Latinalicious: The South America Diaries

by Becky Wicks

  Gordon Rock is the most popular dive site because it’s where large schools of hammerhead sharks tend to congregate, but changing currents can turn it into a washing machine in an instant and, if you’re not experienced, you could find yourself seriously out of your depth. Several people have died there in recent years — two so far in 2012. When I finally made it into the dive shop Academy Bay, I found an Aussie expat called Anne who told me several horror stories about these other operators, some of whom conduct trips even though they’re not qualified divers themselves!

  I was told that if I really wanted to see the sharks I should probably book a live-aboard cruise to Darwin and Wolf, two eroded volcanoes located very far north from the central islands and which can only be reached after two or three days of sailing. But on a trip like this I would almost be guaranteed sightings of great spotted whale sharks, whales, hammerheads, white tips, Galápagos sharks and more, thanks to the cold currents.

  Well, obviously I thought, fuck it, why not? And then I thought, well, because you can’t afford it, silly. You’re on a budget now, else you won’t be able to do any other exciting thing later on.

  Eight-day live-aboard trips start at $4000, depending on the time of year. I could barely afford the day dive trips, really, after my two cruises (hmm), but having come all this way I decided to do at least one.

  The cost of a two-dive trip with most companies from Santa Cruz is between $150 and $180 (in comparison, I was paying roughly $40 per dive in Indonesia). Doing your Open Water PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) course in the Galápagos will cost, on average, $500 — way more than in many other parts of the world. Diving here will seriously blow your travel budget.

  Grateful to have had all my questions answered in English by qualified dive instructors, I headed out with Academy Bay, who promised me a CD of photos on top of the adventure, so it was worth it. Sort of. Heading out to our first site was one of the bumpiest, most gut-wrenching boat journeys of my life. I nearly threw up my breakfast, and spent the majority of the voyage slamming into the guy next to me and apologising, even though I wasn’t really sorry, because he was hot.

  Daniel from Miami — a trainee medical doctor, tall, sandy-haired and on a day trip away from his family, with whom he’d come for a Galápagos holiday — was by far one of the sexiest specimens of man I’ve encountered so far on my trip. We swam hand-in-hand with the sea lions together, floated in the middle of a giant swirling ball of silver barracuda, glided alongside huge turtles and helped each other through the currents, which at one point were pretty strong. By the time we got back on the boat to Santa Cruz I don’t think either of us minded slamming into each other so much.

  After our dives, Daniel and I took a walk to beautiful Tortuga Beach and its vast stretch of white sand. It’s just five minutes from Santa Cruz’s main harbour in Puerto Ayora and then a forty-minute trek along a brick road, which I thought they should paint yellow, not just because I think all long and winding brick roads should be yellow but because it would make it easier to spot the lava lizards as they bake in camouflage. The entire walk makes you feel as though you’re doing nothing but terrifying lizards, actually. They run away as you approach, although you do get the odd one who’ll sit and look at you in wonder, like you’re the most incredible and interesting creature on earth.

  Daniel and I arranged to meet again that night, too, for a bit of karaoke, after I’d had dinner at Dani’s, which was lovely. I got to hang out with all her friends and we cooked mini-pizzas and drank red wine around her garden table, talking about life in the Galápagos under another star-scattered sky. They spoke Spanish so fast it was like trying to keep up with a Grand Prix, but they all kindly took the time to translate, and so I got to learn who starts and spreads the Galápagossip.

  Being such a small town, everyone knows who’s new, who’s sleeping with whom, which scuba divers are hooking up with which tourists and which naturalists are hooking up with which shop owners. It was like sitting in a real life soap opera.

  Oli, a sweet girl who’s lived on Santa Cruz for five years as a tour guide for children’s groups (she also takes them all over Ecuador), loves it here because for her it’s an example of how you don’t need much to live a happy life. The Internet barely works and no one has a TV, so the only news from the outside world some of these people ever get is what comes in via the boats, or two-day-old newspapers.

  ‘It’s the simple life,’ Oli told me, swinging her bare feet up onto an empty chair. ‘I’ve never cared about politics or governments or knowing what people were wearing, and to me it’s nice to live without feeling swayed by news or media.’

  It made me wonder what it would be like to live in the Galápagos, actually. Rent here costs between $300 to $400 a month for a decent room in a house. For $700 a month you can pretty much have a whole house.

  I also learned, however, that the water here in the Galápagos is dirty. Apparently, in spite of its pristine reputation and undeniable beauty from a boat, the water coming out of the taps here is so vile that it causes infections in your privates. So, Dani’s friends told me, it’s normal for girls living on Santa Cruz to wash themselves down there in pure water, which led to all sorts of ‘princess’ jokes around the garden table. It definitely made me hurry up in my shoddy hotel shower later on.

  I’m not sure I will ever go back to the Galápagos, if only because it’s so expensive to get to, even if you do it on a budget. But having been twice I can now tell you that you can’t fail to be amazed by something, every single day … even if it’s just to find your mono-lingual self in a karaoke bar, surrounded by baffled Ecuadoreans, singing Shakira songs into a microphone in bad Spanish.

  8/08

  Argentinean first impressions …

  The smattering of bruises on my ribs is making me look more like I’ve been shacking up with a wife-beater than with a lovely Argentinean family here in Palermo, Buenos Aires. I don’t know how to tell them my bed is causing me physical injury, because even though I’m paying to live here I don’t want to upset them. My room in their house was arranged by my Spanish language school, Expanish, and having flown straight in from Quito knowing next to nothing about this city, I’m supposed to live with them for two weeks.

  The springs responsible for the bruising are hidden inside what’s allegedly a mattress, and because my host Julio is a man who once restored antique furniture for a living, I’m not entirely sure my bed hasn’t already been restored. If it has, he might be offended that his new antique springs are affecting my sleep in a bad way and I wouldn’t want that. Julio and his wife Sylvia have taken me into their home with as much love and kindness as Daddy Warbucks took in Annie.

  I’m really hoping the sun’ll come out tomorrow, though. Like Quito, Buenos Aires is cold. I’ve practically got my feet stuck in the bars of an electric heater as I type. I’m hoping it’s not another restored antique, because I do worry from time to time about things like my bedroom burning down.

  When I arrived at the house at 4 a.m. in the back of a taxi the other day, Julio was waiting up for me with a wide smile and a torrent of indecipherable Spanish (he speaks no English whatsoever), and although I was dazed and bewildered and exhausted, I noticed he looked a bit like Steve Martin and I warmed to him instantly. I did not, however, warm to the tiny three-metre squared box of a room he led me to, which was so mind-numbingly freezing that I woke up an hour later with snot running down over my top lip. I was too tired and out of it to notice the heater in the corner. I actually thought it was a fan.

  My body is in shock, I can feel a cold coming on and, while there are no blizzards like there were on my ill-fated minivan tour to Cotopaxi, my Bali wardrobe still isn’t gonna cut it. At least I can justify finally doing my bulky clothes shop and this neighborhood seems the perfect place for it. Palermo feels a bit Bohemian, like London’s Camden, mixed with New York’s East Village.

  I’ve not seen much else of Buenos Aires yet, to be honest, because m
y time here so far has consisted of heading to Expanish, where I’m taking my intense Spanish course every day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and then trying to navigate my way back home again. This traffic-clogged journey, that seems to take up four hours of my day, would usually only take me thirty minutes each way, so says Carmen, the cute Swiss girl who’s also living with my new family and studying at Expanish. But Buenos Aires is currently suffering a subway (subte) strike.

  This strike has been going on since I arrived and, from what I can gather, it’s not looking like it’s going to stop any time soon. Workers are asking for a twenty-eight per cent pay increase and better working conditions, and while everyone argues and refuses to take responsibility for the subway in general, some 900,000 of the city’s commuters who use the subte each day (including me now) are having to cram onto alternative transport.

  I’m too new to know much about the politics here yet, but I do know that one third of Argentineans still live in poverty and, while they have a reputation globally for being quite stuck-up and egotistical, as well as undergoing more psychotherapy and cosmetic surgery than any other nation, the country is struggling with a sputtering economy, which is hitting everyone hard. As a result, the slightest upset in any political sense can cause an uproar.

  It seems that the root cause of the subte strike is a power struggle between the president and the mayor, a man called Mauricio Macri, who isn’t very popular. In fact, the subway workers’ union secretary-general, Roberto Pianelli, tells the Buenos Aires Herald: ‘We never took into consideration that we were negotiating with an animal like Macri, who doesn’t give a dime for the people. The City Mayor is way more dangerous than a monkey with a knife, he’s like a monkey with an automatic gun.’

  I can’t say I’ve ever heard such public mockery as I’m hearing here. Things must be tense if they’re assigning their leaders imaginary weapons and calling them monkeys.

  Anyway, it’s super annoying not being able to get around very easily, not least because of the weather. I can’t go shopping very easily in the rain and even though I’ve since discovered the heater in my room, which offers a warm night at least, I never got my J.C. Penney zip-up back from Mowgli. Thanks to a lack of decent shopping in Quito, I had to buy the only other warm item available — a terrible, unflattering, grey round-neck sweater with the word ‘Quito’ on it. It makes me look like a pet shop worker. I feel like I’m supposed to have a mullet when I wear it. And maybe live somewhere like Idaho. I’m not sure why it invokes these feelings … perhaps I saw something similar on telly.

  I did think perhaps if I buy a bulky coat I could also sleep on top of it, lessen the digging of the mattress springs into my rib cage and solve both problems at once. But meanwhile, as I’ve been shivering my way around in pain, here’s what I’ve noticed about Buenos Aires:

  Everyone kisses everyone else

  It’s a sexy mix here, thanks to nineteenth-century Spanish and Italian immigrants bringing their tall, dark, brooding looks into things. In fact, unlike in Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, only one per cent of Argentina’s population is indigenous. A prime example of the passion of Latin Americans, which was perhaps introduced with those thankful immigrants, is the kissing thing, which happens all the time. And I’m not just talking between the overly-amorous novios (boyfriends and girlfriends), either.

  Last night I went to the laundromat with a girl called Michelle, who I met at Expanish. As she went to leave with her bag of freshly washed undergarments, the rotund man behind the counter leaned over and planted a kiss on her cheek.

  Michelle told me that last weekend she was also kissed by the lady who’d just done her nails. I see this happening all around me and I don’t know if it’s because I’m British but seriously … although it’s nice to witness such abundant affection, I’m not sure I want people kissing me when I don’t know them. Especially not men who’ve just washed my knickers.

  There is dog shit absolutely everywhere

  We’re talking major turdage here. You can’t take five steps along the pavement without seeing a pile of mierda heaped in front of you like a serving of bad Mr Whippy. Walking about has you weaving your way through the streets like an army cadet on some sort of specialty shit-dodging assault course. They’re big shits, too. I mean, we’re not talking the crap of a chihuahua here, I don’t think. From the size of these piles, you’d think most people in Buenos Aires owned elephants.

  At dinner with Michelle the other night, her friend Tom told me that the dog-walkers of Buenos Aires aren’t allowed by law to walk more than eight dogs. They regularly do so anyway and many of them don’t clean up after their pooches, either. Tom told me that because you can earn up to ten pesos per dog, per day, lots of people walk ten at a time and earn up to 4000 pesos a month. Almost US$1000 per month isn’t bad when all you’re doing is walking around for a couple of hours a day, texting your mates and pretending not see that mountain of shit your K9 clients are dropping in their wake.

  Everyone smokes

  If not everyone, then definitely more people smoke in Buenos Aires than anywhere else in the world. Julio smokes not at the dinner table, but just to the right of it, about a metre away, as though there’s a designated pocket of air he’s allowed to pollute in the corner that won’t curl its way anywhere else.

  I could, of course, be noticing the smokers more here because people still seem to smoke in bars and restaurants as and when they please, and also because I’ve just come from Bali: a place of health, fresh air and wellbeing. But I swear the cigarette smoke is contributing to my new cough and sore throat. You can’t walk anywhere without getting a lungful of it here.

  There’s sweet temptation on every corner

  There are windows full of cakes and pastries everywhere you turn in this city; every other store is a bakery of some kind and every other businessman in the city centre is tucking into a plate of empanadas on his lunch break. I’ve also noticed the Porteños (Buenos Aires locals) have an obsession with Milka, which is a great chocolate by all accounts, but on a stroll along most streets in Buenos Aires, especially in the CBD, your eyeballs are accosted constantly by the purple ocean of it. There’s no escaping it. In fact, to avoid the ultimate thigh expansion that will occur if I keep allowing it to lure me in, it’s probably best I keep my eyes down on the dog shit.

  People queue for buses

  They actually stand in a polite line on the street and queue in an orderly fashion to get on the bus. How fantastic is that? At first I wondered why everyone was standing around in lines on the side of the road, but then I realised that they were actually being courteous. I felt a warm rush of appreciation towards the people of Buenos Aires. In other cities it’s a given that you’ll either elbow someone’s rib cage or have your own face squished into the back of someone else before you can board the bus or the Metro. This orderly queue-forming thing is quite refreshing … unless you find yourself standing in dog shit.

  No one has any money

  When I say money, I mean actual bank notes. Perhaps due to the ever fluctuating economy, there’s been no newly printed money in Argentina for what seems like a century and every note you find yourself pulling out of your purse is so withered and filthy you feel as though you’ve just rooted through a skip for it. Buy some hand sanitizer.

  Several times now I’ve been out to make a purchase with only the one large note a cash machine has given me, and the shopkeeper has stared at my outstretched hand in alarm and disdain, before asking if I have anything smaller. When I shake my head, often they will snatch the proffered note and storm off in a huff … and come back having made a journey through three more shops, an outdoor market and their own mum’s house just to locate some change.

  They show dead bodies on the telly

  I was eating a breakfast of tiny, dried, cold toast pieces from a packet and a coffee (which seems to be the norm where I’m staying, and indeed in Buenos Aires) when I looked up at the telly to see a man who’d just been shot. His bloody arm wa
s dangling out from beneath a tarp as police and a dog wandered nonchalantly around him like he wasn’t even there. At first I thought perhaps it was a police drama, but then I realised it was just the morning news.

  Everyone goes out after I’ve gone to bed

  I still can’t get my head around the fact that everyone seems to go out for the night at around 1 a.m. here, sometimes later. If you want dinner first, prime time for eating in restaurants in Buenos Aires is between 11 p.m. and midnight.

  On my first morning at Julio and Sylvia’s, I dragged myself out of bed by 9 a.m., not wanting to appear rude by sleeping in, but I was alone downstairs all morning with their huge, scary dog Tito. Eventually I went out to explore Palermo, but everything was dead. Literally nothing was open. I couldn’t even get a coffee. I thought perhaps the apocalypse had occurred overnight and I’d been left all alone in the world with Tito, like Will Smith in I Am Legend, but after a few more hours things started to come to life again. When I went back to the house Carmen told me no one goes to bed till 7 a.m., so no one gets up before 2 p.m. on a weekend. It’s quite a weird lifestyle to get used to.

  Buenos Aires is definitely keeping me on my toes so far and it’s only just started to get interesting, I’m sure. I just wish spring would spring as quickly as my mattress seems to be doing.

  13/08

  Conjugation deliberation …

  I’ve been studying at Expanish in the city for almost a week now and at lunchtime every day I walk around the block looking for the nicest thing to eat. A normal lunchtime mission, you might think. Well, here in central Buenos Aires, where everyone’s in a rush and no one’s got time for you even if you do speak Spanish, I’ll admit I’m not just looking for the nicest thing to eat. I’m looking for the easiest food item in a window that I might point to, in order to save myself and everybody else the uncomfortable moment in which my needs are lost in translation and everyone in a queue turns to stare at me.