Last Tango in Buenos Aires

Argentine Men -Yummy? Not

I was warned. But as so often, I didn’t listen. ‘The men in the North are a lot more macho than Portenos’, I was told, once they’d finished rolling around in hysterics when I said I was moving to Salta.

I don’t regret it, it’s provided me with a good business and the opportunity to publish. It’s been a disappointment that there are no hiking trails as there are in Mendoza and Bariloche. But the biggest disappointment has been the men.

As travellers coming through have said to me, ‘There are absolutely no handsome men in Salta.’ The lack is truly noticeable. Not only not handsome but lacking in creativity, intelligence, drive and manners. And fairly useless in bed. Not only has there not been a Women’s Lib movement here, they haven’t even heard about it as they don’t read more than the football scores. For a liberated woman, it is beyond tough (although for the local women it’s much worse – alcoholism, domestic violence and incest is hugely prevalent).

They seem to feel it somehow degrading to spend time with a woman and if they do enjoy the company of one, their mates will belittle them. Therefore they prefer to go to dinner and drinks with each other, all homophobics in denial together and call a woman at the last moment leaving just enough time to soften her up with ONE drink for sex.

They seem to feel it’s their RIGHT that you put out if they want it. I can’t even go dancing without a few men glaring at me all night because I won’t give in. Others come up to dance with me and play drums on my pubis.

The amigovio was nice enough to start with, respectful, made plans in advance but as usual it turned to use-abuse. Why do they do this? Everyone says they are afraid of compromiso but what commitment am I going to have with a guy of 29 who insists that everyone call him Bubu (Teddy Bear) and posts cartoon caricatures on Facebook with the names of his friends. Duh.

Once they feel they have you, it becomes a battle of wills to see how cold and distant they can be but still keep you available for sex. This is the prevailing characteristic of the Argentine male – the heavy come on and the heavier retreat, sometimes a total disappearance. They call you every day or more usually text, saves money and has a wall of distance,  ‘Hola!!!! Como Estas?????’ What is with the punctuation of the young? And why is every sentence interspersed with a row of ‘jajajajajajajaj’s when the hilarity of the words should be more than apparent? Then contact drops to once a week, once a month, every three to six. The coldness is heartless as it can only be in a country that has fostered so many military juntas. Go away and you’ll get mails asking when you’re coming back. Come back and you get silence. Is it punishment for going or regret at acting as though they gave a damn?

And there’s no communicating with these guys. The only talk they hear is the massage of their egos. Try saying, ‘it makes me feel used as a prostituta when you come into town and call me up at eleven o’clock at night’ and you’ll get an apology while they still want something, but if they don’t get it, there’s a tirade of denial and projection culminating in a sarcastic dumping.

Put up and shut up.

And women do. My local friend, a woman who gives the chemo treatment in the hospital, single, told me that a woman here would have gone running out to look for him at midnight because they’re so afraid of ending up alone. Her amigovio pitches up at 4am when he’s finished drinking whisky with his buddies and calls from her front door. She told him no so that’s that. The women with intelligence are single and will remain that way until they put up with use-abuse.

In Buenos Aires at least they're yummy and I had the option do date foreigners when the clashing cultures got too overwhelming - Here there is not one.

How to Become an Emotionally Unavailable Woman

'How to become an emotionally unavailable woman' and 'Do emotionally unvailable men ever get their shit together?' These were just two of the Google searches that were directed to Last Tango today. As well as a really long comment from a woman dating an Argentine that will have to be answered directly. Suffice to say she sounds as though she is hurting - And the bottom line is 'If it hurts it isn't love'. What do I know? I'm on the road for the Newspaper at the moment and in TIlcara, the manager offered me a room half price in my favourite hotel. I walked through the garden to the lovely casita and I had to go back and tell her, trying not to cry like una estupida that I could not stay there. 'I understand' she said. Too many memories. Everyone has them with an Argentine man.

All men hurt you. But it possibly hurts more with an Argentine because of the lies, because women really want to feel loved. You really feel loved and then they yank the rug and maybe you discover a bunch of horrors - either way it's not respectful and it hurts. Then it hurts more because they won't set you free but keep coming back, usually by text, saying they miss you. It's a seduction. RaZa did this to me many times until a friend in Cafayate said to me 'Oh Bullshit. I can't hear any more of these lies.' I thanked her and asked her to keep telling me the same. Because a person who loves you but wants to leave doesn't try to keep you dangling. Love is shared, Lust is selfish.

So the commenter and the second search - 'Does an Emotionally Unavailable Man Ever Get His Shit Together?' Bottom line - NO. We women seem to want to change our lovers. There is some really strange gene impertive going on that attracts us to disasters so we can make them different. Someone with more degrees than me has to explain it but I do know - we need to Stop. Because it aint working. And there is a very, but very, remote possibility they will change but ask yourself (as an eminent psych once said to me) How much of your life do you want to waste on the risk? (I was out of there the next day) If you can sit quietly and say to yourself; 'I am willing to accept this exactly as it is and make no more complaints or demands' then stay. If you wish it was diiferent, it's probably time to leave.

I tried it.The becoming emotionally unavailable - It didn't work. In fact it made it worse.

RaZa begged to see me enough that I thought that at least he was into me. I thought I Could handle his emotional unavailability and enjoy what we were able to create together. But it couldn't be done. The less I wanted, the more he acted out to get a distancing reaction. The more emotionally unavailable I was (which is an act for a woman - it's that old tactic of pretending to be busy but that only works in the first three months) the more he lured me into something so he could drop me from the precipice. But oh so subtley. It was hard to really get a handle on the situation because of all the excuses and the vanishings.

Finally, you can love someone for whatever thwarted reason but walk away because you don't feel good. Chemistry, great sex, spiritual connection, knowing that inside there's something different - meaningless if you don't have open communication followed by great sex. Abandonment followed by great sex is an illusion.

You don't have to love a pussy to have love and respect in return but your first relationship has to be with yourself.

Groceries

Cafayate is cheap. It is not so third world that it needs to be this cheap. You can have a week’s fresh groceries for a tenner and all the wine you can neck down from the bodegas at the end of the road. Canned goods are more expensive as they have to be trucked in from afar.

Living in the middle of town there are supermarkets all around – what we would know as a seven elevens but without all the goods. A whole aisle of shelves can be stretched out with a few plastic washing up bowls and coloured plastic buckets. Cleaning is important here. Every day a thin film of sandy dust covers everything in the house. In the dry season of winter, it will be a thick film of red sand, turning the white porcelain of the bathroom suite into a dust bowl. Every day women are outside hosing down the pavement in front of their houses in an attempt to stop dust tracking into the house. It’s an ongoing battle against an enemy that slinks back in overnight or is whipped back in by a ten minute wind shower.

I go shopping at the market and choose between who has the nicest greenest vegetables that day. Everything is piled up unpackaged. The broccoli has been recently hacked low down from its stalk with all its blue leaves still attached. All my vegetables, fruit and salad is placed into one bag and a price totted up. I’m not going to quibble – it comes to less than a pound. I buy chicken in the same shop. The butcher smiles as I explain in Spanish that I want it boneless and skinless. Here they would eat the lot and give the rest to the dog. They wrap six eggs in a row inside two sheets of newspaper. I could buy chicken at the house two doors down. It would somehow seem like justice to eat the cock that wakes me up early every day – not the sort of cock one wants in the morning – but I can’t face eating something I know even if only aurally. So I avoid the place.

Cafayate Corso - Carneval

It was full on party week last week in Cafayate, Salta. Not only was there a corso along calle Rioja three nights running but there was the Serenata - a week long folk music festival - the most important in the North.

 

The street was packed with people and parillas and kids running around spraying espuma into your face. They have an unpleasant habit of blasting it straight in the eye.

 

It was amazingly well-organised for such a small city and some of the costumes and dancing displayed a huge amount of work.

 

After seeing corsos inside big buildings like the sambadromo, in Rio, designed for the purpose, it was fun to be part of the community on the street in Cafayate.

Tafi del Valle - Nada Que Ver

I had been told - mostly by Tucumanos - that Tafi del Valle in the Tucuman Province was every bit as lovely as Salta and that it was a shame that it wasn't on the circuito turistico in the way that the two provinces oop North are.

After a number of glorious days in Cafayate, where the BD drove around the Plaza watching me drinking coffee but not having sufficient pelotas to stop and speak to me nor offer an explanation for his tonteria, I went on to Tucuman alone. Or rather in a remise with a sweet driver and a couple from Capital. It worked out perfectly as the buses from Cafayate to Tafi leave at a deeply inconvenient horario - taking the excursion meant I saw Quilmes and Pachamama and Tafi AND my luggage was removed door to door.

Quilmes - much hyped ruins along the ancient Inca trail - taken over last year by indigents and only recently recovered. Interesting in principal, but as everybody told me when I asked 'Why isn't Tucuman popular with tourists?' - Nada Que Ver. Quilmes is a rather dull series of garden walls climbing a steep dry hill. You seriously need some imagination to get excited about the place. Nothing like the Pucara in Tilcara, Jujuy, which is a real village with an Inca church at the top and a stupendous view down the Quebrada forever.

Next - the Pachamama Museum at Amaicha. A really ingeniously decorated space, using Inca motifs, just as you would expect from the artist who owns it. Inside there is some interesting geographical information about how the gorges were formed and some dioramas of Inca tribal life. And then a number of rooms dedicated to the owner's painting and weaving. Very clever businessmen some artists are.

The drive of another 100km to Tafi is pretty enough if you like Wales in Autumn - not something I would come to the end of the World to see. And then you drop down into Tafi from a height of 3042m above sea level through a rolling green environment of sheep huts that soon turns into summer homes for rich Tucumanos escaping the 40 degree heat of the city. For S.M. de Tucuman is an infierno of a capital and Tafi is, well, cold. The temperature dropped so much when the afternoon drizzles set in that I had to put on every cover-up I had brought and then go shopping for a wool wrap.

I hated Tafi personally. It's in a basin surrounded by green mountains which makes it cooler but also means every breath you take is full of pollution. The cars are as pervasive as the wild dogs and lunatics. In a city of 8000 inhabitants, two-thirds as many as Cafayate, there is about a tenth of the charm. There is no pretty central plaza with iglesia. The wild dogs outnumber the cars and I was forced to observe chocques between the two. Then, finally attempting to relax at a sidewalk cafe, the local loony grabbed my half eaten empanada from the plate and rammed it into his mouth, not before returning to grab the limon slice from the plate and squeeze it all over the pastry. Apparently it's a regular occurrence here and the locals simply shrugged their shoulders.

It was delightful to get on the bus to Tucuman, that is until it stopped at every pueblo and parada in the valley and pandemonium broke out - just without the chickens. There is a great section of road on the way to the capital as you climb out of the pozo of Tafi over the mountain and down to Tucuman. The hills are cloched in trees and ferns tighter than a skinhead's beanie as the road snakes along clinging to the precipice. The photos were taken through a grubby window as people hurled themselves back and forth at every bend on the cornisa, screaming at the driver for a non-existent seat or their money back. Never has a bus station looked so calm.

 

 

TILCARA

Hours wasted trying to rent a 4x4 in Salta city : 3.6

Maybe there is only one truck available and they share it between the zillions of car rental agencies, hence the wacky price of 610 pesos/day. However, there was not a single one to be had for at least ten days. So we took to the hills in a Renault CLIO - not to be recommended unless you are fortunate enough to be driven by my sweetie or Lewis Hamilton. On second thought, even Lewis couldn't manage the twisting mountain roads of dust, gravel and rocks.

Cars also not cheap to rent - about 170 pesos/day plus franquisia of 4000 pesos (12000 for 4x4). As there is no insurance on rental cars in NW Argentina due to scary roads - they simply apply the franquisia to your charge card and if you damage the car - YOU PAY. The woman at Avis (Swedish with Argentine-ex. Apparently the men of the NW are the most macho of the machos) said that they regularly have to send out rescue teams to stranded drivers with damaged cars who thought they could manage the mountain roads.

Stopped first at that delightful tourist trap - the Hill of the Seven Colours - mercifully totally devoid of tourists as the sweetie knows what time the convoys arrive and hence avoided them.

From Purmamarca we drove over the mountain pass at 4170 Metres, with our constantly present coca leaves, to the phenomenal Salinas Grandes. This was an otherwordly environment of 15k hectares of solid salt lake, blazing sun and whistling wind, peopled by extras from Star Wars, totally covered against the sun, eyes barely visible through slits in their hoods.

What a beautifully desolate experience and hotter than hell whilst looking so icy. Yet more slaves toiling in this arid environment for a few pesos more. I could feel my skin shrivelling every moment I stood there.

CAFAYATE

Marooned again in the North West of the country with thousands, pero thousands of tourists. Salta looks a bit like Disneyworld on the Plaza especially when the Gauchos come out on their horses and there are even more thousands of tourists snapping away as though facing the imminent extinction of the man in baggy pants.

Tourists like Cafayate and it is certainly OK if you like Red Rock Canyons but I find the endless train of buses and proscribed photo pitstops really wearing. Fortunately Raul knows that when he gets everyone back on the bus, he needs to drive 1/2k up the road to get me.

Now we're talking travelling...

What they really need in Salta is a strong Trade Union for the Tour Guides because it's a bloody crime how these guys slave. You the tourist paying upwards of 150 pesos for the day trip to Cafayate, you the tourist squeezed into a combi Merc with 12 other tourists, the guide getting up at 5 and getting home at 9 after dropping you all off at your cozy hotels before taking the bus back and getting the names for tomorrow, doing this SEVEN days a week and earning 400 PESOS. Do The Math. Then do what's right and protest when you purchase your overpriced tickets to Cafayate/Cachi/Humahuaca.

This kid has it easy by comparison.

Its a thorny issue but these guys don't even get a weekend/a day off and when a two day break is requested, it is ruined by the constant calls of the Jefe telling them to get back (or else). PROTEST. Sorry - but I am the Grand-daughter of a Trade Union Leader.