It is a bit of leap I know. Sometimes I even surprise myself. There is an old world charm here in Buenos Aires that hints at deeply ingrained culture, breeding, courtesy, protocol, and the grace of all that is civilized.
It is quite subtle. I really like it. Some of the European history here is older than 500 years with a bewildering catalogue of struggle with borders and invading European countries. What becomes immediately apparent, aside from the tremendous wealth that is here, is that I have the wrong shoes. I need heels. I need…… yes, I need, TANGO SHOES! The Latino rhythms, swarthy complexions, smouldering eyes with deeply banked, combustible heat, Italian cadences and colloquialisms intermixed with rapid fire Spanish, all serve to stir the blood.
I am now on a ship rounding Cape Horn, Tierra Del Fuego, the furthest southerly point where so many sailors lives have been lost and where the Pacific and the Atlantic meet in roiling fomentation. The wind and sea are contentious. The ocean is a boiling cauldron, a heaving vortex of spuming movement set against undulating cliffs punctuated by wild cloud and a moaning, pummelling wind. I can see why they call it the horn, there is a shape in the jagged high formations of the rocky islas that is like a horn. Here a lighthouse sits where the keeper has asked to stay for a further six months. It cannot be the social life. Beside the lighthouse is a statue that is the shape of an albatross representing the souls of drowned sailors, who it is said, return as albatrosses that swoop and cry around their shipmates. The worst was being caught on the lee side of land and being driven onto the rocky shores by the currents and storms. Ships that were damaged here were directed by their financial backers not to go to the Falklands for refit as the harbourmasters there were prone to seizing cargo after declaring the ship unfit. Imagine this now being a tourist attraction for what historically must have filled many with dread and where fortunes were made or lost in its transit. My mother was never one to mope or be idle. She did this voyage, well, I am only doing half of what she did. It was her last major trip before she died. It is a way for me to commemorate her and I draw and paint what she must have seen and in so doing, I honour her memory. The palette is subarctic. Incredibly the sun comes out and a rainbow appears as a storm overtakes the stern. In the night we negotiate narrow Beagle Channel by full moon and I am spellbound by silvery light finding sleep impossible, ever a captive of beauty. El fin del mundo they call it here.
She didn’t tell me about the fiords of Chile. Oh. Mio Dio. Try blue glaciers at eye level a couple of hundred meters away interspersed with jagged snow-capped peaks on a continuous basis for five hours. The camera actually seemed pointless. I could only stare incredulously. I had absolutely no idea this was so unbelievably superlative. Words fail me.
I mourn that Peru is so close and that I won’t be getting to it. After Peru, I would be keening for Venezuela, I suppose. Apparently I am insatiable.
“Oh world, I cannot hold thee close enough.” Emily Dickinson
