THE CAMERA IS BROKEN!!!!

Rosario

Rosario is the third largest city in Argentina. It is a very pretty, very vibrant city with lots of cool. We had the honour of being taken around to get to know the place by a good friend and jazz musician called Ruben. The picture above is part of a fantastic park created for the fun and education of children. There´s lots of great stuff for kids here. The inset is a monstrous monument, an ode to Nationalism, although a famous landmark, I don´t think it is a good representation of Rosario.

Bus Station at Midnight

Stories

We often find our selves having to hang around and kill time. Killing time usually means lots of stories. It usually involvers recombining things like little girls, asteroids, balloons and dogs. It can be a strain on the imagination.

Bicycle

Cumbia

Here we have another relic of the great national railway. This time in a town called Capilla del Monte, a place where some people don´t like Cumbia. Cumbia is a form of music that has taken Latin America by storm in recent years. Derived from a Colombian dance music style it has been reduced to its most basic rudimentary form. It is the most base music imaginable and it is absolutely everywhere. Every town has its own local style. In Buenos Aires a very popular form is Cumbia Villera which comes from the slums. It usually comprises of a distinctive, repetative rhythm knocked out of a cheese-grater and a tin can while someone plays an incessant melody on a squealing, guitarstyle casio keyboard thats flung around their neck. Subject matters for Cumbia Villera songs range between drinking your bottle of beer, riding on your donkey, sniffing your bag of glue, shooting your local policeman and screwing whores.
People either love it or hate it. I can´t say I particularly like it but it fascinates me.

Valley

Flight

Emms decided to fulfill a lifetime desire and jump off a mountain. She flew like the condors that circle the skies of the area. After confronting absolute fear I was inspired to do the same but the wind thought otherwise and changed. I was condemned to terra firma. But that wasn´t so bad because down in the valley where Emma landed was a little paradise where the paragliders hang out. A small river of pure water to bathe in and a little shack with a barbique serving cold beer. I´m sure I´ll get another opportunity.

Vietnam

Sky

A storm is brewing.

Asado

I made this. It looks delicious but it wasn´t. In a small town called La Cumbre we did find a restaurant serving Currys. It was one of the most enjoyable meals we´ve had. It refreshed the tastebuds.

Powercuts

In Argentina one is often forced to eat by candle light. It is quite romantic.

Cordoba

A different kettle of fish. In Cordoba you can eat at German restaurants. The landscape is mountainous and temperate. Not the sort of place to hire a bicycle. We were naive.

Market

This is were we leave Corrientes to travel south to Cordoba a 14 hour bus journey through a night of Steven Seagal action dreams.

Lost Boy

Party

We were convinced to stay longer than planned and come to a big fancydress party that was being had to see off the end of the year among friends and families. It was large and fantastically organised by Cacho taking place on the land of the Fraschia´s. We danced the early hours away in the middle of the country side under the milkyway. Don Fraschi burst onto the scene on a white steed as the Zorro. He had an amazing energy!

Pesoa

This is an old bridge that features in a famous chamame (a music of the region) called Puente Pesoa. It runs over a small river called Riochuelo where people goe to bathe in the afternoon sunshine. It´s beautiful. But riding over a 180 year olf bridge on a 120 year old cart with Emma driving is terrifying.

La Quinta de Don Fraschia

El Cacho took us to the farm of the Fraschias, a family headed by one of the most remarkable men we´ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. After spenting a lovely day relaxing among friends we had the honour of seeing his collection of old carts all beautifully cared for and the greater honour of going for a ride through the countryside on a 120 year old ambulance.

Santa Ana

El Cacho took us to a very curious place called Santa Ana near Corrientes. It was a beautiful town frozen in time. It was a town that thrived from sugar cane industry but when a major sugar company relocated to another part of the country the towns economy perished and the town remained petrified. It is a living town but it is like being in the past with very old little buildings and dirt roads.
The town maintained its old train station with an old train in it. This is where began our astonishment at the disappearance of an enormous rail network that had helped Argentina to become a Nation. Now you come across its relics in every town. Its demise was very recent being killed off completely by the government the nineties. It is a very sad thing.

Good People

We were fortunate enough to hook up with the guys we met in the estancia. Jorge or "Cacho" who is pictured with the moustache is a fantastic man and we are infinitely greatful to him for leaving us with such a fantastic memory. He was showed us the around and introduce us to more good people whose hospitality knows no bounds. We had a great time in Corrientes because of these Correntinos. Friendliness was something common of the whole region. Everyone is willing to stop and chat. The guy on the left is Horacio. A great guy who sings beautiful Samba.
Talking of good people I´d like to take this opportunity to thank "El Chivito", you know who you are!! A great guy whose eyes sparkle with enthusiasm.

Corrientes City

Corrientes is a town with a lot of potential. It is blessed by beautiful colonial buildings. Unfortunately the Province is in serious poverty largely due to the recent rule of a corrupt family called the Romero-Feris who appear to have pinched all the cash. The Province has only just washed its hands of the last family member and appears to be on the up. However the poverty shows and the place is a wierd combination of colonial and seventies architecture.
We stayed in a very nice but seventies hotel with seventies staff it was like being in a discoloured seventies postcard. Unfortunately I don´t have any pictures that illustrate this.

Itati

We left the estancia by boat since it had rained so much the day before that the land had become waterlogged and inaccesible by car. We went to Itati to pick up a bus for the city of Corrientes.
Itati is a place famous for a huge basilica which was built to house "Our lady of Itati" the most important image of the virgin Mary of the region. She is hailed Patron and Protector of Corrientes and Misiones provinces and after many adventures since her creation in the 1500s she had this enormous house built which looks a bit like St. Pauls Cathedral and can be seen for miles around. It is a very sacred place.

Mucama

One for the grandparents II.

Toads

A lot of people seem to be afflicted with an irrational phobia of toads. The way I see it they are comical to look at and they eat the enemy.

Life

The daughter was in her element again, nakedness and nature. Pure nature. This was life. and this was where we met some other people who understood about the good life. A few of guys had bought a tiny bit of land next door to the estancia that they would use to get away from everything at the weekends, go fishing and have good times. They took me round to their Shack where we spent the afternoon drinking wine with ice and soda from a tin can and singing songs with the guitar. One of them was a musician from the brazilian frontier who carried phenomenal catalog of folklore songs and a great voice. He sung some great chamames.
We were to see more of them in the coming weeks and be inspired by their philosophy on life and friendship.

Paradise Again

We spent the next morning bathing in the Parana on a little beach covered in buffalo tracks and got eaten alive by the defenders of paradise, the mosquitos.

The Night and the Insect

I soon grew to love the place. It is the first place where I recieved a powerful electric shock from the toilet water.

Estancia

As the sun went down we got into the remains of a cab with a toothless driver called Moncho who took us about 20km down a dirt track through swampy land inhabited by Yacares (like small crocodiles) and amazing birds. Our destination was an overgrown estancia that sat on the edge of the Parana surrounded by forest where howler monkeys live. We spent the night in horror at all the creatures that were trying to get into our basic lodgings. By the time it was time to sleep the fly mesh was completely coated in big beetles, wierd flys and other crazy insects and we had toads in the bathroom. But bythe next day we were used to it all.

Corrientes

We took a bus further down the Parana to an intersection near a place called Itati. Taking a bus usual means trying to sleep through the full volume violence of a Steven Seagal flick while hurtling down unsealed, winding roads at a125km per hour on a double-decker monstrosity with a sleepy driver. This occasion wasn´t so bad. Posadas lies at the edge of Misiones and on crossing to the next province, Corrientes, the landscape changes abruptly and dramatically. From the rolling subtropical land of Misiones with its red soil we entered an infinitely flat grassland interrupted only by swampy lakes called Esteros and lots of cows.

Frontiers

Getting into Paraguay was relatively easy but getting back into Argentina required a little more patience. We cannot get far across the immense bridge before the queue of cars begins. The border is really tight with every car searched thoroughly as everyone returns from shopping for cheap electronic goods and clothes. The sun is searing hot as it coming down and everybody is out rolling their cars forwards as the queue slowly moves along. Emms, the daughter and I opted to walk to the other side and enjoy the view of Posadas spilling out into the immense river.

Paraguay

Trinidad

Posadas is linked up by bridge with a town called Encarnacion in Paraguay. We figured we might take advantage of this and hop over to see what all the fuss is about. This is frontier land and one feels it with heavy military presence and a general rascism towards the Paraguayans. Anything that goes missing can be blamed on the Paraguayans. It is said that during the night, the Paraguayans will come over the Parana in canoes and steal your cows. Crossing over was quite an experience. Being so close to Posadas one expects a very similar thing of Encarnacion but it is a completely different kettle of fish. It is a very, very poor place. I won´t go into detail right now.
We took the opportunity to get a bus inland and visit the immense ruins of a Jesuit Mission in the middle of nowhere.

Street Paraphenalia

White Balloon

The daughter was handed a white balloon which soon became an inconvenient but most treasured item. A kind of friend in fact. As we all know and the daughter soon found out, the lifespan of balloon is relatively short and it´s demise can be rather abrupt and distressing. Her first encounters with mortality caused great impression and spawned a kind of obsessive desire for white balloon. "Wanty white balloon" a faint voice would cry on any occasion. What´s more the analogies with white balloon would come flooding in.
A firecracker bang; "went pop like white balloon"
The irresistable destruction of mummy´s sandcastle "just like white balloon"
A chair is devastated under daddy´s weight in an explosion of plastic splinters "like saskia´s white balloon".
Everything that comes to an end does so "like White Balloon"

Calesita.

Thank god for Merry-Go-Rounds is all I can say.
The daughter was reunited with these archaic machines in Posadas and she even upgraded to some faster more dangerous models.