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.