Back in BA

Why hello there... It feels like it has been quite some time. I apologize for the gap in time. Solo traveling has been a lot busier and more intense than I thought it would. I simply assumed that traveling on my own would give me oodles of free time to roam and pontificate the meaning of dew and the romping of guanacos, but alas no, that was not the truth for me. For me, traveling solo meant doing a whole lot of talkity talk talk with folks on my path, many of them Argentine, and most often in spanish. After the two weeks that have just passed before my eyes (and, by proxy, the rest of my body), I have emerged a far better spanish speaker than I thought was possible. I even acted as translator for a bunch of Israelis in a taxi cab way up north by Iguazu's absolutely magnificent waterfalls. From bicycle rides to hiking up the sierras to taxi cabs to hotel desks, bus rides, and restaurants, I did a whole lot of the talk, and managed to meet some of the finest folk a person could ever request, and perhaps even finer than that. The grand mix included a pretty boy and a female police officer from Hamburg, a bicycle riding Jerry Garcia look-alike on my way to the wineries, a pair of uber-Norwegian sisters, an Icelandic young'n with an extraordinary ability to drink massive amounts of alcohol (or at least by my standards), and a very generous sprinkling of Israelis (ranging from mild to extra-strength Israeli), and there were many a more. This segment of my journey, while perhaps the most daunting at first, was I think one of, if not the most rewarding of all segments. It asked me to find friends and create home spaces on the spot as backdrops frequently morphed, sometimes even within the same locale. I also managed to get back on the rafting horse (after the whole nail loss thing) and go rafting once again, this time on the much more spirited and rapid Rio Mendoza. And I made it back alive and in the same amount of pieces as I was before, that being one. From crossing the stark and gorgeous Andes to heading northward to the sierras of Cordoba, from laying low and relaxing at a ranch in sleepy Villa General Belgrano to heading way up north to see the gargantuan Iguazu Falls, stretching my legs even into Brazil for a day, I have now closed my two week chapter of solo travel and have arrived satisfied and safe in Buenos Aires, the starting point of my Argentine excursion.

On my bus ride back to BA, I befriended a small 10 year-old boy named Facundo from a suburb of Buenos Aires. He had been visiting family up north and was now heading home to pack for summer camp in the country. This was his first long bus ride alone. He offerred me a mint-flavored sucking candy, I gave him some of my water. I showed him the Adventures of Huck Finn, he showed me the three marbles that he kept in an old Colgate toothpaste box, even the big one with the dent in it. We laughed at the old folks snoring in the back of the bus and stared out of the windows with curiosity and perhaps even a bit of wonder as we passed through the variegated worlds of Argentina's massive stretches. We fell in and out of slumber for the remainder of the ride and, just like that, we became friends. His mind was stocked full with beginnings: the beginning of summer, the beginning of bus trips on his own, the beginning of summer camp in the country. Lingering in my mind, the conclusion of my solo travel time, the conclusion of my time in Argentina, the conclusion of my time abroad. And I felt calm, I felt satisfied, I felt happy. I imagined our bus a ship passing others through the night in silence and drifted into some of the most peaceful slumber I had had in days. I woke with the sun and saw Facundo rustling about with the anxiousness of any 10-year old boy on a 20-hour bus trip. We were but a few minutes away from home and it was clear that it was going to be a gorgeous blue sky day. Off the bus we went and left for our entirely separate paths, he to his dad standing attentively outside the bus, me to a cab back to my temporary apartment a few neighborhoods over. He's going to have a great summer at camp, I thought, and I think things are looking alright for me too.

See y'all in New York in a week.