From Buenos to Bariloche

The Actual Leaving:

After wrapping up a few loose ends in Buenos Aires with incredible haste, I jumped on the bus to Bariloche.

There seemed to be only Argentines entering, so I was excited to get an opportunity to practice my Spanish... but I ran into a strange surprise when I got to my seat. Instead of meeting an Argentine, I found myself next to an overly-talkative Korean man named Kim. Kim had made it a point not to learn a single word of Spanish in his months of travelling. I talked to him for a long time about essentially nothing before I got really bored and pretend to fall asleep. He's an author/artist in Korea, and obsesses way too much over the obvious. I'll leave the Kim business at that... at least he kept me awake to take that shot of the sunset on the horizon.

Exploring People and Places in Bariloche:

I ended up in my hostel room with a group of 5 Brits from Manchester traveling together. They turned out to be an awesome group and I got along well with all of them. That night I acted as their Spanish translator and we went on a hilarious 'empanada crawl' in Bariloche. Some pizza place that cooked them freshly took the prize.

We spent the first full day biking around the "micro circle." It was an amazing time for lots of reasons, but mostly because everyone wanted to do completely crazy and ridiculous things the whole time. We started just by riding up hills that weren't meant for bikes, like the road to the fancy hotel Llao Llao, where the picture on the left was taken.

That, however was the least exciting part of the excursion. Farther down the trail me Jaime, and Lawrence ended up cutting into the woods and climbing through the canopy to get a unique view of Lago Escondito. I managed to snap this picture of Jaime moving through the treetops.

Afterward we got stuck in the bamboo forest below, but eventually worked our way back to the normal path and had lunch by the lake. This was the first of several off-the-trodden-path experiments... and it really showed me how much more I could enjoy my experiences simply by knowing that they were unique. Peer pressure drove us off the path, and I'm not gonna lie, some of my greatest discoveries have happened as the result of peer pressure and mob mentality. The extremes that those things are responsible for are pretty interesting, but I won't explore my philosophical reflections on the power of collective thinking here.

I will, however, talk more about exploring in general. It's no coincidence that every single one of my pictures came from the things we found off the main trail (which was still very beautiful itself). The second time we diverged from the road was actually twice removed from the main trail. We accidentally went about 15km off the map and ended up on a difficult and poorly marked road. It was from that road that we went off into the woods and found a beautiful waterfall. We filled up our water bottles with some of the most deliciously pure, cold water I've ever tasted, and relaxed there for a while. I convinced the group to take a trek up into the hills since they looked fairly climbable. I wanted to see where the waterfall came from. I expected a pond or something of that sort, but we found far more spectacular things. After a bit of fairly difficult climbing we found a shrine and a statue of the virgin Mary on top of the cascade. This place must have been special to someone, but we could only guess why. It was a surreal sight . . . hard to take any clear and simple impressions from.

Farther up towered a taller, thinner, more spectacular waterfall. That's the one in the picture. Sam took a fall on the way down, and I put my arm out to help him. I think he would have been fine, but I was credited for the first of two times with 'saving' one of them. I'm pretty much one of the greatest heroes that ever lived... anyhow... the waterfall we found felt so peaceful, so inspiring, so uniquely beautiful that it's hard to reflect on the experience without feeling a longing to be out in the wilderness in the quiet.

After coming down from there and riding even farther in the wrong direction we saw an isolated and completely deserted beach. we felt obligated to find a way down to it. After the third random guess as to how to get down there, we managed to find a trail. We weren't disappointed at all. We discovered a private beach with a setting sun and beautifully dynamic horizon - completely unspoiled by civilization or any signs of human activity. It was an amazing day, and after returning to the main road we managed to return the bikes 3 minutes before they had to be back, 10 hours after we started the trip. Good people, good sites, good exercise, great day.

Leaving Buenos Aires

I have mixed feelings about leaving Buenos Aires, and I feel like I have a lot of unfinished business here. I'll certainly be returning here before traveling to a few other places, but I'm not sure how long that stay will last. I can't believe how many people I've met here, how much I've done, how much I could have done, and how strangely homelike such a foreign and heavily populated city could be.

I have a few more loose ends to tie up tomorrow, but after that, I'm gone. I'll be on a bus to smaller places. Places with more natural beauty, with adventure, with solitude. I have been craving these things, but I'm positive I'll be missing this city quite a bit. I've left a lot of unfinished business, and I'd like to have a chance to deal with it in the future.

For now, beautiful lakes, towering mountains, and the incredible glaciers of Patagonia are calling. I'm excited to go and, as always, very nervous about exactly what the future holds. Either way, it'll be an experience that I doubt I'll soon forget. The freedom, the uncertainty, all of it feeds my adventurous spirit. Other than that, all I have to say is Mom, Dad, DON'T WORRY! It'll be fine, it'll be fun, it'll be constructive, and it'll be healthy. I'm very happy to be here but I still love you all and I'll be incredibly excited to see you when this journey reaches its end.

Carnaval in Gualeguaychu

The Beginning:

So this weekend my Indian friend, Brazilian roommate and I went to Carnaval in Gualeguaychu. It made for a great day. We took a surprisingly comfortable 3 hour bus ride, and arrived just before noon. It seemed to be a nice and quaint little town--very different from Buenos Aires. We bought reasonably priced drinks and enjoyed the relatively mild weather. Passing the temperate day in a relaxed town along a lazily flowing river while drinking deliciously cheap local beer with good company inspires only one feeling: content. It wasn't quite Hemmingway drinking mojitos on the beach in Cuba, the sand was clearly planted there by humans and the river was murky with sediment, but it sufficed. I’m pretty interested in what kind of wildlife there was in that river, since all of it was effectively invisible. Nit-picky details aside, it was picturesque.

Taking in the Scene:

We had a lot of time to lounge, and only headed out toward the festivities around 8:30pm as the sun started setting. That was good timing, as we were able to get in before it became overcrowded and had time to meet and socialize with the people around us. Everyone there was awesome, I’ve had good experiences with just about everyone in Buenos Aires, but here there was absolute consistency. We were invited to join people at several after-hours clubs, and everyone we talked to were very interested to find out where our unique Spanish accents were from (California, Texas/India, and Brazil).

The Festival:

When the actual festival started, I was surprised in a lot of ways. All the music was played live from the floats as they passed, and there was no shortage of sexuality and symbolism between the ridiculous costumes and surprisingly thoughtful floats. It seemed it was just going to be a series of inaccurate and borderline offensive cultural stereotypes; the first set of floats was simply a series of cliché depictions of Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern cultures. That irked me a bit, but from there the procession got on track.

The rest of the floats followed a very logical and interesting progression that I think is probably overlooked by most visitors (I couldn’t convince the people around me that there was anything of substance in the procession). The floats depicted the indigenous cultures and wildlife in South America. These were immediately followed by a Portuguese ship filled with conquistadors. The connection seemed obvious to me at this point, but 15 floats later people still thought I was imagining it.

The next floats depicted the missionary period, with giant symbols of European religion and culture, and after that it got really interesting . There was a giant float that represented the poisonous effects (literal and figurative) of the European colonists. The cultural symbols on that float were each perverted in an interesting way, and all centered on a diabolical piece of machinery pumping the poison into everything.

I thought that the festival had ended when a dark float that represented the deaths from plague, war, and murder came by, but it turned out there was a lot more to be said. A purely white float, full of angelic and redemptive images followed, yet this wasn’t the whole story either.

Next a series of floats showing beggars, corrupt politicians, giant and malicious visages of jokers, and a float full of people in suits riding a pig being lured by an American $100 bill. I thought the connections were pretty undeniable at this point, and I was happy to see this kind of awareness in a celebration that is largely considered to be a wild sex-romp. To be clear, in front of and on top of just about all of these were scantily clad dancers wearing the feathers of what I could only estimate to be about 2,000 large birds. So like most celebrations, it wasn’t without its conflicts of interest, but in all honesty I think Christmas is much worse (I find endless irony in obligatory kindness).

The depressingly true imagery of the poisons of European and North American culture was followed by the reaction. Giant floats loaded with politically charged messages followed. Some protested directly through protest signs, some had to be understood implicitly. These floats demonstrated the movements and hope that drive positive change. I was glad to see that, otherwise I'd say that the high spirited celebration would have ended on a really depressing note.

The Overview:

As a culmination of a lot of different things, my interpretation of Carnaval is a celebration of the current culture for everything that it is. The good, the bad, the free, the victimized, the taboo… everything is recognized and the whole time people are happily dancing and interacting with each other. Rather than cherry-picking events to highlight as stepping stones to the current situation, they put everything in perspective. Bad things happened, but we are what we are, and since we’re happy with what we are, there’s cause to celebrate.

Oh, and the after party was ridiculous. I’ve never seen a relatively bland area come to life like that.