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World Tour II Postcards, Page 12:  Excerpts from postcards sent in LATE MARCH, 1996

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 20 March 1996 -- Buenas noches!  The sun passes today into your hemisphere and out of mine, but the first day of autumn here is still hot and humid.

Although the buildings are not so tall, Bueno Aires has a strong Manhatten feel about it.  It's a very lively, exciting, cosmopolitan place well into the early morning hours.  The bright flashing colored lights of huge trademark signs such as Coca Cola, Sony and two or three dozen others light the night more brightly than Times Square, though not as much as Las Vegas.  Two lengthy pedestrian malls that crisscross the downtown are packed with people even late on a midweek worknight.  Aside from a lack of tall buildings, it also seems to lack the filth, crime and poverty of some parts of Manhatten, but the subway and many of the buildings, like Manhatten, have that early 20th century feel.  The prices here exceed the high prices of Manhatten in most cases (i.e. $1 for this postcard, $1.50 for a McDonald's small cheezeburger and get this ... $17 for a Sunday Washington Post).

With so many cars pumping out pollutants, I think I'd change the name Buenos Aires to Mediocres Aires, although it's noticably better here than in Chile's capital Santiago.

After walking up for a close view of the highest mountain in the Americas, Mount Aconcagua (nearly 23,000 feet high), and finding another pleasant hot spring in which to relax, I hitched a ride with a maniacally reckless though skilled driver named Raymond, who was hauling a double semi-truck load of pr------- (unintelligible).  Thankfully, he wasn't hauling gasoline.  I'm glad I had told him I was getting off in Mendoza (because at that point I could still pry my fingers from the armwrests).  He had already been driving 13 hours and was planning to drive another 13 hours without sleep all the was to Buenos Aires.  The scenery was spectacular on the winding mountain roads, and I would have enjoyed it more had I not developed such a leg cramp from pushing so often on the imaginary brake.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 22 March 1996 -- Buenos dias!  A little over 10 years ago, in Barcelona, Spain, the very first friend I made on my grand 2 and 1/2 year journey was Jessica Grumberg, who was only 18 at the time (when I was 28).  We met in the Barcelona youth hostel, shared a coed dormitory room, and hung around together for a couple of days.  Amazingly, her address remained in my book and after all these years, I am now visiting her at her home in Buenos Aires.  She is a very talented blues singer/songwriter who, along with other talented musicians, including her boyfriend, has recorded several CDs together, though she doesn't make a living at it.  She is also a very talented artist, and her artworks occupy prominent places both her apartment and her mother's.

While prices are high here in Buenos Aires, I somehow always manage to find some affordable meals.  There's an all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet with a huge spread for $6 that I fill up on every day.

Buenos Aires gives the feeling of being quite a wealthy place.  Prices are high, but people seem to have the money to fork out.  The Argentine peso is tied directly to the value of the U.S. dollar, so that one peso always equals exactly one dollar.  It makes things easy to figure out, though expensive.  I can't tell if their currency is overvalued or if people are legitimately well-off here.  They seem a little crazy about exchanging U.S. dollars though.  They accept only perfectly crisp, fresh U.S. bills.  If there's even a crease or very small tear in one, they won't exchange it for pesos.

Feliz primavera,
Juan Peron

Montevideo, Uruguay, 25 March 1996 -- Buenas tardes!  Uruguay is a calm, pleasant place, but about the only things it has going for it are its beaches and rich Argentinians who come over from Buenos Aires.  Otherwise, there's not much to say.  The climate is mild, the streets are shady, lined with gand, old sycamore trees, and the place feels like many places I've seen in the U.S. midwest.  It gives this impression that the world is passing it by.  It seems a throwback to an earlier, slower paced era, back when there were still "mom and pop" grocery stores on every block, and men would hang out in barber shops just for a shave and conversation ... kind of like Mayberry from the Andy Griffith show.  There are a lot of older, functional, though poorly maintained cars on the streets ... 40, 50, 60 years old.

There is also the new part of town where you see the typical American style shopping malls, loaded with trendy, upscale shops and well-off conspicuous consumers.

It's difficult to generalize about this place.  It seems to have one foot in the 1990s and the other planted firmly in the 1950s.

I've been on the road six months as of yesterday, and if all goes well, I'll have six months more.  Excluding my trip to Antarctica and the film processing you've been doing for those rolls I've mailed back to the States, all else has been costing me about $1050 each month according to my calculations, or about $6,300 total.  That's about the pace I hope to maintain, though it may be hard.  The 12 day Antarctica trip was another $2,000, for a total of $8,300.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 28 March 1996 -- Estimados todos!  Other than beef, the tango is probably Argentina's most famous export.  The tango is not just one dance step but a whole genre of many dance patterns.  It is also a musical style, a dress style, and a cultural pattern of behavior.  It began last century in the Italian neighborhoods of Buenos Aires when some men in the local bars began to make fun of the conservative way in which people danced in Europe, usually with some distance kept between the man and the woman.  For many years, the dance was exclusively for men, who would dance holding each other very closely.

Jessica attempted to teach me a basic tango step, and she said I did fine, but I felt pretty awkward.  We then went to a theater to see some professionals perform it live, and I got a much better impression of how complicated and how beautiful the dance and music could be.  It was like watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rodgers.

Jessica is extraordinarily talented in numerous ways ... as a dancer, singer, songwriter, painter and sculpter.  She also makes part of her living giving fabulous massages.

Her housemate, Agatha, is a young television news journalist and producer who aspires to work someday for the Spanish language version of CNN.  She came home one day upset and at a los for what to do about a famous woman who called to tell her that she had personal knowledge of who had committed a well known political assassination.  The woman felt that her own life was in danger and wanted her identity to be kept secret, but wanted journalists to investigate and report about it.  Agatha told her boss without disclosing the woman's name, but he seemed reluctant to pursue the story.

Although Argentina is a wealthy, fully developed country, its officials seem to me to be among the most corrupt of the countries I have visited.  While things are much better than they were in the past, there are still people who suddenly unexplainably disappear and many who remain unaccounted for after two decades.  What I have had to face are officials asking me for money in order that they not search through my baggage.

Meanwhile, my wallet got lifted from my pocket while I was riding on a crowded city bus.  I lost $12 and, unfortunately, I lost my driver's license as well.  American Express replaced my credit card rapidly, a bus company replaced my bus ticket, and everything else was secure in my money belt.

Iguazu, Argentina, 28 March 1996 -- Querida familia!  Most waterfalls can be captured well in photos by taking two or three shots, one from above, one from below and one straight from the front.  For Iguazu Falls, a whole roll of 36 photos cannot tell the story.  It goes far beyond what you see on this postcard, breaking out into many channels.  There are places you can go where you are surrounded in almost all directions by the roaring water and you quickly become drenched by the spray.  I believe that more water passes over this falls than any other on the planet, dwarfing falls such as Niagara.  To fully view it takes a couple of days, one on the Argentina side and the other from Brazil.  It truly is one of the most awesome spectacles I’ve seen in my travels.

I’m back in the tropics again (after several weeks in cooler climates like Antarctica), and I am forever amazed at how much rain falls in the afternoon torrential downpours that occur daily.  You may as well find a place to have a cup of coffee and sit it out because almost nothing can get done until it’s over.

While riding the very comfortable busses of Chile, Argentina and Uruguay, I was wondering why it is that they can provide so much better service than Greyhound does in the States.  Why is it that they have dozens of competing companies, every one of which is better than our one company, Greyhound?  Sure, more Americans have cars and choose not to ride busses, but why is that?  My theory is that it is not simply because Americans have more money and can afford private transport, but it has more to do with racism and elitism.  Americans don’t like sharing their space with “undesirables”.  There are different races and cultures here too, but they seem more economically equal, and people seem more respectful of the differences.

Ciao,

Deano

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