It was some 600km from Villa Gesell to Bahia Blanca, across an immense flatness;
where the black cattle graze
in the empty haze
of the pampas plain
hours upon hours
of drooping sunflowers
and wheat shorn short
and dams awaiting rain.
We passed through dusty bus terminals, where grandmothers awaited grandchildren, lovers took long last kisses, and families fawned over the farewelled: Argentines part so ardently.
We arrived in Bahia Blanca as the sun was setting into the pall of pollution handing over the city, which made for a beautiful sky. The bus terminal was a crumbling old building, and a new concrete bus terminal was in construction beside it.
The settlement of the "White Bay" (so called for the salt flats which encrust the estuary of the Naposta) dates from 1828, when, according to Charles Darwin who visited it in 1834, "the government of Buenos Ayres unjustly occupied it by force, instead of following the wise example of the Spanish Viceroys, who purchased the land near the older settlement of the Rio Negro, from the Indians. Hence the need for the fortifications." (Chapter IV, Voyage of the Beagle). It later was used as a base for the infamous gaucho general, Juan Man Rosas, in his genocidal campaigns agains the Mapuche Indians of the s
outhern pampas. A fearsome and cruel caudillo of the early Argentine Republic, Rosas died in exile as a milk farmer in Southhampton, UK in 1877. His grave in the south of England was bombed during WWII and when the bones were repatriated to Argentina with much fanfare in the late 1980´s, they were found to include the bones of bomb-blasted cows!
Today, Bahia Blanca is a city of some 350,000 people, with a laidback feel of a provincial capital. It is centred upon a large plaza with a memorial to with many trees and surrounded by French neo-classical buildings.
We spent two days walking around the town.
On Sunday, the main park was populated by friends sipping mate, young guys in hotted-up Morris Minors, busts of dead dictators and excessive pairs of policeman in bright orange vest on the beat, presumably keeping the peace.
On Monday we found the Museo de Bella Artes y Contemporaneo Artes closed, but upon knocking, were welcomed in for a private tour by one of the gallery staff, Claudio Rodolfo. Claudio is as manic as Roberto Benigni on ten cups of espresso, and with rapid Spanish and wild gesticulations, we learnt of his profession to abstract painting and of the long suffering public art galleries of Argentina.
We lodged three nights in the Bahia Blanca Hostel, whose foyer included an installation of wire ants crawling from a sackcloth anthill over the reception desk, and a strange tableau of old sepia photos of the hotel façade arranged around a colour photograph of a young girl seated naked on a toilet.
One the second afternoon we drunk red wine and wrote letters and short stories, and then decided to return to Buenos Aires rather than hike in the Sierra Ventana. Our sleeper bus screamed across the Pampas through the night like its passage was a national emergency and by morning, we found ourselves in the vast terminus of Retiro, Buenos Aires.
where the black cattle graze
in the empty haze
of the pampas plain
hours upon hours
of drooping sunflowers
and wheat shorn short
and dams awaiting rain.
We passed through dusty bus terminals, where grandmothers awaited grandchildren, lovers took long last kisses, and families fawned over the farewelled: Argentines part so ardently.
We arrived in Bahia Blanca as the sun was setting into the pall of pollution handing over the city, which made for a beautiful sky. The bus terminal was a crumbling old building, and a new concrete bus terminal was in construction beside it.
The settlement of the "White Bay" (so called for the salt flats which encrust the estuary of the Naposta) dates from 1828, when, according to Charles Darwin who visited it in 1834, "the government of Buenos Ayres unjustly occupied it by force, instead of following the wise example of the Spanish Viceroys, who purchased the land near the older settlement of the Rio Negro, from the Indians. Hence the need for the fortifications." (Chapter IV, Voyage of the Beagle). It later was used as a base for the infamous gaucho general, Juan Man Rosas, in his genocidal campaigns agains the Mapuche Indians of the s
outhern pampas. A fearsome and cruel caudillo of the early Argentine Republic, Rosas died in exile as a milk farmer in Southhampton, UK in 1877. His grave in the south of England was bombed during WWII and when the bones were repatriated to Argentina with much fanfare in the late 1980´s, they were found to include the bones of bomb-blasted cows!Today, Bahia Blanca is a city of some 350,000 people, with a laidback feel of a provincial capital. It is centred upon a large plaza with a memorial to with many trees and surrounded by French neo-classical buildings.
We spent two days walking around the town.
On Sunday, the main park was populated by friends sipping mate, young guys in hotted-up Morris Minors, busts of dead dictators and excessive pairs of policeman in bright orange vest on the beat, presumably keeping the peace.
On Monday we found the Museo de Bella Artes y Contemporaneo Artes closed, but upon knocking, were welcomed in for a private tour by one of the gallery staff, Claudio Rodolfo. Claudio is as manic as Roberto Benigni on ten cups of espresso, and with rapid Spanish and wild gesticulations, we learnt of his profession to abstract painting and of the long suffering public art galleries of Argentina.
We lodged three nights in the Bahia Blanca Hostel, whose foyer included an installation of wire ants crawling from a sackcloth anthill over the reception desk, and a strange tableau of old sepia photos of the hotel façade arranged around a colour photograph of a young girl seated naked on a toilet.
One the second afternoon we drunk red wine and wrote letters and short stories, and then decided to return to Buenos Aires rather than hike in the Sierra Ventana. Our sleeper bus screamed across the Pampas through the night like its passage was a national emergency and by morning, we found ourselves in the vast terminus of Retiro, Buenos Aires.
No comments:
Post a Comment