Anarchy in BA

Buenos Aires is starlingly cosmopolitan. As in you can quite literally find yourself having facinating person interactions with a wider range of characters than you though existed in the world, let alone Argentina. My first taste of this was the first tango club that I found in BA- in the underground basement of an Armenian Community Culture center in the SoHo (yes, named after and thoroughly resembling the SoHos of NY and London) part of Palermo. That mix of cultures was already far more exotic than the Italian-Argentine mix that characterizes the rest of the country, but Buenos Aires, like the other great cities of the world, is a mixing point of culture from every corner of the world.

What I found on Friday Night, however, made me feel as if I had stepped right out of this area and into underground activist world of the 1910s. A Finnish girl from the hostel took me to a secret Anarchist library, bookstore, schoolhouse and meeting place that served as the center of a local anarchist community of Buenos Aires. We found it behind an unmarked door in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods of the city, exhibiting at aevery corner the evidence of widespread crack addiction and petty crime. Several moments after we rang, a pair of eyes peeked through the peephole and demanded to know who we  were. My Finnish companion had been there before, so she had only to show her face before the door swung open and a small woman in a cooking apron swept us in with kisses while offering food. Another older gentleman, one of the patriachs of the establishment, showed us around the facility, which occupied an old hopuse and included a regular circulation library, biblioteca especifico (which was under lock and key and contained only anarchist texts), a large meeting room, an area for in-house printing and publishing, and in a large attic above a gigantic Archive of Anarchist newspapers, flyers, and newsletter stored in cardboarrd boxes marked with their country of origin. The boxes occupied almost every inch of wallspace of the very large, dusty room from floor to ceiling except for a 6 by 10 foot painting of a voluptious woman, entirely naked except for a nun's habit, lying on her stomach and touching herself. We then spent several hours with the some of the Archivists going through there collections of Swiss, Norwegian, and Finnish publications, some of which dated as far back as the 1940s. The leader meanwhile described the tensions in the Argentine Anarchist community as well as their plans to create a cooperative clothing factory to sustain themselves in an anarchist community. They were truly some of the sweetest and most hospitable people I had met in the country, and appear to be entirely dedicated to the intellectual pursuit of anarchist ideas.

Leaving the bookstore in the middle of the night, we were on our way home when a homeless Uruguayan man who was making metal scultpures of crabs and spiders to sell stopped us to talk. He lectured about the importance of respect, the beauty of every moment, and gave me my horoscope (a cryptic "vas a sufrir mucho para amor") for a long time before he invited us to get a beer. Oddly, he'd been asking for money from all of the pedestrains, but here he was buying beers for us in a tiny slum bar down the road. We passed another few hours meeting the characters in this bar, who were an odd mix of local laborers and tattooed teens, at this bar, before leaving close to 4 in the morning and having to kiss every person in the place on the way out. Our uruguayan friend accompanied us as far as he park, gave the girl a wire crab scultpure, and admonished us "¡disfruta de la vida!" before finally letting us go. All in all something a little different from the standard tourist fare.

Argentina!! Of Wine and Bikes and Bus Accidents.

I left me shoes in Mendoza. Of all things to leave behind, I left the only shoes that have any arch and ankle support to help me with my 19 kilo backpack.
 To start from the begining, my last day in Valparaiso was marked by an horrendous hangover and one of the coolest moutain bike races that I have ever witnessed. It consisted if a 2 kilometer course that began in the favela-like slums at the top of the hill and careened through the cobblestone streets of Valpo over twenty foot drop offs, wall rides, and table top jumps admist a racous crowd of porteños who cheered on every rider and made a party of the whole event. The layout of the race was incredible, including a final jump through small buildings and into the cental plaza, and one could see little old ladies, groups of chilean teens... basically the entire community cheering at the sidelines. Facinating juxtoposition of extreme sport and picturesque urban environment with a festival atmosphere.
I then arrived in Mendoza after an overnight bus from Valparaiso planning on storing my backpack at the trainstation and spending a tranquil day tasting wines until I took the last bus to Buenos Aires that night, but after an overnight bus ride throught Andes that left me exhausted at 6 am in Mendoza, I was ready for a night in a bed before continuing. As a result I got to spend a full two days exploring beautiful Mendoza, which is the heart of Argentinas thriving wine industry. The city itself is spacious and beautifully laid out, with a thriving artsy bar district and a fantastic public heart complete with a zoo and abandonded velodrome. I easily spent the first day wandering through the park and climbing Cerro de la Gloria, which had an emormous bronze and stone monument to the Army of the Andes at its peak.
The highlight of the city, however, is its winery "crawl" that most people tour by bicycle. I ended up with a group of fiove working our way down the main drag by bicycle stopping at wineries to taste their signature Malbec wines. Incredible variety of antique, ultra-modern, and even frech-owned wineries, though we weren.t riding quite as straight and clear on the trip back, and the policia seemed to be following us the whole way back....
Regardless, I came within minutes of missing my overnight bus to BA, and consequentially entirely forget what I was wearing on my own. Such is life. But Buenos Aires has proven to be an incredibly rewarding and intimitdating metropolis, being that I have had to find new places to sleep every night after wandering the city for hours and in its sheer size and complexity of public transport. We will see what it has to offer yet. Tango tonight, maybe even see Julie Fair tomorrow. Now where to buy shoes...

Time to start in earnest

So after three blurry days in Santiago, I've arrived in the port town of Valpariaso in Chile to see a new area and hopefully do much more than just drink with other young travelers in Hostels. Not that my time in Santiago wasn't spectacular, I just didn't sleep for more than three hours a night for 4 solid days and was hanging out with an extremely odd and diverse group of young people. I went out every night with a group consisting of three jet-setting party series's from Sydney, a perky Jewish Canadian girl who turned out to be an Isreali army veteran, an College student from Montana starting a semester abroad, a few English and Dutch guys that were all super tall and blonde, and a bunch of Brazilian girls from Rio and Sao Paulo. It turned out to nbd a spectacular recipe for looking fir places to dance and drink all night and a race to get up the next morning and pretend that you're not hurting in the least bit. Mostly this was due to our hostel's location in the center of the Belles Artes comun of Santiago, which was the hippest barrio of the city where all the best bars and clubs were situated in a strip of colonial style houses covered in spectacular street art that made in like a combination of the unique aesthetic vibe of Silverlake with the raucous party scene of westwood. Very interesting.
One of the unforseen results, however, of this experience was that Gabriela, who was the most lively of the Brazilian delegation, invited me to stay at her house for Carnival in Rio. Given the hostels in Rio that generally charge $15 a night jack there prices up to $120 for Carnival, it was an offer not to be missed. Thus the need to make some definite plans for the future with the end goal of getting a visa for Brazil in Buenos Aires and making it to Rio in time for the March 4th kick-off. And that means I can't spend as long as I'd lo,e in Chile... But really, there's not muter to complain about.
What I really did want to see while I was in Chile's district 5 was Valparaiso. Valpo (as everyone here calls it) has almost the same climate, geography, and bohemian status as San Francisco in California. it spans tons of hills along it's embarcadero that are sometimes so steep that "ascensores," which here are large elevators built in the 30s or 40s, carry walkers and commuters up the nearly vertical inclines. It's famous for it's nightlife and also for being considerably more dangerous and edgy than neighboring Santiago, but I really just hope to be able to meet some couch surfing hosts to show me some of the fun, laid back, Chilean get aways,although if everyone in Valpo follows in Neruda's footsteps as closely as they say, even those will be pretty wild. You see, Valparaiso was the favorite city of Chile's favorite son Pablo Neruda, the world famous poet,communist activist, and notorious womanizer whose erotic poetry was likely responsible for the Latin population boom mid century. His house, which I visited today with the Brazilians, is a fascinating "work on progress" that seems like it was built for the ultimate leisure lifestyle with a full bar, lounges which overlook the impressive bay, and napping nooks atevery turn. This town truly has a Bohemian character that trickles down even to every dog on the street, as even they pose for photos and

Arrived!

Arrived in Santiago today after a rather painful 20 hour travel time... Not complaining,but I have definitely been more lucid. Santiago seems to be a fantastic city, full of monuments and fascinating architecture, even a bust of Abraham Lincoln in the park. It's also... Cold, or was as I was trying to catch up on some sleep on a park bench before the hostel opened up. Going out tonight to see exactly what barrio Bella artes has got to offer the wandering party animal still loopy from airborne sleep deprivation.