Goodbye Santiago!

Dear Santiago, 

Although I do not so much like you from the point of view of tourism, you are still dear to me. It is always late at night that I touch down on your runway and still later, when my tour bus makes it to your centre. I am tired, hungry and all those concrete and glass structures that greet me on the way to my hotel, I despise. What do you expect? I am coming from the South and from places where the woods and the waters have fascinated me over the years. As I sleep in your arms, I don't feel cuddled even in the super comfortable bed linen your hotels boast of. The feeling of going back to the south keeps knocking at my door, even when I am waking up to a day I don't feel like even starting. For I know it will be the day of the ‘city tour’. A day when you will impose more of your so called arty concrete in your old centre or the same glass in the business district. 

I get out in the open leaving the hotel behind, hoping of taking the bus not in your streets but back to the airport. I put on my head phones to cut the sound of the guide talking about history blah blah and more blah. I want to close my eyes and shut myself completely off from you when casually I look out of the window and see the people. Not too many, and certainly not less. I don't feel the difference from other cities in general. The cities that keep you company in your larger domain. Buenos Aires, Lima and Sao Paolo. All cities that I feel nothing in and only treat them with the same kind of remorse as I feel for you. 

The bus stops and I get down with my group. The same drill! I walk off away from them and into some street with a place to eat. I find a random eatery with some activity and occupy a table in the hope of making up for missing the same old hotel breakfast of scrambled eggs and coffee earlier in the morning. I know what I will eat, and I have to join the group back. So I eat, I pay and greet the waiter on my way out. As I walk back to my group at least my stomach is full with the ‘Avocado’ that I think is the only thing I love about you. The rest of the day goes on and there is nothing that I wish to write about you. In the hotel, I don't even feel like getting out to know you more. 

This, Santiago, has been going on since the first time I came to you in 2010 and ever since, I have told myself, never again! 

A few months back I finally managed to take you out of my tour itinerary by re arranging some flights that will only make me fly over you. So, when I landed this time at the same nightly hour as I always do, and felt the same on my way to the hotel, I smiled and said to myself, 'this thank god is the last time'. However an undercurrent crept up in me the night I went to bed. I still did not feel your cuddle and I still did not feel the warmth. But then I realised you are like this. You are always like this to everyone. To the many people that depend on you for their daily living, you never cuddle them. You simply provide. I know that all the cities do the same, they provide. But now as I know this is the last time I will be visiting you, I feel your eyes all over me. They are not asking me to come again. They are simply staring .. and in your stare I catch something. Something I cant explain through words but can only feel. 

Did you ask me something, through those eyes of yours? Coz even if you did not, i might have an answer. I finally know why I feel this way as I leave you. Not sad, but not happy. ‘Saudade’ is a word in Portuguese that best describes it. I at some moment of ‘yesterday’, while I walked out of the eatery felt like being a part of the people on the streets. People, not tourists! This, I have never felt in any other city and I don't know why I feel it with you. You were all dead to me and now suddenly you are alive and what a time to do it?!!

I know I wont come to you with a group of tourists. I know however I will come, just to be one of yours!

Bariloche to Puerto Varas .. The Tip of Patagonia!

On a cold windy evening, the sound of the waves hitting the shore makes me forget that this is not a sea I am hearing from. The Lake Region which comprises of land from both Argentina and Chile is the start of the wonder called Patagonia. When in Patagonia, if its not windy, the locals feel out of home. 

Lake Nahuel Huapi from my room in Bariloche

The morning starts all sunny with still views of the Nahuel Huappi Lake. The local guide very confidently exclaims “look at the lake now and then we will see it again on our way back”. As I sit by the view of my lake facing room, with the window just aptly open to let the sound of the wind and waves in, I can state that I have just begun to understand Patagonia. 

View of the lake from Mt. Companero

I first came to the town of Bariloche in 2013 and came here on a clue. A scene from the movie, ‘Motorcycle Diaries’, where ‘Che’ played  by Gael Garcia Bernal looks at the lake in front of him and then the mountains that fall on the waters and the words just flow out, ‘Viva Chile’, long live Chile! It is the first time he has crossed the borders of his country and entered a foreign land. I did the same crossing of the borders three years ago and then I don't remember exactly the feeling that went through me when I saw from the cross border waters the mountain that belonged to Chile. It certainly didn't feel like ‘Che’, It certainly didn't feel like Chile or that I was crossing Argentina. It just felt like Patagonia. 

The spring cherry blossom - Bariloche

The lake crossing of the Andes is one of the high points of North Patagonia with a full day dedicated to moving from Bariloche in the east to Puerto Varas, Chile in the west. Being on the east of the Andes Bariloche and inland gets its rain coming from the pacific blocked by the mighty mountains. Since more of ‘Patagonian Land’ is in Argentina, the minimal rainfall makes it look like a vast expanse of ‘Steppes’, mostly covered with dry grass. The rivers that originate in the lakes flow into the Atlantic and even then the green spots are limited only to the foot hills of the Andes on the Argentinian side. This scarce of green gives the Argentinian Patagonia its character. Where for kilometres and kilometres one sees nothing but dry grasslands. Where ranches known locally as Estancias feel like a mini province in its expanse. I have yet to see this expanse and I only write from what I have seen on the tip of the iceberg. 

  

The dry grasslands of North Argentinian Patagonia

Even though on the lake crossing it doesn't feel like a different country, once I’ve crossed over and gone just over 10 kms inland Chile, it feels like a different Patagonia. Grasslands become the terrain, but this time not like the Steppes but like the foot hills of the Alps. That is the reason the Germans and the Swiss were called by the then government of Chile to settle here and they did come, first alone and later joined by their families. With a landscape like back in Europe the highlanders sure didn't miss their home.  

The German feel is everywhere in the town of Puerto Varas, from the cafe’s to the beer that they serve here. The German thing however ends there and it gets purely Chilean when it comes to the way of dealing with people. 

The Osorno Volcano - Puerto Varas

Patagonian Chile feels different than Argentina through its people and more through its food. The people on both side of the Andes are warm, but I have to give it to the Chileans, for that little bit of extra effort they take to deal with tourists. The food, the seafood is a big point scorer too when compared with Argentina. Its all beef and meet in Argentina and even the fish is more or less the trout coming from the lakes. In Chile … What can I say about the seafood!!

It makes all the difference specially for a person like me. 

The Fish Market of Puerto Montt

The fish market of Puerto Montt feels like the original version of the Bergen fish market in Norway. 

Norway and Chile!! There is a whole lot I can write about these two nations. But this is not about the countries, as much it is about a region. A region where nature makes you look so small that you have no other option but to sit back in silence and wonder. 

The only thing to break that silence is the scent of its food and the warmth of the people of the South of South America. Nature alone is beautiful and for some people that would be enough. As far as I go, I need the culture to add on to the whole experience. Patagonia starts with the lake region and whenever I talk about it to the locals here they always tell me to go south. I simply smile and tell them, someday I will. I just will!

A Bug called South America

I am on a flight to Buenos Aires. I don't know how many more hours there are until we touch down and I don't even want to know(maybe coz they upgraded me to business class). I want to however land and get out on the ‘streets of the continent’. 

Buenos Aires although more European than any of its partner cities in South America, still feels one with the continent. In my travels, there have been these three regions on the planet that have fascinated me and made me go deeper into them for reasons best known to me. Scandinavia,  Eastern Europe and South America. When I think of these three regions I immediately think of the homogenous feel their elements have in whichever corner you touch. There is this distinct Scandinavian style in every aspect of how a town or a village looks to how the people that live in it are. The style gets a little more ‘not so easy’ to specify when you move east and go to Poland or Albania. However you still are ‘very aware’ that this is the east.

What makes South America and its ‘feel’ so unique is the expanse in which the character is spread. Nowhere on this planet would you find such tastes which are more or less similar and in an area so widely spread as South America. Yes, each one has its own different nature but it is not just the Spanish that is widely spoken makes up for the similarities. It is something that cannot be defined as easily as in Scandinavia or Eastern Europe, but you would know it is somehow South American.

The head of Patagonias untamed nature - Bariloche

 It was in 2014 - 15 that maybe I decided, more has to be done to promote the continent amongst the people back home, in India. To promote was to simply keep coming here no matter the number of people I have with me and certainly no matter if the economics are working out or not. 

The challenge itself starts from the flights. 

To Buenos Aires the length of the flight time in hours from India although maybe less than its North American counterpart like Chicago, but still the limitation of connectivity makes getting to the South a long shot and a more expensive affair than the North. However once you get to South America you would, like me, realise why you have to get there. The other part of the challenge would be the language, Spanish is an essential tool and needs to be employed from time to time with whatever skill quotient you have. The distance to travel and the absence of a rail network or more flights to conquer the expanse is yet another bit of a difficulty. However once you are on the continent you simply accept all this and keep moving, just as you do in India with its huge train network but double the madness. 

Pisco Sour with Parmesan Scallops in Paracas, Peru

The untamed nature, the warmth in its people or the food? I don't know what is it about South America that keeps me coming back. To people who call me to book the trip but are concerned with things among which primary is the price, I often say, “do not wait, simply come with me as I know the Bug has bit you, the more you wait the more you would suffer”.

As for me the infection grows.