I have signed up for more immersion. More trying to understand the school cook´s gabbled explanation of why he grills meat with newspaper laid on the top. More wrist-slapping from the teachers when I try to ask anything in English, even during our fun afternoon excursions to the hot springs or tours of the town. But I need it. After a week´s lessons and staring imploringly at hundreds of pairs of dark, frowning, confused eyebrows, I have decided I have to stay a little longer and try to get to grips with Spanish. My many years of studying Latin at school are helping with my comprehension, but this is streaking ahead of my speaking which, attuned to French, is to be frank, shit. My otherwise amiable roommate in the hostel, another Federico no less, left me in no doubt that I need to work hard at my pronunciation, comparing my speaking very unfavourably with the Spanish of an exceedly broad-accented rural Irish guy also staying here.
There are much worse places to be put through this torture. This pleasant desert city, flattened in 1861 by an earthquake and helpfully rebuilt on an exact north-south grid, will be my home for a few weeks I think. The town, which gently slopes up towards the Andes to the west, is clearly the place where knackered Peugeots, Fiats and Fords go to die. Mark I Sierras, Escorts and Falcons abound, all belching smoke and growling like dogs, their owners riding their clutches at red lights, wary that the next stall could be the car´s last and giving the whole town a baritone´s hum late into every night. It reminds me, obscurely, of a documentary on the history of motorway service stations...
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