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Saturday, April 23, 2016
Tuesday, March 22, 2016
Relaxing on the River Plate--February 2016
Livingstone, Zambia, March 21st
Before I get stuck into writing
about the various stages of our African overland adventure, I want to finish up
describing the last stage of our South American journey, eleven days spent
in Buenos Aires and Uruguay. It was a
different style of travelling than we had done up until that point: no bicycles, a largely urban setting, hotels
instead of our tent, and culture and history rather than nature as the main
focus.
We left Asuncion at 1 pm on
Wednesday, February 3rd in a biblical downpour. At the bus station, the TVs were showing
scenes of flooding in some neighbourhoods of the capital, reminiscent of the
devastating floods a month earlier. Our
bus left late, with my bicycle packed in the luggage hold after the usual
last-minute negotiating and bribing with the luggage guys. It’s amazing how the easiest, most elegant
way to get around becomes so tedious, difficult and fraught with hassle as soon
as you pack the bike in a box and try to get it on public transportation. I had to pretend that I had spent most of my
Paraguayan currency in order to get a discount.
And no sooner were we underway than we went through the Argentinian
border and had to unload the bike and luggage for customs: more negotiating, half-truths and bribes to
the luggage guys there. I think
Argentinian luggage handlers at the borders must make an absolute killing out
of the obligatory tips which they extort from passengers.
After that, the bus trip was
quiet and very long. We retraced our
previous bus trip south along the flat floodplain of the Parana (the
Argentinian side of the Chaco), then continued along the river towards the
metropolis. We were in comfy seats and
slept most of the way. The next morning
I woke up in the Buenos Aires suburbs, dozed off again and woke up definitively
as we drove past the huge soccer stadium of River Plate, one of the two biggest
clubs in the country. We raced past one
of the two airports, Aeroparque, and the port, and quite suddenly we were in
Retiro bus station, the nerve centre of transport for the entire country. It was very early in the morning, and we sat
in an overpriced café slowly waking up and making plans.
I ended up leaving Terri with
wi-fi and a second cup of coffee and lugging my bike the (considerable) length
of the station to a left-luggage place, then heading out into the city to find
a place to exchange dollars for pesos.
As I walked out into the early morning commuter rush, across a small
park towards the tall buildings of the Microcentro, I felt as though I was in
New York City. On Calle Florida, the
pedestrian heart of this business district, I passed dozens of dubious
characters shouting “Dollars? Cambio!”
before finding a slightly less shady guy who led me to a Chinese shop where I
got 14 pesos to the dollar. I was
unsurprised to find that the new president, Macri, had not gotten rid of the
cambio guys when he got rid of the artificially low official exchange rate back
in December. I retreated to Retiro to
pick up Terri and we set off on foot towards the apartment we had rented for
the first two nights. We walked back
along Florida and its Belle Epoque buildings, then turned right up Hipolito
Yrigoyen to find the Loft Argentino serviced apartments.
I don’t often rhapsodize about
places that I stay, but I loved the Loft.
It wasn’t that expensive (about US$32 a night in the most expensive city
in the most expensive country in South America), and gave us a big space to
spread out our stuff. We had a bathroom
and a king-sized bed in an air-conditioned bedroom upstairs and a kitchen and
living room downstairs. The rooms faced
inwards onto a courtyard and were remarkably insulated from any noise from the
street outside. Best of all, every
morning we went across to the breakfast room and enjoyed a sumptuous spread
while leafing through copies of the morning’s newspapers. I couldn’t believe how good a deal it
was. We only had two nights booked, and
they were booked solid over the weekend, but we decided to go to Uruguay for a
few days and then return. We made
reservations for our return, and then set off to explore Buenos Aires.
Evita on the Avenida |
Protest outside the Casa Rosada |
It was a blisteringly hot day,
just as we had experienced for the previous few weeks in Paraguay, and it made
for a long sweaty walk to the Costanera Sur.
Along the way we detoured to visit the SS Uruguay, an Argentinian naval
ship which had played a key role in the drama of the Nordenskjold Antarctic
expedition in 1902-04. We had had a
lecture during our cruise on the MV Ushuaia about this expedition, and had
visited one of the key sites, Esperanza, where some members of the team had
waited out a very long winter and summer waiting for rescue after their ship
was crushed in ice and sank. It was the
Uruguay which came to the rescue, and walking around the ship and peering at
the old black and white photos, it was though we were suddenly back on the
Antarctic Peninsula where we had spent such memorable days back in November. The views from the ship along the waters of
Puerto Madero to the yachts and condominium skyscrapers of the new developments
beyond were sweeping, and reminded us that for all that Argentina has had a lot
of miserable economic news over the past few decades, there are still a lot of
Argentinians who are living a comfortable, or even gilded, existence.
Fancy yachts and buildings, Puerto Madero |
After all the urban bustle and
architecture, culture and history of the first part of the walk, the Costanera
Sur was a welcome change. It’s a nature reserve,
tucked between Puerto Madero and the waters of the River Plate estuary, and it’s
a surprisingly good place to go birdwatching.
There were dozens of species of birds to be seen, particularly waders
and waterbirds bobbing around in the long ponds along the road.
Office workers from the tall buildings nearby
came out for lunch at the various food trucks parked along the road, and we
joined them, eating delicious churrasco sandwiches for an unbeatable price (about
35 pesos, or under US$ 3) and watching the birds. After a while, we decided to penetrate
further into the reserve itself (so far we had just been wandering along the
perimeter), but we found that there was a Formula E electric car race in town,
and their racecourse blocked access to the park, which was closed for the
day. We watched a bit of the practice
session (those electric cars can accelerate amazingly well, and make very
little noise) and admired the statues of Argentinian sporting greats that lined
the walkway: Fangio, Vilas, Pascual
Perez, Sabatini, Ginobili and others. I
had my picture taken with Vilas and my teenage idol Sabatini.
Me with the Bull of the Pampas |
We headed back towards town via
the ferry terminals for Uruguay. The
prices that Buquebus were asking for the following day’s departures were
astonishing: just to Colonia (the port
on the other side of the estuary), they wanted 1800 pesos (US$130) each! Cursing their prices, we walked to Retiro and
bought night bus tickets instead for 590 pesos (US$42) instead. Finally wilting under the heat, we walked
back to our apartment and had a luxurious apero dinner of cheeses, meats,
bread, salad and more good wine, happy with our day at large in the big city.
Horned screamer, Costanera Sur |
The next day, February 6th,
we left our luggage in storage at the apartment and headed out for another full
day of exploring on foot. This time we
headed towards the upmarket neighbourhoods of Recoleta and Palermo, past
luxurious apartment buildings and chic cafes.
Unlike Santiago de Chile, the wealthy have not abandoned the downtown
core of the city, and it felt very vibrantly urban and chic, like New York or
London or Milan. Our destination was
Recoleta Cemetery, where the great and good of BA society were buried for a
century and a half.
There are dozens of
graves of well-known figures—presidents, generals, scientists, writers,
sportsmen—but the one tomb that everyone heads for is that of Evita Peron, wife
of President Juan Peron, subject of Andrew Lloyd Webber musical immortality,
icon of the populist left and the most famous Argentinian (aside, perhaps, from
the Pope, Lionel Messi and Diego Maradona).
She is still a potent symbol for the aspirations of the poor, and her
image and name are everywhere, including all over the protest camp in front of
the Casa Rosada. The cemetery breathes
Italianate luxury, with gorgeously carved funeral monuments and mausolea. Evita’s grave still boasts lots of fresh
flowers, but some of the lesser-known graves from the past were overgrown with
weeds and had broken windows. My
favourite graves were those of Raul Alfonsin, the first post-military president
in the 1980s, and Luis Federico Leloir, a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry in
1970.
Raul Alfonsin's grave, Recoleta |
The tomb of Evita Peron |
Funerary monument, Recoleta |
The bus ride was easy and
uneventful, although when we got off the bus at 1 am, we didn’t realize that we
hadn’t been stamped out of Argentina, only into Uruguay, and spent the next
three days worrying that Argentinian immigration officials would give us a hard
time on the way back. (They
didn’t.) We woke up at 6 am as we pulled
into Montevideo bus terminal, and once again spent a couple of hours relaxing
and enjoying good, fast, free public wifi (a rarity in Argentina, but common in
Uruguay) as we searched for a place to stay and for affordable ferry tickets
back to BA. Seacat Colonia offered us
tickets for Wednesday afternoon at a much more reasonable US$ 22 per person, so
we snapped them up quickly. The bus
station was the cleanest, safest, best-organized bus station we saw in South
America, a far cry from the menace of Santiago or the chaos of Retiro. No hotels online seemed very cheap, so we
decided to walk into town and find a place on our own. It was a pleasant 40-minute stroll through
Saturday morning streets, past big apartment buildings that had seen better
days, into the centre of town. Half an
hour of searching turned up an acceptable hotel at an acceptable price, as well
as explaining the dearth of rooms: it
was Carnival season in Montevideo, and tourists from Argentina and Brazil were
flooding into the city for the party.
Palacio Salvo, Montevideo |
Montevideo coastline by bike |
Very nice Uruguayan wine, Colonia |
Sunset meal, Colonia |
Back streets of Colonia |
Pablo Cuevas unleashes a backhand |
Friday, February 12th
we set off after breakfast to use our hard-won EcoBici cards, only to find that
the system has a few flaws, like a complete absence of bicycles anywhere in the
city centre. We eventually gave up and
walked to the Costanera Sur, where this time the park was open and we were able
to walk the interior pathways looking for birds. There were plenty to be seen, and it was good
to get some exercise, although the heat was like a hammer. We emerged after a couple of hours, had
another tasty churrasco sandwich and then headed back to the apartment, via
some last-minute shopping on Calle Florida for leather belts for Terri. I escorted her to Retiro, saw her onto her
bus, and suddenly was alone in the big city.
David Ferrer, the Energizer Bunny of tennis |
Waiting for Rafa |
Terri at her first-ever tennis tournament |
Rafael Nadal, showing off the forehand that ruled tennis for a decade |
As for my final take on Buenos
Aires and Uruguay, I really, really enjoyed Buenos Aires, despite its crime and
obvious social problems. It has a
confident urban feel and provides culturally rich city living to its huge
population and feels unlike any other South American city I have encountered,
an island of cosmopolitan sophistication.
Uruguay is an interesting country, very socially progressive (legalized
marijuana, a very early welfare state) but a bit non-descript compared to
Argentina. If I went back, I would
concentrate on the eastern beaches before heading off to Brazil.
Labels:
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tennis,
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Friday, March 18, 2016
Africa Awaits! A Preview of Upcoming Travel Plans
Livingstone, Zambia, March 18
This will be a slightly atypical
blog post from me: much briefer than
usual, and looking forward instead of backward.
I want to fill you in, gentle readers, on the upcoming travel plans.
Terri and I are in Zambia now,
doing some work for a humanitarian project that Terri started almost a decade
ago. She and the Social Service Club of
her former school raise money and donate it to help support a community-based
pre-school and primary school in the impoverished Livingstone suburb of
Ngwenya, and they have visited during their school’s March vacation almost
every year since 2007. I have heard lots
of stories and seen lots of pictures and videos from previous visits, but this
is my first time to see the project first-hand.
It’s been very interesting so far, seeing the pre-school and its new
project: the construction of a new
classroom building, doubling the available classroom area of the school. The students arrive from Switzerland tomorrow
morning, and for the next 9 days it will be a blur of activity: helping build the new structure, painting and
repairing broken windows in the older building, teaching lessons and doing
cultural exchanges with the pre-school students and with older students here at
a youth training centre where we are staying.
I am looking forward to it.
However, it would be a long way
to come to Africa just for a 9-day visit. After
Terri’s former students leave, we are flying south to Cape Town to start a much
longer trip. The plan is to buy a
second-hand 4WD camper and use it to explore large chunks of the African
continent over the coming months. We
haven’t made firm plans in terms of dates and routes, but the basic plan is
threefold. We will first pick the
low-hanging fruit in terms of ease of travel by exploring the landscapes of
Southern Africa (as far north as Namibia, Zambia and Mozambique), taking advantage of the lack
of irritating visa rules and the network of largely decent roads. I am particularly excited to visit Namibia,
Botswana and Mozambique, but we plan to visit all of the countries in the south
over the next few months. We also want
to try to dive and snorkel in the awe-inspiring Sardine Run that passes the
South African coast, having seen amazing footage on BBC’s Blue Planet
documentary series. Having a vehicle
should greatly simplify matters in terms of having access to the remote wild
places that we most want to see, and in terms of camping rather than staying in
the overpriced accommodation on offer in much of Africa, as well as being able
to cook for ourselves.
Once the south has been thoroughly
explored, then it will be time to head further afield into slightly more
difficult territory. East Africa is the
likely next stage, with the familiar trio of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda being
joined by Rwanda and Burundi (the latter depending on the current state of civil unrest). Then it will be time to go further
north: South Sudan seems unlikely, given
its current civil war (although things might change), but Ethiopia and Sudan
are definites, with perhaps Djibouti and Somaliland. Sadly Somalia itself is probably completely
out of the question, as is paranoid Eritrea with its closed land borders and
hard-to-get visas.
Then, having gotten as far as
Sudan, it would be nice if we could turn west and drive into Chad to get into
West Africa. This seems sadly unlikely,
given that the route would lead straight through troubled Darfur, which the
Sudanese government would like to keep nosy foreigners out of. If (and it’s a big if) we could get through,
we could make a huge loop to get back to South Africa. If not, we might have to backtrack south as
far as Zambia to get to the next stage:
West Africa.
West and Central Africa are
almost terra incognito for me. I spent
two days in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), back when it was still
called Zaire, visiting mountain gorillas back in 1995. I also spent three weeks cycling in Togo and
Benin a few years ago. For the rest, it’s
all new territory for me. I would like
to visit every country possible, since once we’re there, it doesn’t cost much
more to keep going to another country, while having to come back on another
trip to get to a country that I missed would be much more expensive. The countries that seem least likely to get
visited are Equatorial Guinea (expensive and hard to get a visa), Central
African Republic (civil war) and Nigeria (unpleasant, expensive and with
serious unrest in the northeast).
Angola, DRC and Mauretania seem to have tricky visas as well, while much
of Mali, Niger and Chad (the most interesting bits, up in the Sahara) seem to
be no-go areas as well. Sao Tome and
Principe, along with the Cape Verde islands, both will require a flight out
from the mainland, but are both said to be well worth it. Much of West Africa has the reputation of
being overpriced and underwhelming, but with our own vehicle, we should at
least be able to travel in some comfort and seek out areas of greater
interest. Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville,
Guinea and Mauretania sound as though they’re more interesting than some of
their neighbours, and I’m looking forward to visiting them.
Then, if we’ve managed somehow to
do a complete loop and ended up back in South Africa, we would sell the vehicle
and fly off for a glorious finale in Madagascar, a country that’s high on my
bucket list for its (sadly fast-vanishing) natural beauty and wildlife. If, instead, we end up in Mauretania at the
end, we might drive up through Western Sahara and Morocco into Europe and try
to ship the vehicle back to South Africa to sell it.
It’s not clear how long it will
take to do all of this, or even if we will accomplish it all in one long
monster trip, but it’s exciting planning a big trip, reading up on things to
see and contemplating seeing a new part of the world for both of us. Stay tuned here or on Facebook to follow our
ongoing progress!
Labels:
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