finishing off argentina: so, last part.

in the bus that crossed the border from chile to argentina i had a million men hit on me for some reason. it was kindof fun. then i left them in mendoza, argentina´s main wine country, and another guy approached me asking if i had a room yet. i did not, so i followed him and he led me to a really fantastic hostel. ariel was the hilarious owner and he was a tall, rather large man who spoke with gusto and had an attitude to him. he was fantastic. not to mention 24 hours free malbec (mendoza´s specialty) wine, free internet, free breakfast, sunny patio, and therefore a VERY happy crew of travellers to chill with.

in mendoza, i didn´t seem to do much. i didn´t want to pay for the wine and chocolate tour by vehicle (as opposed to bicycle), so ariel, who looooved me, told me that if the japanese guy took the tour, he´d take me for free. nice. i only had to give him a tip. ariel acquires tips by tapping his right cheek, insinuating a kiss. small price to pay to see grapes being crushed (with all my winery tours, never seen the grapes being crushed- very exciting), getting a free small bottle of wine, and some free shards of chocolate. mm. i tried very hard to translate the tour for the japanese guy, but she talked incredibly fast, leaving no room for translation. i felt like it was my duty, although he didn´t know i wasn´t paying, to at least translate the tour for him. but when i couldn´t fit it in, he didn´t seem to care, in that lovely, mindless, nonchalant japanese manner.

i got really frustrated with the poor physiotherapist who did an ultrasound on my legs looking for clots (referring to aforementioned DVT). he THINKS i don´t have a clot. THINKS. but this is life-dependent; if i DO, i´m in serious trouble, and if i DON´T i need to get off the blood thinners. i was so exasperated. i tried not to let it out on him.

one night i attended the shockingly enormous "vendimia"- the harvest wine festival. me and my company chose to not pay to see it and instead follow the masses to the steep hill behind the show. it was exciting, even being late, and the furthest back that one could possibly be, struggling with numb bums on gritty rocks, yelling at 8-year old smokers to get down in front. very spectacular- tonnes of colours, people, dancing, choreography, lights, images on mega screen. a real beautiful scene.

we also watched a battle one afternoon between the family members that owned the hostel. they had a security camera out the front of the hostel, so we all watched in awe as car alarms went off, smashing of windshields and passionate screaming ensued. i have never seen a family fight quite like it, and it was all because the kid let an israeli stay at the hostel. jesus.

ariel gave nick five litres of free wine just because he liked him, but nick couldn´t fit it in his backpack, so he gave it to me (could i fit it? certainly not. did i make room? why, of course). so i lugged it to cordoba and spread the free-wine love throughout the hostel. good evening. i also got bed-bugs in mendoza (increeeedibly annoying things, both in their insistent itch and ability to follow you everywhere), so i had to strip all my clothes, immediately put them through the wash, shower real hot, and spray my backpack, sleeping bag, etc. with insecticide. good waste of a morning. there was very little to do in cordoba, but somehow patrik convinced me to stay until the next night, for the jazz scene. so cordoba was a giant waste of daylight time, but the nights were quite a good time. i had my second asado- the very popular, traditional argentinian barbeque. okay, well, by my second asado i mean i sat and drank loads of wine while those around me ate copious amounts of animal innards. for the second time. even though i had to watch it all, they are such a huge part of argentinian culture that i would have felt cheated without seeing a couple.

then, since buenos aires is more well-known for its nightlife as opposed to day, i took the ten-hour ride during the sunny hours (first time the decision to willingly waste an entire day on a bus has been made. normally i go out of my way to make those nighttime trips). in buenos aires, it is normal to go OUT at 2am and return between 6-10 am. ridiculous. i went out that night and was quite impressed with the beauty of the bars. my nighttime company was annoying so i left them, talked to loads of locals, then went home early (6am).

i spent nine days in buenos aires, so it´s all an incoherent blur for me in terms of what i did in succession. i shall go by area. in recoleta, i visited the famous cemetary. i was shocked to see that i was more impressed with the cemetary of the small patagonian town of punta arenas than i was with the famous recoleta. i, of course, completely forgot to see evita´s grave. ah well. apparently it´s ugly, anyway. rachel and i saw the movie "eastern promises", which is TERRIBLE, but the theater was so incredibly elegant that i felt like royalty. i also went to a few art galleries, which were very well done.

i saw an INCREDIBLY powerful art exhibit at the cultural center. it was on the subject of the desaparecidos (disappeared people). i don´t know the whole story, i tend to involuntarily completely zone out when matters of politics are discussed, but it goes something like this: there was a recent revolution against the incredibly corrupt government in argentina, everyone who was involved ended up disappearing, obviously the government has something to do with this, the end. i don´t mean to sound insensitive, i just don´t know even half of the story. so anyway, the exhibit showed photos from the 1970s of the disappeared, and then recent photos of the same situation, though without the disappeared. the most powerful included the one with the smiling, happy couple on the edge of their bed with a baby suspended in the air, and the second photo is the baby all grown up (they also attach the names, so you know who is who), at the side of the bed, staring straight at the camera with the saddest face i have ever seen. i´m getting goosebumps just writing about it again, the same goosebumps i had through the entire show. another one included a couple on the beach, and the second photo shows only the beach. it all actually brought tears to my eyes. incredibly strong message and so very powerful- it held the kind of emotion i always wished i could invoke with my own art, it made people feel something. it was so sad.

one day every week, the mothers of the plaza de mayo do a walk around the main plaza to make people aware of the desaparecidos situation. every woman that was walking was a mother to one who had disappeared. morbid. i got all goosebumpy and teary-eyed again. it´s such a sad situation. argentina is very unhappy with their government- i had never seen more protests or heard more talk of politics in one country.

in the area of palermo, i visited the botanical gardens, which was strangely filled to the limit with cats. hilarious. sat and watched mobs of dirty cats walk by, pushing people off the sidewalk. soooo weird, but made me laugh really hard. in san telmo, there are heaps of beautiful old colonial buildings with lots of character.

and then IIIiiiii, shayla garland, went to a futbol game! ME! that´s right. can you believe it? i didn´t think i would ever voluntarily attend a soccer match, let alone pay money for it. though, to be honest, i actually only went to experience the energy of the crowd rather than see boys kicking balls. i tried my best to understand what was going on on the field, too. we saw racing vs. river or something like that. apparently it´s a classic (?). the crowd was pretty wild, but since a zero-zero tie doesn´t exactly induce the most passionate of emotions, they were tamer than normal. damn. i was actually really excited to see a fight break out over something stupid like a futbol game, but i felt bad about that admittance later when i heard someone had died the week before in one of said fights. eek. i loved watching the synchronous jumping and chanting and such of the painted crowd opposite. there was actually a swat team outside the stadium! jesus, latin america loves this game. i got really confused during the game because when someone would ALMOST score, the crowd would go wild. at first i thought it was the opposite team cheering because it didn´t go in, but then i realized that no, there was so little to be excited about in this game that when the ball was NEARLY a goal, that was something to go crazy bout. strange.

anyway, on to la boca, a very sketchy area of buenos aires. el caminito is the only area tourists are really "supposed" to visit because the rest of it is extremely poor, and with poverty comes danger and crime (i alone met three people who had been robbed during daylight, and heard many more secondhand stories). i took the bus everyone told me to take and somehow got dropped off on the complete opposite side of the la boca neighbourhood (it was the last stop- that bus goes nowhere NEAR caminito). yikes. so i had to walk through twenty blocks of one of the more dangerous areas of buenos aires. awesome. luckily i walked quickly and tried to make myself look very strong and aware and sly like a fox and got through without rape, robbery or murder. phew. hilariously, i got there so late that everything was closing, and my batteries died in caminito, so i made the trip again two days later anyway. on the first trip, i met hormigita (little ant man)- an old man with a long grey beard who dressed up in a cape and mask and hat, like a giant ant. he was soooo funny. i met him at the bus stop and he joined me on the bus, and when we saw a huge protect blocking traffic on the main street, we randomly de-boarded together and took a gander, and then a walk. it was fun walking with him because EVERY single person we passed had some sort of reaction to the caped, masked, legginged ant man, but he was entirely oblivious, ranting on and on about politics. he tried to explain to me the politics of the protest, and i tried to listen, but even in english i zone out regarding politics talk, so in spanish i was a lost cause. he gave me a free ant keychain (he was trying to raise money for poor kids by dressing as an ant or something, i didn´t understand) and promised he´d see me again. but he did not.

the first time i saw caminito, the bohemian, mexican-style textureless, brightly coloured houses, the sun was setting and projecting a delightful glow and soft shadows on the whole place. for this reason, i made sure to return my second time at the same near-dusk hour. add to the scene some tango in the streets and you have a lovely and awfully interesting place to wander about. i was entirely entranced by the tango- i loved it. caminito just made me so happy.

in terms of the nights spent in buenos aires... i just don´t know what to say. i almost fell into the trap of accepting everyone else´s opinion of the place. the accepted opinion is that the nights in b.a. are the shit. and i kindof have to disagree, from my personal experience. i didn´t like having to wait til two in the morning to go out. i disliked the majority of the music played (although i must say, had i been with different company, perhaps we would have gravitated to different clubs with different music, but the majority that we found were electro, which i rather despise for the most part). and you have to pay to go everywhere- both to get there and get in, which is somewhat rare for south america. so all in all, i would generally say that i didn´t enjoy the b.a. nightlife as much as i thought i might. that being said, i did have some really great nights, including a few hours of 80s music at one club in which we were dancing MACHINES and tired ourselves out enough in those few hours that we weren´t sad to leave when they switched to electro later on. also, a few hip-hop/r&b nights that made me happier than can be. so not all was lost. i went out seven or eight out of nine nights, so that says something. plus the crew at my hostel were amazing- i never went out with the exact same crowd, and it was always good times being with them. when hadas and i left, she remarked how tense it was saying goodbyes... we all got quite close!

so next, i went to reserva esteros de iberra with hadas, an israeli girl i had met previously in colombia. the stopover in the town of mercedes was nice- very quiet town where i read in the grass in the park and hadas fell asleep beside me (i don´t know if i´ve ever met anyone who loves sleeping so much. and when she´s asleep her mouth is hilariously and dangerously agape, i wish i took a photo). it was so peaceful, i really liked the feeling of the town.

in colonia carlos pellegrini (the town that actually resides within the confines of the reserve), we decided on hostal san cayetano, with a lovely courtyard full of bright plants and bird feed, therefore lots of birds, plus dogs and a shy hostess, clear night sky.

we didn´t do much, which actually made me really anxious (i was worried about attempting to finish off four countries in 2.5 months). hadas slept, i attempted to read the idiot by dostoevsky (WOW, i cannot follow that man´s train of thought). really bloody hot in the daytime, and no air flow, very dusty place. nothing cooling about those days, except for the accidentally frozen squash (quite nice, actually). we hiked around the reserve. i saw my first wild capybara, which made it all worth it- i was very excited about this. largest rodent on earth. they are sooo cute and funny looking, and there were tonnes of them. hadas was really great at spotting animals, which was great because i´m the contrary. we saw some monkeys, too, and i spotted a wild pig that shrieked when i yelled for her to come see, and he ran away squealing very loudly. i think everything´s a condor, so we may or may not have seen a condor. probably not. it was likely just a vulture. almost the same thing...

p.s. layers of galloping horses on sandy road and dust hitting setting sun is beyond beautiful and makes you feel like you´re in a cheesy romance movie.

after a long and frustrating attempt to find an english guide for the boat tour of the reserve, we ended up drinking caipirinhas with a german and the parents of a really cute illegitimate love child. again, contrary to normal opinion, i believe caipirinhas to be absolutely disgusting- cachaça is the dirtiest alcohol i have ever tasted.

the boat tour, which we paid too much for and still got barely any explanation of anything, was still... alright. we saw loads of caiman (like small crocodile) and birds and capybara. there are islands in this reserve that actually float, so we de-boarded and jumped up and down on the squishy surface while giggling like schoolkids and watched the guide easily drive a bamboo stick directly through the island floor to the water below. neato.

then, more time was wasted as this idiot at the tourist center told us that we for sure had a spot on the truck to posadas, even though she didn´t ask for money or our names, and didn´t give us a ticket. i asked her three times if she was sure that we just had to wait outside of our hostal. si si si. when i found out the truck had left- the truck that we had purposely waited around in the shit town for- and we were not on it, i was outraged. oh, i was so mad. but, as always, everything worked out. we stumbled upon a man who was going to posadas the next afternoon, so we paid him instead and slept outdoors on his property that evening for free. lovely. a dog joined me sleeping on the picnic table at one point.

so since we had til the afternoon to leave, we went for an expensive canoe ride. we did not get very far before hadas decided that it was far too windy to continue. i´m shocked she even noticed that since she wasn´t doing ANY of the work. i was paddling so hard that i ripped off all the skin of my inner thumb, the mark of which still remains today, two months later. for future reference, you need your inner thumb skin more than you think- to write, to use utensils, to wash your hair, to grab things, etc. i am glad we left when we did though, because the boys, who did continue, ended up tipping twice, and it´s awfully hard to re-flip an overturned canoe. before we headed back though, we did spot one caiman, it frightfully revealed itself from the swampy depths just feet from our canoe and hadas FREEEAKED out and started screaming for me to backpaddle and such. it was really funny. i must say, contrary to the motorboat, you´re only inches from the water in a canoe, so it makes the caiman a lot more real, but i thought it was the coolest thing i had seen there, (other than the capybara, of course). i felt much closer to nature. by a few inches, i suppose i technically was.

we drove to posadas in a crazy rainstorm that the driver was quite worried about (we weren´t on the most quality of roads). i went crazy listening to hadas´ good music (my lord do i miss my music). in posadas, i left her with her new weird, spacey, but sweet german boyfriend and went to puerto iguazu that evening.

the modern jungle town was extremely peaceful in the very early morn, as i wandered for longer than usual searching for a cheap hostel. the first day rained mucho, so i did very little but check out the point where two rivers separate three countries (argentina, paraguay and brazil). exciting. i also met eeevvvery worker at the hostel and not one person actually staying at the hostel. i was preparing for dinner alone when i walked outside my hostel and ran into a guy i met in buenos aires. so i ended up eating with a group of six! you just never know what´s going to happen.

i awoke early the next morn and hit iguazu falls. absolutely... fucking... spectacular. amazing. eleanor roosevelt is quoted as saying "poor niagara" whilst viewing these beautiful works of nature. we´ve got nothing on em. i spent six hours just walking around the grounds, taking them in. SIX HOURS WATCHING RUSHING WATER. they are fantastic and enormous. at the skinnier falls, you could see enough definition that it looked like a factory line of gauzy curtains being pulled down a cliffside. so incredibly gorgeous and tranquil and powerful, being so close.

then there was garganta del diablo (devil´s throat)- the absolutely enormous and aptly titled falls that tend to steal the show (but just barely). i believe that if someone said "close your eyes" and transported you before it before yelling "surprise!", and if it hit you all at once, caught you off guard, that the average soul would have no choice but in an act of awe, to burst into shocked, uncontrollable tears. no lie. one takes the train from the main falls to garganta (or, if you´re me, walks the tracks and is then known to everyone at garganta as the crazy lady that waked to the falls) and then walks platforms above a lake to arrive at its calm center. from here, a circle of the lake appears to be simply removed, and the lake collapses within itself to create the awe that is: garganta del diablo. it´s as if the earth is sucking in the lake. the falls here have the same factory line look, but of giant balls of cushy cotton (i ignored the fact that cotton balls make me cringe like nothing else, and that that would make giant cotton balls one of my worst fears) that are falling in line, bouncing on their first platform, meshing about, then falling in line again and bursting to bits once they reach bottom- explosions- layers upon layers of confetti fireworks. so, SO beautiful- i could stare at it forever.

on said platform walk, i thought i was rare in having a retarded butterfly attach to my bright flower-embroidered bag and start sucking it like mad. i then saw others experiencing the same phenomenon. this had me in stifled fits of giggles, staring at the poor, confused mariposas. i WAS rare, though, in sitting down and having NINE of them attack my bright green silk skirt at once. it was lovely- i felt like a magical fairy tale disney princess with the power to brainwash these beautiful insects into loving me madly. a very young japanese girl stared at them in awe so i spent five minutes trying to get one on her finger, while also teaching her not to touch the wings. it was cute.

on the way out, i met an argentinian and a few really nice colombians. when we got off the bus, we made dinner plans and i explicitly told the argentino to bring his colombian friends and i would bring my friends. he clearly had selective hearing because he did not bring his friends and was evidently shocked by the presence of hadas and marcos. so... awkward double date of sorts. that guy was so strange. hadas and marcos went to bed and myself and the creeper planned to hit the club. i got rid of him by telling him i had a boyfriend. he suddenly said that he had to sleep instead of going out. that was more than fine by me. i later saw him at the club.

so i went to gabriel, a hostel worker i had befriended, and told him that i had been ditched by everyone. he gave me a drink (he was working the bar next door), and later accompanied me to the bar (complete with free entrance and drink) and gave me the best sober salsa dance of my life. good times. lovely last eve in argentina.

so still, you guessed it, three countries behind. but... advancing. stay tuned!
love you all muchly,
shay.

random adds:

- it was on the mendoza to cordoba to buenos aires stretch that i began to really have the sad, miss-home feeling. hard. i think it´s because it was month 10ish and everything in these places was very normal, not as exciting or different from home. in other words, if it´s not so different from canada, why am i here? if i miss home so much, i would rather be in ontario than here. this was the first time on the trip that i so strongly preferred home to travel. i always miss friends and family and canadian things, but this was über-missing. a talk with my old roommate, megan, and we agreed that i have finally become normal. i normally am largely indifferent to time spent away from things and people. sure, i miss them, but never so much it hurts.
BUT... at the same time, going home without seeing brazil and the remainder of bolivia and peru would have left me entirely unsatisfied, so i knew i had to continue through the feeling. it comes and goes. i also just got sick of seeing the same stuff multiple times, completely jaded. it´s depressing thinking like that.

- you´re always exotic to someone.

- it´s strange how nearly every capital city in central america is avoided and nearly every in south america is embraced and enjoyed. this supports my theory about central america: its charm is in how small it feels. there is no appeal to big dirty, dangerous cities there because that´s not what central america is about. it´s quaint and family-run and smallsmallsmall.

- i pick some really BAD times to be in countries. i missed day of the dead because i was in colombia. i missed semana santa because i was in buenos aires. i missed carnaval because i was in salta and patagonia. i´ve missed some major festivities- and i LOVE festivities- because i´ve been in what seems like the only place that doesn´t celebrate it. damn. one more reason to return, i spose.

- i don´t mean to sound pompous and full of myself, but...
do you ever look back on your past with awe? do you ever think "wow, i was pretty effin´ great"? do you ever not believe that you have done some things you´ve accomplished? do you ever not believe that you could have been so happy and smart and genuine and positive and smiling and laughing? this often happens to me... and especially with my art... especially now that all inspiration has left me. i feel like that was a different, better me and that i couldn´t do the things that that me did. hm.