Mosquitoes in Iquitos or Bienvenidos al Selva

As you shuffle off the plane and on to the tarmac in Iquitos you are greeted by the open arms of unlimited humidity, it hugs you from above, beneath, between and behind. While one hand is busy pulling cloying clothing away from your skin the other is pursuing quickening beads of sweat. A race ensues between water, gravity and motor skills. There is little doubt that you have arrived in the tropics. To add to the banana republic-like atmosphere, the carcasses of a few Boeing 737’s lay rotting and windowless in waist high grass in the distance. Planes which probably last left the ground in the late 70’s. For me it was a made to order welcome.

The taxis in Iquitos of which there appear to be more of than people are a variation of the S.E. Asian Tuk Tuk. A 125cc Honda motorcycle with a two-person carriage harnessed to the back of the bike. Except for the collectivos (buses) the city gets around on two wheels and the yellow lines in the middle of the road are discretionary at best. The streets are teeming with taxis, collectivos, women on motorcycles (is there nothing sexier?) and guys ferrying women with both legs draped over the left side of the bike so as not to burn their legs on the tail pipe. Almost buckling under the weight of the cargo the taxis rarely leave second gear. A winding out of small engines under stress permeates the air. The bikes actually sound like mosquitoes.

Shortly after dark I checked into my hotel a few blocks from the Plaza de Armas. There were no rooms left save for the Honeymoon Suite, which would be given to me for the price of a single room. I am not sure exactly who honey moons up here but the Berber carpeted room had an exposed step up bathroom whith Jacuzzi, a terry cloth robe that wouldn’t look out of place on the racks of your local Salvation Army, push button electric heated water, a half dozen vases filled with plastic flowers, air conditioner with remote control, Raton furniture, a California King size bed and a headboard with an engraving of mating alligators. Jungle kitsch at its’ finest.

Iquitos was once a prosperous place, playing host to the World War I rubber boom. There is a testament to its’ once upwardly mobile past in buildings that are plated with beautiful terra cotta tiles imported from Portugal. On the South West corner of the Plaza de Armas sits a two story building designed by Gustav Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame. Today it resembles little more than a stamped tin ceiling in a decrepit Brooklyn bar - spray painted with rattle can silver. Anyway the bottom fell out of the Iquitos economy when some smarty pants Brit. smuggled rubber tree seeds back to Kew Gardens, London and there was no longer a need to harvest rubber from the backwaters of the jungles surrounding Iquitos.

After a quick dinner I made the rounds to some agencies that specialized in “Amazon Expeditions.” Somewhere around the third agency I started to recognize both the alligator in the brochues and the picture of the woman from Pensacola, Florida trying out the blow dart gun with the “native.” This was clearly a bust and I headed back to my hotel to take advantage of the 5th floor terrace, which promised “sweeping views.” The only view I found was inky blackness interrupted by the blinking of communication towers. A few minutes later the street below was whipped up into frenzy. Four pick up tricks filled with police screeched to a halt a half a block away. Being ever curious I rushed down to the street below. I was sure or at least hoping that a major drug lord was soon to be hauled off. The matter proved uneventful though, the police or overabundance of them were simply looking into a kiosko that was maybe running an illicit bar and selling drinks after hours. Across the street from the tienda was a group of people sitting on the sidewalk talking rather loudly. With the failed promise of excitement I hesitated to head back to my hotel and instead wondered over, introduced myself and sat down. They were locals, a group of painters who lived in the lofts in back. Within a few minutes we were getting along like a house on fire. It turns out that two of the artists Mauro and Moises also did tours of the Amazon around Iquitos. They inquired about what it was that I wanted to see. I mentioned the tired looking alligator in all the brochures and the woman from Florida with the blow darts and they laughed. They assured me there was no Disneyland parade on their river trip. They specialized in one place called the Pacaya Samiria Reserva. Soon after Moises produced some pictures of trips past. To be honest it looked like a bit of “roughing it” but quite beautiful nonetheless. Shortly after it was agreed upon, they would wake my sleepy self up the next morning and a four-day three-night excursion would commence. Admittedly this was a rather unorthodox way of organizing a trip but sometimes you have to just rely on instinct and general judge of character. Aside from that I had just finished reading “Endurance” the Ernest Shackleton Arctic nightmare and “Over the Edge of the World” the Magellan circumnavigation story and I was up for a bit of the unknown. The plastic flowers at the Dorado Inn would still be there when I got back.

Wednesday Morning:

Moises, Mauro and myself headed by car two hours upriver of Iquitos to the town of Nauta with two tents, two hammocks, three sleeping bags and three pair of thick rubber boots. Here we were to stock up on provisions, meet Nestor our navigator and set off for Pacaya Samira. After almost two hours at the market we obtained the following:

10 packs of batteries, 6 fishing hooks and line, 20 gallons of water, 2 chickens, 8 cucumbers, a stalk of bananas, 2 pounds of rice, 3 dozen eggs, 2 water melons, 6 mangoes, 2 bags of pasta, 2 stalks of palm, salt, sugar, 1 case of large bottles of beer, a bag of ice, a large jar of instant coffee, 8 cans of condensed milk, toilet paper, 16 gallons of gasoline, 2 lighters and 4 tall candles.

With provisions in hand we headed down to the slip to meet Nestor and load our boat. The boat was rickety wooden affair – 20 feet long by 4 feet wide, with a 14 horsepower outboard motor. Due to the fact that this was low season an outboard motor of this size was required as running aground was a real concern with the water level up in Pacaya Samira. There were also requirements about what size engine you could enter the National Reserve with for environmental impact reasons. So with three pulls of the cord we were off on the Marañón River to God knows where but everything was "Pitre Mitre" as the Peruvians say.

To be continued …

Some of the Pics are high-res and so might take a bit of time, I am of course the poser anyway they are available Here

Lima Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

I arrived in Lima a couple of days ago. I have been staying in a neighborhood called Miraflores about 10 blocks from the ocean. This time of year there is a coastal fog called "garua" that blankets the area. It's basically a marine layer that doesn't burn off once the afternoon comes. Despite the lack of sunshine the ceviche and pisco sours are fantastic.

This afternoon I am headed up to the region of Lareto which is the North East corner of Peru. I fly to a place called Iquitos which is a small city that has the curious distinction of being a city that is not connected to the country by any roads. The only way in is by plane. The city sits on the Amazon River basin. In Iquitos it is possible to arrange for a stay at lodge in the rain forest and/or a boat down the Amazon. I hope to do both, arrange a quick meeting with Jeff Bezos and also find a good Shaman along the way. I don't think there is much in the way of internets up there so I will be back next week sometime.

Ciao
Clifford

Glacial Paces

Hola,
I left Chile on a bus bound for Calafate in Argentine Patagagonia 2 days ago. I almost didn't get to Calafate. I almost got left at the Frontier. It seems my papers were not in order. For some inexplicable reason they stamped my passport very lightly and in the middle of Rorschach blotch of other countries stamps also failed to stamp my visa card. The passport stamp was at best illegible. I ended up in an odd predicament, not having an entrance stamp means not being able to obtain and exit stamp. Since I couldn't prove that I legally entered the country I was no not able to leave it. This is an odd predicament because generally if you enter a place illegally they throw you out, it seem s in Chile they keep you there. Eventually some genius realized that passports have bar code on them for a reason and was able to ascertain where and when I legally entered. Back on the bus Gus.

People generally come to Calafate for one reason to witness the Perito Moreno Glacier. I was happy to find a place called Cabanas Nevis that had 6 detached A frames for rent for $50.00 night. I was even happier to learn that with a quick phone call the owner of the Cabanas Nevis was able to arrange to have a van honking outside my cabana in the morning in order to take me to Los Glaciares National Park.

The park is maybe an hours drive north of Calafate. A short and beautiful drive tracing the outline of the never ending Largo Argentino, the largest lake in the country. Not long after you enter the park you get a glimpse of one of the side walls of Perito Morenos, distant but nonetheless impressive. A short while later we were dropped off at a trail which lead to a dock on Lake Argentina. The first thing you notice about the lake is the unique colors of the water, really just two colors a mineral green and gun metal grey. I was told that sediment kicked up by the glacier is responsible for this phenomenon. At the lake we boarded a Zodiac and proceeded to cruise within a 100 meters of the glaciers front wall. Floating out from the wall are various sizes and shapes of ice bergs that recently cleaved off of the Glacier. The closer you get the more the Glacier's scale comes into focus. The length of the front wall is close to 3 miles and the height ranges from 20 to 25 stories high. A true behemoth. The surface of the Glacier randomly alternates between an ivory white and a crystalline blue. Think breath mint. The blue is caused by changes in the ice's density. In the denser areas the only light allowed to escape are the shorter wave lengths in the blue end of the spectrum. Oh science how I love ye! At the closest point the captain cut the engine and we just drifted for a while. Without the drone of the engine you could actually hear the glacier, a muted creaking like an old floor board. This glacier has that distinction of being one of the ones that is not receding. It is constantly growing and moves slightly over 2 meters a day. With all of these characteristics I began to view it more like the biggest piece of kinetic sculpture and less like a wonder of nature. The highlight was when the creaking sounds grew gradually louder causing a moment of rapt anticipation. You knew something was coming but not from where it would come. If your eyes were looking in the right place you saw it. A chunk of ice the size of a small suburban house broke away from the Glacier. The piece that cleaved off was maybe 3/4 of the way up on the front wall. The visual was an equal mix of both grace and violence. The new born ice berg's arrival in the water send shock waves rippling out hundreds of yards on the lakes surface and then the mountains returned the echo of ice hitting the water. It was truly awesome and the only the polite thing to do in this situation was to clap in appreciation. Give the people what they want ...

After about an hour we came back ashore and broke for lunch. The afternoon was spent on the Magellan peninsula which provides an almost panoramic view of the Perito Moreno Galcier. There are many vantage points on the peninsula and different heights, all connected by a muddy trail. The distance from the peninsula to the side wall of the glacier is no more than 100 yards. It is from the top of the peninsula though that you can see and truly appreciate the length of the ice field that feeds the glacier. It extends back almost 6 miles. From this perspective it appears that glacier is a little smaller than the city of Baltimore. Most of the afternoon was spent relaxing and talking in the shadow of ice beast in front of the peninsula. Sometimes its great to feel that small. Like a drop of water. Frozen water.

Some pics can be found HERE

House of Torres Del Paine

I arrived in Puerto Natales on Tuesday. It was only a three hour bus ride from Punto Arenas but it was the typical "there is only one bus a day, you can't get there from here, try again tomorrow, it sucks to be you" scenario that was the cause of delay. No fault of my own. Puerto Natales is not much to speak of - a postage stamp sized town that is nothing more than a jumping off point for people looking to hike or trek(is there a difference?) in Torres Del Pain Nacional Parque. The town is centered around the Seno Ultima Ezperanza or The Last Hope Sound. Seemingly everything in Patagonia has a name that implies mortality or at the very least mercy of some sort. Given the fact that it is late Winter here the cargo van that picked us up did the majority of the hiking and the trekking was kept to a bare minimum. Fine by me. The weather in Patagonia will turn on you like a sickly dog, one minute it is congenial almost spring-like and the next it's snow, fog or rain. Pick your unfavorable condition and it is most likely on deck.

On the five mile drive to the park the morning fog and cloud cover peeled themselves away leaving us with a 20/20 view of everything around us. The driver mentioned that we might be blessed today as the previous day's tour was a bust. He mentioned how the day before he simply pointed to where things "would" be if there were better weather. The skies above managed to hold out and it wasn't long before we were all gawking at Guanacos grazing. That last sentence was brought to you by the letter "G." Apparently the Guanaco is a member of the camal/llama family and vaguely resembles the alpaca - with the geeky neck and all. Anyway enough Zooligy they were funny and friendly and probably make excellent sweaters. Shortly after our Wild Kingdom moment we pulled up to the Miladon Cave, the Miladon being a prehistoric animal also known as the sloth. Since Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins I think we were all curious to take a look at his former digs. And what a place it was, the view was fantastic. I would say easily his place was 20K square feet. The Midalon lived large! Next we found our way to Lago Sarmiento. The still lake held a mirror image of the mountain above it on its surface creating an almost kaleidoscopic effect. The picture at the top of the of this post gives some evidence of that. It made you want to run right in to the lake and shatter the optical trick, but hypothermia being the scourge it is, it somehow didn't seem like the sensible thing to do.

Further up we stopped at a restaurant in the middle of the Park for lunch. Wha? A restaurant here? All of the driving had made us all quite hungry. The view was 4 star the food was 2 stars. Divide by 2 and you break even. It's always interesting how you are willing to overlook food quality when you are sitting on a lake with 180 degree views of mountains outside the floor to ceiling windows. It doesn't take long before you forget the food is crap and quite frankly it doesn't matter much. The idea of being in a dining room with such beautiful albeit outdoor decor is fascinating. Shortly after we took our leave and boarded on back our white yet muddy cargo van. Upwards and onwards.

Soon after our driver Manuel crained his neck back and explained that we would now be stopping at a glacial lake - Lago Grey. After a minute amount of hiking me and two Austrians found ourselves at the foot of the glacial lake. While the front wall of the Glacier Grey was slightly distorted in the distance there was an abundance of icebergs floating close enough to the shore to make us all stop and appreciate where we were. After several photo ops and close to zero temperature we all hiked back to the van. By now the sun was setting and we were all very tired from all of the looking we had done.

Fast forward another sleepy hour and Manuel drops me off at the Hotel Captain Eberhard. This hotel is a slimmed down version of the hotel in "The Shining." More on that later. Tomorrow I must catch a bus out of Chile. Really I must.

Pictures at Eleven.

CT

PS I finally uploaded the pics and they can be found HERE

Punto Arenas Pablum

Lazy day today. I woke up late and had breakfast in the Cafe Tierra del Fuego in my hotel. This Cafe happens to be the most happening cafe in town. Spend an hour here and you will see all walks of life come and go conversing over coffee, drinks or food. I recommend eaves dropping as a way of learning a language as it trains the ear to the cadence of everyday conversation. I properly identified 5 or 6 words that I had previously been butchering even before my coffee arrived.

After finishing up my sedentary and highly caffeinated late morning I took a long walk to the cemetary which I was told yesterday was very important here. Cemataires are always important places to people for obvious reason but what struck me was that perhaps 98% of the graves had fresh flowers placed on them in the dead of winter. They were less holes in the ground and more like shrines that are visited weekly at the very least. This in itself was much more impresive than the grand and yet decrepit mausoleums of Ricoletta in Buenos Aires. It's interesting that even in death there is a socio-economic divide, you have the grand mausoleum and then the glass boxes on a shared wall for the plebes. While the plots of the well to do wool boom families were impressive the commoners glass boxes containing an urn for ashes and personal affects were far more touching. What struck me as curious was the many crypts that contained Slavic names or bore names in the Cyrillic alphabet. Aparently the Croatians were a major imigrant force here in Chilean Patagonia. I think they came over for an overhyped but non-existent Gold Rush in early 18th century and remained focusing instead on Wool. Most of them did pretty well from what I gathered in looking at the real estate they currently occupy in the cemetry. Afterwards I walked to the Zona Franca or tax free zone and bought some things I neither needed or wanted and afterwards felt really good that I didn´t pay any tax on them. From there I went to the Agriculture Museum which was interesting becuase the terrain here is so completely unforgiving that seeing the primitive machines they used to manage the soil down here was a testament to the spirit of farming.

The logistics of travel in Chile are a little tough. There is no train and the Pan American Highway stops a few hours past Santiago as the land mass gives way to an endless archipelogo and fjords. I think if you laid Chile sideways it would more than cover the distance from New York to LA. However Chile being the sliver of country it is, it seems you are never not moving North or South. I bring this up because it was quite a haul to get down to Punta Arneas which is arguably the southern most city in the world. I say "Arguably" becuase the possesion of this title that is currently being duked out with neighboring Argentina´s board of tourism. My initial plan was to connect via bus down here and head the end of Argentina while avoiding crossing the Andes again. As fate would have it I was abducted by two girls on Friday night and kept out way later than my bed time and subsequently missed my bus the following morning. I was told there would not be another bus to Ushuai, Argentina until the following Wednesday. Big Oops. While I realy did appreciate that these ladies had taught me how much I do like to dance to Cumbia and Reggaeton´ music I now had to redraw my plans. As always roll with punches.

While eating a late breakfast downstairs in my hotel the waiter introduced me to his friend who just happened to work in a local travel office. I explained to him my previous plan and what I wanted to experience in Patagonia. He infromed that my missing the bus was a blessing because my previous plan was crap. Inside of 15 minutes I had a whole new itenerary that was bullet proof. I would now take the bus up to Puerto Natales and visit what is purported to be the most beautiful place in Patagonia - Torres Del Paine. Being stranded in Punta Arenas was not such a bad thing. I rather liked the town. Historically, it began life as Penal Colony for military insubordinates and other reprobates and looked like it could be a set for some obscure David Lynch movie. Additionaly there is a small wooden diorama in the center of town honoring Antoine de Saint-Exupéry which I just thought was too cool. Although he is best known for writing The Little Prince. He was responsible for pioneering the first air mail service in Patagonia. His book Night Flight is based on a harrowing trip from Punta Arenas during a storm. Besides that the staff at the hotel had taken a liking to me and there was always the prospect of more dancing.



I have posted some pics of Punta Arena
HERE

Patagonia

Yesterday afternoon I boarded the bus back to Santiago and from there caught another one straight to the airport. Since I am in the middle of reading 'Over the Edge of the World' a book about Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe the choice of my destination was a foregone conclusion. Below the 40th parralell we go. At the airport I walked up to the LAN Chile window and purchased a ticket to Punta Arenas - Patagonian Chile, A small city perched on the Straits of Magellan. The flight was a sardine can populated almost exclusively with young dudes in camouflage. There were maybe three or four passengers who were not enlisted men in the Chilean Army, apparently Patagonian Chile is not a popular destination for tourists in mid-Winter. Sandwiched between a pair of infantry men the conversation inevitably turned to me, where I was from and what I was doing. It didn't take long for one of them to point out that my coat was insufficient for the place the plane was headed. I assured them that everything would work out just fine. It always does.

The plane landed at 2:00AM and I was awoken by a stewardess throttling my shoulder to wake up. Anticipating a cold wind from Valhalla I was pleasantly surprised that the weather outside did not chill me to the bone. I hopped in a cab and deposited myself at the Hotel Tierra del Fuego.

Today was a day of modest ambition. After breakfast I headed to the Palacio Sara Braun. She was a local and part of the Braun/Nogueira'/Menendez dynasty here who made a fortune off of the wool boom in the early 19Th century. I hadn't a clue who these folks were before today but I will say lots of Italian marble and a great billiards room, how else do you define "doing well" in that era? or any era for that matter? Afterwards I hiked up to Cerro de la Cruz which is one of the best vantage points to view the Magellan Strait from Punta Arenas. Across the strait you could see Tierra Del Fuego and then further to the South another land mass capped in snow which I believed to be Puerto Williams near Cape Horn. Actually I have no idea what the latter was but neither did Magellan so I am in good company with my ignorance.

Since my ultimate goal was Tierra del Fueguo, I headed to a tour agency and secured a ticket for Saturday to take a bus/ferry down to Ushuaia to see the Bealge Channel and whatever is visible from there of Cape Horn. Mission accomplished.

Feeling somewhat proud of my meager achievements I sat myself down for an early dinner. I ordered the Magellan King Crab which showed up just a little shy of a pound of meat. There was very little need for any of the five salsas placed on the table, an occasionally dab of mayonnaise but really just butter and some lemon proved more than enough to enhance the mariscos in front of me.

So the Internet stinks here as my US adapters don't fit the receptacles in this hotel for some strange reason. I am living on borrowed time and as I write this I must depart the corporate conference room now.

I will talk more tomorrow.

Happy Trails
Clifford

Valparaiso

I awoke yesterday and after a very leisurely breakfast made an attempt to orient myself to the town of Valparaiso. The city is laid out like an amphitheater. The residential districts built into the hills are the seats and the Pacific ocean is the stage The city was developed vertically. Public transportation is good. There are San Francisco style street cars and 15 funiculars to take you up the hills at regular intervals. The funiculars are particularly fun to ride. Its a 45 degree angle ascent up that lasts about 2 minutes. The cost of the ride is 10 cents. Almost any destination in the hills affords a sweeping view of the port and ocean. From the downtown area below I imagined everything past the funicular ride was strictly residential much like the Hollywood Hills. However in walking around the hills it became apparent that there were many galleries, bed and breakfasts, restaurants, kioskos and locuturios on almost every block. The neighborhoods on the hills are a challenge to navigate. They are a veritable labyrinth of endless stairs, funiculars, retaining walls, hidden shortcuts, street murals, concrete and corrugated aluminum houses which are painted in the most vibrant of colors. After an afternoon of walking I settled in to the Brighton Cafe overlooking the ocean for an early dinner. Being a port town the selection was obvious - Patagonian Toothfish i.e Chilean Sea Bass. However here they don't call it Chilean Sea Bass here but rather just Sea Bass. Ha! There was little doubt that the fish had been swimming in the Pacific earlier that day. It was one of the best pieces of fish I have ever consumed. Two large fillets in a simple butter sauce with a squeeze of lemon. Divine.


Yesterday I visited La Sebastiana which was Pablo Nerudas house and now a museum. Photography was prohibited but if you would like to see the house the Neruda Foundation's website can be found HERE On the way back from the museum I walked through the Sky Museum which is a culturaly protected four block area where the house's facades are painted up in gradiose murals. Color really is is everywhere in this place.
Later I stopped into to a small restaurant to try another local specialty called Chorrillana. This a small mountain of food which consists of a base of french fries topped with beef sauteed in red wine, cheese, egg and onions. The dish resembled a small feeding trough. I managed to finish most of it and for dessert I had a long nap.


An interesting fact of Valparaiso is that although it is not the Capitol of the country it is where the Congress meets and legislates. It sounds like someone wanted to appease the most populous city of Santiago and assure them of their superiority. Oh Politics. I personally didn't care much for Santiago and thought it had little in the way of character, just a big dirty city. I thought that it had all of the charm of Newark New Jersey on a cold and rainy day.


I have some pictures of Valparaiso that can be found HERE.

I am out of here today and not sure where I am headed I am going to get back down to Santiago and see what happens.

C.

Chile con Cliffe'

I checked out of Mendoza yesterday after fearing that the long arm of the law was closing in. Since the next bus to Chile was to depart in 15 minutes I was back on the road before I knew it. There is only one way to get to Chile from Argentina above Patagonia abd that is straight over the mountain. The journey was an endless sequence of hairpin turns and spaghetti bends on a one lane road(with traffic in both directions of course) and a drop of nearly 3000 meters on the left hand side. There were two points of major interest for me one was passing through Uspallata which was very compelling. Anybody who has seen Seven Years in Tibet has seen Uspallata. This was the location director Jean Jacques Annauds selected for filming since it so closely resembled the Asian Steppe where the story actually takes place. I am sure there is more of a back story behind this choice of location shooting but really who cares? The other highlight was passing by Mount Acancagua. Acancgua at 7,000 meters above sea level is the highest peak in the Americas second in the world to the Himalayas. There is a memorial close by to all the climbers who have died trying to scale its' heights. The peak is truly impressive, impaling the cloud line three quarters of the way up. Why anyone would attempt to climb this is beyond clear reasoning especially considering one could safely drive by it and live to write about it later. Subsequently the curtains on the bus were closed and a cheesy Bruce Willis movie was presented. I suspected that the movie bit was a ploy designed to keep people from looking out the window while the driver negotiated turns on a mountain road which had such obvious and potentially terminal consequences.

What seemed like months later we finally reached Chilean territory. This was no brief stop at the Mexican border on the way to Tijuana. This was a serious bit of theater requiring well over an hour and a half. All luggage was pulled from the belly of the bus for a once over external inspection. Afterwards we disembarked to passport control for Visas. Next we were ushered into an adjoining room while the luggage was methodically X-rayed. Next we put our hand carry on a conveyor belt while Dopey the drug sniffing dog put his nose to our bags. Dopey casually walked down the conveyor line until he got to my backpack at which point he leapt up onto the conveyor belt for a closer inspection. Knowing there was nothing stronger than Advil in my bag I did manage to have one of those Midnight Express type moments. I mean I had left my bag unattended at many points since leaving. My stomach dropped the way it only can during one of those panicky "what if?" moment. A sense of relief overcame me when dopey jumped back down off of the conveyor belt and moved on to the next person. I would like to report that this border crossing was without incident but silly me in a moment of low blood sugar filled out his customs declaration incorrectly. On the series of yes/no check boxes I accidentally checked yes for the "are you bringing more than $10,000 dollars cash into the country. The customs agent is now asking incredulously but very loudly in Spanish if I have more than 10K in my luggage. He is now holding up my declaration for all to see and pointing at the check box in question. "No no no, tengo mucho mucho menos!" I retorted. "He is a millionaire no?" the agent asked the room. This of course was met with a big round of laughter. Stupid American.

As we began to re board the bus the driver struck up a conversation with me and asked where in Chile I was headed. I told him Valparaiso once I got to the bus terminal in Santiago. He informed me that it would be much more efficient if I got on the next Los Andes bus coming through as it was going straight to Valparaiso. Fantastic I thought as the assistant driver fished my luggage back out of the cargo hold. This is where things got wierd. The last thing I saw was the assistant wheeling my bag around the bus but at some point this plan they devised for me got scuttled and I was told to get back on the bus. Being somewhat paranoid I got on the bus and intoned "adonde es my equipaje?" I felt something wasn't quite right. Why was the bus transfer plan scuttled and why wasn't I consulted?. I love to be consulted.I was then given visual proof of my bag down below and boarded the bus. I am not sure what happened but it was a minor bit of drama that had my fellow passengers concerned or at least entertained. I apologized to everyone for the hold up when someone uttered in Spanish "the millionaire and his bag again." Another round of laughter now resounded at my expense. It was actually very funny and it was nice to see everyone smiling at me. Payaso Americano.

While wending our way back down the mountain one of the drivers explained to me that it was in fact better to transfer at the first bus terminal in Santiago rather than waiting at the border. At the bus terminal the driver pointed to the berth next to us explaining that this was the bus I wanted. I grabbed my belongings and went to the window to get a ticket, the Valparaiso bus was leaving in 4 minutes. Remembering that I hadn't opted to exchange my Argentine pesos at the border because the rate wasn't the greatest I asked if he would take my pesos or if there was a cambio nearby. The answer to both questions was no. We don't take Argentine pesos or dollars and the cambio is now closed. Realizing I was now potentially stuck at a bus terminal on the outskirts of Santiago I ran for the door. The bus I had come in on was now pulling away and here I am running, yelling, gesturing wildly pulling my luggage filled with millions behind me and imploring the bus driver to stop. The bus came to a halt and as I boarded I raised my hands as queue for everyone to begin laughing. Round number three.

When we got to the final terminal in Santiago there were a number of buses headed up to Valparaiso which is about an hour north. I grabbed the first one available.

I must mention parenthetically that the night before the internet access at my hotel went out. So my normal meticulous planning had gone out the window. There is nothing like arriving in a new place well after dark and without s specific destination in mind. After arriving I explained to the driver that I wanted to window shop some hotels. I didn't like the first two for no specific reason exactly and decided that three times was the charm. The Hotel Cordell it was. It met my criteria at that point, Wi-Fi in the rooms, friendly receptionist and porter and the kitchen was still open.

Anyway here are some pics from along the way Click Here

More later ...

C.

Mas Mendoza.

I uploaded some pics of Mendoza HERE

Friday I headed out for a tour of a Mendoza province called Maipu which is widely regarded as the cradle of wine in Argentina. I stopped in two distinctly different bodegas. One was a family affair(Bodega Famiglia) and the other was a mid tier producer. The family bodega produced nearly 1,000 Litres of Wine per anum, primarily Malbec while the larger producer is responsible for almost 4,0000 Litres. The former was named La Cave Don Arturo. The first thing you notice about this Bodega is the host giving the wine tour, a young beautiful Argentine woman from a well to do family. The vines themselves were fairly uneventful as it is Winter now but being led through the production process was interesting. The bodega employs no netting above the vineyard to protect the vines so they are at the mercy of the Free Masons who control the weather machine in Washington DC. I mentioned the threat of hail storms to which she simply replied that the fine netting had a detrimental affect on sugar maturation within the grapes. The hail storms in Mendoza are a serious business, hail the size of eggs is not uncommon and if you get hit hard it can easily decimate an entire vineyard. She explained that this was a precautionary measure they were willing to forgo in the name of integrity. God I just love idealists. The grapes are hand harvested which translates into many minions armed with nothing more than a pair of scirrors who cut only the best of the best for production.

From here the grapes are dumped into an industrial thresher which chews up the grapes separating the juice from skins and seeds. These three parts are then sent to fermentation tanks. Important is the fact it is the skins, seeds and grape juice existing here. This is called "maceration" it is where the wine takes on its structure, color from the dye of the skins and various aromas. From here the wine is sent for cooling and stabilizing. This is done in giant concrete vaults. They will spend two to four weeks here. It is important during this phase that the temperature of the vaults is carefully controlled and monitored otherwise you will end up with vinegar. This is essentialy a desert environment and they use a pressurized irrigation technique whereby the intake the water from the Medoza River which is Andes run off and pump it into a water tanks not unlike what you see on the rooftops of Manhattan apartment buildings. From here the water runs in pipes that wrap around the cooling and stabilization vaults. These pipes are actually a pipe within a pipe the inner pipe sends the wine in one direction and the outer pipe sends cool mountain water in the opposite direction. The wine will cool as it passes in the opposite direction much like how your car radiator works. After a pass through the cooling pipes the same water is sent out to irrigate the new grape producing vines and nothing is wasted. Oh efficiency!

The family bodega at no point adds yeast for the fermentation process. The yeast is indigenous and is what is found in the air and collects on the outer skin of the grape in the form of must. There is a problem here though if a particular season is a rainy one it will wash all the must off which is responsible for the spontaneous fermentation. When I asked how they dealt with this situation since refusing to add a yeast to the fermentation process to compensate for this loss of must produces sub-par wines she simply replied "we have our good vintages and our bad vintages."

Anyway from the cooling and maturation tanks if it is a "a young wine" it will be bottled almost immediately otherwise the wine will be filled into 20 Litre Canadian or French Oak barrels where it will spend almost 2 years before being bottled and subsequently released.

Curiously this Family Bodega is also devoid of the use of sulfites. Sulfites are added to wine in order to give them a longer cellar life and keep oxygenation from destroying them. A wine without sulfites has a maximum life of no more than 10 years. What's the point in cellaring wine anyway? Unless you are some stodgy WASP collector drink that stuff already!

Interestingly enough this Bodgega does not sell in Argentina everything is exclusively exported to the US. The value of a bottle here is about 15 pesos or 5 dollars but in the US it regularly turns up on wine lists for $50.00! Shark idealists indeed. They were doing well enough without my having to purchase anything but they really have something going with these beautiful girls leading the tours that makes one feel compelled to purchase something.

The other Bodega was an insipid industrial affair ho hum. Although the tour guide was equally as beautiful as the previous one the whole thing just smacked of industrialism and lack of soul. They might as well have been making ball-peen hammers.

Following that I paid a visit to an olive oil factory. The tour was Catellano only and I think I understood most of what she was saying but the environment was as aseptically clean and sterile as an operating room and I soon lost interest. I did manage to find out the difference between virgin olive oil and extra virgin olive oil though. So if you don't know it comes down to acidity. Extra has less than one percent of acidity and virgin had between 1 and 2 percent. Everything else is apparently crap.

Anyway Maipu is beautiful. Vines and fruit groves everywhere sitting under the specter of the intimidating snow-capped Andes. Very chilled out people, lots of distance and many pick up trucks. I hope to retire here.

I spent my last day in Mendoza hiking around Parque San Martin which is a beautiful parke designed by Carlos Thays who is more or less the Frederick Law Olmstead of Argentina. I would easily say it rivaled Central Park for an urban park. I think every deciduous tree in the region was represented there. Cool mountain streams from the from the Andes above flowed freely and seemingly everywhere. The smells alone were enough to make you lose your sense of self. The weather was made to order for a Saturday afternoon - a serene 60 degrees. It was truly one of those "It's good to be alive" type of days.

C.

Mendoza

After an all night bus ride from BA I reached La Tierra de Sol y Buen Vino - the land of sun and good wine, this morning. Today that could have been more accurately restated as La Tierra de Nieve(snow) y Bien Vino. It was a little over a 1,000 Kilometer bus ride, basically the width of Argentina. Although the bus was luxury enough I managed to get very little sleep as a result of the portly paunchy porteno occupying both seats next to me. Yes that was plural - seats, not a typo. To say this man snored would be an understatement of criminal proportion. It was more like sonic fury with yours truly being well within the blast radius. It was like sharing a room with a lumberjack dreaming of a Denny's Grand Slam Breakfast. After arrival and collecting my luggage I made my way to the curb to hail a taxi. Standing beneath a pair of date Palms, large flakes of clean white mountain snow began to collect on my black jacket. I peered up through the fronds of the Palm Tree above to see the snow fall. It was like the Christmas I never had in LA! It was at this moment it occurred to me that I might in fact be in the Central Andes. Subsequently I checked into the Acongagu Hotel in Plaza Italia and laid down for a long Winter's nap.

Upon leaving the hotel this afternoon I braced myself for the cold. I zipped, buttoned, covered and tucked myself comprehensively only to be met by 50 degree weather. This struck me as odd since this morning as I was checking in to the hotel snow was falling heavy and sticking. I believe this sudden change in temperature is due to a phenomenon called La Zonda which is hot western wind from the Pacific that dumps it's precipitation on the top of the Andes and when it reaches the Argentine side of the Andes it becomes just a hot wind empty of cargo. I am no meteorologist but I do believe everything I read.

Feeling rested and somewhat relieved that the lumberjack from the night before was nowhere around I took a leisurely stroll around Mendoza City. It is a city albeit a small one with a population of just over 130K. The town or err city is laid out in a hub and spoke pattern with the main Plaza, Plaza Indepencia in the center and four satellite plazas surrounding it. The city is devoid of any high rise activity with very wide and leafy sidewalks. The Sycamore Tree is ubiquitous. The Sycamores hug the edges of the sidewalk on both sides of the street forming a canopy that apparently makes the summer heat here somewhat palatable. In addition to the Sycamore another salient characteristic is the irrigation ditches that flow alongside every block. They are known as "acequias", a piece of engineering that is a throw back to the Colonial era that is still in use today. They are used to take run off water from the Andes for agricultural purposes. The presence of these ditches poses something of a danger to someone like myself who might be backing up to frame a shot with a digital camera. There were two close calls today before I learned that although a picture might be worth a thousand words it is never worth a broken ankle.

After a month in Buenos Aires it was relieving to sit in a couple of Cafes that did not claim that Carlos Gardel and Louis Borge had regularly hung out there. I make this last point somewhat tongue in cheek but sheesh did Hemingway drank at every establishment in Havana(although that might be true) or the were the Kray Twins reallly regular patrons of every pub in East London. Enough already! Anyway here the Malbec grape is the star and thankfully there are no signed pictures of it adorning the walls. Amen.

I paid a visit to the Centro Mercado which might possibly be the best market I have ever seen. There were no food stuffs that weren't readily obtainable - herbs, grains, chicken, fish, wine, arsenal bread, helado, steaks, organ meats, cured hams, you name it. It was all here under one roof.

At one point this afternoon I stopped into a cafe to eat lunch. It was now beautiful spring weather outside and I was famished from all the walking I had done. Midway though my sandwich two of the employees went outside for a cigarette. When the waitress went to open the door the whole door shattered into a million pieces. I am no engineering expert but I opened the same door to come in and it was clearly 1/2 inch thick or so of tempered glass. I couldn't help but wonder if the extreme changes in temperature played a part in that spontaneous shattering?(La Zonda?) Everything suddenly became a bit surreal, it had now started snowing again, the door was gone and they were playing Tropicalia music. I sat at my table in what was now a wind tunnel, looking out on Palm Trees and falling snow while listening to Tropical sounds on the the stereo. I was not sure quite what to think at this point. I offered up my janitorial services to the employees now collecting glass outside and afterwards they invited me out with them tonight for some dancing.

Anyway tomorrow it's off to either Lujan De Cuyo or Maipu for some wine tours and a natural spa. Both of these are just outside of the city. The pic at the top of this post is of the Basillica De San Francisco. This is the church of the Virgin of Cuyo. Cuyo being a geographical term which comprises the area of Mendoza, San Juan and San Luis, all within Mendoza Province. The Virgin of Cuyo was the patron saint of José de San Martín and his amry when marched over the Andes to beat back the Spanish in order to win independence for both Chile and Peru.

Ciao for now
Talk more later.

CT