The camera I bought at an antique shop in Medellin, pre-broken:

I departed the luxurious apartment of Camila and Pilar after taking advantage of their kindness for far too long on a last ditch effort to see a little more of Colombia. I spent a fun day in a cold cold bus to Bogota and spent a weird night in a place called Alegria’s Hostel with a smoky, barracks-style dorm room full of semi-drunken English and a cat that freaked me out 3 times in the middle of the night by jumping up onto my bunk. I rocked over through the Candelaria to Platypus Hostel the next morning and found it full of friendly, English speaking youngsters with whom I spent a night drinking bad beer in the street after a day being a good tourist and finding my way around museums.

The Museo de Oro:

Another Botero Museum:

I left the next day for Santa Marta (after a delicious breakfast-slash-lunch). The 20-or-so-hour freezing cold bus ride was uneventful, other than a late-night stop by the military police to rifle through our bags and belongings looking for drugs and whatnot. And a stop in the middle of nowhere at a huge, roadside cafeteria that sold overpriced food to bus riders. Which I ate, happily.

I cruised through Santa Marta quickly and caught the first buseta I could find to Taganga, where I realized that the name of the hostel which I’d reserved was stored in my phone, which now had no battery. So I wandered around the little beach town with the 14-year-old on my back for a couple hours in the intense heat and sweated profusely until I found an Internet cafe and found the name of the hostel. An hour or so later (the streets in Taganga aren’t marked), I arrived at Hostel Tropical Maison and met Jean, the owner. Jean is the sort of fellow that people all over the world have stories about. He’s an old guy, a jazz pianist, a linguist who speaks at least six linguas, an opinionated storyteller, and a crank.

I was the only one in Jean’s house for the first couple days, which was a bit depressing, frankly. I spent a lot of time hearing about Jean’s lives abroad and his experiences alternately spying for the USIS and being followed by the FBI. And reading trashy novels in the comfy hammocks out back. But then, some very nice kids came and we went to the beach every single day for hours and hours. And I snorkeled like a mad man. And we went to the (two) clubs in Taganga and I danced like an idiot at one of them and tried my very best to flirt with girls. Oh, and my last night there I went nightswimming (in my dorkiest pair of underpants) with very kind, very cute Lizzie and very kind, very Australian James. Which was fun.

Yo Spoon, let’s go to Da Beach:

I came back to Medellin after a tearful (on my part) departure from the funnily, bizarrely inappropriate Canadian/South African couple and even-tempered Clover O’Brien (from guess what country) and found Camila as charming and gracious and lovely as ever. I saw her for just a few sad hours before I jumped in a cab the next morning to catch a plane back to, well, here.

I’m back in the States now, feeling like a bit of a stranger. I think that I’ve rewired by brain in the last almost eight months; some synapses in there have re-fused into a network in which my goal on any given day is to A] Find a place to stay, B] Find someone to hang out with, and C] Find a way to have a little bit of fun (but not too much). But I’m getting the hang of it again.

I loved my little trip. I loved the people I met, the places I saw. And yes, I am different.

1] Wake up at Camila’s lovely little apartment, eat a delicious breakfast cooked by either lovely, kind Camila or her lovely, hospitable mom. And feel a little guilty.

2] Loll around for an hour or two, obsessively checking Facebook and slowly working on personal hygiene tasks.

3] Work my way out into the sunlight. Walk to the Metro station down the hill from Envigado, take the spotlessly efficient Metro to Parque Berrio.

4] Eat a 6,000 peso lunch (which sounds expensive, but it’s really only three dollars) before heading over to the Museo Antioquia, which houses lots of Colonial and Colombian art, as well as a huge collection of Botero artwork. And has like 40 fat sculptures directly outside, which are funny and a little grotesque.

5] Jump on my new favorite friend, the Metro, to go check out the MAMM. But arrive there to find that it’s inexplicably closed.

6] So meet up with the Met to ride the crazy huge well-engineered gondola portion of the public transportation system up the hill to the allegedly dangerous little barrio of Santo Domingo, now home to a beautiful modern library bequeathed by the nation of Spain. To wander around a little bit and meet a super-charming technological librarian and speak some halting English.

7] Get kicked out of the library’s computer lab (because it was closing) and running in a downpour down the super-modern handicapped ramp. And falling on my knees in a super-radical rockstar slide in the deluge and ripping a rockstar hole in my jeans and getting some rockstar blood all over myself. And feeling pretty not-rockstar as the little kids were laughing at me and I boarded the fantastic futuristic gondola all wet and bloody.

8] To go back down the hill and eat a really bad expensive sushi roll in Parque LLeras that was not fried in tempura batter, but some kind of corn meal, which does not work well with the Japanese food.

9] Before jumping back on the M and taking my Camino Verde bus back to my perfect apartment and loll around a bit more before welcoming Camila back home from her 14 (or so) hour day at the fancy restaurant.

Other, less common occurrences:

Cirque de Soleil was in town for Los Juegos Sudamericanas and Camila mentioned that I ought to go. When we stopped by a hostel in Parque Lleras to grab a map, she happened to know someone that worked there that somehow had access to (maybe a bit below the board) entrance to the inauguration show. So there was some rapid discourse in a language that I now don’t understand at all on many cellular telephones, and I was told to show up at a certain place at a certain time. Which I did and waited around a couple hours with some super sweet college kids for some shady guy to arrive out of the crowd with dubious access to the show. Which he never did, so I followed the college kids to a nearby bar where I was forced to drink an undisclosed amount of aguardiente and danced really poorly/sweatily with a kind/patient young woman who put up with me even though I have as much rhythm as a, well, a WASP-y white guy from a cold climate.

The college kids:

A delicious meal at Camila’s very fancy restaurant at which I chatted amiably with Rob (from California), her boss and the head chef, and ate one of the best meals of my life, all explained in lurid detail by them both. Was wowed.

Night at the disco with Camila and her very special friends, pretending that Cami is European to the poor drunk Colombian guy (self-proclaimed nickname “the body”) and dancing like a little kid before meeting Pink (not the Pink) and being forced to say some very nasty things in a language I don’t understand and joining in the cleverly written song, Pink is the Best.

Also:

Medellin is Canada. But warm. And the people are more attractive. Everything is clean and modern and attractive. The citizenry is incredibly kind and gregarious and just, well, nice. I feel safer in Medellin (rightly or no) than I’ve felt anywhere outside Patagonia in the last seven months. It’s more Canada than Canada. Is this what Scandanavia is like?

I’ve gone to the aquarium and the botanical gardens and another museum and another museum and a big fancy market and a big fancy mall and another big fancy mall. And the movies, twice.

I walk a lot. And it’s hilly and warm. I’m getting a little sweaty. But people are so nice, they never mention it.

I awoke at 5:15 the next morning and headed off to Colombia in high style. Lonely Planet, that scourge of travelers, told me that Terminal Carapungo is the place to catch buses North. So, I again took the trole to the end of the line and hopped on a bus with a giant sign that read “Carapungo.” And rode it for an hour before realizing that there was a little town on the outskirts of Quito called Carapungo, and the bus terminal confusingly isn’t located there. I jumped off the bus with my mochila gigante in tow and grabbed a shady-looking taxi to ask where the heck I needed to go. Terminal Norte is evidently what it’s called, kids.

Five hour bus from Quito to Tulcan: uneventful. Taxi to Rumichaca: uneventful. Border crossing at Rumichaca: marred by closed borders (a four-hour wait for the Colombian elections) and a mixup by myself and fellow Michigander Tyler over which country’s immigration office we were supposed to visit first, but buoyed by good conversation with friendly (of course) Canadians that had just spent a week on the farm with the Irish expat screamers, currently located 6 hours outside Popayan. Combi ride to Ipiales: uneventful. 10 hour bus ride to Cali: happily uneventful, with a bit of chatting with friendly Irish couple who’ve seen all the countries I have with the addition of Brazil in only 7 weeks. 10 hour bus ride to Medellin: uneventful and beautiful.

Medellin is a lovely, lovely place. It’s really a beautiful city, incredibly modern and clean, and surrounded by pretty little tree-covered mountains. People are more friendly and helpful (people approach me on the street and ask me if they can help. A lot.) than anywhere I’ve yet been. Camila and her mom are hospitality defined. And everywhere I look are quaint shops and charming restaurants and activities and cute little tree-lined avenues. I’m enjoying myself quite a bit, and I’ve only been here a day and a half.

But my camera is now officially broken. So you’ll just have to imagine it.

Yours.

Entonces, I went back inside, upstairs, to find the El Dorado window, handed the nice senorita my voucher, and was told that the voucher I’d bought was for tomorrow, not today. Blerg. I’d told the friendly woman at the tour agency earlier that I needed a ticket for the 7:00 to La Paz. She didn’t ask me, and I didn’t tell her, which day; I’d just assumed it was the same day as my purchase. So, here I was at the terminal with all my possessions in the world, a ticket for the wrong day, no hostel booked for the night in Sucre, and a pretty desperate look on my face. I asked the senorita at the terminal if it was possible to change my ticket for the later bus, but she showed me on the screen that every seat in both the 7:00 and 7:30 bus was filled, and I was pretty much out of luck.

Except. Five minutes of me trying to look as pitiful, yet friendly and gracious as possible, later, she had an idea. Apparently there’s a semi-truck-style bunk behind the driver’s seat in some of these buses where the co-pilot can catch some zeds during the trip. Senorita actually had a picture of one on her computer to show me, and, of course I said I’d take it at no extra charge.

So I retrieve my mochila from the dangerous descending hook manned by two 9-year-olds, toss it into the bus, and settle into the seat next to the driver (offered to me by one of the co-pilots). It was fun, and a bit scary, to see the road from this perspective. Sometimes it seems like bus drivers in South America are a bit reckless, even from the comfort of a reclining seat in the back of the bus, but you don’t really know how reckless they are until you’re sitting next to one and watching as they careen through tiny streets at top speed and barely avoid killing pedestrians and domestic animals while joking around and gesturing wildly with their (multiple) co-pilots and buddies and the little Chola woman seated at my feet. And about a half an hour into the 12-hour trip, they busted out the 96% alcohol, which made me a little apprehensive. But, to their credit, all it was used for was to give a few drops to Pachamama out the window, and to bless the steering wheel with an alcohol baptism of sorts. And the driver crossed himself with it maybe a dozen times.

A bit later one of the co-pilots asked me if I wanted to retire to the cabin. So I climbed back there over another guy and found the bunk a bit small (my feet stuck off the end about a foot and a half), a bit stinky, and a bit claustrophoby, but a decent way to pass a night. It was a space about 3 feet wide, five feet long, and two feet high, with a blacked out window and a blanket with a picture of (I think) a sweet wolf on it. So I turned my iPod on and prepared for a boring, dark, stinky night alone. Until a stop in the middle of nowhere at which I got out to stretch my legs and came back to find a bedmate.

It’s two in the morning. You’ve been sleeping for a couple hours in a small dark box, being thrown around by a superstitious (maybe drunk) driver’s erratic driving, listening to cumbia antigua, and smelling a scratchy wolf blanket that you’re using as a pillow. You’re woken up, you stand outside for three minutes, and you go back to your little box to find another guy in there. What do you do?

You know what I do? I climb back in. I spoon. I sleep like a baby. And I arrive in La Paz still comfortable with my sexuality.

La Paz Terminal:

The long walk:

Also, I stayed in Ushuaia at a place called Freestyle Hostel, which was nice (and caro) except for the one reception dude who was a totally disinterested snowboarder lifty-type guy. And the nice-looking hotelish bathrooms smelled like some very old sweat socks. But Rasta Max’s kindness (and haircut – guess what kind!) totally made up for it. I also ran into Laura again (for at least the fourth time on my trip down South), so it was nice to see her again before she went back to San Diego.

4:30 the next morning I arrived grumpy and hungry at the Ushuaia bus terminal (actually a parking lot next to a gas station) to find the bus to Puerto Madryn. It was a long ride, longer than one might expect after looking at a map, but the roads down there are circuitious and one has to find one’s way around channels and mountains and whatnot. In all, I think that it took around 30 hours (with an incredibly uneventful stop in Rio Gallegos).

But Puerto Madryn was totally worth it. I expected another small tourist town with dozens of parka stores, and was very happily surprised to find a large tourist town in the middle of an incredibly gorgeous spell of warm weather with a long beach spanning the entire town. There were even some crazy kids swimming in the ocean, and I managed to take my shoes off and walk along the shore a bit. It was exciting, and unexpected, to find myself in a city that looked a lot more like coastal Florida than Antarctica, so I was happy. And I stayed at a great place called El Gaulicho in Puerto Madryn with a friendly staff, good rooms, a big kitchen, lots of friendly travellers, and a cute little courtyard with two(!) hammocks. I really could have stayed there for a week, but I think I’d better get traveling if I’m really going to make it to Santiago before Christmas.

Puerto Madryn, suprisingly:

Oh, and I went on a whale-elephant seal-sea lion-penguin tour, on which we also saw lots of maras (which are kind of like rabbits/dogs) and more guanacos.

But the whales were definitely the best part. I caught the very tail end (so to speak) of the whale watching season, so there evidently weren’t many left in the harbor to see, but the moment our super-sized Zodiac came within 50 meters of the one pair we did track down, the baby started jumping out of the water like a lunatic. It breached seven or eight times before its mom came over, jumped out of the water herself, and calmed baby down. I also managed to find myself pretty much the best spot on the boat, standing in the bow with a railing to hold on to and the guide’s girlfriend (also a biologist, I think) telling me exactly what was going on the whole time and how lucky we were to see that kind of stuff so late in the season. Not that you can tell from my pictures, of course, but I’m ok with that. I’ve got it all up here (point at head). And then I partook in the communal asado at the hostel, during which I drank just a smidge too much vino.

The next day I got up, ate free breakfast, and promptly fell asleep in the hammock. And then I went to the EcoCentro, which was a well-produced marine ecology museum and a great way to spend some time on a rainy afternoon (which is what it turned into), and fell asleep on a cushy couch in the upstairs library while waiting for a squall to pass. I needed some sleep, evidently.

It’s a dangerous road, apparently. Not because it’s twisty or mountain-y or anything, just because it’s in the middle of the absolute middle of nothing. It’s a long, straight gravel road that passes through 4000 kilometros of flat. The book says stuff like “Bring two full-size spare tires. Bring extra fuel in a separate tank, as stones will puncture your fuel tank. Buy a windshield protector. Cover your headlights with industrial-strength clear tape.” And always, always stop to help somebody stopped on the side of the road. Our bus, like most others, has what looks like multiple gunshot wounds all over its body from taking this road every week.

More from Lonely Planet:

…rutted Route 40 is every bit a no-man’s-land. It parallels the backbone of the Andes, where nandus doodle through sagebrush, trucks kick up whirling dust and gas stations rise up like oases. It is the ultimate road trip.

Every car or truck or bus we pass flashes its headlights and waves wildly to our driver (who reciprocates, of course) as if to say, “we’re in this together, buddy,” and one time on a particularly narrow portion of road, we actually stopped so our driver could shake another’s hand, just out of solidarity.

I’ve also seen lots of nandues, quite a few guanicos (unfortunately some dead, caught in the ubiquitous barbed wire), a few lonely gauchos far off on the horizon, and a hundred million sagebrush plants. But it’s really really sunny, without a cloud in the sky. I can’t complain.

Edit, four hours later: I’m not sure what the alternate would be, as the nice fellow at Hostel Inn told me that this is the comfortable way to travel down to Chalten. I was expecting a Via Bariloche-type level of service, as I paid out the nose for this ride, but it’s more like a long city bus ride. Hostel Guy also told me that they’d serve some food, but I’ve had to rely on my (thankfully large) cookie stash to get through the day. It’s ok, I like cookies. And now I’m at a very strange place, the Hotel Belgrano in Perito Moreno, which is a granny-type hotel with dorm rooms and a little diner, where I will be eating some papas fritas in a few short minutes. Wish me luck.

Hotel Belgrano:

Some Ruta 40 Stops:

I’ll let you know how the rest of the ride down goes, hopefully we see an Ande or two before El Chalten.

Edit, day two: More guanicos, more sheep. A lot more gravel and cookies. We’re stopping in little hamlets of no more than a few houses each, and they’re absolutely dependent on buses like ours stopping to use the banos and buying empanadas for lunch. Once they finish paving the entire stretch of Ruta 40 (which may, in fact, take decades), I have a feeling these little outposts may disappear.

A stop right before El Chalten, just to take a photo:

The photo:

2] We stayed at a “Five Star” hotel in Iguazu for a couple days for reasons that you’ll have to buy me a beer to learn, and I found out that in Argentina, you can pretty much put as many stars onto your hotel sign as you want. What’s Michelin going to do, sue you? However, the pool was nice and the young men working behind the reception desk were exceptionally kind and resourceful. And the orange juice was oh-so-fresh-squeezed.

3] I bought a low-end camera in Salta, too. If you know me, you know I can be unreasonably picky about material purchases, even those that I will probably lose (or break, or drop in a lake) in a month or two, so it was a bit heartbreaking to settle for some crappy camera. But it’s nice to have something to take pictures with other than the phone. Even if the battery dies after like 20 pictures.

4] As of press time, I’m about 3/4 through my massive bus ride down to Bariloche, and it feels like no time whatsoever has passed. This, my friends, is truly the way to travel. Everything is so comfy and they come around every few hours with cookies and coffee or little bits of candy or fancy hot meals. I got my own bottle of wine for dinner (just like last night), and I’m expecting to be served champagne in an hour or two to help monsieur get to sleep.

And that’s a nice segue into:

5] I’m pretty sure I’m gaining weight exponentially. I’ve heard some stories of people gaining massive amounts of poundage on trips down here, but running was helping to curb my lateral growth for a while. And now, not so much with the running. I’m not super worried about it or anything; this is pretty much just a warning that I may be a bit rounder when I come home. Try not to gape too much.

6] We met an amazing woman named Mierna (spelling terribly inaccurate) in Salta. You may recognize her name from the photo in which Eduardo shows Mierna what it feels like to dance with a man full of amor. But Mierna herself is pretty unforgettable. She’s working on her PhD, studying translations of the work of “a very important Brazilian novelist,” whose name I’ll never be able to remember, and traveling around the world in her spare time. My first impression of Mierna was that she’s an incredibly intelligent, very well-spoken woman, which all proved true. However, she’s Brazilian, and passionate, and really truly loves to enjoy her private life as well as teaching and studying and reading and translating and discoursing. And I felt so incredibly out of my league while attempting to discuss literary translations with her, but she never made me feel stupid, which is an amazing feat on her part.

7] Argentines love the 80’s. Not just the music, but the haircuts. And I’m not sure they’re being referential.

8] Also met a fellow in Salta named Biker Guy*. He’s an Irish fellow with a very strong Gaelic accent who decided to ride through South America on his bike. An admirable goal, no doubt an impressive undertaking. And a very odd guy. He came out with us my second night in Salta, and I spoke with him quite a bit but was really only able to understand five or six words all night. Also a bit of a drooler. But! He was riding all over South America! On his bike!

And finally,

9A] Federico. Combining the Argentine love of mullets, inappropriate romantic advances, and 80’s music, we have Federico. He was the bartender at the hostel in Salta, and he loved the ladies. And Jheri Curl. He was a charmer, though, and when Folkloric Dancing Night at the hostel came around, he was always one of the first to start clapping in unison. He also put my NorteAmericano dance moves to shame at the Salta toothpaste club.

9B] Fernando. Our safari-shorts-wearing, wisecracking, rugby-playing tour guide on the Cachi and Las Nubes trips was, I thought, a pretty cool guy. He even took those crazy pictures in the salt flats (while laying down in the dirt for the sake of his art). And when our minibus blew a flat on the way back from the mountain, he kept the group entertained by throwing around a rugby ball in the middle of a busy street, which was cool. But then I heard that he was laying it on a bit thick to one of the Kiwi girls that we met, and when she disappeared after accepting a moto ride from him that evening, I think he may actually have been a bit sleazy. Good hair, though. Definitely at least 90’s hair.

*not his real name.

A guy giving me the stink eye:

I’m ambivalent about leaving the city. I was, to be honest, getting a little aburrido in Buenos Aires. Don’t get me wrong, of course, I was enjoying my time spent with friends, and I had some fun going to tourist attractions, but I’d definitely settled into a routine. And I can have a routine back home, you know? People say that Buenos Aires is the easiest place in South America to live, and I have a feeling that my neighborhood was probably one of the easiest places to live in the city, so I’ll miss that, but I really feel ready for a change of pace. And to see something other than the same gray buildings around me. Last night, for instance, I saw stars outside my bus window and I realized that I hadn’t seen any stars in the city, not once. And I was happy to see them; hopefully I see more in the coming months.

In the middle of nothing:

A few other things:

I got my full cleaning/security deposit back from Marcela my landlady, minus 20 pesos for a bowl and an espresso cup that I’d broken. Unfortunately, I dismissed it when Marcela muttered something (half under her breath) about the $260 American that she gave me being the same cash that I’d given her at the start of my stay. I knew it wasn’t the same bills because I was never able to find American cash in the city, but figured that it was a language barrier thing and that Marcela meant she was just giving me what she owed me. In fact, I realized last night on the bus that the two hundred-dollar bills are counterfeit, and she was attempting to cover herself in case I noticed right away. Bummer. It’s just money, though, right?

My backpack is so gigantic. It’s like another me. I tried and tried yesterday to find things that I didn’t need and could send back home, but met very little success. I think I sent home one running outfit, some souvenirs, and my mouse. I might have saved myself 12 ounces. I’ll survive, and I really don’t think I’m lugging around anything I don’t need, but, dios mio, it’s a lot of stuff.

2 hours, one almuerzo later:

In the fancy Disco grocery down the street from my place in Recoleta, one can purchase a number of whole grain carbohydrate food choices for slightly less (but not a lot less) than the price in Estados Unidos. Other than that, we eat mostly refined white carbohydrates, potatoes, meat, some vegetables (usually in the form of sauces), and white, creamy cheese. It’s a nation with the appetite a of an 8-year old.

We’re getting closer to Salta now, I think. The bus has actually tilted upward a bit, and I see we’re moving toward some low mountains (I think we call them Sierras). The scenery has changed a bit, too, it now looks like the scrublands just West of Spokane, minus any trace of a pine tree, but with the addition of some low, twisted (now bare, as it’s still early Primavera) deciduous trees. The scenery is definitely changing. But man alive, there are no people, no buildings, no donkeys, not even any trash around. Hey, and there’s even a mountain peak in the distance!

There’s something going on with the toilet paper at public banos outside the major cities. At the first place we stopped, breakfast this morning, there was a man at a table seated beside small bundles of hygienic convenience napkins and none in the stalls. And at the place we stopped for almuerzo (simple carbs, meat, Fanta in a glass bottle, as usual), there was a woman outside the banos with a lockbox, with I’m not sure what inside. Elisabeth alluded to some difficulty with plumbing in the campo (and here I won’t get too graphic); I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Shades of Urinetown?

Chau.

Above: The MALBA

But! The next day I went to the MALBA and realized that yes, I do love art and can be amazed and intrigued and yes, inspired by sculpture and painting and architecture and saying such-and-such is art even though in any other context it would just be a chair or a greenhouse or a canvas painted all the same color. It was great, and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting Buenos Aires. And I went on Miercoles, so it only cost 5 pesos, which is like US$1.50.

I also recently went on a Buenos Aires City Bus Tour with Rebekah and Julie and a young woman named Linda, who is unsurprisingly from Germany. I’ve not got much to say about it, honestly. It seems like something that would have been really cool to go to the moment I got to the city, just to get a good overview of the highlights, but I’d already seen every single place the bus took us through, plus many more. It was a beautiful day, though, and sitting on the roof of a bus being driven around on a gorgeous day is a decent way to pass some time. Here are a few bus-tour-y photos:

I ran a bit. I meant to do 22 miles on Monday and had measured out an appropriate route, but missed a turn somewhere and ran a bit extra when I should have turned around at a certain street. I ended up only going about a mile and a half extra, but after a point, a mile and a half can mean quite a bit. My longest run here in Buenos Aires up to then had been 20 miles, and I ended up running 23.5 miles that day. However, I’m beginning to think that if I had a support van (like Dean Karnazes sometimes does) feeding me nutritious foods and keeping me hydrated (and providing bano services), I might be able to run indefinitely. The things that I always worry about while running are not exhaustion or how much my feet hurt (which really, they do), but if I’m going to get sick from dehydration or if I ate enough of the right kind of food beforehand to keep me going. And el bano, seriously. Public facilities are few and far between in Buenos Aires; I’ve had a couple of close calls.

We also went to the Metropolitan Cathedral. ‘Nuff said:

Chau.