Ghosts of Buenos Aires

I'm just recently emerging from a funk that I fell into upon returning to Buenos Aires. Last Sunday, after several days of drifting, unsure whether I was staying or leaving, and unable to muster enthusiasm about the many and various wonders of this city, unable to even call forth the excitement and pleasure I had so recently and consistently felt for travel, for adventure, for being abroad, I finally, mercifully, snapped out of it.

I had been staying for a few days with my friend Kenyon, in the charming barrio of San Telmo, and decided last Sunday, after spending way too much time inside watching movies, to get outside and see what there was to see. Right outside her building is a lively weekly craft fair, a dangerous spot to be living. I hadn't meant to seek solace in retail, but before I knew it, I had found a pair of handmade leather sandals that I couldn't resist, even though the temperatures around here continue to drop as winter sets in (I justified the purchase with visions of my upcoming trip to Colombia in August). I made a brief attempt to enter the madness of the Bicentennial events, set up along a closed-off avenue not too far away, but was immediately traumatized by the rushing current of stroller-pushing parents and their flag-toting children, and extracted myself as quickly as I entered.

I headed back to San Telmo, and by that time it had started to rain--the first real rain since I had arrived in Buenos Aires two weeks earlier. People out "paseando" took cover under awnings, umbrellas, and newspapers, and I was grateful to duck into the indoor antique market and wait out the storm digging for treasures and souvenirs. I began asking around for yerba tins, something like this to bring home as a souvenir, but I was soon sidetracked by a stall with two huge crates of old black and white photographs.

Forty-five minutes later, my hands full of other people's precious, faded memories, I was utterly transfixed. Unable to part with any of the gems that I had found, I finally pried myself away, and ended up spending as much on the photos as I had on the sandals. The images are incredible: Grandma crouching next to four little ones--all in bathing suits, sun-bronzed, squinting against the bright beach sun; two smiling women in the backseat of a twenties-era convertible, their male companion, seemingly oblivious to the camera, taking a swig from a bottle.



And my favorite: five well-dressed young folks, in their teens and young twenties, probably siblings, posing for a portrait. Each is looking in a different direction, and smirking in unavoidable delight at a shared private joke. The photo was taken probably seventy years ago, their hairstyles antiquated and their clothing old-fashioned, yet I couldn't help but smirk back, in knowing recognition of such a timeless game.



I found so many that called to me, for reasons both obvious and mysterious. The shopkeeper, a middle-aged woman who readily agreeing with me about the power and beauty of these simple snapshots, gave me a discount, and despite the fact that I still paid the equivalent of two nights at a hostel, the treasure was well worth it.



When I left the market, night had fallen and the rain was letting up. I found a nearby cafe, and over my beer and salad, sifted through the photos again, a smile lighting on my face as I studied each one. Beaches, vacations, car trips, family portraits--such typical subjects and settings, yet there was something inexplicably special about these images. Somehow, inexplicably, time-traveling to another time, to the Buenos Aires of unknown ghosts, the fog lifted, and life was good again.

Pickup Trucks and Pacific Sunsets

I've landed in Buenos Aires again, to take a bit of a rest after six weeks of travelling. It's been a beautiful week here in the city, with autumn-hued trees and sunny t-shirt weather days, but I can't shake the smothering discomfort of the big city. It's a feeling that's all too familiar from the last months of my time in New York, but which I'm feeling more acutely now that I'm returning from so many months in the country.

At the same time, it's been good to catch up with some friends here. I'm staying at the apartment of an Argentine friend I travelled with in the North back in January. It's been such a treat to enjoy some of the luxuries items I'd missed during the past several weeks, such running water and liquid milk.

I've also had some time to process my most recent adventure: ten days hitchhiking and camping around the incredible island of Chiloe (pronounced Chill-oh-AY), off the coast of southern Chile. I went with an Argentine boy I met at a mountain refugio near El Bolson, a native of Buenos Aires who had begun his travels at the southern end of the continent in December with the intention of making his way to Colombia, but who, like myself and so many others, had become "enganchado" (hooked) in El Bolson. We met one weekend when I took to the mountains on a solo overnight, and started a kind of casual, temporary romance based on the shared belief in following our own paths.

That said, at the time, my own path was headed towards a farm in northeast Argentina, but when Tobi told me he was thinking about hitchhiking to Chiloe and wanted to know if I would join him, my breath caught in my throat. Upon leaving Chile after studying abroad there in 2002, the island of Chiloe was the one place I regretted not going. Its reputation as a unique, beautiful place with a rich cultural history closely tied with fishing and agriculture had hooked me. Plus, the opportunity to travel in a completely different way than I would on my own, hitchhiking and camping and seeking out hidden, out-of-the-way places was just an irresisitible offer. It wasn't hard to decide to 'postpone' my original plans and set off for Chile with Tobi.

We set off from El Bolson on a Wednesday morning, dropping our packs in a bus shelter by the side of Route 40, the major route that runs from the bottom of Argentina to the top. After sticking his thumb out for about ten minutes, Tobi turned to me, telling me (jokingly?) that he only invited me because blonde gringas are more likely to get a ride than scruffy, bearded Argentines. I took a turn, and within five minutes we were sitting in the cab of a Volvo semi, en route to Osorno, Chile, a seven hour ride away, and within 100 kilometers of the ferry to Chiloe. Tobi's claims that it was "suerte del principiante" or beginners' luck, I've decided to believe that I'm just really good at hitchhiking.

The following day, and two more kind-hearted truck drivers later, we were on Chiloe. Despite its reputation for being rainy just about all year long, and especially during the colder months, the weather was crisp but the sky was blue, as it would be for a week of our ten-day stay. The Chilote gods were smiling on us, and we spent the next several days hopping about from one gorgeous, tranquil location to another.

Tobi had chosen spots on the map to go check out, some based on recommendations, and others chosen for their seemingly isolated or out-of-the-way locations. The tourists were gone but the locals were present, generous, and friendly. Our good fortune with weather and the fine folks we encountered carried on throughout the week. We met a band of rich young surfer boys from Vina del Mar who toted us in the back of their truck and onward, crossing a river, knee-deep-in-mud with our packs on to a deserted Pacific beach where we spent an all-too-short day and night.

A few days later, crossing from the main island to a much smaller one on a transport boat, we met Don Soto, 73 year-old native resident of that small island, Meulin, who, once we arrived on this tiny rural paradise, took us in the back of his truck to his daughter's house, where we stayed in her cozy guest cabin and ate her delicious gifts of fried congrio (white fish), homemade apple pie, and fresh eggs.

After waiting over an hour for a ride to Quellon, the southernmost city on the island, one chilly afternoon, we finally got a ride. After hoisting our packs into the bed of the pickup, we climbed into the cab and met Silvio, our 40-ish ex-hippie Chilean driver, whose first question was, "Why the hell do you want to go to Quellon?" to which Tobi replied, with a shrug, that it looked like someplace interesting and remote. Apparently, not so much. According to Silvio, it's "bastante feo," or ugly, with all of the riff raff from the rest of the island taking refuge down there at the end to escape from their various misdeeds. Okay, so where should we go instead? we wanted to know. "Queilen is much nicer," Silvio told us, "quiet, peaceful, and you can camp on the beach without a problem." Plus, it was where Silvio was headed. He drove us halfway out onto a mile-long beachy spit of land, from where we walked nearly to the end and set up camp, spending the next two days filling in the spaces between gorgeous sunrises and sunsets with beach yoga and fitful attempts at tackling The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in Spanish (Ponche de Acido Lisergico).

In fact, that well sums up the ten days we spent on Chiloe--crisscrossing beautiful landscapes with picturesque ocean views, made even more spectacular by the technicolor skies created by the rising and falling of the sun. The island was everything I expected and more. After one day there, I was hooked, and we both knew that one week wouldn't be enough. Cow-dotted rolling green pastures, small towns with Pacific northwest-style bungalows stacked up along hills overlooking harbors filled with tiny yellow and blue fishing boats. Two hundred year-old weather beaten wooden churches in every plaza, tasty blocks of homemade, soft white cheese in every market, insanely cheap, just-off-the-boat mussels and varied shellfish I only know the names of in Spanish.

Around the eighth or ninth day, our good weather luck began to run out, and Chiloe started showing us its true colors. We spent the last couple of chilly, damp, but not unpleasant days holed up with a lively young pair of Germans in an abandoned refugio in a coastal national park on the southern Pacific coast (where Lili, our friendly Argentine park ranger, fed us seaweed streudel). By that point, it was time to begin the journey back to Buenos Aires, home for Tobi, a good rest stop for me. Chiloe had put on a captivating show for us, giving us daily opportunities for plenty of gasps and exclamations of wonder and appreciation. It may have taken me eight years to get to Chiloe, but it was more than worth the wait.

Here are more pics of my trip, plus some from other April adventures down south (El Chalten and a week in the woods of El Bolson),

or click here