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It took longer than expected to settle back into the travelling lifestyle (move to a new place, find a place to stay, explore, meet people, pack, rinse and repeat) after my immensely enjoyable extended stay in Buenos Aires.

I was comfortable there and had met a wide variety of interesting, entertaining and occasionally bizarre characters, some of whom became good friends. Living in a modern apartment close to the metro and all the useful bus routes, everywhere I wanted to go was within easy reach, any time of night or day.

I feel that the Buenos Aires bus system needs a special mention here. It, coupled with the “Guia T” coded pocket book, made getting about the city ridiculously easy and enjoyable. BsAs has everything that would be expected from a capital city of it´s reputation but with a more laid back feel, without the intensity of London, for example. It is also a fraction of the price of London and everything you could possibly want is deliverable at any time.

So many great meals and fine wines with good company. I remember once hearing of a recommendation to only eat red meat once or twice per week. Sometimes in Argentina it is difficult to limit it to once or twice per meal.I have only two reservations about the cuisine. Firstly, for a nation that lives on steak and has more cuts of beef than your average teenager has words of vocabulary, almost every restaurant will overcook the meat unless you really really stress otherwise. Secondly, it is difficult to find good spicy food, or any spicy food for that matter, which  I love.

All this eating and chatting made me think of a quote from one of the greats of the 20th Century:

“It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?””

– Winnie the Pooh

Here is a useful link for food lovers in Buenos Aires – a blog with reviews of a large number of restaurants, written by a foodie living there:

http://www.saltshaker.net/restaurant-reviews/

One of the most notable few days of my six or so weeks was at the twilight of my stay. It involved a tasty meal and drinks, a surreal, sometimes hilarious and unlikely to be repeated 46 straight hours of poker in various locations, one of which was an enormous luxury apartment / entire floor of building in central Recoleta. This was swiftly followed by a painfully brief sleep, an assortment of media lunas and an abundance of black coffee.  Another tasty meal washed down with above par red wine provided a great precursor for going to see the strange but good Blue Man Group perform, then went and played pool until the early hours before finally admitting defeat and sleeping understandably soundly.

As a result of all this, the first few days travelling again were a little lacklustre and somewhat aimless, spent mostly mooching around the oppressively large and hectic Sao Paulo.

Mostly due to laziness on my part, I was staying in a distinctly insalubrious part of town.

Praca do Republica, right in the centre of downtown, is where the airport transfer buses terminate, so I stayed close to there.

A once shiny placard, proudly showing an image of what the future could hold for the plaza, would have looked out of place were it not for the heavy black scarring across one half, where someone had burnt it.

This sets the tone for the area perfectly, and whether intentional or not, is an apt response to the proposed solution offered by the design of the new plaza.

The surrounding streets bustle and brim with people by day – street vendors line the roads, selling mostly pirated wares and standard handicrafts – homeless sprawl sleeping or unconscious across the pavement – the bustle step over as they go their way.

Come night fall, the area suffers a further fall from grace, taking on an edgier feel. Lone drug fiends shuffle sketchily about. The dark of the backstreets are dimly lit by the soft blue glow from the hourly rate motels – recently opened, presumably, to service the clientele of the hordes of transvestites and transsexuals that solicit themselves here.

I turn my music up loud and walk on purposefully, ignoring the beckoning fingers attached to hands larger than my own..

In the safe retreat of my hotel room, I start to plan my next adventure, feeling the rhythm of travelling return.

THE PLAN

The goal:

To meet an old friend, Merlin, somewhere on this sometimes incomprehensibly large continent.

The current state of affairs:

My itinerary, as it stands, is to travel up to the north of Brazil, reach the Amazon and then jump to Mexico in a month or two. My general net direction is north, along the east coast. Merlin is in Central America, moving south, along the west of the continent. We should be at roughly the same latitude at the same time at the equator.

The problem:

Separating us is the entire length of the mighty Amazon river, the widest section of rain forest in the world and last but not least, the northern head of the Andes range.

Possible solutions:

Before any big route, plan like this is undertaken or any final decision is made, there is one important question, as a man,  that needs further thought first.

To beard or not to beard?

So that´s the question, what´s the answer?

Normally the answer is no. In fact it is rarely a question. This however is not a trivial route decision and so the beard question needs to be addressed.

It´s a decision that makes itself. If I embark upon attempting the entire Amazon from the Atlantic ocean, almost as far as the Pacific in Ecuador, an excess of facial hair is essential. If another, easier way is taken, the more commonplace, clean shaven look will triumph.

With that out the way, all that is left to do is work out a way to Ecuador…

Explore posts in the same categories: Argentina, Brazil, Link

This entry was posted on July 5, 2007 at 1:07 am and is filed under Argentina, Brazil, Link. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.