PAMPAS-ASS TRAVELER PUTS ON AIRS, TAKES TO THE AIR, IN BUENOS AIRES

I hate to hang around when the party’s over. When it’s time to go home, then I do it. So I steal away in the middle of the night, from Vina del Mar climbing high into the Andes by midnight, straight up from the Chilean coast. Too bad there’s not much moonlight or it’d be a pretty sight I’m sure. As it is there’s not that much to see, a few snow-capped peaks and a rugged road a couple miles high I reckon. We finally hit the border crossing about three in the morning and there’s a line waiting of course. At least they’ve incorporated both countries’ formalities into one checkpoint Charlie, so we only have to do this once. I hate formalities. It all takes about an hour and soon we’re on our way again, off into the night and toward the pampas. But I’ll only go to Mendoza, stay a night, and then head off again to the Big City. Cop a crap first thing after an all night bus ride or you’ll pay for it later in traveler’s constipation, that poor second cousin to traveler’s diarrhea. This is a rule, like traveling light and not traveling with butter. Defy me at your peril. The things you should ‘hold in’ usually refer to your mouth. A good coffee usually works, but there are products on the market if the symptoms persist. Be careful what you ask for in Portuguese unless you want aspirin. Asi es idioma.

Mendoza is okay, a medium-size Argentine city with medium-size pretensions. After several weeks in Chile, I immediately recall why I prefer it to Argentina. It’s the difference between Europe and America, the Continent and the UK, rationalism and empiricism. For all its fancy restaurants, I’ve got nothing to eat. I must’ve lost ten pounds in Argentina and only partially gained it back in Chile. Hardie K’s diet tours anyone? Paris-loving Brits look aghast at me when I rag on Argentina’s food, or lack thereof, but listen to this: “If the stunningly boring national obsession of ham and cheese has left you with a yearning for more exotic food, with a little searching you can find international restaurants…”, and that’s from full-time ex-pats doing a travel ‘zine in Argentina, Dutch and Australian the principals, so I’m vindicated. And they’re being generous. It takes a LOT of searching to find something besides the asados and parilladas that the country is famous for and the pastas and pizzas that serve as filler for restaurant fare, starchy greasy stuff sufficing for fast food.

Still a little persistence pays off. If you can handle all-you-can-eat buffets (tenedor libre = ‘free fork’) and the long dark nod that usually follows, then Chinese is a decent option, though no cheaper than the US. A better option for me is take-out by the kilo, a decent $3 fix for about a half kilo (= 1 lb. for you Homies). I even found a veggie place doing the same, and even has brown rice, even cooked correctly. There IS a God. You just have to search. The veggie place still has steak knives, in case the tofu’s tough. Argentina DOES beat out Chile for coffee, Nescafe practically unheard of, and espresso prices cheap in places without seats. They saw me coming. The possible induces the probable. Don’t believe me? Order a double espresso in a cup with no lid, then attempt to walk down the street without spilling any. Someone will bump into you. I guarantee it, especially in Bs. As., where subways disgorge passengers onto streets planned for horses. Unless you’re a champion racing waiter, you’re in trouble.

They do that here for real, too, waiters walking down streets with a tray and two cups, rather than office workers having to deal with the indignity of refilling the water in a coffee maker in the office. It’s so romantic, so Latin, so inefficient, so ridiculous, an acquired taste for etiquette I suppose, cultivated over millennia. If they’d stop kissing each other, they might get some work done. But that would cut into the 3-4 hour siesta, mightn’t it? We don’t want that. So currency devaluations compete with inflation to see who wins, the Argentine economy slowly sliding downward by fits and starts.

Argentina’s got very few supermarkets, and they’re disappointing when you find them. The ones in Chile are great and frequently found, with lots of prepared dishes also, including salmon and seafood and variations on the chap suey theme. At least you can usually find a roast chicken in an Argentine Carrefour, so that helps relieve the ham-and-cheese syndrome. Paraguay doesn’t need supermarkets for that. Chickens line the streets roasting like heads at an Aztec sacrifice. I think it’s the national bird there. The fact that the French finally came in to Argentina with supermarkets speaks volumes. Chile has several of their own chains. And all the smaller non-chain ones in Argentina are run by Chinese, every one! Are these pampas-ass cowboys lame or what? Like southern Europeans they’d rather hang in bistros and buy groceries in kiosks, pure retail dahling.

Meanwhile Chile has ubiquitous pubs and non-pretentious eateries, with lots of local and regional home cooking. This includes Mom’s favorite pure’ de papas, good ol’ mashed ‘taters. And don’t even think about finding any food besides pastry items before noon in Argentina. It doesn’t exist, except in some laborer’s imagination. Is a croissant going to last him till noon? What’s worse, they call them facturas. You spend two years learning business Spanish and the word for ‘invoice’, then the Argentines have to call pastries ‘facturas’. There oughta’ be a law. Thank God for eggs. Anything graced by two eggs in Chile is a la pobre, ‘like the poor’, cheap extra protein. In Argentina it’s a caballo, ‘like a horse’, cheap extra protein.

It’s hot in Mendoza, in some act of reverse adiabasis. Temperatures are supposed to descend as you ascend, but not when you’re coming from a cool coastal fog. The west coast of South America is like its northern counterpart in that respect, staying cool far into the season while the east coast is starting to bake. I kick around town for a day and a half, find a wi-fi signal in the park, but an electrical outlet is another story. Public ones don’t exist, not even in Bs. As. International airport. Score another one for Chile. You can usually find a plug or two in the bus stations there. I hate hanging with nothing to do, but if I can crank the computer up, then I’m usually OK. I catch the night bus on to Buenos Aires. Valium would help. You think Kansas is boring? It’s got nothing on the pampas. They just go on and on, like your relatives and their travel stories, flat as a stale Coke and without the caffeine.

We finally get in to Buenos Aires, a major world megalopolis, for whatever that’s worth. At least it’s a Sunday so traffic’s light. Sunday’s always a good day to travel in these parts, since everything pretty much shuts down. Saturday’s not much better. You need to pack in supplies for the weekend here. Despite the inconvenience it’s nice. Monday’s why, raucous and regrettable. Downtown Bs. As. has a level of social organization that rivals an ant hill for order. If you judge a country by its drivers, then Argentina wouldn’t rate too high. They’re not alone. Watch your feet. Pedestrians aren’t much better. It’s a vicious cycle. What I can’t believe is that so many people seem to like the confusion, meeting with friends and chatting on sidewalks where three sets of shoulders couldn’t fit sideways. They seem to feed off the stress, like Matrix mugwumps getting a bio-electric buzz. So I go out to the suburbs to check out Chinatown. My cell phone still gets a signal in the subway. That’s scary. There ain’t much to Chinatown, a few restaurants, some tourist kitsch and a grocery store, but at least the ‘burbs are peaceful, compared to the core. A pack of ramen noodles cost a buck. I could probably find a niche here, but… naah. I got a flight to catch. Beam me up, Scotty.

JAZZ BANJO? WELCOME TO BUENOS AIRES

I certainly can’t consider myself any kind of jazz expert, so the Buenos Aires Jazz Fest was as much of an educational experience as anything. The banjo was the first lesson. I was never really sure of how it was used before Earl Scruggs turned it into a picking machine. I assumed it was used in old-time pre-bluegrass ‘string bands’, but that’s about all. Being too lazy to Wiki the mother, I really had no idea that it was a jazz instrument. But sure enough there it was, live and in the flesh, in Buenos Aires’ Antigua Jazz Band a few nights ago. It seems back in the old days guitarists would frequently switch between guitar and banjo, playing both similarly, until Django Reinhardt began to change that, long before blues musicians and Earl Scruggs re-defined both completely. This became clear with my second lesson, a film retrospective on the career of Oscar Aleman, the genius Argentine indio moreno who was a contemporary of Reinhardt and in many ways his equal, some ways his superior. He was surely more of a showman, playing guitar behind his back long before Jimi and Stevie Ray. What do I know? I thought Emmett Ray of Sweet Lowdown was a real person until yesterday. That’s what I get for buying bootleg DVD’s in Thailand and not bothering to read reviews.

But I was afraid this festival was going to be too elementary even for me, as it was front heavy with swing and big bands, what we used to play in the high school ‘stage band.’ Of course I wasn’t paying or queuing for the big international acts like jazz stalwarts Randy Weston and Billy Harper, so had to be content with the local acts I could get for free. That’s why you travel anyway, right? to get the local stuff. Things finally kicked into a more modern gear Saturday afternoon with Escalandrum, a local band influenced by Monk and Miles, but with an unusual twist. I thought it seemed strange to see a drum trap set up on the front line with the other lead instruments, but chalked it up to the drummer’s primacy in the group’s creation. Then I saw drummer Daniel Pipi Piazzola take a solo. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard, an exclusively rhythm instrument totally transformed into something else, cut loose from its usual chores as the band’s internal time clock and given wings to fly. I can’t say it’s the best drum solo of its kind I’ve ever heard, simply because I’ve never heard anything like it. I’ve heard guitars reduced to percussion in some African bands, but never the opposite.

Roxana Amed played some good Joni Mitchell-style folk/jazz, covering ‘Amelia’ thoroughly in Spanish, and Ricardo Cavalli played some real nice saxy jazz, but the next real highlight was with the aptly named PWR3. While beloved Argentine classic rock bassist Machi Rufino may be the spiritual heart of this jazz/rock power trio, it serves mainly as a showcase for the speed-guitar work of Lito Epumer, of equally long renown in Argentine musical circles. He does not disappoint either, inviting comparisons to some of the great lead guitarists of the US/UK-based world of rock & roll. Drummer Christian Judurcha played drums with equal intensity, reminding one of the golden era of Cream/Hendrix-style power trios, albeit without the lyrics, all grown up and gone to jazz. Does that make it jazz? Surely many if not most of these musicians got their start in R & R, and I’m reminded of one of the reasons I like jazz in the first place. I get tired of hearing about who’s doing whom. I’m grown up now and this is an art-music alternative to classical, which leaves my butt without a twitch. It’ll keep you awake.

So the festival finally moved beyond its sleepy beginnings as one lost in its history. I was afraid the DNA of music had taken a turn somewhere and re-speciated, but not so. Interestingly, what there was not much of was Latin jazz, surprising coming from a Latin country, no? That means percussion, congas and the like. The next day rectified that a bit. I’m not sure exactly what they were fusing, but Buenos Aires Jazz Fusion featured percussion more prominently, though the real standout was the multi-instrumental pyrotechnics of Bernardo Baraj on saxes and flute. This band was slick, with Bucky Arcella adding smooth bass grooves while lip-synching like a ventriloquist, and Alejandro Kolinoski wailing on the piano. Next up, Daniel Maza continued the Latin edge to his jazz while converting it to his own style of ‘Uru-funk.’ An excellent big-guy bassist who’s played with some of the world’s great artists, he uses that bass line to ground his thumping funk in something solid, while adding some nice Spanish-language vocals as the dessert’s topping. Walter Malosetti finished the show with the guitarist’s old-master’s touch.

As nice as it is to get any authentic display of the local culture while traveling, it’s also interesting to see how culture is created and evolves, across decades and across continents. It’s interesting to see artists with Italian surnames playing American jazz in Argentina. It’s nice to sit in my room in South America and listen to Thailand’s Carabao. I like crossing borders; I just don’t like the paperwork. Sometimes these trails get lost and re-surface as something entirely different and original, the primal influences as long lost as the grunts and groans that eventually became language. I like making discoveries like this. That’s what brings me here. That’s what keeps me going, that and the desire to fly one of Virgin’s new almost-orbital flights once they get the price down.

BACK HOME IN THE LAND OF GOOD AIR

“Clear skies with unlimited visibility,” the pilot said as the plane descends for a landing in Buenos Aires. When’s the last time you heard that? I don’t think I have for, uh, most of my life, maybe since I was a child, and I’m from a rural state. So right away you know you’re in for something a little bit different here. I guess that’s how it got its name. Okay, so what B.A. gains is Santiago’s loss on the other side of that Cordillera in the smog department, so self-congratulatory pats on the back are probably not in order. But still the analogy holds. South America is the one continent that has yet to be ‘done’, or overdone that is, of those that are ‘doable’ of course, so that rules out Antarctica, and Australia is a single country no bigger than mainland US, so that doesn’t really count. But South America is big and beautiful and rich in resources and culture(s), and yet is still relatively under-populated, an empty continent, thick only around the edges, a half-baked pizza, the southern European counterpart to Uncle Sam’s predominantly northern European refugees. And so Buenos Aires patterns itself, an island of European civility in a sea of seeds and cattle, the biggest city in one of the world’s biggest countries, one of the few that could make some reasonable claim to self-sufficiency.

Of course that unlimited visibility is not without some testing by Bonairenses. The tradition of smoking is very much alive and well, thank you, with a passion and a vengeance. People don’t just smoke, they SMOKE, complete with nasty butts flicked to the floor as is the custom in the mother country of old, a world with many bars, and I don’t mean cell-phone signals. Oh sure, they put up signs and cordon off sections, but you know how that works. They put up ‘wi-fi’ signs everywhere too, in cafes especially, even when there is none. It’s just a fashion statement. All the US cafes have them, so it must be cool. The plate glass for cafes comes that way, pre-engraved, Visa and MC too, smokers’ section also. That’s a cruel hoax for us wi-fi users, all plugged in and no place to go. Where’s the consumer protection?

The food sucks; read: ‘too similar to American food’, at least pre-Chinese America. The Chinese don’t seem to have gotten here yet, not in any significant numbers at least, and the ones that have seem to run the inner-city ‘supermarkets’. If there were more, there’d be more Chinese restaurants, long established farther north and west as chifas, and long incorporated into the Peruvian national cuisine, not to mention the business culture, as common members of the Pacific Rim. That’s too bad. Looking for a Chinese restaurant is usually the first thing I do when I enter a new country or city. As it is the food, particularly fast food, is pretty boring, basically variations on starch starch and starch, with a little meat thrown in for flavor in the ubiquitous pizza, hamburgers, and ‘panchos’ (hot dogs) that line the walls of perception. At least they still have empanadas, so I can remember what continent I’m in. The more expensive meals seem to merely shift the meat: starch proportions upward. They have tango and tenors, too, singing and dancing for tips in the pedestrian malls, along with the obligatory hippies peddling their hippie accoutrements. There but for the grace of God…

But it’s a little cold this early in the October springtime, barely hitting 20C if at all (that’s pretty low for a high, Homie; trust me). People crowd the north-facing slopes (it’s the southern hemisphere, remember) at midday like turtles on logs to soak up what they can get for free. At least space heaters are not an unknown item in Argentina, so that helps. Still I’ve got four countries to see in six weeks, so maybe I should head on up to Paraguay where temps will soon be scorching souls and soles. By the time I get back B.A. will only be warmer as summer approaches (they give the running countdown on TV). Paraguay is the trip’s main wild card also, a place where the unexpected might happen. On paper of course it’s the nowhere country, nowhere nothing never no how, the only landlocked country in South America besides Bolivia. But Bolivia of course has some spectacular Andean culture. Does Paraguay have something comparable? They DO have the co-official state language of Guarani’, the only Amerindian language to have crossed over to its conquerors and survived to the present day. I better check it out. Best to play wild cards early in case they take wings. A new law is being proposed in Argentina also which would require visas for Americans. I should make tracks before that goes into effect.

So I do. Fortunately the B.A. bus station is conveniently located, so connections are easy. I like cities with central stations. I’ll just catch an overnighter north to Corrientes and get my visa there, continuing on to Asuncion or Iguazu, whichever works best, then circle back through the other. You’d think in this day and age, visa requirements would be decreasing, but that’s not necessarily so. Part of the problem is ‘reciprocity’, in which countries want to require visas of those countries which require visas of its own citizens, even to the point of charging exactly the same fee. This usually hits US travelers hardest, and then Canada and UK, as these are the strictest countries for entry and the most popular for illegal immigration, not coincidentally. I understand their point but they may be shooting themselves in the foot, as some travelers DO make decisions based on such considerations, like yours truly.

And then of course some of the consequences can be a bit bizarre. While my generally well-funded ex-pat buddies in Thailand sweat and scramble to deal with new toughened immigration requirements there, a little known fact is that citizens from several South American countries can get far more favorable terms of entry there than they, all for free, including those of Peru, one of this continent’s poorest countries. The irony of course is that there are few or no South American tourists there, nor vice versa any Thais here. Thais love to travel, and visas are a hassle, but still South America is hardly at the top of their list, not pretentious enough. In the case of Paraguay though, US citizens are almost alone in the visa requirement, but if I want to visit every country in the world, then that’s the deal. If it’s getting worse before it’s getting better, then I’ll have to hurry.

I get a front row seat on a double-decker bus and head off into the Argentine night. Any thought of missing the scenery is probably misplaced. Argentina rolls under the bus like Nebraska and her mother-in-law, just going on and on about nothing, vast plains dotted with towns and cows. It’s big and it’s beautiful, but in that subtle American way, vast and brooding. It resembles both the US and Mexico in fact, almost equally, Spanish in culture, American in agriculture. Occasionally you can even see a real live gaucho, like a European dandy compared to his US counterpart, but they look cool. I vaguely remember a river passing under us, so that must have been the Parana’ but I couldn’t swear to it. Bumps in the road become minor collisions in my semi-lucid dreams, but at least the Burmese didn’t attack. That’s only happens when I take sleeping pills.