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Published: June 17th 2006
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*WHAT I AM LOVING ABOUT ARGENTINA
*Being a foreign local (Seen as another John Q, if a foreign one)
*Food/wine/
*Sophisticated people (as educated as Canadians; youth more interested in learning and less offended by being taught)
*Quality of living/Cleanliness
*Simply beautiful - I think Salta had one of the most beautful, pleasant plazas I have ever seen
*
*WHAT I AM MISSING ABOUT OTHER SOUTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES
*Feeling like I am really in a very different place
*The raw variety of life
*That people do not speak English
*
*WHAT I AM MISSING FROM HOME
*My mom. She is going into surgery next week.
*The rest of my family
*Friends, even with the countless new ones - Claudia, could use a hug (hey babe!)
*Caesar Salad (had a "Casar" the other day and it was as bad as its spelling)
*My bike. I really wish I could have it here three days a week. Too big a pain to carry around, though. Cant rent road bikes
*Canadians (always like it when I meet one here. Can, literally, pick them out of a crowd)
*
*GEAR I KNOW WAS A GREAT IDEA
*My lightweight but strong daypack, almost left
Driving around area near Salta, Argentina
Surreal scenery. Seem to have a lot of that this trip! without one
*Gore-Tex pants. Simply perfect for hiking, biking, etc. in wet season
*Sunglasses
*Portable DVD player (even for music)
*Perfect medical kit in
*ZIPLOCK BAGS. Should have brought a million of 'em
*
*GEAR THAT I KNOW WAS NOT
*All the expensive clothes that do not fit anymore (note: cannot be replaced here. period)
*The aweful North Face Gore-Tex shoes: easily worst piece of kit I have (well, had. I threw them out yesterday). They were two hundred dollars and quickly fell to pieces. If they held together they would be good shoes but began to wear terribly before I even took them off road! Customer service has not returned an email sent two weeks ago or so.
*Backpack is great but too big. Next time would take smaller bag and put tent on outside.
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Hola,
I was making breakfast the other day (omellet with fresh veggies) and just as I began to chop an onion, a heard a cacaphony of voices loudly coming up the stairs to the hostel. The way the words swashed around like water on a rollercoaster told me they were Irish. As they came into the kitchen I overheard them talking
to a guy sitting watching Austin Powers whether he was interested in renting a car.
"Sorry," I said, turning red eyed from the onion "did you say you wanted to rent a car?"
Half hour later, my big packpack in storage and my daypack crammed with clothes, I met the three people I was to share a car with for the next three days, sitting at a nearby cafe. Today we were going to drive to a local village and spend the night there.
After a day of nice but not spectacular scenery (tomorrow was to be different, though) we got to an eerie, kind of ugly little town at about 3,800 meters whose name I forget. It was really creepy. The town sits in a round, sandy valley which kind of looks like the ashtrays you see in hotel hallways. As you drive over the ridge you first notice the dozens of identical dull yellow little homes sitting perfectly in line which immediately made me think of the houses in Monopoly. "Anyone else feel like we should have gone to jail, no pass go?", I said.
"Ya, if this were monopoly there should be hotels" Lyn said, her head
shaking slightly side to side.
"We're not on Broadway" I,
We're in an Orwell novel, I thought.
The next day, started early in the morning, was a tour through Bedrock. I say this because the mountains were the same ludicrous colours that I had only seen in the Flinstones. These colours were to normal colours what a carricature is to a Poloroid. We had lunch in a valley whose walls were covered in wavy strips of bright colours that looked almost silly with eachother (and thus unbelievable) almost like a child poorly clumsily drawing a rainbow in chalk.
That night I had a nice dinner (Locro, my new favorite local food, and Llama steak in roquefort sauce, with a nice Vino Tinto) with Michael, one of my carmates, and went to bed somewhat early. The third day's morning was spent lounging around the town we spent the second night in, then I returned to Salta by bus while the other three kept going nortward.
The next day I met a girl I really wish I could have spent more time with - a Norweigen - and left on an eighteen hour bus for Mendoza, where I am
now. Got lots of Lev-Co work to do still and am enjoying the income. Maybe an espresso or two to get the blood flowing, a nice steak for lunch, and an afternoon at work. Ah the hard life...
Ciao for now
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