Road Trip in Short

A quick post... yes I am still alive.

I just got back from our seven day road trip. I will write more detailed stories when I have more time. We rented the little Gaucho-Car-That-Could (a four seater sedan, no 4WD here)... and she took us everywhere from deserts to rain forests to salt flats... crossing rivers, ice, and 4900 meter mountain passes. She only gave up two hubcaps and bent her front liscence plate. If there's one thing I love, its getting cars REALLY dirty. And she was ... a dirty dirty girl.

Quick highlights:
I tried Coca Leaves for the first time... legal in northern parts of Argentina.
Went on a drunken midnight moonlit gnome hunt (apparently they exist in the mountains of Argentina).
Listened to incredible live music in small country towns along the way.
Did some solo camping in the desert and in the mountains. Translation: danced naked alone in the desert under the stars.
Tried and failed to learn the flute.
Watched Cody order cow shit stew by accident.
Witnessed some of the most incredible landscape of my life: barren desserts with cacti and mesas, sandblasted lunarscapes seemingly devoid of all life, fertile irrigated oasis tucked into painted valleys, layered canyons millions of years old, ancient Quilnes ruins, and much more. I kept a writeen journal which I will copy when more time allows. Showers have been few and far between much less internet.


It's official the motto of this trip is now "If only I had more time. "
At $20 US per day per person (including gas) this road trip could have been at least twice as long, and I have only explored a corner of this massive, beautiful country.
I have just bade farewell to my carmates and am now once again solo. Mixed feelings on that one, but more awaits.
I bought my ticket to Iguazu tonight: home of the waterfalls. I leave tomorrow morning... only a 24 hour bus ride. Back to BA after that and then State Side.


For now friends... a thought on moments that threaten to break you.
Quoted from Martin Fierro:

"De ese modo nos hallamos
Empenaos en la partida-
No hay que darla por perdida
Por dura que sea la suerte;
Ni que pensar en la muerte,
Sino en soportar la vida."

"So there were we-friend Cruz and me
With our lives in the lap of Fate;
But even when trouble has got you grassed
You must kee up your pecker till the last;
If a man keeps thinking about his death
He may think of his life too late."

The Gaucho Martin Fierro
"Part the Second: The Return of Martin Fierro"
Chapter 3 Paragraph 1
Translation: Walter Owen