Chile - Santiago and Valparaiso

¡Hola!

Five days in Chile. Just enough to visit Santiago and Valparaiso, before heading to Peru.

I arrived in Santiago on Thursday morning after a painful night bus (see previous article...). Nolwenn's mum had introduced me to her cousin Francois, who has been living in Santiago with his wife for the last 15 years. (Nolwenn is a very good friend of mine, and my ex-flatmate). They very kindly accepted to host me for a few days, and welcomed me extremely warmly, even if I had never met them before. They live in a big house a bit further east from the centre of Santiago, and I was treated royally during my whole stay: I had my room with its own massive bed, enjoyed exquisite food everyday and even tried their swimming pool. Not the kind of luxury backpackers are used to! Francois  has worked in many different jobs, and was always happy to discuss any topic, really. They cultivated a lot of fruits and vegetables in their garden, which  enabled me to discover lima (sort of small lime, but without the acidity), the true taste of avocado, and the existence of chirimoya (I wouldn't know how to describe this fruit, but you should definitely try it that if you visit Chile, it is amazingly good!).

I spent the firt day visiting the centre of Santiago, under a warm sun. The highlight of the visit was definitely Bellavista: a bohemian area, its walls are full of colours and graffitis, streets are filled with cute terraces, cafes, bars, restaurant, art galleries and a few trendy shops. It made think of a mix between Vila Madalena's cool places in San Paolo (but without slopes), slightly run-down low buldings of Palermo in Buenos Aires (and same sort of trendiness), and La Boca's colours (but without tourists). I hope a few photos will speak for themselves:

I then went to Valparaiso for the weekend, where I met Nolwenn's cousin Gauthier, who is studying for a year there. My first surprise was to realise the hostel where I had booked two nights was full, but they managed to find me a bed in a better hostel for the same price. I went out with Gauthier and his friends, beer pong in huge student houses is always a good way to start your night, and a 3am completo (a kind of hot dog with dubious white sauce and a lot of avocado) a great way to conclude it. Gauthier lives in the middle of the historic part of the Valaparaiso, which is truly beautiful. Located on the pacific, Valparaio ussed to play a major role in international trade before the Panama canal opening. The city has earned its title of world heritage site for the beauty of its improvised and colourful urban landscape, hills colonised by small buildings facing the ocean. Pablo Neruda, a glorified monument of Chilean culture, had a very unusual house, at least architecturally speaking, offering a truly inspiring view of the whole bay. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but you can check their website:

http://www.fundacionneruda.org/en/la-sebastiana/image-gallery.html

Pablo Neruda's house (left)

All these colours seem to have inspired street artists. Graffitis in Valparaiso are among the most colourful I have seen so far, extremely different from from Bansky's style, as you can see on the following pictures:

As you may notice, Valparaiso streets look very dirty, because, as Francois told me, the city is technically in default and cannot pay people to clean them anymore. But ubiquitous colours and countless fantastic views of the bay make it a great place to visit in Chile.

Since the  area is quite exposed to earthquakes, you'll find many signs to indicate safe areas in case of tsunami, and you'll see a lot of electric cables everywhere: they cannot bury them and thus, you end up with this sort of messy set up:

I came back to Santiago for two more days, and went back to visit the city centre. There was not hat much left to see, so I decided to go to San Cristobal hill. With its huge statue of the Virgin Mary located more than 600 meters above most of the rest of the city, it offers the most impressive view of the Chilean capital.

But before leaving Santiago, I had to visit a "cafe con piernas", another speciality of Santiago. Basically, it's a cafe where barely dressed girls welcome you with a kiss and spend their day talking to clients and walking around half naked carrying coffee. Clients are exclusively men, some of them on their own, others enjoying a coffee break with their colleagues, and most of them wearing suits since these coffee are in the business disctrict at the heart of Santiago. It's kind of a day-time strip club, but without alcohol, and no proper dancers. I left after a 23 years old Colombian waitress asked me if I had kids and started talking about her 5 years old daughter...  

Now that I'm in Peru with my friend PAM, you may not hear so soon from us...

A la prochaine !

Riton

Last two weeks in BA and Mendoza

¡Hola chicos y chicas!

My month in Buenos Aires is already over, but it has been a fantastic experience. I met really cool people there and fell in love with the atmosphere of this great city. Buenos Aires is a town I could easily live in, and it’ll be good to come back here in December.

In my last two weeks there, I...:

- tried and failed to watch a game of Independiente - it got cancelled two hours before kick-off because of some hooligans causing trouble around the stadium. Note that they had confirmed the match only the day before, a good example of the way things work in Argentina... Organisation is not one of their key strengths!

- managed to go to El Monumental watch the Albiceleste (Argentina national football team) against Peru. 3-1, good game but not the atmosphere I expected, because the stadium was half empty: They were already qualified and, more important, Messi wasn't there, which makes a BIG difference for Argentinian fans.

El Monumental

- finally visited Recoleta cemetery. I kept hearing about it, and indeed it is quite impressive. It's a must for rich Porteños to have their own huge tomb there, and in the end you get the feeling of walking in a ghost city, with proper streets but no living soul.

Recoleta cemetary

- discovered some of BA's trendiest and most exciting nightspots, crowded with some of South America hottest girls (and by the way, even if Argentinian women are among the most beautiful on earth, they truly deserve their reputation of having a strong character... beware!)

- got my plaster cast removed in La Plata, capital of the region of Buenos Aires. The city is mostly famous its cathedral and, more surprisingly, for the shape of its map: La Plata, seen from the sky, looks like a perfect square and its streets and plazas are evenly organised, as if an extremely rigorous German had planned this city. Many cities here actually follow this kind of grid map organisation, and history tells us the reason behind that: when Spaniards settled in Latin America, they introduced a huge set of rules on how to govern these territories, including rules about how to organise cities. But La Plata is probably the only one crossed by diagonals, and everyone seems so disturbed by this fact that the place was nicknamed "the city of diagonals". Check it out on Google maps and you'll understand.

La Plata cathedral

- had a go with Robin at the best burger in town (Robin is a Belgium friend from Imperial College who happened to be traveling in South America at that time, before heading to Japan. I know, this doesn't seem to make any sense, but everyone has his own travel plan!)

Playing high-level Jinga in a bar with Robin (red shirt), a Brit and an Australian guy

- ate even more exquisite beef, whether at Parillas  (restaurants specialised in grilled meat) or simply at home (They don't understand de concept of "rare meat", so you're often better off buying the most expensive beef steak - still very cheap compared to London - and cooking it by yourself)

Anyways, now that I'm finally on the road, let's talk about the rest of the continent: BA is without doubts the most European place in Argentina, it's now time to dig deeper into the South American culture!

I stayed four days in Mendoza, a city located at the Andes feet and surrounded by vineyards, where most of Argentinan wine is produced. I got there by bus (14 hours, but in the best night bus I've seen so far in my life) and arrived in the morning. I spent the first day with Sonia and her family, a very nice lady living in Mendoza I met in the plane from Paris to Buenos Aires. She has two sons, both fans of Boca Juniors, who spend their weekends watching football, but are otherwise really cool.

The whole city is located in the middle of a desert, and the dusty and dry air reminds it well enough. But an ingenious irrigation system inherited from the Huarpes (indigenous inhabitants of the region) made life, and later viticulture, possible. Nowadays, the region produces 70% of Argentina’s total wine production, most of it being Malbec.

Vine next to San Martin, Mendoza region

Coming from BA, Mendoza really feels like being in the countryside: smaller buildings, lot of trees, not the constant buzz of the city and a perhaps more tellingly, people drive much slower than in Buenos Aires!

I was staying in a nice medium-sized hostel, full of people from BA at the beginning (They had a three-day weekend) but rapidly deserted. Staying in such places when you travel is a good way to meet people from all over the world, and from diverse backgrounds: many European students, an Australian doctor and his friends, a Canadian electrician and his eco-terrorist sister, plus of course many Argentinians to practice Spanish!

Another day was spent visiting beautiful mountains surrounding Mendoza. What stroke me the most was the impression of immensity and emptiness. You can drive hundreds of kilometers and only come across a few towns or villages, surrounded by landscapes showing no sign of human life. With only 41 million inhabitants (40% of them living in Buenos Aires or its surroundings) and a country nearly as big as twice the size of France, Spain and Italy together, Argentina is full of low-density areas like these. I've attached a few pictures because there's no point trying to describe it in lengthy words:

Mendoza region - Precordillera

Mendoza region - Andes (1)

Mendoza region - Andes (2)

The highest point in South America 

Mendoza region - Natural bridge and a lot of rocks oxydation

But my favourite day was definitely the last one. Sonia's elder son, Antonio, came to pick me up at the hostel and drove me to one of their friend's bodega (winery) located about 50 km far from Mendoza. The oenologist there explained me all the different wine production steps and we discussed quite a bit with him and with Ernesto, the bodega owner, about the wine culture in Argentina and all the challenges inherent in wine production. The wine industry, like most agricultural activities, is in crisis, being hardly hit by trade restrictions imposed by the government and by their unfair sector-wide taxes and subsidies system. It's becoming ridiculously difficult to import or export anything in this country, and all these very populist and protectionist measures clearly hinder the fulfilment of Argentina huge potential as a wine exporter, but also as a global food supplier. The elections scheduled for the last weekend of October will be quite interesting to follow, even if many Argentinians seem to have lost faith in their politicians.

Anyways, driving through his 22 acres of vine, Ernesto then brought us to the vineyard next door, for a true Argentinian asado among winegrowers. Good wine, warm and sunny weather, incredible meat, and succulent fish (Yes, they sometimes vary their protein sources), talking about football and Argentina... What a good way to spend a Tuesday afternoon!

Proper lunch in the vineyard

Antonio then brought me to Gabutti, a firm producing olive oil (another local speciality) and owned by a friend of Ernesto, who explained us all the process of making a good extra virgin olive oil. 

I left Mendoza after that, taking a night bus to Santiago de Chile. After a three-hour ride, we had to cross the worst border control ever: It took us about 5 hours (4 more than expected), in the middle of the Andes (so as you can imagine, high above sea level, and therefore in a freezing cold) to get our passports stamped and our luggage scanned. I got all my luggage fully checked, first because I supposedly had too many medicines in my backpack, and then because I had forgotten an apple in my bag (and apparently I was lucky not to get fined, even though the guy at the customs tried to take my NYU cap as a bribe!). They also checked a woman carrying three or four dozens of lotions, creams and cleaning products in her bags, but when it's 4 am, nothing surprises you anymore. 

Anyways, I'll leave Chile for another post, you already wasted too much time reading this article!

Besos from Santiago,

El Ritonos

Third weekend in Buenos Aires - La Boca, Hipódromo de Palermo

¡Hola!

Despite the freezing weather and two days sick in bed, life in Buenos Aires remains pretty enjoyable. Overall, people here are very friendly and it is quite common to start talking to a stranger for a couple of minutes. That's how I ended up watching horse races at Palermo beautiful "Hipódromo" this weekend, just because a guy stopped to tell me I could walk in for free.

Equestrian sports, and horses in general, truly belong to Argentinian culture (think of the Argentinian gaucho riding his horse in the vast grasslands of la Pampa!), and while football remains the most popular sport, Argentina is above all the home of polo. Polo season runs from mid November to the beginning of December, so I'm not sure I'll be back in BA soon enough to watch the best players in the world, but I'll try.

As you can guess from the following photos, a picturesque sunset watching horse races can be a pleasant way to end your Sunday afternoon.

Hipódromo Argentino de Palermo, main public entrance

 Showing off before the race

On the finish line

Another part of my weekend was spent visiting la Boca.

A major tourist attraction of Buenos Aires, la Boca is located in a more popular part of the town. More than a century ago, mostly Italian immigrants used to live and work there, mainly doing maintenance work on boats during the day and dancing tango at night. Paint leftovers were not thrown away but rather used to add colours on the walls of la Boca, resulting in the bright and colorful houses always associated with BA. The other major attraction is of course "La Bombonera" (literally, "the chocolate box") home of the world renowned Boca Juniors football club, where Maradona used to play.

Typical houses in the centre of la Boca

La Bombonera

 Modern version of a la Boca-style house

My opinion? La Boca is clearly overrated. The main streets are crowded with tourists, restaurants for tourists, shops for tourists... The whole thing seriously lacks authenticity!

But then, if you feel confident enough to wander around (apart from the centre of la Boca, which is full of cops, the area is not super safe), you can find pleasant deserted streets, full of street art and graffitis, another omnipresent characteristic of BA.

A few blocks away 

And even further away from the touristic area

On Saturday night, I met Alexandre (who used to live with Jules Veyrat while he was in BA, for those of you who know him) in a Palermo house full of international young guests. Drinking a cuba libre in a cup made of a Coke plastic bottle while standing in their terraza full of graffitis felt like living the Argentinian version of "L'Auberge Espagnole", with people from all over South America, Europe and North America. That's about when I realised that even if my Spanish is still terribly bad, I can sort of communicate mixing it with a couple of other languages. Actually, knowing Italian proved very helpful: not only does Porteños slang abound with Italian words, but the tone is also very close.

Speaking of Coke bottles, Coca-Cola launched a few months ago Coca-Cola Life here in Argentina.

In case you didn't know, it's a kind of Diet Coke made of stevia, a natural sweetener produced in South America. And it actually tastes good. And as you can see from the picture, they played the Mac Donald's trick: replacing the red communist color by a supposedly more eco-friendly green package. I'll leave you with the official ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZYs_h1DK-NU

Fernet-Branca is another drink you will try if you visit BA. Originally, it was an Italian liqueur mostly used as a hungover cure, and indeed it tastes like a medecine. Fernet and coke is the gin and tonic of Buenos Aires, and when you're not used to it, it's frankly disgusting. Not the best thing Italian brought to this country! However, a strong Italian influence means that you´ll find very easily a buonissima thin and crispy Italian pizza or, from what I've heard, a delicious dulce de leche ice cream (I'm still waiting for hotter weather before trying that!)

That's it for today. I leave you with the random pic of the week.

Un abrazo,

El riton