Chile is hot

I didn't get Chile for about five days: I knew that I liked it but I didn't know why. Then it was on the night that the taxi driver refused a tip of 2000 pesos (two pounds) because it was too much: I got it. It's the civility of the place; everyone is civil and extremely polite. I suppose the omnipresent police in their intimidating brown uniforms makes everyone civil. It certainly had that effect on me. When there is a demonstration of 100 people about Peruvian refugees there are 300 police escorting them together with their back-up of riot buses and fire hoses,

As per usual I start off with a City bus tour so I can get my bearings in Santiago. Once again there is a building, the tallest in Santiago (shown on right), which I can use as my touchstone. The next part of my travelling ritual is to ride the subway. I was not that impressed with the Buenos Aires Subte but  the Santiago Metro is excellent. It is clean, safe and efficient. For less than 40p you can travel anywhere in the city. What I like doing is getting the subway to some place mentioned in the guide books and walk back at my leisure towards the hotel. This is a great way to see any city.

Once again, it's the buses that are on top of Santiago's traffic pecking order though a pedestrian's life is not as threatened here as in Buenos Aires. The city is beautiful; it was founded in 1590 and the architecture reflects hundreds of years os Spanish colonialism. There is also some great modern architecture.

On my second night I go to see Rod Stewart. I am not a particular fan of his but this is like live greatest hits.He is a bit of a hero in Chile because he was the first star to come here after the fall of the Junta. He represents freedom and democracy to the Chilean people and the show is a sell-out. Unfortunately Sophie Ellis-Bextor cancels her Saturday gig at the last minute and Megadeth play the day after I leave.

My favourite part of the city is Bellavista. This is like the Greenwich Village of Santiago. Lots of buskers, drummers and market stalls. It is difficult getting a grasp of time sitting in the sun, reading a book, drinking Escudo and eating papas. One of nature's alarm clocks is the parade of school girls when their private school finishes at 2 o'clock. They all wear dark blue and the only difference in uniform they can exhibit are the bags they carry. Sadly most of them smoke but this is true of a lot of people here.

Chile is extremely long and narrow which gives you the option of getting close to the South Pole which I do after a 6 hour light to Puerto Monte which is a lot colder. 

Its narrowness means you are never far from the sea and I take a bus to San Antonio and visit some of the ports of the Pacific. One of the strangest group of people I have ever met is the happiness group. Their sole aim in life is to make people happy. The seven of them do this by jumping out at traffic lights w

hen they are on red and entertaining everyone around with juggling, music and dance. They do not ask for money;they are not given any grants; they just want to make people happy. On YouTube you can see their show.

All the civility of Chile disappears on my last Saturday in the country particularly at the Estadio Nacional where University de Chile (La U) are

 playing Colo Colo. This is a top-of-the-table local derby - what the locals call a classic. It was the most frightening football experience of my life. La U won 1-0 and Colo Colo fans w

ent mad. By contrast all Sundays take on a festival atmosphere. Streets downtown are closed and street food and street theatre comes to life. My 3 bean and potato stew at 50p is delicious. Most of the vendors seem to be refugees from Peru. Chile and Argentina are the most affluent countries in this region. Even so I had breakfast, lunch, a couple of beers, 3 metro tickets and a return ticket on the finicular railway for less than 7 pounds. Nothing quite prepares you for the 

view of Santiago from the statue of the Immaculate Conception which you reach after a 50 minute uphill walk or a 5 minute ride on the finicular. I choose the latter. The city spreads out in front of you and you can see how it is dominated by the omni-present Andes. This trip is one big classroom.

Coming back down and walking through Bellavista you realise how many dogs there are on the street but even they are civil. They just hang around chilling out. Well it's of to Vegas via Miami for the Calzaghe fight.

On the iPod Stop the Clocks Oasis

Reading Generation X

Published Shirt of the Villa: Chile

The adventure begins

My last night in Miami is spent at a Drum and Bass festival in the hotel next to mine on South Beach. I am a great fan of Douglas Coupland. My son gave me JPod for a Christmas present and since then I've started reading his books in sequence. The Drum and Bass night was typical post-modernist generation x consumerism. I had assumed that people would go to the digital disco to dance but that was not the case. The only people who were dancing or remotely moving were the four DJs. They were obviously passionate about their work while everyone else just stood about trying to talk to each other above the noise. Yet people had paid to get in: it seemed to me that the consumers were paying for the suppliers to have a good time. I suppose it just cuts out the middle-men of capitalism.

I arrive in Buenos Aires with slight trepidation. It does not get a good press. I've never been to the place before and I speak very little Spanish. Within 24 hours all those feelings were gone. I suppose it was the fight in the bar which helped acclimatise me. Suddenly I could have been in Coleshill on a Friday night. It was quite a spectacle to watch. A young woman was being nauseous to everyone in the bar. Someone said something. The next thing that took my attention away from Bryson's Made in America was the noise of shattering glass from the wall next to where I was sitting. She had thrown her fall bottle of Quilmes in the general direction of the people she was arguing with. She ran away but was caught and threatened with the police. She didn't seem to care. She went off and half an hour later returned with two younger men presumably her family. This was when it could have got interesting but it all diffused and her the young men joined in drinking in the bar and sent the aggrieved woman home. A good first night.

As with all cities there is a pecking order with the traffic. In London it is a close call between Black Cabs and White Vans; in New York there is no possible competition for the Yellow Cab. In Buenos Aires it's a fight quite literally to the death between buses and motor bikes. Being a pedestrian in this city can be a very dangerous thing - not only because of the traffic but because of the state of the pavements. In spite of these hazrds the city is extremely walkable 

just use the Obelisk as your touchstone and you can't get lost. As well as the all pervasive traffic in the downtown area of the city is the all pervasive presence of football. The Argentineans love it. I walk over to the Boca to look at the stadium and this extremely poor part of town lives for football. The stadium seems a bit weary now but it is still the reason for living for so many people who live around here. I have tickets for a game on Saturday so I'll see what it's like from the inside. As I said parts of this city are extremely poor. At the end of every day the garbage scavengers come out all over the city looking through the discarded rubbish of business and commerce before it is collected by the city workers. Hundreds are engaged in this daily ritual. It seems that what they collect most is cardboard: this is extreme ultra- recycling.

It's true what all the books say about this city - it is very European and extremely catholic. My second day here was a holiday so most of the streets were empty but a lot of the churches were full. I spent an interesting hour in a church having the different versions of The Annunciation explained to me in broken English. The favourite of the woman doing the explanation was Van Eyck's; I think it is mine too. Gabriel's face of peace and Mary's unquestionable acceptance are unequalled in the many other versions of this story. Apart from the centrality of the church the architecture is very European: broad avenues, narrow streets and siesta. The catholicism though doesn't stop it from being a fun city: tango, fur coats and lots of non-PC action. This city is at ease with itself.

A theme which is appearing on this tour apart from cranes is protest. The journey from the airport to the hotel which should have taken 40 minutes took 2 hours. This was because the public sector workers were protesting against the government before the elections: banners and fireworks everywhere along the Avenue of 9th July. What was it with all these independence days in South America being in the summer? Did Spain just go on holiday in July and forget about her empire?

So far I haven't felt any antagonism about being English in Buenos Aires. One of the most popular bars in the city is The Gibraltar an English pub though it can be a bit disconcerting as you pass one of the central subte (subway) station Belgrano. One of the funniest sights I have witnessed so far is two English businessmen trying to get a receipt for a purchase in The Gibraltar. They spent 10 minutes trying to get a receipt for two beers: the total cost of which was less than two quid.

I go to the Igazu Falls: they are magnificent. I have been to Niagara a couple of times but these are so much better - impossible to describe. Almost as impossible as desc

ribing a Bocas Juniors game. I enter the cauldron of the Boca and WOW. This is football but not as I know it. This is the Holy Grail of football. Slums all around the stadium - the inhabitants of which walk to the city centre to beg. Mainly it´s the kids who beg in Buenos Aires and after a couple of days it does get to you. This is a divided city but it is a great city. If the falls are the best natural sight I've seen then the Boca is the best man-made sight I've seen. It was built in 1940 and is too small for the supporters of Boca Juniors. There are 20 teams in the Argentina premier division and 15 of them are from Buenos Aires. That's a lot of local derbies. Boca are playing Banfield, a suburb of Buenos Aires. The game is pure theatre with the Boca crowd - their 12th Player- singing throughout the game. I've been to great stadiums: the Millennium; Wembley new and old; Bernabeu; San Siro; Nou Camp and St Andrews but I've never been anyw

here like this. This is real football: only 10 stewards; very little in way of seat designation and a great experience. Boca recover from 1-0 down to get a draw. I decide at the beginning of the game when there is a one-minute silence for the fallen of the Malvinas that it is time to accentuate my Irish heritage and cover up my tattoo.

On Sunday I walk to Place Dorrego which houses the Antiques and Art market. This is Buenos Aires at its best: sun, light, streets, tango, music and Qilmes. I love this city - I will be back.

On IPod: Sawdust

Reading: Made in America

Published: Shirt of the Villa Part Two: Argentina

Second Life

Aujord hui maman est morte. Ou peut-etre hier, je ne sais pas.

After leaving work and after burying my mother it seemed like a good idea to get away from my previous life. My first life was brilliant; I hope my second one is better. All kids seem to take gap years so I thought why not me? So on St Patrick's Day I left England and I hope to be back by Christmas. My plans are to visit 21 cities in five continents. This blog will let those who are interested know how things are going.

To paraphrase Bill Bryson nothing prepares you for the grand canyons formed by New York's streets and avenues. Although I have been to this, the greatest city in the world, many times, it still holds me in awe.

I do not understand the micro-climate that operates deep down in these man-made canyons but the avenues always seem warm while the streets are cold and blustery. I know that I have had some of the best times of my life in New York as well as some of the worst. It is A number 1 top of the list top of the hill.

The best way to get around New York is to walk. I use the Empire State building as a touchstone and walk towards it or away from it. At any intersection in the grid system I go with the flow of the white dotted walking figure on the lights system. This act of serendipity lets you discover some great places. I started off where the bus dropped me at the Port Authority building on 42nd on the West Side and I had to get to 52nd  on the East  Side. The first event I happened on was the St Patrick's Day parade up 5th Avenue. For some reason I thought it was held on the Sunday as in Birmingham and Dublin. I knew that a lot of the Catholic church were against its being held on Monday because of Holy Week but there it was in all its glory - thousands of Irish Americans marching and dancing their way towards Central Park. What impressed me most was the Americanism of the celebration: first of all these marchers were Americans celebrating their Irish heritage. We have a lot to learn in England about heritage, multi-culturalism and race. 

The hotel on 2nd which I thought I'd booked had no knowledge of me. Were there any vacant rooms? Did I know it was St Patrick's Day in New York? Off to the internet then to find somewhere. I walked back down 2nd looking for an internet cafe and noticed a throng of what turned out to be media workers. Two days earlier a crane had collapsed at a building site on the Upper East side; this was the site. Hundreds of fire fighters and police were still clearing the debris. I felt awkward as I took some film but this was part of my second life's history so in a strange way I felt justified because it needed to be recorded.

Little did I know that I would be  following crane disasters: a few days later I would be in Miami where another crane collapsed killing 3 people. So far on this trip events have occurred in pairs. I left the scene and walked down the upper East Side and came upon the UN building. Outside there was a protest by Tibetans against the current actions by China. I was to stumble on this again in Washington outside the White House. I remember the boycott of the Moscow Olympics. Surely what is happening in Tibet cannot be tolerated by the so-called free world. From these world news events I just needed to get to my room. It was a coup at under $200 in NYC but when I got there I realised why. I always thought that all hotel rooms had,at least, 

a sink but not the Alexander on West 74th. Sharing a bathroom had its challenging times especially at 5 in the morning but at least it was warm and clean. The next city is Washington, the nation's capital and doesn't it know it.Washington is so different from New York. It is spacious; it is green; it is ordered and it is quiet. It is full of majestic and not so majestic public buildings. It oozes history. I prefer New York. On the journey I am joined for a few days by my dear lady wife whose name for the moment escapes me. One of the strangest event I've ever witnessed is the Easter Egg roll (all 15200 of them) on the lawn of the White House together with 

Bush posing with an 8 foot tall Easter bunny. This was happening at the back of the White House at the same time as Tibetans were chanting at the front of the White House about the abuse of their human rights; it's a strange world.

Then it's back to Nw York for a few days. What I love about New York is being able to walk the city and be constantly surprised. You will always find something new. I've stayed at the Hotel Pennsylvania a number of times but this was only this time that I found

the wonderful church of St Francis of Assissi which is fewer than 200 yards from the hotel. What a gem to discover on 35th Street at Easter time.. Walking New York City is definitely the best way to see it. Anne joined me for a few days in New York and for the first time in ages I went to the theatre. We saw Mama Mia on Broadway: it was tremendous. I might get into this theatre lark. From New York I'm heading for South America but first of all a couple of days in Miami. Unfortunately my flight is cancelled because of new safety checks being imposed on the airlines by the federal government. This has a knock-on effect of my South American flights being cancelled. It will be sorted. South Beach is one of the greatest places in the world. I can understand why Hockney came to this part of the world: it's the light. It makes all the pastels of the Art Deco buildings so vibrant. 

In the last few months I've become an Applehead - knew it was coming but Microsoft seems so passe and clunky. I always suspected that Apple stores were better than educational institutions at teaching computing but now I have paid my $99 for a year's one-to-one tuition I am convinced. I book 2 sessions on iMovie and you can see the results on YouTube: just search Shirt of the Villa. What I didn't realise was as well as being better than schools or colleges at education Apple stores make great discos. I arrive in Miami at the start of the tenth Miami music festival. On Thursday night in the Apple store on Lincoln The Digitalisation provided the sounds - excellent stuff - all done from iTunes. What impressed me most is that Lorreta who is dancing on the table is the same person who had earlier given me advice on partitioning my disk and managing my files on the Mac. On Friday I manage to sort out my flights to South America. So it's off to the airport on Monday for an over-night flight to Buenos Aires from where my next blog will come.