Baaaaaa!!

My last ten days in Buenos Aires, or Good Sheep, as Stevo perversely persists in calling it. My love affair with the city is, if not over, a matter of taking a step back from the beloved and gazing at her with the rose tinted spectacles tossed to the ground. I finally see her, warts and all, and need to be away for a protracted amount of time to decide if we are really meant to be.

Busy busy...

On the one hand, I see the appalling poverty that is ignored and/or resented by the well-heeled, the pointless, grinding, soul-destroying bureacracy, the intolerance for those who don’t fit into society’s mold, the political corruption, the ghastly business practices, the spiralling inflation (30% last year and still going) and the soaring crime rate that invariably accompanies such things.

On the other, however, Argentines (and I’m including Porteños – natives of BA – in here) are on the whole generous, curious, creative, courteous, good-looking (hehe), fun-loving, family-centred, loyal, and the most likeable bunch of people I have ever met. And I’ve met a lot of folks. I could back up every one of those adjectives with at least ten examples (and maybe shall some other time if you allow me to ramble drunkenly at you in the bar).

They’re into LIFE with a capital everything. Tango – and where would BA be without its theme music? – wears its heart on its sleeve and is witty and sexy, and damn, I wish I could dance it. In fact, Argentines simply have music embedded in their souls.

 

Street music in San Telmo.

Their malbec has enslaved me and put me off any other varieties forever (ok, rhetorically). Their beef is so good that Graciela has had to forcibly prevent me from singing in our favourite restaurant in San Telmo when taking my first bite of a big, juicy, rare (damn, dribbling into keyboard now) steak.

I prefer Argentine Spanish and lunfardo slang over all other varieties. Show me another country who, when deciding what to swear about, opts for a parrot?! I love the Springtime here, when the jacaranda trees are in flower everywhere and your blood turns to fire in your veins and you dance down the street rather than walk. I love my wonderful, funny friends here.

 

Lovely, lovely ladies!!!

Oh, and I go weak at the knees for bbq-ed pizza.

Guess what am saying is that I do still love the place, I had hoped I was going to live here forever and build a business and a life and what have you, but this time round it hasn’t worked and it’s time to cut losses and get out before the love affair sours. Maybe some places are better to visit than to live…

Ooop Norf…

Spring had sprung. BA was buzzing. The house was going to be ready in a week. The work start date was fast approaching. It was time for a final trip before the daily grind began once more…

I therefore headed north to Tucumán province to visit the diminutive yet undeniably swoonsome Octavio. The bus journey took a good three hours longer than publicised, and the air con broke down for last two of those, but hey… it’s only £150 return. Am sure I remember buses being half the price two years ago. That’s inflation for you I guess… bet it’s not the last time I complain about that.

Oranges and, well, lemons...

Sat next to lady called Pili. She may have been a fresh-faced 60 or she may have been 45 and had spent the last 10 years hopping. She was in seven states of excitement, done up to the nines and wearing some very high heels, which in my opinion is nothing short of insane on a 16 hour trip. Anyway, was obliged to boggle my way through her whole life story, whether I wanted to hear it or not. When I plugged myself into the iPod on she tapped my arm until I removed the earphones. Bloody hell that woman could talk. To cut a long story blessedly short however, she was heading back to San Miguel de Tucumán, from whence she’d moved to BA with her parents when she was 15, to spend a week with her first – and greatest – love. Time had passed, partners had come and gone, children had flown the nest… a chance meeting a few months back led to the invitation. Have never seen one person do their teeth so many times. He was waiting for her at the terminal, flowers in hand. A thick thatch of white hair above a thin, darkly tanned face deeply etched with wrinkles. Was pretty impressed. Don’t think am even talking to any of the boys I kissed when I was 15.

Octavio was waiting for me, minus flowers but plus face-splitting grin. “How very robust you’re looking these days Sassy”, he said. Your average Argie male has no inner monologue. Grit my teeth and resisted the temptation to slap him so far into next week that it would likely take a team of surgeons just to get Wednesday out of his arse.

San Miguel de Tucumán is fairly big, moderately dirty and very, very hot. Spring there easily goes into the high 30s. During summer the thermometer apparently climbs well over 40, and humidity hits almost 100%. Am not sure how exactly long you’d have to drive in any direction to get to the sea but you wouldn’t get much change out of two days. Like all Argentine cities it’s laid out on a grid system and there isn’t much architectural difference between the low off-white buildings, so you had better hope you’re facing in the right direction when you begin a journey.

And they call it puppy love...

Octavio lives with his two mad doggies, Bombucha and Latina, in a big old one-storey house whose rooms surround a mosaic-tiled courtyard from which white stairs lead up to a terrace and a passage takes you through a wrought iron gate back out to a scrubby garden. But who cares about the lawn when there’s tropical fruit? It doesn’t matter how much I travel: there’s something unbearably exotic and exciting about a place where oranges, lemons and mangoes grow in your garden.

On my first night there was storm. Not a wussy English storm. Here it’s all about stifling heat and  the rain bouncing six inches off the ground. The thunder overhead ranted and roared and set off car alarms in the street. The dogs cowered in the corner. Was possessed by almost overpowering urge to hide under the bed.

African dance girls

That weekend I, together with approximately 300 happy hippy types, attended an African dance and percussion show in the park. Octavio was dancing with one of the groups. They were surprisingly good. Enjoyed myself taking photos with my (still new) toy and managed to only forget what I’d done with the crutch once. One does look a bit of a plonker when people realise one is running around screaming that one can’t find one’s walking stick.

 

Spent most of the week just hanging out, catching up, translating stuff for the agency back in BA. On my last day we borrowed Octavio’s parents’ car and took a trip into the hills. Gorgeous countryside once you’re out of the city. Was confused by all the greenery until remembered that summer here is tropical, i.e. it rains a lot. The further you drive the more the general mode of transport is a horse and a big comfortable gaucho saddle. Some of the beasts were scrawny and uncared for and made me want to cry. Some were shining and muscular and spirited and made me drool with covetousnous. The hill people, with their flat, bronzed, slanting faces and ragged clothes, appeared to be entirely indigenous. This is pretty unusual in Argentina because the Spaniards spent a couple of centuries systematically exterminating or (best case) ruthlessly driving out most of the original local chaps. Am guessing that a lot of these guys or their families came down into the country from Bolivia and Peru, but without some research on the subject I hesitate to sound authoritative.

Tucumán countryside

Well, it had to happen. Mr Random and Miss Head-in-the-Clouds took a wrong turn and continued down it for much longer than strictly necessary. The tarmac became gravel became earth and was peppered with massive pot holes. Began to seriously to worry about the wheels and suspension. If we got stuck this far out who the hell was going to lend us a horse to get to a telephone?! Thank goodness it was a sturdy VW and saw us through. Mind you, am only assuming it hasn’t fallen to bits since.

Eventually we stopped and called over to a Gaucho, baggy trousers and wide flat hat and all. He was doing something with a powerful and beautiful stallion whose sleek chestnut coat sang in the late afternoon sunshine. Our choices were another 30km of track or an ignominious return, metaphorical tails between our legs. We chose tails. Sometimes you gotta know when you’re beat. Anyway, there was a little store that sold miraculously cold beer along the way. So that was alright.

All's well that ends well

The Joys of Househunting

House hunting. I hate house hunting. It’s one of those things that saps your will to breathe. However, these things must be done and so I posted a chirpy little ad on a few sites, underlining my Englishness and my state of employment, and received therefore a veritable swamp of offers as everyone here for some reason thinks the English are well-mannered and well-behaved, and they’re almost without exception bat shit crazy about a nice posh English accent. Result! (and who am I to tell them that they’re sadly mistaken?)

Now to winnow the heap. Shared rooms = out. Living with landladies = out, as I won’t accept any limitations or raised badly pencilled-in eyebrows on my comings and goings. Price over US $300 a month all included = out too. It’s a real sellers’ market at the moment. I visited a couple of total non-starters of the dark and dank variety. My favourite was when the landlady put her hand on my arm and reassured me that the place had great vibes as no drink, drugs or men were allowed on the premises. Absolutely my kind of place.

Finally lit upon a big old house between fashionable Palermo and neat Almagro that has seven rooms and lots and lots of light and open-air areas too. It’s currently being redecorated with a move in date of 1 December and I decided to take a decent sized airy room with big windows and a ceiling fan. The very nice owners have asked me what furniture I’d like and have therefore requested as much storage space as possible given my once more burgeoning shoe problem. I think we’re going to get on well. Of course, sharing with 6 other people may turn out to be a total nightmare if there are food stealers/bathroom hoggers/noisy buggers/nosey buggers… but I can always move out in a couple of months if that’s the case.

Still on the responsible front, have been to see my bosses and colleagues at the translation agency and to get the wheels turning for my residency visa. All is well and all is well and all shall be well. Or at least it had bloody better be. We had a chat about general taxation and private health insurance… which, forgive me the pun, will surely shape up to be a major headache sometime soon. I start next week.

On Tuesday I headed to the Thelonius club, arguably the jazz bar in BA, with my charming new doctor friend Ezequiel. His saxophone teacher is in the sax-heavy band that plays there every Tuesday. He had scored us a table super close to the stage and next to the speakers. Kissed goodbye therefore to another few frequencies in my hearing range. Could have been worse. There could have been a tuba. The couple right in front of us were necking so hard that it was going to take a surgeon to extricate the guys tongue from his enamorada’s tonsils. The band was very good. In fact all I can say is if I could write like those guys play I would hit the delete key a lot less.

As this seems temporarily to have become a journal, Wednesday afternoon I pootled over to the La Boca house of yet another insanely handsome and charming doctor friend (God love all this intelligent eye candy) Pedro, to chew the fat and drink yerba mate, which I can only liken to very bitter caffeine-fuelled green tea accompanied by a ritual as complicated as a Japanese tea ceremony, and which is a national obsession in Argentina and Uruguay. I am trying to learn to like the stuff as it’s a major part of the social culture here. Trying many different brands. The nice thing is that all Argies are delighted to share their culture with you, and enter into such an exchange with enormous bonhomie and patience.

Thursday I applied for my criminal records check within Argentina in order to further my visa application. By Argie standards it was a hassle free experience. Long may it last… In the evening, craving a little culture Graciela and I headed to a Bach concert at the recently renovated Teatro Colon. It’s a beautiful theatre in the old tradition. That night it was filled with the great and the good. Or at least the big and the noisy. I’d guess attendance was about 80%. A vast chandelier hung from the incredibly high ceiling and gilded naked nymphs sprawled against lyres above the boxes. On the minus side, the acoustics weren’t up to much and there was no bar which meant no G&T during the interval. A trip to the theatre without gin is a very poor trip to the theatre in my opinion, and I think my mama would agree. The large blonde American lady next to us with hair the colour of (with apologies to Roald Dahl) a female tightrope walker’s tights that have not been washed for the entire circus season got extremely uppity at being told she couldn’t take photos with her giant new SLR camera and grumbled throughout the second half. Only extreme diplomacy on my part prevented Graciela from ramming her programme into the woman’s ear.

Import – Export

Folks, it’s time to begin the blog again. After seven months, one operation, two crutches, three (metal) screws, a big limp (that’s a noun not an adjective here please note), a whole lot of fizz, the odd toyboy or two, much good food and a good deal of time with my beloved friends and family I’ve made it back to Buenos Aires!!!!!

Super strange to be back. Spent so long chomping at the bit and pining to be here that once I actually made it back there was this wobbly feeling of, ok… well… now what? After a certain amount of soul searching, quite a few glasses of an exceptional malbec (purely medicinal) and a very large rare steak at my favourite restaurant, La Gran Parilla de Plata (The Big Silver Steakhouse. Love it.) in San Telmo, decided that I do in fact still want to live in this beautiful and wonderful country.

Am staying with my super cool friend Graciela in the downtown neighbourhood of Congreso. She came to collect me and bless her, turned really quite pale when she saw the mountain of impedimenta I had with me (well, a girl needs more than one pair of shoes in a city like this). Her apartment is teeny tiny but she’d arranged all her stuff so there was a bed for me. And we can almost see the floor beneath all my bags. It’s jolly lucky we get on so well…

Graciela is busily learning English because a) she wants to and because b) her masters degree in Environmental Law next year is going to involve a lot of literature in English. I am therefore helping or sabotaging her efforts, depending on how you look at these things, by teaching her my personal brand of verbage. If you want to know how to say “Don’t wade in the ornamental fishpond” or “Excuse me, you’re standing on my skis”, look no further. I’m your girl.

Fabulous to see old chums again. Chicago Rick is still living in his huge and awesomely designer grafitti-ed apartment in Barrio Norte… I forecast more fighting over hot boys. He has set up another internet project… a forum for questions on Buenos Aires www.bafaq.com. Made us all (i.e. bribed us with pizza and beer) go round for a think tank on it. For the record I am happy to be bribed in this way any time… but hold the anchovies.

Saturday managed to score tickets to go and see the Fuerza Bruta show. Maybe you’ve heard of it, as the company tours the globe. They are originally from Argentina so the tickets here are 50 pesos rather than 50 quid. Suits me. It’s a most unusual set up and almost impossible to describe… the space between the audience and the dancers changes all the time. They’re in front of you, behind you, to the side, right above you in a glass-bottomed swimming pool that lowers until you can touch it with the flat of your hand. It’s dynamic and exciting and worth seeing if you ever get the chance.

Saturday was also La noche de los museos,  an annual event in BA in which pretty much every museum and place of interest opens its doors from 8pm to midnight and the public pours in. What a great idea! Mind you, don’t really understand why people would queue for an hour to get into, say, the Fine Arts Museum when it’s free to get into and open every day anyway. We popped in before the line started to get long so I could see if there was anything done by one Leonidas Gambartes, a book on whom I spent the best part of half a year (on and off) translating. There was, and it was very good.

Went out of town on Sunday to Victoria, which is a tube ride and an hour on an old rickety train out of grubby Retiro station. Retiro is a horrible place: situated bang next to a big old slum, it’s grimy, hot and jam-packed with pickpockets, robbers and sundry Charlie artfuls. Expect to get liquid chucked over you and your bag snatched while you try to see through the goo.

Never mind, little Victoria dozes beneath the jacaranda trees and seems a long way away. I was invited for late lazy Sunday lunch with my super sweet hippy friend Nico and a round dozen of his cousins (it is de rigueur in all South American cousins to have approximately 30 first cousins. They find it deeply suspicious here that I only have three). Found them all seated in the shade on the patio around a vast wooden table eating paella and arguing about compost. Nico is something of a green-fingered fanatic and so salad vegetables of all varieties flourished around the walls. I gave him a bag of bird’s eye chilli seeds to grow for me because if I don’t keep my spice levels up I might die and they consider a sprinkling of black pepper dangerously hot here. Nico is also happily growing the biggest pot plant I ever saw. It lives in a bath and obviously enjoys the climate as it’s bigger than its container.

After that we went to the races. Can you believe I never saw a horse race before? I wish it had been somewhere a bit more glamorous than San Isidro hippodrome at 9pm on a Sunday, but you can’t have everything. Races are run three times a week and as there were no major prizes involved that day attendance was limited to the kind of grubby middle-aged man you might find in Ladbrokes any day of the week. The boys evolved some complicated system of betting that involved them losing their money every time. I declined to join them and watched the horses and the muscles bunching under their glossy coats as they stalked round the ring.

There was a fight on the bus on the way home. A strange rather elderly man with too-tight white clothes and a disturbing glassy stare that you felt was fixed on you all the time that he was looking into the middle distance was suddenly set upon by the large, bald and extensively tattooed gentleman standing next to him. God knows what set it off but one moment it was peace and quiet and the next man-in-white is being thrown across the bus and pummelled unmercifully. A woman pulled Mr Tattoo off him in the end, but not before he ended in my lap. Bloody hell these Latinos can all be a bit fiery at times.

Anyway, the evening ended well as a nice old chap with a thick thatch of grey hair and twinkling green eyes leaned up to help the crutch and I off the bus and we got to talking as we were both walking towards the huge Plaza Congreso. After a few platitudes he asked me “Sos importada vos?” which means “Are you imported?”… and I think that is the cutest thing I’ve heard all week.

Getting hot under the collar in Cartagena

An overnight bus journey with temperatures only fractionally above freezing ended with our being deposited at Cartagena bus terminal in temperatures only marginally below boiling. The humidity hit me like a sockful of wet cement.

Pretty Cartagena. Photo by author.

Cartagena de las Indias sits on the northern (i.e. Caribbean) coast of Colombia. It was (for those of you who like a little history with your cup of tea and hobnob) founded in 1533 by the Spanish and quickly became their principal gateway to South America for plundering and invasion. Not a major surprise then that with all the looted booty sitting around waiting to be shipped back to Spain Cartagena became a major focus for pirates of all shapes and sizes. In the 16th century alone it was besieged 5 times by these rough and ready buccaneers, including England’s very own Sir Francis Drake, who sacked the place in 1586 and took the astronomical ransom of 10 million pesos off the local burghers in return for not razing it to the ground to boot.

What a nice man.

Anyway, the Cartagenos understandably started to get a little miffed at all this unwelcome attention and built some pretty serious forts around the town, including the Castillo of San Felipe de Barajas, the greatest and strongest fortress ever built by the Spaniards in any of their colonies. It’s truly massive.

In spite of all the hassle this indomitable town continued to flourish and was one of the first to declare (fairly bloody) independence from Spain in 1810.

Today Cartagena is divided into three areas: the inner town (gorgeous, walled), the outer town (less gorgeous, also walled) and the peninsula of Bocagrande (not walled, merely posh).

Streets of Cartagena. Photo by author.

And it’s beautiful. Really beautiful. Immaculately preserved colonial architecture, cobbled streets, huge stone city walls, enough alleys to get even a GPS seriously lost, bougainvillea hanging from ornate balconies… if it wasn’t so bloody baking you could walk around it for a month without once getting tired of craning your neck.

We took beds at Northstar Hostel in Bocagrande which regrettably entailed sharing a dorm with an obnoxious (although it must be said harmless) Italian with a chronic case of verbal incontinence. He never ever shut up. He has also the distinction of being the only backpacker have ever met who travels with 5 button-down shirts. And hangers. Only an Italian…

Well, travelling has not increased my patience threshold vis-à-vis irritating people so was ready to strangle him inside of 48 hours. The hostel employed a seriously light-fingered cleaner who also never did any cleaning, and anyone who has ever shared a house and particularly a bathroom with a man will know that the species somehow generate an inherently sweaty, foot cheese aroma and a whole lot of scum around the sink. There was A/C – but only at night. The owner treated the place like his lounge and that the beds were some of the worst I had slept in since northern Vietnam.

It was time to move to another hostel.

Casa Venecia in the Gethsemani ghetto in the outer walled town turned out to be so much nicer. Lots of hammocks, a nice terrace, a big kitchen and a good crowd. There was only one dorm with A/C so the rest of the guests would all congregate in there. Not unusual to come in late and be obliged to kick three drunken, hairy, snoring blokes out your bed.

It’s worth mentioning here that while the coastal Colombians themselves are as a general rule friendly, welcoming and apt to break into impromptu salsa parties whilst waiting for a bus on the street, guests here (in hostels rather than in homes, where I gather one is pampered to the point where the very shirt is torn from one’s back as soon as one walks in the door and magically appears, washed, dried and smelling lightly of lavender come the following morning), well guests here in a client sense do come a definite second. It is absolutely normal for you to be in the middle of a complex conversation with your man at reception only for his mobile to ring and for him to break off without so much as a by-your-bloody-leave and spend a leisurely 20 minutes chatting to his mate about the latest football scores. It is also absolutely normal to order food (food which you know can be prepared inside of 15 minutes, and that’s probably including catching the damn fish) only to be left for two hours twiddling your thumbs while the chef has a nap, a beer, his dinner… whatever. He might forget your order. He certainly doesn’t appreciate any chivvying. Best not to try.

It’s party time while we’re in town. National independence day coincides with the culmination of the national beauty queen contest. Yes these prehistoric and pointless pageants are alive and well in Colombia, where the winners of the regional heats come to battle it out in identical bikinis and temperatures so fierce I have no idea how the makeup doesn’t just slide straight off their perfectly symmetrical faces. These lovely (if plastic… this IS Colombia) ladies often have patrons who fund huge publicity campaigns for them. It is all taken very seriously.

Taking a break from it all... Photo by author.

Meanwhile in the street it’s all just an excuse for an enormous party. Parades, dancers, floats, blaring music, rum sold on every corner, drunken men sleeping it off in the street… you can imagine. Everyone’s very big on spraying everyone else with foam, which is fun until you’ve had it squirted point blank into your eye once too often… to add to the dynamic you can fully expect some bastard to run up to you and rub a load of cornflour or blue clothing dye or even dirty black engine grease into your face with his smelly sweaty hands. You can expect this 500% more if you’re a foreigner. Started to get a tad fed up after a while. By the 3rd day of it, it seemed frankly malicious. There were roaming lads, covered from head to toe in thick smelly black grease threatening passers by that they would find themselves covered in this shit if they didn’t cough up. I did not cough up. Man I got angry. Gave one of them such a telling off and told the little shit to respect a lady who was obviously dolled up nice, out on a date and blatantly didn’t have any cash hiding in her little sundress. But I saw plenty of people give in. Having a black greasy apparition stretching his hands out to 2cm from your designer frock will do that.

However this aside Carnaval is a feel-good fun time and although I siesta-ed through a lot of the daytime stuff due to the heat it was overall a decent laugh, and much booze and dancing were had by all. I met a very gorgeous Argentine who insisted I salsa despite my pleas of two left feet. Foxie had a dance-off by a food stall with about 150 local chaps… Tall beautiful Amazonian goddesses don’t come along so often it seems. And they certainly don’t usually salsa.

Medellin… Marvellous Metro! Many mullets! Monstrous Mammaries!

Medellin’s skyscrapers and high-rise apartment blocks cling to the sides of a steep valley surrounded by craggy mountains more or less bang in the centre of Colombia. Once the capital of the world’s cocaine business in the 80s under the leadership of the infamous druglord Pablo Escobar, violent gun battles were the norm and the city’s homicide rate was among the highest on the planet. Escobar was assassinated in 1993 by US forces and with his death came big changes. Today Medellin has seriously cleaned itself up, is among the safest cities in Colombia and is altogether rather a nice place to be. It has a well-signed, reliable metro system (unheard of on a continent where even the publishing of bus timetables is considered dangerously optimistic) and some pleasant places to live, work and play.

Medellin nightscape. Photo by César S..

It is also home to more mullet hair-dos than you can shake a can of hairspray at. We began by playing spot the mullet but when scores ran into the hundreds in the first hour we gave up and played I-spy instead. The boys here are not afraid to resemble a who’s who of greatest footballers of the 80s. Long mullets, short mullets, curly mullets, straight mullets. Without even turning my head I can see four right now.

Monster Bazookas! Photo by contraquien

No description of Medellin would be complete without mentioning the boobs. The city’s primary industry must surely be plastic surgery. And it’s no augmentation by a modest cup size for these ladies. No it’s bee stings to a braless 36GG. If I had to say what these knockers most resemble I’d say beach balls. Any jogging type exercise would immediately engender unconsciousness. Most ladies’ clothing here is designed with these freaks in mind… tops are cut low and away and out and round. You can’t help but stare. I mean, even I goggle and walk into lampposts. Cannot imagine how anyone with these monsters expects to get taken seriously. Or perhaps they don’t. There’s even a word for it: pechonalidad… a neat amalgam of pecho, meaning bosoms and personalidad meaning personality.

Just by the by, it’s not uncommon here for a young lady on her 15^th birthday (15^th birthdays in South America being taken as seriously as a cross between an 18^th birthday and a wedding in the UK) to be given some nice new titties by her doting parents. Can’t help but be repelled by this development.

We arranged to surf the couch (www.couchsurfing.com) of a lovely couple called Santiago and Marcela, who live in a gorgeous little apartment overlooking a river in the pleasant and well heeled suburb of Poblado, home to many upmarket restaurants, bars… and a Hooters. They were very sweet, slightly mad, never ate at home if it meant cooking, and looked after us very well indeed.

Santi and Marcela arranged for us all, plus 5 of their friends, to rent a holiday home (with swimming pool) over one of Colombia’s innumerable bank holiday weekends near the village of San Jeronimo. We seemed to have landed on the only well behaved, mostly non drinking Colombians in the country, so bought a crate of beer and a couple of cartons of rum (you feel like you’re buying cartons of orange juice… only a bit stronger) to keep the pair of us going.

Santi drove us in the style of F1 up out of the Medellin valley around Saturday lunchtime. The road up was so, well the only word is vertiginous, that I half expected us to keel over backwards and tumble down into oblivion and an excitingly gory page one of the local paper. We escaped unscathed however. Missed driving through the longest tunnel in Colombia as was passed out and snoring. Awoke to find Marcela telling Foxie that she shouldn’t read in the car as this causes detached retinas. Unless someone with a recognised medical qualification tells me otherwise am going to file this in the same drawer as Pepe telling me I caught swine flu because I had walked around barefoot in the house and drank cold beer on a cold day.

The house turned out to be large, sprawling and set in a pretty green garden. The showers were cold water only, the water coming out of the taps was brown, the mattresses could have done duty as the floor and the bedding was non-existent. However, the large deep heated swimming pool and plentiful fridges for beer storage largely made up for these deficiencies.

Someone had brought a carton of aguardiente, the local hell brew. Every country has one. In Argentina everyone who isn’t sipping fine wine gets sloshed on fernet branca and coke. In Uruguay if you’re not fizzing from too much herbal tea you swill grappa with honey. In Bolivia they knock back a clear liquid sold in plastic bottles labelled (I swear) “DRINKABLE ALCOHOL. PLEASANT TASTE”. In Peru, as you will know if you are a regular reader of this blog, it’s pisco pisco pisco all the way (and woe betide you if you tell a Peruvian that Chilean pisco tastes better). I don’t know what they drink in Ecuador and I don’t much care.

Aguardiente tastes strongly of sour aniseed and I cannot imagine anyone actually wanting to drink the stuff. Mind you, after three or four shots you forget about the taste, which is probably the point. Paola brought out a vile orange Wilma Flintstone wig and everyone tried it on. I became official portrait photographer of the evening. Colombians like to have their picture taken. And I like taking pictures. It was a win-win situation.

The evening progressed. The level of the rum in the carton got lower. The beer cans accumulated. At some point I was picked up fully clothed and dumped unceremoniously in the pool, whereupon everyone who wasn’t actually swimming at that point stripped down to their undies and jumped in again.

Don’t remember too much of the rest of the night, or of going to bed but do remember waking up with a vile rum hangover and what felt like half the swimming pool in my sinuses. Lovely. Spent day soaking up sun in pool, being somewhat antisocial by reading a very good book passed to me by Foxie, watching the others assemble a large and complicated jigsaw, and cooking up a big pot of spaghetti bolognaise in the evening. Yum.

Mozzies got us that evening. They ate us through our clothes. They ate all of my feet and lower legs. They ate my arms. They ate Foxie’s face. They ate through quality Topshop leggings. We are what is technically known as a mess.