Giramondo

So now that I´ve been staying in the hostel for a few weeks, I feel qualified to give the readership of this blog a little peek into what life is like in el hostel.

The facilities are pretty nice. The bathrooms are a little strange, but generally clean. All of the walls to the bathroom are metal, including the stall doors. So when someone shuts the bathroom door con fuerte on the first floor, you can easily hear this event from the third floor. There are rooms for living on the first and second floors. On the third floor, there is a room which has a couple computers that connect to the internet, another room for the tv, and a the kitchen, where free breakfast is served every morning.

I suppose the best way for me to explain what it´s like to live in the hostel would be to give you all a rundown of the different personalities that you´re likely to run into in the Giramondo.

1. Diego - this guy is from Peru. He takes it upon himself to play host to every female who comes to stay at the hostel. My roommate, Andres, tells me that he will have sex with anything that walks. So that´s awesome. He´s also an artist - he plays the guitar. In some ways, he kinda reminds me of Ethan, though with less intelligence, less ambition, and less tact.

2. Alejandro - for a long time I couldn´t figure out what this mid-forties Argentinian was doing in the hostel. My roommates informed me that Alejandro recently divorced his wife and received a rather large settlement from his former spouse, who was apparently pretty rich. My roommate also informed me that Alejandro´s role in the hostel is to smell bad, which I can now confirm is true. This guy, from what I can tell does nothing. I´m serious when I say that I don´t think that he´s left the hostel since I´ve been here. He enjoys watching soccer and other television program. I now anticipate the feeling of disappointment of knowing that I won´t be able to control the television channel before I even enter the tv room because alejandro will be watching something. Though, yesterday he was watching Hook in Spanish, which I enjoyed. Apparently, when I was gone in Bolivia, Alejandro passed out on the stairs and peed down all of the stairs. The owner of the hostel threatened to kick him out, but I think some sort of deal was cut allowing Alejandro to stay. Despite everything I say here, he´s a pretty nice guy.

3. Jam(?)- Jam arrived in the hostel a few days ago. I was proud of myself for being able to recognize that Jam was a transvestite within the first five seconds that I met him, or her. I´ll call him her. We had quite possibly the weirdest introduction conversation. It was a mix of Spanish and English and it went like this. First, Jam told me that her name was like the english word for jamon. Ham? I asked. No, that can´t be right. What was you name again? At this point, Jam realized that her name was not in fact the same as jamon in English. She repeated her name again to me. It sounded like gem, so I asked in Spanish if it is like the stone, you know, gem. Jam had no idea what I was talking about. Finally, I pronounced her name correctly, at which point I was relieved that this ordeal of figuring out Jam´s name was going to end. At this point, Jam informed me that she also goes by Paloma. So Jam seems like a pretty normal transvestite. One of the workers at the hostel showed me the little information card that every resident in the hostel has to fill out filled out by Jam. In the space for sex there are two boxes, M and F. Jam created a new box on her card marked with a T. I´m not gonna lie, I´m not used to being around transvestites, so at first, I was a little uncomfortable. But I´ve adjusted and Jam seems alright to me.

4. Stereotypical American guys- many of these guys have come through. They might as well all belong to the same frat. They are in Buenos Aires to party and try their luck with Argentinian women. They generally don´t stay too long, which is preferable to me. But, whatever, they´re nice and we´re usually friendly.

5. High schoolers - there is a group of high schoolers staying here. They are all part of some creative writing program. Holy shit, I know people are always saying this, but was I like that in high school? I´m pretty sure that I wasn´t. I seriously don´t remember doing things for the sake of being cool, but who knows. Anyway, these kids generally annoy the hell out of me with the things they will say to appear awesome. These kids make me feel very old and very uncool, but I guess I just have to concede coolness to them because I´m just not willing to try to be cool anymore. Why is that such a foriegn concept to me? Oh yeah, and these kids generally ignore me, which I don´t take personally because I realize that being unfriendly is part of being cool. At least I think it is. I guess I can´t really know since I don´t know how to be cool. Also, one of these high schoolers lost her purse the other day. I felt bad for her. I did find it interesting though that she was carrying 2000 dollars in her purse. Not really sure why you´d be doing that. That really sucked.

6. My roommate, Andres - this guy is awesome. Originally from Spain but grew up in Chile. Speak English, French, Spanish, and Italian. Spent a few years in Paris before coming to BsAs. Draws comics. We´ve enjoyed many nights of pillow talk about life and such. Andres doesn´t take much too seriously. He´s generally just a nice guy. He´s also the clean roommate, whereas I am the slob (this should come as no surprise to anyone). He is also a doctor´s son, which means that he has a little pharmacy in his personal locker, which has come in the handy a couple times (don´t worry, I haven´t taken anything too dangerous). I also visited Andres´ studio, which a nice little apartment. I´m hoping that Andres draws me in comic form, though I don´t want to ask because I know he has a decent amount of work.

Okay, not really sure what I´ll do now. I was going to watch tv for a little bit, but that´s not an option now seeing as Jam is passed out on the couch.

Billares

For the past couple months, I have frequented with marked frequency a Bar in the Jewish neighborhood where I used to live. I play pool for a couple hours each time I go. Occasionally, I order a cafe con leche with tres medialunas. I believe that the coffee they serve here is the best I have ever had. The medialunas are pretty awesome as well.

This bar is pretty ridiculous. It´s full of retired old people. They are all playing cards or dominoes. I´ve become friendly with a number of people there. Perhaps the most interesting character is Oswaldo. Oswaldo and I began playing pool against one another about a month ago. Oswaldo is a little better than me, but for the most part, our games are pretty even.

Over the past month, I have grown increasingly suspicious that Oswaldo is part of the mafia here. First of all, he´s not all that old. I would say that he is about 40 years old. You will notice that although Oswaldo and I have built our relationship around pool, there is not much more to our relationship besides this game. I am fearful of asking him questions because I am scared he will kill me if I know too much. So I don´t know where he works, though he always seems to be wearing clothing from the federal ministry of health. So for a while, before I realized he was pretty much always at the bar in between the hours of 11 and 5, I thought that he might work for the ministry of health. But I realize now that this is pretty much an impossibility.

Anyway, Oswaldo seems to know everybody, and I have noticed that people are often coming to him with their problems or stories or such. I can´t be sure of this, but there seems to be money riding on a lot of these card games. It seems Oswaldo has a hand in this action.

It´s also possible that Oswaldo is not in the mafia, but rather I am just judging him by the stereotypical appearance of mafiosos (he looks like he would be in the mafia - greased back hair, leather jackets, etc.). Anyway, he´s a really nice guy and I enjoy playing pool with him.

There are a handful of other interesting characters. The guy who occasionally plays pool against me and has a squeaky voice and who I think may have early stage Parkinsons because he shakes a lot. This plump dude named Fernando who likes to speak in English with me. Siro, who is always wearing a marroon sweater under a sports coat. Lito, the guy who works behind the counter. Eduardo, the sole waiter in the joint. Samuel, an old dude who used to work in perfumes and who likes to wear jumpsuits. Some dude who knows a lot about pool and who likes to teach me some things, which I appreciate.

Okay, well I´m gonna grab some lunch and then meet Oswaldo for a bit of pool.

En Vuelta (pt. 3)

The Asuncion terminal was a little bigger than Santa Cruz terminal. It wasn´t nearly as busy though, which may have been due to the fact that it was near midnight. Like I mentioned before, there was a good number of people, like 6 or 7 of us making the connection. Most of the others were heading into Brasil, Sau Paulo or Brasilia. I only had five more hours to ciudad del este; they had more than twenty until they arrived to their destination.

Anyway, the Bolivian boy, Victoria, my twin, some others, and I waited for not more than fifteen minutes outside at the terminal before boarding the next bus. The leader stayed with us until we safely boarded, taking it upon himself to make sure that we made the connection. He seemed to be friends with a lot of people in the terminal, as I saw him run into two terminal workers who were his friends.

I also bought some bottled water for my traveling companions. Oh, I forgot to mention that the leader was pretty drunk. At the last rest stop, he had purchased a liter of beer. He slowly finished the beer as we approached Asuncion, and therefore became slowly more drunk toward the end of the trip. I offered him one of the bottles I bought, but he turned it down, saying that it would have an undesired effect on him.

So we boarded the bus. Sitting in front of me there was a guy about my age who had actually been sitting in front of me in the last bus. But for some reason, we hadn´t really talked at all. So we talked for about twenty minutes. He told me that he had started his trip in Lima, Peru, where he had lived for a while even though he was born in Asuncion, and that he was continuing on to see his father in Sao Paulo. He would be on a bus for almost three and a half days straight. I forget his name but I´m sure that it began with an ¨n¨. He was twenty one years old, and was working as an auto mechanic in Lima before traveling. He was looking forward to seeing many, dark-skinned women in Brazil. I couldn´t blame him.

We stopped talking as soon as the bus left the station. I slept for the rest of the trip.

I was awoken by the azafata a few minutes before we arrived in ciudad del este. I mentioned before that there was a guy I´d met who was traveling to Puerto Iguazu from ciudad del este. Once I got off the bus in ciudad del este (at a street corner- there was nothing resembling a bus terminal), I could not find this man. Great. I would have to fend for myself. Luckily, this was not too difficult.

A man standing on the street corner told me that I could take cab across the corner. And there was a cab less than 20 meters from where I was standing. Easy. I hopped in the cab. I realized that in my wallet, I had a 50 dollar bill, and a small amount of pesos, bolivianos, and guarinis. I wasn´t sure that I´d be able to pay him with this money, so I told him we may have to stop by an ATM at some point, especially considering that I wasn´t sure if there would be any fees at Paraguay or Argentina immigration. We stopped at two ATMs in ciudad del este, only to find that both only accepted mastercard bank cards. I have a visa. I decided to risk it and told the cab driver, Enrique to push forward across the border, hoping that if I had insufficient funds after immigration, that we could stop at an ATM in Argentina.

Oh, I should mention something about ciudad del este. I didn´t know this before traveling there, but my spanish teacher informed me that ciudad del este is very dangerous. It is know for two things, both of which are kinda connected. The first is that many Argentinians will go to ciudad del este to get good bargains on dvds, electronics, and such. The reason for the this is that these goods were stolen, which brings me to the other interesting fact. Apparently, there are strongholds for Hezbollah and al Qaeda in ciudad del este. There were some bombings on a Jewish building in Argentina in 1994. It is believed that a lot of the logistical support for these terrorist attacks came from groups in ciudad del este.

So we make our way to Paraguay immigration. This takes about a minute. It would have taken less time, but the dude who stamps my passport stamps the wrong date at first (July 21st instead of July 12th). So he has to cancel a stamp and apply the correct one.

Don´t have to pay anything. Nice. We drive through Brazil, which you have to do to get to the Argentinian border. So I was in Brazil for a little while even though I don´t have the passport stamp to prove it. Getting into Argentina turns out to just as easy getting out of Paraguay. And minutes later, Enrique and I are cruising through Puerto Iguazu, which is Argetina´s version of a tourist town. We arrive at the bus terminal- I want to buy my ticket home to BsAs before I see the cataratas. Unfortunately, I don´t have money to pay Enrique. He would have accepted the 50 dollar bill, but then I would be losing a lot of money. So we look for another ATM, which turns out to be very close to the bus terminal. Luckily, this one is functional. I take out some money, pay Enrique, and he drives off. I then walk back to the bus terminal, buy my ticket for a bus that leaves at 2 PM. It´s a cochecama. I´m pretty excited for this because it seems as though it will be my most luxurious travel experience during the return.

It´s 7 in the morning at this point. The park opens at 8. I stop off at a cafe, enjoy a cafe con leche and a tostado (ham and cheese melted on toast). I then find a cab to the park. My cabbie is nice enough to walk me into the park.

I had the impression that I could just walk around the park for a little while. Well, when I get there, I find that there are tours, one of which takes you on a boat into one of the waterfalls. Having spent so much time traveling, I have the attitude of what the hell, I´m here so I might as well go all out. So I take the boat tour. This turns out to be pretty awesome. The motor boat is really fast. Going into the falls is quite exciting. A bunch of my clothes get soaked, but that´s no big deal. And I´m able to get some good pictures

The falls are pretty incredible. Very beautiful. Words won´t really do them justice. So I hope that anyone reading this gets a chance to see my pictures when I return. After the boat tour, I walk around the park a little more. I take this little train to a set of falls called garganta del diablo. It´s pretty awesome.

At one oclock, I take a cab from the park to the bus terminal. It turns out that our first bus is not a cochecama, but that we will board a cochecama after four hours on this normal bus. I´´m a little upset since I was under the impression that I was buying a ticket for a 16 hours trip on a cochecama. I think about trying to get a little money back from the bus company, but decide that my Spanish is probably not good enough to argue. And I would probably only be able to get back 10 pesos or so, so three dollars didn´t really seem like it was worth it.

The trip back was incredibly uneventful. The time in the cochecama was nice. I was able to lay nearly horinzontal, and I drank wine with dinner which was adequate though not as good as what I expected based on the stories I´d heard from others. I didn´t really talk to anybody because I was sitting in a row of single seats. I was actually sitting in the last seat on the second floor (it was a double decker). If you even get the chance to take a cochecama, do not take seats toward the back of the bus. The engine is very loud, which makes it impossible to hear the movie which was playing. On our bus, they showed the Da Vinci Code, which I wanted to see but was not able to due to the noise.

So the bus ride turned out to be 18 instead of 16. But I arrived back in Retiro at 8 in the morning last Thursday and was able to make it to class by 9. All in all, a great trip. An experience I will not forget. Hope you all enjoyed the stories from it.

En Vuelta (pt. 2)

So we make it Paraguay. Done with la tierra. Back on smooth highway. As soon as we enter Paraguay, our bus is inspected by a Paraguayan soldier, the first of probably 10 searches.

Soon thereafter, we make our first stop. We are directed to take all of our bags out the bus. As we exit, we are told by a Paraguayan soldier to form a line and drop our bags in front of us. One by one, one of a few Paraguayan soldiers searches our bags for drugs and verifies that we are on the passenger list. As soon as I am done, I buy a bottle of water and brush my teeth. I have to change some Bolivianos into Guaranis, the Paraguay currency, to make the purchase.

Oh yeah, as I´m standing in line, I make a couple friends. The first guy is quite a talker. I don´t catch his name, but he gives me his business card and informs me that he is on his way home to Asuncion, Paraguay after traveling South America for a month. He runs a small cell phone business in Asuncion and Buenos Aires, which he told me he had recently visited. He was disappointed to learn that I would not be spending even a day in Asuncion, as I was just passing through. For the rest of the trip, he would call me ¨America¨, which was a little funny, slightly embarrassing and mostly annoying. But he was nice and seemed to like me. We had actually spoke a little bit before, during the tierra when I spotted an insect near me and swatted it away. This guy, who I will refer to as ¨the leader¨ for reasons to be explained later, was seated behind me, and informed me that I had missed the bug, but spotted it himself and told me to try again. This time, I swatted with my book and connected. Avispo (wasp), I asked? Si, he told me.

The other guy I met in line didn´t say too much. But he informed me that he was headed to ciudad del este and then Puerto Iguazu, the same route as me, and said that it was okay if i followed him to puerto iguazu after we got off at cuidad del este.

Oh, I also had a short conversation with the azafata, who informed me that when it rains, that same stretch of la tierra that we drove over, can take more than a week. I felt very lucky.

We reboarded the bus and started up again, only to stop a minute later for gas, and then another five minutes later at Paraguayan immigration. As we made our way to the little office, we were greeted by a bunch of poor little kids who were asking us for food and money. There were some nuns on our bus who were handing out bread to the kids from a basket they had brought. I thought that was nice. But it was really sad to see these kids, a couple of whom looked really sick.

Around this immigration office, just as there had been around the Bolivian office, were a collection of animals. There was a goat, a couple roosters, and some dogs, one of which only had three legs, which I couldn´t stop staring at. I finally made it into the office. When the Paraguayan official asked me for my visa, I knew that I was in trouble. I definitely did not have this. I assumed that I wouldn´t need such a document and that my US passport would be sufficient. Wrong. He asked me what I was doing in Paraguay, and I informed him that I was just traveling through the country, on my way back to Argentina. He said, okay, I would be able to get a transport visa, which would cost 70 something dollars. Luckily, I had that 100 dollar bill in my wallet. So I pulled it out and paid the man. He handed me back a 50 dollar bill, stamped my passport, and I was on my way. A little scary.

We reboarded the bus and were back on the road.

Another passenger on the bus was an expressionless Bolivian boy, somewhere in between the age of 15 and 17. I had first seen him with his father at the bus station in Santa Cruz. But this boy was traveling alone, not with his father. I would later learn that he traveling for the first time in his life to see relatives in Sau Paulo. He had a folder full of different papers that he would need for the trip. He made it through immigration in Bolivia and Paraguay. But for some reason, we were later stopped in Paraguay and this boy was pulled from the bus by a Paraguayan soldier, who was asking to see one of the boys documents. He took the boy into an office, which was clearly visible from the bus. We watched as the Paraguayan soldier was unrelenting in letting this boy get on. After about five minutes of this, the leader got off the bus and started negotiating with the soldier. After a couple minutes of talking, the leader pulled out his wallet and handed the soldier some money. The soldier let the boy go, and the leader walked back with his arm around the shoulder of the boy, who remained expressionless, though was also clearly shaken by the experience. And we started up again.

Not too much happened in between the Bolivia-Paraguay border and Asuncion (capital of Paraguay). I talked for a bit with a cute old Bolivian woman named Victoria, who´d lived in Santa Cruz all her life and now worked as a seamstress. When I asked her if she wouldn´t mind talking for a little bit, she said okay, but as our talk went on, I could tell that she grew a bit wary of me; I´m not sure if this was because she was wary of strangers or if it was because I was an American. But I feel as though she warmed up to me as the trip went on. Oh, she was also on her way to Sau Paulo to see her daughter, who had apparently married a Brasilero. And it was her first time out of Bolivia. I imagine, she must have been 65 years old.

At the last rest stop, I also met this other dude, who I will call my twin. I first spotted this guy in the middle of la tierra, when the bus stopped so that everyone could go to the bathroom (women behind the bus and men in front). He was also wearing jeans and white lacoste polo shirt, just like me. I would spend a good portion of the trip trying to figure out if his shirt was also a knock off. He would later tell me that it was. But he had bought his for 80 bolivianos (I got mine for 55). He was impressed with the deal I had gotten. We met as we were both eating empanadas at this rest stop. I asked him what kind he was eating. Carne, just like me. I laughed, we are twins I said. Same clothes, same food. As we walked back to the bus, I asked what he did for a living. He was a medical student in Santa Cruz. Ridiculous, right?

After the rest stop, the leader got up in front of the bus and informed us that the boy who had been pulled off the bus before was in need of some money in order to pay for his connection to Sao Paulo. So he walked down the aisles, collecting money from the passengers. I gave him 20 Bolvianos. The leader gave all the money, which was a pretty good amount, to the boy. Victoria then yelled at the boy to thank the people who had given him money. The boy then got up in front of the entire bus and gave his thanks. It was incredible really. He remained expressionless througout his speech, though you could tell he was very grateful. He was very brave talking in front of everyone. He did a fantastic job, and when he finished, the whole bus gave him a well deserved and proud round of applause.

Four hours after the rest stop, we have been on the bus for 25 hours. Oh, an azafata would tell me at some point, that my trip would consist of 24 hours from Santa Cruz to Asuncion, and then five more on a different bus from Asuncion to ciudad del este. So that was awesome. The bus to ciudad del este would leave at midnight from the Asuncion terminal. At ten oclock at night, we were still on the bus. We had been on the bus for 25 hours total at this point. I started to get a little worried that we weren´t going to make our connection. Luckily, were entered the city of Asuncion a little after 10. I swear that in the last hour before arriving to the bus terminal, we were stopped by at least four military officials, verifying that everyone on the bus was on the list and searching the bus for something.

Asuncion was pretty nice. Seemed like a pretty happening city. Some parts nice, other parts kinda run down. Pretty much just what I expected. I wasn´t too upset to only be passing through.

But eventually, we made it to the Asuncion terminal, and the six or seven of us continuing on to the connection were directed to our new bus...

En Vuelta (pt. 1)

Before I begin this post, I would like to point out that yesterday was my half-birthday and no one congratuled me on turning 23 and a half. So that sucked.

Also, I thought I´d mention something which I think is kinda funny. So my Spanish has undoubtedly improved. My speaking skills are still way behind my comprehension skills. That being said, I´m still pretty horrible. I´m not going to be anywhere close to fluent by the time I return to the US. But still, I have improved, and I have figured out how not to tip people off to the fact that I am an extranjero. The fact that my appearance allows me to blend in makes this a little easier. What I wanted to mention is that now, sometimes, when people who don´t know that I´m a foriegner talk to me for short periods of time, a lot of them don´t quickly figure out that I am a foriegner. Instead, they just think Í´m weird because I don´t talk a whole lot and when I do talk, it sounds off, intelligible, but off.

So back to the story...

To prepare for my return to Buenos Aires via the South American bus circuit, I washed my clothers (thanks for the suggestion Melissa) and bought some things. I also took out a hundred american from the ATM, which decided it would be best to give me all of the money in the form of a 100 dollar bill. I went to the Hipermaxi, Bolivia´s answer to Walmart, and bought a fake Lacoste white golf shirt for six american and mantequilla de mani (peanut butter) as gifts for some people back in BsAs - peanut butter for some reason does not exist in BsAs, something which I cannot figure out since I have seen peanuts a number of times in the city.

So I go to the bus station at 7:15 and find Javier. I pay for the rest of my ticket, and then wait until the bus leaves, which actually turns out to be an hour later that what I had thought.

Eventually, I board the bus, to find that semicam(semi-bed) is not casicama (almost-bed), but just a regular bus, just like the chinatown bus. Great, so I have 24 hours in this thing. I meet the person sitting next to me, Kita, a 50 or so year old Bolivian physical therapist who has lived her whole life in Santa Cruz. She is visiting family in Asuncion for the first time. The bus leaves the terminal, and after Kita and I exchange in a little more smalltalk, we are served our dinners. So we stop talking and begin eating.

We are served our dinners in tv dinner type trays. We also receive a sodss. The dinner contains the following: friend yuca, chicken milanesa (fried chicken), some rice, some bread, and a couple little candies. Now, as I´m looking down at my dinner, I´m torn. I don´t want to have diarrhea, especially during a 24 hour busride where your not allowed to use the bathroom on board (at least that´s what i´ve been told, even though it turned out that it was acceptable to pee in there). But I´m hungry. I decide that I´m on an adventure, and so I delve in. The yuca is delicious, one thing about Bolivia I really miss since I ate it at pretty much every lunch and dinner. The chicken is also very tasty. The bread is awful (I could taste the preservatives, which was both reassuring and gross at the same time). The rice is acceptable. I drink a little bit of my soda, and then decide I´m full enough. So lay back and fall asleep.

When I wake up, the azafatas (stewards) are informing us that we have to get off the bus for immigration. So we all get off the bus and make a line. The sun has not quite risen yet - I estimate that we´ve been on the bus for about seven hours. So we form a line which leads up to this Bolivian military dude, who is the only person sitting at this table, using candlelight to make sure that everyone who is standing in line is on the passenger list for the bus. I show him my passport, let him know what number seat I´m sitting in, and then am free to go somewhere- where I don´t really know. I just walk 200 meters down this dirt road, following the person who was in line in front of me.

I find that I have arrived to the Bolivian immigration. I wait in another line outside this bulding. I look around and see that some people have set up a little makeshift kiosk to sell fruit and sweet to bus passengers passing through. There is also a little cafe in a dilipidated building. And there are also a number of animals walking around. Here, I remember seeing dogs, a pig, and some roosters. The rooster kinda freaks me out because it comes to within a few feet of me. So I finally make it to the building, show this other guy at a table my passport. He asks me a papelito (little piece of paper). I tell him I´m not sure if I have it as I am digging through my backpack. I finally pull out a piece of paper which he grabs from me while informing me that this is what he needs.

I wait outside for the rest of the group to get througb immigration. I take an awesome picture of the horizon, which I hope to post on the blog later, but haven´t downloaded from my camera yet. And then I reboard the bus and we are off.

Starting at the immigration office, it seems that the quality of the road has really taken a turn for the worst. Up until that point on the trip, we had been traveling on paved road. Now, it was readily apparent that we were traveling on a dirt road, la tierra.

La tierra was ridiculous. We would spend five hours on la tierra, all of which were pretty awful. For some reason, there were two adjacent but different levels of this dirt road, and I think that our muy bueno chofer had been directed to use each level at certain points. So we would constantly drive diagonally up or down a small slope to change roads. Oh my god, la tierra was awful. Five hours. It was just so bumpy. Seriously, I wouldn´t advise a subaru outback to drive on la tierra. It was absurd, absurd, that a bus was taking this route. A number of times the bus driver took the wrong route, which meant that we had to do la tierra in reverse. There were some bumps where the bus tipped a lot, and I would wait for the next bump in the road, hoping but certainly not sure of the fact that it would realign the bus. So how can you pass the time on la tierra? Sleep? Yeah right. Read? I can always read in the car, but when I pulled out my S-E dictionary to look up a work during the la tierra, I had to put the dictionary away before I found the word because after I had spent thirty seconds trying to keep the book still and focus on the word that I was looking for, my head hurt. Watch tv? Oh yeah, so when the bus pulled out from Santa Cruz, there were a couple tvs in our bus. When Kita asked the azafata when a movie would start, he laughed in her face while informing her that the tv did not work. After an hour on the tierra, we passed another bus and for reason, gave them our tvs. So for the rest of the trip, there was nothing in the two little containers which used to hold the tvs. For the majortity of the time on la tierra, I just sat there, watching the road, trying to anticipate bumps, praying that I would live to see an asphalt highway again.

And the polvo (dust) was also out on control. The bus kicked up so much dust, which of course made it´s way into the bus. The windows in the bus were open (Bolivis is tropical, remember) during la tierra. At one point, when the sun shone at a certain angle, it seemed me as though the air was 50% polvo. I could tell that the mucus membrance in my throat were working extra hard to keep my airway clear. Seriously, by the end of la tierra, I felt as though I had la tierra-induced asthma because it really hurt to take a full breath. Also, my whole body was covered in a thick coat of dust. My white polo shirt was now a little brownish, and my hair had become immovable, protected by a coat of polvo.

Well, when we arrived in Paraguay, the road turned from la tierra into asphalt road again, and I was proud of myself for having endured la tierra.

Oh yeah, and during la tierra, we were served breakfast, which was a juice box of chocolate milk and a little cookie.

Santa Cruz

In this miniseries of blog posts about my trip, this one will be the most boring. Sorry to disappoint, but at least it can only get better after this one.

So I´m on the plane to Santa Cruz...

I pass out for the first hour because I´m so exhausted from the past couple hours of running around. When I wake up, we´re receiving our meals and a drink. For the rest of the flight, I don´t really do much besides go over in my head how I´m going to contact my friends once I arrive in Santa Cruz. I check to make sure that I brought my little book that has their home phone number in it. Don´t have it. Must have left it in the hostel. Great. Luckily, I remember that I have their number in an email, so now I have to find an internet cafe (which I correctly figure will not be tough to do in the Santa Cruz airport).

Interesting sidenote, elections were held in Bolivia last week in which the people voted to give greater autonomy to various parts of Bolivia. They also voted that the government draft a new constitution. Well, on the plane ride there, I was sitting next to two Bolivianos, both of whom were connecting in Santa Cruz to continue on to La Paz, the capital. Well, the man sitting to one side of me was reading a book in Spanish. The title of this book, and this is a semi-rough translation, was ¨How to Write a Constitution¨.

So we land in Santa Cruz, and I´m through immigration in ten minutes. I change some money into Bolivianos (the name of the citizens and the currency of Bolivia), find an internet cafe and my friends´ number, and call them. When I shout surprise in Spanish to my friend Melissa on the phone, I can tell that she is less than thrilled to hear that I´ve arrived. But she´s nice and doesn´t want to make me fend for myself in Santa Cruz and gives me directions to their place.

Before I get into a cab, I realize that I don´t have a return flight back to BsAs as of yet. I look at the receipt to my ticket and figure out that I have an open return. So I decide it would be smart to book this return trip now and walk over to the AeroSur window. I talk with the woman and ask for a flight back in the beginning of the week. She informs me that there is nothing available. Shit. She puts me on waiting lists for Sunday through Wednesday. My best chance of making a flight is on Tuesday, where I am 4th on the waiting list. The other days, I am no higher than 20th.

So I get in a cab and arrive to my friends house. It is completely understandable that Melissa is pissed. Melissa and Ben live in someone else´s house. They are guests. So it´s weird for them, as guests, to have guests. I arrive to find that Ben is pretty sick with a sore throat. Damn. I can tell he´s a little upset that I just popped in, but also that he´s happy to see me (so is Melissa). So we have dinner, which Niko, the woman who lives in the house with her daughter and also cleans the house for the owner, makes for all of us. Over the course of the next few days, I was very grateful to share meals with Melissa and Ben(when he was up to it) and the rest of the Americans staying there, which were cooked either by Niko or Flores, the cook in the other house.

I´ll be honest, the next few days were pretty uneventful. Melissa and Ben will tell you that there´s not a whole bunch to do. I think at one point, Melissa said that she was making tasks for herself to do so that she wouldn´t be bored. But she was also going to classes about diabetes (which is a huge problem in Santa Cruz) in the morning, so I thought she was being pretty productive.

We watched the world cup final which was pretty fun. We went out to the main Plaza in Santa Cruz, which was pretty. Santa Cruz is a strange city. Like Buenos Aires, it´s a mix of the first and third worlds, expect there´s a shit-ton more third world and a hell of a lot less first-world in Santa Cruz in relation to Buenos Aires. The cab drivers are more insane in Santa Cruz. The majority of intersections don´t have stop signs or stoplights and so they´re pretty much a free for all and are very scary to pass through.

When I think about Santa Cruz, the one thing I can´t get out of my head is the odor that permeates the entire city. Burning trash. Why does it smell like this? Because people burn their trash. It´s an awful odor.

We also went out dancing a couple nights. I drank a decent amount of Pacena, the number one beer in Bolivia. Dancing in Bolivia is weird. There´s mostly Latin music at the clubs and bars, in contrast to Buenos Aires, where you will find mostly American music. And there´s pretty much no freak-dancing. People dance in lines across from one another hear. Strange.

So during my stay in Santa Cruz, I kept calling the airline Aerosur to see if I had moved up in any of the waiting lists. Turns out that I had somehow moved down all of them. Not really sure how that´s possible. Oh wait, corruption mixed with poor organization. Okay, now that makes more sense. On Sunday night, I was no higher than 30th on any of the waiting lists. Seems like if I want to get back to BsAs reasonably soon, I´m going to have to buy another ticket from another company. If Santa Cruz was more exciting and if I didn´t feel bad intruding in someone else´s house for longer, I might have wanted to stay in Santa Cruz. But that was not the case.

So when one of the other Americans was heading over to the bus terminal, I decided to join her to see if I could find a ticket to Puerto Iguazu, a city in Argentina which apparently has incredible cataratas (waterfalls) which I had wanted to visit.

So we go to the bus terminal, which is fucking loco. So many people running around, so many people selling things, so many bus companies trying to get your business. After taking care of my friends ticket, we head over to the international section of the bus companies. A woman directs me to a company which sells tickets to Puerto Iguazu. At the window of the Yacyreta bus company, I am greeted by Javier Fernandez, and plump, energetic Bolivian man who is wearing a red button-down shirt. Upon first glance at Javier, I realize that this is a man who will say anything to get me to hand over some money. So I listen.

Javier informs me that their company can take me as far as ciudad del este, a city which is in paraguay, but is right next to puerto iguazu in argentina. He informs me that puerto iguazu is located at the tres fronteras (three borders) of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. There are cities in each of these countries right at where these three borders meet. He tells me that the trip in 24 hours, and will cost me 480 Bolivianos (60 bucks) and includes two dinners, breakfast, and lunch. The bus leaves on Monday, the next day, at 8 in the evening. He describes the bus to me as very comfortable and tells me that the seats are semi-cama (translated as semi bed). Sounds pretty sweet to me. He also tells me that the driver is a muy bueno chofer, which for some reason I find reassuring at the time, and for some reason I would continue to find reassuring during the actual trip.

I don´t have 480 Bolivianos on me now, and I´m not yet sure if I want to sit on a bus for a day, so I agree to put down a little deposit of 100 Bolivianos (12 bucks) to reserve my seat.

On the taxi ride home, I decide that I don´t really want to stick around Santa Cruz for much longer. And I feel as though even though the bus ride is so long, it will be an adventure. So I decide I will return tomorrow night and make my way toward the tres fronteras.

Sorry this post sucked so much. I promise things get more exciting from here on in.

Making the Flight

I just got back from a six day excursion away from Buenos Aires. I´ve showered for the first time in a few days. I´ve brushed my teeth with a faucet, the first time i´ve done that in a few days.

As some of you know, my emotional state has not exactly been what you would call stable as of late. So when I make decisions, I should probably sleep on it or at least give it some time before I act on an impulse. Well, I haven´t really been that logical recently.

On Friday, I decided to visit my friends in Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia. I made this decision at 2:15 in the afternoon. I knew there was a flight leaving EZE, the airport in Buenos Aires, at 4:00. As many of you know, once I make a decision, it´s tough to pry the idea out of my head. So I gathered my things(I brought a small backpack that I had purchased here in BsAs), asked that the attendant at the hostel retrieved my passport out of the lockbox, and was on my way at 2:30.

I immediately waved down a cab. I asked him how long it would take to get to the airport and how much it would cost. 45 minutes he told me and 40 pesos. I told him I would give him 50 pesos if he could get me there in half an hour. He turned off his meter and we were off.

I made the decision to try to go to Bolivia this weekend because I wanted a chance in Buenos Aires of putting together some semblance of a life, of continuity, for the next month. I had originally scheduled to go to Santa Cruz next weekend, but I was concerned that by doing this, my time in BsAs would be too fragmented, and that I would never have a fair shot of having something of a life here. So I tried to make it.

Mind you, there were a multitude of reasons that going to Bolivia was a bad idea. (1) I didn´t yet have a ticket. (2) There was a good chance that there either wasn´t space on the flight or that I would not make the time of departure (3) My friends in Bolivia didn´t know I was coming, and there was a possibility they wouldn´t be there. (4) I hadn´t gotten any vaccines and I´m pretty sure that the goverment or some health organization recommends that you get at least a yellow fever vaccine before you enter Bolivia. So all in all, not my best decision. But that didn´t stop me from going. Like I said, I´m in a very emotional state.

So the taxi zooms through the streets of Buenos Aires then along the highway on our way to the airport. As we´re about 5 kilometers away, the taxi driver informs me that the gas meter indicator is below empty. I ask him if there are any gas stations around the airport. He says he´s not sure. I figure there must be.

We end up arriving to the airport at 3:10. I ask an airport worker where the counter to Aerosur (the company of the flight) is located and I am off. When I arrive, I see that the check-in for the flight to Santa Cruz ended at 3:00. I ask a worker at Aerosur if there´s any chance I can buy a ticket for the flight. He tells me no. I ask again, and he tells me to run over to some office to see if they will permit me to buy a ticket. I run over to where he directs me, but can´t find an office. I run back to the man I spoke to before, pleading with him to let me on the flight. He talks to someone else who finally informs me that there is space on the plane and that he will consult with his boss to see if I can buy a ticket.

Remember, this is Argentina. No rules are unbreakable. Buying a ticket for an international flight and boarding the plane inside an hour of departure is not as bad as the same would sound in the US.

So the guy consults his boss, and finally he lets me buy a ticket. He informs me of the price. Pretty expensive, but the same as I would pay if I had bought the ticket a month in advance. All in all, not that bad. Roundtrip.

The guy gets my information, prints out my ticket. It´s 3:30. I get my ticket and then rush to the gate. Security takes a minute. Paying a tax to use the international terminal is another minute. Glad they take credit card.

I board the plane and am sitting in my assigned seat by 3:35, less than 90 minutes after I had made the decision to go. Feeling pretty good.

As I´m sitting in my seat, I think about if I paid for the flight. I used my credit card for the tax, but never gave the airlines that information. They told me how much it would cost, but definitely never collected said amount. Hmmm. Nope, I definitely didn´t pay. And I´m sitting in my seat. Should I tell anybody. No.

Didn´t really matter, because apparently the airlines realized their mistake and a stern-looking airport official ordered me to deboard the plane and hand over my credit card, which I did. He told me that I could reboard the plane when it turned out that the card went through and he went off running, and I waited at the gate outside the plane.

3:50. Still not back. Shit, I might not make this flight now if this guy doesn´t return soon. Finally, at 3:53, this guy returns and informs me that my card went through. He makes me sign the receipt. He then informs me that there´s another tax that I have to pay to the airlines for an international flight and that this must be paid en efectivo (cash). I have pretty much no cash on me. No American money (I realized during this trip that not having American money on me was a huge mistake - it would save me later on). 12 pesos. This tax was 40 pesos. Mi falta 28 pesos.

At that moment, it seemed as though i might not make this flight, very sad after all that i had been through in the past couple hours. There were no ATMs around, and it seemed as though there were no options for me.

Then, something incredible happened. One of the airport employees, out of the goodness of his heart, felt sorry for me, and pulled out his wallet and paid the 28 pesos that I couldn´t. Bless this man´s heart. Taken aback by this man´s charity, I tried to thank him as best I could in my Castellano (Spanish) and asked him if he would be here on Monday when I returned so I could pay him back. He told me yes, and to get going or I would miss my flight. So at 3:57, I reboarded.

Minutes later, we were off to Bolivia...

Vivo

There´s a key concept in Argentina known as vivo. This concept is essentially the same as swindling someone, getting something out of someone else, or taking advantage of someone else. To vivo someone, you screw them. The prime example here is with the cabbies, who will do all kinds of tricks in order to give you incorrect change or fake bills as change.

I paid 700 pesos, which is roughly 230 dollars to live for a month in an apartment owned by a woman named Marianna. Marianna was an okay host. She wasn´t really around that much, so it´s kinda a stretch to call her a host. She also did hard drugs. So that was cool.

Last week, I asked Marianna if my friends could stay with me (I had two friends from med school visiting me this week). I assumed that it would be okay since I´m renting out the room. I kinda assumed that I could do anything I wanted to in the room, including keep people in there. Well, I shouldn´t have made these assumptions. Marianna started going off about trust issues with extra people in the house and how she already doesn´t like having so many people in the house because it doesn´t make her feel as though she´s in her own home. Apparently this also means that I´m not allowed to have guests over. This pissed me off. She continued to say that if I wanted my friends to stay over, I would have to pay extra. You have got to be kidding me. I knew that I was right in the middle of a good ol fashioned vivoing. And there was no way I was paying to squeeze my two friends and myself on a couple small matresses for four nights.

Well, that got me thinking. My month of rent is almost up. Am I really happy in my apartment? After thinking about this for a ratito, the answer was an obvious no. It´s pretty lonely in that place. The only person who is ever around is this Polish girl who is pretty nice but also very annoying because she likes to teach me about alternative medicine. And then her roommate, another Polish girl, likes to blast 90´s hip hop in the morning, which wouldn´t be so much of a problem if there was a real wall and not a makeshift shade separating our rooms. PS, I cannot stand the sound of Polish. When those girls would speak Polish, I felt as though my head were repeatedly being hit with a hammer. Then there was their friend, who told me that I shouldn´t rehydrate with cold water when I exercise, but hot tea instead. When she explained that the physiology behind this idea was that it´s bad to shock the body (which is warm durante exercise) with something cold. I almost socked her in the face. Anyway, the point here is that I didn´t think it would be very difficult to find a living situation that would be more pleasing to me.

So I decided to move out. I looked at this all as a vivo back in the face of Marianna. She doesn´t let my friends stay over, I don´t pay her the 700 pesos she´s expecting for next month. But I had to find a new place to live. I decided to live in a hostel. All of these decisions were essentially made at the same time as my friend´s flight got in on Sunday. So when they arrived, I made them come with me to look at some hostels. After looking at three places, we finally stumbled upon giromino, a cozy little place in a neighborhood named Palermo Viejo. Great location, safe, cheap. I got a room for the next night. My friends found a hotel.

So now I´m living in a hostel in Buenos Aires. I live in a four bed room with one other dude, a guy from Spain named Andres who works as a cartoonist here in Buenos Aires. So that´s pretty awesome. It´s a little scary here at times, and there are people here who are really young so that makes me feel old. But mostly, it´s more exciting than my old place. So that´s where I´ll be staying for the next month. I kinda hope that no one else moves in to our room, but if they do, so what. Anyway, I feel as though I vivoed the shit out of Marianna. I told her that I was leaving about an hour before I actually moved out. Vivo!