Last days in the B of A...

As my time in Buenos Aires draws to a close, I find myself encountering new people and locations that I wish I had spent my last four months hanging out with. It's terribly ironic: my first times at La Bomba del Tiempo and Bahrein were less than a month ago, and both are things that I should have been doing every week the whole time I was here. La Bomba del Tiempo, for those who don't know, is a hand percussion section with a conductor that play crazy beats for an audience for about 3 hours straight. Every week they have different guest musicians who play (or try to play) along with the percussionists, usually with some success. The crowd it draws is also the best of Buenos Aires youth, from all backgrounds but all with a common interest in dancing and having a good time.

Bahrein is a club with a weekly Drum&Bass called 160+ (e.g., Beats Per Minute--drum&bass is usually 160-175 bpm) that starts around midnite and goes until after the sun comes up. The Djs are consistently good, and the speakers and light show add many levels. Tonight I'm going to Hype for the first time, another weekly techno music event. 

I spent a lot of time with the fine folks from my study abroad program (all quite cool--rest assured) but now that they're mostly out and about Latin America traveling post-school, I've been forced to meet Argentines and locals, which has been great. 

If I had known four months ago what I know today, I certainly would have done things differently. Nevertheless I'm glad to be enjoying my last days here in style....

Patagonia

For those of you who didn't know, Patagonia is very, very big.

I spent the last ten days hiking through mountains and past glacial lakes, over every terrain imaginable: chapparel, forest, beach, coast, desert (-ish), through snow, ice and wind. Although Greenpeace wants you to fear that there aren't any glaciers anymore, there are in fact tons of glaciers and you see them on just about every mountainside that's high enough. The lakes that dot the landscape are the bluest of blues, amazing fresh glacial water that looks amazing and tastes excellent (take that, evian!). But most of all, everything's huge: the lakes, the mountains, everything. It's enough to make a man feel very, very small...

Meredith and I spent her birthday backpacking through Torres del Paine national park in Chile, celebrating it by setting up our tent in the rain and passing out early. Chile was beautiful but fucking expensive, and they go out of their way to charge you a million hidden fees ("bus terminal use fees", for instance). The bus ride out of Chile into Argentine Tierra del Fuego had three bus transfers, two in the middle of nowhere, and we spent a significant portion of our time crammed into tiny-ass minivans driving through the hills. We did, however, see dolphins while crossing the Straight of Magellan, which was bonus. Everywhere we went the animals were fearless, like the hawk that hung out while we were eating out lunch at 1500 meters, waiting for us to peace out so he could eat the crumbs from our lunch. I never knew that hawks liked bacon, but now I know...

Finally, we departed from Ushuaia's "Malvinas Argentinas" airport after paying an AR$25 airport use fee, back to warm, sweaty Buenos Aires. Thank you very much, Patagonia, but I'm glad to be back.

(from halloween)

This past weekend I went to Iguazu Falls. The northernmost point in Argentina, Iguazu is at the top of the state of Misiones, a tiny wedge of jungle and rivers stuck between Paraguay and Brazil. Although I can't figure out what the hell this land historically has to do with Argentina, it's an incredibly trippy place. It was 80-plus degrees the entire time we were there; so the Misioneros, instead of drinking hot mate to keep warm, drink "pebebe", a mixture of mate and lemonade. 

On Friday we spent the whole day at an estancia near Posadas sipping pebebe by the pool and eating neverending plates of decent Argentine food. The guys working at the estancia were super excited to practice their english and spent a lot of time discussing the merits of Boca and River, the two Buenos Aires soccer clubs, in English and Spanish. 

Saturday morning we woke up early to spend the day at the falls. The park has incredible catwalks that run literally along the edge of the falls, straight through dense jungle foliage over masses of cascading water. The butterflies, precocious as they are, will land on your hands or back if you let them, and the poatí (basically jungle raccoons) will steal your food if you let them.

It was a full moon and so for a little extra we got to take a moonlight tour of la garganta del diablo ("the devil's throat"), which is basically a hole in the earth surrounded by waterfalls. You can't see the bottom really (even by daylight) and at night, the mist rises through the moonlight and splashes you in the face like standing at the front of a ship. The natives believed that you would lose your soul if you looked directly into the falls at that point, but it's a wonder how they would have even gotten out that far considering nowadays you have to walk across almost a mile of catwalks to get there.