back to the beginning again...

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The 18 hour bus ride turned into a 21 hour bus ride due to some accident. We didn't move for about two hours. We watched Lions for Lambs twice to make the time pass. Why were we watching it again Jen and Susie asked? "I think we're the only people who have been on this bus the WHOLE time."

It was a long bus ride. a COMFORTABLE bus ride. With food, snacks, soda, water, and CHAMAPGNE. Yes, they handed us champagne at the end of the night.

When we woke up in the morning, Azul, a little four year old girl who had been taking pictures and videotaping us for the beginning of the evening, crawled into the seat next to me and started to have a conversation with me. She kept on asking what our names were, and were thoroughly entertained by us. She took a photo shoot of us, taught us songs, begged for candy and cookies, and just entertained us the whole way. I'm sure the bus folk thought we were either annoying or completely amused by the fact that we were indeed being molested by a 4 year old. Her father kept asking us if she was bothering us, but we told her it was okay.

When we finally arrived to BA, we parted ways and hoped that we would all see each other again. We were trying. But the fact that we didn't have a cell phone, didn't know where the other person was staying, didn't know what our time schedule looked like made it incredibly hard.

I got into the cab and told the cab driver where I was going. My hostel was in Palermo, really far away from the bus terminal. 20 peso cab ride away. The cab driver was nice. I spoke to him in Spanish and said some English words. He said I had really good English. I told him that's because I grew up in America. Then he said that he thought I was Mexican (second time that has happened on this trip!). I showed up at my hostel and checked it. It was just like the Hostel Inn in Iguazu. Big, anonymous. Loads of activities, hard to meet people. I guess I wasn't there with the intention to meet people since I had met people while traveling and Rebecca was coming. However, I know Rebecca wanted to meet people, and hopefully all is okay. We were going to relocate to another hostel (which turned out to be a guesthouse with the House Mom from hell) anyway, so I shouldn't have made connections... not that it was even easy to!

So I proceeded to try and get in touch with people, went to an internet cafe, wandered around town and headed to the best Hostel ever: Portal Del Sur.

Daniel was staying at Portal Del Sur and I had facebooked him and he said to come hang out. There wasn't room there for us, but being back there made me feel fortunate that was where I started my journey. I was debating whether or not to show up. I mean, what if he wasn't there? I had gone all that way to just continue wandering around BA (which, is not a bad thing). Luckily, he was there, along with a slew of other Americans... including a girl who was from Long Beach (RANDOM) and another girl who went to Cal. We sang the cal drinking song and everyone looked at us like we were crazy. It's amazing how many great people you meet while traveling. She was staying in BA and then moving back to SF, as many Cal grads relocate to. We had a great conversation and I definitely enjoyed the people I met there.

I talked about my blog and talked to them about what was blog worthy or not. Making dinner in the kitchen is blogworthy. Talking to Kristen was blogworthy. And Daniel still telling me that I am not shy was blogworthy.

It's funny. Daniel and I only met one night. And here he was, so open to having me back in his life after 3 weeks of traveling. The people at Portal Del Sur were also amazing. They just went up to me and said, "New person!"

We also had the most brilliant conversation: Dick, Bread (the words sound similar in Brazil) and Bitch Beach. Trying to distinguish the sounds. It provided for a lot of laughter and entertainment.

Then, it was finally time to call it quits because I had to catch the Subte back to my hostel, and the Subte closed at 11.

I went back and found it loud and segregated. Clumps of cliques. No one inviting others in. As cool as the hostel was, I didn't feel comfortable there.

It wasn't like the people at portal del sur. Inviting, warm friendly. Fun.

Hopefully, I'll be spending some more time there later on... It's definitely one of those places that felt like home. I'm not sure if it's the place... or if it's more all of the people I had met there at the beginning of my journey and remembering them now that my journey is nearly over.

Well... my journey is not over. I still have a lot of work to do on myself.

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