The Last Time I Walked Into Cholamandal Artists' Village, I Saw So Many Glass Bottles. Gah. So, This Is What It Was?!

Tito Ingenieri, a character from a city called Quilmes, about an hour south from Buenos Aires, has built a massive home made entirely from beer bottles and trash. And by massive, we mean...

By massive we mean 6 million bottles, which have been added to the home along 19 years (at least that's what he claims).

Even if the home doesn't look sleek or chic, we have to give the guy credit for the recycling. Because even though usually beer bottles in Argentina are returnable, Ingenieri takes abandoned and non-returnable bottles from the street and has neighbors saving bottles for him.

He's a famous character in Quilmes and has been subject of many interviews, though this video from Eco-Ideas.net has some impressive images of the whole home, which looks huge. {Read on}{Cholamandal Artists' Village}{Image}

"I don't always do coke but when I do, I do it off the end of a fucking machete."

Image via Wikipedia

Okay - first off - I only speak a little Spanish and my spelling's crap so please excuse. Anyway - me and a buddy had been travelling around Chile and Bolivia a few years back doing a bit of snowboarding. We had been trying to get our hands on some weed with very little joy. Anything we managed to score was really weak and the deals really poor. Finally we twigged that coke was the local stimulant of choice and was pretty readily available. Well it was the end of the holiday so we figured what the hell.

We'd had a fair few beers and were feeling pretty ballsy so we hailed a cab and I (as the only somewhat capable Spanish speaker) asked directly if he could take us somewhere where we could score some coke. The driver's cool with this and starts driving us around the dodgier neighbourhoods of downtown Santiago asking hookers and pimps and general lowlives if they can help us out.

Eventually this seriously rough looking mofo agrees and gets into the front seat beside the driver - me and my mate in the back. So this dealer turns around to face us and he's like 'Cuanto grammes quieres?' I'm like 'Solo uno - gracias'. He's all 'No - no, cinco'.

So i figure fuck it - why not? It's cheap as hell so I agree. He turns away fro a sec and when he looks back at us again I see he's holding a huge fucking knife, serrated edge and all and he's pointing it directly at me. I'm like - oh fuck. This is the bit where we lose all our money, passports and maybe a kidney. It's only then that I spot a little pile of white powder on the tip of the blade and he's like' Quieres probar?' So cool as anything I lean forward, snort it off the end of the dagger and like some fucking connoisseur I'm all ' Si - es bueno. Cinco grammes.' I felt like a badass motherfucker.