Chile wasn´t at chilly at all. Thank goodness the hotel was aireaconondicionado, although the unit in the room sounded like a tin of marbles being vigorously shaken. The taxi driver from the airport royally screwed us over, but we didn´t realise that until a week later, when I figured out the exchange rate.

There are two hills in Santiago so we climbed them both (with the help of a cable car (funicular) in one case). The tallest hill has a very tall statue of The Virgin with a ladder running inelegantly up her back. The other one has lots of escarpments and battlements (and no doubt other other-ments that I didn´t notice) to which the conquistadores retreated when the indians onslaughted them. It was very vertiginous and I´m glad I wasn´t an indian thirsting for spanish blood, it would have been an uphill battle all the way to taste any.

We also tried the subway system, which appeared at first to have entrances but no exits (perhaps tourists accumulate down there, wandering aimlessly in increasingly desperate groups trying to escape). It was very clean and quiet and efficient, there was no rattling, no open windows, no opening of doors yourself, no fear of breakdown, cave-in, etc. which made the whole experience a bit of an anticlimax; I missed the familiar peril of Línea A in Buenos Aires.

We also saw some strange gypsy-looking women bothering passers by. I didn´t find out what they were actually doing until I encountered one in Mendoza. It turns out they ask you for a coin, and when you give them one, in order to repay your generosity, they make an incantation to give you luck. They then sit you down and offer a more powerful incantation to protect your pocket. This involves producing a frond of some kind, which has to be placed over your wallet. In fact your wallet has to be open for it to work. In fact it has to be placed inside your wallet. And for some reason it involves the gypsy lady gripping tightly on to the wad of peso notes contained therein. I don´t know what happens after that; my commonsense (which had been shouting insults at me through the deafening heat for some minutes) finally took over, and somehow extracated me without any embarassing financial loss. Mendoza was otherwise very green and tranquil. I think you´re meant to go trekking in the Andes when you visit Mendoza; that´s what the´international stylist´ who cut my hair thought I must be there for. But we were too jet-lagged and it was too hot for any such altitudinous exertions.

Unfortunately we discovered that A had left her lorazopam on the plain in Santiago, so the flight from Mendoza to BsAs was a little on the terror-stricken side, but we arrived unharmed (except for all the bones in the hand that A had been holding, which were broken).

I tried going hayfever-drug free one morning, but didn´t last until theafternoon. But with the drugs, I´m merely snotty, which is tolerable (except that my spanish has atrophied to the point that, when I say ´a packet of tissues please´ in my best castellano porteño, the kiosco attendant looks at me like I´m a gibbering madman and I have to point).

It seems that in the milongas I´m been demoted to b-grade tourist - I get to see the backs of ladies´ heads alot and was relegated to the second row at El Beso last night. I guess I have to put some hard yards back in and rebuild my ´tanguero-about-town´ image again from scratch. How fickle and amnesiac the tango world is. Oh well... I did get to dance with a niceRussian lady, and G was there practicing her new milonga styles on me.


The new apartment is nicer than the old one, although I look forward to the day that light-fittings are installed. The neighborhood is full of interesting buildings, including lots of deco architecture. Dragons and lions greet me from the building across from my balcony, and the Palacio Barolo is round the corner, which is a palace built in the 20s to reflect the structure of Dante´s Inferno. The Italian millionaire who built it apparently wanted to house Dantes remains there, for some reason.