Susan Woz 'Ere

My my, hasn’t it been a while! I’ve had a few complaints about not writing in the blog lately, so here I go. A lot has been happening but I will stick to the highlights.

The main highlight has to be Susan’s 3 weeks here. She came in mid-July after a trip to New York to catch up with her family & friends up there.

The first 2 weeks she stayed with me and in the middle of that we flew up to Salta, an old colonial city which is built in a lush valley just short of the Andes, in the far North-West of Argentina. Really beautiful. The city itself is extremely pretty and has the craziest churches. We had a couple of odd experiences trying to find restaurants recommended by the Lonely Planet guide, stumbling instead upon first an enormous and ornate burgundy painted church, then second a fantastic open air crafts market and a load of bars and restaurants with folk dancing that had somehow slipped the attention of the Lonely Planet researcher. Or maybe they misinform deliberately to give the traveller the feeling that she has discovered something entirely for herself... Hhhhm. This is the church they failed to mention:

And this is the utterly fabulous PINK cathedral church on the main square:

We took two trips out of Salta: up and down the valley to the north and to the south. On reflection, it might have been better to hire a car and have the freedom to stop and linger where we wanted but drivers in Buenos Aires are so atrocious that I have been rather put off driving in Argentina.

Going north, we went up across the Tropic of Capricorn to a place called Humahuaca about 10km from the Bolivian border, stopping on the way at towns and villages and lay-bys either to look at the crafts and trinkets markets or have lunch or just gape at and take photos of the amazing rock formations and mountains. The landscape is truly stunning. The Andes apparently were formed by the crash of an Atlantic and a Pacific tectonic plate and in the foothills you can see how the land at the periphery buckled in the process. It is on an enormous scale. Then there is the effect of thousands of years of wind and water erosion revealing the strata that the ages had laid down to make those rocks in the first place. Apart from its sheer size, the main difference between this and the other big geography I have seen before - like the Gorges du Tarn or our own little Cheddar - is that the layers of rock here are brightly coloured and some are seriously stripey. We saw pink mountains and red ones and psychedelic ones too. This is because of the wildly different mineral content in the layers of rock which, when exposed, oxidise to create the bright colours. Cheddar must be full of very dull minerals! These photos do not do it justice.

I will blow my own trumpet a little and say that our tours were conducted all in Spanish, so I had to listen hard and interpret everything for Susan. Geography was never a good subject for me but luckily a lot of the words are very similar so all I needed was to have my ear in to the accent. I was very relieved when the guide admitted he did actually speak some English and gave us a potted summary of his spiel - it was exactly what I had already said to Susan. Very glad I hadn’t just sat there and made it all up!

Hamlet beginning with P, note the stripey mountain, the pink one and the green one...

The best thing we saw that day was at Tilcara. Somebody had discovered and excavated a prehistoric (pre-Inca) town on the top of a high foothill and they had also partly re-built it in places to show what it would have been like. The views from the top were stunning but we were also blown away by the cactus that lived amongst the ruins. Huge things like the ones you see in cowboy movies. Stupidly I had let the battery run down in my camera but a sweet Australian woman let me put my memory chip in her camera to take a couple of photos - Susan and I both love this one.

(Well, once again the blog site has had enough uploading photos, so I will have to come back to it. No, have tried time & time again, even tried deleting the cupola but to no avail. Will stick pic elsewhere if poss.)

We would happily have spent a day mooching about the ruins at Tilcara. As it was, we held up the bus for half an hour before leaving for the long drive back.

Despite being exhausted when we got back to Salta after 12 hours on this excursion, we managed to stroll into the main square and on to a restaurant we had liked the look of the night before. We ate the biggest steaks yet, uncharacteristically dressed up with rich sauces and vegetables. In fact the garnish on Susan’s would have been a meal in itself. Somehow we polished our plates, though we were groaning full by the end of it! We ate really well in Salta, only one duff meal in what looked like a nice family restaurant but was on a level with a Happy Chef! A couple of times I had excellent fresh local fish; something you have to look hard for in Bs As, so a welcome treat.

The second excursion was down the valley to Cafayate, a nice little town in a major wine-producing area of Argentina. On the way, we went through the part of the valley that is a major tobacco-producing area and Susan had to stop me interpreting the commentary about that out of sheer boredom. Are there tourists who want to know all the production and export statistics? Probably but we ain‘t them. There was also a lot of battle talk about Independence struggles way back when.

Anyway, there was more stunning landscape and the further we got from Salta, the less lush the valley and the more cactus we saw. The vegetation was very interesting as a marker of the changing climate up and down the valley. See, I could almost get interested in geography when it is on this scale. None of your ox-bow lakes! We did go to a vineyard and taste some wine but didn’t buy any, partly because they only let us taste the cheap stuff. In town, we went for lunch in a place recommended by the Lonely Planet guide (should have known better!) where the service was unbelievably slow and the food nothing special. There was a lovely young couple from New Zealand on the tour who came with us and it was really nice having their company. They had been on the Humahuaca tour too, which is where we met them. They were doing South America on their way to London to be accountants for a couple of years. Oddly though, they would sit on the bus reading their books and when we asked why they weren’t agog at the landscape, they said ‘Oh we have all the landscape we need in New Zealand.’ So why travel?

Susan and I both really enjoyed Salta and happily wanted to do the same things at the same pace, so made for good company. We mooched around town, in and out of the crazy churches, looking at all the beautiful silverware on offer and buying a few shiny things to adorn ourselves with. One day we wandered down to the cable car which takes you up to the top of a very high hill - it would probably be regarded as a mountain in the UK but next to the Andes, it is a mere molehill! It has fabulous views of Salta and the valley and has been laid out nicely with gardens and waterfalls and a couple of shops at the top. We sat in the café, chasing the shade of the umbrellas around our table, and drank our way through a couple of litres of fizzy grapefruit pop. The most amazing thing happened as we sat there: the Andes were over in the distance in misty layers of blue and, as we watched, some of the cloud lifted and a whole new layer of mountains appeared. They were just huge. I am not sure this reproduces well enough for you to even see the extra layer of mountains at the back but have fun looking.

It was a tropical mid-winter up there, very sunny and quite hot in the sun but suddenly very cold in the shade and when the sun went down in the evening.

Back in Buenos Aires, we both suffered from the change in altitude. Odd really as most people suffer when they are actually up there. Poor Susan had one of her migraines triggered by the discomfort and lack of sleep, so had to spend an afternoon in bed. I had had a hideously painful time in the descent to Bs As airport, which sometimes happens to me if there is a problem with the cabin pressure. My sinuses go crazy and my head feels as if it will explode. It is ferociously painful while it is happening and aches for some time after.

We went out to dance while Susan was here though she had mixed success getting partners. It was quite a blow really as she is such a lovely dancer but, as Linda pointed out, it can take a while to build up regulars and even the ones you do think are regulars can suddenly behave as if they have never seen you before. In the last week she was here, we more or less gave up on the tango. Still, she enjoyed mooching around town, looking up at the fabulous buildings, riding the antiquated underground trains, doing the odd spot of shopping, eating one heavenly steak after another, taking lessons with Carlos & Romina and whatever else we got up to. The last week she was here, she stayed with Linda out in Palermo. It was very sad to see her go and we are working on convincing her to take an early retirement…

Some other people have been and gone. As I type, Julie-Anne is up in her flat packing to go back to Blighty for a few months to earn some hard currency so she can come back in the new year. Very sad but it has to be done. We are going this afternoon for a last dance at Confiteria Ideal. The milonga there is a bit hit & miss on a Monday afternoon, so I hope that one or two of her favourite old geezers are there to make it worthwhile. We went last week with my little digital camera and the hope of filming each other dance but didn’t have too much luck with the chaps. I filmed Julie-Anne dancing with a funny little man called Adolfo, who really played up to the camera. It was enough for her to see herself move. There was no-one I wanted to watch myself dancing with, so I didn’t get her to return the favour.

Today has been dark and wet and gloomy. At lunch time there was a mighty thunderstorm and a downpour, so probably good to get that out of the way before Julie-Anne has to fly tomorrow. No comfort for the poor plane-load leaving town on today’s flight of course, but I don’t know them, so who cares! In fact, it has been winter weather since Susan left. No complaints really because for the most part, it has been mild if not warm. Not once have I wished I had a proper winter coat and only once have I resorted to a hat and gloves. I am so glad not to have had to suffer the heat that has been raging in the UK this past month - sounds disgusting.

I have been trying for some time to buy a flat here and have had one wretched problem with it after another. At the moment it is held up while the vendor sorts out some title transfer issue hanging over from her father’s death 15 years ago. All very straightforward I am assured, except that the courts have just had a 2 week holiday. Now I am hoping that it will not be long but given the history of unexpected hurdles, I will not be holding my breath. The flat is gorgeous (or will be) and huge and in a building with a roof terrace and a cupola on top. I am enamoured with the cupola, which is why I am trying to be patient about the transaction, though it is very stressful. I do realise that having removed most other sources of stress in my life, there is a bit of room for me to absorb this!

So, in summary: still here; still loving it; had the first big visitor; still tangoing, though maybe not so frantically; still trying to buy my flat.

Hoping to write more soon.
Raquelita