What Would I Do Without Friends?

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At 4 AM it is pitch dark in Colonia Valdense, Uruguay. Walking around this small city never worried me, late or early. But my friends insisted I call a taxi. At the last minute Friday night Javier announced that the family would be at my door at 4:20. Javier, Marcela, Donald, Edith hauled my two backpacks, my sack of food to the car. I insisted I had to stop at the bank to give money to Donald for Argentina pesos. No, I'll meet you in Ecuador in a few weeks and you can pay me then. Javier drove right past the bank. As we rolled into a parking place the bus was nearly on our bumper. Had we stopped at the bank I would have missed the bus!

The Agencia Central bus, Yes, the right temperature! Not too cold or hot. I slept til 7:30 when a light tap woke me. A young man sat down. I asked him his name and he wrote on my pad, "Mi nombre es Nicolas Romero." I asked where he lived: Florida-Uruguay. As far as I could tell he is a student. The language barrier is real! We went through a good sized town and he wrote Dolores, again Mercedes, and lastly, Frey Bentos, where he and his family got off.

As I read through my journals and stored them I kept running into, "This scene is indescribably awesome", "I cannot find words to tell people about these mountains" "How do I describe what I am seeing?". Those were scenes out of Mexico, Central America and northern South America.

Here cities spaced out like uneven pearls on a necklace look similar. The landscape consists of rolling hills, fields green as a crayon or brown with new tilling, tree farms, small homes on large acreages. No drama, really. The people make it interesting.

But this post is going to be short. After the 3 AM alarm and the rush to finish stashing little "necessities" into backpacks I am too tired to think. Will work on this after I snooze 9 hours.

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