The truth, but not as we know it...

In Cusco we have stayed, and will stay again tonight at the Libertador Hotel, a converted colonial convent, filled with antiques (not just us, stop sniggering at the back!) and original paintings and with a world class restaurant. We travelled to Macchu Pichu on the Hiram Bingham Orient Express and after our exploration of the "Lost City" yesterday we have been staying here at the Inkaterra Lodge Hotel, a tiny oasis which used to be a tea plantation and which is carved out of the cloud forest just at the point where the Amazon meets the Andes. Our bungalow had candles, a log fire and hot water bottles in our bed-and that is modest. Apparently the villas, where I am told members of the British Royal Family like to stay, have private terraces, hot tubs and butler service.

Although we have tried to eat Peruvian cuisine and talk to lots of people-our Spanish has been much more useful than we thought, although for many rural Peruvians it is their second language-it would be foolish to say that in these circumstances we are getting to know the real Peru. One thing is clear though, I think, and that is that the beliefs that underpinned Macchu Pichu are alive and well even today. This morning we went for an orchid walk through the gardens of the hotel and our guide told us stories about the use that shamans make of the plants we were seeing (we also saw amazing birds and butterflies, but thats another story). It was evident that he believed them, as did our guide in Macchu Pichu who told us similar stories and our guide in Cusco. Peru may be a catholic country but people hedge their bets and combine christian and pagan practices as for example our guide in Cusco`s grandmother who used to "exorcise" illness in her grandchildren by passing an egg across their bodies when thy were sick, mixing it with water and then employing a man to take the water out into the streets and throw it on the ground so that the illness would pass to the next person who passed (very charitable!) after which she would make the sign of the cross and go to mass!

Off to find coffee now before we go on another walk and then this evening catch the Hiram Bingham train back to Cusco. Tomorrow we head off to Puno and Lake Titicaca and the Island of the Sun. I am still not clear as to what Macchu Pichu was-we have heard various explanations, including a healing centre, a fort and a pleasure palace. But the Inka culture which produced it and the other places we have seen, building on other ancient civilisations is fascinating and perhaps when I have a faster internet access I will try to write somemore. For now, Mike is pacing......

Onward and upward

I have been suffering from a little altitude sickness for the last couple of days-nothing serious, just a headache and a slight queasiness-so Mike was left to go on his own with our guide on the treck through the Sacred Valley while I caught up on a lost night´s sleep. He has some amazing photographs and on the way back he mentioned that he hadn´t seen any animals here, other than the ubiquitous llamas and alpacas (we had our photograpoh taken with one and its owner on Saturday-it is something you have to do!) so he was taken to a rescue centre where he was able to photograph condors and puma from close up. Fantastic.

By yesterday lunchtime, however, I had recovered enough to go to the Museum of Pre Columbian Art in Cusco. We had read about it in Hugh Thomson´s book, Cochineal Red, and it really is as spectacular as he claims, especially if you enter the galleries when they are empty as the cases light up as you go through the door. The point of the museum is that all the work-pottery, woodwork, shellwork and gold and silver-are displayed as art and not as ethnographic evidence of particular cultures. You are given the minimum amount of information-broad dates, the culture, since it covers the pre-Inka civilsations and the Inkas-and just left to look. According to Thomas it is perhaps not possible to give much information by way of provenance since looting is, or at least was, almost officially accepted in Peru, seen by the descendants of the indigenous people as a way of liberating their history from the detested Spanish conquerers and by the government as a cheap and feasible way of getting access to archeaological sites. Whatever, it is amazing and leaves you feeling able to wonder at the beauty and quality without trouybling yourself with a lot of information. That is for another day.

Must rush now as we are off on the Hiram Brigham Orient Express to Macchu Pichu, leaving our suitcase here as the Orient Express kindly provide you with your own little case. We have left another case in Lima. Must remember to collect everything on the way back!

Don´t cry for me....

So we have said farewell to Buenos Aires and Argentina having spent our last evening at Casa Felix, Felix´s House. Felix is not our new best friend. The name, of course, is that off a restaurant. But it really is Felix´s house, one of the many (we were assured that it is the best) ¨private¨ restaurants in BA that are run within peoples´homes. The home in this case was what is called a "chorizo house" because all of the rooms run off each other, like a string of sausages! It was built in 1910 and so is in the art deco style that was typical of domestic architecture in BA at the time. Running alongside the rooms is an open tiled patio which has been filled with plants and which serves as an open air dining room. Before the meal we had drinks in the backgarden where Felix grows the herbs which he uses in cooking and then we ate-a 5 course degustacion menu plus an "intermezzo" of a sorbet made with melon, thyme and turmeric (sounds weird, tastes wonderful!). But best of all, from our point of view, all the food was either vegetables or fish, each course accompanied by a wonderful Argentinian wine. We finished off by finally getting to drink mate, the national tea of Argentina which people drink all the time, carrying their flasks around with them to top up their mate pot, on the street, in parks, at the cinema....

We felt the experience brought our stay in BA to a triumphant conclusion and we are now in Cusco ready to begin our tour of Peru. Things continue to look up on the food front as last night we stayed in the fabulous Hotel Miraflores Park (our room on the 9th floor looked out to the Pacific) and ate ceviche (fish marinaded in lemon or lime to cook) in their restaurant and were given a wonderful explanation of Peruvian food by our waiter. Off to lunch...

Tea for 2?

According to Miranda France (Bad Times in Buenos Aires), Cafe Biela, opposite Recoleta Cemetery and the Church, is where rich divorcees drink coffee and take afternoon tea while "looking at themselves in other people's sunglasses". Not being in the market for a divorce and having only very small sunglasses, we decided to by-pass this venue and yesterday afternoon headed instead to the Orangerie in the swanky Alvear Palace Hotel, BA's swishest hotel-look it up on Google for nice photographs! Thanks to Naomi, Esther and co's generous birthday gift we indulged in tiny sandwiches, scones, cakes, pink champagne and blue earl grey, which is earl grey but with the addition of lavender from the south of France! It was served by waiters wearing red coats and white gloves. In the corner a lady in black played the harp. Delicious and a great way to start an evening which ended just after midnight back in the Thelonius Jazz Club in Palermo listening to Pablo Kranz.

France also describes how her local news stand (there don't seem to be news agents here, just street stalls) refused to sell her foreign fashion magazines on the basis that they were too expensive, even though they stocked them, and we have also had this experience. I tried to buy the Spanish version of Hola to keep up with the doings of the Duchess of Alba (as you so) and was told it was far too expensive and I didn't really need it-so I didn't buy it! Yesterday we had a similar experience. We had hardly sat down at the Alvear Palace than the elegantly dressed Maitre De glided over to us and "advised" us that we didn't need to buy two teas as one was quite enough for two people. And so it turned out to be. You just have to love these people!

Time to go time

We now feel quite at home in the area we have been living for the last few weeks in Buenos Aires. We have found two good and comfortable cinemas within walking distance and, as seems to be the case in general here, foreign films are subtitled not dubbed so you actually get to hear the voices of the actors rather than, as in Spain, the small group of "actors" who provide voices (often inappropriate) for a wide range of actors. This weekend we went to see a French film about a school in the 20th arrondisment in Paris, Entre Les Murs (The Class, I think, in England) and finally caught up with Slum Dog Millionaire ( Quien Quieres Ser Millionario?). Both were fascinating studies of difficult societies and it is easy to see why they won prizes. In fact in relation to Slumdog I would imagine all other contenders in most categories from cinematography to acting to soundtrack gave up hope on seeing it. It was also, of course, horrifically violent, but I can see that it would not have worked without this.

We have also found a restuarant where we are welcomed like long lost friends-yes, despite all our complaints about food-and another which we have been to only once so far but which serves the best pizza I have ever tasted "made with the same love as that of the original immigrants" according to the blurb, since of course pizza, made by Italian immigrants, was the original fast food, long before McDonalds thought of the concept. We will be back there tonight.We have a favourite coffee shop and we know which supermarket to avoid (horrendous queues at all hours and no change in the till-a constant problem here) and where to go. For bigger adventures we know to keep an eye on what is going on at the Centro Cultural Borges, where we were again on Saturday night, to watch a modern dance company perform some of the most startling tango you could imagine, accompanied by a tango band and singer with a voice that surely equals that of Carlos Gardel (No, we had´t heard of him either till we came here, but he was a hollywood star in the 30s and lived up the road). We have a park that we run in and know our way to a shopping mall where we can sit and read the papers and watch the beautiful people stroll by on a Sunday morning. What more could anyone want?

So, predictably, we are moving on. Not very far to begin with, just to Palermo, another barrio of BA, but then, on Friday, to Peru and Bolivia. It is raining there at the moment and here we are enjoying the most wonderful autumn weather-blue skies, a little chilly first thing in the morning and then warm sun in the afternoon. The leaves are beginning to fall so the light is dappled....Buenos Aires gets under your skin. It will be hard to leave it.

Mas Guay que Paraguay

I came across the above phrase, which means literally "more guay than Paraguay" ages ago. it means, or more probably, it meant at the time, since fashions change, "cool". I have been looking for a chance to use it ever since and came close yesterday as we went ...to Uruguay. Or at least we went to Colonia de Sacramiento which is a world heritage site in Uruguay. Some say it has been over preserved. It has delightful single storey houses built in the Spanish colonial style, cobbled streets, plane trees and restuarants with views of the river, in one of which we had a lovely lunch. However, we found it charming and a delightful place to spend an afternoon, enjoying the quiet after the bustle of BA. It only takes an hour on the wonderful efficient Buquebus, a sort of floating shopping mall so we were back in time to have dinner with Greg in Palermo at a restuarnt which boasted of a performance by opera singers. Maybe so. but not as we know them. Tonight we are going to the opera at Teatro Avenida to see Don Pasquale. Hopefully this is the real thing, as our previous visit there to see La Traviata was very enjoyable.

PS. I have just realised that I do know something about Paraguay since we were told by our Brazilian guide that the main industry of Paraguay, whose border is about 10km from where Brazil meets Argentina, is shopping. I have heard of people who make this their life´s work (put your hand down Esther!), but never of shopping as an industry. However, it seems that the tax system in Paraguay is such that they can import and sell good from all over the world very cheaply so people actually visit specifically to visit its shopping malls. Mas guay que Paraguay. There you have it.

The global village

As I write this I have a fantastic view of the Iguazu falls through the hotel window. Impressive as it looks , however, the thing that I wasn´t prepared for was the smell. Think "newly watered garden" times 100. It also sounds pretty impressive and last night we heard the roar as the damns further upstream were opened up to allow more water through which happens once a week.

We have now done quite a lot of walking around the impressively laid out tracks (Mike thinks that it would be a good idea to get the company who run the national park to come and manage Chiclana. They might actually make it work), yesterday on the Brazil side and today in Argentina. You are going to get so tired of our photographs of waterfalls, although we have one of a racoon trying to drink out of a can of Coke.

We now have a few hours spare since our flight has been re-scheduled. Fortunately we were told about this yesterday and fortuitously, there was some repair work going on in a room adjacent to ours when we returned yesterday so that when we complained we were able to negotiate not only a new room but also told we could check out just before we left rather than by the official 10 o clock deadline. Smart negotiating.

Off to the pool now. Must get a few more rays of sunshine.

The caress of mother earth

I realised when my massage started last night that it´s title, the caress of mother earth, (it sounds better in the local indian language, honest!) should have alerted me to the fact that it wasn´t just a massage but a treatment as well. I was coated in warm mud and , after a shower, rubbed with the oil of exotic flowers. All this involved lots of bending of limbs, pulling of joints and general stretching. It sounds bizarre but my right shoulder and arm which has been given me lots of problems now feels a lot better, so I guess I shouldn´t be too sniffy. Greg tried the hot stones and Mike had a Swedish massage. Not quite so glamorous, perhaps, but we are now all well and truely pummelled and off to tackle Brazil......

And now...

...for something completely different!

We have noiw arrived at Iguazu Falls and are ensconsed in the Sheraton, with its fantastic views (including one from our bedroom window) of the falls on the Argentinian side. (Lovely hotel, but why the piped musack in all the public rooms?) We´ve just been for our first walk up to the falls and tomorrow we are going to see it from the Brazilian side. We had to catch a flight out of BA at 7.00 which meant leaving in the middle of the night so we have that feeling of unreality which comes from a lack of sleep. It makes the Falls, with their incredible rainbows, even more incredible.

To be honest, we didn´t exactly help pourselves with an early night. On Saturday we had been to see the musical Eva, a very saccharine account of her life. As Greg said, it made Jesus Christ Superstar seem a little critical of Jesus by comparison. So last night we decided to head off to Palermo to a jazz club for something completely different-a group of Argentinian musicians, one of whom, Pablo Andals, who is based in New York playing jazz versions of tango. It was great, but we couldn´t bear to drag ourselves away till after midnight, so whatever we are feeling now, we have only ourselves to blame. Oh well, nothing that the massage that I am about to have, followed by dinner and a good night´s sleep won´t cure.

All things Eva and Ecological

Yesterday we continued our walking tour with our excellent guide William (who, despite his name, is as Argentinian as a side of beef!). This time we visited the cemetery at Recoleta and other sites associated with Eva Peron, the second wife of the Argentinian president, General Peron and the darling of the Argentinian masses. William is not a fan of Eva and the Peronists who, from what we understand, seem to reinvent themselves every few years and come back into power-the current president, Cristina Kirchner, wife of the ex-president Mr Kirchner, is a Peronist and apparently appears in front of a photograph of Evita, wearing her hair in a similar style and with suits modeled on those that Eva wore. Again from what we understand, although their policies seem flexible (sometimes pro nationalisation, sometimes pro privatisation, for example) a basic thread is the populist streak and a fair degree of authoritarianism. The original General, in addition, was sympathetic to the Nazis, although ultimately forced to sell grain to the Allies, and allowed a lot of Nazis into Argentina at the end of the war, thus explaining the German settlements in Patagonia and Northern Argentina. Eva used her considerable charms first of all to capture Peron and then to manipulate the masses (she had been a radio soap opera star and had many of her speeches written by the author of her soap opera scripts), many of whom still regard her as some sort of unofficial saint, to the extent that there was a popular outcry in Argentina at the way in which Madonna depicted her (too human) in the eponymous film. Anyway, tonight we are going to the musical, Eva, that has been a wild success in BA and which, it is claimed, gives the Argentinian depiction of Eva. We shall see. I can´t help feeling that she probably did have something of the same scary (because unaccountable) charisma of Princess Diana, although of course, her background was very different (illegitimate child of a rich farmer, never accepted by her father´s family etc) and the plot in which she is buried at Recoleta is, compared to some of the mausoleum´s there, a very modest one, constructed for her by her sister when her body was brought back to BA 16 year after her death-she had been spirited out of the country, buried in Milan and then sent to Spain where Peron was living with his thrid wife.

This morning for a completely different experience, we did another walk, following the 8 km track through the ecological reserve that borders on the River Plate. There were lots of runners, bikers and walkers and this area is obviously another of the reserves of the beutiful people-so, of course ,we fitted right in!

Tomorrow we are taking Greg to the market in San Telmo and then in the eveing to a jazz club. On monday we fly up to Iguazu for three days of Luxury in the Sheraton. More soon.

So it goes

Since we worked out how it operates, you can´t keep us off the "subte" (underground) and now that we are no longer doing classes we are enjoying the opportunity to get around BA. Yesterday we went and had a look at Home which is the hotel we will be staying at the week after next in Palermo Viejo-or is it Palermo Holywood?Hard to tell as the names change all the time. Anyway, it looks great. We had a cup of coffee in the bar and checked out the pool and the loungers in the adorable garden-so thanks for that recommendation, Esther and Paul. We shall have a champagne cocktail in the bar and think of you both on our first night.

The only problem with this outing was that Mike´s sunglasses hopped of the train rather before he did in the hands of some light fingered youth who had managed to unhook them from his belt in the crush on the train. Ah well. You learn. All our jewelery, passports and camera are in the safe, but we didn,t think that a reasonable but not outrageous pair of old raybans would be that interesting. Anyway, it was a good excuse to stop of at the Patio Bullrich, one of the nicest malls in downtown BA (the one that is housed in an old horse and cattle market-oh plese keep up, I must have mentioned this already!) and buy a new pair from Mike´s second favourite shop, the Italian one with the initials EZ (the favourite is Paul Smith of course). We were very impressed when the salesman came back with the receipt and said that there was someone with the name Mike Tierney, who shopped in their store in Melbourne, but he assumed that Mike was the Mike Tierney from Cadiz. Isn´t new technology wonderful! So we went and had coffee and icecream (dulce de leche flavour-Argentinia´s national flavour) to celebrate the purchase before we set off again to San Telmo to look around with fewer crowds than there were on Sunday. Now we are waiting for Greg to arrive back from Salta before we set off again in search of further adventures in downtown BA. If only the food was better, I could live here! How is it possible to runin a salad?

Lazy like...

This morning we wondered down to San Telmo, one of the old areas in the centre of BA which has 19th century architecture, little shops and galaries, a food and antiques market and, on Sunday, a craft market. Some of the stuff was good, more craft than tat, although we can´t buy anything because even with our enhanced Business Class baggage allowance, our cases already weigh too much. Still, we listened to some tango and had a nice lunch at a little corner cafe. This afternoon we may go to the cinema. Apparently, unlike in Spain where all English language films are dubbed into Spanish by the same 5 or 6 actors, so you never actually get to hear the real voices, here in South America you get voz original and subtitles, reflecting the fact that each country has its own form of Spanish and therefore it would be impossible to dub across the board.

We have been thinking about the economy here and everyone we speak to is very dispondant about the future, although we read in the local paper this morning that many Argentinians are returning from Spain, either under their own steam or through a repatriation package organised by the Zapatero Government so I guess it´s not much better anywhere else. BA of course has always been a city of contrasts. Yesterday we walked through the Retiro district (named after the Madrid park) which is the area that the rich moved to in order to be as far away as they could from the river after the outbreak of yellow fever in 1870. There are an amazing number of palaces or mansions, mostly of French design, including one modeled on the Louvre (!), which were built in the final decade of the 19th century or the first decade of the 20th and which now mostly serve as hotels or government buildings, although one of the nicest ones is the French Embassy (we Brits have a concrete bunker!). At the same time, there was obviously a great deal of poverty and one of our projects this week is to see if we can find the Museum of Immigration.

These days, we have been told, there are more Bentleys in BA than in London, and from what we can tell, Barrio Norte, Recoleta and parts of Palermo are pretty swanky. However, we see a lot of people sleeping in the streets and some of the shanty towns, known as Villas, are very depressing. There is one, for example just on the outskirts of La Boca district and the start of Puerto Modero, the fashionable restaurant and apartment and loft area by the river (It made us think of our apartment in King Edwards Wharf!). This is the extreme, of course, but we have also been told that a teacher here would earn about 400 pounds a month. Given that you can buy (we are told) quite a nice apartment for beteen 100,000 and 300,00 pounds this probably isn´t very much. However, what brought the situation home to me was when I realised that a shoe shop near our hotel was offering 6 instalment payments on shoes costing about 50 pounds a pair maximum. This is in a business area so the clientele are probably in work and we are not, therefore talking about really poor people.

Tomorrow we are going to try and walk to the recalimed park on the river...more to follow

School´s out.....

We celebrated the end of our two weeks at the language school yesterday by opening a bottle of wine and having an early night! It´s been good. We learnt a lot of new grammar and lots about the history, politics and culture of Argentina, including some reading of Borges and Cortazar and some looking at Xul Solar and other artists, which we have followed up by visits to the Museo Bellas Artes, the Museum of Modern Art and the Xul Solar Museum.

In between we have even managed to go to the opera, do a walking tour of the city and make our first foray into Palermo where we will spend a few days at the end of our time in BA. We found a vegetarian restaurant, La Esquina de Flores, and stocked up on vitamin C which has been sadly lacking from our diet. A lot of coffee has been drunk to keep us awake since 5 hours of classes a day is hard going, and despite being told that the coffee here is not good (Naomi!), we have found it excellent. Just as well-we have needed it! Now all that remains is to put the grammar to some use, although we are speaking a lot of Spanish here-more often than not I think when we are out and about as well as at the school and it is very useful.

Thursday was another dia feriado (the word fiesta seem not to be used except for Christmas and New Year), this time to commemorate the dead in the Falklands or Malvinas. As fate would have it, Raul Alfonsin, the first president of a democratic Argentina after the fall of the Generals in 1983 had died a couple of days before, so the day was also his funeral and there was a massive turn out and show of popular grief. We have been told that although the Malvinas was terrible, it is generally understood in Argentina that this was the price paid for the downfall of the military junta, though it seems a terribly heavy one and one that does the British no credit, especially the sinking of the Belgrano, although we have seen no anti British feeling other than one banner at the football match. Perhaps this also has something to do with the fact that much of the country´s infrastructure, such as railways, electricity and water was built by the British and although the Spanish and Italians are by far and away the biggest group of immigrants. Still, on Thursday, I wished that I had kept my "I didn´t vote for Thatcher" badge which I would have gladly worn.

Speaking of football, the national team lost 6 goals to 0 against Bolivia on Wednesday night, thus adding an extra edge of dolefulness to Thursday. The team are blaming the fact that they had to play at altitude, but perhaps they weren´t very good after all.......

They say...

.....that travel broadens the mind. And so it does. Here we are in Buenos Aires and, as we seem to do in every city we visit, we have made our visit to the dentist in search of the perfect filling for Mike´s tooth. This time it was The German Hospital that was recommended and the treatment was fine. We even had high hopes that German efficiency would find its way into the bureacracy. But no. The visit lasted two hours (a temporary filling which actually took 5 minutes plus another 5 for an x ray) and the rest of the time was spent in queues. Mike has another appointment on monday. I am planning to go shopping.

Apart from that BA is great (except the food, which is terrible for us, although no doubt very good for meat eaters. They don´t even make very good salads!) We are enjoying the school, even the struggling with Borges and Cortazar amongst other Argentinian writers and feel that as well as improving (we hope!) our grammar, it is doing what we hoped and giving us an insight into the history and culture. We now know, for example a lot about such diverse topics as the history of the military dictatorship and the subsequent trials on the one hand and the way in which the bands of people who sort the rubbish before it is collected every night came into existence (self organised at first to make some money when the economy collapsed in 2001 and now working under official licences from the city). Inevitably this takes up a lot of our time but we have managed other things including the opera last night at the Teatro Avenida (the Colon is still closed and the centre of a political argument). Tomorrow we have a day off school (the commemoration of the Malvinas/Falklands) and then Friday is our last day before we start exploring ourselves...more soon