The following took place a couple of weeks back, the story saved till I was safely out of Argentina!
“Don’t Mention the War!”, only as they left my month did I realise that I was turning into Basil Fawlty, although I took the sign above to indicate that they had started it, they did invade The Falklands after all, and they brought up the whole thing again with there sign. Facing chile as if giving the V sign to Chile. Something that I didn’t understand was the hate between these two nations split by a mountain range.
It appears that whilst Chile didn’t actually pull any punches, the UK used parts of Chile as a staging post. The anger still continues and on either side of the mountain border crossing we past through. In the first town below is a Battalion of soldiers, posed in something that resembled the cold war but on a patagonian rather than world level.
Argentina also ‘harboured’ Nazi after WWII, in fact I was told one of the top dogs was arrested on the high street of bariloche for war crimes. Another story tells of one of the Hitlers scientist, the really nasty one who experimented on humans escaped to argentina, and there is a town with somewhere in the region of 900% more than usual number of identical twins. Although much of this is the conspiracy thoerist wet daydreams, there is a book called the Nazi’s in Argentina, although only available in spainish.
That said across the border other than having a van with chilean plates, meaning many argentines hoot you or make strong jestures that don’t look encouraging. The actual locals I met face to face were extremely nice, friendly, approachable, helpful and everything I wasn’t expecting from a nation that outwardly seemed to not like the English, although I cheated and played the ‘Welsh’ Card (Sorry to all Gogs, I know I as unwelsh as an Englishman can get, but the welsh card worked for me!).