La Boca Boxing Day

La Boca is a rapìdly gentrifying port-side barrio, famous for its artisitic community, painted buildings and for its soccer team - Maradona's Boca Juniors. The painted buildings come from La Boca's heritage as the first port of call for the waves of Italian immigrants to Argentina - who used paint left over from the ships to colour their houses. Now days it's part of the area's identity and photos of the coloured houses in the tourist area feature prominently in most Buenos Aires tourism promotions.

The tourist area though is still in the middle of a barrio that is considered dangerous; and Porteños go out of their way to make sure that visitors are fully aware of this, quite unlike any other zone a tourist is likely to visit in this city. It started at the hostel, where the girl at the desk dramatically drew scribble on my map over the area to avoid passing on my way to La Boca. Lonely Planet has 'area unadvisable for tourist' on their La Boca map in several places, and emphatically warns not to cross 'the bridge' - whatever you do. It got even more serious when I asked for the restaurant that had been recommended at the hostel (with no address). A concerned and nervous look passed over the face of the barmaid at La Perla, who then asked her manager before pointing it out on our map, but insisting we take a taxi there (500m or so away). The taxi driver in turn inisted that we not leave the restaurant until we'd called another taxi; a (by now unneceassary) warning repeated by the waiter as we settled up !

Still, the lunch was fantastic. El Obrero is a traditional worker´s eatery whose walls serve as a shrine to Boca Juniors. Simple but delicious steaks (of course) and salads and amazing desserts - made by the proud waiter's mother - in fact he 'corrected' our order to make sure we got the right ones. To be honest, it was hard to see from the taxi back to the centre what it was we needed to be scared of in La Boca, but we were certainly happy to take the advice so insistantly given, and even happier to have persisted in finding this gem of a destination.

Apart from just wandering the streets and being accosted by tango dancers, artists, hustlers etc while looking for that one shot not yet taken, La Boca has a hyper modern exhibition space called the PROA Foundation which had a Marcel Duchamps exhibition on, inlcuding (a version of) his famous urinal. This, I'm afraid, is the closest I was to get to an art gallery in Buenos Aires.

Quick Update

There are not a lot of internet cafes in the Patagonian Alps, and travelling with a social group doesn´t leave a lot of time for blogging - so here's a quick photo free update of where I am and how it's going so far.

Today (Jan 06) we're leaving the Chilean city Puerto Natales (capital of the aptly named Ultima Esperanza or 'last hope' province) to travel to Punta Arenas, the last town of any siginificance in the area. The last 6 days in Patagonia have been great - in Argentina we had the best weather imaginable for our three days hiking in sensational scenery, whereas in Chilean Patagonia it really didn´t stop raining while we were camped in the Torres del Paine National Park. Needless to say, the return to civilization in the form of warm showers beds and laundries was most appreciated ! The group I'm travelling with is fantastic, everyone gets on well, there's a good range of ages and nationalities, and that spirit has helped us deal with a few of the challenges in the Chilean leg of the trip - more later ! My body is mostly coping with the rigours of the 9 hour hikings, though a small shin injury means it's probably good news we're back to towns for a couple of days (including 12 hours in a bus to Ushuaia tomorrow !)

It's hard to believe there are only 5 more days left in Patagonia, before my true independent travel begins.

Happy New Year to every one !

Digesting Buenos Aires

Digesting Buenos Aires requires a certain amount of effort. Firstly, the city is enormous - 13 million residents in the greater metropolitan area, nearly a third of Argentina's 40 Million inhabitants. Thankfully most of the areas a foreign visitor is likely to visit are situated in an area near the coastline (or river mouth, more accurately), close enough together to be almost walkable - and easily navigated with metro, cheap taxis or busses.

But the digesting that gave me most trouble came in the form of Bife de Lomo, massive slabs of tender steak that Argentina and particulary Buenos Aires and the surrounding Pampa are justly famous for. Possibly unwisely, I made my first assault on one of these only a few hours after stepping off my 16 hour plane trip from Sydney via Buenos Aires. Airport, transport and hostal check-in simply were navigated without any fuss, so I made arrangements to meet up with Chris and Kath - travelling incognito as Paco and Conchita on their way home to Sydney from New York via too many exciting places to mention here.

Christmas dinner at El Territorio in San Telmo

After a few hours at a local bar sampling the local brew - Quilmes - and wine (various Malbec labels) and a nice Spanish strength gin tonic, we decided that we´d hit the restaurant previously planned for Christmas lunch at once (Conchita isn´t big on waiting once a good idea enters her head).

The place recommended (La Cabrera) is very popular with the locals so we supped on a glass of bubbly waiting for our table to come free - which it did sometime after 11pm. The waiter raised his eyebrow when we ordered two full and one half steaks -which should have sent off a few warning bells, but it wasn´t until two giant metal trays (tastefully cow-shaped) arrived, each with a one kilogram, inch thick slab of meet on them. The half kilo steak looked modest in comparison. Out of pride we polished off most of it, leaving the salad and fries untouched. I don´t think my jet-lagged body will forgive me in a hurry for that !

In general Buenos Aires is a place for strolling around, enjoying the cafes and sites. There are plenty of musuems and galleries, but none come particularly recommended. Instead on Christmas Eve I met up with with Pablo from Madrid (but originally BA) for a much more modest lunch and catch up and walked about 4 hours around the up-market districts of Palermo and Recoleta, visiting the cemetery where Evita (and hundreds of other famous Argentinians I really hadn´t heard of) are buried, before passing back to the hostel via Puerto Madero, the recently revitalised Buenos Aires port area.

Casa Rosada and the famous Evita balcony

Argentinians celebrate Christmas Eve rather than the 25th, so the Hostal put on a roof top BBQ grill and party for guests, staff and other random strays in the area. That finished at 6am (further impressing my jet-lagged and steak digesting body) so Christmas Day really started with a Christmas lunch of a steak sandwich with chips at Chris and Kath's hotel, before starting an afternoon's bar and tapas hop.

Boxing Day was in La Boca, which I'll save until I can get my photo uploading process going more efficiently than it is now ! Back into civilisation today so contact may well become more frequent.

Off to Argentina and Peru

Welcome to installment one of the South American series. After the time-travelling experience with Cuba and Mexico, it's now time to attempt some real-time travel blogging. At this stage, I'm not sure how effective this will be, as a lot will depend on internet access in the more remote locations and how much fun I'm having - and how little spare time I have !

One thing for sure, I won't be posting all my photos real time. As with my last big trip, I've decided to take a combination of cameras - one digital and one film. Sadly, I'm not taking my grandfather's old fully manual Pentax K1000 this time as I really couldn´t justify the extra weight. So there'll be no photos from Peru in 1932. I was always going to bring my compact Pentax digital camera for city and social shots, but I was in a dilemma whether to get a new digital SLR for the nature shots (especially from Patagonia and the Inca Trail), or to stick with slide film. In the end I've stuck with slide film, not because I'm any sort of luddite (I only play vinyl records for a laugh) but because I still think that slide film better captures light than all but the most expensive digital cameras, an opinion that seems to be shared by many experts (by no means all) in the inter-world. But I´ve certainly created a whole lot more work for myself on my return in February by that choice - hopefully that will help with the post trip depression !

The reason I've found some time today (Xmas Eve) is that there´s a brief lull between my first day wondering around and Xmas Eve celebrations - which are the main Christmas celebrations in this part of the world. Although I've only been here 24 hours, I've already managed to catch up with Chris and Kath on their slow way home from New York, and Pablo, a friend from Madrid on his trip home for a family wedding, as well as walking all round Buenos Aires in the blazing sun.

I'm staying at a hostel (yes, a 40 year-old backpacker) - called the ArtFactory on account of the themed and painted rooms - for the first 5 days in Buenos Aires. Following that, I'm on a 2 week trip to Patagonia which should give my fitness a good work out ! After that, I have two un-planned weeks that will cover some or all of the Iguacu Falls, Salta/Jujuy and the Andean Northwest, and Mendoza; before finally skipping up to Peru to walk the Inca Trail - a touristic cliche for sure, but not one I'm prepared to miss out on.

Finally - Merry Christmas to all from Buenos Aires, and stay tuned for hopefully some further updates !

Trinidad and Trains Revisited

So when last we were in Trinidad, I mentioned a train trip through the Valle de los Ingenios to a town called Manaca Iznaga, famous for its tower. Given that (5 years after the event) I still hadn't finished scanning my slides, the photos were a little limited. Finally that can be rectified. Without (too many) further stories, here are some more snaps from the train trip.

Firstly, the train itself:

On the move:


Not the one we were afraid we might have to take:

The first stop was a Hacienda called Casa Guachinango, just after a railway bridge:


It doubled as a sort of bar, and I guess the intention was that we stayed there and lined the pockets of whoever was working there. I took the opportunity to check out the surrounding countryside:

... and luckily, as I explained in the previous Trinidad post, I managed to jump back on the train as it departed, unannounced, for what was to be the final destination, Manaca Iznaga, famous for its tower:

from which there was a pretty view, including of the local hamlet itself:

... in which not much happened, although they were pretty casual about a steam train crossing,


a tractor seemed to be more interesting to the locals.

Next, I revisit Camaguey , from where my first impressions of Trinidad were written, so long ago !

Cuban Propaganda Badge

Following from my previous post, this is what a Fotki badge looks like when applied to an album of political propaganda from all over Cuba.

It might be more effective applied to an album with more photos in it, such as this one from the Urban Sights album. The size and background colours are also configurable.

All in all, cute, but not as much fun as the Stacks:

Stacks of photos from Mexican Bus Windows

I store my photos on the website Fotki. I can't remember now how I found it, but at the time (2001) it was far away the best (and most reasonable) of the photo websites around. Today I have more than 5000 photos there so I won't be changing any time soon. I actually prefer its interface to Flickr, and the multi-album facility to that of Picasa. Picasa wins with its desktop software you use to synchronise albums, which unfortunately is not available on the Mac. It also has a cleaner interface, but is not as well suited to storing large numbers as fotki is. One day I will spend more time doing a more rigorous comparison.

Fotki has come out with a new feature called widgets, which give you ways of emdedding collections of your photos on websites (such as blogs). There are 3 at the moment, and I'm using this entry to test out the Stack feature, which represents a fotki album as a stack of prints with an intuitive flickability to browse the album.

This stack comes from my album Mexico from the Bus Window which is fairly self explanatory. You'll notice that one of my busses has wings. If you find the little arrow icon on a given photo, it will take you back to that photo in fotki. You can also vary the size of the stack, and set the background to any colour you want. You can see a stack of my photos from Palenque, Mitlan and Mont Alban below.

Next post I'll test out the badge and slideshow (yawn) widgets.

Birthdays 2.0

The other day I crossed the big 4-0. It was less traumatic than I'd expected, which might have been helped by it falling on a Monday. These days though it's hard for a birthday to go unnoticed, especially for those with Facebook profiles. A few years ago, it was really only family and close friends who would remember the exact day. If I organised a party (which I often did), or someone at work managed to find out, then a few more people would find out and maybe wish me a happy birthday in person, but that was it.

This year I was struck by how many different ways there are to wish someone a Happy Birthday ! In fact the most frequent way I was wished a happy birthday this was via people scrawling on my Facebook wall (36 in all), a method of felicitations that didn't even exist two years ago. Facebook (for those who aren't familiar with it) gives you 3 days notice of impending friend's birthdays, which is enough to ensure that most people are aware of it. At the other end of the scale, I received exactly one card in the mail - kudos to my cousin in England who managed to time it to arrive on the exact day. The next most common method was text messaging - a grand total of 8 messages, or 9 if you count the text from my local pub, telling me they'd added $10 to my card for my birthday (at least 0.1% of my annual spend).

Apart from that, just a couple of in-person greetings (maybe helped by being out of the office for most of the day) and surprisingly few emails (4, mostly from family) and phone calls (3 to fixed lines and 2 to mobile). Quite a contrast to only a few years ago. Despite having recently signed up to Twitter, I'm still not active, so there's a possibility of yet another new means to be commiserated with next year.

Below a summary of Duncan's 2008 greetings !

Facebook Wall	36
Facebook Message	2
Normal Email	4
Snail mail Card	1
Text Messages	9
Mobile Phone Calls	2
Home Phone Calls	2
Work Phone Calls	1
In Person	5