AUTUMN’S ADVENTURES

I haven’t been updating as much lately because my brain is buzzing with a million different ideas and I haven’t been able to break myself from working on them to work on the blog. I apologize.  I probably don’t even have any followers anymore.  I’m also behind on posting pictures on my Flickr page.  I was good and did manage to get all photos from my 1.5 month travels onto Facebook so if you are friends with me you’ve probably already seen them.

To break it down in short form, this is where I was for 1.5 months and with whom:

• Cordoba, ARG - 10 days - with pal Bobby Carter
• Salta, ARG - 6 days - 4 days with Bobby, 2 days with Alexander.
• Tucuman, ARG - 3 hours - with Alex
• Rosario, ARG - 2 days - with Alex
• Buenos Aires, ARG -4 days - 2 days with Alex, 2 days with Alex and Shannon.
• Colonia, Uruguay - 1 day - with Shannon, Alex, David, Alex’s friend Abe and Abe’s friend Lee.

Of course I had to show Bobby, Alex and Shannon my new digs so they all came to visit me in Jujuy.  I took each of them to the north. I am beginning to be a really great tour guide of my home town!  I really liked seeing how they reacted to the places I took them. It was rewarding for me to show people new things.  Jujuy is a place of reflection and relaxation and I think I relayed that quite well to my friends.  They enjoyed a break from reality.

Now I am wiped out.  I’m happy to be done with traveling and back to working and a regular routine of yoga and the gym twice a week.  I’m not the type that enjoys living out of a suitcase for sure.  Since returning to Jujuy I have been a major hermit.  I stayed in my pjs and in my room for almost 2 days and 2 nights straight. I think the woman I live with thinks this behavior is a bit strange but I tried to explain it to her as best as I could that  I needed a super detox from all of that socializing and traveling — I needed to reconnect with myself!

Also, hanging out with Bobby, Alex and Shannon was really inspiring.  We talked about so many different things and I came away from those conversations with such great ideas that I couldn’t wait to get home and start working on them.  I felt that if I didn’t “download” my ideas from my head soon, it was going to explode.

Now I’m a bit more normal. I’m being social again after about a week of me time.  I’m trying to get out of the house at least once a day, whether it be for a walk around the city for exercise or for groceries, partially so the lady I live with doesn’t think I’ve gone nutballs crazy and chained myself to my bed for eternity.

I may go to Mendoza next weekend to visit Bobby again because he is there for an indetermined amount of time.  I really want to go when he is there because I like seeing my friends and it gives me a good excuse to go to Mendoza (other than the kickass wine).  We’ll see how I feel by Thursday and if I can handle another mini trip 14 hours south by bus…

As I sit here watching American Idol really for the first time ever, I am thinking about the highlights and the lowlights of my trip to Cordoba.  I have been here for about 11 days and I can’t say that I did much.  Here is a bulleted breakdown:

Highlights:

• La Feria de Las Pulgas (market of the fleas, literally translated for flea market haha).  This flea market was huge and winding in and out of streets. It felt like a maze of discovery. I spent lots of money here.
• “Random” nightclub.  I went here in my first weekend.  I dug the scene and I found myself in literally random situations - for example, a guy in a wheelchair surprise attacked my face with wet slobbery makeout session.
• Carlos Paz is a town 40 minutes outside of Cordoba city center. There is a beautiful lake there and I took a nice long walk along the water which ended with a stop at the gelato place. DELISH!
• Peatonal in city center has tons of shopping. I spent more than an hour in one store and got some new fall digs.
• Tango Hostel is a great little hostel run by friends of mine (kind of) and they have a really good atmosphere. I started off most of my nights here, eating a delicious homemade meal and then drinking on the patio and talking into the wee hours of the mornings.
• I spent some real quality time with my good friend Bobby Carter.  I’ve discovered that he is a good travel buddy. those are few and far between.

Lowlights:

• I didn’t find much to do during the day so I spent most days on my computer.
• The heat here is unbearable. Another reason I didn’t leave the apartment until after sunset.  The humidity carried out into the night and was uncomfortable.
• Restaurants close after 3 pm so when I’d finally emerge from the house and try to eat something, lots of places would be closed.  The ones that were open only offered a few items on their menu, usually Lomito and empanadas.
• I got my hair cut and the dude missed a chunk of my bangs.  He was also not very nice and made the experience really uncomfortable. It was like he was too cool to cut my hair and me being there was inconveniencing his cool.  douche.

Overall I had a good time and it was really chill.  Now I’m headed back to Jujuy to show Bobby around my neck of the woods.

This evening a rush of heavy, colorful clouds overtook my view of Cordoba from the balcony.  There was barely any rain and instead there was a magnificent show of heat lightening.  I documented it here to my favorite song by Bon Iver.

Storm in Cordoba

I went to my first big concert in Argentina and it was with good company (the carter brothers and my friends in Cordoba) and of one of my favorite singers, Manu Chao.  The concert was outdoors in Cosquin, about 40 minutes outside of central Cordoba.  It was part of Cosquin Rock that basically has a bunch of rock national from Argentina.

Tickets were only 70 pesos (20 dollars).  It cost us almost the same amount to get a taxi there (150 pesos total split between 3 people) — an outrageous price to pay as we found out later (we should have only paid 70 pesos). Ya fue…

The concert was good. I got caught up in the front with the boys at the beginning and I didn’t much enjoy the shoulder-to-shoulder forced swaying. I never like that feeling that I will either be pushed over and trampled on or that a joined force is fucking up my balance and I have no control over it.  I’m so focused on staying standing that I can’t watch the actual musician.  As I made my way to the outside to regain the free movement of my limbs, I could only imagine myself as a cartoon character in a funny short film drifting like a ripple farther out into the sea. My arms pinned to my sides, my head tilted to the sky and my feet floating one inch above the grass.  If only I could animate…*sigh*.

I drank 2 giant beers and took a hit of a passing joint to honor manu chao and his positive attitude on MJ.  This put me in a happy place and I watched the whole concert away from my friends in a bubble of musical bliss.  Manu Chao had 3 encores that were at least 15 minutes each.  As much as the extra 45 minutes of jam-time rocked my drunkly-stoned brain I couldn’t help but think about how much I hate encores.  I understand that people get pumped up and EVERY musician does it but I would much prefer they just continue on with the show and end it strong, without coming back.  If I ever start a band or become famous because I coo like a sweet dove singing melodies of the 80’s and 90’s, I will NOT do encores.

It took just as much time to get back to Cordoba as the whole performance that we just finished watching.  We walked a lot, trying to find my friends from AR.  When that proved unsuccessful we tried to find a bus to take.  That also proved to be immensely difficult.  Luckily one of my friends found us and took us to the “terminal” where we could actually catch a bus.  We would have never found this so-called terminal on our own merit.

We were zombies - dead tired with sore and swollen feet from standing and walking what felt like a million miles.  I dreamed lucidly of my plastic couch-bed on the ride home.