¡Bienvenidos!

Having finally achieved a decent night´s sleep, I think I am now more able to share some cultural experiences and observations - rather than just moan about the difficulties of travel.

First lesson: Quisiera vino tinto, por favor.

The wine served on the plane with dinner was better than most $20+ bottles I have had in the states. The hostel only has two selections, but both are stellar and can be purchased for $25 pesos - the equivalent of about $7 US. At that price it is very managable to have a decent bottle of wine with your dinner, considering we bought all the fresh materials for veggie pasta w/ marinara for $5 (US).
So, the length of our money is one area in which we did not overestimate. Beyond food, we have heard that lengthy busrides in a cama-bus (sleeper with food service) are more than affordable. This will factor massively when we start looking towards Mendoza (to really taste some wine) and Bariloche when we start working south.

Wine aside.. the people, barring the taxi (who according to some fellow hostel residents is the exception rather than the rule), are generally friendly and willing to help - even if you struggle with their language. Kaitlin remarked yesterday that the service at the cafe in the Plaza de Congreso was very friendly - whereas in Spain the wait staff would just stare at her if she asked questions about the food. The staff at the hostel has also been very nice (especially to me, since it is obvious I am learning the language). People on the street seem very busy and purposeful, but it is a good balance of what you would expect in any major metropolitan area. Though I´m sure the next few weeks will bring some lasting impressions regarding the locals - I think our best experiences with the people will probably come outside of the urban setting.

A moment:
Kaitlin and I were soaking up some sun on the roof of the hostel after our midday meal (I guess it was a siesta) when we started hearing drums and a bullhorn in the distance. Sure enough, we look over the roof wall and there is a massive demonstration clogging the Ave. de 9 Julio (the widest street in Argentina, named after their independence day - mix Times Square and Chicago´s Michigan Ave). There is a massive transit strike going on here right now - our assumption (I haven´t seen today´s paper) is that this march is related to the recent breakdown in negotiations between the Gobierno and the socialist bloc of workers. There is grafitti everywhere here championing the socialist agenda or lamenting the Falklands War in 1982 (there was also a veterans demonstration next to the house of congress).
The march, while rather massive (easily thousands of people - taking nearly two hours to clear a block and a half) - was very pedestrian. We laughed that they were not over zealous - more like they were on their way to a football match than to the steps of Congress. Still, it made an impression on me, to see people actively participating in something. Whether it was the drumming and singing of the marchers or the honking and gesitculating of the stranded motorists - I took it as a good omen for eventful and safe travels.

Lastly, we have already met some charming characters here. In addition to the staff we shared the kitchen with a gentleman from northwest England - were bestowed with a helpfully modified city map and some bread by another Brit (he from the northeast) - but we had our best interaction with a couple from Holland whom we spoke with on the roof last night for some time - each couple with their own bottle of vino tinto. They have already come through Santiago and Mendoza, so they had some helpful tips for us, but mostly it was nice to share first impressions of Buenos Aires (as well as other destinations we had in common).
Today we plan to make our way north to the massive park (I forget the name). Friday, I´m not sure what we´re doing, but Saturday and Sunday are about futbol! Argentina is playing Spain on Saturday and word is every hotel lobby, bar, and cafe will have the game available. Sunday River Plate play Tucuman, but I´m not sure if we´ll be able to make it up there (River´s stadium is about an hour northwest).
I still haven´t decided who - if anyone - I will follow or at least attempt to see play. All accounts so far are that the terraces at a Boca or River match are filled with bonafide hooligans and extremists (and that´s coming from Brits!). From what I saw of the game on TV last night between Estudiantes and Rosario - the entire stadium is a hazard, but that´s the point, right?

Oh well, today is a new day. I feel fairly rested, though I could have slept much later (someone hit me with a towel this morning because they mistook me for one of the people snoring below and beside me. Needless to say, I couldn´t get back to sleep because of the snoring.

Alive, in Buenos Aires

A day later and indeed, a few bucks short - we have arrived in Buenos Aires.

If the last forty-eight hours are any indication of the path that lay before us, God help us. Of course, nothing we can´t handle, but I am hoping for more subtlety and romance to divulge - rather than the abrupt drama that is the city.

But first...

I try not to believe in jinxs (and now I know of at least one we can avoid on the return trip), but after smooth passage via Delta from Denver to Atlanta to Miami - it was only a matter of time. Originally, we chose Aeorlineas Argentina because it was reasonably priced, but more so because it flew direct from Miami to Buenos Aires. All other airlines stopped in either Mexico or Panama City. I still think we made the best choice but it is difficult to ignore hindsight.

Upon arriving in Miami we were greeted first and foremost by that all too familiar wave of humidity. At that moment I found myself longing for the swelter of the Sandhills - bizarre.
Continuing up the ramp the sentimentality was overcome with the excitement of our pending final leg of the twenty-eight hour haul. But Miami International is a rather large airport and rather than wandering aimlessly we opted for the information kiosk.

When we told the clerk which airline we were seeking, his chin sucked into his neck - pursed his lips - rolled his eyes to the top of his head: Y´all are brave...DAMN y´all are brave!

Immediately, we shriveled. Why exactly should we be brave? Who wants to be brave? Not me.

The gentlemen proceeded to inform us that Aerolineas Argentina is the bane of MIA - the target of countless industry jokes - ´´That airline is held together with bubble gum and duct tape.¨ ¨Sometimes they try to take off with two..even one engine!¨

Thansk for the heads up!

Luckily, the flight was cancelled due to, ¨No aircraft.¨ So we had an entire day in Miami to ruminate on the possible flaws with this airline - to ponder and joke about the potential for crashing into the Gulf of Mexico or the Andes. Huzzah!

Of course, the flight itself went off without a hitch. The craft was not state of the art, but the meal was good and the ride smooth and I was lulled into the simpler, slower way.

That was until my pack arrived in baggage claim with the brain (top compartment) unclipped and hanging next to the body. It was a very strange kind of panic that came over me. My pack seemed smaller, but that could have been because it was buried under the weight of a pyramid of luggage - it didn´t necessarily mean that anything was missing.

Then I saw that two of my five carrabiners used to hold my zippers shut were missing. Long story short, because this is dramatically overhyped - my external hard-drive (which we intended to load with thousands of touristy photos) was gone. In retrospect, I´m not too surprised - more surprised that my first naive blunder would come so soon upon arriving.

The sick insecurity of knowing that a stranger has access to all of your photos, videos, writing, etc... left me pretty vulnerable - I was caving after being swept through customs, no questions asked - only to be blindsided.

We soldiered on though - in the grand scheme of things it was a minimal loss - all our files had been backed-up on Kaitlin´s harddrive before we left..and we brought mine because it didn´t even really work that well. Good riddance.

- I hope every day does not produce such long winded entries -

Our cab ride was another harrowing experience. Before we walked through the automatic doors - we were picked up by a taxi. We were told the rate would be $350 pesos..which seemed exorbitant compared to the exchange rates and the info we had seen online about fares from the airport to the city center, but hey.. we were on our way..

The since of injustice ebbed and flowed as I took in the drive. It was difficult to stay focused on the fare as we passed the training facility for the Argentine National Futbol team and the sporadic cars parked in the median and shoulder with people just sitting staring at the countryside. We asked the driver what they were doing, ¨Just passing the day,¨ he said.

We arrived after a while and the fare showed $460 pesos - I knew we were getting ripped off, but I just wanted to get into the hostel and collapse - so between Kaitlin and myself we shelled out $500 pesos. The driver attempted some poor slight of hand and produced four hundred peso bills and two ten peso bills. He then tried to convince us that we had given him $420 pesos.. it was pretty surreal for about five minutes as Kaitlin tried to grasp what the man was saying and I (limited by my lack of Spanish) was unable to tell the guy to go jump off a bridge. Once he realized we weren´t going to submit - he changed his story and said he was just giving us our change (still shorted $20 pesos from the already inflated fare). We shook hands and he drove away. Bizarre.

This entry has already swelled beyond acceptable proportion and we need to hit the grocery store before it gets dark. I´ll be back later with impressions from our exploratory walks around the area and perhaps a picture of the massive socialist protest that shut down the cities major thoroughfares for almost an hour. Till then...

Psuedo-South America

It is currently 8:01AM EST on November 10th, Miami - USA. Yes, Miami.

I am living to rue my words to Matt the night before we left. I was ruminating on the poor mail service in Argentina/South America and I said, "We may just find that the world is a lot bigger than we think."

I didn't think we'd find out so soon!

Two of three flights yesterday went off without a hitch. Upon arriving in Miami we made our way to baggage claim, because our flight from Miami to Buenos Aires was on a different airline: Aerolineas Argentina

After we got our bags we went to the information desk to get directions to the Aerolineas check-in

We walk up to the desk and ask the gentleman, "We were just looking for the A-A check-in desk."
The man leans back in his chair, lowers is head, and purses his lips - "Y'all are brave, damn, y'all are brave..."

"Excuse me?"

The man proceeded to explain that A-A is the bane of the Miami airport. That there is an "industry joke" about the airline: That airline is held together with bubble gum and duct tape.
He was also kind enough to elaborate by explaining that they often try to take off with two..even one engine working - instead of four.

GREAT! AWESOME! THANKS FOR THE HEADS-UP! ..as we are about to get onto our flight..

But, we are hardy traveleres - we soldier on! After sitting infront of the Aerolineas Argentina check-in desk for a few hours (we didn't want to check-in too early - in order to reduce the likelihood that our bags would be misplaced so early before the flight) we slap our knees and say, "LETS DO THIS!"

We tie up all of the loose straps on our packs and stride galantly over to the check-in desk. We wait for the clerks to finish their conversation. We place our identification on the counter. We wait. The woman says, "No flight today." It doesn't sink in to either one of us. Kaitlin talks to the woman - I continue to imagine that the form she is filling out is our boarding pass, "Gee, that's odd that she is hand-writing our boarding pass."
"If you go out the door and take a left, that is where the shuttle will pick you up. We are giving you breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

...um...wait, what?

So, I jinxed us. And, the "big world" got bigger a lot faster than I expected.

Thus - here - in Miami - not Buenos Aires - but that's okay!

It has been a good while since I have been in Miami. I look at it as Miami is our "warm-up" to BA. The minute we stepped off the plane, we smiled at the humidity. As I felt my fingers get sticky for the first time since early September - sentimentality for the south crept in.
More so, everyone speaks Spanish here. We more or less feel immersed, although I'm sure my first day in BA will blow this feeling out of the water.

So, that is the first update from life after Denver. We are crossing our fingers for a flight today. The weather looks clearer today, I'm taking that as our good omen. More tomorrow from Buenos Aires - ojala!

..just get me to the hostel.

Just over forty-eight hours until departure.

Yesterday, I tested out the pack. Everything fits!

Today, I will load up the car with everything that is not going to South America.

Tomorrow, we'll drive the car down to Colorado Springs and leave it there.

Sunday will be an early Thanksgiving with Kaitlin's family and time to make my last free phone calls for a long time.

Early Monday morning we'll head for the airport. Boarding Denver to Atlanta 6am Mountain Time. Atlanta to Miami. Miami to Buenos Aires.

We should arrive in Buenos Aires 8 or 10am Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday.

I have resigned myself to the fact that everything between now and Tuesday afternoon will be a blur. Last minute plans to visit with family and friends, phone calls, letters, everything that can be done simply now, that will be difficult to do for the next six months. That's okay.

I feel like we have taken every opportunity to say farewell, to settle our affairs, and to properly prepare ourselves for everything we wish to do in South America. Still, I know it will be hard to turn off my phone that last time, to close up my laptop that last time, to get to sleep that last night, to load the car, to walk away from this generous continent, and to enter a relative unknown. But it will be done.

We have reserved three nights in the Lime House youth hostel in Buenos Aires. I am focusing solely on getting from the airport to the hostel. Once I'm there, I don't know how long I'll sleep, but after I wake up - I will be a new animal.

What exactly that entails - I can't be sure, but I feel it in my gut.
..just get me there.

I imagine I'll write again before we leave - though there is increasingly less to say. Words are nearly obsolete - time for action.

15 Days

With fifteen days until departure - most pieces are in place.

We are yet to book a hostel in Buenos Aires. We are waiting to hear back from a staff member about the possibility of helping with upkeep in exchange for a free/discounted room. If we have not heard anything definite by the end of this next week, we'll probably book the Pax Hostel and figure out a more permanent situation in country.

The plan is to stay in the BA vicinity for about a month. Assuming our only obligation will be to help out around the hostel, there should be plenty of time to explore. All indications suggest that day trips to Montevideo, Uruguay are a very real possibility.
I have "committed" to a (tentative) three day rotation:

Day 1: Explore the city/surroundings.
Day 2: Pursue soccer related activities.
Day 3: Write.

I do not intend to establish a routine - this rotation is more so a matter of probability.

Sometime in December, we will start to make our way through the Patagonia.
We've booked a hostel in Punta Arenas, Chile - partly to placate the Argentine customs official that will be skeptical about our one-way ticket - partly to keep us moving.
Once we get down to Punta Arenas, we have the month of January to continue hiking and camping. I'm telling myself I will befriend a local near one of the hundreds of islands that make up a megalopolis of archipelagos along the southern portion of Chile, that will let us work on his isolated sheep farm.

Around February we will be making our way north to Isle Chiloe. Word is that this is a "mystical" region where "time passes differently" - enough said. We have contacted several WWOOF farms on the island and have had replies from most. Unfortunately, our number one choice (Thomas, "el holandes" part mad scientist - part Castaneda) in Puerto Raul Marin has not replied, yet. However, we have already had a lengthy correspondence with a family in Chacoa (just east of Ancud). They are more than happy to have us February through April if we are willing to stay that long.

Looking at the accommodations, I can see us staying a while!






Between the snail farm, the horses, and mollusk harvesting, should be plenty to learn.





It is safe to say, I am more than excited by the prospect.
Of course, we do still intend to make our way to Valparaiso, Santiago, and hopefully Antofagasta and/or Iquique. We are also leaving the door open for a trip into Peru, but nothing solid is planned beyond Chiloe.

So...that is the state of things. Meanwhile, I refuse to sleep. I am exhausting myself in hopes that I will be able to sleep on the plane come November. Until then, I'll force my eyelids open and settle for daydreams.

To Be Prolific

The trip to Tucson/Phoenix served as the christening of a mini-renaissance within me. Not inspired, but invigorated and envious. To be a fly on the wall for a few days as Jeremy makes "The Guilt Complex" whatever it will be - I felt guilty.

For how long I have been coasting. For how little effort I have put towards the activities that have always brought fulfillment. For how arrogant and wasteful I have been with my days. For my indifference. For my lassitude. For allowing weakness.

In the nonchalant rage that was their touring through Arizona, I was lulled into a vulnerability that had only been alluded to when Jeremy played in Denver last week. The mundane and whorish aspects of their self-promotion. Hawking handbills in guitar shops and canvasing prepubescent shopping malls. A preemptive ejaculation in order to purge the weakest seed. In order to leave only the most viral representation of their art for whomever appears for the show.
This purity and intensity - I have only sniffed the last few months. Here and there I stumble upon something of which I am proud. Only every so often have I produced a work that reminded me why I bother.

Surely, the madness of two thousand miles to ponder Jeremy's mystery, not to mention the might of the sonorous Coronado, and the delirious rhythm of an overdue oil change - have transubstantiated my lower proclivity into a seething fecundity.

The read and written word is back. Participation and Intrigue, requiters of the active masses have brought me home. Ostensibly, the time honored postal mission is revisited. Letters are retracing the spent bends of the interstate highway system and the less trafficked troposphere - bringing bits of me back.
Pynchon and my peers fill my head with beer that steers me clear of trite and septic disaffection. Better than the best brewed bubbles have to offer.

The mere fact that I am so eager to write this nothing, is - for me - success. A fever I can only hope to continue carrying. No climate or harbor for relevance!

Education continues..

Last week I spent about five days in a cabin with Kaitlin and family along the Gunnison River, over the Collegiate Mountains - in the sufficiently remote ranch land braced by Signal Peak and Gunnison National Forest.

Gunnison County is home to the Gunnison, East, and Taylor rivers which boast some of the best trout fishing in Colorado - in addition to an average temperature that is ten degrees lower than anywhere in the state. Though Colorado is experiencing an "early winter" (having just turned to autumn) the low of nine degrees our first morning in Gunnison was quite a shock.

The temperatures gradually rose throughout the stay, but falling in a mountain fed river and leaking waiters will certainly give your feet a different perspective.

Above there are pictures from a hike Kaitlin and I ventured on into the West Elk Wilderness - Mill Creek Trail. The week before the canyon had experienced 80mph winds, leaving giant aspen and ponderosa strewn across the valley and in many places blocking the trail.
It is difficult to glean from just photos, but the hike was quite eerie. The canyon was still but for the constant rustling of the aspen leaves. Only birds and small rodents appeared, though we found mountain lion tracks and scat. In fact, we were in prime mountain lion country (large boulders, high yellow grass, downed trees, high canyon walls), a realization that made the hike all the more tense - despite their reclusive nature.
Featured also are just two pictures from days of fly fishing activities. Kaitlin's father (The Gillie Man) tying leaders and flies. Then we have me on day five. After spending most of the day on our hike is West Elk, there was too little daylight left to rent boots, so I hit the Gunnison in my slippers. Not recommended.

Back in Denver now, it might be easy to forget the presence of the wild. My good friend Taylor posed the question to me the other day: How is the American Frontier? Does the American Dream reside in Colorado?

Well, I gave him more than he bargained for and more than I will burden anyone reading this with..

But the answer is of course, "yes" and "no"..

I have come to find, through Ed Abbey and driving in my own steel dinosaur through eastern Utah - that the rail fence that I once thought plagued the American West (lining miles and miles of uninhabited prairie) does not confine nature - it does not make the land our eunuch - it confines us, it protects us. From a force that, despite the industrial mechanization of our lives, can still reek absolute havoc. The fences protect us from facing all of the forces that we no longer have the instinctual capacity to maneuver. In this manner, the frontier is still a vibrant throng, a population unrivaled.
Yet, there are those who come to the frontier with no tolerance, no adventure in their heart. They will remain the urban mob, with no interest in equilibrium. If by chance they do venture into the hills - it is for a resort like cabin with tens of thousands of square footage and fenced in acreage. For these individuals and indeed for most of us in our daily lives, there is no frontier. However, in those rare moments when we dream of wild things and in the rarer moments when we let ourselves be hunted - when we reenter the chain - then we have reclaimed both frontiers (our mind and our surrounding).

Lastly, thirty days until our departure. Nearly every loose end is tied. Kaitlin's grandmother has offered to store my car in her garage in Colorado Springs. The scent of South America is so strong now that it is difficult to pursue any of the administrative details left. I just know that the days are going by and not too long from now we will be on a plane and everything will change. For now though, we will call the airlines, dry-run packing, and make our last excursions in the American West. I leave for Phoenix tomorrow, but will be back by Tuesday. Then later this month we will head five or six hours south to the sand dunes.

There is so much land.