TANGY! Or is it Tango-ey? Whatever it is, it's Buenos Aires. Capital Federal, La Reina del Plata, the town of unknown population. It's great. Cars stop at the line at red lights! Water can be drunk from the tap without dying! There are pedestrian buttons, and drivers respect the little green man! There's a little green man!!!
Of course, the taxis have a meter, which gets my goat. They point at the meter as if I'm stupid when I lean in and say "[insert direction here] - ¿cuanto cuesta?"
It's European, cosmopolitan, full of the Argentinian street-jewellery sellers that you see all over Bolivia, and they have every reason to crow about their Tango. I'M sweating when a couple in the street, at a show, in the bar finish their dance!
AND it's just that much closer to home. I'm doing all I can to enjoy these last smatterings of holiday fun with Fiona before the crash of responsibility comes... um, crashing down and I'm home again with my family and friends. I really have learned what it means to be Australian, to belong to a place, have my heart where I was born no matter where I am. I also have the tingling feeling of future hugs, "salud"s and chuckles of long-time knowings with those I love.
Oh, and Iguazu Falls. Look it up, find footage, ask your well-travelled friends, but you'll never ever understand the falls without having been there. The enormity of the spectacle - not just the sheer volume, which is mesmerisingly seductive and heady, but the beauty of its hundreds of both tiny and massive squirts just blew my synapses. Really, it's something! AND something else! It's great, but the fellow at the counter says "Get your ass outa here" in his indecipherable Argentinian Spanish. So chau.
Love, Michael.
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3 comments:
Glad you got out of the fortress with all dangling bits and pieces intact (assuming).
Yes, but you will never know what it means to be ... Tasmanian xox Rups
p.s.
Look forward to your return, this glass of beer I've been reserving is well moulded, since you said to me in the Cornish, "juts going out to get some more cash, order another 'round" and I have been here since, only able to have known where you went because the Cornish over time became an Internet Cafe.
Yeh, sorry about that. I intended on coming back for that drink but at the ATM somebody sidled up, slyly opened the side of his overcoat and said in a distinctly Bolivian accent "Hey bub, wanna buy a ticket to South America? Going cheap with the letter Z" I'll be there for round two in a tick.
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