Cienfuegos, Cuba

After the continuous movement of Havana, the throngs of people, beaten out cars, and salsa music blaring from every corner, the empty streets of Cienfuegos with their colourful buildings that looked like they were made out of candy were a welcome and peaceful relief. Cobbled streets lined with cheerfully painted houses were picture-perfect and fairytale clean after the crumbling apartment blocks of the city.

The searing midday heat pounded me like a sledgehammer and I had to concentrate hard just to keep my eyes open as the fury in my head pressed against my temples. The lack of people in the streets was a telling sign that the best way to deal with a punishingly hot climate was to stay indoors and fan yourself. But I didn’t come to Cuba to stay inside my hotel room, I wanted to explore.... Although it has to be noted, “hotel room” is a generous term for the bed I am renting behind the net curtain in the back of the casa of the señora with the permanent curlers in her hair and thin lips permanently set into a stern line.

Renting rooms in casas particulares here is a mixed bag of experiences. There are few hotels outside of the main tourist zones and the ones that were available blew my budget to pieces. The only option was to rent a room in a house where you could play with the children, eat dinner with the family and learn more about their culture. Well that was when it was good; when it was bad you were renting from your wicked old Aunt that imposed a curfew and made you eat all of your greens. If you’re not careful they will drill you into spilling all of the details of your itinerary and then phone their cousins (every Cuban has a thousand of these whether by blood or not) and get you to stay with them in different places across Cuba, delivering messages and even packages as you go, and keeping the business in the family. I understand the need to look out for their own but I detest being moved around like a chess piece, especially by a woman as domineering and cold as the señora of this casa.

I had not even the most minimal desire to go back to the casa but something was wrong as I never suffered from the heat, relishing in its every last ray, soaking up its goodness like a sponge. I had to hang back in the shade for a moment, as my dizziness caused the streets to move.

Loud speakers cranked up in the distance and the atmosphere outside began to change a little as a small rabble of people dribbled over to the plaza, eventually joined by a few more until a sizable gathering was formed. A powerful song played loud across the town plaza and neighbouring streets, commemorating the lost compadres who had died in the revolution, while freeing Cuba from the Imperialists. I thought it must have been an anniversary or some kind of commemorative occasion, but the lady beside me with the ill-fitting leopard print lycra top confirmed that this was a daily ritual.

Suddenly the voice of Fidel resounded loud and bold throughout the parks as he began his daily discourse, encouraging Cubans to stand firm against the evil and cunning capitalists, shoulder to shoulder in defence of communism and the Cuban way of life. The enemy to the North may try to bring Cuba down but they would stand and fight to the death, until they had nothing left, not the shirt on their back or the food on their tables, “patria o muerte” (motherland or death!), he belted out with a tremendous force that rattled the speakers.

The citizens of Cienfuegos looked about as moved by these stirring words as an adolescent in a bible studies class when his friends are out at a disco, unable to disguise the fact that they hear the same speech, or some variation of it, every day at the same time blasting out from the scratchy speakers, and Fidel has a tendency to waffle a little. As emotive as his words may have been, we were contending with a relentless heat that must have been approaching 40 in the shade. The mothers fanned themselves while chewing on gum and the children shuffled uncomfortably from side to side on their feet.

What a riddle this country really is. With a spirited people that you would have thought would have risen up at any moment and said “enough”, in the same way they find his speeches dull, and his doctrine wearing thin, Fidel is like that grumpy old grandfather who you complain about bitterly but tolerate and love because he’s part of your family. Actually it’s like one big family in Cuba; this is the overwhelming sensation here. Living with so little has fostered the need to ask for help from your neighbour and to give it back regularly.

The taxi driver who took me to the beach yesterday said that in his opinion there were lots of good things about Cuba, about the system, about Fidel, of whom he spoke with the same sense of love and frustration as one would a close relative; dismissive and respectful, rebellious and obedient all at once. They may not agree with many of his ways and bit by bit they are gradually more exposed to the realities of life under different regimes elsewhere, but they love him all the same. “Es lo que hay” is a popular expression in this little Caribbean island... “this is what we have” they say while shrugging their shoulders and continuing their conversations.

He showed me several of Havana’s 4 and 5 star hotels in which Cubans are allowed no further than the lobby. If I had wanted to get romantically involved with a Cuban during my stay I would have had to have gone to the police station and registered my consent, picking up a document to present to the police every time we were asked what we were doing and if it was allowed. The reason is simple; to keep Cubans away from the influence of foreigners and as in the dark as much as possible. Later on I would see the same thing happening in Venezuela, as Chavez removed English from the school curriculum and prevented the villages from having Internet.

This is shocking apartheid, especially within the white sandy paradise areas of Varadero, where the all inclusive species of tourists, wrist bands firmly in place, remain separated in their little patch of Cuban sand, eating imported food and drinks with no involvement in the country whatsoever, but for the fat Cuban cigar they smoke form the safe distance of their balconies. I shudder at the thought. Although there are easier countries to travel round and I have had to become extremely cautious being alone, I wouldn’t trade the real experience for any amount of paid-for cocktails or aqua aerobics in the pool.

Life is so difficult here. With a capped salary everyone earns the same; the equivalent of 15 dollars a month*, whether you are a doctor, a maid, or a technician. This money is paid in Cuban pesos, which clearly goes much further than 15 dollars would and is technically enough to subside on, but little wonder that the majority are continually scraping to make ends meet and that they see a foreigner as a chance to make a quick buck.

After my second day of non-stop intensity, where I was swept up by more than one Cuban, grabbed by the waist, invited out to dance salsa, proposed to and asked for money by more than fifty different people, I finally reached breaking point, screaming at the last man who had been so bold as to ask me for change that I was a backpacker and not a walking dollar sign, a woman alone and all I wanted was to walk the streets in peace. He was devastated by my reaction and profusely apologised afterwards, sensing I was on the point of tears. It turned out that he was a doctor. But why work his life away in service when he could ask 15 tourists for a dollar and make his monthly salary in an hour or so? You can understand the people’s frustration.

The taxi driver also told me how difficult it was to get hold of cars in Cuba, that usually they were handed down through the family or sometimes it was possible to buy one second hand, but never new, hence the antique Cadillacs and burned out Russian ladas, an echo back to the days of cooperation with the Soviet bloc. Nothing is thrown away in Cuba and even light bulbs, alarm clocks and things you would normally toss out are repaired hundreds of times.

There’s such a fading glory to Havana, the city frozen in time, the dull expression in so many people’s eyes reflecting the fading facades of the crumbling buildings. The stores are ill-stocked and most of the shelves are bare. In one restaurant I ordered a salad of vegetables “in season” and was presented with a saucer of 4 slices of cucumber. A portion of fries brought exactly nine and when I asked for ketchup it was rationed out, drop by drop, as the waitress returned with the bottle to the bar. There is a national shortage of absolutely everything and this is not the reality you see when you spend your vacation in a hotel.

Electricity is scarce and you have to use it while you can. There is only a supply some of the time and, apart from the 5-star resorts; they turn it off completely during the day. I had been trying to buy a writing pad for a while now, jotting down my notes on the back of a calendar. I went to seven different stores here and in the capital and with no success, having to line up for more than an hour, being bustled about, stared down, ignored, to at last be told “no mi amor no hay” (sorry love, we don’t have any). It’s frustrating and I have experienced three days; living with this reality must work away at the people like a drip, drip effect as they slowly descend into acceptance.

The floor starts to swirl and there’s a pain in my stomach so intense that I began to wretch and vomit. I feel my head hitting the pavement hard and everything goes black. A few hours later I awake and the son of the sergeant major señora is standing over me. “You’re going to be alright” he said soothingly, “take this” as he handed me a pill and pressed a wet towel on my forehead. It turns out that the skinny guy who hangs out on the porch of the house all day rocking in an armchair is a doctor too. This is a curious country. I need to find out more.

*I was in Cuba in 2005, when the dollar was still widely used and these details were correct.

A Strange Place To Buy An Alarm Clock

It was about 3am when the bus pulled into Campeche and I took a taxi straight to the budget hostal I had circled in my guide book, that apparently had 24 hour service. As we rumbled over the cobblestone streets and past the zocalo (town plaza) I smiled to myself at the familiar flags that drape every Mexican public space; the cheerful colours of the houses and the balmy late-night air evoking an infectious warmth throughout my body, despite the tiredness after a nine-hour bus ride. Campeche is striking at first sight by night, ringed by an ancient fortress wall, gloriously illuminated by powerful flood lights.

As we veered away from the centre and towards a back street, the destination of my choice was a fairly daunting site with its prison-like doors, robust with iron bars, and bells that required several rounds of ringing before a middle-aged man, grunting and cursing and scratching his head, came down.

I was instructed to wait while he readied the room, and I did so for about 15 minutes, with my heavy pack on my back. I studied the cracks in the walls and the insects that giddily danced about the open light bulbs. At last he made his way grumpily down the stairs and inclined his head, leading me, with no offer of help to carry the luggage, up the rickety staircase to the most spartan room imaginable.

The impossibly high ceilings made the empty room even more intimidating as the naked walls bore no sign of paintings or drapes or, in fact, any attempt at decoration at all. The large patches of open cement, where the paint had peeled off completely were accompanied by a ceiling fan that screeched with a desperate howling capable of waking the dead, and there was an awkwardly-placed wardrobe in the corner with a door hanging off.

There was no sheet on the bed and I received a thunderous look when I asked for one, as this far-from-welcoming hotelier growled off muttering loudly, with no attempt to conceal his clear dislike of me. There was no mirror in the room and when I went to the bathroom at the end of the hallway to take out my contact lenses, there wasn’t one there either. I took a deep breath and wrestled with my fear as I walked along the creaking hallway back to my room, pulled the sheet up to my ears and tried to think of something else until sleep finally relieved me from my nerves.

When the morning dawned a few hours later, the shadows that the moonlight had cast on my bed and across the walls, wreaking havoc in my over-active imagination, were gone. I had to arrange my trip to the ruins of Uxmal and I walked off in search of the bus station, which took me past the plaza, the market, and beyond the city limits as I sweated copiously and unbecomingly in the furious, unrelenting heat.

It is quite amazing the difference it makes in Mexico walking the streets alone or walking with a man. Having decided to part ways at this leg of the journey, my male friend and travelling companion, Paul, was now on his way to Cancun. Walking with Paul, the men around me were somewhat subdued and all I attracted were a few muted stares. Walking alone provoked overwhelming scenes of whistles, catcalls, bus drivers beeping their horns as they juddered past, old men asking me where I was going and inviting me to drinks, offers to carry my bags, and constant, omnipresent, ill-concealed,lustful stares.

It can be a little scary being a woman alone and I can’t deny that it’s a challenge but I’m getting to know a side of myself that I wasn’t aware existed before. There’s something empowering about ploughing through an unknown terrain in a foreign land that most people I know are either frightened by or have never heard of, and actually doing it – travelling it – feeding off of the colourful streets, the heady smells of boiling corn and fried tortillas, the broken sidewalks, pot-holed pavement and just... life – pure provincial Mexican life – exploding with music and vital energy before my eyes.

Exploring the streets and nosing about the markets, I don’t feel lonely at all. Lying on the “beach”, which in Campeche is really nothing more than a gravel pit with children’s play things and some patches of grass, that drops off sharply into horribly contaminated water (its name – playa bonita – (pretty beach) somewhat undeserved), I am quite content with my own company. My life in Madrid is such a frenzied blur of social activities, parties, outings, chat and company, it’s slowly dawning on me that I haven’t been alone for a very long time. I think I had almost convinced myself that I couldn’t be alone. I had forgotten about the solitary, reflective side of myself that likes to observe sometimes, happy to not be the centre of attention. Sitting here watching the kids play and the chubby Mexican lady at my side cackle with embarrassed delight as her husband places a cheeky hand on her buttock doesn’t make me miss anybody. It just makes me smile.

Plus I was still processing the curious event that had happened as I was walking back from the bus station. Paul had gone off with the alarm clock and I had no cell phone, or watch, or in fact any way of ensuring I made the early-morning bus tomorrow, so I stopped by the market that spread over the narrow streets, stand after stand that promised to satiate every sense of the body from pungent smells to florescent colours, delicious tastes of melt-in-your-mouth beef tacos and loud, relentless merengue music.

I challenge you to imagine of the most innately bizarre item you can think of and can say with absolute confidence that, in a Mexican market, you will find it here. From sex toys to steaming pigs’ ears and chilly-fried grasshoppers, flashlights and door fastenings, anything you could possibly need is taken care of in the mercado.

I stopped at a small stall that had batteries and watches, and little plastic dogs with heads that wagged up and down when you flicked them, to ask a lady if she sold alarm clocks, at which she called her husband over from the table behind, where he was swigging beer and playing cards. They engaged in a heavy discussion, arguing back and forth about something that seemed to be worthy of great debate. After a few raised eyebrows and smouldering looks between them, the lady turned to me, composed herself, and smiled, indicating that yes; they did sell alarm clocks and if I would be so amable, to follow her husband where he would get one for me.

He led me out of the market and down a narrow street far less populated and noisy, the throbbing music somewhat muffled in the distance. The Mexican Senor looked me up and down with a gap-toothed smile revealing a golden crown, as I continued to follow him further away from hub of the market and into his house.

With his instruction I waited in the living room, which was about as kitsch as you can imagine with a hideous infusion of tastes (bad ones) from ornate multi-coloured plastic feather birds on the walls, to a trickling fountain with neon lights in the corner and fake flowers in a vase on the crocheted tablecloth. He went into his bedroom and came back out, emerging with something that definitely resembled an alarm clock –theirs.

It wasn’t really a travel alarm clock and its analogue design and juddering hands inspired little faith in me as to its effectiveness – Mexico isn’t really famous for its punctuality – but he assured me of its flawless performance. You know when you walk into a small store and you’re the only person inside and the desperate shop assistant is stalking you, jumping out behind a railing with an offer as you’re trying to subtly look around? I didn’t really feel I could refuse this purchase, however strange it was coming in to their house and buying pieces of it.

He opened a fridge full of beer and pulled down a wooden flap on the dresser to reveal a perfectly stocked liquor cabinet with glasses, decanters and the whole works, offering me cerveza, tequila, ron, or anything I wanted, eying me in a slightly inappropriate way. I decided that perhaps I had gone as far as I should have, seeing as I was in a perfect stranger’s living room in a city suburb in Mexico and it might not be the best idea. I decided to say my polite “thank yous” and make my exit, chuckling to myself as I made my way back towards my hotel, examining the alarm clock in my hand that would always have a story behind it whether it worked or not.

I’ve certainly done my share of travelling alone. I’ve felt just about as lonely and frightened and desperate as it’s possible to feel and then – even worse – returned to my own country, even more of a foreigner, with friends I can no longer relate to and with little tolerance for listening to what I’d been up to so many miles away. I’ve reckoned with the stark realisation that most of my adventures will only ever exist inside my own memory and only live as long as I do, or as long as I am conscious enough to remember. The beating orange sun that dissipated over the fortress of Campeche that night, the salty smell in the coastal air and the story behind the alarm clock will live inside of me only. That is the sad thing about travelling alone.

I remember one time in New Zealand, on an impulse I decided to do a skydive, free-falling over a vast expanse of volcanoes, lakes and steaming geezers, the wind penetrating my ears and rushing through my nostrils as I plummeted at more than 200km an hour towards the earth. My heart literally jumping out of my body and the adrenaline pumping through my veins for the entire day and I had no one to share it with. Such was the time difference I couldn’t call any friends in England and I certainly wouldn’t have called my parents, having promised not to do anything risky while I was away; my poor father exceptionally paranoid after my parachuting instructor in England died a few months before I left because of a mal-functioning shoot. So I just ran into the little shops in the sleepy town of Lake Tekapo yelling “I just did a skydive!! I just did a skydive!!” as the bemused assistants smiled blandly back at me; absurd foreign teenagers doing outlandish things was nothing unusual for them.

Today I’m on some fake beach in the South East of Mexico, my current home a God-forsaken cell-like room that would evoke fear in the hearts of the bravest of men and yet I feel strangely, spine-tingly alive... Viva Mexico!

Gypsy Spirit

I still can’t shake the image of your eyes
Searching for answers as you left that day.
As I stood on the platform in Madrid,
Helplessly watching your bus pull away.

Standing all alone in a faceless crowd
Wondering if I’d ever see you again,
With an empty hotel room awaiting,
Bags packed and ready to get on a plane.

I have to be on the road one more time
My gypsy spirit keeps on calling me
Beyond the horizon, spontaneous
As the wind; so much of the world to see.

More than an ocean divides us now and
This is a harsh world of sadness and pain;
The rich lavish in their marble mansions
While the poor die in the street in the rain.

There are times I feel like my heart will break
With the injustice I see every day.
Though I miss you with every breath I take,
It would have been harder for me to stay.

You can’t keep a wild bird in a cage
As much as I think that you wanted to.
I love you so much for keeping the faith
That someday I would fly back to you.

Something Different... Little Girl

Little girl with the faraway eyes
Lost in the rolling tide of the sea,
The gentle waves that break on the sand,
And their hypnotising melody.

Your dress is threadbare with holes and your
Tired feet throb from walking all day.
Selling bread to ungrateful tourists
Who impatiently shoo you away.

I wish I knew where your thoughts went to,
As you stare into infinity.
Do you know what lies beyond the ocean;
Have you heard about people like me?

Who work in their air-conditioned rooms,
From 9 until 5 every day,
Complaining about how hard life is,
While planning trips and weekends away.

Your mother yells far in the distance;
Your long afternoon has just begun.
The light behind your eyes is turned off;
You know that there is no place to run.

I am so drawn to your hopeless eyes,
Little girl, and you will never know
That my heart burns with the image of
Your far-away face wherever I go.

The Moneda Crisis and Life's Other Curiosities

I sighed with that familiar exasperation as I opened my wallet and realised I only had 60 centavos in it. Now I would have to buy something just to get some change. Coins in Buenos Aires are like pens or plastic bags - you either have so many that you start to get careless about where you leave them, or you find yourself rummaging through your nightstand drawer, fishing out 5 cent coins from the fluff and dust.

Is there another place on earth where loose change is like gold dust and you would rather give a beggar a note instead of 10 cents because you have to keep hold of your change? Without coins in this city you are rendered immobile and simply cannot circulate; sometimes you can’t even buy things because the store owner is unwilling to part with valuable pennies for the sale of a cereal bar. He does the math and decides that it’s simply not worth selling it to you of it leaves him without change for the next client who will probably spend a bit more. A beaming smile and feminine charm get you nowhere when it comes down to this, trust me.

A little girl stopped me on my way to the bus the other day, her ragged clothing and disillusioned stare awoke a deep sense pity inside me. She asked if I could help her out with a “monedita” (a small coin). My heart broke as I looked at her, realising that if I parted with just one coin I wouldn’t be able to get the bus. She understood my dilemma and we began to search for a solution together. I ended up giving her my bottle of water; I could buy another one, but there’s nothing worse than finding yourself penniless and stuck in the middle of a derelict avenida late at night.

It’s just one of those integral and widely complained about, yet resignedly accepted malfunctions of Buenos Aires. The moneda (coin) crisis has been going on ever since I’ve been here and seems to have no resolution. The subway is only useful if you happen to live near a stop or don’t mind walking several blocks out of your way. At some point, if you have no personal transport, you will have to take a bus. I’ve wasted quite a considerable amount of my life waiting for and sweating inside tightly-packed busses as they creep across the city, spluttering black exhaust fume and driving too close to pedestrians.

Allow me to explain, to board a bus in Buenos Aires you have to pay with coins, dropping them into the slot machine with dexterity and skill as the driver accelerates on purpose while you have one hand on your wallet, the other on your carrying bags and no way of supporting yourself as you crash into the passenger next to you.

This need for coins on busses has led to a city-wide shortage and people are fiercely protective of them. It’s more likely that a stranger will give you their shoes than part with their loose change. Well, perhaps not their shoes, but maybe their bottle of water. There have been some solutions offered to resolve the crisis. I think extra coins were fabricated at one point but it didn’t seem to ease the shortage; some blamed the Chinese mafia for hoarding them and charging desperate store owners a hefty percentage for rolls of 1 peso coins. A few bus lines began implementing a swipe card system, which seemed like an obvious solution to me, however, the reality is that most of these have been incorrectly installed, don’t work, are vandalised, or simply haven’t arrived yet; the plans still stuck on the drawing board after more than 5 years of conception.

I walk past a little supermarket and desperately think of something I need so that I’m not simply wasting money just to get a few pennies. I know it seems ridiculous but this is a daily problem. Let me reinforce, unless the stars are aligning for you and you’re having an exceptionally lucky day, no one here will actually change a note for coins, so you almost always end up buying something cheap just to get a few pennies back. This is more of a strategic purchase than it might sound. You can’t buy just any old thing, and certainly not something with a rounded-off price tag; paying 5 or 10 pesos will only use up one note or get you another right back. Then you’re left with something you don’t want and still can’t get the bus home.

I look for a useful item for less than 5 pesos that suits my budget and needs. I scan the aisles, checking the prices and at last come across some rice cakes for $4.40. I am curiously addicted to these disgusting things and 60 cents will get me home. I approach the counter and the po-faced Chinese lady hands me a 50 cent coin and a boiled sweet. I look at her questioningly but she fails to respond- “but what about the other 10 cents? I need the 10 cents.” She shakes her head gruffly, grunting something I can’t understand and gestures towards the sweet. I hate getting my change in sweets. What good is a boiled sweet to me when I’m trying to get a bus? I sigh and walk back out onto the damp streets, slippery with the summer rain, rice cakes in hand and just enough for the long ride home.

Somehow this absurd city and I are strangely intertwined. This bustling metropolis that recompenses people with candy is tied into my DNA. It’s rather a volatile relationship and we fight constantly. Sometimes I end up crying with frustration, other times I am mean and prickly right back but somehow we always seem to make up again and for as much as I try to leave, it keeps on pulling me back. Arturo’s step-dad calls this city the “pulpo” (octopus) because it seems to suck people in with its tentacles. I certainly know a considerable amount of people (myself included) who have come here for a few weeks and ended up staying for years, all trying different and creative ways to scratch out a living in this chaotic yet curiously appealing urban jungle.

For those of you who follow my blog, scrap everything I said in the last post. Except the part about loving life because you never know what it will throw at you. I had no idea on Monday morning that this would be another a life-changing week. I still didn’t know where we would be staying at the end of the month but at least we had the country defined; project Uruguay was firmly in motion.

In a few short days that’s all changed. The universe connected me with two special people who run an exciting online music distribution business and have kindly asked me to work for them; after an interview of course. Technically, writing and account management you can do from anywhere as long as you have internet. In reality however, getting this job has halted our plans for moving to Punta del Diablo. Living in the middle of nowhere with an internet connection that crashes for a whole morning because a sea bird is sitting on the line probably isn’t all that smart.

So the upshot is I finally I have a fixed address from which I don’t plan on moving for at least the next few months. I have a sofa bed, a garden and lots of room for visitors. Our future home is literally an oasis of calm in the middle of the swirling, relentless insanity. Angel gets back from Uruguay next weekend and we will move there at the end of the month. Plan Buenos Aires is back on track. It’s really not surprising that we just did a complete 180 – our move to Northern Spain ended up with me being sent to Honduras. Latin America isn’t in my blood like it is in Angel’s, but it’s certainly in my soul.

At the end of the day the old adage is true; everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe in coincidences. You get back what you put out, pure and simple. I can literally feel the positive vibes radiating from me from months of hard work that have finally paid off. I have more clients, I’m finally getting published and I’m developing my writing skills in ways I never imagined. For anyone who is interested I just finished a very informative article about cupcake and cake ideas for boy scouts. There’s also one about tips for preventing plagiarism; we all have to pay the rent.

But finally after so many ups and downs and periods of nerve-crunching instability, I’ve found my balance once again and feel more like the old me; the one that helps old ladies cross the road and laughs when the heel of my shoe breaks or my skirt blows over my head in a sudden gust of wind. This week I held out my hands and received a fantastic job, an ideal place to live and, rather more curiously, a gold bracelet. The latter was definitely the most random and unexpected of all. I arrived home from lunch today and went to take the garbage out. There was a man sitting slumped upon my door step with dirty fingernails and a small mirror in his hand from which he had just snorted some crack. He raised his eyes to look at me and asked something I didn’t really understand. Most of his teeth were missing and he had dry white saliva in the corners of his mouth. His shoes were ridden with holes and his young face already etched with wrinkles and a deep scar on his cheek.

His name is Esteban, and Esteban by profession is technically a cartonero. This is another inherent cultural element that I’m not really sure exists outside of Buenos Aires, but is basically all about recycling. In more developed and regulated countries, garbage is separated and recycled at the plant (at least we are told that it is) and the garbage trucks come and take away what you’re allowed to throw. What you can’t, like sofas or fridges or toxic waste, depending on how good you are, you take down to the dump or deposit on the street late at night when no one else can see.

Here the cartoneros basically manage the city’s recycling system. You see them fishing through the garbage bags and extracting materials that can be exchanged for cash; cardboard, plastic, clothes. It may not be the most efficient system as the poor cartoneros have to rummage through sack-fulls of rotten food and waste and the streets usually end up full of discarded litter, but at least they are able to make some kind of a living from the stuff that other people ultimately don’t want. It’s a hard life being a cartonero and you see them, the successful ones, pulling a large cart behind them, sweating in the heat, loaded up with boxes and recyclable materials. The smaller players, like Esteban, just rummage around in the hopes of getting lucky and finding things they can exchange for food, or drugs, or alcohol to numb the desperate biting harshness of their daily lives.

It’s generally accepted that you don’t interact very much with the cartoneros and certainly don’t engage in conversation. I think a lot of people believe that if they ignore them long enough then they will eventually go away. It reminds me of when I was in Alice Springs, a bizarrely hostile town in the dead centre of Australia, probably the strangest place I’ve ever been to in my life. The Aborigines just hung about the plaza or underneath the shade of a tree whilst the predominant white population just pretended not to see them, carrying about their daily activities as if they weren’t there. The sad truth is that most of us don’t care that much about anyone else until they have penetrated our outer layers with a smile, a stare, or some sort of communication that forces us to drop our guards and let them in.

I’m the first to admit that Esteban and I probably don’t have much in common, but what right do I have to deny him a few moments of my time? At least have the decency to acknowledge his presence on my doorstep. Most people in Latin America don’t give money or time to street tramps, beggars or charities, believing they will put it to bad use in buying more of whatever substance they need to get them through the day – and in most cases it’s probably true - so there is a tendency to look away when people jump onto the subway and start to ask for money.

Yesterday a little boy, maybe about 5 years old, began to speak loudly, engaging the commuters with his commanding voice. He took out 4 balls from a large sack and began to juggle, catching a few in the nape of his neck and throwing others under one leg and over his shoulder. Despite the gripping performance and spectacular efforts of this marvellous child, you could almost see the discomfort radiating off the people whose eyes remained fixed on the floor. He finished his act and I began to clap as he pleaded the silent people for applause. What level of separation from strangers have we reached that we can’t even praise a little boy who should be playing football with his friends that is instead juggling balls in a crowded subway car? I told him he was “fantastico” and his chubby face burst into a smile. Of course he wants money but even more than that I think he just wants to be acknowledged; like this cartonero in my doorway.

Staring at me in his drug-induced state, Esteban asks me where I’m from; apparently I was even harder for him to understand than he was for me and we limped our way through a stilted conversation. His eyes were rolling slightly in the back of his head. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone can really find their way back when they reach this low in life. I have to hope that they can, I need to believe that it’s possible. Life is unpredictable. I ended up giving him a few pesos and a printer. I thought that maybe he could do something with the spare parts as the machine that I had stopped working long ago and has been taking up space in my living room.

He smiled and pulled out a shiny gold bracelet from his pocket “this is for you”. I lit up with a smile – “are you sure?” I asked him as he nodded his head again and rather painfully attempted to fasten the fragile clasp around my wrist, whilst swaying from side to side. I can only guess at the past life of this little trinket. A stranger didn’t give me shoes today, but a stranger gave me a gold bracelet. If we just let our guards down for a moment and remember that we are all human after all, amazing things can happen.

Punta del Diablo

I have come to the conclusion that being a professional writer is far more arduous and tedious than I thought. Instead of enthusiastically opening my notebook at a fresh page, the speed of my fingers barely keeping pace with my mind’s restless desire to record every detail and bring to life the sights, sounds, and smells that surround me, lately I have been writing about the benefits of certain statistical software products as managerial tools, the definition of a torque angle (I had never heard of it either) and the obligations of good Muslim women. The latter, I have to say, certainly interested me more, but the technical writing and stiff format requirements of the articles tie my hands. There’s nothing like observing real people, trekking into the wild and luring outback or listening to the softly lapping waves on the shore to get your creative juices flowing.

Today I am allowing myself the guilty pleasure of up-dating my long-abandoned blog. For my few followers, I apologise for leaving you without reading material for so long. Since arriving back in Buenos Aires, all my efforts have been focused on launching my professional writing page (www.christinacomben.com – for those of you who haven’t seen it yet) and working on my first novel, of which I’m about 55 pages in.

It is Sunday, although you wouldn’t really know it. There is little to distinguish one day from the next in a popular beach resort in high season. I decided to take a leisurely stroll over the dunes and to the quietest beach, playa grande, which actually has quite a few people on it today. I’m used to seeing nothing but the waves breaking on the sand and the trees and shrubs that pepper the hills tumbling in the breeze.

I love this beach. Once we bathed here at 2am, splashing in the tepid waters brimming with a shining star dust that had us mesmerised by its glow. Shimmering layers of what seemed like fairy dust lit up our naked bodies and danced around in our hair. I thought they were little bacteria that lived in the water, but it turns out that my star dust is actually a scientific phenomenon called phosphorescence. It occurs when lots of energy is absorbed by a substance and released slowly in the form of light. To witness it and swim in the turquoise froth of a wave at night under the light of the moon, leaving footprints in the wet sand that sparkle back at you like gold certainly doesn’t feel scientific. It feels like magic.

That summer night last year here on playa grande, the beach was ours alone. We lay back nestled from the wind by a sand dune, staring up at a sky bursting with stars. Apparently it’s not possible for two people to see the same shooting star, but we did. “Quiero estar contigo para siempre,” (“I want to be with you forever”) Angel whispered to me, staring deeply into my eyes, which were glistening with tears. We’d only known each other a few days but somehow it felt like a life time. Remembering that night has carried me through many a stressful and heart-racing moment. When we were separated and I was in Honduras, I closed my eyes and thought of the beach; when the gunshot rounds in the night were frequent and unnerving; on the day our car span off the road whilst journeying back from San Pedro to Tegucigalpa and we nearly crashed into a horse, a few opportune reeds and plants luckily softening our landing.

On that particularly frightful episode I actually wondered if I would see any of my friends or family again. I just prayed and prayed as I’ve never prayed before to make it home alive, knowing that we still had hours of journey on a treacherous mountain highway ahead, followed by a loop through the poorest and scariest neighbourhood in Honduras at the onset of darkness, searching for a way out of the rat’s nest of chaotic streets and dilapidated buildings. I certainly wouldn’t have believed that a few months later I would be back here on this beach. But then that’s the thing I love most about life – you never know what’s going to happen or what twists and turns of fate will throw you off your path without warning. Here I am, looking out to the horizon, one year later... engaged to my dark-eyed Uruguayan and anticipating yet another move.

Punta del Diablo in the Eastern tip of Uruguay, almost at the border with Brazil has such a special energy that, if you connect with it, it will draw you back time and again. I reconciled my relationship with my sister here, fell in love, bought land, and got engaged on this very beach. There is a magic in the air that radiates from the rocks, the forest that fringes the perfect sandy beaches, the honey-sweet smell of the flowers and the wildlife that hums in the distance. Apart from the phosphorescence, we’ve seen many a curious insect here. If you’re located too close to the forest then the mosquitoes can be ferocious and the frogs and crickets that throb in the undergrowth like a musical chorus, will keep you up all night with their incessant shrill, should one unwillingly enter your house.

Last year after a huge storm that shook the foundations of our cabin, my sister and I awoke to find a horse in the garden. I’ve shared my room with a species of moth-slash-butterfly-slash-bat so big that it froze the breath in my throat. The locals affectionately call this “batman” and it has a wing span greater than that of both my hands together. When it was fixed to the wall without moving I could just about live with it, but when it made its flapping and erratic darts about the thin wooden walls, terrorised shrieks were provoked in me. We’ve seen snakes and miniature dolphins, a local species of shark, crowds of sea birds that gather together on the rocks and fireflies with large green eyes that light up the night with their beams.

If you can learn to be at one with the omnipresent natural life that abounds here, slow your rhythm down to the rolling movements of the tide, and learn that nothing is ever planned in advance, then this might just be a little slice of heaven. At least that is what I am hoping. Angel and I have decided to move here permanently (I say permanently in the Christina sense of the word). I have actually lost count now of how many houses, apartments, shelters, hotels, tents and countries I have lived in and I have a passport with 87 stamps and half a page of space free that doesn’t expire for another 5 years.

We still don’t have our house defined, as it’s only the 6th of February and looking ahead to March is about as alien a concept to the people here as planning your wedding when you’re still in primary school. We were joking with some local friends about this just last night. I will always have my English (mostly my father’s) impatience to get things done and plan in advance. Maybe not to the same extent, but a diluted version of the wanting everything now and not leaving things up in the air to see what happens. When I spoke to him yesterday he told me that they had already sent out invitations to their anniversary party – in JULY – I don’t even know where I will be living in three week’s time. It’s just a different world.

It is going to be an experimental year. I’ve spent most of my adult life residing in chaotic and vibrating cities with throbbing nightlife, street culture, public transport, pollution, noise, bars, restaurants and a 24-hour kiosk on the corner. Can my accelerated and restless spirit be contained and calmed here, in this corner of this tiny South American country miles from any real civilisation? When the winter bites and the harsh, Sothern wind blows and the cold invades my lungs, the carafe of gas has run out and there’s no delivery until next week... how will I react?

The truth is... I don’t know. But I’m willing to find out. I can work from here. I can write. Perhaps I can even find the peace and time I need to complete my novel and inhale pure air. I wonder if I can cure my insomnia and shake of the layers of stress that I’ve been carrying around for so long. I never mention it in my blog, but so much constant moving can be a little, well, unsettling.

I will miss dining out, sipping on pisco sours and hanging out with my friends. Dressing up and straightening my hair, strapping high-heeled shoes around my ankles and feeling glamorous, taking pilates classes, tennis, and massages; just generally being in the city. And the food here is certainly no luxury; the only healthy alternative will be to eat at home. Having a chef as a fiancé comes in handy here as in the main, Uruguayans are certainly not gourmets, at least not in this part of the country. Perhaps in the swanky, 5-star resorts further south or the better areas of Montevideo, but in the rest of Uruguay their idea of a glamorous meal is serving it on a ceramic plate instead of a plastic package and the only way to cook is with a deep fat fryer.

Almost everything here is fried. Milanesas (meat in breadcrumbs), empanadas (Cornish pasties), and a kind of sweet fried dough known as tortas fritas (fried cakes) are all specialities. It’s amazing the people here are not obese with the amount of hamburgers, hotdogs, and general junk oozing with fat that they eat. The Uruguayan chivito is the equivalent of a heart attack on a plate and comes stacked with meat, ham, egg, fries, potato salad, lettuce, olives, cheese and a few other food groups I’m failing to mention, all smothered in mayonnaise. In a country where they eat and appreciate every internal organ of the cow and do creative things with intestines, liver and kidney, I will certainly miss the sophistication of Buenos Aires cuisine.
But for now at least, I am hanging up my heels and my hair dryer, putting always my jackets, skirts and makeup and trading my cocktails for mate and biscocho. My next few blogs will be posted from a small fishing village with a year-round population that doesn’t exceed 1,500. I’ve been to cinemas with more people than that.

Leonardo

I see him every time I go to the gym. He stands in the doorway nearby and controls the cars that park on the side of the road - although not officially; it's kind of understood that a coin here and there to help the less fortunate and (more importantly, to ensure that the side of your car is not scratched by a passing vandal) is the price of parking in a street such as this.

The first time I saw him, I walked cautiously by, not sure how to assess this handicapped man standing between me and my pilates class. Fully prepared for some salacious comment I tensed up as I passed by, but he just smiled and said "buen dia" (good day); I mumbled the same and walked awkwardly on.

In several visits to the gym now, we've struck up quite a relationship. He calls me "flaquita" (little thing) and always has a smile and a story for me before my class. I don't know how old he is but I'm guessing somewhere in his forties, although the lines etched around his eyes and forehead from squinting in the sun probably add a few years. His breath always reeks of alcohol, yet I never see him with a bottle. His face lights up as I turn the corner – “flaquita, volviste!” (little thing, you came back) and we engage in a light-hearted banter, as if we weren’t two illegal aliens drawn to Argentina from faraway countries and strikingly different paths in life.

He's actually from Peru but you can't really tell from his accent. His wife and kids live far out of the capital and he struggles from his neighbourhood every day with his crutches to one of Buenos Aires’s most affluent neighbourhoods to stand in his spot and look after cars. How rapidly my middle-classed angst and trifling anxieties are reduced to their proper context.

I used to close myself off from the sights and sounds; moving about the city with my MP3 and headphones firmly planted in my ears. I was over-whelmed and irritated by the noise and bustle; the constant, lecherous comments from passersby and the crunching gears of the buses. But you can’t shy away from people forever. Sometimes you just have to let the world in. As threatening or invasive or extraordinary as they might seem; we're all in this together after all.