GOOD SHOES ARE A LIFT

RIO GRANDE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 30
Back home I search charity shops for good English Church’s shoes hand made in Northampton. I wore a pair of Church’s on the ride south from Mexico last year. They survived staying at my friend’s estancia on the Rio Dulce. A dog ate a shoe on a previous visit; Church use fine-tasting English leather and Eugenio has large dogs (see last year’s BLOG). The shoes survived 22,000 kilometres on a bike. They survived rain and snow and the heat of the engine. They survived six months in Snr. Preto’s cold store in Ushuaia. A good polish and they looked as good as new. Now the left shoe has the sole raised 3 cm to match the rised heel on the cast. The shoe looks kind of cute. I could have the other shoe raised and be as tall as my two younger sons – nearly as tall. Just a thought. I’m not sure that I enjoy being looked down at…Our youngest, Jed, claims I'm shrinking.

TALL STEMS, HIGH PRICES

RIO GRANDE: WEDNESDAY: AUGUST 29
Javier and I are taking Graciela to dinner at the local Chinese. I hope to eat prawns. Pepe drops by. His wife’s Landrover has been serviced. He has a better idea than the Chinese. He drives to a new restaurant on the seafront. The owner is a friend of Pepe’s. Everyone is either Pepe’s friend or Graciela’s friend or Javier’s friend. Rio Grande is that type of town. The restaurant is big and smart. Restaurant prices are governed by the height of the wine glass stems. These glasses are tall, the tablecloths are thick and starched. Diners at other tables are different from most people in town. They are paler skinned.
Pepe departs with the owner to select wine from the cellar. He chooses a 2004 Malbec, excellent. We eat calamari in batter crisply fried, mussels in garlic sauce, ravioli. Javier gluts on an ice-cream cup that would fill a milk pail. Pepe drops us back to the hotel. Graciela and I chat in the kitchen for a couple of hours. Not much travel for a Travel BLOG but a good evening…

FIDELISMO

RIO GRANDE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29
Never before have I watched myself perform in Spanish on TV. Now I have a CD of Sunday’s program. My actions are disturbingly familiar. Where have I seen that exaggerated raise of eyebrows, the opening wide of eyes, hands spread to proffer a self-evident truth to a captive audience?
I search my memory.
The conceit that invests a superior being?
No! No, surely not.
Truth is unavoidable.
I have been imprinted by those years in Cuba, imprinted by those four-hour speeches.
Fidel, over the years, has become a caricature of Fidel.
I am a caricature of the caricature.

WOW!

RIO GRANDE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 28
My appologies to my readers: I am slightly inebriated. Pepe came by. He made me walk on the bad ankle, stand one footed on it, declared the break mended. He will change the cast, have new xrays, enforce high intensity rehab and have me out of here on 8th September.
How do I feel?
Immensely grateful.
Immensely relieved.
I have been scared of coming out of this as an invalid and a drag on my beloved wife.
Right, that's enough truth.
Anyone for tango?

FALKLANDS/MALVINAS

RIO GRANDE: MONDAY, AUGUST 27
I am returned to my corner of the kitchen at the Hotel Aregentino, back to the cast iron range. An overweight professor visits. Will I be the guest speaker at a reunion of mostly academics Saturday afternoon? The Minister of Education is expected as a guest.
I agree because he comes via Graciela’s office.
I agree because I am flattered.
I agree because I am a Brit and educated to be polite.
I agree because I have drunk only one cup of coffee and my mind is fully functional.
Then he says, "Some will question you on the Malvinas."
Oh, shit…
I sit for an hour or so questioning myself as to how I should reply.
At least I am faced with a more acute concern than my Spanish verbs.
Later a cab comes to take me to sign the VISA chit for my wheelchair. An oil worker accompanies me. We discuss whether I will be safer with crutches or a walker. Walkers are more stable. They don’t work on stairs. Elevators are scarce in the hotels I frequent. I’ll decide next week.

TRUCKS MAKE ME NERVOUS

TOLHUIN: SATURDAY, AUGUST 26
We have glutted on barbecue chicken and admired the lake in brilliant sunshine. Cloud closes in and we drive back at night in heavy snow. Truck traffic is heavy. A couple of trucks have lost traction on an upslope and come to a halt. The ex-future is a good driver and we are safe in his big double-cab 4x4 pickup. However trucks make me nervous – trucks on ice. Scared of losing traction, the drivers hit the hills at speed and keep going no matter what lies ahead. Weird, I will be happy to be back in the Hotel Argentino tucked up in my own bed with my foot propped up on a stiff pillow.
My own bed, that’s the weird bit: pretending to be home because I want so badly to be home.

STAR OF TOLHUIN TV

TOLHUIN: SATURDAY, AUGUST 26
I am on TV this afternoon. The program goes out live. Three of us sit in the log cabin in front of the wood stove. One is a gaucho poet in the true Argentine tradition (though he is Uruguayan): early sixties, thin as a stick, white moustache, black Basque beret and silk neck scarf fastened with a gilt broach. He has been conversing with trees and horses and bottles of red wine for fifty years. His voice carries a rythm as he talks to the camera of nature’s gifts and nature’s cruelties…While I cruelly picture bit-part Country and Western performers in the B movies of my youth.
To my right sits a musician. A good guitarist, he plays a classical introduction. Later he plays a great tango.
Most of the program is focused on me, the English writer with the broken foot. I talk, I answer questions and worry that I am using the wrong verb tense.
Later the musician asks for my thoughts on the Malvinas.
Duck and run…

GLUTTED ON MEAT

roboloco
graciela holds harmonica

TOLHUIN: SATURDAY, AUGUST 25
We sit on solid benches at a solid table in the shorefront window of the log cabin. An enormous wood stove warms us. As does red wine. The ex-future is a great barbecue cook. We snack on a sausage or two. Then we eat meat. We eat more meat. Then we seriously eat meat. First comes the thin end of the skirt. Then the middle thickness. Finally the thick end. Finally? A steer has two skirts. We recommence at the thin end of the second skirt…
Roboloco is with us.
Glutted, we drink a little more red wine and listen to Robo’s guitar, his harmonica and his patter. He is a natural entertainer. He knows all the party tricks and performs them with brilliant elan. The ex-future’s daughter is in heaven as he pulls his mouth askew with a long black hair plucked from Luisa’s head.
And I am in heaven for an old man with a broken foot. I am amongst friends who will remain friends for life. Robo presents me with a copy of his book recounting the pedallo marathon. The gang add signatures and comments to the front page. I lie in bed and listen to three sets of gentle snores and worry that the crutches will slip on the tiles when I make the next trip to the bathroom. Getting up in the night is an old man’s complaint…

LAGO FAGNANO

log cabin canasta club

TOLHUIN: SATURDAY, AUGUST 25
The town of Tolhuin is known as the heart of Tierra del Fuego. It occupies a rise at the head of Lake Fagnano and lies in the mountains midway between Rio Grande and Ushuaia. Virgin forest encloses the town and much of the population work at the timber mill. Others are employed in tourism. Roboloco owns four cabins and a campsite down on the lakefront. An ablutions block with hot and cold showers and clean lavatories serves the campsite. A commedor near by caters for those who don’t cook. For those who do cook, there are heaps of firewood and huge barbecues. The view down the lake is superb. Snow caps rise above dark forest while the light continually changes on the lake as does the colour of the water, dark blue, light blue, slate grey, pale smoky grey. Birds of prey spiral leisurely overhead. A pair of duck fly by and skid into land, feet splayed, on the dark, silky-surfaced lagoon that lies behind the strip of paddocks along the foreshore. Graciela and Luisa are playing cards in the cabin. I am outdoors in my wheelchair. Graciela has wrapped me in a grey blanket. The ex-future is tending a mountain of meat behind me while his daughter plays a complicated game with small dolls. A continual swell breaks and sucks at the pebble beach. The blanket makes me feel old. I am old. Tough shit!

ROBOLOCO

TOLHUIN: SATURDAY, AUGUST 25
I travel by pizza delivery bike. I have been accused of lunacy. Good!
Graciela, the ex-future and his daughter (6), Schoolteacher Luisa and I spend the weekend in a beachfront cabin on Lake Fagnano. Our host is a serial lunatic. As a teenager he rode a 50cc mobillette from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia: 3000 kilometres. Aged forty, he pedalled a pedalo the circumference of Lake Fagnano. Picture the lake. It fills a narrow trench in the mountains and is 117 kilometres long. It runs west to east. The prevailing wind blast from west to east. The weather changes in minutes, dead calm to a gale, bright sunshine to driving snow. Ten-foot waves smash onto pebble beaches. This is no place for a pedalo. Little wonder that Roberto Daniel Berbel is known locally as Roboloco.

MENACE IN THE FOREST

RIO GRANDE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 24
We are going away for the weekend. Graciela has rented a cabin in the forest. The forest is inhabited by wolves and bear and mountain lions and packs of wild savage dogs. I will sleep seated in my chair facing the cabin door with a shotgun in my lap.
Or we will confront vast quantities of meat on the grill and I will inhale vast quantities of second-hand cigarette smoke.
Which is most dangerous?
Pepe states that Tierra del Fuego stock trek vast distances in search of fodder: the meat is cholesterol free.
Pepe raises cattle and sheep on a 17000-hectare estancia.
Should I believe him?

TOWARDS FREEDOM

RIO GRANDE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 24
Pepe believes the bone is heeling. Xrays delay the heeling. For now he will leave the cast as it is. In ten days he will split the cast and make a further inspection. The cast will be replaceable. Take it off and I can bathe myself. Put it on and I can put some weight on the foot. I can travel. I must cut my possessions to a minimum. I must make a list. First I must be able to carry my crutches on the chair.

HEY, MY LOVELY, CARE FOR A RIDE?

RIO GRANDE: THURSDAY, AUGUST 22
I am mobile. Pepe had brought a wheelchair. It is a 2008 model drophead sports-coupé of a chair. I do spins. I weave between the tables in the hotel lounge. I make for the kitchen. The wooden doorsill is vertical barrier one centimetre in height. Buff! I back up and attack the sill at speed. Double Buff!
Pepe watches contemptuously.
The art is to lean back on the approach, then forward as you touch the sill – so Pepe instructs me.
I try. Further failure.
I reach for my crutches. More failure - I am trapped by the footrests.
This chair is a deluxe model. It offers many options. I must study the mechanics.

A NEED TO FORGET

RIO GRANDE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST, 22
I am in position, back to the iron rage. A mini cab driver sits opposite at the kitchen table and sips mate.
He is in his fifties. He is from the north. He and his wife have been in Tierra del Fuego for three weeks. She works in a shop. He drives from 7 in the evening to 7 in the morning. Back home there is no work for fifty-year-olds. They had a good life before the crisis of 2001/2. They owned a small house in town and a weekend cottage. Their children expected to attend university. The crash came and the good life ended. In those two years only the rich survived, those with hoarded capital hidden abroad. I travelled through Argentina for six weeks last year. Now I have been here for more than a month. Never have I overheard people talk of those years.
I mention this to three women.
"We want to forget," answers one.
"Yes, we want to forget," agrees the second.
Silence apart from the suck of tin straws in mate…The third says, "There is so much that we wish to forget."

KICKED BY A DOCTOR

RIO GRANDE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22
Pepe drops by. He has had a haircut. The result resembles Tierra del Fuego’s pastures: short and blown tufty by the wind.
Pepe asks if my ankle hurts.
How to differentiate between ache and pain?
Pepe believes in direct action. He wears work boots. He swings his artificial leg and hacks the underside of my foot. "Does that hurt?"
"No."
He raps me on the ankle. "Does that hurt?"
"No."
"Good," he says.
I say, "Sometimes it aches in the night."
"Of course it does," says Pepe. "It rests against hard plaster."
I feel foolish. "Right," I say.

GUILTY OF THOUGHT CRIME

RIO GRANDE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 21
I have been sitting in the kitchen, back to a warm old cast-iron range. Fellow residents drop scraps of information. X tells of his father, a writer arrested during the military dictatorship and condemned to ten years in jail. Police ransacked the family home once or twice a month, turned everything upside down, deliberately imprinted their prisoner’s children with fear. At the change of Government, the father was released under amnesty.
X is a close friend of Graciela. They have known each other for years. Graciela learns from me of his father’s arrest.

FACADE

three sages
javier, fernando & me

RIO GRANDE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 21
I have been skimming Thorn Tree, the message board for travellers sponsored by Lonely Planet. Many young travellers seek a beach to hang out on with other young travellers, some place cheaper than back home. I wonder what they learn of the countries through which they travel. What do they learn of the people?
Argentina is a favourite of young travellers. They trek the national parks, admire the forests, mountains and glaciers, enjoy the laughter and party spirit of the people.
What they experience is a façade.

DUMB GENERALISATIONS

RIO GRANDE: MONDAY, AUGUST 21
Each hour I lie on my bed and do leg lifts. Today I achieve three consecutive series of thirty lifts. While exercising, I cogitate on a piece I have been asked to consider on the difference between young travellers and us oldies. Here is one quick generalisation. Young travellers journey alone by day and gather in the evening to swap war stories. Oldies enjoy exploring in a group with a knowledgeable guide by day and separate in the evening into couples and foursomes

ILLICIT ENRICHMENT

Argentine snack

RIO GRANDE, SUNDAY, AUGUST 19
Have I made the right decision? Time will tell. Meanwhile I am invited to Sunday lunch by the ex-future novio. Javier drives. We eat in the carport. Warm weather tyres fills one corner by the doors, bits of machinery, planks, kindling, logs. The wood grill runs the full width of the back wall. The long table is loaded with meat: beef, blood sausage, ordinary sausage.
Fellow guests are the Sunday gang. The pregnant grandmother spends the first hour indoors preparing salads: one of Brussel sprouts in olive oil, the other of eggplants and onion, also in oil.
Conversation centres on the previous Governor. He bought votes by creating 7000 non-existent jobs for his supporters. Now he, his wife and brother-in-law are charged with illicit enrichment and the Province must beg funds from Central Government.

MUM, DO YOU HAVE A MINUTE?

mum and son

RIO GRANDE:

FRIDAY, AGUGUST 17
I drink my morning coffee and watch Graciela watch her younger son complete an application form at the kitchen table. For Graciela this is a rare moment of relaxation. She is content to watch and love. Then, maternal, she points to an empty box on the form that requires a date.
I might be watching Bernadette and our eldest boy back home.
At what age do sons stop bringing home their application forms for Mum’s advice?
And do Mums ever have sufficient energy to stay awake during the showing of a DVD?
Bernadette and I have been together for nearly thirty years. I don't recall Bernadette ever staying awake through an entire film.

Graciela slept through three showings of The Last King Of Scotland earlier in the week. Last night she nodded off to Apocalypto.