Iguazu to Salta

It was a cold run to Salta, 23 hours in total. My clothes were wet and the bus had no heat. To make matters worse, a young lady who’s Spanish was worse than mine, had mistakenly asked the driver to turn ON the air condition as it was too WARM on the bus. I thought to correct her, but found it amusing and did nothing. Within the hour I was freezing and my teeth had no shame in chattering. I found solace out the window and stared wide-eyed as the sun rose and the soggy tropics gave way to grassy plains that rolled on for days. Finally, the skies gradually transformed into blue chrysalis. In the distance there were gauchos herding sheep and further still but before the horizon dropped from existence, blue lakes were scattered and glowing under the big blue sky. The wild Argentine countryside had warmed me; I remember wishing I had bigger eyes to take it all in – to see more of this beautiful country before it was soon to become a distant memory.
The bus trundled further into the morning sun.
I fell asleep.
I woke.
“Would you like some?” a Brazilian girl about my age extended her arm across the aisle, holding a box of crackers.
“No thanks, I have my own,” I said.
Her English was impeccable, I had never met a Brazilian, or any foreigner, who spoke English like her, so I said to her: “Your English is impeccable, I have never met a Brazilian, or any foreigner, who speaks English like you.”
She smiled, then chuckled a bit, then set me straight, “I’m from Israel . . . everyone thinks we look like Brazilians though.” After a few pleasantries she stabbed me with a curious question.
“Do you like Arabs?”
“Shit!” I mumbled under my breath. I wondered how many of her previous friendships she had qualified with this question. My mind raced as I tried to surface the little knowledge I had of the Israeli-Palestine conflict (and in my head it went something like this: Shit! Israel. Tiny country. Jews. Palestine ARABS. SHIT! Jews no likey Arabs. Bombs. I have an Arab friend back home, I like her. I have Jewish friends back home too, I wonder how Andy’s doing anyway. SHITTT!!! Answer her dude!)
“I hate Arabs,” I said with a smile.
“Me too!” she exclaims as she puts her hands to her neck pantomiming strangulation by Arabs. We talked for the next few hours, mostly about the Israeli culture. “You would love Televiv,” she told me repeatedly. “It’s like a tiny America. We love America!”
Of course you do I said to myself, we bankroll your fight against, well, every Arab nation surrounding you. If it weren’t for us, you’d be squashed like a bug.
“I’m sure I would love it there,” I said.
She told me she had just finished her mandatory two year service in the Israeli army (men serve three) and she goes on to tell me that I wouldn’t like the army if I didn’t like to kill people. I told her I wouldn’t like the army.
As the conversation matured, I pegged her as a kind and well meaning girl, just drunk with that kind of hideous nationalistic pride. I turned my attention out the window, to my refuge. I saw a pine tree but it didn’t excite me; it looked more healthy and full of life in my dream a few nights back.
“We work in your malls,” the girl blurts in my direction and I turn my attention back to her.
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“After the army, we go to America and work in your malls and we make heaps of money for our travels!”
“Huh, you can make ‘heaps’ of money working at the mall?” and just as soon as this left my mouth, I realized my blunder.
“Yes! Haven’t you seen us? The one’s selling lotions and sunglasses? We’re all from Israel!”
This was news to me.
She went on, “In one year,” she says, and her eyes grow the size of plums, “We can make TWENTY-FIVE-THOUSAND-DOLLARS!”
I felt ashamed that this was about our minimum wage and could do nothing but patronize her: “WOW!” I exclaimed.
I opened my book.
I slept.
I awoke – and just in time.
In the same British accent (I’m grateful I’m not British, for if I were, I would annoy myself every time I opened my mouth to speak) the girl once again fumbles a few Spanish verbs and tells the driver to turn up the air. I correct her. The bus gets warmer. I’m a hero to all.
Now, well on our way to Salta, our bus pulls into the town of Corrientes where people will board and unboard, and still others will reboard after relieving themselves in the bus terminal bathrooms. I stepped off the bus to stretch my bones but my clothes were still damp and the air was crisp – I was the first to reboard.
The bus took off. My Israeli friend was gone, replaced with an Argentine man with suspect eyes. For a few moments before I opened my book I reflected on what a crazy life this all is that sitting on some bus, billions of miles from both Israel and America, that an American would stumble upon a vat of Israeli culture to drink from. To hell with classrooms and books! Get on the road!!!!

In and outa Iguazu

I arrived to a very wet Iguazu. This northwestern region of Argentina, on the border of Brazil, sees a lot of rain and because of this the landscape is thick with tropical flora and fauna (and everything else, including the beastly insects that come with such a biosphere). From the bus station I quickly hiked my pack high on my back and caught a bus that took me 5 kilometers west of town where I checked into my hostel. “Cabana 4 is yours… choose any bed you’d like,” said the pretty lady behind the desk. Very well I said and left for my room. Entering my room I was greeted by a little brown dog climbing out from underneath a bed. I said hello, we exchanged pleasantries, and back he went under the bed. This encounter alone can accurately sum-up my South American experience thus far – innocently random, like the dogs standing on rooftops in Salta, but we’ll get to that.

my new friend

Off to Cataratas de Iguazu (Iguazu Waterfalls)! Well, once again another classic example of our overly ambitious tourism enterprise attempting to tame nature for the viewers pleasure (and safety), and once again, it has worked. First went to the “most furious” falls of them all, the “Devils Throat!” (cue the dramatic music). I left unconvinced and disappointed. This might be a matter of personal taste, but I’m used to water being blue. This water had a reddish-brown rusty look to it. They said it was from sediment but that did me no good. There was so much hype about these waterfalls, but I just couldn’t get into them, no matter how bad I wanted to. Wish I had more to report.

I can hardly contain my excitement

ok, this was pretty cool

and this too

It had rained incessantly during my stay in Puerto Iguazu, so I was more than anxious to get on the road to Salta, my next and last stop before Bolivia. I left the hostel and walked maybe 50 meters to the street to catch a bus to the center. I stood, in the night, in the rain. No bus. “Taxi amigo?!” a taxista from across the street yelled in my direction. In Spanish I told him no thanks as I was waiting for the bus. The rain continued to fall. A few minutes pass and still no bus. “Cuanta Cuesta, senior?” I asked him, out of curiosity. “10 pesos!” he yells back at me. I thought to myself, the bus is only 1 peso, I better wait for the bus. It rained furiously. I got in the cab.

BA-Iguazu

It’s 7:09am. I slept contorted in my “semi-cama” seat for the past six or seven hours. I feel awake now and the black night is surrendering to daylight before my eyes. It’s raining. The road looks like a belt of leather rubbed through and through with oil and our headlights set it shimmering like black-pearl (I’ve never seen black-pearl, only in my minds-eye, but I’m sure they shimmer like I think they do). The sky is tall and blue, light blue with light grey tones. The sun is nowhere but still the landscape begins to appear in more vivid detail with each kilometer the bus lurches down this skinnily-lubed highway. Landscape change is always more obvious when you do not physically see the shifts. And when you are sleeping, you lack most of your physical faculties (all but the fun ones!). But here I am awake and much further north, creeping into the lower reaches of the Amazon basin, where the greens of the outer-world are lush and fertile. Still, it is wet and dreary out there and I am dry and comfy in here.

Small bunches of grayish-white vapors climb down from the sky and rest on the shoulders of the trees as burdenless as a small child rests on the broad shoulders of her father. It all looks welcome and appropriate. The rain falls heavy. I wonder to myself if certain inclement weather calls for a variation in the communication among the truck drivers. Nevermind that. The road is now grey with white swirls; its reflective qualities have absorbed the cloud-filled sky.
The rain stops.
The rain begins again.

Last night sometime, whether in a dream or in reality, the bus rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the road and its headlights illuminated the underbelly of a large pine tree. “Phwaaa!” I said to myself. I’ve been craving pine tree since I left the high desert four months back. The sight filled me with that thing that traveling fills me with. Also in a dream or in reality I looked out on the nightscape to see, not far from the road, a flaming semi-circle of fire with a radius of nearly ninety yards.

Later a sign tells me: Iguazu 26 Kilometers

A man on a mower down in a gulch
He tends the same grass daily
He is more important than I

on nothing, really.

This bus is emptier than I thought it would be. It looks as though I’m forced to watch another shitty movie; this time Mr. Bean – HA! Not much fond of the Brits any longer… Out the window is still outer space (it might as well be as ya can’t see a micrometer in frontaya!) except for when the seldom bus or semi-truck or logger comes barreling toward us, missing collision by inches, passing along as they do.

I hope this isn’t too soon, but Argentines are the most seemingly wreckless drivers I’ve ever seen. It’s only seemingly. In fact, they’re surgeons behind the wheel cutting traffic with clean precision and calculation. Four months in Buenos Aires and I saw only one car accident. In the states I would see a few in a week – too much caution is dangerous.

It’s a fine thing to see how Argentines, and probably much of Latin America, communicate on the road (even way out here wherever I am on the open highway in the apex of a moonless night). As it goes, at least for these big ‘ol trucks and busses, you must first, when passing, signal to the driver ahead with a flash of the high-beams. He grants you permission with a flash of his and off you go. Cake enough. This becomes a bit tech when a few trucks simultaneously attempt to pass a slower one; but still, it’s all in the signals. (I’m purposely omitting the technique to see if I can’t remember when, in 20 years, I pick this up again to read it). I´m gonna study their method a bit longer.

Sometimes I think it would suit me well to be a long distance truck driver. HA! What I should do is save up some cash and buy one of these beasts, these busses, and gut the insides and fix it up to my standards of living (a quick job) and drive the wild-west from Tierra Del Fuego down in Patagonia to the other tip of the world, what is that somewhere in British Colombia or the Yukon or up that way? Picking up every last forlorn hitch-hiker hitchin’ that way! I could see it now! (although, I’d first have to further educate myself on the secret signals, the secret code of the road).

my seat on the bus! looks like a movie, huh?!

another realization

It’s 7pm, four hours into the bus trip to Puerto Iguazu. Outside it’s pitch-black but for some deep grey splotches far back on the horizon. I leave my seat and go downstairs to the restroom and when I look in the mirror I can’t help but smile bigger than I have in some time. I looked into my eyes and say aloud “I’m proud of you kid.” Here I am on some bus, by myself, in the middle of the blackened pampas somewhere in South America on a great big lonely stretch of highway! Then I laughed at the hilarity of it all, the simple understanding that THIS is LIFE – the explorations of the unknowns. I had come a long, long way in four short months. I think it’s important to pat yourself on the back at least every now and then in congratulations of accomplishments big and small.

plan

Most of you who know me won´t believe this, but I like to plan (at least tentatively). I should arrive in Puerto Iguazu by late morning and I plan to stay two days and two nights exploring the cataratas (waterfalls) and leave for Salta sometime Sunday. I’d like to stay in Salta to regroup after the 24 hour bus-ride before heading north-more to Bolivia. Thus… I tentatively plan to be on the road to Bolivia by mid-week next week, the 3rd or 4th. I meet with Adam from Environment Las Americas, the company I may be working with, June 21st in a tiny eco-development outside of Cochabamba, Bolivia – giving me a bit more than 2 weeks of complete freedom to explore Bolivia.

Leaving Buenos Aires

I´ve just boarded the bus that leaves all this behind. In twenty short hours I´ll be in Puerto Iguazu, in the north of Argentina, and worlds away from this city I´ve grown to love over the past few months. But it feels good to be on the road again; I´m once again smitten by this thing we call the ¨traveler´s high.¨ Now, as I sit on the upper deck of this bus with windows to the world all around me I feel perfect. I feel so perfect that for a moment I wished I was traveling with someone to share the perfection and to share the adventure. This thought was quickly eclipsed by a kinder one: everything has been set into it´s place, into it´s perfect orbit, for me and for me ALONE… A great secret whispered only for my eyes to hear. No one will ever see the things I see in the way I see them.
About four months ago I boarded a plane in Miami that was headed for Argentina. There was an empty seat to the left of me and I remember thinking to myself that that seat shouldn´t be empty, that a certain somebody should be sitting there and smiling and sharing the same anxious anticipation as I was. But now, as my bus is pulling further and further away from the city, I look to the empty seat to my right and smile and tell myself this is the only way. That seats emptiness is an integral element of this perfection!

Anthony…

Hey bro, I jumped on the subway this morning to go to my Spanish class—I got off at my usual station but decided that going to class wouldn’t make me happy—so I didn’t go—Instead I put Weezer on my I-pod and walked the opposite direction deep into the barrio of San Telmo—Winter’s comin’ around down here so it’s been getting a bit cold and with the music and all I got to thinkin’ about life and the good ol’ days—took me right back to when we were wide-eyed punk teenagers headin’ up to the mountains on a crisp cold winter morning for a day on the slopes—You’d have your pajama pants on and I’d be wearing my way-too-baggy snowboard pants and we’d both be toasty in our hoodies and beenies and we’d be rockin’ “My name is Jonas” on the CD player and we’d be singin’ “The workers are going home…The workers are going home… THE WORKERS ARE GOING HOOOOMMMEEE… YAH YAH YAHHHHH!!!”—in all our singin’ and screamin’ the windows of your mom’s ol’ Cherokee—the white one—would fog up and I can still smell those white wool seat covers and I think how perfect they were for a drive like that—outside the desert would gradually fade to snow as the road winded deeper into the mountains—the joy that filled us was unmatched by anything—“The workers are going home… THE WORKERS ARE GOING HOME!!!!”—sometimes we’d get pulled over by highway patrol but they could only slow us down—they could see in our eyes that we couldn’t be stopped—I remember we’d always try to put our snowboard boots on before we reached the resort and it was always awkward but we tried it anyway (sometimes without success and I can still feel the biting pain of bare knuckles growing numb in the below-freezing temps as we’d try to lace our boots up outside)—We made this same drive—this journey—week after week—“My name is Jonas…!!!”—you’d call in sick to the Consignment Center and I’d skip out on the Sports Park—two kids who owned the world off to do the only thing that mattered in life—SNOWBOARD—at our furthest point we were only fifty five minutes from our homes and our jobs and our girlfriends and our school—but we were as good as gone!—sometimes the back seats would be filled with Steve and Troy or Gavin and Damon—but it was always you and me—I can still see the same clouds that welcomed us week after week—they hung low and swam in the trees until finally the road climbed up and out and the aspens that stood as tall as towers opened up and at once we could see the slopes and at once we were home—in our excitement we’d open up the windows but they never stayed open for longer than a minute—“Yah Yahhh Yahhhhhhhh!!!” we’d sing—life back then was promising—to me it wasn’t really about snowboarding—I remember those early morning drives more vividly than I can remember the actual snowboarding—I suppose it’s never been about the destination like they say—It was about two friends with a lust for life that couldn’t be curbed by anything—I love you bro—and let us never forget these days of our firey youth!

Words I Like

“I sometimes think that people in our country are affected by a mass pathology. On what planet does it make sense to work hard at a job we can’t stand, to earn money we don’t need, to buy things we don’t want, to impress people we don’t even like? Only on planet America.”

“‘Give me another slug of that jug. How! Ho! Hoo!’ Japhy leaping up: ‘I’ve been reading Whitman, know what he says, Cheer up slaves and horrify foreign despots, he means that’s the attitude for the bard, the Zen Lunacy bard of old desert paths, see the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn’t really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to the mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of ’em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange and unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures, that’s what I like about you Goldbook and Smith, you two guys from the East Coast which I thought was dead.'”
-From The Dharma Bums, Jack Kerouac, 1958

A Few Thoughts Dismembered

I dare you to let this keep your attention:
We’ve got some fish to fry and I’ve got some words to share.
Afterall, what good is even the greatest orator if his mouth is sewed shut?!
This is NOT poetry.
This is RAGE!
This is the disbelief in a world that I LAMENT to call my own.
Last week I ventured to a small town where I met poverty face to face. We don’t know much about poverty, its genesis or how it manifests itself in our world… nor do we really care. What we have, and I’m referring to the masses, is a vague and nebulous understanding of poverty, yet we remain, for the mostpart, unaffected. Understandable. Afterall, the SICKLY HANDS OF POVERTY aren’t poking and prodding OUR CHILDREN as they sleep at night. And, I think, herein lies the problem of human nature… what isn’t reality to us, isn’t reality.

Un Techo Para Mi Pais (A Roof for my Country) is the volunteer organization in which I accompanied to this small town to interview this family. My duty was to gauge the family’s need for a new “house.” I say “house,” as they currently live in a cardboard, wood-slated RAMSHACKLE OF SHIT! Eight children all under the age of seven, half of whom are sick, and a mother and a father. At night, they sleep one on top of the other. They eat mud. To make a long story a bit shorter, they need a house and Un Techo Para Mi Pais will build them one… great. Next month, in May, I will lend my manual labor to the construction… great.

Organizations such as Un Techo do incredible work for poverty-stricken families and they obviously have my full support. But are we not just TREATING THE SYMPTOMS? Are we not sitting idly by as the powers that manufacture poverty LAUGH AND POINT AND LAUGH SOME MORE?

I think the human core is made up of some intrinsic political astuteness or intuition that must be flexed during times of injustice. Flexed against said powers… the oppressing powers of the state. But herein lies another problem: The oppressed haven’t the means to an education, an education that would at least partially unveil the injustice to which they’re exposed, and an education that would bring them closer to the realization of the class-consciousness needed to pull themselves from their plight. In short, even if they had a voice, they wouldn’t know what to do with it!

I write this of South America, but don’t for a second think North Americans are exempt from this. We’re under the same oppression and it’s even more repulsive as we’re an (relatively) educated nation. One difference only, we’ve found comfort in the other extreme…. the extreme of EXCESS… we’ve been tricked! Indeed, there would be a great uprising if we weren’t so distracted by our iphones and our plasma televisions and our… We would have to pick up a book and learn about how we might be able to right this UPSIDE-DOWN WORLD!!!! We would have fabulous dialogue and demonstrations that would spread like WILDFIRE throughout the masses. I’m convinced, the human soul–if we have a soul–is a great spheroid of a gaseous substance lofting in our bodies, resting in silence and waiting for ignition. And when they ignite they explode and go up in a fantastic display of life-giving warmth and iridescence that’re even more so infectious than the most infectious of infections!!! One might say I’m approaching madness, but I’d rather be a CRAZED man WITH A VOICE, than a sane man without one!!!! A lovely lady once told me I would be a pastor in this life. I believed her then and I believe her still. But like many of you, my blood dances through my veins at the rhythm of a revolutionary. A pastor of a different sort perhaps is my fate. Not quite sure where this is going, but you’re still reading so LET US SPEAK OUT ABOUT WHAT WE HAVEN’T SPOKEN OUT ABOUT!!!!! Let not our lives be lived in VAIN! Let us voluntarily EXILE ourselves from the STATUS QUO! Let’s get ANGRY! FOR ONCE!!!! Let us no longer be disillusioned. If I see another facebook status update that reads “Suzy Fairfield … is going to the store to buy some butter then to rent a movie, any suggestions?” I’m gonna go APE-SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!! :) Let’s inoculate ourselves against a shallow existence and stab ourselves in the ass with the needle of substance… PLEASE!!! This is a plea!!!!!!! If we only knew how INCREDIBLY POWERFUL the voice of even a child is… things would be different… much different!!!! But let us not raise our children to believe what has always been… or it WILL always be!!!! We must REPENT for allowing this FARCE to continue as long as it has, then we must SPEAK!!!! And let our words SPEAK LOUDER than our actions but then let us ACT UPON OUR WORDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!