Nederland, Ward,...

For the time being I live in a 'suburb' of San Martin called "La Vega", which is the Spanish word for wetland or floodplain. Yes, I know, you would haver never guessed as the place whose name sounds so similar - and by using the plural: Las Vegas, even amplifies our expectation of an abundance of natural moisture - is known for exactly the opposite: an arid desert climate with the ensuing water resource issues.

Looking out the window and using a little imagination I can easily understand how this neighbourhood here acquired its name. Check out the place in Google Earth here: < 40° 7'42.38"S - 71°16'42.63"W > and you'll agree. Heading East out of the center of town, the main road climbs through a gap between two small hills reaching out from the ridges to the North and South. Then the valley opens up and its floor becomes flat as a pan. About 10 miles further East a hill, appropriately called "lomo atravesado" - the hill across - marks the end of this vega. A small river and runoff from the mountains in numerous creeks keep the water table high enough, so that parts of this plain have areas of standing water most of the year.

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La Vega - the wetlands and the ridge to the north

But I digress. I wanted to say, that my current place is about 4 or 5 miles out of town. There is public transportation and the buses, whose routes connect even the remote satellite villages, run frequently and reliably and are cheap. For 45 cents you get a tour through different suburbs and neighbourhoods and the entire stretch of downtown. All that often times in vehicles, which have apparently completed their first service-life in a city close to that I just arrived from. The emblem next to their front entrance identifies that as the City of Basel, Switzerland.
So, whenever I go downtown for a single purpose, like running one of my favorite administrative errands, and don't have to worry about carrying home five plastic bags full of groceries, I take the 'colectivo'. Since I never know to how many diffferent places over what stretch of time my bureaucrazy adventures take me, I go well prepared. My backpack holds something to read, a notebook and an assortment of pens to write, my laptop - in case there's a forced pit stop at a wifi cafe - and the Nikon. It's the latter, above all, which over time has helped me to gather some insight into the town of San Martin. I suspect that these impressions are of a snapshot quality in that they reflect a rather momentary interpretation of what I see. A couple of months down the road I might relate to them in an entirely different manner.
Anyway, what is San Martin de los Andes like? Three towns(?) kept popping up in my visual memory as I was trying to find someplace to compare it to and for today I will refer to two of them only: Nederland and Ward. I know: these are not hot spots on any tourist map of the (western) US. So I apologize: what follows has been written primarily with my Boulder friends in mind.

Nederland? Not that San Martin looks like Nederland, much rather, for me, in some ways it 'feels' like it. In one corner a tourist town: a couple of small, nice shops, sport equipment, skiing, snowboarding, hiking mostly. A cute Hamburger place, perhaps.
And across the main drag, along a dusty gravel road the hide-outs of ex-hippies, secondhand stores for this and that, books, clothes, CD's.
The studio of a local, "indie" radio station hidden behind a group of pine trees.

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A cute music-and-games bar - - - - and the "indie" radio station, in San Martin

What defines this town for me is the mix of expensive cars carrying skiers in expensive gear to the slopes of Eldora and the locals, discussing along the counter of a small diner with a dusty parking lot in the back the exceptional spring skiing of last winter or planning the backcountry hikes of the coming summer. The locals seem to be mostly aged college kids with their studies in an extended holding pattern.


Yes, this is Nederland..

Most of this I've found here in San Martin, as well

And sometimes even more: right downtown, across from a hotel, a shack, which must have been one of the first buildings when the early 'pioneers' set up shop along the shores of Lago Lacar. And that reminds me of Ward.

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looks like ? and is: San Martin

Of course, there's the other San Martin as well, playing in an entirely different league and reminding me of a town as different from Ward or Nederland as one part of San Martin is from another.
More on that in a later post.