Buenos Aires part II

second stay in the city is laid back.  my room rental is fantastic.  Giselle set me up with a friend and neighbor of Marina´s.  I´d met Alberto at a dinner party we had one of my first weekends here and i saw his place when mike was shopping around.  so i knew what i was getting as my bus arrived in town.  as best as i can tell Alberto is a gallery owner and hobby painter.    Rita es el gato negro.  she´s extremely social, when i turn around she finds her way into my room to nap on my clean laundry.  maybe that´s why she was named for a famous prostitute in Rosario.  other folks in the house include Oliver, 23 from london and Jesse, a planner recentely from New York.  a George Washington student named Boyan just left for Brazil, another artist from Tucuman also just left for the summer months to spain for an exhibition.  and a musician and his wife are out on vacation.  i´ve been playing a lot of banjo.  napping.  saw three movies including Volver, which was challenging without subtitles. 
friday we had a dinner at marina´s then headed to this monthly Balkanic dance party that i´ve heard so much about, finally experiencing first hand the insanity.  woah.  live bands, beautiful crowds, immediately lost most of the people we came with.  danced till 6:30 in the morning and left with the party still going strong. 

yesterday i visited Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes.  i was happy to learn of the buenos aires born artist Ernesto Deira 1928-1986.  i really love his early work, paintings and pen drawings. 
today i get my brazil visa.  i called the US embassy to see about yellow fever shots and learned that they are utterly worthless for advice. 
now i´m headed to another museum MALBA and doing laundry.  its 27*C (81*F) and getting hotter.  looks like its about the same in Rio.  ready to go. 

the road to Tarabuco, Bolivia

mike took video of a ride we hitched to a market outside of Sucre. it started as a sunny, hot day. clear skies. when rounded a mountain and the first drops of rain began to fall the driver politely stopped to fasten the blue tarp over our heads.
RIGHT CLICK here and ¨SAVE¨ the file to your computer to view it. mike says they´ll shut him down if we clog his bandwidth. thanks much. xo

and hey!  merry christmas!    thanks for the messages.  i miss everyone and will take more care in ensuring i´m not away for the holidays anymore.  here they celebrate christmas eve more than christmas day.  there are practically no decorations.  i could have blinked and missed christmas entirely.  its customary to have a dinner party with family and friends, which is what we did at my new house.  dinner at 10 pm, a toast at midnight -  which we became aware of when the fireworks that´d been going off for hours suddenly took on a new ferver.  today the city is shut down.  the streets are covered with evidence of the haphazard firework displays.  i took my bike out to enjoy the empty streets.  just spent an hour at the Recoleta Cementario taking photos of the amazing tombs.

thinking of home, the sauna, egg nog and fireplaces.

back in Buenos!

i´m more happy than i would have expected to return to buenos aires.  i´ve got a room to myself in a minimal house with a courtyard arrangement.  it´s around the block from my old house.  so it´s nice to be near andrea and san telmo.  just found out ivan is nearby as well.  the last bus i took was a 26 hour ride.  saw lots of movies.  it´s HOT here.  muggy.  i´m ready for the brazilian beaches.

got in last night and met andrea.  went to my new place then we headed out to the monday night drum party at KONEX.  found some other folks we knew and headed to the after bar.  caught a cab home but decided we needed icecream.  i´d been missing it. 

i had mate flavor with pistachio.  they always expect you want two flavors in your cone. 

anyway, i´m happy again.  was feeling a bit homesick for the holidays.  mike and i are doing solo trips for the next two or so months so i wasn´t sure what my christmas and new years plans were.  being in a city i know with friends is a comfort. 

thinking of you all.  xo

la paz, round two.

sorry it´s been awhile. i´ve been jotting notes on paper mostly. since we´re traveling it´s been hard to get internet time.

here´s what i wrote an hour ago.

i had another LaPaz adventure today… i rode the city bus. (supposedly there are under 1 million people living in this city. i don´t believe it for a moment.) riding the city bus in a new place is monumental for me cause it means i can get around with the locals.

every city transportation system is fasinating. in LaPaz there are at least three main means of motorized transport. i see VERY few privately owned vehicles. people walk and i´ve only seen one bicycle. the expensive way to travel is by taxi. usually 6-12 bolivianos. $8bs=$1usd. here you don´t tip taxis, as far as i can tell. next is the shared taxi and the shared van. and then the public bus. the shared van is the most unusual. SMALLER toyota-type minivans, flourecent lettered signs block the passenger windsheild. these vans cascade down the streets, seeming to bounce of the walls as they avoid hitting people and each other. a caller leans out the door or window shouting in rapid succession the streets its going to travel. it costs $1.5bs. it slows down for passengers to jump on or off.

LaPaz is by far the worst city for driving. they drive like there is a 2¨ force field protecting them. and the vehicles are so beat up i don´t know how they survive the san francisco-like hills.

so we were traveling along when the bus was diverted with traffic off the main ave by police. found out later it was for a demonstration. i think there´s been one almost every day i´ve been here. it´s 4 in the afternoon. people are our walking with icecream, enjoying the weather. there´s a brief break in the traffic smog. i am sitting in the landscaped medium with at least 100 art students who are sketching the surroundings. i´ve been approached 3 times by young shoe shiners, eyeing my new balance sneakers. make that four. i give my icecream to the 6th.

trip to Sucre, another one for the books.

 we had heard a handful of complaints about the buses in Bolivia so we weren{t too surprised when we got on the bus.  it was like a beat up greyhound.  Bolivians take buses places they aren{t meant to go.  we were off-roading… barreling down dirt and mud roads.  crying babies, vibrating seats…  i was dumbfounded!  i just couldn{t believe this was … how they got around.  Sucre is the CAPITAL!  and this was the route from the southern border?  i can{t even describe it.  i was actually scared.  luckily we were not in a two story bus.  at one point (1:30 am) we got stuck in mud and everyone got out while the men threw rocks in the tire path.  behind us was another two-story bus stuck in mud but leaning really badly.  again, in disbelief we looked on as 8 or so men tried pushing a GIANT, LEANING BUS through mud.  the rocks helped ours out and we were on our way again.  there was another point at which we had to back up for about a mile cause we couldn{t get through mud.  backing up a bus on a mountain road at night…  yeah.  i didn{t sleep much. 

in the morning the ride had improved, we located something we thought we{d lost, and we were happy to be alive.  
the exhilerating voyage has paid off because Sucre is absolutely beautiful.  Its so friggin photogenic and Architecturally breathtaking.  Colonial style and painted uniformly white.  stunning.  our hostel is colonial as well… just postcard perfect.  it makes my head spin.  pink flowering cactus at the end of white washed outdoor halls.  i don{t think there are any buildings over two or three stories high except for the churches.  they are all set neatly into the mountainsides that Sucre wraps around.  

tomorrow we{re going to an artisan craft fair just outside of town and monday (after the textile museum, mom) we leave for LaPaz and biking the Dead Road!  (yeah, more extreme sports in store for us.) 
good to hear from some of you!  kate, missed celebrating your birthday with you this year.  hope it was a blast! 

coca induced rambling

Mike and I spent the last three-ish days in Salta where we met our Peruvian friend from the hostel in BsAs., Valeria.  It´s great to see Val again, and as some Canadians told me before they even spoke with her, you can see that she is a magnetic person.  she has a really good vibe about her.  and it´s true, evidenced by how she knows everyone everywhere we go.  Val has this apparent preference for surrounding herself with english speakers though, so we haven´t spoken hardly any spanish since leaving Paraná.  from one extreme to the other.  Salta was super touristy.  I hadn´t seen so many backpackers as i did there.  in fact, we stayed at a hostel called Backpackers Hostel.  it was pretty ridiculous.  kinda fratty and if you can imagine, it was like stepping into a reality tv show.  welcome to real world, salta!  

so within like 15 minutes of arriving, Val pitches this idea to us about adventure sports and sure enough an hour later she and the other gringos have convinced us to spend an entire day on zip lines.  it was with this big extreme sport outfitter that does rafting, bungee, etc.  mike and i were reluctant to get involved in something so obviously touristy but the photos suggested it would be worth it for the scenery alone.  in the end the zip lines were a lot of fun too.  i really enjoyed the 2 hour drive to and from the base camp.  we were getting up toward the base of the Andes mountains, so there are lush rolling hills and small towns with fantastic little farmsteads structures.  the zip lines were in a sort of river valley within a canyon.  the actual zipping around (they call the activity ¨canopy¨) took some skill.  Val had a close call when she was twisted around and the pulley caught her glove on the wire.  it ripped the finger of the leather glove in two.  sobering.  

that night got a little wild once back in Salta.  we celebrated a brit. girl´s birthday.  there was an asado at the hostel with a folk band that was fantastic.  afterward the party moved to a local bar.  

we spent the next day exploring a bit with Val.  got our bus tickets to the border and got a mountain veiw of Salta.  took a scenic walk down.  laid back. 

so this morning we arrived in the northern-most town in Argentina, La Quiaca.  we walked the 8 or so blocks into Villazon, Bolivia and it actually feels like a different country.  the Andean culture is all around us.  i keep expecting them to speak an entirely different language. 

i am thrilled by the dress of the women.  this will sound dumb, but it´s like you see in the pictures…  stout little women with weathered faces, in brightly colored costumes of layered skirts and sweaters, topped off with a bowler hat!  it´s amazing!  they arrange their hair in two long braids with tassels at the end.  they wear thick woollen socks and sandals.  it makes me so happy. 

we bought a sack of coca leaves and glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice.  we have about 6 more hours to relax here and adjust to the altitude.  the cocoa leaves will help a little with that.  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca_leaves
they´re pretty neat.  you wad up a pinch and knaw on it for a bit.  it numbs your mouth and you feel a nice buzz.