Goodbye Argentina
After my four days were over I asked the hotel to call me a cab back to Col. Mouldes so I could catch the bus to Salta. I stood out front of the hotel taking in the last of the clear mountain air and the view of the lake and the pass at the dammed up end. An old beat up mini-van pulled up to the hotel and the driver got out and walked passed me into the lobby only to turn around and come right back out. It was my cab. I was a little dubious as the car looked like it had rolled down the mountain a couple of times. But the hotel had called him so I figured he was legit. I got in and he pulled away from the hotel drive and back towards the end of the peninsula and soon we were on the bridge with all the fishermen. I noticed what looked like a large turkey vulture floating just 25-30 feet above the heads of the fisher men. “que es la avion?” I asked using the word for airplane mistakenly pointing to the bird just in front of us. “El condor.” he said matter of factly. I leaned forward to get a better look and then I could see the ring of fluff around its neck and realized how big it really was. “Su pais es hermoso senor.“ I said. He careened around the switchbacks down the mountain side passing the campgrounds where I was first dumped out into this beautiful place and a couple kilometers later we were in Coronel Mouldes Centro.
Walter King on 08.31.07 @ 11:08 AM EST [more..]
Picture the scene, born in Monaco 1973 child number 192. Waking up each morning to the breathtaking view, watching the FI grand prix from your balcony, growing up in the French Riviera, enjoying fantastic holidays, trips around the world, socializing with royalty, frequenting opera houses, restaurants and meeting the most famous and wealthiest visitors to Monaco from around the world. 
I received several invitations to dinner each week from Crist and his wife Maria Theresa-- Titi as Crist sometimes calls her affectionately. I suppose I’ll never understand how such a rogue captured such a beautiful woman. The meal and wine was always far more than I could have asked for. But it was the conversation that was the most important. At Crist’s casa I learned more Spanish than almost anywhere else. Between us we would go back and forth in both Spanish and English with the occasional time out to check my dictionary or their high tech hand held language interpreter. My first night at their apartments, Crist has two…one is Crist’s studio and the other their living quarters, was a reunion. We hadn’t seen each other in 3 years. I brought Crist 11 of his favorite drawing pens from the States and a sketchbook I had promised the year before. Crist gave me two cubanos and made a drawing of me with one of his new pens that he called it “el Gaucho.” The apartment was rather chilly that evening because a window in the house was under repair and had only plastic wrap to keep out the cold night air. The next morning it snowed for the first time in 20 years as I mentioned in my last blog. 
