Ich Habe Einen Sternfisch Im Meine Unterhosen

The last week has been spent skiing frantically, trying to improve. In my case, this usually results in severe ham string cramps and my arms and legs ending up in positions they shouldn't be in, with my face submerged deep in snow, writhing frantically in a vain attempt to right myself, like an overturned turtle. Or rather, like some turtle with irritating pieces of metal strapped to it, that it neither finds comfortable nor possible to coordinate competently. Other than this we (Robbie the energetic Australian and I) have been honing our long distance chat up skills via chairlift. Unfortunately, despite much practice all we seem to have been able to do is shout bastardised Spanish at an offensive volume which usually merits a slightly nervous smile and (presuming they didn't hear us properly) on rare occasions a lackadaisical wave.

So it turns out that despite all this epic falling and what you might consider sexual harassment we'd been engaging in, we'd actually passed BASI 1 and I, your very own layabout degenerate fiend, am now a qualified ski instructor. How's that for a scary thought. Scum of society to someone with some qualifications and a job prospect in under a month and a half (oh yeah, I also got my A Levels, which weren't too bad in the end). However, this was done and dusted, and come the next day, typically, we were all immensely bored and I think the hotel was fed up with us hanging around making the lobby look dirty, loitering around the fireplaces, lounging about in the squishy armchairs that we had been occupying regularly since we had arrived like a bunch of hobos who have stumbled upon some luck. So the more proactive of us (a minority of which you may be surprised to know that I now 'proudly' include myself in) decided to venture out with a touring company that would ferry us around the Patagonian wilderness, pointing out interesting varieties of moss and other lichen. Oh, and a glacier and some waterfalls.

So we had luckily prepared in advance (probably because I wasn't entrusted with the organising process of the day) and had paid the small price for the trip. And also, in typical Argentinian style, we had to pay the guy who recommended we go on the trip a 30% cut of 44 pesos. Strictly on a confidential basis, as you do in a country completely dictated by the black market. Anyway, we were told to be ready at 8.15 sharp or the bus would leave without us, in the strictest of tones. So we were up, and bleary eyed at the aforementioned time, ready as could be. And continued to be for the next 45 minutes, due to the reliable system of negotiations here in Argentina. Anyway, we'd all fallen asleep on the sofas in reception waiting for these layabouts to turn up, and were awoken by a short, wiry individual with greying hair in a mullet, who, once having woken us up, thrust out his arm, charismatically announced that his English was poor and that he 'spoke like Tarzan'. Having gotten up and noticed that his eyes were freakishly far apart, making him look like some kind of biped trout, I asked his name, which he had so far forgotten to share with us. It turns out that his name was Ricardo, which was announced with a massive, excitable grin and much bouncing up and down, like a badly trained terrier.

We were hurried on the bus by Ricardo, assuring us that we could call him Ricky Martin (who he bore a similarity to, in the same respect that whenever I hear or see either of them, I become immediately irritated) and laughing to himself maniacally. I enthusiastically attempted to say a quick 'hello, how are you' to the driver in Spanish, only to receive a slow turning of the head accompanied by an incredulously blank look, with his jaw hanging loose like some kind of genetically challenged fool. I quickly moved on, embarrassed and with the rest of the passengers staring at me, fixedly, as is the norm when inspecting a new arrival to your company on a bus. Some of them even said hello and I was starting to feel at ease until I noticed the alarming number of poorly applied toupees floating above the moth eaten 1970's seats of the bus, only to be accompanied by a disillusioned skiers worst enemy. The one piece ski suit. Now in my opinion, the one piece is some dreadful invention that should have died a painful death with the rest of the 1980's, like Duran Duran and flared trousers. In fact, so hated are they that it's a game, on piste, to spit on them, and if that's not possible, then you just have to yell 'ONE PIECE' as loud as humanly possible, in a vague attempt to rid the owner of their crippling delusion of looking inoffensive. Honestly, crimes against fashion I tell you. In fact, considering their disgusting and vulgar nature on the slopes, why would you harm society even more by wearing them in public ? ON A BUS ?!! Fools, fools the lot of them. So I took some incriminating photos of them whilst they weren't looking and let them be.

It was soon after we pulled out of the driveway that we discovered Ricardo's excitability would not be contained on the road. He bounced up and down ceaselessly, rabbiting on about the mountains across the way, stopping mid sentence to ask us if we were American, which, fortunately we were not (they aren't too popular here, due to damaging their economy somewhat). I would have appreciated his non-stop commentary if he had held the microphone a decent distance away from his mouth, so that he wasn't in danger of choking on it and so that we might have understood some of the lightning speed Spanish firing out of his mouth at a thousand miles a minute. Honestly, he sounded like a horse racing commentator on amphetamines! I managed to zone out by hanging a dangerous percentage of my body out of the window in order to take some blurry and, in general, poor quality photos of our high moving surroundings. However, 20 minutes down the road we were stopped and everyone had to pay $30AR to get into the national park (where the glacier was), except us, when the arse of a ranger realised that we weren't Argentinian (thanks to Robbie yakking away, loudly, advertising our foreignness) and subsequently demanded more money off of us.

After this covert theft had been completed we powered on down the precarious dirt track with scant regard for other traffic, Ricardo leaping about like some kind of crazed animal yelling about 'this rare trees that come from Canadia' with the fellow passengers' toupees now hanging off at extreme angles. Every so often the charismatic driver would screech to a sudden, unannounced halt and we would all pour out and take pictures of nothing in particular, and then be hurried quickly back into the van when various other tour buses starting piling up behind us on the narrow one-way mountain track. Nevertheless the surrounding area was exceptionally beautiful. In fact there was one particular thing that has stuck me of late, in this particular valley we were busy polluting with our aged van, there was an abundance of dead, skeletal trees. Peculiar because it was contrasted by the most amazing blues of the glacial water and the deep greens of the surrounding shrubbery, emphasising this oddly beautiful sense of morbidity that added to the silence and atmosphere of the enormous valley. I had been told on the absolutely reliable authority of Mark that there was a disease ravaging the country's tree population, in a similar fashion to Dutch Elm disease. Which, fair to the man, seemed (on this one, rare occasion of anything that he has ever said) believable enough.



Our first proper, arranged stop was at some waterfalls, Los Alerces, which were in fact really quite amazingly beautiful. The river leading up them ran a deep, emerald green, slowly twisting into a frothing frenzy of colour and energy, culminating in an epic show of the raw power of nature. The water crashed down in a satisfying roar, sending spray up in a shimmering display of colour, the tranquility and permanence of the rainbow creating a delightful contrast against the swirling inferno of water below. We all snapped away, looking incredibly touristy and probably getting very little worthwhile photography accomplished. Once again we were ushered like unruly cattle back towards the minibus, being allowed a short toilet break and a quick look into the coffee shop. I required neither of these things so I snuck around, trying to look inconspicuous, in the surrounding (and off limits) barns. This went relatively smoothly apart from a very lazy dog sitting and watching me with an expression that pretty much said 'oh you silly bastard' and a cat appearing from a hole in a wall and hissing at me rather aggressively, which I then tried to take some photographs of, got a bit scared and left. This was not the end to my shameless tourism. As the rest of the group sat about drinking coffee and complimenting the hosts, I was outside shouting at a small, and in the opinion of some people, cute dog, trying to get it to sit still and look at the camera lens for one photograph. Which I don't think was a particularly unreasonable request.


A little later, Ricardo's jabbering was starting to piss me off, so I decided that I'd already seen the majority of the view from the abrupt stops we'd already made and promptly fell asleep. I had one of those moments where you whack your head violently against the window pane and wake up swearing under your breath only to find your crazed tour guide furiously shouting about something with a concerning amount of passion whilst wafting about a large picture of an otter. I thought it would be best to go back to sleep. I awoke as we were nearing the glacier, and at pretty much the same time as the driver had spotted a small shard of ice and promptly refused to go any further, accentuating this with furious texting and refusing to acknowledge any kind of communication. So, we walked. Uphill, on ice, in tennis shoes. Soon, the ice turned to snow and we were soon surrounded by the magnificent stillness that was the Tronador glacier (Tronador meaning thunder), only broken by the subsonic boom of the ice breaking off from far above and crashing down into the valley. As amazing as this experience was, taking my glacier virginity, so to speak I couldn't help but feel slightly let down, only because it was so far away from the viewing platform, and due to the strictly touristic format of the day.

However, I considered the day a great success, and due to the fact that I was far, far away from the other members of the cabin moping, being hungover and 'relieving' themselves furiously, I was on top of the world. In fact I was so elated that I fell asleep the entire bus journey back and so avoided the dreadful tirade of verbal assault that came with Ricardo's existence. The next day I would return to the week's of skiing, in preparation for my next (and considerably harder) exam, with 5 days of depression, severe confidence issues and the further punishment of my already aged knees. Joy of joys, I'm a ski instructor.

Ain't Sayin' He a Grave Cleaner...

We were woken up by Mark banging on our apartment door at 10 to 12, shouting 'Chicos! We should cook steak sandwiches!'Now as watching Sacha Baron Cohen's film 'Bruno' is a test of how conservative you are, a long trip to Argentina is similar except a test to see how long you can go without vegetables (to date I have only seen them three times, and one of those was at a distance)and how much steak you can stomach before you have a massive heart attack. So far I am passing the test with no cardiac issues surfacing.

After forcing down a healthy breakfast of pure meat, we ventured into the Recoleta district where we stumbled upon a large, outdoor market. Within seconds of entering the market Ritchie stops, turns around and with an important tone of voice announced 'I can smell weed'. So we all, including Mark, went forth to find the source of this curious scent, and on the way discovered some fairly interesting, non intoxicating, products. There were the typical products there to lure tourists and those born with a similarly low-level of taste like Ponchos with 'BUENOS AIRES' woven into the chest in large, red writing. There was also a guy sat behind his stall with a mass of old newspapers. Great, I thought, some hobo has nicked this poor bastard's stall and has spread his mighty collection of old rubbish around it, in a slightly more acceptable version of a dog pissing on a tree. However, it turned out that upon closer inspection, this dirty little chap was not homeless and this mass collection of paper was part of his trade. How, I hear you say, can someone make a living from old paper? I shall tell you, this chap sifted through his pile of paper looking for certain shades of colour and then proceeded to twist it in a particular fashion so that it became possible to fashion a little statuette out of them. This doesn't sound very impressive in writing,but when you become face to face with a massive, brightly coloured, surprisingly robust paper goose in the middle of a market, it does become slightly hard to ignore. But, that didn't make me want to buy it. You'd have to be a right nonce for that.

As we emerged from the mass of vendors, weird models, strange leather faces and Brazillian tourists we came up to the Recoleta Cimeteria, which is one of the city's main attractions. At first it looks a bit disappointing, just a rather crumbly red brick wall with a few images of Jesus staring down at you in a rather condescending fashion. However upon entering you get that atmosphere descending down on you that always happens at some point or another when you go into a fairly historic graveyard. This was momentarily lifted again when Ritchie blurted out 'Since when the f**k does being dead become a f*****g tourist attraction, if people came up to my town and started taking pictures of dead people, we'd think they were f*****g weirdos'. However, I separated from the group and went around taking what I hoped would turn out to be some pretentiously moody and maybe even arty photos. Which I cannot say was a great success. However in doing so I learned that Recoleta is the resting place of Eva Peron who was the second wife of President Juan Peron. There was a throng of tourists surrounding her grave and I must admit I was not overly keen to see it so I moved on. Besides, at least 50 per cent of the crowd were Americans. In fact, instead of suffering from an invasion of German, speedo-clad, tourists, Argentina seems to be plagued by very annoying Americans who have no concept of respect or culture or, Brazillians, whom I will come to complain about in due course. However, the tourists were a minority in comparison to the enormous cat population, who seemed to occupy every other tombs, which I must admit I found a little disturbing.


Recoleta Cimeteria is in some ways similar to Brompton Cemetery in London, and fortunately, does not have a reputation for being popular amongst certain members of the gay community. It is essentially quite Victorian in appearance, all the graves are elaborate and evidently quite well looked after. Despite the constant presence of death which surrounded me I didn't actually get the impression that I was in a place where people were laid to rest. This may have been due to the way the cemetery was laid out, effectively in blocks, like the rest of Buenos Aires, and that there was a lot of greenery around, and a good amount of trees which provided sufficient contrast to the cold, grey of the tombs. I was also surprised to see that there was actually a team of tomb cleaners, who went around with a little trolley containing cloths, polish for the coffins, feather dusters and the like. They seemed to be perfectly at ease in the tombs, however one of them wasn't quite as placid when I tried to take a sneaky photo of him, which caused lots of shouting and brandishing of fists. I escaped being locked in a tomb for eternity by gesticulating in sign language that I was 'taking a picture of the bird on top of the grave'. I don't think he was entirely convinced.


Afterwards we all followed Mark out of the cemetery who was running around the courtyard with a contraption he called his 'maddy-cam', something made out of brown plumbing material with a camera crudely attached to the end trying to film a pigeon, which drew a crowd and caused people to take photos, at which point I suggested it might be a good time to leave.

That night we went out for dinner, just around the corner from the apartment. Again we had a sumptuous steak feast washed down with many bottles of beer. I remember having a 'spanglish' conversation with Mark's girlfriend about George Orwell and whether, in all my knowledge of teaching prepubescent teenagers English, it was too hard for Argentine 12 year olds. At this point I was feeling horribly tired and the combination of a heavy meal and copious amounts of alcohol was not helping. I was not providing much coherent conversation. But at least I was better than Ritchie, who was drunkenly trying to obtain directions to the nearest toilet in very loud English with a slightly frightened looking waiter. Whilst walking back to the apartment, on the way to ending a fairly incident free day, I was promptly targeted by one of the local drunkards and had some horrid concoction from a plastic bottle poured over me when I told him to piss off and that I wouldn't give him any money, I hope to God it was just coke.

We went back to Jess' room, promptly buggered the air conditioning and went to bed. Expecting hangovers and a hair of the dog mentality to be the order of the ensuing day.