BUENOS AIRES REDUX

Well, we're back in Buenos Aires to close our trip. Today, a few images I didn't get into the earlier posts: a couple of cool buildings, and a few tourist cliches such as the obelisk above. I don't get why every city thinks it has to have one, and why every city says theirs is the biggest. Hmm... don't think I'll go there.

One thing do like to see, though, are national art galleries. The one in Buenos Aires is fantastic. While the first floor is second-rate paintings by major world artists, the second floor devoted to Argentinian art is amazing. A lot of social comment in the realistic works. I remember especially a terrific piece from the 19th century: a man, woman and nursing child sit at their empty table and watch workers going off to the mine. I think its English title would read "No Job, No Food". Anyway, here's the gallery -- and just five minutes from our hotel.



Politics is ever-present. the grandmothers, mothers and wives of the disappeared continue to press for justice outside the presidential palace, as do soldiers from the Maldives/Faulklands war.



The economy ravages once grand buildings:



But there are still plenty of stunners:





Here, by the way, is The Haunted Tower. It's in the La Boca area. I've searched everywhere to find out why it's haunted. In my fractured Spanish I think I heard a local hairdresser tell me there was an actress who killed herself (or her aunt) there in the twenties. Anybody out there know the true story?



And, of course, ghosts brings me back to Recoleta cemetery and a cool tomb that missed my first entry:



Last shot today is from the land of the living, specifically Tigre, a suburb on accessible only by water. Indeed most of the homes are on individual islands too.



Tomorrow, I'm going to end the Argentina series with shots of the Botanical Gardens and national zoo. Then It's back to Canada and a few posts on writing as I get ready for the launch of my new novel, BORDERLINE!

Till then,

Allan

GRAVE ROBBING AT RECOLETA CEMETERY -- PLUS EVITA'S TOMB

Apart from the fantastic ice cream chains (Freddo's, Volares, etcetera), the rubber trees, La Boca, and the amazing art galleries -- the second floor of the National Museum of Art featuring Argentinian art is awe-inspiring -- Recoleta Cemetery, aka the Buenos Aires Boneyard is one of the most interesting places in the city. It's minutes away from our hotel. Above is the church by the entrance.

And here is a street scene from the City of the Dead. As you can see, everyone here is in a family mausoleum.



The cemetery is filled with rich people and dignitaries: a plot here is literally the most expensive real estate in the world. But the main reason tourists flock here is to see the mausoleum of Evita. (Peron is buried in a military cemetery, not here.) The flowers you see below are real. They change every day. She is truly beloved by the poor to this day, despite her taste in shoes and accessories.



Aside from the dead, the cemetery is home to cats. Here is the mayor, and an assistant on siesta:





But there's a darker side to the cemetery. Many of the mausoleums are collapsed or broken into -- great for grave robbers, necrophiles and the homeless who live in the tombs after dark. The thing is, it's up to families to pay for upkeep and pay a tax of 30 pesos for each dead person in the family tomb going back several hundred years -- so some people just say forget it. After 40 years the city takes back the plot and the bodies are dumped somewhere else.

Meanwhile you can see coffins -- and touch them where the doors are broken in or the glass smashed -- and also see violated mausoleums with stairs leading down to where the coffins from a century ago are stored. (Mausoleums can hold nine coffins, plus a great many more reliquaries. I gather when the tombs are full, it's the in-laws who are first to get the old heave-ho.





Anyway, it's all quite spooky and fun -- if you´re not the corpse.

We'll be coming back to Buenos Aires. But when I post next, I'll be taking you to the fabulous IGUAZU FALLS!!! Get your wetsuits on!

Yours,

Allan

DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA!

Yup, this is me outside the Casa Rosada -- aka the Presidential Palace in Argentina -- the place where Madonna sang that big song in the movie. Er, I mean where Eva "Evita" Peron gave her big speech. Argentina is the first country I've visited in South America, and to get there Daniel and I flew via Chile, i.e. over the Andes. Here's the view from the plane window.



Whenever I think of the Andes I think of that soccer team in the sixties or seventies whose plane crashed and the survivors had to eat their dead teammates to survive. Surveying the plane, I remember thinking I'd throw up if it happened to us. Tourists are very unappetizing. On the other hand, most are well-marinated.



This is our hotel in Buenos Aires. It's in the Recoleta area, which is pretty trendy with lots of artists and ice cream shops, not to mention the Recoleta Cemetery which has the most expensive real estate in the world. (True.) People are literally DYING to get in. Our hotel is a Melia boutique hotel. I love the Melia chain -- and owing to the downturn prices here are at 30% regular! It's tacky to mention, but honestly there's no other way we could afford a hotel that comes with a Pillow Menu. That's right. A Pillow Menu. It's like a food menu only for pillows. We chose a Lavender for soothing dreams. There's also a "Jasmine Pillow" and a "Roll Pillow" -- which the menu says is popular with honeymooners. Oh, and there's an "Orthopedic Pillow" too -- presumably for recovery from the "Roll Pillow".

Truly cool fact: Our hotel is where Peron 'kept' Eva before they were married.



Above is the cutlery chandelier at a terrific restaurant called Fervor, just a few doors down from the hotel. People eat like pigs here. A pound of steak for $15 at a 5*. I ordered the steak, and Daniel the vegetables -- everything's à la carte -- and we shared. But most people eat EVERYTHING!!! Maybe because restaurants only open at 8 p.m. and people are starving when they enter.

Also near our hotel is a little parkette with the most AMAZING rubber trees. If you look closely you'll see me among the roots of one of them.



I don't want to bore you with standard guide book pictures -- as you may have guessed -- so here are a couple of shots from a poor area known as La Boca. It's in the old port district where the houses are made of wood and painted hugely garish colours. It's been like this for centuries. A poor area, people painted their houses using the leftover paint from the old ship building places. The area used to be flooded a few times a year, so anyone who could afford to got the hell out. It's great by day but knife robberies by night. I loved it.





And here's a street puppeteer from the weekly Sunday flea market on San Telmo.



Mainly the flea market is lined with tourist-trap "crafts". See Daniel below at beginning of the gauntlet:



But there are also great antique stores, street shows like the one that puppeteer put on, and also people who just turn on a boom box and start to tango; or who walk around trying to sell odd stuff like feather dusters:





Well, I'm tuckered out. Next time out I'll take you to the cemetery. Oooooooooh! Scary stuff! :)

Yours,

Allan.

A BLOG VIRGIN NO MORE!

I swore I’d never do this. That I’d stay pure. That I’d save my writing for my books.
“Everyone’s doing it,” my editor coaxed.
“But once I’ve done it, I’ll have to keep on doing it,” I said. “My friends who blog do it two or three times a week. They’ve addicts.”
“But it’s fun,” my web mistress winked. “You’ll like it,” (Her name is Christine, but I call her Madame and she calls me Sir, and she helps me with everything to do with technology, because I’m basically terrified of anything with strange initials like URL or pdf or RSS. I’m also a very old friend of her sister, Louise, who goes by the name of Blinky.)
Anyway, Madame me set up with this blog pad, and she’s decorated it all nice for visitors and all, so what can I say? I’ve been seduced! I’m a blog virgin no more!
AND I WANT ALL THE WORLD TO KNOW!
So tell your friends! Tell your relatives. Tell complete strangers, like the people at the checkout counter, or half the people on your Facebook page. (That is if your Facebook page is anything like mine.)

“Great,” I hear you say. “Just what the world needs. Another writer with a blog. So tell us, oh Great One, who thinks he’s so important people should actually spend time reading his Blah Blah Blah -- what’ll we get if we come to your blog?”
Well, okay, yeah, I’m a writer, so some days I’ll probably blog about stuff that comes up in my work. For instance, my novel Chanda’s Secrets is being made into a movie in South Africa and I’ll be flying over on Friday to be on set. It’s a German/South African co-production set to open in Berlin in the fall. The shoot is in Elandsdoorn, a town of about thirty-thousand people, a two-hour drive north-east of Johannesburg. It’s the first time I’ve had a book turned into a film, and the chance to be back in Africa is wonderful, especially with all the local actors and the rich cultural mix. So, yeah, I’ll probably blog about that.

And in January, I’ll be on a private writer’s retreat in Cayo Largo, Cuba, for a couple of weeks, working on the first draft of the first book in a new series for HarperCollins: The Grave Robber’s Apprentice. I write for a couple of hours before breakfast, then hit the beach, swim out half a mile to the reef and relax with the corals and barracuda, then write a few hours before and after supper. It’s kinda perfect, and there’s always lots of interesting and/or weird tourist encounters, so hey, that should be good for a few entries.

Then in February my coming-of-age/ mystery/ thriller Borderline comes out in Canada (March in the U.S.) from Harper, so I’m sure there’ll be some self-indulgent commentary on that front. And stuff about researching with a guy from the ACLU, and a hostage from the Iran hostage taking in the 1970s, yadda yadda.

And in March, I’m taking a break with Daniel to either Vietnam and Cambodia or northern India for two weeks. (We haven’t decided. If you’ve been to either, please let us know what you think we should pick.)

April is my The Grave Robber’s Apprentice deadline, which should be fun if you like reading about nervous breakdowns. (Blogging is also the perfect writer’s tool at deadline time, actually, because it gives writers another reason not to be doing what they should be doing -- like, uh, writing the damn book -- which only adds to the incredible pressure that is so essential to getting things done.)

Then in May, Daniel and I are off to Italy -- Venice and Florence, mostly -- to do research (ha ha) for The G.R.A. sequel, The Necromancer’s Revenge. And face it, if I can’t write something interesting about hopping onto gondolas and seeing reliquaries with the severed limbs and organs of medieval saints, then I really ought to give up writing and sell tacks.

In between the above, I’ll write about things that pop into my head -- or if I’m blocked, maybe toss in a short series on recent trips, like my time this fall in Argentina, doing hairpin turns in the Andes, skinny dipping at Iguazu Falls, and checking out the crypts in Buenos Aires.

Oh, and I’ll always try to include a picture -- except for stuff like skinny dipping and such: The world has enough horror.
More important, I’ll be answering any questions you may have about writing or whatever. So come on, feel free -- what have you always wanted to ask a writer? Or this writer? Don’t be shy. Just ask. I’m an open book -- even if some of my pages are torn.

UPDATE: The film adaptation of CHANDA'S SECRETS is called LIFE, ABOVE ALL and will premiere as an Official Selection at the 2010 Cannes International Film Festival.