Freezing in Tilcara, Argentina

I cannot function within the perameters of cold or at least it feels this way. Summer and I are currently thawing in the ¨nice¨city of Salta, Argentina. we just came out of the freezer, known as Tilcara, an adorable pueblo of mostly indigenous people and hippies escaping their respective Argentine cities. We were passing through on our way to Bolivia, which we had heard was cold. As we got to Tilcara, just three hours south of the border however, we realized the reality of what cold really can be. Lets just say, we have a change of plans. On to Peru tomorrow and up to Ecuador where there are monkeys in the trees and sun on your back.

Okay, so I know most of us have those days or moments in life where we consider them our all time hardest times or biggest struggles. Depending on our demons, our karma or our pet peev, it could be a day sprung from a variety of sources. I consider myself a pretty tuff bird most of the time and pretty resiliant. After all, i actually enjoy the the more difficult of paths for almost any situation. I rejoice in hardship and doing things from scratch. I am an odd bird like that. but maybe the truest thing that holds me back on the physical realm is the cold. I met my match and i think i can speak for summer too when she says she too met hers.

Now one of the reasons I trave, is to see what the world is really like or gain a closer proximity to the truth. In the west we have restaraunts, charge cards, Wal-Marts, electricity and warm showers to always fall back on. Travelling gives you the real face of what people can go through each day just to survive, not even to have a nice time, but just survive.

We knew as soon as we rolled in to town, after dark, that it was cold from that moment but the following day proved to run us through the gauntlet of challenges within the blistering weather.

Let me start by saying that they most common phrase in the three days of Tilcara was, ¨que frio!¨ It seemed to bond the most odd combination of strangers to one another, the fact that if nothing else held true, not a one of us could feel our toes.

So the day after we arrived, the first thing we had to figure out was laundry. We hadn´t done it in a while and we were down to the bones of clothes. I know, not the time for this is what you are thinking and you are right. However, Erika, our hostal hostess said to just take it up the street and drop it off. it will only take three hours. so summer, being my little hero, combined the most perculiar arrangement of clothes to make herelf a suit to ward off the cold while delivering laundry. i have the picture to prove the get up. she rushed off and turns out that, big surprise, it would not be ready till the following night at 8 p.m. She dropped it off. we had no other real option. she then went out to find me some pants while i curled under a sleeping bag, two blankets and a comforter, in what came to be known as the dungeon. now in some parts of the world when it is 9 degrees below celsius, you would have some sort of retreat. but as you can imagine, this was not the case. summer came back with some pants for both of us and some veggies so i could make up a soup. and i did and we got along for the day between hiding under the pile of bedding and taking what turned out to be an actual hot shower. the kind of hot that when your digits are so numb and the hot water hits them, they burn.

we made it through the day barely and even managed to go out that night in what looked like pajamas. we even laughed at a hippie clown and swayed to some indigenous rhythms all in the freezing cold. it was the next day that blew it out of the water for me.

we decided that if we are going to make it in bolivia we must go seek out some hearty clothing. i hope you are not too sensitive because I have to be graphic, the story calls for it. I began to dress in the only few things I had when I felt a drip as Summer went to tease me and I laughed. I am not prone to peeing in my pants but I did have to go so I went to the bathroon and discovered that I had just bled through my only pair of underwear and long underwear. So here I was, bloody and frozen and with no warm place to go and no clean laundry to solve my problems. still in our pajama-like get ups and yes, me in my bloody underwear, we shivered our way around the sweet plaza where brown skin and pink cheeks, snotty noses and bundles of clothing were everywhere you looked. With only one pair of gloves between the two of us, we sifted through used cloths piles. This was right of the plaza, behind the touristy parts, where the locals go. This is where every middle class American´s old boxes of clothes from 1982 come. And we were elbow deep. I found a sweater, we found some socks and i found some corny but NEW underwear. We decided to stop at the a.t.m to get some more funds to get the other things we needed. We stood in a line, in a tunnel, where the wind swept just so that you felt like you just might die. We waited only to find that the persons just before us took out the last money in the whole pueblo...and it was saturday. in our icy palms, all we had was less than what it would take to even get our laundry. the clean underwear set us over the top. and we had groceries but also that morning, we woke to hammering. the kitchen was being taken apart so we had no way of cooking.

so let me remind you of what we did and didn´t have: no food, no clothes, no money. but i did have blood and summer at this point, did have a cold.

we went back, almost in tears, which probably would have frozen half way down our cheeks. i was able to shower and it was hot...a god save. we moped and thought about how to use our last pennies, to eat or be warm...to be or not to be. we were just shy 6 pesos so i thought we could maybe use the extra U.S. dollar that i had left to get our cloths out. summer didn´t seem to think so and this still didn´t solve our problem that we had nothing to eat. finally we decided to use the last of it to go eat. the veggie restraunt was right next door...one convenience. however, they were out of water. summer decided to truck back to the bank to see if money had come and it had! we were saved, even if we still had another 5 hours in our pajamas.

i sit and write this now from a hostel where there is little gas heaters. I can feel my toes again and I sat in the plaza yesterday for two hours during siesta moving each time the sunbeams did, chasing the sunshine. I found that i don´t really function so well in extreme feezing weather. but always in the back of my head, i knew there was a safe haven. i have the comfort of knowing that i can change my situation.

i think about all those earth tone, round faced Argentine natives that I froze my toes with in the waiting room at the bus station the following day. Even if we did wait from 7:30 a.m. till 5 in the afternoon in the same kind of temperatures, I found reprieve. I travel to get closer to what its like to not have a way out. to get closer to the faces of those that can´t travel to see the other side. they are too busy surviving in the cold, with no money, and no food.

i dedicate this little blog to those that are freezing at this moment. I wish them their next lifetime full of hot tubs and warm sunshine.

The Great Race through Argentina

Thats exactly what it has felt like. We never know when it is Monday or Friday, what city we are in or where we just came from. I think I last wrote you all in Cordoba. Since then we have traveled to Rosario, Buenos Aires, the Iguaza Falls and we are currently in the north western tip of Argentina in a town called...hold on let me check...Tilcara.

All of this rush in the anticipation of Bolivia. Living in the moment has neve been my strong suit. I tend to always see the future. In fairness, I am not a big dweller in the past but i am always looking for the next golden nugget that the future promises. However, we have managed to enjoy our time but we have had some things working against us. It is the middle of inter break in Argentina right now so all the spots are spilling with persons and the World Cup was going on so things were shut down.

Buenos Aires was filled with rain and tantrums in the showers, snobby and unhappy Argentines. The city was vast and stuffy with no room to breath. However the odds and end markets were like walking in to the turn of the century shops that were just a little dusty. I took advantage of the grey day and walked amidst giant tombs where Evita , herself was buried. The monuments also out did almost any others that I have seen. okay, except for maybe Paris.

Rosario was like a dream come true in a few ways. There is a great river running through the city that is wide as the day is long with marshes amidst. So all the museums and parks were along the little boardwalk thing along the river wich was sweet. And the Chinese love Rosario and Rosario has vegetarians so the Chinese open up little veggie resaurants with fake meat galore... The down side, all the art that everyone raved about was not for our eyes due to the holiday and Indepence day. So it was a lot of walking across the city from one part to the next only to find closed doors.

Iguazu Falls, after the 17 hour bus ride to get there, blew us away. There must not be such a mass of cascades anywhere in the world. The first steps in to the majestic beauty was breath taking. There were droves of people but the power was so great it was as though that drowned out the masses. I wish i could say my camera did it justice but i could only be so lucky. the beauty even had me daydreaming of my camera slipping down in to the white mist below me. all i could think of was how beautiful the death of that object...

and now, i sit typing after a thirty hour continual journey on buses in my new dorky pants with my woolen socks on. this place of Tilcara is precious and small. this area of argentina is all the natives with rounder browner faces and lots of bow legs and smiles. it snowed on the way up so we are gaining more closes for it is 20 degrees below celcius in bolivia which we shall pass in to two or three days.

just a little brief synopsis of the past 10 days or so. i will write again later when i dont have soup going and people waiting on the only computer. excuse all my messy errors. i havent the time for revising. love you all...

I didn´t know this trip too i would swim in so much silence

but i do now.
today, again, i have told my love, no mas engles! originally inspired by our friends that we met in Pisco Elqui, Charles and Latia. But we easily let it fall to the wayside due to the clambor for expression and the need for things to get done to make the next destination. but today, i know my position holds more weight. we will only spean in spanish we will. you have all witnessed my affirmation and can hold me to it.

summer picked up a book a few days ago in spanish about hitler. there are many theories that hitler never burned in to ashes but instead, fled to argentina like many of the other nazi generals, etc... the book she found was of exactly this subject. she decided today to tackle it, to translate. she speaks well but reading is a whole other story ( no pun intended). i bought my first South American literary works, a book of short stories by a nobel prize winning author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. as we sat down at a cafe for mate´and cafe´, i snuggled in to my exciting first short story. i eyed summer occassionaly from my periphial vision and admired her for taking on the struggle with translator in hand, all the way. if she could climb the next level, so could i.

but damn, how i lapped up my book in english, thinking each moment that i didn´t have to talk, i could just enjoy the journey of words. the more i sank my teeth in to the new book, the more i dreaded the next conversation. i felt sorry for those struggling toddlers taking their first steps and the little babies trying to just say what they want and it all comes out in a cry. and we as adults find it annoying to hear ¨that baby screaming behind me in the airplane¨. you know what, a big bird to those adults without patience. coming from an adult who has regressed to infancy, please, a call for patience.

the difference that compounds the feeling of infancy is that oh so adult sence of pride. yes, i am prideful like the next one. it is the reason, i sit in silence even when i understand the words coming at me. ¨what if i säy the wrong word?¨; what if i say the right word incorrectly?¨ these voices,in english,run through my head. at least as that child no one has made you feel stupid for saying or doing the wrong thing. at least as that child you haven´t felt the reality of utter sensitivity.

but maybe i digress too much. perhaps i linger on this computer with you all so that i don´t have to face the music when the earbugs are pulled from my lobes and the conversation goes on in the language i don´t know but so hunger to grasp.

i just had a random thought.always, even as a poet, i feel somewhat contrived in speaking lyrically with imagery too flowery or just too poetic. but perhaps it is the only serious space that i can express wonderment in the mundane. possible´, yes. as a matter of fact it is the space that i can just truly reveal those minor epiphanies opened in my daily life. i wish we could all walk around and converse as though we were in a shakespearean play or in a sharon olds poem. but maybe we can´t handle the consistancy of depth and the splattering of human raw guts with each word said.

pero, again i transgress. i long so hard to speak with all the flora and fauna of a blog or a poem just in common every day. but now as a prideful infant, i am left with nothing but crib talk.

my lovely summer calls, "listo", time for dinner. wish me luck in the conversations over food. thank god she has the patiance to hear me out in my stammers and calm me in my frustrations. i will try not to slip in to silence...

i waited long for this computer for words that weren´t said

Today, after a huge German massacre on the Argentines in the World Cup, the streets grew barren. Summer saw grown men cry and all the shops, museums, restaurants closed. the city at 2 in the afternoon was 10 times more quiet than it was at 7:30 this morning as we first rolled out of the bus. the city mourns and so we too lost our life as tourists and gained our life as waxers.

in fits of hunger, lack of sleep and agitation, we bickered over the map in search of the one veggie restaurant known. our only meal thus far, four crackers and a 1" by 2" countainer of marmelade. our only sleep, bits between descending and winding through the mountains (i think) on a double decker bus with lights of passing cars flashing through the fogged up window panes. we never found the restaurant but as fate has it, we did find an unbelievable "Arab" cafe, which the old german highly recommended. we sat around nibbles of hummus ( at this point, an anomoly...a gift from the gods), tomato and cucumber salads, etc... This is where at the sight of food and a smidge of comfort, our shoulders fell and the muscles in our face let go. we began engaging. we began a conversation. it could really be any, but of course it wasn´t just any, because they never are on the road. they are strong, unforgettable in their essence, and passionate beyond the loops of home.

this started me thinking. we failed multiple times to find anything to "do" with our day due to the depressed Argentine football lovers. the gates locked and closed, we were alone amidst the ghosts. our words, our banter, our verbal display crashindoed through the vacant streets. two sides of the same coin, we tossed our solid opinions back and forth between ears and tongues. at some point, our destination was really a distraction. we were in the voyage; in the jungle of discovery; batting at the other and then retracting and sitting silent in the next street unfound, map to nose, thoughts simmering.

words: maybe the most valuable. our voice: unretractable.

after waiting for hours to get this computer in my hands, to spill my "profundities" on words and engagemant, i was interupted. a young British man started me in chatter that lead to depth. the kind of talk that you both somehow reach an end, only out of the sort of need for analytical meditation.

back to the computer. words...all that is said and wrestled with in verbal atmosphere amongst the vagabonds, locals, intellects, common woman and more. but this leads me to the negative space, what about those words unsaid?

those of faith, speechless at the gates of disbelief, the words tucked under their tongues and in their diaries; the lovers sweeping their frustrations of self identity below sweet words; politicians leaving their reality of self for the luxuries of plastic.

it is these words that come from the darkness, the mildewy crevices of our haphazard path that come up when put on the edge. as long as the gypsy spirit can tamper with our wires, we can whip these words from their isolation and throw them in the mix.

keep talking from the bottom up and from the inside out.

One thing i know anytime something frustrating as shit happens is that i will learn something out of it. well multiply that times 20, when something frustrating as shit occurs in a country in which you are foreign to. not because it is a foreign country, thats where most of us go wrong, especially as americans. we are use to getting what we want with a snap of the finger and if that doesn't happen and we bitch loud enough, it should come. the real problem is being foreign to another's sytem. now most of losing my debit card was all on the process of the monopolies of the united states, in this case the huge monster of \bank of America. I spent 10 hours total on line with them and visa and my mom spent about another 3 hours on my behalf. that is a lot of internet fees and sheer pain and heartache...it could all seem lost but nothing ever is.

The story is long and bueracratic, that is all you really need to know. Most of the time spent listening to the same song loop again and again and being transfered to yet another person. But in the end there was some resolve. We must go to Santiago again, we had to anyways, and pick up the card at the designated DHL VERIFIED local. in a race against the clock, after finding out that the pass was open to argentina through the andes, we ran to get the card and make it back to the hostel for our stuff, to the bank exchange, and on to the bus.

1143 Cathadral Calle...easy right. nope, never is. there was no 1143 Cathadral, the address that apparently had to be verified in order to even print the new card. it was some ornate building with locked doors. so we, through more fits and rigging managed to confirm with a DHL location that apparently isn't a DHL location at 1043 Cathadral that our package is in fact in Santiago at the real DHL on calle San Francisco. he told us, only 500 pesos for a taxi there. we get in the nearest taxi and continue to sit in traffic for 15 or 20 minutes before making it out of the traffic and on to our destination. This 1 dollar ride cost 10 dollars. we arrive, the lady was a raving bitch...but...ahhhhhhhh! we now have a new card. we made it through the rest of the gauntlet in to the bus and on through the peace restoring Andes.

Like i said at the beginning, nothing is lost. i learned that your partner is more frustrating and so are you to them in times of stress. i also was reminded that in the end, it could be worse. i will never deal with bank of america again, except to withdrawl my money from their clutch. and that bullshit happens, and in our minds its larger than life, but in reality the sun is still shining and your partner still is the most perfect one to wake up next to. patience...patience...patience...

I am done with the ranting, i swear, i know that is two blogs in a row but thats because thats how long it lasted. now i am back under the good sky and in a new country with a new flavor. coming up...Argentina! we will see what its like when i walk back in to the streets and see all the depressed fans after their loss to germany in the world cup. it could be a problem considering every argentine is a fan. wish me luck! love you all...