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At the End of a Long Drive


Shreesh and Neena Taskar

We didn't make the decision, the decision made us. On October 20th, 2007, we left our comfortable city of San Francisco to follow a simple algorithm - go North till the road ends then turn around and then go as far South. In between those two points was the stage, the timeline, the space, where we made things happen and things happened to us.

The past is fleeting and the stories, the sights and the feelings are perishable. One sees what one wants to see, and perhaps we are not capable of more. We saw that people are kind and helpful even if they were not materially rich. Some we could understand even though we didn't speak the same language, the motivations of others were incomprehensible even though we did. In the end fragments remain - the smell of roasting chocolate, a flock of snow Ptarmigians on snow, the creaking of the rainforest, the rough feathers of penguins, and the intoxication of Curanto.


So these are our stories. Every time you visit the site you will see a random post below. Each starts with Lo que pasa es que...

A Divine Comedy

May 6th, 2009 by

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At MALBA

The Divine Comedy and the Story of a Merchant’s Dream.
(Map this!)

Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva scura,
chè la dritta via era smarrita.

– Dante Alighieri, “L’Inferno”

 

With these famous lines we enter hell. Or rather, the first (ground) floor of Palacio Barolo, the product of a fantastic dream of a rich textile merchant of twentieth century Argentina, Luis Barolo. Thinking that Europe would be destroyed by incessant wars, he built a mausoleum for Dante Alighieri’s ashes (which, unsurprisingly enough, the Italians never released) in a magnificent edifice with architecture suffused with the Divine Comedy.

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The view from the top of Palacio Barolo facing the Congress

 

To view the 40.29 megapixel panorama click here.

 

We zoomed up hell and purgatory relatively easily – but reaching heaven was hard work. The ancient elevator could not carry everyone in our little group, so some of us had to schlep the last few floors up a one-person-wide stairway. Inexplicably, the once-tallest building in South America is topped by a lighthouse lamp, housed in a glass dome. Precariously perched on the metal railing, we took in the panoramic view of the “Congresso” district of Buenos Aires – the wedding cake Congress building, the expansive plaza which is a magnet for the homeless, the sidewalk cafes as well as the colorfully painted bus of unknown purpose that seems to be a permanent fixture of the landscape…

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