Abroad Thoughts from Home

Actually as I start this post, I'm still in an overpriced airport hotel at Ezeiza, BAs, waiting to be ferried off for my flight to London. It's called Posada de Aguilas (...of the Eagles...and they certainly are winging it with the price - although by European standards it's normal.) Made me think about all the things one doesn't appreciate in accommodation; air-con I didn't want or need but couldn't be controlled from the room - and that sense of being confined to your box. I couldn't wander to get my cuppa when I woke. No sockets except in the bathroom - good job I have a long charging lead for the pc. Despite having been in for breakfast and saying I no longer needed my wake up call for 9 - at 9.15 I've just had it anyway!

And breakfast - a pale skinned media-luna that Tesco value range would embrace as one of their own, and watered coffee. Actually, a lot of places in Chile didn't do real coffee but offered nescaff. On top of it all the juice was actually fresh but I managed to inhale it and went off on a coughing fit....however, I am a bit clogged up with pressure changes and all the full-cream and condensed milk Lesley and I have consumed. The latter is much liked here; Lesley and I fondly remember both our fathers on holiday jaunts, brewing up tea on camping stoves and adding condensed milk. Here in Argentina they boil it down to a gluey, fudge brown colour and call it Dulce de Leche; in Chile the name is Manjar - and that word can be applied to something totally delicious.

Part of the Plaza, La Serena

La Serena with street parking warden

Not many pix of me this hols...in this one I seem to be surrounded by halos!

 
Yesterday, I spent a few hours wandering La Serena in lovely sun (25 C?) but the locals were treating it as the end of summer and many were in jeans and fleeces - I felt a little unusual in my summer dress. I sat in their elegant Plaza overlooked by the Cathedral and listened to gentle, classical music being played over a tannoy as the sweepers-up and waterers busied themselves. It's quite salutory to see the people in the cities using water with such gay abandon having driven past, on the bus, sadly depleted reservoirs and experienced the total aridity of Miravalle and other parched areas in the Elqui valley. The climate up north is very dry - and drier as you meet the Atacama desert; next visit may include San Pedro de Atacama with its geysers. Anyway, I shall be glad to get back to a little more humidity (and to think I was complaining about rain earlier!)

My Sky flight to Santiago from La Serena

This one's for Lesley...it's an astronomical observatory from the air

Coming into Santiago

The flight down from La Serena by way of a connection at Santiago was absolutely great - flying down and then across the Andes. That bird's eye view isn't something you'll get from a bus - but both transports have their good and bad points. But if one has time, the bus is much more relaxing - and there's a lot less lugging your own stuff around miles of terminal. I  had to find my way from national to international flights at Santiago - luckily I had enough time.Yesterday's bad was arriving at Buenos Aires to humungous queues for the customs; you have to fill out a form stating the value of goods you are bringing into the country - like phones and computers. I think with their parlous financial situation they're trying to stop illegal imports/trade. It took about an hour to get through and in the end no-one even glanced at the form.

End of whinge....I'm now sitting by the pool in the sun (albeit with Heathrow like traffic passing by outside) and life always improves with light and warmth.

Musing on the differences between Argentina and Chile - I think you do get more of a sense of a place 'on the edge' in Argentina. We rode on buses past bonfires in the middle of a main street in BAs outside the hospital - a protest against non-payment of government workers. And whilst in the hostal in Mendoza we watched TV pix of riots in BAs - by people who'd been without power for nearly two months; the result of the super-high temperatures (in the 40s C) of January. It's the poor areas that have been forgotten. (I'm still reading about Pablo Neruda - and how his political sense of justice was sharpened by the way the nitrate workers of Chile were so badly treated; now, I see, they have tourist expeditions to the old mine-workings 'to discover our heritage'.)

Lesley also tells me that in BAs there is certainly  no sense of 'lost property'; it's unlikely I would have recovered my camera there....Also, you fend for yourself on the roads; there are pedestrian crossings but they seem to act as signage for all traffic to speed up and aim at you. In Vicuna, Chile it was almost fictional the way that drivers slowed, stopped and smiled-you across the road! Also in Chile, you get parking wardens - dedicated to one street - who are ready to issue you with a payment ticket - instead of a machine. It also means they are the eyes and ears of that street - the one near our hostal helpfully aided us with bags to and from the taxi!

POSTSCRIPT
I'm now back at home, having been picked up from the airport by the lovely Tracey. I certainly have my desired humidity....it's raining.  At this moment I'm wishing that I could have ridden a Latin American bus across the sea as the flight home was probably the worst in a long while. It got off late; the problem being that the crew had been delayed getting in from the city as some protestors (this time about housing) had set fire to a pile of tyres in the middle of the freeway. Lucky I was staying near the airport. I learnt this from a  very plummy, older English woman in a wheelchair who was going off on one about it- and berating her husband as well. She was issuing orders to him to find out what was going on and he sat quietly with a benign look on his face. While she was referring to the bulk of  'us' as 'cattle-class' and irritatedly complaining that the names being called to the desk were 'half the plane getting upgraded' one of the Argentinian ground staff came and talked to her husband. He replied in fluent, laconic but English accented Spanish. As they left - she said to me 'If ever you're invited to join a  queue in Argentina - do it!' And as she was wheeled away, the husband confided to me 'Anna is English - and I'm from here...sometimes it can be a source of ......', 'some strain?' I added....'Yes!', he smiled.....

As for me, having made the effort to online book an aisle seat - when I got into the plane the seat numbers were reversed and I was trapped into a window seat with a perpetually crying baby 3 rows up....also felt a bit weird and shivery for the entire flight, so, grateful to be at home, I've now crawled into bed and am listening happily to Radio 4. Time to catch up on the news in the real world....maybe....
What I will try and do - having lugged too much baggage with me over the last month, is attempt to record exactly what I really need for my travels.........the next time.