Archive for June, 2010

Drinking in Paraguay, December 2008

This was the local bar in Paraguay, where I was staying with a Peace Corps Volunteer and his family. It was different in two ways. Firstly it was basically somebody’s house, the waitresses were the daughters of the family (both wore Man United tops) and the beer was kept in the fridge in the kitchen. Secondly, you can see the guy on the left being passed a glass. In fact it was the only glass. Everybody bought a bottle of beer and when you got the glass, you filled it up from your bottle, drank all or some of it and passed it on. I liked it.

Balancing Rock, Arches National Park, Utah

I got here early on a beautiful summers day and already it was starting to get seriously hot. I had a lot to do that day so I didn’t stay too long but it’s not a big place so I got to see most of it. It’s a starkly beautiful place, very little vegetation and surreal rock formations all around. The red of the rock and the deep blue of the sky stays imprinted on your brain for a long time.

Balancing Rock View

Monday 14th June was a big day, it marks my return to gainful employment for the first time since that rainy October evening back in 2008 when I walked out of the BNP Paribas offices in Geneva for the last time.

Perito Moreno, Feb 2009

It was a strange feeling then, and it is a strange feeling now and it’s got me thinking about what I’ve done in my 84 week “holiday”. There are plenty of websites out there devoted to all sorts of different types of travel; backpacking, a gap-year, the career break. These sites are filled (for the main part, there’s a lot of self-obsessed twaddle out there too) with information on where to go, how to get there, what to do when you get and, most importantly for my current state of mind, how to cope when it’s all over.

The thought has not been with me much over the last few months. Deep down I’ve always known that one day I would return to the world of work and it has held no terror for me. I think this is due to the fact that, unlike the gap-year student or the “career-breaker” I knew that this was much more than just a trip abroad. Deep down, I knew I wouldn’t be coming back to Europe a year later. Even if I did I woudn’t be returning to the life I knew before. Having made the decision to leave (I described it to someone the other day as the easiest decision I ever took – it was) I knew that whatever I would do in the future would be on my terms.

Train Cemetery, May 2009

The fact that I’ve gone back to work doesn’t scare me, nor does it bother me. Over the course of the past months I’ve come to realise that it hasn’t been the not working that was important. As strange as it might sound, I don’t think that it was the travelling either, although obviously it’s been an incredible experience.

What has been important since leaving Geneva is that, for the first time in my life, I was able to do exactly what felt right, at that particular point in time. People have often said to me that I’ve been very lucky to be able to go travelling (instead of working), and I would often reply that it wasn’t luck, anybody could do it. I still believe that to be true to an extent, but the thing is, lots of the people who tell me I’m lucky, would like to do the same but won’t. They tell themselves, and others, they can’t, but the truth is they won’t.

Doing what I did is not for everybody, and in some ways it was painful, I’m a long way from home. However, coming to South America was one of the best things I ever did in my life, for the simple reason that it was the first time I stopped listening to voices telling me I couldn’t do anything different and just went ahead and did it.

Now I’m here and I know that nothing will be the same again. Never again will I find myself in the same state of mind that lead to me leaving in the first place. Life is great, and it’s 100% on my terms.

Today I am proud to present the greatest photo I never took.

Bald Eagle Fishing, Craig, AK

Whilst in Alaska last year, I stayed for a week in Craig where my cousin’s husband was working. It’s a 2 hour ferry and hour’s drive from Ketchikan (itself only accessible by ferry or plane) so it’s kind of remote. To make the most of the beautiful, still weather they were enjoying (made more eerie by the haze from huge forest fires across the border in British Columbia), after work, Michael took us all out in a skiff for a spot of fishing.

The water was glassy, with not a breath of wind and we shot out into the bay for about 30 minutes heading for an area where the seabed rose up to within 15 feet of the surface, a good fishing spot I was reliably informed. And, it proved to be, Michael reeling in a tasty dinner every 5 minutes or so. Even I managed to snag a couple of rockfish, which I was all excited about, but one disdainful look from Valerie told me all I needed to know, and we threw it back.

It floated slowly away from the boat, and we got on with catching some more serious fish. At this point we were around half a mile away from the shore, with nothing else around and surrounded by total silence (the occasional noise of a whale exhaling could be heard).

A couple of minutes after the fish had gone back in the water, Valerie spotted a black shape in the distance flying towards us. “An eagle” she said, “It’s seen the rockfish.” And sure enough, having seen the fish in the water from half a mile away, a bald eagle was flying towards us, looking for dinner. It flew past us once to check out what was floating in the water, looped round and in one fluid movement, scooped my luckless fishy friend from the water, 15 feet away from the boat.

I had brought my camera along, and Valerie was holding it when the eagle swooped, and she managed to get a shot of it’s tailfeathers as it flew off. Her son Simon however, managed to get the perfect shot, so I will always have a reminder of what has to be the most incredible thing I have ever been lucky enough to have witnessed.

The Daily Catch

I went for lunch with a friend a couple of days ago, we had a sandwich each, a drink and a coffee. The bill came to 128 pesos. That may not mean anything to you but had we not finished our delicious lunch, we may well have choked on it.

Everybody that has spent any length of time in Buenos Aires has stories about how expensive it has become. I first came here nearly 3 years ago when 6 of us ate (in a good but basic cafe) a main meal and dessert and had change from 100 pesos. The first thing you’re going to do is look up how much 100 pesos is. I’ll save you the bother, as of today 100 pesos is  £17.54 ($25.50 or €21.25). That makes our lunch clock in at £22.45, London prices indeed.

To put this into some sort of comparison, I went for a job interview the other day. It’s a customer-facing role for a professional company, requiring language skills and technology experience. Take home pay is 3,000 pesos a month (£526.33). If you’re sharing a decent flat and lucky enough to pay Argentinian rates (as opposed to tourist short-term rates) your rent & services will come to around half of that. This leaves you with £263 a month, that’s 10 lunches for 2. And I am, of course, one of the lucky few.

Veinte Pesos. Flickr image by Irargerich.

Whatever great economic progress the government is trumping, the fact remains that living here remains a struggle for the vast majority of the population (working full-time in a coffee shop pays about 1,200 pesos a month).

To illustrate this, there is a nice parallel to the Big Mac Index, the Ugi’s Pizza index, which tracks the cost of a plain Muzzerela pizza at resolutely working-class pizza chain, Ugi’s Pizza. In the last 10 years, it’s gone from 2 pesos to 16 (64% in real terms). If that’s just too depressing to contemplate, here are some great shots of people who just won’t be put off by a 16 peso pizza.

Eric Fischer on Flickr has published a photoset that examines the GeoTagging information in each Flickr photograph of a city and analyses the users behaviour to establish whether the photographer can be classified as a “local’ or a “tourist”. For example a tourist takes pictures of lots of different locations in a month, a local takes lots of pictures in the same area over a longer period of time. He then produces a map of the city showing who took pictures where (blue = local, red = tourist, yellow = uncertain).

Buenos Aires Locals vs. Tourists. Click for Full Size

The Buenos Aires one is interesting in that there is very little blue in there, it’s mostly big blotches of red. The “V” on its side in the middle is Congreso bottom left, Avenida de Mayo leading to Plaza de Mayo and the Diagonal skewing up and to the left towards El Obelisco. Towards the bottom the concentrations are El Caminito and La Bombonera in La Boca and the large blob in the centre towards the top is Recoleta Cemetery. Other hotspots include El Puente de la Mujer in Puerto Madryn and Plaza San Martin (north of Plaza de Mayo)

• Only men drink alcohol, except Tia Maria which is only drunk by women
• It’s not possible to like beer and not like football
• There are only 3 things important in a women’s life: washing clothes and talking about it, cooking food using packets of processed crap for their families and having men that drink beer and watch football whistle at them in the street
• A flooded street corner is “News”. It deserves a 20 minute live segment
• Commercials that take up half the screen and have sound are to be shown during a football match.
• By law, football commentary must mention Diego Maradona every 45 seconds
• In case they forget what they are watching, it’s advisable to run a trailer for the program you are showing during that very same program
• Argentina has already won the 2010 World Cup. It’s just that the rest of the world doesn’t know it yet
• Light entertainment shows kill your soul just a little bit each time you watch them
• To be a star on Argentinian TV it’s important that you don’t actually look real

Argentine Megastar 66-year old Susana Gimenez

Chocolate Heir and Reality TV Star Ricardo Fort

Just in case you think I’m being overly harsh on Argentinian TV, I give you this, from Senorita Gimenez herself, Argentina’s biggest TV star. This show is real, and it wins prizes.

KM 4373, Ruta 40

For those of you paying attention, you will remember that I have already written about Ruta 40 from my Patagonia trip. On that occasion I travelled on it southwards from Bariloche to El Chalten, a distance of around 1,500km. It wasn’t however, my first time on the 40.

A few weeks before heading to Patagonia I’d been on a week-long roadtrip in a hired 4×4 from Buenos Aires to Argentina’s North West corner, based around the city of Salta. A lot of that trip was done on an unpaved section of Ruta 40, with a reminder every kilometre of the size of the country and the road that runs the length of it.