MONTEGO BAY: FRIENDLY NATIVES, SOUL FOOD, AND THE QUEST FOR (WI) FI

The Caribbean ain’t cheap, but you probably already knew that. Why should a picture-postcard-perfect swimming-pool-to-the-gods only a half day from approximately one-billion North Americans and Europeans sell itself cheaply? If you’re okay with $50 ‘budget’ hotels, then you’re in. That’s the problem with Lonely Planet- ‘budget’ means different things in different countries. Of course if you want cheaper islands you can go to Indonesia. Everybody knows that. But you’d spend it all on the flight to get there, and that would mean missing some qualities peculiarly Jamaican- like reggae, Rastafarians, and rum, the ‘3R’s of Jamaican experience, to which another should probably now be added, i.e. running, as in Usain Bolt, who almost stole the Olympics from Michael Phelps and even broke records while mocking the losers, including his own teammates, a luxury not even Michael Phelps could afford. Given the success and lingering nostalgia for the ‘Cool Runnings’ of Jamaican bobsled and John Candy movie fame, I suspect there are already efforts underway to somehow connect all these runnings and capitalize on Jamaica’s other non-dreadlocked success.

For all its cache’ within my wildest imagination, the reality on the ground in Montego Bay is a bit different. By my standards I’d say that MoBay is a veritable cold bed of activity… which is good. Though it’s long been superseded by Negril as the hipper alternative and Ocho Rios as the slick uptown cousin, MoBay still manages to rock on weekends and cruise-ship days, and certainly functions as an airport terminus far more user-friendly than funky Trenchtown… I mean Kingston. Yet for me it’s still a bit lacking in services… like maybe supermarkets? Anybody here ever heard of those? If you don’t have traditional ‘green’ markets, then you’re supposed to have supermarkets; that’s the deal. Anything else is substandard. Thank God for the Chinese or there wouldn’t be anything in the stores to eat, as the take’s probably too low for a self-respecting Brit. They run the banks.

Put a dozen of the same thing in a box and offer a discount and voila!, wholesale was invented. Take them back out and stack them on a shelf and you’ve got a grocery store. Take that away and you’re back in Africa, people selling along the roadside and out of their trunks. It looks like a Dead show, or maybe Dimanche en Bamako. Chinese scour the world looking for places that need some basic mom-and-pop groceries, and seem to be doing quite well, thank you. This is not ‘yellow peril’ conspiracy mind you, just Xiao Jie Blou and her husband Zhou trying to take care of her family and put food on the table, everybody’s table. They even open on Sunday. They even learn patois. Their stores here look just like the old market districts of Thailand, a mangled tangle of shelves and boxes, whose owners now scream ‘foreign takeover’ as the big fancy European supermarkets move on to their prized turf. NIC citizens now hop in their cars and drive to the outskirts of town, in a world paradigm shift that probably still outranks E-commerce. Half the world didn’t even have telephones until cells took over recently, al-Qaeda and all the rest. My wife’s never written a check in her life, much less received one. No one in Thailand writes checks, because no one will take them, because they’ll bounce until the rubber wears out, because that imaginary stasis of a balanced budget is an abstract concept, something which eludes many people.

But the best thing about Montego Bay is that there’s a real town there, though a comfy mile from the Hip Strip here where all the hotels, bars and Margaritaville are. That’s enough to keep most of the riff-raff out and keep the restaurant prices up. A mile the other way and you’re at the airport. That’ll teach them to overcharge on airport taxis; I’ll just walk. A five minute taxi ride here costs the same as a thirty minute ride at BKK. So MoBay’s not Kingston, but once again, that’s good. At least it’s more of a city than Negril, which I haven’t been to, but I doubt I’ll like it. You can sense those things. If there’s one thing I hate worse than the choking air of dirty degenerate cities it’s the rarefied air of pristine pretentious resort areas. There’s got to be a balance. So MoBay ‘proper’ is okay, funky and frenetic, kinda’ like Jackson’s Farish Street up until the eighties (all that’s changed now), kinda’ like Port-au-Prince, or Dakar almost spitting images. How is that possible, since the African diaspora occurred before the age of modern cities and the commerce and consumption that the Industrial Revolution ushered in?

I finally even found something resembling a real supermarket, so I’m excited. Before that the most exciting thing so far was seeing a buck (butt?) naked woman walking down the street in the early morning as if that were the most normal thing in the world. Maybe for her it is. I wanted to stop her and get her story, but didn’t want to offend her sensibilities or violate any religious taboos. I wouldn’t want to change any of the local customs, no. You’ve got to be sensitive. The Interzone bozos almost got to me the first day with all their little dog-and-pony shows and psychological manips to get me into their shops and their houses and their pants to spend all my money before it’s all gone, stash for cash. They can sense fresh meat like a vulture at five thousand feet. Funny thing is that by day two or three that’s all over and I’m now like part of the landscape, twilight man, homo erectus Montegus, the guy who walks for miles looking for something nous ne savons pas, but never at midday nor midnight. That’s me. Roasting buns in the midday sun was never my vice, nor late late nights.

Most of the beaches are private, so long walks on the beach are not an option. It’s beyond me why anyone would do anything else there besides swim or have intercourse… I’m talking about SOCIAL intercourse, you dirty minds out there, talking and laughing and mutual masterminding, that sort of thing. I wouldn’t mind some myself, swimming that is, but it hardly seems worth all the extra protection for that one sublime moment when you surrender all to the warm wet wildness of nature’s vast womb. Where does the passport and money go? Such considerations are the bane of the independent traveler who long ago forewent the pleasures of tour guides and glossy brochures and pleasure palaces in favor of actually seeing some places, unedited and in the raw, if not le boeuf.

So I quickly get a daily routine together, going to the city in the morning while it’s cool to explore and eat Jamaican lunch for cheap, then head back to the ‘hip strip’ to beat the heat and send out these messages in bottles in the hopes that someone will rescue me. If I want sit-down supper, then I’ll go to the Chinese joint down the street close by. Given the lack of groceries, there’s not much need to bemoan the lack of a kitchen. Half the Chinese eateries in the world operate on that principle- ‘we can do it cheaper and better than you can do it yourself.’ The other half try to capitalize on their exotica Asiatica where the Homies ain’t never seen no slant-eyed stuff (“I wonder what else is slanted, yuk yuk?”) nor pineapples and peppers in the same dish. You get used to it.

The Jamaicans are genuinely friendly people, despite the hustlers, though like all such people they run the risk of running it into the ground and making genuine pests of themselves as has long been the case in Morocco and is arguably in process in Thailand. That friendliness usually carries a price; they’ve all got their hands out. Sometimes it’s nice just to blend in to the point of being ignored. Anything else is a subtle form of racism, however benign. But it CAN be fun, all the extra attention, especially if you’re a novice traveler looking for thrills. Me, I’m past all that; yeah, right. No, me, I’m just looking for a wi-fi signal. What was optional a year ago is no longer so. I’ll pay extra for a wi-fi signal and even go without cable TV. I just opted out of a place a few bucks cheaper WITH KITCHEN because there’s probably no wi-fi; MAYBE a rogue signal, but no guarantee. I’m borrowing it where I am now, and then I’ve only got it on the balcony, drifting in and out of consciousness. Step inside and it’s gone. Such is love. The Information Age is no longer a societal paradigm, but a personal way of life, to have info constantly at one’s fingertips, constantly up-dated and inter-active. I wonder if it’s not the same urge, interpolated and extrapolated, as the primordial quest to control fire, create language, and conquer continents. Outer space and inner space transect right here and right now.

Jamaica’s so-called ‘jerk cuisine’ is not bad, something of a cross between soul food and Indian cuisine, though I’m hardly an expert after only a week’s time and something of a weak stomach, cautious after decades of self-abuse with chiles and derivative products. That seems a little odd with only a handful of native Indians here, they one of the traditional merchant groups who, along with the Chinese and the original peripatetic Semitic Lebanese, keep Jamaica out of the jungle. As Chinese cooks increasingly take over cooking chores, Jamaican food itself may be taking on some Chinese qualities. Curries there are cooked from scratch and piping hot, not perpetual stews simply ladled over and out. The bakeries aren’t bad either, combining the chores of meaty British patties and sweet European pastries, with biscuits both British and American to boot. Too bad there are none of these on the ‘hip strip’. They’d probably do well, since street food is hard to find. Fancy restaurants aren’t. Neither are skunks, the smell of which pervades the atmosphere. I suppose you could eat them too, maybe mixed into brownies. But I’m past all that.

TRAILS OF TWO CITIES- NOODLE WARS, BUDDHIST DESIRES, HOT SHOWERS, AND THE FREE TEMPTATIONS OF TRAVEL (part 2)

My current considerations for choice between TJ and Ensenada are more basic, like which place is more convenient, with better prices, with cable TV, and especially Internet. Two years ago finding a café with free Internet in Ensenada seemed pretty hip, harbinger of great things to come. Now it’s still the same, at a time when wi-fi is fairly standard fare in US hotel/motels, even cheap ones, and fairly easy to find world-wide, especially when you book online. But that’s not the case in Ensenada, with only a few high-end places showing up on my screen. In fact you’re lucky to find cable TV, or a movie channel at all. They must’ve cracked down on the cable guys. I’ve stayed all over town, moving on when a place renovates and raises its rates. I’ve only got one bottom line- no depression. But the blanket at my regular place is now getting holes, the water only gets hot for about three minutes, and the second-storey railings are dangerous. Cable or wi-fi wouldn’t matter much if I were still drinking y/o single, but… yeah, I’m gettin’ older 2. So it’s time to say good-bye to my trusty third home. I’ve already waved off Chiang Rai and Flagstaff this year, so it only seems fittin’. Everything’s different now.

So I get a room on the Revolucion strip in TJ with free wi-fi, scalding showers, morning sun, and plenty of room to work out, all for $22 Sun-Thurs. I’m in cheap hotel heaven. There’s no cable, but local TJ and San Diego’s okay as long as I got wi-fi. Being an Internet couch potato’s better than TV, right? The first night’s rough with the disco across the street going until 4am, but that’s fixable. I’m still nursing a tooth extraction on the #30 molar, so sleep’s not exactly a dream anyway. The doctor’s sixty-five and says it’s the toughest he’s ever done. I tell him that’s why I chose a doctor with experience. He tells me that’s why he charged me fifty extra pesos. The Thai dentist cracked it on a root job; an Arizona dentist x-rayed and diagnosed it; Mexican dentist jerked the mother. First tooth of mine’s ever had three countries and three languages. I thought he was going for the crowbar at one point. But TJ’s okay. There’s only one problem.

Last night thirty-three people were killed in TJ (including nine de-caps, and I don’t mean tire blowouts) as drug turf wars rage on. Two of the victims were children. One of the incidents occurred in a grocery store. That’s getting close to home. Weird shit’s going on everywhere, Mumbai not the least of it, as the world gets crowded. And doing things the much-touted ‘Thai way’ hardly seems enlightened, passivity as philosophy, allowing anti-democracy protesters to shut the country down. These are the same people who protested FOR democracy fifteen years ago, before they found out that idiots would elect sweet-talking ‘big men’ handing out favors every time. The conflict has spread to Thai Town in LA. Oord’s noodle shop makes the help wear red on Sunday. Those are PPP colors. Local PAD supporters say if they don’t wear yellow, or at least stay neutral, they won’t eat noodles there any more. PPP people claim that PAD ranks back home are being swelled by opportunists, reprobates, and prostitutes… but I won’t go there.

What’s a poet/blogger/traveler to do? Travel… and write. Future archeologists won’t believe it. Hopefully they can download the computers they’ll find in middens. The dollar’s stronger than in years and gas prices have been granted a reprieve. That won’t last forever. The US economy sucks… so the dollar is strong. Go figure. Recession is not so bad for us fiscal conservatives who don’t feed on credit. It’s my turn. So with one trip barely over, I plan the next, Caribbean al invierno. The Chilean gypsy’s love potions seem to have worked, so I’ll revolve around my wife in LA. The Caribbean’s still America, right, so close enough? For now I’ll just hang in TJ and listen to Tinariwen on MySpace. The sun sets at 4pm now, but temps are still mild. There’s a parallel reality, a real Mexican city, parallel to the Revolucion strip, just one block away. There’s a cultural center and an annual film festival here. Manu Chao and Lila Downs play concerts here regularly. But where do the people who make fun of TJ go when they visit? The Strip of course. Me in TJ? Or even LA? Who’d’ve ever thought? Life’s weird; you can quote me on that.

I almost feel guilty, that so many people are undergoing economic hardship right now and I’m traveling the world, but… naah. I’m just doing what I always do. Others spend denarii like it’s going out of style when times are good; now they cry when the credit’s gone. I never ask for credit, though I certainly could. It’s just not my way of life. People usually call me a tightwad when they’re not calling me a wastrel traveler. But I don’t spend that much and still manage to enjoy. The numbers are finally in from this last South American trip, $17-1800 for fifty days in four countries over thirty degrees of latitude and probably half that of longitude. That includes every thing but the flight from North America to South America, which was a freebie from points. Even for a paid flight that would have been only fifty dollars a day, not bad for some righteous travel. I don’t sleep in bunk beds either. You can’t live in LA on that, not like a human at least, and you wouldn’t see much if you did, just some pissy streets and lots of attitude. At least the food is good, and the music. Though immigrants can certainly do it for less, they’ll eventually upgrade or go home. They’ll live better later. That’s what I’m doing. We’re all immigrants here, or used to be, at least. I still am.

If the goal is to visit every single sovereign nation in the world, then I’ve still got a long way to go. I’m not a flight attendant, and doing mere airport stops wouldn’t account to much anyway. If someone’s been to them all already, then I haven’t heard about it. The guy who gets all the press and the ‘Good Morning’ gig for ‘most traveled person’ works from some list of 692 ‘significant places’ of which he’s covered maybe ninety percent. But I don’t know who compiled that list or what makes those places so significant. I’m looking at the UN list. At least maybe I’ve got as many countries as I’ve got years now. That’s a start. Europe’s got a quarter of them, of course, so that’s gravy, since you don’t even need visas for most, just the old USSR. Hopefully you won’t pass through one in the middle of the night unbeknownst to you. Europe’s got lots of cheap flights now, but flyovers don’t count. You have to stand on solid ground; that’s the rule.

For now the Caribbean Basin is the project. There are lots of little countries there and they’re scattered around. Any increase in flight fares could be disastrous. So I’ll start in Jamaica and take it from there. Barbados and Trinidad and Guyana are already booked, and some others should fall into place, Surinam at the least. That’s one of those back-water plums of international travel, a back-packer’s wet dream of cultural, linguistic, and sensory masala... or not. That’s the gamble. I’d like to go to Cuba of course, but that would be wrong. Uh huh. It’s a good time to use those frequent flyer miles. They’re cracking down on unused accounts. The trick is to work from your computer anywhere in the world. Or better yet, work from your world anywhere in the computer. The clock’s ticking.

TRAILS OF TWO CITIES- DRUG WARS, CATHOLIC DESIRES, COLD SHOWERS, AND THE THREE TEMPTATIONS OF EVE (part 1)

Tale of two cities, TJ and Ensenada? This must be some kind of joke, right? Tijuana and Ensenada are a joke, right, just cheap kicks for the Homies, though as close as many will get to a foreign country? I consider such slights to be misplaced, not only out of consideration to the million souls who call the area home, but for the fact that the area is truly unique in the world. The entire US-Mexico border is; never has a line divided so much, Latino-Germanic, control-freedom, centrality-sprawl, pessimism-optimism. But beyond the Roman sandals, red tile roofs, and Latin language, Mexico is essentially an Indian country, more than any other country in Latin America, with the possible exception of Guatemala. While Peru and Bolivia may have large percentages and the official ‘Indian’ languages of Quechua and Aymara’, they also have large purely white populations who dominate the country, at least pre-Evo. Such is not necessarily the case in Mexico, where populations have long mixed freely and cuisine, appearance, and custom are arguably more indigenous than European. The ‘rez’ in Arizona looks uncannily similar to Mexico, from populations long separated by a border.

The first time I visited the Mexican border was back in the old days of donkey shows, Boys’ Town, and choc-a-block whore houses. They closed all that down long ago. Now the girls stand on the sidewalks not a hundred yards from the silver arch, wearing cheap make-up like neon signs for cheap hotels where they line the entrances. This is a vast improvement over discreet internal goings-on, girls in Catholic-school uniforms now selling sex on sidewalks. That’s not fair. Somebody’s downloading my subconscious, not that I would prey on their youth mind you, but I might pray on their religion. My tastes in women are Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Jewish, anything but Muslim. But I’m married now. Still back then I was enthralled at the possibilities for sex, drugs, and r&r. The food was wild, the gas smelled weird and the taxi drivers were eager to please. I was hooked, and the rest is history. I was convinced this was the weirdest place in the world. Now I know why. It is. I quickly moved on to more exotic and far-flung locations, from whose lofty vantage the US-Mexico border seemed quaint at best, hardly the ‘real thing’, maybe even a perversion.

After traveling and dealing handicrafts from many countries for many years I finally re-visited the border about a decade ago as a tax maneuver. Now that I have a foreign ‘tax home’ (how’s that for a misnomer?) complete with foreign income, to avoid paying taxes on it in the US I need to stay out of the country. Though Thailand was/is the ‘tax home’ of record, the Mexican border certainly qualifies as another country, so is useful for killing some time in and around the US. Welcome to Ensenada. It seemed pretty nice, especially a decade ago when I was still single and anxious to compare it tit-for-tat with Thailand after a couple years there. I also needed to revive my use of Spanish language, in serious atrophy after being displaced by Thai, though never a problem before, like linguistic civil wars. Ensenada was rockin’ back then in several bars I liked, ranchero, salsa, and jazz for the price of a beer. That was when I could not only drink every night, but drink in several different places every night, just like Thailand but better music and fatter girls.

All that’s changed now. As Tijuana degenerates into drug cartel turf wars, its party scene is going south, mostly to Rosarito but also Ensenada. Hardly more than a stop sign ten years ago, Rosarito Beach is now party central, less than half an hour from TJ and open for business, complete with double-decker discos and border-blaster boom boxes. Ensenada is not immune. Though larger and better able to maintain its original identity, it’s under increasing assault, mostly self-inflicted. Hussong’s, formerly a funky cantina with a far-reaching business plan, has long since one-upped itself with ‘Papas ‘n Beer’ and ‘Mango Mango’, lines stretching out the door. What’s the big attraction anyway? Aren’t California bars good enough? Not if you’re eighteen years old, they’re not. In Mexico teen-age American girls can dance on the bar and do all the other things that drive the local boys crazy, especially the ones who’ve seen ‘Girls Gone Wild’. What will happen if and when new passport regs are applied to the border areas is uncertain, but the likely economic impact is real enough that special consideration was given at the last minute, and implementation was postponed.

The two cities themselves long represented divisions as real as the border itself symbolized- TJ the cheap and tacky, Ensenada authentic and self-sufficient. The same symbolism has long defined other cities of my consideration, including LA-San Fran, Chiang Mai-Chiang Rai, Sedona-Flagstaff, all representing a fundamental difference in lifestyle. Sedona people don’t DO Flagstaff, and vice-versa, generally speaking. Even though the two are only thirty miles and thirty minutes away, that three thousand foot difference in elevation seems to speak volumes. If nothing else, the age difference is palpable. Falling on ice probably isn’t much fun over sixty. San Fran’s more romantic and intellectual, while LA’s more physical and image-conscious. Chiang Rai is the ‘real’ Thailand; Chiang Mai is Interzone. Well Ensenada’s changed a lot in the last ten years and not just with the TJ party scene. Cruise ships land now with regularity and have come to define the town. Chinese walk the streets in throngs, but I suspect they’re investment tourists. They’re not snapping photos; they’re snapping up opportunities. Chinese restaurants have vastly improved beyond the chop suey fare of yesteryear and buffets are down to $3 a head. Elsa’s pollo con mole is still $2 a plate, with tortillas made creamy only by the use of lard, pure lard. Loosen that belt.

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.

ANDEAN MUSIC, ANDEAN FILM… SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT

I finally get back down to La Serena and it’s just that- serene, and dirt cheap too, unlike certain other touristy locations. I even find something there I haven’t seen much of on this trip, Andean music, complete with dances, the kind of thing you might expect to find in Bolivia, but not here. I like it, the clogging and tapping, the singing and rapping. It reminds me I’m in South America. It reminds me I’m alive. To be sure the dances and costumes are derived from the Bolivian standard, regardless of to what degree any of them might still exist in Chile. Andean music itself is becoming increasingly interbred, and increasingly with jazz. I like it. A good example of this is the Chilean group Entrama I saw earlier in Valdivia. All Andean groups incorporate a great deal of Spanish folk music of course. This could help revive the genre. Andean music was one of the first types of ‘world music’ on the scene, long before ‘Afro-Beat’. Why has it faded? Is it too simplistic, too folksy? Have we simply outgrown it? Certainly the fact that many of its proponents are playing for tips on street corners and in subways doesn’t help, making it seem too common. Dressing up in American Indian costume like I saw in Barcelona and even in Buenos Aires doesn’t help much either. Those Otavalenos don’t miss a trick. The verdict is still out. Many of its problems are problems of ‘world music’ in general of course. But more of that later, I’ve got a film festival to attend in Vina del Mar.

I had a choice of which film festival to attend, the Mar del Plata ‘grade-A’ event or its much lesser known minor cousin, the Vina del Mar event. Vina (sorry no ‘enye’ on this keyboard) fit my schedule better and Chile satisfies my belly and my pocketbook better, so that’s where I showed up. If you’re hard-core of course you could do both in succession, but who’s so hard core when you could just sit home and watch cable instead? Still, there’s something nice about a good festival, mostly the opportunity to see a lot of good independent films and the festive atmosphere itself. For better or worse film festivals in recent years have increasingly become the farm system for Hollywood, a place for films to find distributors and audiences, the same films showing up all over the ‘circuit’, about as spontaneous as an alarm clock. On the plus side, Hollywood is making some of its best films ever with directors from all over the world, including del Toro, Cuaron, and Inarritu from Mexico.

Vina hasn’t reached that level yet, being more a venue for student films and the Spanish-language market for independent features and documentaries. The student films were fairly predictable dissertations on the status of the human condition, and the ease of changing all that if only society weren’t so corrupt. As Gertrude Stein once said, “students they are merciful, and recognized they chew something.” I wish I had said that, but I catch flack for my flights of fancy writing. Write vertically just once instead of the usual horizontal missionary position, and I’m sure to hear about it from hacks with axes. Sure as shit some redneck cop with bad teeth is gonna’ stop me and ask to see my poetic license. It never fails. Film is no different. It long ago surrendered to its to its most mundane role as a popular literary medium, its qualities of light color sound and celluloid reduced to subordinate roles. Such things are relegated to ‘experimental films’ and their festivals, increasingly hard to find. Money wins. YouTube and its surfing dogs don’t help much either, such is the tyranny of democracy, but they DO have stuff by Kenneth Anger, Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage and all the other early innovators, if anybody still cares.

The documentaries at Vina were a disappointment, more talking heads (a technical term) than telling pictures, moral platitudes from southern latitudes, predictable at best. Boring film is failed film. The Mexican ones from the Churubusco studios were best, not surprisingly. This is a film tradition the qualitative equal of Hollywood, commercial cradle of Bunuel, and fountain of creativity. Their stuff always looks good. The fiction fared better than the documentaries. Though it’s hard to see them all when they’re playing simultaneously on different screens, the ones I saw were good, particularly an Argentine offering called ‘Soledad’, a play on terms, being the name of a new-born child and the theme of the film, solitude. The story manages to weave through social classes and their distinctions without falling into clichés, just confusion. Such is life, a comedy of airs and errors. The Chango Spasiuk-infused soundtrack was perfect.

The Vina festival had its moments but largely failed from an outsider’s point of view. First and foremost a festival should be festive. I suppose it was if you knew where the parties were, but such are superfluous considerations for an aficionado of film. The buzz was at the O’Higgins hotel where I got wi-fi, not at the theatres, waiting with baited breath to see the next cinematic jewel to melt in your mind. One problem was that venues were scattered around town; at least Vina is not so big, so doable. Try that in Bangkok. They did once and it was the worst film festival I’ve ever attended. The ‘festival’ consisted of a sign under which volunteers would steer you to the theater that had the film you wanted to see (in a city of ten million!) and before which trucked-in Hollywood celebrities would gather for publicity photos, a purely media event organized by government functionaries. The same event when organized by and for film-lovers is one of the best I’ve ever attended, scads of films in one central location, both ‘circuit’ films and regional delicacies, robustly attended by local Thais always looking for an excuse to party.

Vina started off with one strike against it, fallen ill to the Latin American disease, labor strikes. From what I gather this one is by municipal workers, looking for cures to the ‘crisis’. This is not surprising in the typical Latin American bureaucratic state, but Chile is the least of those. Old habits die hard. This shut one of the main venues down, the Municipal Theatre and its retinue of selections and competition entries, though somehow it managed to open for the evening’s high-profile gala events. Shit’s relative. The main problem was with the organization itself. Information was not clear about times locations and costs, so some perseverance was necessary. That’s doable and probably excusable. Not excusable was the unprofessional attitude of much of the volunteers themselves, presumably film students, entering theatres mid-screening en masse laughing and cutting up, even talking on cell phones. *^%$(&^%!!! Hardly anybody stayed for credits and sometimes they were cut out completely!? There is no substitute for professionalism. Still, Vina’s got potential. But me, I get on the bus again a day early and head for the hills. After three weeks in Chile it’s time to head back to Argentina. It’s time to head home, wherever that is.

SANTA FE SOUTH- ATACAMA SOONER OR LATER

The Santiago-Valparaiso nexus lies in the fertile central region of Chile. Below is increasing rain and cold, if not quite Antarctic extremes. Above is increasing aridity, if not heat, to extremes hardly known anywhere else, rainfall never recorded. Roofs are optional in Antofagasta. Somehow it seems strange for such dryness to exist next to the ocean, but that it does, on a cloudy day ocean, sand, and sky blending into a seamless grayness. Fortunately in Chile the sun usually comes out to brighten things up. Farther north in Peru, it seldom does. Fortunately the desert comes in stages. North of Valparaiso to la Serena is some of the most beautiful desert you’d ever want to see. Sonora’s got nothing on this. In keeping with Chile’s metaphor of a far-south California, there are wind farms climbing up the slope from the sea. Unlike California, an evening fog (?) rolls in and licks up the terrain until it whites us out briefly.

By the time the bus gets to La Serena it’s almost 6pm and we’re parked on the outskirts of town, or so it seems. This is a tourist town, but there’s not a map to be had anywhere. There’s a stall for tourist info, but it’s closed. Suburban bus stations are a bummer. You have to make a commitment to a place with incomplete information. It’s nice to hop from place to place, staying if you like, moving on if you don’t. It’s hard to know whether you like a place by looking at a shopping mall in the suburbs. That’s why centrally located bus stations are nice, though the trend is toward remote locations. That’s one thing nice about Buenos Aires, an easy walk into the center of town.

Though it doesn’t get dark until fairly late right now right here in Chile, I decide to shove on. I have to come back the same route, another unfortunate occurrence when the motto is ‘backpack, don’t backtrack’, but that’s the price you pay for your cultural intercourse sometimes. I could either hang around in Vina for a week for a film festival which may or may not be any good, by which time I’d be burnt out on the place, or take a trip and come back. I could also loop through Argentina, but extra border crossings can be laborious also, in time and paperwork and extra stamps in the passport. I get on the bus.

All night bus rides are a challenge. If you’re lucky you’ll be beside an empty seat, though it doesn’t matter that much. I’ve tried all kinds of positions, and the straight old middle of the saddle missionary position usually works best. It gets harder with age, but if you fly around, then you miss the landscape. That’s a big part of the fun, right? You can save some bucks 2. Buses may not be prompt in Chile, but they ARE pretty cheap. Unless some overexcited bus attendant plays videos all night, I can usually do almost as many hours REM as in bed, which probably says more about me than it. If there’s nothing else to do, I’ll study some Arabic; that usually knocks me right out. Don’t do that through border crossings btw. Pick another language, maybe Old Church Slavonic. That’ll f**k ‘em.

The night passes in darkness (doesn’t it usually?) outside. By the time I wake up the lush desert at Serena has become moonscape at Antofagasta. Temperatures hover just above freezing at daybreak on the road to Calama, though they’re around 70F by the time we get there an hour later. It’ll be scorching at high noon in San Pedro de Atacama, my immediate destination. Once a lonely dusty outpost on the Golden Triangle where Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia meet, this is now THE back-packers hot spot in the region. Unfortunately it’s still dusty, but now it’s hip too, with Krishna restaurants and tour guides, the whole nine yards, but not quite a first down, not for me at least. I hate it, reluctantly, this Santa Fe-in-progress. It’s a shame too, because if you could discover it early on, it’d be way cool, a picturesque stopover en route to a remote border crossing. There’s nothing a backpacker loves more than THAT.

But I have a rule of thumb: if a place has more than 50% tourists and/or tourist-industry workers, then I can’t do it. It’s a matter of authenticity, remember? I try to be open-minded, but… naah. I also realize the danger of reverse snobbery, the ‘authentic’ guy acting ‘less-tourist-than-thou’ when faced with people simply enjoying themselves. Does that change anything? Does that mean I’ll be hanging out at Khao San road in Bangkok? I doubt it. I know what I like also. I order a bowl of cazuela in a street stall up by the bus stop while everybody else sips wine or chug-a-lugs brew down with the Interzone people, best soup I’ve had in years. The prices are out of proportion here, too. I spend the night then get back on the bus. Others spend days and weeks, grooving with the groovers. But I stick to my guns- if you want to see the REAL Santa Fe, then you go to Las Vegas NM. If you want to see the REAL Thailand, then go to Laos. If you want to see the REAL China, then go to Vietnam. If you want to see the REAL Atacama, then go to…?

Considering I slept through much of the Atacama Desert on the way up, I figure to go back in stages, seeing what I missed. I already saw a bit of Calama already, so go back straight to Antofagasta. This is copper country. Statues in the Calama pedestrian mall are made of the stuff, and the rail yards are full of it, hammered into crumpled sheets. They only found the stuff after the phosphate trade dried up. I don’t know why it took so long- the hills around the area have a distinct greenish tint. Prices are up, stolen electric wire a big problem now, and the area is prosperous. Antofagasta is more expensive than any place I’ve been yet in Chile, with the possible exception of Santiago. It’s got plenty of bars and strip clubs for the mine workers. It’s even got ‘sexy’ coffee. Huh? It sounds like a trap. Have these people been reading my blog? These are daytime girlie joints with apparently a different set of rules than the nighttime alcohol-based ones. That sounds good to me, though not as weird as the ‘sexy breakfasts’ in Montreal. But there is something even more interesting here- gypsies, a whole family of them occupying the town square.

This is an anachronism and a dying way of life, the act of Gypsies being gypsies. They panhandle and perform little rites and shuffle around bugging people, but other than that the only thing that distinguishes them is their long flowing cheap printed dresses and a general attitude of listlessness. I want to know more, but not TOO much. I know these people’s reputation for sticky fingers. I don’t want to get ‘gypped’ by Gypsies; the idea is to get a piece without losing my fleece. So I let the lady approach me and do me up a little love potion. I need it. She takes some magic powder and asks me for a little piece of paper to wrap it up in. Then she asks me for a banknote to lay it on. I know what you’re thinking, me too- I’ll never see that note again. She does a few ‘repeat-after-me’s, then asks for a larger bill. I get the picture and start to leave. Feigning insult, though I’m sure she’s had much worse, she settles for another small bill and finishes the encantations.

We’re good and I’m outta’ there, she even suggesting I should consider a gypsy woman. Yeah, and they should consider bathing. As I walk away I notice a familiar smell. B-O? No, it’s the magic powder wafting windward, the distinct smell of… guess what? Curry, turmeric, the essence of India with a human vector, mobilized and motivated. Do the Gypsies know that’s their ancient home? They spoke another language to each other besides Spanish, but off my radar. What’s their story? Do they even know? Theirs is an emigration unlike any other, Jew Chinese or Inuit, bound together by ancient ties and uncertain logic. They’re famous even where they never reached. Tarot cards in Thailand are known as ‘gypsy cards’. I wonder why they didn’t head east.