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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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cry for me... Buenos Aires in 1979 was a scary place to live. I arrived there with three children under four and rusty A level Spanish. National life was still overshadowed by the military dictatorship - looking back on it I can at least say I have experienced living with that day to day uncertainty and it has left me with some insight into how others have felt in similar or worse circumstances. This was the time of the desaparecidos - people kidnapped for political (or sadistic) reasons, their children confiscated and adopted. The Mothers have kept up their vigil and there has been some success lately in tracing lost grandchildren. Then of course there was the Falklands War - I was very lucky to leave three months before the invasion but those British who stayed behind had a very difficult time of it and many had to be evacuated for their own safety, leaving all their belongings behind. What a stern beginning to this piece - and yet Argentina is a wonderful country. Its vastness impresses - it takes four hours to fly from the hot and sultry north to the freezing wind-blasted south. A long eastern coastline and endless flat pampas lands stretch from the Andean chain with its stunning lakes and glaciers. Such a huge land seems sparsely populated, and yet full of agricultural and mineral wealth which has sadly never been harnessed in a way to bring prosperity to all. I am very drawn to the south - to Patagonia - which has appeared on the tourist map over the last 5 - 10 years. Always a fan of deserts, this cold, barely-touched land is elemental yet has a diversity of wildlife for the patient. Foxes, rheas (a type of ostrich), penguins, condors and hares abound. Extinct volcanoes with their brilliant turquoise lakes punctuate the landscape and scrub. Tough pioneers have set up estancias and forced a living from the land - their stories alone would fascinate. Gauchos still practise their skilled horsemanship, living in the saddle. Sheep farms struggle against the falling price of wool, but these people - many of British descent, with some German, Italian and other European descendants - know how to work hard and have experienced all the vagaries of economic disasters. In the far north western corner of Argentina lie other gems. These for me are the Spanish colonial cities founded more than four hundred years ago, with their white churches and spa towns. Whatever the morality of the Conquest, the sheer determination and toughness of their founders impress. We took a train trip (two days long!) to Salta and Tucuman, towns on the salt route to the Atacama in Chile. The railways have been neglected since - thirty years ago the British-built station buildings still had and used their original brass telegraphic equipment. You could book a comfortable sleeper and even have your car put on the back of the train (whatever happened to Motorail?) but I think long distance buses have replaced these now. Then the capital. Buenos Aires has often been described as the Paris of the South. Probably in the 1930s and 1940s she was indeed an elegant and cultural city, and to some extent this is still true. There was a very bleak phase under Peron and again later under the military - though I did get to see Madame Butterfly at the beautiful Colon Opera House. The sheer poverty of everyone back in the 1970s when inflation was at 200% per month (as soon as you received your salary you had to put it straight on the money market otherwise it would be worth very little by the end of the month) meant that goods were sparse in the shops. An old branch of Harrods was still open then - I went in one day and wandered around the echoing wooden floors looking at the empty display cases and traditional wooden counters - occasionally one or two items appeared for sale. Somehow you had the feeling it was being kept open for appearances' sake. On my last visit five years ago it had finally closed. Similarly, in food shops there were only really packets of rice and tea along the aisles and frozen food was unheard of. You had to buy meat and vegetables from local shops and make everything from scratch - and very healthy that was too! I have been back to Buenos Aires a couple of times in recent years and although the economic problems are never far away, I have been pleased to see there is a greater air of prosperity. Some modern high rise buildings now grace the city centre and give an air of modernity. The main fashionable shopping streets are lined with boutiques - leather is a great buy. Tourism has encouraged the redevelopment of the notorious La Boca harbour area - once a much darker and more powerful place than it is now and birthplace of the tango. People still have to work very hard - often with two jobs - and many of the middle classes suffered the loss of their savings a few years ago (remember TV news scenes of housewives banging saucepans in protest?) Argentina still has a wonderful survivability and tense energy - go there and experience it if you can. First
published in VISA 80A (Aug 2008) |