The wrap up

Me in front of the Casa Rosada. Sorry the pic is so dark here.
For some reason pics are darker here than they really are.

Plaza de Mayo, with its distinctly European flair

Buenos Aires is a magnificent city. Tonight is my 5th and final night (tear drop) here, and I have been absolutely enchanted by it´s dynamism and vibrance. I was a little nervous about returning to the city because my last experience here was so absolutely terrifying and overwhelming, but armed with my newly acquired language skills, cultural understanding, and backpacker´s grit, I have managed to immerse myself in the spectacular carnival of experience that is Buenos Aires.

First of all, this city is absolutely immense. With 13 million people in the metropolitan area, the city has the population of New York, the architecture of Europe, and the lust-for-life of a Latin American capital. The city center, with its marble canyons and packed walkways, stretches for miles in every direction. The city is bursting with innumerable plazas, gigantic parks, thousands of cafes and bars, museums, history, and a palpable buzz of humanity. The first three nights I stayed in San Telmo barrio (neighborhood), which is famous for its tradition, tango, and its cobbled streets. It was a very pleasant and active place to stay, and I met a group of friends there that invited me out on the town with them. (sidenote: this city doesn´t sleep. When you go out, it is for the entire night. We left for the disco at 3 am and danced til the sun came up. It was exhausting!!) They were really fun and we had a great time. Plus, it was a wildly diverse group, with a lot of Colombians, Chileans, Argentines, Israelis, British, Surinamese, Hollanders, a guy from Istanbul, and myself. It was cool to get so many different people together. During the day I did an immense walking tour of the city and saw the Casa Rosada (their White House), the capital building, the theater district, an artisan fair where I bought some gifts, their national cemetary (which was actually awesome, with Evita´s mosaleum), 2 museums, parks, and miles of city boulevards. There is so much to see here, it is astonishing. Buenos Aires has enough for a lifetime.

It was this guy´s birthday. Party!!

Two chicas from Colombia. (Isabel, if you are reading this, the
girl on the left looks just like you!!)

Last night and tonight I am in the Palermo district of the city, which is posh, elegant, and quite beautiful. The hostel I am staying out right now is probably the best of my entire trip, with its quite courtyard, excellent facilities, nice people, and chill dog. I happened to meet two super cool Irish people there last night, and we have made plans to go out tonight for a real Argentine steak and good wine. Yum! And, of course, tomorrow is my last day of vacation. I have been looking forward to returning home to friends and family, but my last couple of days in Buenos Aires are making it tough. I am truly in love with this awesome city, and will be a bit sad to leave it. I think this is my favorite city I have ever been to. No joke.

So, since this is my last post of my South American adventure, I would like to thank you for following along and enduring my bad jokes and rambling. This has been a great experience for me, and like everything else in life, sharing it makes it better. Writing like this has been very enjoyable for me, and I get quite a bit of satisfaction from having a forum to put out there for people to read. So, because I enjoy it so much, I have decided that I will archive my vacation blog here and slightly retool to continue on into the future. As you know, I very much enjoy to read and to share my thoughts on literature with folks, and the new incarnation of my blog will be devoted to what I am reading. Not quite as exciting as travel, but just as valuable I think. Thanks again for taking in interest in my folly and, if it interests you, please visit this blog in the future to share in my passion for literature.

I´ll bid you farewell here with a germane quote from Joseph Conrad´s "Lord Jim", which I am finishing right now.
" Felicity, felicity - how shall I say it? - is quaffed out of a golden cup in every latitude; the flavour is with you - with you alone, and you can make it as intoxicating as you please."

In the city of Ché

This bar drew me to it like a moth to a street lamp. The Simpsons
are enormously popular all over Argentina and Chile. As big as they are in the US, which
I find inexplicable due to the show´s Ameri-culturalcentrism.

Once again, it´s been too long, and I send my heartfelt apologies for the harrowing, nail-biting wait. Here I am, smack dab in the middle of my 2 week Tour de Ciudades. First Salta, then Córdoba, now Rosario, and next (the big one!) Buenos Aires. Cities here are really a different animal than in the US, at least in my limited experience. Brimming with people, noise, activity, and living on a 24 hour schedule, Argentine cities are like the cracked out cousin to the suburban attitude of our metropolises (gotta be honest, I had to look up the pluralization of metropolis). They are all nice cities in their own right and offer a great variety of amusements, but I guess I am just a bit nostalgic for the wide open spaces and mountainous horizons of the South. It´s funny, the first thing I do when I get to a city is seek out the largest, shadiest, grassiest park around and set up for a good long chill. However, I am very much looking forward to the world-class cultural landmarks of Buenos Aires, and plan on spending several education-filled days exploring the governmental buildings, the zoo, and the various museums. Also, I´m going to buy a big, fat steak. Yup.

One of the many universities.

Meanwhile, I got a couple more days in Rosario. Only about 4 hours northwest of Buenos Aires, Rosario harbours over a million souls on the banks of the Rio Paraná. The city has a great deal of history and culture, several pedestrian malls, beaches, and (as I found out yesterday for 2 hours) a very confusing bus system. For the majority of gringos, the city is most famous as the birthplace and hometown of Ernesto ¨Ché¨ Guevara. If you´ve lived in a cave underneath the North Pole for the last 50 years, go ahead and Wikipedia his name to get some info on him. Quite a life he had.

Yet another dirt jump bike park. These are in lots of cities, and
I love it. Would like to write article for IMBA when I return. Got some thoughts.

Note: I noticed the blog-censor (I had no idea there was one) will not allow me to publish the last word in the title of the following book, and replaces it with ¨######¨. Facists. The word begins with a ¨W¨and ends with ¨hores¨. FYI.

And lastly, I recently finished Gabriel Garcia Marquez´s ¨Memories of My Melancholy ######¨. I have had some difficulty acquiring books by Latin American authors over the last couple weeks (had to read 2 interim books), but was glad to find this novella by the Colombian master. For a long time I was trying to avoid his books because I have read several of them before and would like to diversify myself as much as possible. This was all I could find after scouring over a dozen book stores in Córdoba, so here is what I thought:

Garcia Marquez erupted on the scene in the 1960s and 70s as the leading figure in the boom era of Latin American literature. Publishing several world-reknown novels and eventually earning the Nobel Prize in 1982, you can understand why this was one of the very few books I could find in English here. At the still vibrant age of 82, Garcia Marquez is still alive and kickin´, and published his most recent book in 2004, ¨Memories of My Melancholy ######¨. In alot of ways, this novella is classic Gabriel Garcia Marquez: romantic, dreamy, slow paced, and gorgeously written in a simplistic, trim, almost Hemingway-esque style with themes of love, history, family, and art. Without exception (at least in my readings of 4 of his books), the author distinguishes himself as the quintessential Latin American voice and can conjure the essence of his culture with ease and unique beauty.
In ¨Memories of My Melancholy ######¨, Garcia Marquez reveals himself to be something of a dirty old man, though with a wink of an eye and an endearing smile, of course. The story centers around a 90 year old bachelor who, on his birthday, finds himself contemplating life, love, sex, and death. A life-long devotee of the ¨world´s oldest profession¨, the man decides to give himself the birthday present of a night with a teenage virgin. You may remember this book for making news because it was banned in Iran (for obvious reasons). After this single night, the man awakens to a love he never felt in his life, and it changes him indefinitely. From here, the book follows the man as he starts to see his life, his experience, and everything around him in a new way. What I like about this book is it gives the reader an elegant insight into aging and death, and what it must be like for Garcia Marquez to look into his past.
When reading Garcia Marquez, I almost feel like he offers a distinct and intangible sensory experience, like he added a extra sense to his quiver. You get the words, their associated images, their sound, and a very peculiar extra sense that I would place somewhere between olfactory and ¨memory¨. How he accomplishes this is the mystery of his art.
Elegant, sexy, powerful, profound, and economical (with its 117 pages), ¨Memories of My Melancholy ######¨ makes for a really pleasant afternoon in the park.

Gotta go. My hammock is-a-callin´. I am finishing Mario Vargas Llosa´s ¨In Praise of the Stepmother¨, so look forward to hearing about that. Next report is likely to come from Buenos Aires. Wish me luck!!

A Sensory A-Salta

I hate to burst any bubbles, but I feel it is my duty to inform you that, when travelling abroad, you cannot expect all to be rainbows and bell-bottoms. In the interest of keeping you abreast of my good times, I have purposefully ommitted a great deal of cultural observations over the past 2 months. My perspective on humanity has, understandably, vascillated between the heroic and the evil, and, because I find Salta, Argentina to be a particularly robust example of all things Human, allow me to draw the following illustrations for your benefit:

1) I have only experienced a miniscule percentage of the People of Earth on my trip, and 78% have been brought to me by the Coca-Cola Company.

2) Capitalism is not an ethos; it is the principal upon which People operate, and the 2nd world has embraced it with open arms and a closed wallet.

3) Feral dogs and horny pidgeons will inherit the earth.

4) The parental instinct to improve the offspring´s existence is both holy and disasterous.

5) Technology and Coolness (both exports of my very own country) are conquering the Life Force.

6) The end of the world will not be an explosion: we will simply suffocate in a mountain of our own plastic bottles.

7) And, regardless of my hypocritical pessimism, I am constantly blown away by beautiful examples humanity.

Sorry about the sidways image. Salta has numerous cake-like churches, and

I guess I was laying down on my side when I took the picture of the second one.

Salta has not really been the highlight of my trip. In short, it is a really crowded, busy, humid city stuck in the clouds at the base of the Andes. With nice shady parks, multiple plazas, and an awesome market (in which I accidently ordered a bowl of tripe soup...), the city is nice, but not really that impressive. It´s been a really cheap but somewhat boring 3 days here. I happened to be the first guest at the brand new hostel that I am staying at, but because I hate being doted upon, it has been a little uncomfortable.

I am taking another overnight bus to Córdoba in about 2 hours, so I best be moving. My intention with this post was not to be a downer, but rather give you a little better perspective on the very diverse experience I am having. All in all, it is very educational, and I value education above all.

Is that a desert mirage, or is that my trip´s end in the distance?

Inside the Valley of the Moon, with snow covered 20,000 ft peaks
in the distant background.

Wow. Talk about your dramatic change of scenery! San Pedro de Atacama stands alone on my trip. The dream-like otherworldlyness seems inconguent with the rest of my journey. I´ve visited alpine mountains, rainforest, big city, and vast pampas, but nothing like San Pedro. Sitting at 8,000 ft above sea level on a parched plane with dusty, obscured horizons, San Pedro is a tiny pueblo of adobe buildings and one tiny main street (more accurately qualified as an alley, really). The Andean Cordillera runs along the eastern edge of the valley, and this area is the driest place on Earth. Honestly, I wasn´t terribly jazzed about coming here due to its remoteness and touristy reputation, but the place has really charmed me with its lazy attitude, surprisingly cool and breezy courtyards, and some crazy landscapes.


The town itself really isn´t terribly impressive, but rather quaint. Every structure in the town is crafted from adobe, even the central church (pictured above). Outside of the town (which is something of an oasis, because they have gushing aquaducts inside the city), nothing grows. Only vast stretches of baked sand and stone, with occasional mirage-like salt deposits. Very, I want to say, creepy...


The one thing I was really excited to do here was rent a bike. It has been 2 months since I have ridden a bike, and I had almost forgotten how liberating it can be to have two wheels to push around. Yesterday, I gathered my supplies and rode out to the very near regional park, Valley of the Moon. It was strikingly beautiful and it was refreshing to get there on my own time and accord. I can´t wait to have bikes again!

I´m going to keep this post quick because everything here (including the internet) is outrageously expensive. For instance, due to a complete lack of options, I am paying 8,000 pesos a night to camp (around $12). That is just silly. It is a really nice campground, but still!

Tomorrow I am catching a bus to climb the pass (over 12,000 feet, I believe) back over to Argentina. Salta, to be exact. A couple of days there, then will push on. I was going to try to get to Bolivia from here, as it is only about 40 km away, but I am (sadly) running short on time and have a handful of places in Argentina to visit still. Hard to believe I only have 17 days until I´m outta here! Time flies, am I right? Ah, such is life. Those of you back in the good ol´US of A, run a bath and put some beer on ice for me, will ya?