Cemetery Sky

This was one of our last stops before the border crossing to Bolivia. The town was beautifully deserted under the bright blue sky. Well, not quite deserted, but it lacked a certain bustle.

It was fairly average, apart from boasting of a church which had a giant that came out and blessed everyone at midday. The blessing was fairly scary and seemed more like a scolding.

There was a statue of an indian looking out over the town and onwards over the peaks that surrounded it. Behind it lay a cemetery. We ambled through looking at the tombs and the bright, wild glow of the fake plastic flowers emblazoning their tribute to the departed in the bright sun. It was gaudy but I felt touched, I like the vibrancy of the celebration of death here. It wasn't quite a Mexican Dia de los muertos but it was close to that sort of fiesta of colour and Latin Spirit.

More stalls selling more llama knit wear

The Indian statue

The giant, not sure how blessed I felt afterwards...

Tribute

And so, goodbye Argentina, we're off to Bolivia now. But I'll be back one day....

Mountains, ruins, cacti and llamas

Llamas are so cute! And the scenery here isn't bad either. These small mountain towns have a lot of character in spite of their size and seemingly isolated location.

It looks impressive now, I can't imagine what it would have looked like when it was being used by the indigenous tribes who built it. Hard to imagine.

At the end of a rather productive day of sight seeing we found a nice little bar and had a glass of wine. Later, when we checked into a hostel we got talking to some Argentinian travellers, listened to some music, gathered into a small bar and drank Fernet (disgusting stuff) but it seems to be their drink of choice, I'm not sure how I didn't pick up on that in Buenos Aires.

Stumbled back to my bed feeling a bit tipsy and was jumped on and snogged rather unskilfully by one of the boys. Disappointingly dispelled all the myths I was forming about how amazing it would be to have an Argentinian lover seeing as a lot of them are rather attractive. I guess I shouldn't let it taint my image of them.

Ascending into the mountains

Met a girl and we teamed up to travel up to the Argentina-Bolivia border together.

I was daunted by ascending into the Andes, feared altitude sickness and stomach bugs that travellers around these parts often suffer.

The blue skies were spectacular but the air cooler than it seemed with everything so bathed in sunlight. We found ourselves in a colourful market square. Knitwear everywhere. Llamas and multicoloured stripes, Inca sun shapes everywhere. Panpipes, everything. We even bought some coca leave to chew on to help us adapt to the higher altitude (when in Rome!). They tasted quite disgusting as far as I was concerned and they had no discernible effect other than making my tongue go slightly numb.

We stopped at a few little towns (Purmamarca and Tilcara) throughout the day, taking in the brightly coloured red and even green rocks of the mountains. There were huge cacti everywhere too, and real life llamas.

Snap decision


So I made a snap decision by weighing up the distances by eye, looking at the map of the continent, in the hostel in Buenos Aires, it seemed pretty much equal from where I was to get to the northern coast of this huge landmass. So I decided to go up the other side. The reasoning behind this was that there would be more variation, I can speak Spanish, I can't speak Portuguese, and Brazil is beautiful but very expensive whereas Bolivia and Peru should be cheaper. I admit the final leg of the journey still needs working out since I have no idea how I'm going to get from Colombia to Martinique. I would love to go to Venezuela, it is supposed to be stunning, but it doesn't sounds particularly backpacker friendly right now. This is the only (big) flaw in the new plan, going from French Guyana should have been relatively easy but I have no idea how I'm going to get from Colombia to Martinique without spending a fortune or making friends with someone with a large yacht. It's going to be challenging.


With all this in mind, I made my move for the bus station. I was sad to leave, I could happily have moved to Buenos Aires and tried to set myself up there for a few months or longer. I really liked the city but I'd seen all that I thought I could see as a passer through so it was time to move on. I miss-timed this move most spectacularly. I decided to journey a few days before a bank holiday weekend, the bus terminal was carnage, it was flooded with passengers and luggage. All buses were delayed, it was a case of waiting, eyes glued to a monitor for a departure time and parking bay to be announced. The only saving grace of the whole exercise was that I got a deal on my ticket. When the bus did finally arrive we were stuck in the grid-lock to get away from the city. It turned out to be a long and torturous journey.


I decided to go straight up to a town called Jujuy, right in the north, not far from the Bolivian border. This meant cutting out basically ALL of Argentina but I felt like I had so much distance to cover and I'd just contacted a long lost lover in Martinique to warn him of my eminent arrival. I was anxious to move fast. Argentina will have to be re-visited properly at a later date - I'm desperate to go to Patagonia, see some mountains and glaciers.


I got to Jujuy and went straight to a hostel to rest, kind of feeling like a shadow of my former self. It's really hard when you are stuck on a bus alone for so long not to start thinking and dwelling on all kinds of strange things. Mine goes back in time and drags up all sorts of strange things. As I watch ever-changing scenery I'm also having a session with Freud. I'm not yet sure if all this thinking time is productive or a product of bordem. Fortunately, when the journey ended and I got to move around again and operate like a normal human being, the shift to being actively involved with the world again seems to untangle me from my own strange thoughts.


I feel alone and like I'm about to embark on a pretty strange quest. Unclear journey (there are so many options), unclear destination (what will happen when I re-visit a place and people I knew five years ago, it may be completely different).


Cup of tea, shower, sleep. I'll worry about it more tomorrow.


Here are some photos of Jujuy.

This man was wearing a very long and quite stylish poncho

Shopping in BA


Confession. My backpacker budget was put under quite a lot of strain in Buenos Aires. The shopping was just too good. It all started with an innocent visit to one of the shopping malls with a friend. He'd been in Buenos Aires about 18 months ago with his family and was raving about a cafe he'd been to, we both fancied some mid morning caffeine, so we set out in search of it. Somehow he had completely forgotten where the shopping mall was and even which one he went to. Inside the male mind - how can you forget about good coffee brands and good shops? We ended up in the wrong place (but fortunately for me a bigger, better mall).


I had a moment of dizzying girl delirium. So deprived of shopping after Tanzania, my brain struggled to process everything I was seeing, it was being over-stimulated after so many months of neglect. Nice clothes were everywhere and I wanted all of them. I couldn't stop myself, I was shopping. The practicalities of how can you really afford this with your meagre travel budget, all of which is assigned to travel, food and sleeping were suppressed by the outpour of happy chemicals in my brain telling me everything would be fine and especially if I bought and own the pretty things that were making me smile so much at that moment. Where on earth are they going to fit in your already impossibly heavy and impossibly full backpack, for goodness sake? That's just a minor issue that can be overcome, plus its cool here at night, I need this jumper...and err this mini skirt too.


The flood gates had opened.


Fashion on Buenos Aires is really good. Really good. For a country that has as many ranches as it does with such a tradition of steak eating and parillas it's really no wonder that the leather goods are as good as they are.


For shoes:
Ricky Sarkany
Prune

Source:All Fashion Trend

For clothes:
Cuesta Blanca
Rapsodia

Source: Tarde o Temprano

In addition I picked up a copy of Harpers Bazaar Argentina which is celebrating it's first Birthday. It's remarkable to think that Bazaar only just arrived in Argentina when the fashion in the capital is as good as it is, I suppose it goes to show how quickly Argentina recovered from its financial crisis.


Long live shopping in Buenos Aires! I'm already planning my return. Hopefully my bank balance will match my appetite for these clothes. Better get working and saving!