stilts sit directly above the water during the wet season floods. Surrounded by half-submerged trees, the wooden dwellings are very simple, small enough to have two rooms at the most, and often with a satellite dish. This surprises some people as though the descendents of indigenous people and the colonial Portuguese shouldn´t be allowed to watch television. Buffaloes wallow in the fields to the side of the houses, boats filled almost to the point of sinking chug their way up or down through the floating trunks and grass islands that are heading towards the Atlantic.

And then the kids arrive. From the sides of the river, like one half of their ancestors attacking the other hundreds of years before, they paddle into the middle of the river in their dug-out canoes to meet the big boat. Only there aren´t any waves of arrows, just waves of little hands. They don´t try to attack, they try to attach their canoes to the back of the boat and catch a ride up the river. These tiny canoes are the equivalent of bikes, and the kids bob up and down in the swell behind the boat for fun. Even our boat dwarfed them. My jaw dropped when I saw one girl of around 4 years old paddling happily into our path like a mosquito about to be run over by an elephant. I couldn´t take a photo of her. I was literally holding my hands over my eyes and peering through my fingers, wailing. This little river veteran didn´t bat an eyelid as the prow of the boat passed within 6 inches of the front of her canoe. She smiled and waved, smiled and waved in rhythm with my pounding heart.

Around South America - Bariloche

It was love at first sight. I knew immediately that this was one of those places that will always have a place in my heart, like the Costa Verde, Chapada Diamantina or Lençois Maranhenses in Brazil, just from arriving at the bus station. Even Rio, with all of its treasures, cannot boast a stunning bus station. Not many places can, and certainly not many can compare with Bariloche. On one side of the road you have the terminal and on the other a line of solid, tall pine trees, which help the place to smell as good as it looks. Through the trunks you can see the train tracks, then some more trees and Lago Nahuel Huapi, with an ethereal mist rising from the surface as it reflects the winter sun. The lake is a beautiful dark blue dotted with pine-green islands, while the surrounding Andes point at the sky, showing off their winter coats. What an entrance.

It only gets better too. Snowboarding in the Andes was one of the things that I really wanted to do in South America, because life must be going ok as a gringo away from home if you find yourself snowboarding in the Andes. Sadly, having to work as well kept me away from the slopes too much but I’ve never worked in a place with a better view than the cabaña on the road to Llao Llao. If I thought Bariloche was special, then Llao Llao even trumps it with the big hotel looking out over two lakes at once. That area of the Andes has distinct weather systems that change drastically from the high desert of the eastern end of the lake to the lushness of the forests just 30km to the west, brought about by the clouds that sit on the highest mountains and spill the rain. The landscape there is famous for being the inspiration for Bambi, especially the beautiful and bizarre Arrayanes trees that only grow in a few areas of the planet and are threatened with extinction. Their fawn-coloured bark is decorated by light spots reminiscent of – you guessed it – a deer. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luma_apiculata) With a covering of fresh snow on the branches, heavy falls that bring down the bamboo grasses over the forest paths to make beautiful tunnels, and mirror lakes that reflect the mountains that you can see from the beaches, you would be inspired too, if only to repeat ‘que lindo’ at every turn.

What I know and Walt Disney is that Bariloche is also very popular with Brazilians, skiing, snowboarding, riding the teleferico to the top of Cerro Otto, filling the town in colourful groups with their travel company winter outfits, and having photos taken with the ubiquitous St Bernards in all the tourist spots. Like the huge groups of Argentineans who have travelled there to celebrate finishing school, they are generally well-behaved and the only problems come from them somehow not being able to understand each other. Which was how I, with my passable Portuguese and slowly improving Spanish, was totally bewildered at having to translate between the two sides up in the ski station. ‘Eh dificil para pagar depois?’ said the brasileira. Blank looks all around from the argentinos. How could they not understand?

The only thing that I didn’t understand about Bariloche is why I left.

Understanding Gringoes - Drinking

For those Brazilians who have ever wondered why your Gringo friend is usually the drunkest person at a party full of locals, I’m going to try to offer an explanation, as I know I’m not the only one to experience this phenomenon. As well as the obvious cultural differences that we gringoes drink to embarrassing levels as a matter of course, there are other factors to take into account.

Important Factor #1 is that we generally like to have a drinking buddy along to accompany us and are never happier than finding some like-minded person to hide in the kitchen and share a bottle with at a party full of strangers. When you are the only gringo at a house party, this can be a little more difficult, especially when speaking Portuguese is still a work in progress.

Important Factor #2 is the amount of Brazilians who speak English better than we speak their language. At parties, it is very difficult to practice your Portuguese when everybody else wants to speak English. And wants to talk about English. Or your Portuguese. Nobody wants to spend a whole party talking to the gringo about languages so the novelty value understandably wears off rapidly, which is good as it can get a little wearing talking about the same subject all night, but bad because it means that eventually you have to try to join in the group talk.

Important Factor #3 is the amount Brazilians love to talk. I have stayed in pousadas around Brazil and heard breakfast conversations outside my room involving at least 4 people. When I leave the room, it has always been a shock to find only 4 people sat around a table, all of them talking. So to try to follow conversations, which needs heavy concentration at the best of times, is impossible at parties with loud music - like watching a tennis match played with 3 balls at once. This is when we resort to Defensive Drinking – constant sips because you can’t or don’t want to contribute to the conversation. It happens in other situations too – for example when stuck amongst in-laws with whom you don’t have much in common, or while waiting in a bar alone for your date to arrive.

Important Factor #4 is that we’re used to drinking from large glasses which we don’t share with anybody else. Then we can go at a casual pace, but sharing brings out our greed and we constantly bottle-watch. We finish our drinks first to ensure we get a full glass, and we fill up the other glasses at the same time. Then we go to the fridge to get a fresh bottle for more and also in order to give us something to do as we haven’t spoken for twenty minutes. Exactly the same process happens with caipirinha, and we will usually be the ones who end up in the kitchen making them, testing them, handing them around, making another, testing more before passing it on, making two, handing one around and drinking the other.

And so on. Don’t be too surprised if your gringo friend needs helping out of the door at the end of the night, and don’t be too hard on them for it. It’s only because they’re in need of a proper drinking buddy. And when they find one, things will be even worse, but at least along the way they learn to make fantastic caipirinhas.