14 - Transition

Well, if living the high life were my goal for this study abroad, I certainly picked the right destination. Vina/Valpo is prime Mediterranean coast town transplanted to the South Pacific, with some historical spice and Latin flavor mixed in to boot. It’s a larger city than I had imagined, famously built right into the rolling Andean hills so that everywhere you go there is a view out to the sea. Although I feel a little regret at being a complete wuss (ISA will also take you Amman, Jordan among other places), I think palm trees with white Christmas lights a la Ann Arbor will help me get over it pretty quick.

The living situation is a win all around. The family is very laid back, I have my own room, and best of all, it turns out pensiones are common student housing arrangements. There’s only one other international student who will be living here – the rest are local students. It’s going to be nice to right away meet people who know the area, have local friends, etc. And as an added bonus, nobody in the house speaks much English, so Spanish practice is all day. I was worried for a bit that I would get put in a house with a bunch of other new-to-Spanish Americans and an English speaking family – I wouldn’t have nearly as much time to practice. For now though, it’s just me here, as everybody else is still on break until March.

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On a separate note, I’m not sure where to take this blog from here. My travels are essentially done except for a Chile bucket list that I’ll work on and write about as they happen, slowly. I will keep writing here, even if nobody cares and nobody reads, because putting together formal-ish blog entries as opposed to scribbles in a journal has been both fun and a really good learning experience. But, if possible, I’d like to make it interesting for my few readers as well. If I spill my mind every once in a while on a variety of topics, would people care? For example, I could write opinions and observations right now on the turmoil Egypt, thoughts on business and reading (currently The World is Flat, long overdue), or what I predict to be a looming public health crisis in South America. Would you read any of it?

I guess that’s what a generic blog is, and I don’t know what else I would write about, so for now that’s what it will be. There’s a new blog born, incredibly, every seven seconds according to a source cited in The World is Flat (Technorati.com). Most of them are made by people like me and will probably talk about similar issues, but I’m alright with that. I’m not trying to be entrepreneurial here; I just want to keep writing. So that’s what it will be. Wednesday I’ll post about the situation in Egypt, after watching what happens tomorrow as Cairo tries to put on a million-man protest. Until then, briefly check out this incredible post:

http://matadornetwork.com/life/notes-on-not-being-in-egypt-as-it-all-kicks-off/

Arrival: Expectations and a New Perspective

This is a souped up essay I wrote earlier today in my long-term journal. I write these types of things once in a while to help me clarify myself, to myself, especially after some event or period ends. I figured I might as well post it here. Same disclaimer as before.

I didn’t really want to go on this trip. August, I said, would be far better; I would be fluent in Spanish, know the region well, and comfortable travelling around. When it didn’t pan out, I briefly thought of cancelling the whole thing and taking the month to study independently at home. But I quickly realized that there was no way I could let myself off the hook that easily, so off it was. Besides, I was itching to start over in a new place after a difficult semester, and since when did I turn down an opportunity like this? Once that was decided, I went for it head first, throwing out all expectations, planning, and terrified reactions from a few friends. January became a black hole in my mental calendar, and the edge of the now-inevitable cliff was fast approaching.

I remember flying into Buenos Aires the first day. It was New Years, the plane was on the descent, and I can remember very pointedly one moment when I looked down, saw the land, and thought to myself that everything would just fine, no matter what. If the plane crashed in a fireball, I was OK with that. I would have felt fine with it all, the way everything had went in life up to that point. I was calm, relaxed, and comfortable letting everything go. That was a totally new feeling for me, usually the control-heavy, forward looking driver who couldn’t wait for the future to get here. Maybe it was the fact that I now had no idea what the future held, or maybe it was the fact that for the first time, I was truly alone. I think that moment, before I had even arrived, was the most significant thing that has happened on this trip.

That feeling of ‘everything will be alright’ continued throughout the month. When the airport shuttle dropped me off in the middle of the city, I was lost and unsure what to do, but I felt that I would get through it just fine. When I missed my flight out of Rio Gallegos with nowhere to go, a bunch of luggage, frustration, and no idea what to do, I felt I would be alright. Now, when I jump off a bus somewhere in a new city, I’m not even anxious at all anymore.

I used to describe a bug that lived in my gut that made me a little anxious at all times. Whatever I was doing, wherever I was, it wasn’t quite good enough. It was truly a love-hate thing. I hated the fact that I could never relax and enjoy a moment, but I loved the fact that it made me always work to improve. Basically, it’s the engine that produces both success and misery in high-gear type A people, and I had a bad case of it. I wasn’t sure if it would ever go away, if after attaining a certain level of success the bug would be satisfied. I was pretty sure the answer is no, and in some ways I was alright with that. But in the end, theoretically I did want to have a life at some point.

I’d like to think that this trip, and some deliberate work, has helped me move just a little closer to the Holy Grail, a kind of best-of-both-worlds. I still want to move on and improve, badly. I’m in the middle of reading The Practice of Management so I can learn how to run an organization. I also learned how hedge funds work, how small organizations can use junk debt or performance bonds to grow, and a little bit more about stock picking, all while travelling. But at the same time, taking time to enjoy things, talk to people and relax sounds great too.

It sounds obvious, but logic can only change what you do, not who you are. Only experiences can do that. For me, coming to Argentina was the experience of turning out the lights, blowing out the candles and feeling around in the dark to finally begin seeing what, perhaps, was there all along.

13 - Argentine Burnout

Buenos Aires was worth a return trip, as was Siga La Vaca and a few other quality spots within the city. I stayed in a different hostel than last time, in the restaurant and bar heavy district of San Telmo. Unfortunately, the glamour didn’t carry over to the hostel, which was loud and without air conditioning during the 35 degree days. I managed to make friends with the Brazilian contingent as there were a few English speakers and, for the most part, they understood my Spanish. In any language, it was basically unanimous; with a lousy hostel in a beautiful city, why sleep?

That plan worked out very well the next three days. We had steak, sushi, milanesa and finally, a few good salads. I met a hilarious Russian named Sergey Fedorov, like the former Red Wing, and we won this trivia challenge at a bar for the service of some high class champagne. There was dancing in the streets on Sunday as local performers took advantage of the street market and fair in San Telmo. We followed marching bands, watched protests at the Pink House, and got lost on the bus system at 3 am after discovering one of the city’s biggest gay clubs.

It’s now Thursday in Cordoba, running on empty. There’s always these points when you travel when you wake up exhausted, realize you and all of your clothes smell terrible, and you’re facing yet another 12 hour bus ride that you think ‘enough of this’. I have only been on the road for less than a month. These people who backpack for 6 months or a year have some incredible stamina. Every once in a while you need to step back, downshift a few gears and remember how far you have come. While one of the good things about travelling is endless invitations to live in the moment, it can be easy to get caught up.

I’ll only have two days in Cordoba because of difficult bus scheduling on the way to final destination, Valparaiso. I do plan on continuing this blog in Chile, although posts will probably continue to slow down a bit. I think sacrificing my initial goal of a post a day for a little better writing was probably worth it. If I got kicked out of college, I think I would seriously make it my goal to be a travel writer for a while. Not forever, but maybe for a few years. Matador, my favorite travel site, has an online 12 week university-level travel writing program for $350 that I might take as a summer project sometime.

Side note: Any budding entrepreneurs out there with a handle on South America looking for an opportunity? Somebody seriously, seriously needs to create an Orbitz for SA bus travel. It’s a pain in the can to have to go to the bus station and go through an endless line of vendors to ask for ticket availability. There are a hundred different bus companies, shopping for the best value is next to impossible, and you can’t even figure out routes until you ask. A lot of companies don’t have websites, and the ones that do suck and you can’t buy online. South America is online. Somebody fill the obvious need!

PS to side note: Any html programmers out there looking for an exciting opportunity? Do you have friends in the venture capital game? Leave a comment with your contact information, and we’ll set up an exploratory meeting.

Quote of the Day: ‘In reality, most Brazilians don’t have much pride. There’s only one thing that unites the country. Ask them - Is Brazil the best country in the world? Não. Are Brazilians the best people? Não, but we will kick your ass on the futbol pitch!

12 - Fresh Air

All good things must come to an end, and fortunately, the same goes for all bad things too. Unbelievably, I missed my flight out of Patagonia (that I had been waiting for all week), and I was thinking the whole ill-fated trip to Calafate might never end. I did however manage to catch a last minute bus to Buenos Aires, and spent my weekend watching the same couple of movies that they show on every bus, again. It’ll end up costing me a trip to Montevideo that I had planned, but at least I’m finally out of the endless Patagonian tar pit.

Interesting moment on the bus – I had the seat next to me to myself for most of the ride. After we stopped in Bahia Blanca for a while (definitely worth visiting next time), I come back to my seat and next to me is a 12 year old who is an absolute spitting image of me. He had hair, the height (for a 12 year old), freckles, blue framed glasses, blue and grey wind pants and a t-shirt. I was shocked. I stepped back outside to get an ice cream, and I thought ‘why don’t I get this kid an ice cream too’. Then I realized that I was about to offer candy to a stranger’s kid. Whups.

More interesting moments on the bus – Finally won the Andesmar grand bingo, which ended up being a bottle of wine of course. Later on, I was hungry so I grabbed a sandwich at a stop. But then, back on the bus, they served us dinner. It was 1:20 a.m. Finally, we were stopped at a light passing through Rivadavia, and I look down out the window and hear some serious tire screeching. Then, the car that was stopped right next to the bus directly below my window gets blasted from behind by this Volkswagen, who must have been doing at least 50 downtown before slamming the brakes. Nobody was hurt, unless the argument turned into a fight. We pulled away.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Buenos Aires was my favorite city thus far and I feel like I missed a few things, so I’ll be here for the next three nights. Last stop will be Cordoba for three nights before finally heading off to Chile.

Leroy is absolutely dying for a decent salad or at least, something besides ham and cheese sandwiches. I think we can pull that off in Buenos Aires. It’s nice to have a bit of a head start on the city, having already done the tours and visits and restaurants the first time around.

Quote of the day: ‘What’s your name sir? Packs? Pad? Pip! Ok, a round of applause for Pip everybody! Enjoy your wine.’

11 - Float On

Here’s an interesting thought. If you could step back from ‘you’ and play yourself as a Sim or SecondLife character, what would your life look like? If you could optimize your life, your actions and your decisions from the outside, how much different would that be than your current life? What would you do differently if your only goal was to define and then adapt an ideal lifestyle? Take a minute and think about it.

Life, of course, doesn’t work quite like that. You can direct your Sim to study every night in order to get an ideal career, eat healthy and make breakfast for the kids in the morning, but in real life it would be difficult to make those investments every day. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting and useful exercise. Identifying leverage points – simple changes that can make a much bigger difference – is a good start. For me, it also re-emphasizes what I believe is your real wealth – your time.

It can also be more difficult than it seems to define exactly what your ideal life would look like. Would you really want to relax on a hammock in Jamaica every day? Or, on the other side, would you really want to be a CEO or the president of the country? I can’t figure out at all where on the scale I would fit.

I’ve had plenty of time to chew on stuff like that lately, being stuck here in El Calafate, criminally killing time until Friday morning. I’ve had to change hostels every day for the past four days, and there’s not much to do in a town where the main attraction is 40 miles upstream. And of course, 24 hours after I bought my flight back to the starting gate, the Chileans decided to stop striking. At least the gut-bomb fallout is finally clearing up.

Side note: Grocery shopping the other day, I thought it was strange that they didn’t bag my food at the checkout. I noticed everyone else had bags with them, and then I saw a sign that said ‘As of April 2007, all non-biodegradable bags are banned following law ###’. Props to Argentina. Another reason your cities are so clean.

Personal side note: Sitting here in a new and cool foreign country, torqued off and wishing I was back in AA. What??? I need to stop re-reading 1000 Dollars and an Idea. I suppose running around to find the new and cool only works for so long. I realized I need to be in the process of BUILDING something to enjoy the moment. Makes sense why I like both engineering and business. I’m glad travelling can help teach new things about yourself as well as the world, even if they are seemingly obvious.

Quote of the Day: ‘No kidding. You’re already the third group from that hostel in Buenos Aires that I have re-met again elsewhere in Argentina.’

Two from Bariloche and two of the Perito Moreno glacier

10 - The Statue

If you’ve ever been to a Jimmy John’s sub, you walk out with a tasty sandwich and a new piece of wit posted on their wall. One of the ones I remember is ‘Some days you’re the pigeon, some days you’re the statue’. Well, yesterday was one of those statue days.

Anytime you travel, you can expect to have a least a day or two ruined by food. The problem in Argentina is this – Argentines get their fruit by drinking wine and their vegetables by eating beef, which, sometime in a past life, used to eat grass. Other than that, they just don’t exist. This country has the worst eating habits I have ever seen. Sweets, more sweets, then red meat every single day. Naturally, it was bound to catch up to me. What started as throwing up all over the main chalet at the Perito Moreno glacier ended a full eight hours later after uncontrollable spasms, chills, fever, cramps, a permanently clenched jaw, and more bathroom issues than you can imagine. Two hours of that came on the floor of a bus too, when the chalet closed and I had no choice. I cannot remember ever having that level of sustained full body pain. In the end, I was so sore and exhausted that I fell asleep in my boxers on the community bathroom floor.

Yesterday, I also learned that southern Chile is on strike over natural resource wealth sharing, meaning all roads and borders are closed. El Calafate is now a dead end. I was lucky to sneak on a reasonably priced flight back to Buenos Aires on Friday. I’ll have about a week left, with which I might bump up to Uruguay, or maybe Iguazu falls.

Anyways, watching the quality of my blog posts go down the tubes is painful too, so we’ll move on.

I was lucky enough to be able to see most of the Glacier National Park before the nuke in my gut went off, which was worth the trip. There’s something about seeing that much mass flow and breathe and live that is just incredible. When 30 some kilometers of ice moves, it doesn’t tip-toe around. It goes off like a cannon, over and over. There’s an overhead lookout point where you can get a view of most of the glacier and just listen to the thunder roll. I also got to take a boat ride to the front of the glacier, and we saw some fair size chunks fall off.

On the lookout point, there’s a bronze sign that reads something along the lines of ‘This glacier is a relic of the past, a reminder of a time when the world was covered in ice and humanity rose up to the challenge and got its start. You and your world are here because of them, so let this glacier forever stand to remind us of our past and where we came from.’ It was a powerful message. To use another popular quote from business ‘Every generation stands on the shoulders of the giants who came before them’. If there’s one thing that differentiates humans from other species, it’s that constant building of progress over time that is kind of amazing. You have to wonder if sometime in the distant future, somebody will cast a sign in our honor as well, or conversely, if we’ll finally fall off the tower of giants.

Quote of the day: ‘They had Fijian Idol in the same way we had American Idol, but it was never quite the same because there are so few people in Fiji. You can’t mock the contestants, because that’s someone you know’s sister or uncle or friend up there.’

9 - Journey On

Sorry for lack of posts recently, I’ve been running around quite a bit. On Thursday I met up with two Aussies and an Israeli and went ziplining, which was fun but not as exciting as it could have been given all the mountains around Bariloche. We went rafting on Friday (much more fun), had some all you can eat barbecue, played volleyball, then later on destroyed the competition at pool. Good couple of days, all in all.

I left Bariloche Saturday morning on a 30 hour bus to El Calafate, Argentina’s biggest tourist draw outside of Buenos Aires. It’s famous for a nearby glacial mass of the same name, plus some tall mountains and Lake Argentina. The weather down here is a little more my style, cool and breezy. The sun only sets for a few brief hours at midnight. My hostel here turned out to be a real hippie joint, but is actually the fanciest place thus far.

I have less than two weeks left and a lot of ground to cover, so I’m only staying here long enough to see the dang thing and move on. I’ll go to Ushuaia for a couple of days, then over to Puerto Natales in Chile to see the Torres del Paine and Patagonia National Park. I could either take my time with all of this and then fly to Santiago, or take a bus and get to spend a few days in Valdivia Chile as well. I’ll probably end up flying, because all of this busing around really wipes you out! I’ll try to keep up with posts and pictures a little better here as well.

Quote of the Day: ‘I knew this kid for what, like an hour, and he’s already throwing rocks at me while I’m trying to take a leak!’

8 - The Lonely Planet

Today (Wednesday) was a mountain biking day, after getting a ringing endorsement from the local Swedes (it was really really hard!). The brochure told me to take the number 22 bus from downtown and hope off at at km 18.3 to rent a bike. Well, the number 22 wasn’t even close. Spent an hour riding through the dirt back-roads of Bariloche before finally asking the driver if we would ever get to km 18.3. He just laughed, and told me to follow a trail until I got back to the main road, then take the number 10. I just ended up walking.

Got to the bike rental place, which was clearly set up for people who have never even heard of a mountain bike before, as they made us go through a tutorial on switching gears. They set up a route to follow, a fairly long loop around an inland lake, which sounded fine to me until I realized that it just followed the highway. I asked if there were any real trails. They said yes, there were, but don’t take them because ‘they’re dangerous and you’ll get lost’. I said ‘that sounds like no fun, I’ll just follow the road’ and made sure to slip as I left. Ended up doing a circle around a very pretty mountain, finding my own rock beach, and having a blast, except that they were right on the ‘you’ll get lost’ part. After 4 hours running on just a muffin and coffee, I again ended up walking.

The bike place is representative of Bariloche as a whole, which is clearly and firmly marked on all Argentine tourist guidebooks (and for good reason really). There are tourist cities in most countries around the world. The Lonely Planet phenomenon has gotten to be a little out of hand. Within a given city, you can tell plain as day which restaurants, hotels, and activities are recommended. It’s a little sad that some of the best places get stampeded and ‘touristified’ to death, but then again, what else is a full family or AARP group to do travelling in some unknown place.

Tourist cities aren’t all bad either. In some of the less travelled countries of the world, it can be a real weight off the shoulders to find a place where you won’t get stared at or stick out like an unwelcome sore thumb. I understand the reasons for why people in a lot of places don’t trust foreigners, but being judged as (untrustworthy, greedy, arrogant and condescending) before you even say hi really wears on you. And in turn, when the people you interact with don’t trust you for a second, it becomes hard to trust them in return. It’s a difficult cycle. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be changed. One of the best moments I had in Peru was when we returned to Huanuscuro – the tiny rural village we built stoves in – to finish our work after they assumed we had left and given them the shaft. It broke the stare. That might have been a more significant thing for the people than the actual stoves we built.

Again, how different would the world be if every country had a tradition like Israel’s? That sort of experience, being judged or discriminated against, being in a stand-out minority, is something that everybody can learn from.

As a side note, you won’t get that in Argentina, which is one of the reasons I have liked this place thus far. They aren’t afraid to douse you in local culture (although I would have to get out the hostel circuit to really get it) without assuming that you’ll choke because you’re a stupid American. They give you some credit and don’t care where you’re from. It’s fresh. It’s one more reason for Lonely Planet to stop printing Argentina editions as well.

Quote of the day: ‘When I decided to be a dancer, I thought Tango was too typical for an Argentine, so I learned Arabic belly dancing. It’s unique, it’s fun, it’s great at parties, it’s… well, no, really I just wanted to dance like Shakira.’

7 - E.T.

The drive from the lowland areas in the Amazon up onto the Altiplano is always one of the more interesting parts of a visit to that part of South America. As the trees get shorter and shorter and the greenery begins to disappear, you continue to rise and the land begins to look like the surface of the moon. It’s grey, dusty, and becomes flatter as you get to the top, occasionally broken by small pointy mountains. Step out of the bus after a 13000 foot climb and you’ll feel like an astronaut, too. It’s a unique world.

Driving down to Patagonia is kind of a similar experience. There’s a billboard with a giant bite taken out of it advertising Caution: Dinosaurs. The road we took followed a river that came complete with small canyons here and there and some inviting places to stop and swim. The trees also become shorter and shorter as you go along, and combined with these puffy-looking, bulbous shrubs carpeting the ground, kind of gives an Alice In Wonderland feel. Most of the mountains are not overwhelmingly tall, but impressive nonetheless because of the sheer rock faces and pointy, dangerous look. Some wispy clouds, a little snow on the tallest peaks and a constant blowing wind complete the scenery.

Before leaving Mendoza however, I had to get on a wine tour for my last day. Most of the wineries in Mendoza are very small and privately owned spots. They had the visitation machine rolling by the time we came around in early afternoon. One place said that they sell up to 20% of their wine at the winery, and they know how to sell. There is nothing like the smell of the basement where wine ages in wooden barrels. We were also taught what makes each wine a little different from the last, and how to taste wine like professionals. I obviously wasn’t about to carry some bottles around travelling, so I passed on the marked-up prices.

Back on the bus, the river we had been following dumped into a lake and we pulled in to Bariloche. I had heard that Bariloche was a unique and very pretty town, but I was still surprised. The layout gets squeezed horizontally by mountains on the back end and lakeshore on the front. It really feels like a high Alpine village, especially with the short pine forests around, yet there’s also the lake. The architecture is very German, with lots of exposed wood.

Activities on the radar include DIY mountain climbing, mountain biking or kayak trips, and possibly more formal rafting, rock climbing or paragliding. I certainly won’t get to all of them here, but there’s plenty more time to be spent down in Patagonia.

Leroy commented on the bus ‘this is a long long way from Beijing’. Leroy’s right. Distance from home:

Leroy: 12040 miles

Me: 6200 miles

The circumference of the planet is 24900 miles, so Leroy is almost as far away from home as possible! Leroy would also like to graciously acknowledge the support of Buzz the Yellowjacket. Thanks!

Quote of the Day: (baggage handler for our bus) ‘You speak Spanish? English? Ok, one word for you miss – tips!’

Mendoza

Some overdue pictures from around Mendoza. In addition to having the best cafes anywhere, the city has these incredible ice cream delis with like 45 flavors. A double espresso with tiramisu ice cream in a waffle cone is a wholesome breakfast, right?

X - and miles to go before I sleep

Note: This is just a result of me spilling my mind, nothing more, nothing less. It explains why I travel and offers a little philosophy on the intersection of travel and life. I include it here not to advertise myself or say that I’m right and I have it all figured out, which I don’t, but rather as a reference that someone will hopefully find interesting. It’s just my perspective, the train of thought that runs through my mind before I hop a plane to another unknown place in the world. It shouldn't be taken too seriously. Maybe you'll think I'm a little less crazy though. Hope you enjoy it

Having a Purpose

Why?

This is the most important question in the universe. Why ____? The more you ask this question, and the more you think about the answers, the better your life gets.

The world is full of people telling you what to do, telling you what you want, where to go, and how to think. It happens so often every day that few people even notice. At it’s most benign, an ad will tell you that you really want a Coke. At it’s worst, the constant flow of society will spell out your entire life for you. Think about how a typical life plays out today, then think about the scale of ‘typical’.

It’s huge.

I’m not saying that everybody needs to be a radical. I’m not saying that everybody is unsatisfied with their life. What I am saying is that if everybody started asking themselves ‘Why’ a little more often, instead of going with the default answer, maybe they could find opportunities to do more and become a little more satisfied with the quality of their journey.

Isn’t that worth the effort of asking yourself a few questions?

Travel

One of the reasons I travel, maybe the single most important reason, is that it puts the question and answer cycle in overdrive. Real travel knocks you off your butt. Your life is no longer on autopilot. Your world is no longer familiar. Almost everything that makes up your life at home - your habits, your connections, your mindset, etc. - gets torn down and you are forced to rebuild.

When that happens, when your house gets torn down, you start to see yourself a little clearer. When it’s 5 am and your bus drops you off in a completely new city, and maybe you don’t understand the language or culture well or at all, how do you react? When you’ve settled into a new place and you have a lot of time all to yourself, what do you do? When you don’t know anybody within a thousand mile radius, can you get by? New and experienced travellers alike have to learn how to learn on the fly and adapt quickly. Sometimes you impress yourself and do well, and some other times you break down. Sometimes the challenge is greater than you anticipated, and sometimes the new world isn’t so different after all. If you can keep trying and keep improving, you will start to trust yourself more and you will learn how to learn, which is an invaluable skill in itself.

Every time you go through another rebuilding phase, you have a chance to improve. If your house burned down and you were to rebuild it, you would probably change a few things. Maybe you would expand the porch, move the kitchen to a better spot, and eliminate an unused room. It’s the same way with your metaphorical house. Keep testing, keep rebuilding, and keep improving.

Travel can also provide new answers, new ways of building if you will, that you might not have thought of otherwise. And fortunately, it’s often easier to re-organize your metaphorical house than your real house.

But not always, and this is another place where I think people could benefit tremendously by doing a little homework. Learning how to learn is a great start, but it then has to be applied. If you can learn to be flexible and open to change in everything you do, you can keep improving yourself as you go. Unfortunately, I believe that being flexible is something that everyone is born with but a lot of people eventually lose.

Travelling around isn't for everyone, and there are a lot of other ways to improve your life by asking, answering, and applying ‘why’. For me though, it’s the most efficient, and it’s a heck of a lot of fun. I think It’s more than worth the price of indigestion, insomnia, and occasional embarrassment.

Dondequiera vayas, les deseo un buen viaje

6 - There and Back Again

The two most common groups of people traveling in Argentina are Israelis and Brazilians. The Brazilians always carve out a Portuguese-language enclave in each hostel, but are always friendly and willing to try a mediocre Spanish with mediocre Spanish conversation. I’ve also met a few who speak excellent English though, including a brother-sister pair who both studied business in the US.

Israel would seem to make less sense, being entirely half a world away and having a completely different language, yet they are everywhere you go around here. Why? In Israel, military service is mandatory for everyone, even women. After a couple of really tough years, it’s customary to take 6 months off and travel the world. The government even pays them during the military years specifically for that purpose. How different would the US be if everyone took 6 months to travel after finishing school? Think about it for a minute.

Back in Mendoza, I signed up for a combination trekking-rappelling-relaxing in a pool complete tour. I was surprised that the group was at least three quarters girls. Most were Brazilian, which made meeting people a little difficult (which, all things considered, was a real shame) but I was able to talk to a couple from Santiago for a while. The Chilean accent really isn’t as difficult as advertised.

Later on, I followed the rotating barbecue night to a hostel across town and had some delicious empanadas with a pair of Dutchmen and a couple Porteña girls. I’m compiling a list of everyone I’ve talked to and where they’re from, and it’s getting to be pretty extensive already. This whole traveling by yourself business really isn’t that difficult.

I’m still pretty wiped out from yesterday, so I’m taking it easy for a while today. I’ll post pictures from around Mendoza later on. For now, here’s a few pictures from earlier.

Quote of the day: ‘Maybe people think Chilean Spanish is difficult because we have a much more descriptive set of swears.’

The first two are from yesterday's hike, the third is from Bs As, the last two are back in Tigre

5 - Onwards and Upwards

The morning clouds cleared themselves up as usual, so we took a walk down to the famous Recoleta cemetery. All of the most famous and influential Argentines are buried there, usually with huge marble edifices or statues, and you would think it would be an interesting place to walk around. Instead, it just gave me the creeps. Many of the tombs have been robbed at some point, and for some unbelievable reason or another they never get fixed up. The cemetery is a city-like maze of granite and marble with rusted ad bent iron doors, broken glass and trash, and smashed caskets. Yikes.

We headed back a bit early to watch some Premier league instead. I packed up my stuff, checked out of the hostel and eventually headed over to the bus station. I figured if I get there 30 minutes early, I´ll have plenty of time and won´t have to rush. 28 minutes later, here I am running around like a moron still trying to figure out where I have to be. Turns out the big bold number on your ticket isn´t your gate, the big red company logo isn´t the bus you´re taking, and nobody working at the station has a clue either. After running through gates and checking endlessly, one of the far buses flicked on a sign that said Mendoza and saved my butt from an impending logistical mess. The bus ride was really nice after that, and Thursday morning we pulled in.

Mendoza is one of the nicest cities to walk around in. There are plenty of parks, pedestrian streets and a sprawling cafe district. On the horizon you can see the Andes rising up from the plains, and as promised, an expanse of vineyards. The hostel has a giant weekly calendar of activities ranging from mountain biking to high-Andes treks to cooking classes and a free hostel barbecue night. I might end up spending a few more nights here than planned.

Quote of the day: ´What kind of waiter tells you how much he wants for a tip? Oh well, we suck at math.´

4 - Follow the Cow!

Sometimes having no plan is the best plan. Often the most memorable trips are those where the itinerary falls apart or was never there to begin with. I’m trying to take that to heart for this entire month as a whole, but the strategy also works well on shorter timeframes. Not sure what to do with your day? Turn your brain off, open your eyes and ears, and let your feet take you where they may.

Met up with two other solo travellers in the hostel, and we decided to just go for a long walk, see what hits us, and take a cab back home at sunset. We walked through the shopping district (which looked quite Asian with the narrow pedestrian streets), stopped at a couple of different cafes , and watched a guy dressed in tin foil dance the robot in the middle of a seven lane road. There’s a little bit of everything here, including insanity.

Later on, we decided that the city is plenty safe and going home would be kind of lame. We started looking around for some dinner and maybe something interesting to do and ended up near the city’s old port. The area is fairly average during the daytime, but as it were, turns out to be a fabulous spot at night. There is a full boardwalk along the canal, some shiny foot bridges, and a big clipper ship decorated with Christmas lights. Fancy restaurants and bars with plenty of outside seating, a group of musicians, and a nice breeze from the ocean complete a great scene. We took full advantage of the place, eating some dinner at a steak and wine called Siga la Vaca (Follow the Cow) and relaxing at a bar called Havana Club.

Sometimes when you’re travelling, you get one of those moments where you just look around, and it all just kind of hits you, and it’s impossible not to get this stupid-happy smile. Havana Club put on the Rolling Stones I’m Free (cause I’m free, to do what I want, any old time…), and safe to say, I looked pretty stupid alright.

Rainy and cool here today (Wednesday); if the weather holds up a bit I’ll try to get down to the mausoleum in la Recoleta, which we missed on Sunday for lack of time. The night bus to Mendoza leaves at 9 pm, and I’ll be staying there for probably 3 nights after that. According to one travel website, the number 1 rated attraction in Mendoza is a wine-tasting tour. Also, the number 10 rated attraction is a wine-tasting tour, and you can guess what numbers 2-9 are as well. Leroy will be a very happy camper.

Quote of the day: ‘Everything happens late in this city. Dinner happens at midnight, ‘its late lets go home’ is at six in the morning, everything is closed until lunchtime, and that’s a weekday. When do they work?’

3 - Eyes on the Delta

The city finally opened up today (Monday) after the holiday weekend, and we decided to take a day trip up to Tigre, an upscale suburb on the Plata River delta. The trip was a good opportunity to see more of the city as well, taking a train from the city center to the outskirts.

Public transportation is always entertainment in itself in South America. Salesmen, musicians and political activists revel in the opportunity to have a bored and captive audience. You can actually learn a lot about a country by what these people say. In a more ‘indigenous’ region of Peru, there was a guy ranting on for nearly an hour about Peruvian nationalism, Che Guevara and the political pressures of Westernization. It was interesting how he tried to stir up local pride by playing up outside cultural and political threats. In the end, for all his effort, he went around the bus and tried to sell us chocolate covered marshmallows for 25 cents.

In Argentina, the shows had a different flavor. We first had a disabled man try to sell calendars, playing on sympathy for his amputated legs. Then there was a man advertising great family fun and entertainment with packets of water balloons. Finally, a group moved in with guitars, microphones and a soundsystem and played a very unique and catchy blend of acoustic guitar sounds and hip-hop lyrics. They rapped about ‘real life’, living in the very poor districts, and hope of making it out to something better. They struck a chord with the audience, and a surprising number of people donated or bought their CD. In contrast to Peru, where salesmen related to the audience through sensitive political issues, Porteño salesmen focused on family, the challenges of life in the metropolis and the capitalist dream of moving up in society.

We took the train to the end of the line in Tigre, which has been described as Little Venice in Argentina. German and Austrian architecture lined the waterways of the river delta as wooden boats and catamarans floated by. We jumped on one of the larger boats and headed up the river towards the island of Tres Bocas. The delta area is a giant maze of dotted islands connected by marshland and streams. Defying expectations, there were very few bugs, and altogether the islands were more like tropical paradise than wetland mess. In recent years, wealthier Argentines began building small vacation and retirement homes there. I certainly wouldn’t mind taking a week or two and relaxing on a hammock amidst bamboo trees and a warm tropical breeze!

Aside from all that, I’m taking a bit of a break today (Tuesday) to relax and maybe walk around later on. This is actually going to be my last night in Buenos Aires. After talking to a number of people, I charted a tentative course down the spine of the Andes; through Mendoza, then Bariloche and the Lake district, and finally to the very south of Tierra del Fuego and Ushuaia. I’m taking a bus to Mendoza tomorrow overnight. Leroy is excited to climb a mountain or two in the heart of the Andes, and it’s his turn to pick activities for the next few days. I hope we can find some gear that fits him alright.

Side note: Never get too excited about your travels. There is always someone who will put you to shame. Yesterday I met a traveller who had trekked through Egypt, northern Iraq, Kashmir and most of the –stan countries in a single go. Alone. And she is a woman!

Quote of the Day: ‘My favorite moment in Iraq was discovering this little ice cream parlor on the corner; there were a bunch of women sitting there outside and laughing their heads off. It’s nice to know women everywhere in the world enjoy ice cream’

More images (see post 2 below). All pictures will be posted on facebook sometime soon.

Quote of the day: 'I think we're testing these guy's commitment to unlimited beef. Don't look now, but the manager is over there is giving us the eye...'

2 - The Deep Dive

If you’ve ever been involved in engineering, you are familiar with the design company Ideo, every engineer’s dream job. If it’s new and cool on the block, chances are Ideo cranked it out. The company approaches every design challenge with a Deep Dive; a one day head-first jump into the challenge to learn as much as they possibly can about it. If Buenos Aires was a design challenge, then yesterday was my Deep Dive.

I met up with some students from California at the hostel in the morning and headed out to do as much of the city as possible. We started at the Pink House, Argentina’s version of the White House, then headed towards the famous district La Boca (home of the CABJ Boca Juniors if you’re a futbol fan). After that we visited the Sunday street market, the national art museum in La Recoleta, the city’s Central Park, and the Recoleta cemetery. Finally, we went to a nice restaurant to get some famous Argentine beef and wine. The waiter asked us if we wanted to order from the menu or just get unlimited everything. I think you know which we chose. A

ll of this is much better said in pictures rather than words, so let’s

get to the point.

1 - Welcome to Buenos Aires

The airline industry takes a lot of heat these days for everything from smaller seats to smaller tomatoes on the salad. But when you stop to think about it for a second, the system behind it all, that makes it all even possible in the first place, is something of a miracle. Think about the parameters that factors into every flight, from tire pressure to de-icing fluid, routing around airports and traffic on the tarmac to global coordination between tens of thousands of planes every day. In the end, all you have to do is drop off your bag and hop on the plane and more often than not, every single one of those parameters – literally thousands of them – line up and work together.

In my case, my bag managed to run through the airport quicker than I did and within 20 hours, 6150 miles were behind me and the huge city sprawled out ahead.

Huge is a bit of an understatement for a metro area of over 14 million people, the second largest on the continent (Sao Paulo edges it out). There’s a saying in entrepreneurship that to build big, you simply have to create a model that works and then keep adding zeroes. That seems to be the prevailing attitude in Buenos Aires. In this case, they borrowed the model for a city from metropolitan Europe, transplanted it to the gulf and started adding zeroes. The city is often called the Paris of South America for its architecture and metropolitan feel. Or, as local pride goes, Paris is the Buenos Aires of Europe.

It certainly does have a different feel than any other Latin city I’ve been to thus far. For how many people live there, the city is incredibly clean. The name Buenos Aires is no misnomer. There is absolutely no city-air smell, even in the crowded downtown parts where I am staying. The traffic is light and drivers are generally polite and minimize honking (completely unlike the hectic, noisy traffic of Lima or La Paz). And a generally more wealthy population that can afford clean, quiet cars and trucks helps too.

Buenos Aires has its poor areas like every large city, in this case mostly in the suburbs rather than in the metro area. Packed 15-20 story apartment buildings are as common as blades of grass in the suburbs that I saw. Mixed between those are the more traditional Latin working class houses: low, sprawling complexes of brick and cloth. But as a result of the fertile river valley area and some smart city planning, the entire city is peppered with temperate and sub-tropical forest that lightens the entire atmosphere. Of course, the gorgeous summer weather never hurts either.

The makeup of the people is quite different in Buenos Aires than in a lot of other places. Most Argentinians are of Italian descent, with less mestizo mixed in the population. The metropolitan area is pretty diverse and welcoming, with cultural areas from around the world within walking distance. I noticed on the way in that for such a large city, Ezeiza airport is pretty tiny; I suppose a lot of people come in, but few ever want to leave!

Today was the end of the Dakar Motor Rally, held this year in Argentina and Chile. The city had a gathering in the main square for the end of the race and set up a sport for motocyclists to show off skills. For New Years, every restaurant and bank in the city was closed, but hey, the vendor’s chocolate bonbons and girls parading around in pickup truck beds was more than enough to keep everyone happy.

Looking forward to finally getting some sleep and whatever day tomorrow is. I’ll work on posting some pictures in the meantime.

Finally, Leroy would like to give a shout-out to Beni and Quincy, ‘the coolest elephant friends a pig can have’, Ki the turtle and, of course, Elena. ‘Love to all my people from Argentina. Peace!’

Quote of the day: (sp) ‘Welcome to Buenos Aires and Happy New Year! Health, love, and money… uh, in that order. Thank you for flying Delta, a member of the OneWorld alliance.’