Christmas in Santa Fe

Meli in Marita's Pad




Christmas is particularly keen reminder of my inability to grow up. The sheer excitement of those few dark December day meant that the last time I anticipated missing them, the thoughts of the christingle and of my ritualistic battle through Redlynch brambles and fog to unearth a gangly tree, managed to lure me home. This year, however, was somewhat different. Perhaps the fact that the festival managed to creep up upon me should be taken into account: the stalwart day-to-day rhythm of the estancia permits little time for either romanticising or realising the luxuries of a Christmas week. Lamentably, cows need both feeding and milking regardless of the red-letter days that arise. As a result, suddenly December was drawing rapidly to a close and I had to curtail my motorbiking; my lawn mowing; my alarming partiality to chewing coca, and set sail for Santa Fé. The journey, had it's hairy moments. As the time for my first bus grew alarmingly near the taxi I had booked failed to arrive at the sleepy Estancia. Fortunately, I didn't have to run to far laden with my bags as a nice motorbiker gave me a lift to the bus station where I arrived, sweating profusely only to be told there were no tickets! Rather bemused by my situation I ended up making a desperate appeal to the assembled audience for a passage to San Miguel.

Me and Meli
(Early days of the tash)

Just to be invited for 'las fiestas' by an Argentine family was a massive honour: despite the frequent warnings from Meli's father over the humble nature of the family home, the prospect of an authentic argentine Christmas was certainly superior to the hostel variety surrounded by myriad estranged backpackers!

I arrived at number 62, 25th de Mayo very early on the 23rd. After being plied with mate and bread around the large table in what served as an entrance hall, sitting room and dining room, Melissa's voluptuous mother informed me that I was due a siesta. This became a stalwart part of Santa Fe life involving a rotation process through the hottest hours of the day to allow all the various family members a stint of shut-eye: there appeared to be considerably less beds than relatives and when Granny rolled out, I rolled in! Somewhat perplexed by lack of space in the house, it soon came to pass that the day-time solution was to exile the family to the street. A neighbourhood wide technique, the pavements of the barrio boil with plaits of children who play amongst the makeshift sitting rooms of nylon chairs to the soundtrack of cumbia santafesina. Various family elders are propped out too and watch their wild offspring with a nostalgic despondency. The nocturnal solution for me and Meli turned out to be a semi-nomadic process of lying where we fell! I particularly liked staying over at Meli's best friend Marisa's house: a crumbling colonial villa at the end of a long alley where time slows down amidst endless mates, picking of guitars and reading.
Both Christmas and New Year's were fabulous. Christmas day itself is a complete non-event – it all takes place on the night of the 24th, commencing with gluttonous quantities of food and elbow clashing with the assembled family. As midnight draws nearer the neighbourhood begins to ring with the cacophony of fireworks and competing hi-fis pumping cumbia, the television has a running update of burn casualties in the local hospital. At about two we set off into town to continue celebrating.

Christmas Supper on the 24th
(Me, Robert, Debo, Toni, Leandra, Pepa, Camilo and Granny)



Life in Santa Fe obliged me to through out the puritanical 'early to rise' maxim and adopt a more Latin lifestyle. Meli has a lovely group of friends and most nights involved cracking open a couple of Santa Fe's famous beers, getting the guitars out, or hitting the town.

The Last Few Days in Tucuman

Tafi de Valle’s erratic mix of ostentatious second homes and corrugated tin buildings scramble from the tidy main street, free from the rigours of planning bureaucracy, and scale the shingled hillsides precariously in a constant battle for the finest views: paradoxically each new generation of fast built homes fetter any previous aspirations to the panoramic vistas and push the building projects onto ever more perilous slopes. Despite the blight of middle-class holidaying: banks of homogeneous artisan tat and wealthy families huddling in the faded social club beneath ancestral photos of great estancieros past, the Cachique valleys still have an irresistible allure. From the town, the soft green hills are masked by passing rainstorms, their cartoon clouds dissipate to leave a phosphorescent icing of frozen moisture and an unmatched fertility, in the high plateaus the horses graze contented in meadows burgeoning with wildflowers. This wet weather renders the high foots hills of the Andean cordillera unforgiving: for every leathery gaucho we pass as we ascend there are skeletal wooden crosses and shrines lodged above deceptive drops. The unpredictable weather makes hazardous territory for horsemen: swollen streams and shrouding of fog warrant the respect of even the brazen.

One of the last days I spent in Tucuman before heading south to celebrate Christmas, Hugh and I left the estancia in the blistering sunshine with the hope to explore the mesalas a couple of hours up from the town. We ate lunch on the vastness of the green meadows under a burning sky, but as we picked our way higher a cooler wind teased our light shirts and created a tangible difference in the atmosphere. The climb leveling out we played witness to the vast meteorological theatre of the high plateaus: two jealous storm systems rivaled for our attentions simultaneously spitting lightening. The bloated clouds carving across the hot green valleys to our right soon took priority and the impression of the impending storm made my skin prickle. Within seconds of turning the horses towards the path back down towards town the wind hit us. Laced with a hail that soon turned to a constant and rain our shirts tacked to our backs, Doradillo and Tusoj slipped on the instantly muddy paths and so we dismounted to slip down ourselves. I always appreciated the speed of how weather changes, particularly at high altitude. However, amongst Tafi's high valleys, these hills and dales on a scale that would mother the Brecon Beacons, I really got see the velocity and unpredictability of the weather.

Asado at Dos Rios

The train-tracks add a real charm to Dos Rios: although now they labour little more than coolers of beer and vast quantities of steak, they were installed to transport building materials from boats to the central buildings.

Where better to put a pool than within three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of verdant, sunlit Delta?
Read all about Hugo and Jane's project at http://www.dos-rios.com.ar/index.php?showPage=5

Return to EL Churqi

Who needs a pony?Yesterday Richard led the way up onto the fertile arable ground on his motorbike to check on the potatoes. I followed in the truck, struggling to keep up with the agile bike. After a maté with the contractors and a lot of agricultural tyrekicking, Richard gave me the helmet, an elementary lesson in starting the bike, a honda 250 modified to 300 cc, and told me he would see me at the farm! What you can see of my face in the photo is my 'return of the conquering hero' grimace.

A very health potato crop.

Hugh, Richard and Hugh's new truck.
A Transformation:
Summertime,

...in contrast to when I was here in winter



Summer in the highlands of Tucuman is wet: the days are remarkably simular to a good English summer; changeable and temperate. As a result the Aconquija valley has undergone a complete transformation from the dusty bowl I found in July. Welly boots have become a fundamental addition to the wardrobe.

Un Aguafuerte Porteño/ Inglés

Mientras estoy apurándome para el subte, los veo, en medio de los vidrios brillantes de las líneas de taxis y la espuma. Del café cansado vienen los sonidos débiles de la radio. Una banda sonora constante de hip-hop y regatón. Los choferes de taxis se apoyan en el mostrador, masticando el tiempo con el patrón, quien vive de sorber un café con leche aguachento y de limpiar vasos grasosos con un repasador amarillo.

A pesar de que el trabajo sea sencillo, los muchachos mantienen una estética claramente compleja y definida. Sus pantalones cuelgan de las caderas a consciencia antes de desaparecer en sus zapatos. Los abanicos de agua descansan en múltiples trenzas apretadas y africanas. De hecho, poseen el sentimiento de algo de “Mo-Town”: un souvenir elegante en plena edad del automóvil, de cines al aire libre y noches cálidas, de hamburguesas y coca-cola.

Me fijé que el lavadero está abierto veinticuatro horas, y me preguntaba que pasará durante la noche y si realmente existen los que quieren un auto limpio a las tres de la mañana. Sin embargo, pasé por donde están ellos en la noche vacía antes del amanecer, y aunque el flujo de autos mugrientos se hubiera reducido, todavía los chicos trabajan bajo las luces fluorescentes.

Whilst I am rushing for the subte I see them between the shining windscreens and the foam. From the dog-eared café come faints strains of the radio: an endless sound-track of hip-hop and reggaeton. The taxi-drivers lean on the bar chewing time with the owner, who lives to suck endless coffee and polish greasy glasses with a yellowed rag.

Whilst the work is simple, the lads’ aesthetic is clearly defined: trousers hang from hips before disappearing into black Wellingtons and the fans of water dust tight corn-rows. There is a distinct air of “Mo-Town here, an elegant souvenir of the automobile age. Of drive-throughs and close nights, hamburgers and coca-cola.

I note that the car-wash is open twenty-four hours a day and come to ask myself what happens during the night. Do they exist, those who want a clean car at three in the morning? I wander past in the vacant night before dawn, and whilst the flow of begrimed cars has eased, the boys continue to work beneath the fluorescent lights.

The 1600g Steak:

The Big Run.

Following the stimulus of sibling rivalry having heard Linz’s plans for the Brum half marathon, the adidas website informed me that I had 11 days and 8 hours of preparation if I was to run in the Buenos Aires half-marathon. I am in no position, then, to start my account of the endeavour with a ‘following months of preparation, highs and lows…’ introduction. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the rigours of Argentine bureaucracy cut with endless possibilities for loss in translation meant that having reached the point of donning my orange tee shirt left me feeling that half the battle had been won.
Despite being an athletic type, the buildings frowning down through the mist to the widest road on earth set me well out of my normal field of operations; there is something deeply cosmopolitan about the urban marathon: whilst being undoubtedly an elemental experience it very much feels the product of the metropolitan age. From the Plaza del Mayo reaching out along the Diag. Saenz Pena and away from the river, streets normally filled with the hubbub of shoppers rang with apprehension and a colossus of bouncing, stretching, jogging bodies. Soon currents of the lycra clad swung towards the start, to pool, leaping, climbing gantries and each other, vibrant with a Latin enthusiasm.
I found my feet, not as the flood gates burst from the beneath the starting gate, but as the density dropped around the plaza, allowing the establishment of a pace. Stuffing my head phones in I was caught simultaneously by Kraftwerk, the soundtrack of many sunny Somerset afternoon runs, and, as we swung round the corner past the Casa Rosada, the dancing vista of a thousand bodies pushing forward on the momentum of shared energy. It made me gasp for breath, even choke back tears. (Ed. Not really if Grandpa is reading). Needless to say, I had a swift check to make sure no one had seen me gurning like a wally, and headed on, grinning from ear to ear.

The ipod was a good idea. I had chosen a playlist in the week and it was very motivational to have a good mix of genres and tempos (all pretty upbeat) to accompany me. What was particularly good was that as it went from Grandmaster Flash, to Dire Straits and onto Echo and the Bunnymen, I had Willsy, Linz and Otto jogging along beside me!
My limited prep meant that I ran very much within my limits, preserving myself, and waiting for something to start complaining. However, the kilometre markers and drinks stations (and I regret to say a companionable pee in a hedge with lots of grinning fellow runners) jogged by in a most satisfactory manner! After commencing in the city, the middle of the route took us round the port and edge of the ecological reserve before heading back for a good slog up the Av. 9th de Julio with the Obelisk in view. For the last 3km I really got into the swing and removed my headphones as to appreciate the tango band playing on the corner of Independancia and San Martin and the crowds of people on the way towards achieving the grand finale after 1:54:17 minutes.
In Adidas’s rather smug pre-race booklet was a outline of the athletes recommended post-race warm-down. This included putting on a fresh tee, eating a banana and doing some stretches. However, instead, they cleverly organised it that all our bags, containing the aforementioned tee shirts and bananas, were in their tent along with about three useless goons attempting to calm the sweaty crowds. This started as a bit of a bore but rapidly escalated into an extremely entertaining chaos of shouting, singing and climbing over barriers. After getting over my truly English queue complex, I remembered I was the biggest person there and had a lovely time protesting in disgust at the proceedings. Whoever needs rock concerts?
My biggest feeling both during and after the race was the feeling of belonging the run afforded. Both the training runs and the ½ marathon afforded a distinct intimacy with the city that I feel thoroughly honoured to have been allowed to share in.