I´m writing from my hostel in downtown Córdoba. Have a little time to kill so I figured I might as well write.
So, what a day yesterday! Woke up at 4:30 am to catch my bus from Mendoza to here. Spent a seemingly endless ride in and out of sleep, arrive here at 5:30 and immediately rushed from the terminal dowtown to the place where tickets for Manu Chao were supposedly sold. I get there and despite the fact that I called the day before and specifically asked if there would be tickets if I came by at 6 pm, they were sold out. Ok, no panicking, I still have a chance if I haul ass 20 blocks down to the stadium itself. I rush there full of nerves, arrive, and thankfully they´ve just brought the last batch of tickets. Now I rush back downtown to find a bed to crash in later, eat a bit, do a 180, and join the parade of hippies and punks and anarquist and rastas marching across the bridge to the show.
What a show!! It was completely absurd. Thousands of people packed in losing their minds. The opening act was a huge drum troupe dressed up for carnaval, who played and danced themes against police violence. Then on came Radio Bemba Sound System and Manu front and center. By the second song my clothes were completely soaked through with sweat, mostly not mine. For most of the show I was right up front and center, 3 meters from the stage, and that meant being smashed up against everyone around me, lifting crowd surfers over my head, planting myself against the waves of people pushing back and forth and writhing up and down every time a ska beat came around. It was raging fun. My only complaint is that it was hard to breath with so much humidity and smoke, and dehydration was endemic. I was fortunate to be generally bigger than the average argentine, so I could hold my ground and not get smashed, and still be able to see the stage and jump up for some fresh air now and then.
They played 3 hours straight, weaving all the themes into each other, and pausing only toward the end (during one of 3 encores) to let anti-mining activists talk to the audience. It was amazing- I´ve never been to a concert where the artist let activists talk right in the middle of the show, but then Manu Chao is just down like that (background: in the south of Mendoza, new gold deposits have been discovered, but extracting them would threaten to contaminate a huge portion of the regio`n´s drinking water, thus the slogan of the resistence is ¨Sí a la vida, no a la minería!¨).
So anyway, after waking up and eating a hearty breakfast at 2 pm, to day was spent wandering around this pleasant, if balmy city. Saw lots of huge cathedrals, art museums, parks, talk to a lot of interesting people here and there. Climbed up a huge cypress tree on a hill above the zoo and watched a great sunset. Now I´m waiting for my aunt`s friend who lives here to come by so we can visit, and then hopefully I can get some sleep before my bus back to Mendoza bright and early tomorrow.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
despedidas y renacimiento
Hello all!
What a whirlwind month November has been! Many things to tell, little time. Last week was the end of classes at UN Cuyo. The weekend before I did my first fruit fast to help me concentrate on the 300 page book I had to read about political violence and ethnicity in andean countries. I just drank orange juice the whole day. It had mixed results concentration-wise, but it was definitely cleansing. So then I turned in my huge final report and now I just have an oral exam next week for my prehispanic culture class and my final for folclore dance. We´ve really stepped it up in the latter class, and we´re working toward completing a Malambo, which is basically a long improvised series of zapateo (see these links for examples that will raise your expectations entirely too much: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl5VQb3FOG0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvlVO9Tmy30&feature=related)
But, yeah, things are really winding down here. I have a little over a week left in Mendoza; next Saturday morning I leave early for Patagonia, land of mountains, lakes, and forests, and the farm I´ll be on until a little before Christmas. It´s getting time for many goodbyes. Monday and Tuesday I spent on the farm in Tunuyan for the last time. The last day we got up really early in the morning to go out into the desert and collect medicinal herbs. It´s amazing how many types of little trees and flowering shrubs are out in a landscape that seems barren from the highway. Later in the day we reinforced a tower we built and figured out how to lift three giant drums of water up onto it for a gravity-powered drip irrigation system. That night Azucena made mulberry pie, which was amazing, and then I said goodbye to everyone and rushed to barely catch the last bus back to town and rode back in a daze.
Last weekend our program went on a trip to San Rafael, a region a few hours south of here with canyons and rivers, along which the only vegetation grows. We went to a huge man-made lake with super green water and swam and slid down huge sandy cliffs on our butts. Our argentine guide taught us to play truco, an argentine card game similar to pocker, but much more complicated deceitful and fun. A few of us got pretty addicted. The last day we found a cave near our cabin and played truco in there and felt very guachesco.
Goodness gracious, now I rushing to spend time with friends in the little time that´s left. Tomorrow I´m off to Cordoba because MANU CHAO is playing in estadio juniors, which will be a completely insane show (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Vqd4rGcjg&feature=related). Trying to check things off my lists of things to do before I leave Mendoza, but a lot of things just necessarily fall by the wayside. It´s frustrating because there´s a lot of great things going on that I´ve just discovered in the last few weeks. Like, I ran across a community center in my neighborhood of african music where they have drum circles and dance lessons and the people are really great and chill. Still, I must say I´ll be very ready to leave Mendoza when the time comes. I need to get the hell out into the countryside, work, hike, get more sleep, and listen to more silence.
So this may well be my last post from Mendoza, if not from Argentina. Hope it finds everyone well, and before you know it I´ll be headed back to the northern hemisphere.
What a whirlwind month November has been! Many things to tell, little time. Last week was the end of classes at UN Cuyo. The weekend before I did my first fruit fast to help me concentrate on the 300 page book I had to read about political violence and ethnicity in andean countries. I just drank orange juice the whole day. It had mixed results concentration-wise, but it was definitely cleansing. So then I turned in my huge final report and now I just have an oral exam next week for my prehispanic culture class and my final for folclore dance. We´ve really stepped it up in the latter class, and we´re working toward completing a Malambo, which is basically a long improvised series of zapateo (see these links for examples that will raise your expectations entirely too much: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl5VQb3FOG0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvlVO9Tmy30&feature=related)
But, yeah, things are really winding down here. I have a little over a week left in Mendoza; next Saturday morning I leave early for Patagonia, land of mountains, lakes, and forests, and the farm I´ll be on until a little before Christmas. It´s getting time for many goodbyes. Monday and Tuesday I spent on the farm in Tunuyan for the last time. The last day we got up really early in the morning to go out into the desert and collect medicinal herbs. It´s amazing how many types of little trees and flowering shrubs are out in a landscape that seems barren from the highway. Later in the day we reinforced a tower we built and figured out how to lift three giant drums of water up onto it for a gravity-powered drip irrigation system. That night Azucena made mulberry pie, which was amazing, and then I said goodbye to everyone and rushed to barely catch the last bus back to town and rode back in a daze.
Last weekend our program went on a trip to San Rafael, a region a few hours south of here with canyons and rivers, along which the only vegetation grows. We went to a huge man-made lake with super green water and swam and slid down huge sandy cliffs on our butts. Our argentine guide taught us to play truco, an argentine card game similar to pocker, but much more complicated deceitful and fun. A few of us got pretty addicted. The last day we found a cave near our cabin and played truco in there and felt very guachesco.
Goodness gracious, now I rushing to spend time with friends in the little time that´s left. Tomorrow I´m off to Cordoba because MANU CHAO is playing in estadio juniors, which will be a completely insane show (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Vqd4rGcjg&feature=related). Trying to check things off my lists of things to do before I leave Mendoza, but a lot of things just necessarily fall by the wayside. It´s frustrating because there´s a lot of great things going on that I´ve just discovered in the last few weeks. Like, I ran across a community center in my neighborhood of african music where they have drum circles and dance lessons and the people are really great and chill. Still, I must say I´ll be very ready to leave Mendoza when the time comes. I need to get the hell out into the countryside, work, hike, get more sleep, and listen to more silence.
So this may well be my last post from Mendoza, if not from Argentina. Hope it finds everyone well, and before you know it I´ll be headed back to the northern hemisphere.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
desde Valparaíso!
My, what a bustling last couple of weeks. What can I tell you? I´m writing from Hostal Polaco in downtown Valparaíso, where I been since Friday and will be leaving very early tomorrow morning, sadly. I just finished putting avocado on my poor sunburned nose and cheeks and ate a dinner of bread, many avocados (abundant and delicious here) and Chirimoya, one of the many fruits that exists only in the alternate universe of agriculture that is Chile. Chirmoya has grayish green skin with lumps like an artichoke, and full of delicious white flesh that is best described as tasting like mango and coconut combined. So delicious! Obviously. The hostel has been full of other travelers: frenchies, austrians, aussies, kiwis, all good folk.
Yesterday I met up with friends from the farm in Tunuyan who are en route to another farm in south Chile and we explored the city. And, what a place! Very much like San Francisco, but smaller and more working class. It´s basically an industrial port giving way to steep hills covered with pastel houses and churches and cable cars (just for touist use nowadays) and big globs of mist rolling in from the sea. The neighborhood I´m in is downtown and just soo artsy, yet somehow not that pretentious. There are murals lining every street- fantastic murals! Really strong colors and from all different artists, some trippy (bears in a mushroom castle), some channeling indigenous mapuche designs, many political- one showed a skeleton in a helmet with a US flag scything a field of flowers (subtle, eh?)and bore the message "They can cut down all the flowers, but they can`t steop spring from coming." On the street climbing up the the hostel- and I mean climbing, we´re talking a 60 degree angle- you pass Biblioteca Popular (People´s Library) Salvador Allende, where a guy in a red beret lets people hang out, read his lefty books and play instruments. He explained to me that Hugo Chavez has been key in his financing of most of the other left wing folks elected down here is the past few years, from Evo to Correa to Lugo. Needless to say, if I had to live in a city, Valpo would make the A list.
Then this morning I took a bus an half hour south to Quintay, a little beach town in the middle of a huge rolling landscape of hills and pine forest. Jesus, what a place. I spent the day hopping from rock to rock along the jagged coastline and watching the waves come and crash against the rocks and mist float up into the hills. I was still in a trance on bus back, blaring cumbia and all. Tomorrow it´s back through the mountains to my little corner of Mendoza, and to study my arse off for the two big exams this coming week. But then, besides finals, classes are basically over. But I had to come back to Chile one more time while I could.
What else is new? I don´t rightly remember. Last week was bustling; lots of asados (cook out), merriment, and intense classes. A highlight was last Saturday when we got back to Mendoza and walked into a Celtic music fest in progress. There was an Irish band from Buenos Irish Aires with an uillean piper! Unbelievable. Then the best part was we were dancing off to the side and a woman from one of the groups asked us if we could come and dance up in front of the stage to try and get people engaged, so up we went and did our best to step dance in front of thousands of people in the plaza. It was amazing, and I must say, having had some instruction in zapateo, I can apply a lot of my moves to step dancing. Needless to say, we stole the show, or at least borrowed it for a minute. After one set we were completely exhausted, and coughing from the smog from all the buses that pass the plaza, but well worth it.
Well, as always, much more to tell, but I must awaken painfully early toworrow, and my brain is pretty cloudy anyway. Last week already seems like a long time ago. So, wish me bon voyage and sweet dreams.
Yesterday I met up with friends from the farm in Tunuyan who are en route to another farm in south Chile and we explored the city. And, what a place! Very much like San Francisco, but smaller and more working class. It´s basically an industrial port giving way to steep hills covered with pastel houses and churches and cable cars (just for touist use nowadays) and big globs of mist rolling in from the sea. The neighborhood I´m in is downtown and just soo artsy, yet somehow not that pretentious. There are murals lining every street- fantastic murals! Really strong colors and from all different artists, some trippy (bears in a mushroom castle), some channeling indigenous mapuche designs, many political- one showed a skeleton in a helmet with a US flag scything a field of flowers (subtle, eh?)and bore the message "They can cut down all the flowers, but they can`t steop spring from coming." On the street climbing up the the hostel- and I mean climbing, we´re talking a 60 degree angle- you pass Biblioteca Popular (People´s Library) Salvador Allende, where a guy in a red beret lets people hang out, read his lefty books and play instruments. He explained to me that Hugo Chavez has been key in his financing of most of the other left wing folks elected down here is the past few years, from Evo to Correa to Lugo. Needless to say, if I had to live in a city, Valpo would make the A list.
Then this morning I took a bus an half hour south to Quintay, a little beach town in the middle of a huge rolling landscape of hills and pine forest. Jesus, what a place. I spent the day hopping from rock to rock along the jagged coastline and watching the waves come and crash against the rocks and mist float up into the hills. I was still in a trance on bus back, blaring cumbia and all. Tomorrow it´s back through the mountains to my little corner of Mendoza, and to study my arse off for the two big exams this coming week. But then, besides finals, classes are basically over. But I had to come back to Chile one more time while I could.
What else is new? I don´t rightly remember. Last week was bustling; lots of asados (cook out), merriment, and intense classes. A highlight was last Saturday when we got back to Mendoza and walked into a Celtic music fest in progress. There was an Irish band from Buenos Irish Aires with an uillean piper! Unbelievable. Then the best part was we were dancing off to the side and a woman from one of the groups asked us if we could come and dance up in front of the stage to try and get people engaged, so up we went and did our best to step dance in front of thousands of people in the plaza. It was amazing, and I must say, having had some instruction in zapateo, I can apply a lot of my moves to step dancing. Needless to say, we stole the show, or at least borrowed it for a minute. After one set we were completely exhausted, and coughing from the smog from all the buses that pass the plaza, but well worth it.
Well, as always, much more to tell, but I must awaken painfully early toworrow, and my brain is pretty cloudy anyway. Last week already seems like a long time ago. So, wish me bon voyage and sweet dreams.
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