Last Day in Mexico City

Saturday 23 May, 2009


It’s my last day and be warned: I’m disgruntled. 

10am: The day begins like every other day here in DF – cold and overcast. Whatever, we’re too busy enjoying our free breakfast at our hostel, which happens to sit right on the main zocalo, the second-largest public space in the world after Moscow’s Red Square. We look out the window and simultaneously see the cathedral, the presidential palace and the random assortment of hobos, vendors and tourist trappers that drift around the area looking for an easy mark. (Sidenote: our hostel has offered us free breakfast AND dinner, AND an extra free night – who said nothing good ever came from an economic downturn in the epicenter of a potential global pandemic?)

11am: We have a lot planned, and set off to the Museum of Fine Arts to get a bit of culture in us. Mexico City, incidentally, is ridiculously nice. I pictured a traffic-choked, acid-raining hotbed of crime and depravity, all dirty and sprawling and grey, and instead it is clean, orderly (in parts), and very European (who said nothing good ever came from Spanish conquest and brutality?). The streets in the historical centre are cobbled and lined with colonial buildings that are older than Australia.

11.30am: We arrive at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. Suspiciously, entry is free. We soon realize that this is due to every single exhibition room being either inexplicably closed or empty. Of course! We do, however, see some cool murals. Mexican muralists were world-renowned back in the day, and the piece de resistance is Diego Rivera’s Man At The Crossroads which was commissioned for Rockerfeller in New York in the 1930s. Rivera painted, in the foyer of one of Rockerfeller’s buildings – in the belly of the beast – a mural deriding capitalism, applauding communism, and featuring Lenin in a prime position of glory. When ordered to change it he refused and Rockerfeller destroyed the whole thing. Fun fact! There’s plenty more where that came from! But the mural was re-commissioned by the Mexican government and is pretty damn thrilling, even if that whole communism thing turned out to be a failure.

The other highlight of this museum is its grotesque red marbled interior which resembles nothing so much as a slab of raw Wagyu beef. Ew.

12pm: Outside the museum is set up a little health tent where people are being handed free face masks and pamphlets on hygiene and flu avoiding. Aren’t we past this? Pig flu is so last week, as Luke Punzet says. Still, we aren’t ones to say no to free anything, especially not surgical masks, so we happily take them and descend into the metro.

12.30pm: We pop out at the Bosque de Chapultepec, the lung of Mexico City. It is swarming with squirrels, which are fascinating to a pair of Aussies. They scamper photogenically all over the place and wave their fluffy little rodent tails around and we are utterly enchanted. Lange feeds one a chili-powdered chip. Because it is a Mexican squirrel, it loves it. We have an argument over who owes whom 1 peso or 1.50. (Perspective: that is equivalent to 10-15 cents). We storm up the hill to the castle in a huff, not speaking.

1pm: Castillo de Chapultepec. The only film that I can visually recall as being filmed in Mexico City is Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet (which has been my favourite since I was eleven. Don’t judge. It’s great.). I have been keeping an eye out for city landmarks from the movie and the Castillo was used for the party scene. I completely nerd out and wander around blissfully quoting key dialogue to myself while snapping pictures. (“My only love sprung from my only hate. Too early seen unknown and known too late. Prodigious birth of love it is to me, that I must love a loathed enemy.” Juliet on the balcony. The balcony right in front of me! Other tourists give me weird looks. I could care less.) The Castillo is famous for many reasons, being the Versailles of Mexico, but I am too busy muttering Shakespeare to myself to pay much attention to exhibits on French royalty, the Mexican-American war, and where the Presidents of Mexico slept. (But I do check out the bathroom because I am always interested in knowing where the high and mighty poop.)

2.30pm: We find a stall that offers to write your name on a grain of rice. I have wanted one of these since Year Three when Jody in my jazz-dancing class had one. I stared at it longingly every Saturday morning wishing for the same. Today is the day of childhood wish-fulfillment, it seems. It costs 20 pesos. Lange tells the guy that he paid 150 pesos for the same thing as a gift for his Mexican woman at Sayulita Beach. The guy tries not to laugh. “You were robbed, wey,” he says. That’s not even the best part: after he was robbed, he lost it. The guy really does laugh and Lange tries to strangle me. Ah, friendship. I am learning how to say “I am about to squeeze your neck til you die right now” in Cambodian. Key phrase for future travel. “Uhn gebaht gekor hayn ngoup aleuhay.” Tell your friends! The man clearly thinks we’re freaks as we walk off trying to headlock each other. (I win because I am a foot taller.)

3.30pm: Lange and I have lunch at a pitiful little café with plastic chairs and tables and huddle to get away from the sudden downpour. The food is good ($3 schnitzel sandwiches) but somehow fails to live up to our lunch experience of the previous day in Taxco. We climbed up to a tiny apartment that was set up like a restaurant with a few tables and chairs in the living room, and ate a delicious lunch served by a family of cross-dressers. The men all had long hair, waxed legs, subtle makeup (a rarity in Mexico) and distinctly feminine mannerisms. To say that this would be unusual in ultra-Catholic Mexico would be an understatement. But today’s lunch has no such delights in store, only a surly waitress with over-plucked eyebrows.

4.30pm: I leave Lange to his unbelievably slow-eating sandwich and decide to go all out and get some more culture at the Museum of Modern Art. Too much time spent in galleries usually makes me dizzy but this one is exceptionally good, filled with Mexican prison art installations, Frida Kahlo, and the like. As I leave it starts to rain again (hello, wet season) and I am immensely grateful for my 26 peso umbrella (which has not yet broken, yay!). An imbecile workman directs me downhill onto an eight-lane uncrossable freeway instead of to my metro stop. Am not happy as I trudge back uphill in increasing rain. Return to the art gallery and attempt to cross through it, back into the park to the train. An overly jolly security guard stops me.

“Senorita, this is the Museum of Modern Art, not a metro stop! Aahaha!” I know that, I grit at him. Can’t I just cut through here? “Oh, no no no! You have to go back out and allll the way up the road and then go alllll the way back! Where are you from?” I mishear his question as “Where are you going?” and answer accordingly. He and his security guard friend burst out laughing at me. “Coyoacan!” He giggles. “I don’t think this senorita is from Coyoacan, do you? No, senorita, where are you FROM?” What does that have to do with anything, I wonder, but force a smile and tell him. “Australia! Ah! I am looking, I am thinking, and I am going to tell you my friend that this senorita is from Sydney! Am I right?” Yes, I snap at him. (Should have said Melbourne.) “Ah, you see, senorita, I know that because I can look into the future and see things that have not yet happened!” Fantasise about kicking him in the shins and asking how he possibly didn’t see that coming. Comfort myself with stomping off in the rain. Stupid condescending little man. Stupid metro stop. Stupid park. Stupid rain.

5.30pm: Emerge from the metro on the other side of town to run some errands. The rain begins to really pummel down, having waited expressly for my reemergence above ground. Wonder what the Spanish idiom is for “raining cats and dogs”. My 26 peso umbrella keeps my head dry but the rest of me is soaked to the skin. My jeans are heavy with water and my shoes are sloshing. The weather conditions are akin to the infamous Guadalajara storm that turned the streets to rivers, and whose currents stole my havaianas. I dash into a café, drip all over their floor and proceed to drench their couch. I wait out the storm by drinking chai and reading a travel magazine about everywhere else in the world but where I am.

6.30pm: Squelch towards the metro. It is cold and I am shivering like a whippet. Spot a shopping mall: cue heavenly music. I take refuge inside in the warm and look for replacement havaianas. Cheap foam knockoffs cost $30. WHAT! But then… I spot a Zara. I am thrilled. Shop shop shop. Emerge with new purchases that probably cost me 2 days’ budget. Try not to think in those terms and do some flimsy purchase-justifying. There is no point in having nice clothes on this trip when I am losing every shred of style I might ever have possessed as my entire wardrobe mutates into a cheap, comfortable, dirty, falling-apart facsimile of every travellers’ pack contents. But not to worry – I will never stoop to purchasing either crocs or reefwalkers. The situation will never be that dire. Tell myself that pretty new clothes can be worn in glamorous Sydney. Make note to self to tell Sydney friends to cue up glamorous-type events upon my return to justify said purchases.

7.30pm: Skip to the metro (as much as waterlogged clothes will permit). Discover that for some reason, the metro tonight is only taking women and children under 12. Board a train filled entirely with women. It is surreal. Feel as though I am on a lifeboat leaving the Titanic… or on a train on our way to the gas chambers. Am the tallest person in the carriage. The women-and-children-only rule means that the train is blessedly free of the usual cacophony of people hawking their wares, everything from chewing gum to spelling books. Some vendors have boombox backpacks blaring early 90s music from burned CDs for sale. Sometimes people will sing (usually badly). Forget about sleeping on your commute to work; these people are working the trains all day long. I have only seen one transaction so far though, for a packet of gum. Feel guilty about my capitalist consumerist pig shopping spree. What would Diego Rivera say? Comfort myself with the fact that no one else knows.

8pm: Stagger out of the metro, utterly wiped out (as the Mexico City metro is prone to making one feel). Walk across the zocalo and pass a line of workmen sitting against the cathedral fence. About a metre apart, each one has a hand-painted sign in front of him advertising his trade. Plumber, electrician, glazier. Every day they line up here in the main square, hoping for work. For some reason, the obvious poverty in Mexico affects me more than it has in other countries I have visited. I have fallen so in love with this country and people. Mexican men might look like scowling gangsters from a distance but the minute you speak to them or ask them something their faces light up and they couldn’t be kinder. The women, too (sometimes…). Everyone here is working, selling things, trying to make an honest buck and feed their families. There is very little visible begging here, in this city of 21 million. This economic downturn, coupled with the swine flu hysteria, will surely keep millions of tourists away this year, as I've already seen in the almost-empty hostels with free food and extra night deals. Mexico is already one of the countries hit hardest this year, and all because they have yoked their economy and future to the United States.

I go inside to my free dinner. 

Two glamourous, action-packed days in a quarantined country

Sunday 3 May, 2009


FRIDAY

9.30AM: There are very few other travellers in Mexico at the moment. And yet have been kept up all night by snorer from Mexico City. Said snorer not only snores in his sleep but also when awake - rare, I think. Also has a habit of sitting on his bed while I'm in the room and watching me do whatever. Needless to say, I get dressed in the bathroom.

10AM: Meet Jorge for a goodbye breakfast. Met randomly in a restaurant 4 days previous and have had a fabulous time with his gang, being taken on tours of the city, out to dinner every night, and getting a major update of my Spanish vocab ("You have to know las groserias," Jorge told me, and promptly taught me to say fuck your mum.). Wolf down eggs and watch a Japanese girl drink a Corona for breakfast. Respect. Pervy old man underneath the bridge we're dining on takes photos of us/the bridge for several too-long minutes. Chat to the bitchy queen waiter who was previously so rude to me about possible closures of restaurants along with bars, schools, universities, and museums. Hope not - things are already pretty dire.

11.45AM: Jorge drives me to the bus station. As we wait, the driver disembarks, sticks his cigarette in between the plastic of the front right-hand light and opens the bag rack. Ash drops onto the footpath.

5.20PM: Bus from Gunajuato via León finally arrives in Zacatecas, my destination for the weekend. ("You're gonna love Zacas," Carlos told me.) Listened to Swedish electropop courtesy of Jorge and counted facemasks on the bus (24 out of 42). I'm sick of wearing mine. It's hot and makes me feel claustrophobic... though I guess it's better than an ignoble swine flu death.

5.30PM: Emerge into the hot sun and head for the taxi rank. The guy in the first cab is asleep. Approach the second but he mimes to take the first. Mime sleeping back to him. He responds with a loud PAAAAAAAAAARP! of his horn and the first driver leaps up as if electrocuted. The drivers behind him explode into laughter - they've clearly been waiting here a while. "Hola," I smile brightly.

5.32PM: Is obvious that driver is still half asleep as we drive. His nod when I gave him the address was the opposite of encouraging and, sure enough, when we stop at a red light he leans over to the car next to us. "Hey," he says, "which street is Primero de Mayo?"

5.50PM: We arrive in the centre and pull over. The driver gets out to ask a parked car where Primero de Mayo is. This is the point at which am grateful that he lacks a meter and that the cost of the ride was prearranged. Incidentally, today is Primero de Mayo, the day of work, and everything is shut.

6.15PM: Finally arrive at hostel. Have a small 4 bed dorm to myself with a balcony crowded with flowerpots and a view of the cathedral's dome. Sweet. Have a long over-indulgent shower. Justify water wastage by killing any potential pig flu germs that might have hitched a ride. Explore the hostel and admire the view from the roof terrace. There is a Japanese guy sleeping on a bench and wakes when I appear. He looks embarrassed. "Hola," I smile brightly. Not day of work so much as day of rest, apparently.

7.30PM: Go out to look for a restaurant. Any business not closed due to pig panic is closed due to the holiday.

7.40PM: Go to an OXXO (7/11) and buy two instant soups and two Coronas. Dinner.

7.45PM: There is a building site in the next street with a huge pile of dirt in front of it. Two small boys are leaping ecstatically into it and sliding down as though it is a sand dune. The actual ocean is about 800 kilometres away. Look up and see Japanese guy in my room, on my balcony, taking photos. Feel that it is unacceptable to enter someone's room when they are absent, even if it's a dorm. It's MY dorm. And I closed the door behind me when I went out.

8.15PM: Spend twenty minutes trying to microwave hot water for my soup in the world's weakest microwave. No, there is no kettle. Finally just eat, the noodles lukewarm and a bit crunchy. Am reading an amazing book set in Mexico and Texas, and read the same passage three times:

"They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of colour like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them. The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them like strands of the night from which they'd ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come. They rode with their heads down, faceless under their hats, like an army asleep on the march. By midmorning another man had died and they lifted him from the wagon where he'd stained the sacks he'd lain among and buried him also and rode on."

- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

Apocalyptic poet genius. Makes my noodles taste better.

8.30PM: Internet. Tragic highlight of day. According to the guy at the desk, I made the computer crash by plugging my headphones in. Am sceptical. Second computer painfully slow; FB boring. Still manage to waste two hours.

10.30PM: Hostel manager flamboyantly greets me and unnecessarily gives me the hostel drill a second time. Listen politely. He pours me a shot of something anonymous to toast my arrival. I am a good guest, so I drink. Bleeeach it's tequila. Should have known; was unprepared. An older American couple enter and are offered a shot, which they decline. Clever.

11.30PM: Bed.

SATURDAY

10AM: Blearily wake up to blinding sunlight. Something has bitten me ferociously in the night and have huge welts on one hip. This is something of a pattern for me these days so ignore it.

11.30AM: Finally get it together to leave the hostel in search of breakfast, and head to the main square. It is huge and grand. It is also completely empty. There are only two - grossly overpriced - cafes. No bakeries. Am not that hungry so decide to check out the two museums that my Lones made sound interesting. Am not usually into museums so this is a big deal. Takes me half an hour to get to the first one and when I arrive a notice on the door greets me, saying that due to pig flu it is closed until May 5. Great. It is getting hot as I walk across town to the other museum. The streets are almost deserted. I sneeze and the one other woman in the street crosses to avoid me.

11.35AM: Zacatecas is a former silver-mining town and the streets are long and wide, the houses only two stories. They're painted various shades of neutral with an occasional pale pink or green amongst them. Except for small balconies on the second floor, the facades are flat, business names painted above the doorways in no-nonsense black. The supermarket's sign reads, bewilderingly, "Farmacia". It sells no pharmaceutical items. I arrive across town at the second museum and - surprise! - It is closed until May 5. Am leaving on May 3.

12.30PM: There is literally nothing left to do in this pretty but boring city. Head over to the shittier but infintely more interesting poor part of town, which is bustling. Buy a cheese tart from a boy on the side of the road. It is eggy and custardy and completely delicious and I go back to buy two more.

12.40PM: The rest of my day is taken up by a search for a strawberry vendor I saw earlier. Want to eat sugar-dusted strawberries on the roof terrace overlooking the city. Do not find him. However, do learn that Zacatecans are big fans of skateboard sticker shops, pharmacies, and glittery tacky clothes (much like the rest of Mexico). The shops all blare an operatic Spanish cover of Toni Braxton's Unbreak My Heart: "Regresamiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii"...

12.50PM: See a woman wearing a shirt that says "Dr Condom - Have sex with the best". Wonder if she knows what it means. Realise that I am not entirely sure what it means.

1:30PM: I buy a fruit cup from a street vendor. He asks if I want something extra. Wasn't really listening so say yes, which is my Latin America policy. He seasons my fruit with chili powder, salt, and lime juice. Actually tastes pretty great. Mexicans are obsessed with lime - lucky I like it too. Drop the largest and most succulent piece of chili mango on my white cardi, and then on the ground. Several Mexicans look at me scornfully. "Gringa estupida", they are thinking. Want to point out that am not actually a gringa. Can not argue with the estupida.

2:30PM: Walk back to my hostel wondering how to occupy myself for the rest of the day. There is only one other thing to do - cablecar up the mountain - but am saving that as my one Sunday activity. Why oh why did I pay for three nights in advance?

3:30PM: Watch four hours of mind-numbing television, beginning with WALL-E and culminating in a blinding channel-hop between Fashion TV, Miss Congeniality, Law and Order, and a Woody Allen movie.

7.30PM: Head hurts.

7.40PM: Go out to look for food. Sit at one of the two overpriced cafes, not having found anything else open all day. Starving. Order Dorados, which turn out to be delicious potato- and meat-filled pastries. Am eating when a group of young guys takes up a perch next to me, talking shit in that funny way that is particular to Mexicans. Am not really paying attention and after a while realise they are talking about me. They have courteously switched to English in case I don't understand.

"I am a girl and I am eating alone, at the most expensive restaurant. People are going to think I have money," one boy lectures his friends. "And if they think you have money, you're in trouble." Start to smile when realise they are talking to me and turn to look at them. None of them are smiling and not one is making eye contact. Typical cowardly Mexican male behaviour. What is it that you have a problem with? I want to ask. My eating alone or my eating here? Turn to ask but they are still studiously ignoring me. They go back to talking shit in Spanish.

8.00PM: Walk back to my hostel. Another cowardly Mexican male waits in a doorway until I have passed him before he leers at me. "Hola, preciosa..." Keep walking. He follows me up the street. "Where's your mask, preciosa? Don't you know about the influenza porcina?" "What influenza?" I reply, and keep walking.

Murder and mayhem on the Nun River

Tuesday 7 April, 2009


"The closest I ever came to death was in Nigeria, once, when we accidentally killed a woman," my uncle says. We're sitting on a dock in Port Galveston, Texas, sipping on Salvadorean beers and enjoying the sun as seagulls wheel and squawk overhead.

"This was the 1980s, and Nigeria was real rough. We'd been working in the jungle, and had only been there for about four days. The only way we could get to our camp was to take a two hour boat from Port Harcourt down the Nun River and then drive for about an hour and a half. Anyway, we were on the boat heading out, four of us and a local driver. The boat had no wheel, just two motors at the back that were steered by hand. I was sitting up the front of the boat and I see a woman in a canoe, fishing. She'd thrown a net out and was sitting there, staring at us in shock. We were bearing down on her fast. I turned and yelled at the driver, 'Wow, stop, look out!' but he couldn't hear me over the roar of the engines, he was looking out towards the bank.

"We ran straight into her. Snapped the canoe in half. The net just floated away. I heard a thump under the boat and everything started to happen at once. As we went over the canoe it hit one of the motors, and we juddered to a stop right there in the water. The motors were connected by a rope under the boat so if something like this happened we wouldn't lose the whole motor, but it was hanging under the boat, dragging us back.

"Well, the driver was a local guy and he started freaking out. 'Very bad, very bad,' he kept babbling, completely terrified. About a hundred metres away on the riverbank a group of villagers had seen all this happen. They were jumping up and down, yelling and screaming, and when they saw us lurch to a stop they leapt into four canoes and started coming for us, waving spears and machetes. We saw them, and those machetes told us that they meant business. The driver went into hysterics. Charles the Peruvian guy says to me, 'We must go, we must go, they are going to kill us.' I take another look and see they've already gained thirty or forty metres. So Charles and I get down and start dragging the motor up out of the water. It must have weighed about a hundred, hundred and fifty pounds.

"But we got it up and into the boat, moved the other motor over into the middle, and took off, slower than before. We got a little way away and then hit a submerged log. Dented the remaining motor. The villagers see this and start paddling with their hands, salivating to get hold of us. They were maybe twenty or so metres away and they started throwing their spears and machetes, bouncing off the boat. The driver was sobbing in the bottom of the boat, as we ducked down and somehow managed to get the boat going again, one damaged motor and all, and I took over the rudder and got us out of there.

"We eventually got to a village called Yenagoa, went to the police station, made a report. The husband and son of the woman turned up very quickly, already with shaven heads, which is a Nigerian custom when a family member dies. The husband got right up in my face, babbling, eyes wide, crying. You could see the tick bites and bald patches on his head. We were there in Nigeria working for Shell so we had to call up headquarters in the Hague and report what had happened. The boat was impounded, the driver tossed into a cell, and that was that.

"A few days later we came back, paid a thousand lira to have the boat released, and then fixed it up. They were carrying the body up out of the water while we were there. It had been in the mangrove swamp until then. They had to wait for guys from another village to come and carry the body, nobody local would touch it, 'Bad juju,' they said. We gave the boat the works: windscreen wipers, steering wheel, fixed the motors. Couple of weeks later we were ready to get going again but the problem was, no one wanted to ride in that boat. 'Bad juju,' they kept saying. They didn't want anything to do with it. So there we were, with the best boat we had, and we couldn't get it going. We asked around to find out how to fix this juju problem, and they told us no worries, they would call in the witch doctor to do a spell.

"We arrived at the docks the next day and there was something like five thousand villagers there. This was huge, it was the biggest thing to happen in the area all year. The chief was there, sitting like a king on some old sofa they'd decked out into a throne. The witch doctor was a shrivelled old lady, long knotted hair, loincloth, not much else. We'd paid a few hundred dollars for the ceremony and they gave half to the police right there in front of everybody, and we were ready to roll.

"The recipe for getting rid of bad juju involves a bottle or two of caicai, a local spirit, three eggs, and a tree branch. The witch doctor said a few words, broke an egg on the steering wheel, and took a healthy slug of caicai. Then she danced a bit on the boat, broke another egg on one of the motors, and had another couple of pulls on the bottle, before breaking an egg on the final motor, singing a song, and downing the rest of the bottle. And that was it, juju gone, and everyone was willing to come back to work.

"Not long after all this, I was talking to a guy, Richard, old colonialist English guy who had some kind of tax problem and couldn't go back, had been living in Nigeria for a long time. He told me about the vigilante killings that go on in Nigeria, if someone steals something or has a car accident, crowds in the streets just set upon them and tear them apart. It wasn't until then that I realised how close it was, and how lucky we had been. We'd only been there for four days. I was only twenty-seven. Nigeria. I wouldn't go back there."

Why you should never eat South American pork

Saturday 4 April, 2009


"Pigs are the worst," my uncle says authoritatively, rolling a cigarette. "Sure, anacondas have eaten members of the crew more than once... I mean, the jungle's a dangerous place. But let me tell you a story about pigs."

He lights his smoke, takes a puff, and looks at me.

"Back when we had a crew working in Bolivia, we were in the jungle east of Santa Cruz, almost on the border with Brazil. Anyway, we were coming back to the city on what we used to call the Bullet Train - it was a bus on rails. Real rails, trains used them too, but a bus. Like a coach. It was a fourteen-hour trip because this thing only went about 20 miles an hour. We were sitting in there, playing cards, drinking, laughing, as this thing trundled through Bolivia. We had hostesses, the works.

"Anyway. In the middle of the night we hit a bump, and the Bullet Train comes screeching to a stop. 'What's going on?' we're all asking the driver. 'Oh no,' he says, 'we just ran over a man and killed him.' 'What??'

"So we all jump off the train and run outside while the driver backs it up a little, and sure enough, there's a dead man on the tracks. A bum or a worker, you know, they walk along the tracks and sometimes they're drunk and they fall asleep on the rails and accidents happen.

"And as we're getting off the train, this guy's been dead for less than a minute, you know, and a pig comes trotting out of the bushes and starts eating him. Right away. Body's still warm. He could have been sleeping, except for the blood. Pigs are disgusting. You want to commit the perfect crime, use a pig. Like the mafia does.They know what they're doing."

He stubs out his cigarette.

"And that's why you should never eat South American pork." 

An Alaskan Interlude in Puerto Natales

Tuesday 24 March, 2009


I was exiting my hostel in search of dinner one cold March night in a small town in the Chilean province of Ultima Esperanza (Last Hope - very poetic and a little bleak), not too far from the end of the inhabited world, when I heard a gravelly American voice say, "Gotta light for an old smoker, honey?" I turned to see a grizzled old sea dog sitting on am bench, idly rolling a cigarette between his fingers. He had a shock of white hair, a hunch on his back, and sat with one leg insouciantly slung over the other, defiant of the chill. I apologised and explained that I didn't smoke.

"Well,  shit, honey, we're a dying breed!" He spat on the footpath. "They threw me outta there," he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the hostel. "Said I was a goddamned disruption!" He chuckled. "Well, whadda they expect. I'm a tramp. Yes I am!" He declared proudly, as my British companion made to object. "Damn right I am! Been trampin' all over and now here I am, a goddamned old tramp. I'm from Alaska!" He was warming to his captive audience. He had an evident flair for the dramatic and spoke in near-constant italics, which gave his speech a theatrical lilt.

I have a friend working on boats up in Alaska, I ventured. "Well,  shit, honey!" He bellowed. "I'm a captain!" He cocked a shrewd eye at me. "What kinda boats?" Tourist boats, mostly. His face darkened. "Well, shit. Everything's tourism these days. Time was, I was a traveller. I was a voyager! Now I'm a goddamned tramp getting thrown out on my ass by goddamned prissy tourists and an old man can't even get a goddamned light. Shit."

Horse-riding in Bolovia's Wild West

How My Equestrian Dreams Were Thwarted by La Negra Paloma
Saturday, 28 February 2009

While travelling through Peru and northern Bolivia, I had gotten it into my head that I was secretly a star horsewoman who had been robbed of a childhood chance to bond with mans's other best friend, the mighty horse. So when I found out that Tupiza, in Bolivia's south-west, was not only the last stand of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but also possessed unrivalled scenery and horseriding oportunities, I knew that my time had come.

My travel companion, on the other hand, was distinctly underwhelmed by the prospect of horseriding, and couldn't even be bribed with banana chips and an ice cream sundae to join me, given that her last four horse encounters had ended with her doing one or more of the following: screaming; crying; leaping off her horse; being hospitalised. And it was thus that I made my way, at 9am one Saturday, through the deserted tumbleweed-blowing-in-the-wind streets of Tupiza to my tourist office to embark on a seven-hour horseriding extravaganza.

Vincente, my guide, turned out to be seventeen years old and still in high school, and a full head shorter than me (like the entire Bolivian population). He immediately endeared himself to me by asking what my favourite animals were and stopping a stray dog from chewing on my shoe. We walked twenty minutes along the train tracks outside of town to the horses, which were held behind a rickety fence the likes of which only Bolivians can construct - a few old fence palings, some tree branches, and a bit of carpet strung artfully together with rope.


My horse was a black Argentinean monster called La Negra Paloma and it became clear from the get-go that we were not going to be friends. La Negra Paloma was not at all impressed with having to be roused early on a Saturday morning and separated from her friends and feed to be kicked in the ribs by the likes of me. She tossed her head and skittered away from me in protest as I tried to mount, and then, once on, she refused to walk.

For the first twenty minutes Vincente had to drag her along by the reins behind Juan, a sturdier, smaller horse, a humiliation which La Negra Paloma did not appreciate. The moment for her revenge came as we entered a country lane and Vincente decided that we should go a little faster. La Negra Paloma took off at a terrifying pace, with me clinging for dear life as I almost bounced clear off her back, praying for a quick death. She galloped straight at a rock wall and screeched to a halt, deciding that a few mouthfuls of grass would be adequate reward for that fearsome demonstration of her power. We had three more false starts in that vein, La Negra Paloma careening at walls and me shrieking loud enough to wake all of Tupiza's 22, 000 residents, until, exasperated, Vincente slowed things down to an infinitely more manageable walk.

Off we went, along a gravel path that opened up into open Wild West terrain. Tupiza is arid and thorny, with jutting red escarpments on one side as you ride, and rainbow-coloured mountains on the other. They begin as a pale sandy yellow close to the ground and graduate to a deep ochre red, a bruised blue, purple and pink, and are crowned in green vegetation. "Spectacular" doesn't begin to cover it.


After a little while we were joined by a group of three French TV journalists, which gave me ample opportunity to discover just how much my French had deteriorated. La Negra Paloma could have cared less about that, and insisted on walking behind a stout, speckled white horse. At first I mistook this for her better nature emerging in the company of her friends, but I soon realised that that was a ploy. La Negra Paloma, it appeared, was a firm believer in the old adage "keep your friends close and your enemies closer", and our two high school student guides informed us that, in age-old tradition, these two ladies were engaged in a fierce contest over the plodding portly caramel-coloured male horse leading the group. Typical. La Negra Paloma was thirteen years old and not looking too fresh; a little grey around the snout and mane, she was competing with a younger and healthier looking specimen. However, she was not giving up without a fight, and whenever she had the opportunity to get close to Speckles, she would snap at her head. "Your horse is kind of mean," Juliette commented. Yeah, no kidding.

We carried on for another hour or two, through ravines and valleys and along dry riverbeds. Vincente told me the story of how Tupiza got its name (a joke in which two conquering Spaniards debate where to pee: "tu pisas primero...") and of the ultimate demise of Butch and Sundance (unsurprisingly, he strongly supported the theory that they met their end in Bolivia, and would not hear of my argument that they made it back to the States alive). Every now and then the horses would randomly break into a canter, their own hoofbeats spurring them into a gallop all together, La Negra Paloma so fierce and jerky that my squeals echoed off the red rock walls as I tried desperately to hold on.

As we crossed the bridge to Inca Head Mountain the skies opened and began to pour with rain so we galloped to our lunch spot, a little stone table shielded by weeping willows, down by the river. Vincente had brought me a fried egg sandwich, a tamale (steamed mashed corn and dried fruit wrapped in a husk) yoghurt and fruit. The Bolivian guides never ate with us on tours, even when invited. They would melt into the background and eat separately from the group. We just wanted them to sit and talk with us but some kind of unwritten rule seems to forbid that.

As the rain abated, Vincente came running over, for the first time looking his age. "Hey guys! Do you want to play soccer?"

That was how we ended up in a higgledy-piggledy six-a-side formation spread out across the valley, players including one Bolivian in his forties who was a weapon on the field and whom everyone called tío ("uncle"), and three giggling fourteen-year-old girls who were more useless than I was and complained when the boys kept the ball as far away from them as possible. The game was hijacked by a Jack Russell called Bruce Lee, a fierce non-partisan defender who had all twelve of us trying desperately to wrangle the ball back. Manchester United, eat your heart out.


It was time for Vincente and I to make our way back to Tupiza, so we farewelled the others and remounted. After another abortive attempt at galloping Vincente and I swapped horses and I ended up on the marginally more tranquil Bolivian horse Juan, on whom I could actually enjoy a little speed, being significantly closer to the ground. Vincente wanted to really ride, as he was a horse lover who had found himself a weekend job taking inexperienced tourists out on the trails and never got to ride the horses alone or for pleasure. "Only with tourists," he said forlornly. I felt bad... and so let him risk my life a few more times, praying vainly that he at least was enjoying himself.

We walked for a long time along a gravel mountain road, occasionally being passed by rattly old trucks with trays filled with Bolivians heading home to their properties, all staring bemusedly at me through the dust. Eventually we diverged onto a trailless bit of beautiful scrub, all red rocks and cacti and espina, a spiky bush with large peanut-shaped fruit. Vincente told me a joke about the Argentinean slang for horse ("pingo") and the Bolivian slang for penis ("pingo"), and then dramatically acted out, with finger pistols, collapsing back onto his horse, what happened when an Argentinean came to the ranch demanding a horse (you can imagine). He told me a little about his family (he lived with his grandparents and his brothers went to school in Villazón, the border town) but shied away from talking about his parents (divorced). He told me his favourite subjects were maths and literature, and that he wanted to study but didn´t know what, like most seventeen year olds everywhere. When I told him that my whole body was starting to hurt, he took the opportunity to grope my leg and I let him, figuring it was the second-biggest thrill he'd had all day (first being me screaming every time La Negra Paloma terrorised me).


After a rest in the Valley of the Machos, with its very phallic rock formations ("Do you know why they call it that?") we thankfully headed home with a few spine-jarring gallops. There was no ceremony in farewelling La Negra Paloma, whom I was definitely not going to miss. Juan, too, gave me the hairy eyeball every time I tried to stop him from grazing when we were supposed to be trotting, as he clearly considered trotting to be necessary only to reach greater grazing areas. I had to admit to myself that perhaps my dreams of equestrian glory were a little ill-informed.

Vincente walked me back to town and waited outside as I told the tour agency what a great guide he had been. "He's a good kid," she said, nodding. I went back out to thank him and to wish him well, but Vincente had vanished into the dust-blown street like smoke.

Partly-formed impressions of Buenos Aires

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

I left Sydney for many reasons but chief among them was a fear of committing to a working life I wasn't ready for, when I felt like I still needed to see the world and experience new things. During my final year of university I was watching so many of my clever, talented friends signing up for clerkships, internships, their first full-time adult jobs, talking about career stepping stones and benchmarks that had to be achieved and hearing too much of it made me struggle to breathe. It wasn't a life for me, and more and more I was realising that although I didn't know what I wanted to do with myself, it wasn't that. So much in Sydney seemed to be about status, money, work work work, and when I thought about myself running on that little wheel I wanted to cry. I needed to get out of the bubble for a while, and like everyone else who panics about not knowing what to do with their life, I've run away to another world. I suppose I needed to make sure that a Sydney life was what I wanted... and I'm not yet convinced that it is.

It probably comes as no surprise that I'm being seduced by life here. So far I've only seen how people live in Buenos Aires and a small part of the Uruguayan coast, but already in the last month I've found myself yearning to stay. If I didn't love my friends and family so much, I would, but I can't just leave everyone in my life behind and forget about them. I need them. Like the Argentineans, for whom everything is based around family, I want a life of lunches, dinners, bbqs and beach trips, of sitting in cafes watching the dog walkers swirl past with a dozen dogs winding around their legs. I want all the little moments, and I don't want to feel like I'm on the clock all the time. I want to be part of an anarchic society, as Argentina has been described to me... a place where anyone can do anything they want, anytime. At first the thought of that scared me; I had been envisioning drug traffickers, kidnappings, mayhem in the streets. And while that certainly exists, in parts, it's definitely not all bad. There's a comic twist to life here, and so much happiness. It's a wonderful reminder that no one really needs much to be happy. No one needs swimming pools filled with money, designer shirts and dresses, expensive cocktails and cab rides. I know it's a different world here, and the standards can't apply to back home, but I wish they did. Quality of life here is high, although so is unemployment, the government's engagement in some questionable practices, and environmental concerns are a long way down the list - take for example the supermercados, where you're given only two items in each plastic bag. Cashiers make "crazy foreigner" eyes when you ask them to fill the bags right up, doing so dubiously, as though the bag will explode and they can say "I told you so".


But despite economic troubles, people have standards. They're neatly dressed; the sheer number of cosmetics stores, hairdressing and manicure salons would indicate that they take a lot of pride in their appearance. The ubiquitous dogwalkers show that people love their pets, but no one wants to walk them... and there has to be money around if they can pay others to exercise their dogs (NB: This pride in themselves and their country does not extend to picking up dog shit, and Buenos Aires makes Paris, that paradise of poop, look like the pinnacle of public cleanliness). Cars are a status symbol like anywhere else but you could never accuse the Argentines of handling them with much care - a typical attempt at parking here involves bumpering into a too-small spot, alternately and repeatedly colliding with cars in front and behind until thoroughly wedged in. Apparently handbrakes are left off as a matter of course so that cars can be nudged forward or backward without submitting to the dents that are evident all over the city and denote a BA parking attempt. People are free and liberal with their horns, and lean on them at any opportunity. There is a strong sense of "I'll take my time doing what I want here, because I'm Number One" which is most clearly demonstrated in traffic, when it's common for a driver to leave their car in the middle of the lane and stroll off to the shops, leaving the rapidly-banking traffic behind livid with rage and tooting furiously. Upon their return, the driver takes in the scene, strolls back to their car and takes their time strapping on their seatbelt, checking mirrors, and testing the anger of those behind before leisurely pulling away from the kerb. It's theatre. Bus drivers, too, have all equipped their buses with musical horns, which they play every time they pass a pretty girl in the street, the horn sounding like a wolf whistle. Sometimes wolf-whistling buses are all you can hear for blocks - Argentinean women are gorgeous.


Of course, I've been writing of wealthy Buenos Aires, which is where I've been staying, the Double Bay equivalent. It's green and leafy, the buildings are old and grand, and the boutiques are overpriced. People sit in cafes eating pizza all day long (the country's obsession with pizza is bordering on alarming). But the other Buenos Aires is much more interesting, and it's where the true measure of the people can be made. It's underground in the subte, where punk kids give their seats up for the elderly without ever having to be asked. It's out on the Western outskirts of the city, where we went to experience some soccer matches, Argentina-style. I have never seen anything like it.

We arrived to find a dozen riot police vans with barred windows waiting for us. We were physically searched at two separate security checkpoints, water bottles and deoderant confiscated. I realised pretty quickly that I was one of a tiny minority of women present, and the others I saw looked as though they could beat me to a pulp without much effort at all. Soccer is a man's world in Argentina, which isn't surprising. Kids are brought to matches as babies, and an Argentinean four-year-old knows more about soccer than you or I ever would. The audience is 95% male, and in the entradas populares seats, where we were sitting, it's a whole different world. These seats are the cheapest, about $AUD10, and are directly behind either goalpost, surrounded with extremely high fences and barbed wire on all sides. Riot police are stationed all around the stadium, including in an unbroken line behind the goal facing up into the crowd, waiting for trouble. This part of the stadium is where the real fans, the poor fans, are. They all, without exception, wear the home team colours of red and white, and were clearly an experienced and well-oiled machine. Boys run up and down, directing and dividing the crowd, running enormous banners through horizontally as well as diagonally, and later on, working the crowd up and leading them in song.



Right before the game begins, the musicians arrive, 6 synchronised marching bass drummers and a couple of cowbells, and they set the beat for cheers for the entire game. I should mention here that the crowd arrives thoroughly drunk, and opens the game with marijunana, the second-hand fumes of which made me fuzzy-headed. They chant non-stop for the entire first half, songs about the supremacy of their team, River Plate ("smoking pot and drinking booze/we tell the police to fuck off/because here comes River Plate" being a sample of the lyrics), and their manhood ("why do I have balls/if I'm afraid to use them" is a popular chant). After the marijuana comes the cocaine, bumped off coins and only cursory attempts made to shield it from the police (who probably sold it to them). Goal-scoring is of course the most exciting time, when there is a huge cry of "GoooooooooooooOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLL!" Apparently soccer commentators on TV and the radio are hired based on their ability to stretch "GOAL" out for the longest. When the home team scores this is flashed up on the board for several minutes; when the away team scores, the screen continues to play advertisements as though nothing had happened. Love that objectivity.

After the game, the riot police descend in formation upon the away team, who are swooped out of the stadium within minutes and bussed out of the area with a police escort, before anyone from the home team is permitted to leave the stadium, to deter post-match violence. Soccer games are an exercise in primal male chest-beating, and it is an intensely sweaty, exciting, and nerve-wracking scene to be a part of.

On Sunday we woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to experience another must-see of Buenos Aires, the Feria de Mataderos, in another far-out western suburb. The Feria is touted as being "unmissable", with market stalls, amazing asados and barbequed meats, and gaucho (cowboy) displays. It's supposed to be Buenos Aires province at its finest and most authentic. Imagine my dismay, then, when we spent an hour on a bus to get there only to find about two dozen tarp-covered market stalls separated by a dusty concrete path, selling the same cheap trinkets that can be found the world over, and not a single cowhide-chaps-sporting, lasso-twirling, mate-sipping gaucho in sight. You could almost see tumbleweeds blowing down the main street, which was more or less completely deserted, all the shops closed. We deduced that it was the mid-Christmas/New Year's weekend holiday that was keeping everyone away, but that being my final Sunday in B.A., I was extremely disappointed.

We decided to stay and have a parrilla lunch nonetheless (an open grill of various types of meat). We wandered down a side street and heard music blaring from a restaurant (I use the term here loosely). We peered down a dark, long narrow corridor to see people sitting at ramshackle tables and a man on a guitar singing Argentinean tango music. The corridor opened up into what looked like someone's high-ceilinged cement garage. There were a scattering of little tables and the walls were whitewashed, with the exception of a sad little disco ball up on the wall in one corner weakly flashing coloured lights onto the walls. The sweatiest, most harried-looking waiter I've ever seen took our order (the poor guy was serving 50 tables alone) and we had a proper look around. The first thing that became apparent was that everyone dining there clearly all knew each other, as well as the musicians and the waitstaff. The guitarist was accompanied by an enthusiastic drummer beating an African drum, who'd sporadically stop drumming and wander off to greet new arrivals. The room was smoky from cigarettes and all the open grills and the atmosphere was buzzing. This was obviously some kind of local Sunday afternoon hangout where everyone came to eat, drink, sing and be merry.

The musicians were great. At one point the drummer, accompanied only by some vague guitar strumming, delivered the most electrifying spoken-word poem I've ever heard. I only wish I'd been able to understand what he was saying, but what I missed of the words I gathered from the way everyone sat spellbound and exploded into riotous applause afterwards. At no point did it seem as though this was paid entertainment, but rather a few friends that gathered weekly for some fun.

During one passionate tango-style song, a fierce-looking hard-faced couple in their late 30s got up into the central space between tables and performed a passionate mix of tango and flamenco. They were unbelieveably good, whipping around scarves and circling each other with barely-contained crackling energy. I've never been anywhere where people spontaneously do that, and how much did I wish then that Australia had a more uniform culture and tradition of song and dance. The diners were loving it, and a couple of old ladies in turbans and glittery Sunday-best jackets got up and showed the rest of us how waltzing's done.

And I haven't even mentioned the food... two grills arrived at our table of 4 laden with chunks of meat. One grill would have fed us all easily, but we were valiant in our attempt to choke down as much meat as humanly possible. Chicken, beef, and some kind of intestiney offal thing (I skipped it) were all served. The place had apparently run out of salad so it was a meat-only feast, in swelteringly humid 40 degree heat. Probably one of the best afternoons I've experienced, the fact that we stumbled upon this treasure of a restaurant, where everyone was having a great time, made the trip to Mataderos overwhelmingly worth it.

Moments like this happen constantly around this city. Not that it's all happy, all the time - The week I was taking Spanish classes in the city, the main square, Plaza de Mayo, was wracked with protests over poor working conditions. Nothing quite like finding out that the banks are closed for four days only to then see the people that dispense your cash bellowing in the street, letting off flares and crackers/shooting guns in the air. They all go to the Plaza in front of the Presidental Palace aka the "Pink House" (Casa Rosada) and drink beer and make their dissatisfaction with the government known. Argentines love a good protest; it's another excuse for a holiday from work that no one seems to do.


I was crossing the main avenida of the city (supposedly the largest in the world with about 20 lanes of traffic) and saw a man bathing and washing his clothes in its central fountain while cars blurred past. He took no notice, and after washing carefully buttoned his shirt and put on a tie. It took me by surprise because although of course there is extreme poverty in Buenos Aires, it's not particularly evident. There are a lot of people limping around the city, which I think is the vestige of polio in childhood. There are beggars in the street, taking their babies from car to car at red lights asking for money, and kids juggling for small change, but for the most part poverty in Buenos Aires isn't so obvious, so seeing this man in the fountain (and I have seen others since) just reminded me that as much as Buenos Aires might seem familiar, it really isn't.


This is an incredible city and I will be back later in the year. I'm not finished discovering and experiencing all the excitement and contrasts to be had. What's not to love about a country that puts on a photo display of glamour shots of its own president in front of the Casa Rosada for the world to admire, while outside the fence homeless people sleep on benches? Here's the president, making a phone call in his presidential sash. Here's the president, having a laugh with some buddies in a private jet. Here he is, competing in a marathon. There's the president salsa-ing in a club. And here he's autographing photos of himself. It has, however, been a gentle introduction to South America. It's not hugely different from a lot of places that I visited in Europe but I'm sure that Peru and Bolivia, which are next on the agenda, will be very different.

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

My deeply procrastinatory nature would put this moment off for as long as possible but it seems that it is finally time to create a blog. Time to share my flamingo musings with whoever might stumble across them.

There will be travel stories, rants, interviews, and whatever else I might cobble together and publish. I hope you enjoy...