Home after a three week adventure in South America. We flew all night Tuesday from Buenos Aires to Dallas, then changed planes and caught another plane to Phoenix. Got home at noon on Wednesday. Chalked up four countries (Bolivia, Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina), ate great food, saw amazing things, solved a whole bunch of life, and sketched like crazy (55 pages worth).
Frankly, it was actually a relief to be away from all the negative talk about the economy and health care, but I have to say, the long arm of our culture is hard to escape. Here are a couple sightings that amused me:
Not sure why Obama is in green, but it caught my attention on a very crowded newsstand in Montevideo. Meanwhile, Quentin Tarrantino has to be happy about the billboard campaign his studio bought throughout Argentina and Uruguay:
Meanwhile, my son Thomas says that in his travels throughout South America there is always a Simpson ripoff on a store or, in this case, a bar:
And speaking of knock offs, here is a "hamburgueso" eatery in Santa Cruz, Bolivia:
Patent Attorney, anyone? Probably the most successful worldwide ad campaign in the history of the world is the logo in this pic:
In every town and every country, you see the classic coke logo. The kids are a school group running around the plaza in Samaipata, Bolivia (Samah-ih-pata, means resting up high).
Some of the U.S. references are quite eclectic, like this Jim Morrison line on the side of a building in Santa Cruz, Bolivia:
On our last day in Argentina we found this gaucho town thirty minutes west of Buenos Aires called Canuela. In the center of town was this watering hole:
Spanish reverses words, so instead of Old West Saloon, we get Saloon Old West. Ha. The logo on their napkins shows a gunfighter coming through swinging doors. Amazing, the long reach of the West, our West, that is.
We ran into all kinds of weather, cold, hot and lots of rain, like this photo, taken near an Inca ruin on top of a very high mountain in Bolivia.
Artwork, tomorrow, from that sketchbook I'm holding.
"To understand is to perceive patterns."
—Isaiah Berlin
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