Flight Details for Mom & Dad

I am leaving from Buenos Aires (EZE) airport April 1 @ 8:10 pm local time. I will arrive in New York (JFK) at 6:30 am local time. The flight number is American Airlines 956. From New York I am grabbing a flight to Boston (American Airlines Flight 4611, operated by American Eagle Commuter Service). That is scheduled to land around 10 am in Boston April 2nd. International flights have the tendency to go over or under its estimated times, so dont be alarmed if I am delayed. I cant wait to see you! Love you!

Also, I have a conclusion coming for the blog. I just want a few more days to mull over everything. Let it all set in!

Excerpts from my personal journal (unedited)

2 May 2008- Six Days till graduation
Well I`ve reached the end of the road. Looking back through what I wrote in the weeks and months leading up to this end of times I think it safe to say that it has not been the easiest of experiences...With that said I am super excited to make the next step in life.
Today, when filling out a survey for graduating seniors, I was asked the question: `what is your planned occupation after college?` Without blinking an eye I put down `ADVENTURER`. While I appreciate the ability to analytically think which Holy Cross has given me, I trully feel that my real education is about to start. Within me is a desire to be a tumbleweed. I need to see the world and experience it. .. Before I will be able to set a definite course in my life I need to gain a true world perspective. I am grateful to have the unquestioned support of my family- I just hope they can cope with me me being away. I am now at the helm of my life.

8 December 2008
In two days I will be embarking on the journey that has existed only as a thought in my mind for so many months. In two days the fantasies of what I have imagined will finally meet the reality. I am on the threshold of a serious life change- change in both the practical and extrodinary. My fears are overpowered with a drive and hope to do it to the fullest. I pledge to myself, here and now, to be entirely open and aware of the opportunities. You are going into circumstances where you can be who you are with no precondition. The best part of it is that I want to go as I am now. I just need to persist to be courageous and bold, while also being calulated and smart.

10 December 2008
The adventure has finally begun. I have just taken off from Boston- headed to Miami then on to Buenos Aires. I have to admit that this last day and a half was the only time in this whole process of planning this trip that I have been nervous. I guess the feelings are only to be expected when embarking on such an adventure. This nervousness quickly becomes excitement when I think of the adventure to come...

11 December 2008
...I utterly reek of being a gringo...I need to get my spanish going. My fear of speaking has left me starving tonight. I have only had a McDonal´`s Big Mac and a peice of bread- which I later threw out because it was utterly tasteless. I am also coming to realize that I will be here for four months. I cant enjoy that time in the city. Sooner than later I will head to Patagonia country where I hope I will feel more at home.

19 December 2008
I am in love with this place. So much has happened since my last entry. The exact details I will specify in my blog, but the basic details: I met up with 3 Aussies. They turned out to be fisherman. So we hired a car for cheap and hit el Rio Limay...Today was my favorite. We had to hike down to the river, through arid snake infested ground. We climbed along the river and stalked fish. I was the only one to catch a fish today! SO HAPPY!

25 December 2008
I am sitting on a rocky beach around a lake just outside of Bariloche. My time here has been excellent. I have met so many interesting and exciting people in this quant place. Tommorow I am jumping on a bus south to El Bolson to camp. As I have passed the tho week point in my trip, I feel that I have entered a point in travel that other travelers have told me about. Its a relaxed unrushed state. While I am still mildly stressed over money matters and the need to prolong my money, each day this stress subsides.
I definitely know it is time to move on from this place. Time to meet a fresh new group of people. See some new things. Gather some more experiences. This is the nice thing about traveling- the freedom to move at will. Expand the realm of your conscience. Expand the number of friends.

28 December 2008
I am feeling very defeated today. I spent the whole morning packing my stuff, planning to camp by Rio Azul. All the supermarkets are closed, and there is no where to legally camp for free. Part of me just wants to jump on a bus and get out of El Bolson. I don`t know if its the town, the lonliness, or the adjustment to camping life- but i feel beaten up. I`m treating myself to a big lunch to try to figure it out.

New Years Eve 2008
I am spending my new years camping near the summit of Cerro Piltriquitron in El Bolson...Reading over my journal of the last year, it is nice to see some of my goals fulfilled. I am in the process of fulfilling my travel goals in Patagonia. So what do I see for this upcoming year? Well the enormity of this trip blocks the future- which is nice. Each day is what I am looking forward to figuring out.

11 January 2009
I am beginning to detect a change occuring within myself. I cannot identify what exactly has changed, but I feel like a different person than when I left the US. This change seems to be rather indifferent in terms of good or bad- its just different. Maybe its this transitory lifestyle and all the people that blur through this experience. I hope to understand what is happening as this trip continues. Or maybe it will simply be what it is.

17 January 2009
Tonights my last night in Argentina (at least for now anyway)...I hit my first stretch of bad luck today. First I burned my hand at the bus station on a radiator. The burn looks worse than it feels- which is kind of worrisome. Later in the day my iPod was destroyed in the was. So it will be a musicless trip from here on in. In spite of the things, I am remaining positive. I just hope I am not met with any additional bad luck- famous last words. But its all part of the trip...Each day is a new adventure.

26 January 2009
Enough plot, I need thought. Tonight is my last night camping in Torres del Paine- 7th night. Tommorow Sagiv and I will hike five hours to the Catamaran, then grab a bus back to Puerto Natales. While I am excited to return to civilization for a hot shower and a proper meal, it is a bitter sweet departure from Torres. This period of hard hiking has done alot for me. For one I feel that it has provided me with the spring board/ bench mark for living a healtier life...In a way I feel like I have purified myself with this treck...This period of time has also been one of continual meditation. I thought alot about family and friends; of future goals...At times it was difficult to get hold of my mind, to focus it on the present

29 January 2009
Well Im making my move north. I am in Punta Arenas waiting to grab a bus...I have 8 weeks left in South America. What do I want to achieve?
-improve my spanish
-spend time in a wine region
-go see Iguazu
-spend a week in Uruguay
-fish and hike more
While I dont wear a watch and readily stuggle to remember the date (let alone the day), time is a reocurring topic in my mind. Two months more seems long- but its relatively not. This is the first time...that I admit there is some homesickness in the back of my mind. Its not that I miss being home and that whole life. Its just the missing of people; my family, my friends. My only thoughts of home are of them. Otherwise, this is easy. I enjoy traveling immensely. I love going to new places, meeting new people. I would not say that I am an expert traveler- I am still learning- but I would say I am compatable to travel

31 January 2009
I have finally been reunited with the Atlantic- albeit through the glass of the bus window. The scene is familiar: the same true blue broken by white caps; birds diving. It is the first time I feel trully home. I wish I could go out and take in the scent of that salty air. Its funny, seeing the Atlantic again seems to answer the question: would you rather live by the ocean or the mountains. Im going to have to say the ocean.

10 February 2009
Today marks two months of my travels in South America. As the time passes more quickly, I begin to realize the constraints on this trip. I wanted to spend time in Bolivia, but due to its political climate and the fact that I am an American traveling alone, I have decided not to go. At this point, I see myself visiting Uruguay at the end of my trip. That would bring the country tally to 3. I am happy with this tho. I feel like I am `doing`Argentina and Patagonia to the fullest that I can afford with the time I have. Traveling makes time move at various speeds. Some weeks fall off the calender at a scary rate, while others drag along. This inconsistency makes my perception of the remaining time of this trip change daily. Some days I fear that I do not have enough time, other days I feel I have too much. In the end, I must pacify this subtly anxiety by enjoying the moment I am in. I look back at some of the things I have done already and it blows my mind. This experience is a true gift. Sometimes I have to say outloud to whoever I am with: `We are so lucky`

24 February 2009
Nearing the final month of this trip, my mind dances from topics. Most of the time I think about the prospect of writing this story as a book. While I enjoy my writing style, I wonder if other people do. I wonder if I have the skill to write a worthwhile book. Whether I have the ability or not, my heart is set on writing it. This trip has helped me achieve my objective of habitually writing everyday. I am looking forward to sitting down at a desk, and really making this happen.

27 February 2009´
Serious travelers often write that after a certain point they realize that the road is their home. This never appealed to me. I never wanted to get to this point, being stuck in a constant state of transition. I love my life at home- being able to see family and friends. Traveling alone, you think more about family and friends than ever in your life- its almost constant. I went on the road not to run from something, but to gain something. To bring my perspective to a new level. While much is learned about the foriegn world, much is also learned about the world you already knew.

2 March 2009
With a month remaining, I am beginning to feel worn out. I hate to admit it, but in times when I am alone (which has been alot lately), homesickness gets the better of me. I remember feeling this way nearing the end of my time in Scotland. I also remember thinking that was ridiculous to feel that way from the retrospect of my life in the states. But it is difficult all the same...I need to keep everything in perspective.This next month is a gift. I need to rally and push hard for the experience. I pledge here and now to get every last bit of meat off the bones of this experience.

26 March 2009
Six days...part of me believes it, part of me doesn´t. The part of me that ¨does¨ is tired, homesick and, in a way, disenchanted. Thats the reality side of me which admits to the everyday difficulties of travel which have accumilated over the four months, delivering a potent sense of overall exhaustion.

The part that ¨doesn´t ¨ believe is the side of me which I wish to win out. It sees the experience in its most beautiful, dare I say, profound form. Beyond the places and experiences there is the truth of fundamental accomplishment. This trip has delivered the insights and realizations that I hoped for. Most immediately, this trip has illustrated the power of an idea, along with the courage to follow through. Goals often remain just mental figments because fear inhibits them from being pursued. Yet in reality it just takes one step to make that fear a falsehood, and make any goal a possible reality.

On a personal level, I have become aware of my strengths, while also meditating on my weaknesses. I see now, more than any time before, that I am capable of anything I want. I just need to exercise the courage that I mustered for this trip. On the weakness side of things, I see what I need to change. And the change has begun.

I see myself coming even more into who I am.

The last leg (Part I)

Salta was as far north as I was to get in Argentina. That's why I was there: to cast the invisible line of my journey to Argentina's northern banks, some hours short of Bolivia. Two weeks remaining and with my overall objectives met, I became a true tumbleweed in the Northern territories of Argentina and Chile. Aimless, the oars slipped from my hands and I turned my trip over to the tides of fate. Fate seems to bloom in the midst of random decisions, so I embarked on the 22 hour bus ride from Mendoza to Salta on a whim.

Aboard the bus, tortured by blaring 80's Latin pop and the unremitting whistle of overhead airconditoning, I befriended two birds from Australia and England sitting across the aisle, Lucy and Elle. When landing in Salta the next afternoon, we checked into the same hostel and we're lucky to share a three bed room. As hostels go, three person rooms are a rarity. Staying in one, especially with mildly familiar folks, is a backpacker's night at the Ritz.

Normally, I book a bed in the ten or twelve person rooms, as required by my peso to peso budget. While the exact arrangement may vary, these cramped rooms are what you imagine of early submarine layouts. A slender corridor cluttered by disemboweled packs divides sets of bunk beds lining each wall. The normal sleeping protocol is foot to head with your neighbor. Anyone, backpacker or not, can picture the conditions of such overpopulated sleeping quarters. Beyond the obvious annoyances of snoring and gas, there is the more subtle difficulty of finding one's breathing rhythm. The night's silence is sewn with the room's combined whisper of oxygen being turned into carbon dioxide. Settling into one's own presleep meditation is continually compromised by the room's irregular breath. Exhaustion overcomes all, however, and drags a backpacker to the depths of unconscious.

In truth, the nights in these rooms are not bad compared to the mornings. Waking, the skin glistens greasy with a film of humidity. The air is thick with a rhechid stench so potent it crawls deep into the nostrils, onto the tongue, then drips down the throat triggering the gag reflex. It is a smell not easily shaken from the senses: body odor, filthy clothes, gas, all marinating in a asphyxiating stew of carbon rich air. Needless to say, when you're up, you're up.

Lucy and Elle motivated me to be a tourist in Salta. We visited a museum where an exhumed child mummy was on display. Inca culture ritualistically sacrificed beautiful children from the community's wealthy class in an effort to please the gods and hopefully be blessed with good harvests. The chosen one would be chauffeured throughout the village where she would be adored by the masses. She was then led in a caravan up into the mountains, a journey which could take months. When they neared the summit, the Inca elders would get the child drunk and unconscious. She was then buried alive on the summit. While the scene was morbid, I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought of how horrid that hangover must have been. Waking up from her first big night out, head splitting, wondering if she did something embarrassing; only to open her eyes and find she's been buried alive.

After the museum, with appetites ablaze from viewing the well preserved corpse, we had lunch at an outdoor cafe. The scene was very much like that of Mendoza: smartly dressed waiters, European-like diners , umbrella shaded tables. Yet the conspicuous face of Salta's impoverished set it apart. The poor stumbled from table to table, a sign often strung around their necks. Most suffered sever handicaps, laboring over each step, backs painfully bent. A women with black teeth, shaking anxiously from some addiction, came over and handed us a pamphlet about mother's with AIDS. We each handed over some spare pesos.

Beholding Salta's poor made me realize that I have never meditated on poverty enough to come to personal terms with it. With the reaches of poverty so far extended, where do I start to address the situation? Do I give money to each person who needs it? Do I work through some broader organization who knows how to allocate money better and meet the need more effectively? Just as these thoughts swam in my mind, a scene unfolded before me that began to address these troubles.

A young boy had come up to a man asking for money. Children are put on the streets by their parents very early, often wielding stickers or playing cards to sell. The man pulled out a chair for the boy, split his pizza with him, and had the waiter bring the boy a coke. The boy sat in the metal seat, his feet dangling below. He cautiously and neatly placed his wallet and cards on the table. With visible satisfaction he sipped the coke patiently from its old fashion glass bottle. The man sat there, his seat angled just away from the table allowing him to cast one leg over the other, engaging the boy in conversation. While the scene did not answer all my questions, it made me realize that on the most basic level poverty must be met human to human. While I cannot give to each who ask and need, I can treat them with the dignity that all humans fundamentally deserve.

MOM & DAD: Im leaving Punta del Diablo tommorow for Montevideo. Then following day I will get back to Buenos Aires. Three days three then home. My flight lands in Boston April 2nd around 1030 think (but I will solidify these specifics when I get a phone to call you from). All is well! Cant wait to see you! Love Robbie

Dear Mom and Dad

Mom and Dad

Im sorry I have not been able to call, I have not been able to find any skype capabilities where I am. But things are absolutely perfect. I am in Punta del Diablo Uruguay. Most beautiful beach spot next to Dennis MA. I am doing very well. I did get stung by a scorpion today, but they are not posinous, so all is well. Just a week left. Cant wait! I love you. Ill call once I can!

Swish This

I came to Mendoza to drink. Not to drink in the over-indulgent collegiate sense which I am accustomed; but to sniff, swish and sip like a cultured connoisseur. My glass was to be raised not in toast, but in observation of consistency and character. What better setting to train my tongue to the delectable subtleties of the world´s best wines than Mendoza´s annual harvest festival?

The city was done up like a child on Easter Sunday: clean, neat, and seemingly more innocent and wholesome than normal. While Mendoza´s festive atmosphere catered to its international guests, I learned over the week that the festival was a local celebration. Tourists there to soak up the ultimate Mendoza experience, like myself, were only spectators to the festivals true significance.

My stay there began as intended. Chris, Megan and I, along with a Brit, an Israeli, and two nineteen year old Dutch girls, rented bikes and did a self guided wine tour in the town of Maipu. After a quick breeze through a wine museum where we enjoyed the heavy handed pours of our disenchanted and most likely alcoholic tour guide, we peddled to a small, family owned vineyard called CarniaE. Owned by a French couple and named after the constellation hovering above Mendoza, CarinaE produced around 70,000 bottles of wine per year. The French owners bought and refurbished the vineyard quiet recently. Prior to that, it existed as a plot of rampant weeds and shambled equipment. Despite years of inactivity and neglect, the vineyard´s soil required it to be organized just as the original winemakers had. Malbec grapes in one designated area, Cabernet Sauvignon in another. This enduring control of nature intrigued me. After the tour, we sat under the extended reach of a tree at a long picnic table and tasted wines.

I held each sip in my mouth, aerating it, and mentally narrowing the focus of my pallet like adjusting the knobs of a microscope. Each wine danced a different jig over my taste buds. I struggled to compartmentalize the experience from each. The French owner, a stout women, teeth ink stained from testing the product, offered a pour of their best wine. I shelled out the ten pesos for a taste of the high end, seeing this as an optimal opportunity to mentally distinguish to good from the great.

Muddy red, the malbec´s full body denied the slightest knife of light to cut through it. Burying my nose in the glass, a spicy assault gripped the inner nerves of my nostrils. I delectably drew a sip from the glass, its tannins pulled at the soft spots beneath my ears. A flavor parade marched over my senses- too quick to register. Sucking air through my lips, creating the belly of a star fish below my nose, I lit the wine´s short fuse. Quickly, new tastes exploded from the sip. The wine´s blooming character mesmerised my mouth with its Pollock-like complexity. I began to imagine the barrel this sip patiently sat in; buried deep in the cellar´s dankest corner, wearing a growing blanket of dust. The old French winemaker hobbles down the alley of horizontal barrels to the dim, back corner. He drags out a little stool, and blows the faint dust from the glass left from his last visit. He squats on the miniature stool, his knees bent beyond ninety degrees like a shoeshine. Twisting the tap with the greatest of care, he draws out the slightest of samples like a humming bird. His fingers pinch the glass´s stem, dirt has collected under his nails. He silently goes through his rituals. Smell. Swift. Smell. Sip. Wait. Swallow. He looks up to the barrel, the date scrawled across the top in white chalk, and engages his creation. ¨Not yet¨, he whispers.

I swallowed the image with the sip and smiled. Chris then raised his hand, and stole the women´s attention from me: ¨Do you have any chips?¨

Our final stop was at the Trapiche vineyard. Enormous and industrial, this particular Trapiche winery produced seven million bottles of reserve wines. Chris and some other members of my company were not keen on paying the twenty pesos for a tour and decided to skip out. This did not make much sense to me. We were at the Eiffel Tower of wine regions, and they weren´t going to the top.

Passing through the automated sliding doors, I was embraced by the buildings icey airconditioning. Dehydrated and mildly intoxicated, the cool was sobering. Everything was stainless steel and mechanical within. Trapiche´s process for mass production seemed to rob the human aspect of wine making that I came to love at the first, family owned vineyard. Tasting its wines I did not imagine a sweet, little old man in a tattered cap; but a drone dressed in a blue surgical suite equipped with booties and a hair net, pouring wine samples into graduated cylinders and testing their Ph levels. Observing this juxtaposition between the two vineyards taught me which winemakers I prefer.

Just a little sip of Mendoza

I rolled uneasily into Mendoza. I am wary of cities, they tend to leach the life from me. The din of aggravated car horns; the subtle stench of urine tucked in every corner; the filth of concentrated population; the panhandling and pickpocket; all blind me to a city´s cultural value. With that said, I loved Mendoza.

Mendoza balanced its dense cityscape with several pristine parks. The park´s sweet air carried down wide pedestrian avenues where grids of umbrella topped tables sprouted from the street like beds of red pansies. The scene was all very European as if transported from Florence or Paris. Waiters stood neatly dressed, a menu tucked under one arm, trying to entice passing pedestrians to dine. Musicians glided from table to table, lingering at groups of tourists and other potential tippers. Local diners sipped cappuccino with one leg cast over the other, a cigarette burning lazily between their fingers.

The parks served as stages for Peruvian musicians who played in traditional indigenous garb. They ran a clever racket, drawing large semicircle crowds, pretending to blow into flutes while the music actually came from a stealthily stowed iPod. An American I watched the performance with doubted that they were even from Peru: ¨I swear those dudes are Puerto Rican.¨ The deep whistling of the flutes gave the park a continuous soundtrack.

The park was structured around three fountains that projected water into the sky through a number of spouts. I never really appreciated fountains. It seemed like an unnecessary waste of water and energy. But I guess I have yet to see one that has achieved its designed effect for me. The perimeter of the park was held together by artensan stands. Hippies sat along the walls of the nucleus fountain, selling their goods on blankets and towels.

Around midday, uniformed students spilled out into the streets. The youngsters wore blue and white lab coats indicative of their age. Teenagers romped through the park in boisterous gaggles. Occasionally, a couple would break off from the group and retreat to a shady tree where they became wrapped around one another in a braid of adolescent love.

Drifting clouds of cheap marijuana smoke met with the ambient scent of cut grass, giving the park a fresh aroma. If it were bottled as a cologne, you might title it tranquilo.

I checked into a hostel down the street from the park where I reunited with Chris and Megan- this time intentionally. For some reason, everyone in the hostel seemed unusually fascinated with me. I was not being overly sociable or funny. In fact, I felt rather introverted. None the less, groups of Argentines continually called me over to there table- giving up their seats, feeding me their food and beer. The groups ringleader, a small Argentine who functioned in a caffeinated trance from continual mate consumption, affectionately called me Kurt Cobain on account of my long blond hair. While I found the nickname morbid and not especially flattering, I did not protest. I even strummed an air guitar when he introduced me to others.

My arrival in Mendoza was schedualed around the city´s annual Harvest Festival. Primped to perfection, Mendoza was hosting an international crowd the ran the spectrum: wine enthusiasts, backpackers, partiers.

NEW UPDATE FOR MOM AND DAD: I am jumping on a bus tomorrow to go back to Buenos Aires. I will arrive in Buenos Aires the 16th. I am not staying there tho, from B.A. Im heading into Uruguay. Everything is good! Love you lots!

The Crux

Heading east across central Argentina, I opted for a circuitous route towards the country´s wine capital, Mendoza. I hoped to stray from the well worn backpacker avenues and destinations where the local economy depends on tourism, and find a more authentic Argentina. My time in Horcon Chile exposed me to this seductive, albeit occasionally stressful, form of solo travel. The trade off for these experiences is being completely alone in a foreign world. Yet this unique solitude is part of the appeal. Rarely in life is true detachment possible. It is during these times when one´s self reliance is put to the test.

Bumping along on a regional bus, passing through tunnels cut into the mountainside, a unseen landscape unfolded before me. Many forget, as I did, that magnificent nature exists beyond Patagonia in Argentina. In fact, the highest mountain in South America, Aconcagua, is located in the region of Mendoza. The mountains here were far different than those in the South. Down in Patagonia, the peaks were often of clean granite that shot narrowly into the sky. Here the mountain´s staggering mass ate up the horizon, often stealing the sun in the late afternoon. The stone matches the region´s arid temperatures, painted in honey mustard yellows, squash oranges, and hot pepper reds. Their summits are cooled with pristine white snow that seems to contradict the dry heat at ground level. Rivers run brown down through the valleys like a never ending flow of chocolate milk.

My first stop was in Uspallata. Located about two and a half hours west of Mendoza, Uspallata is a one road town encircled by snow capped mountains. As I disembarked the bus, foreboding clouds crept overhead. I had planned to camp at a site in town, but with the sky beginning to whimper and cry, and my tent in no condition to weather a storm, I grabbed a room in a cheap hospedaje (bed & breakfast). Dropping my pack on one of the room´s twin beds, I returned to the street.

Uspallata´s recent claim to fame is that it was used for the filming of the late 90´s Brad Pitt film Seven Years in Tibet. After the filming a local bar bought up all the extra props and took the name Tibet Bar. Thirsty for a cold beer, I took a seat under an umbrella outside of the Tibet Bar. Sitting there, nursing a liter of Quilmes, I watched distant clouds strike at the horizon with bolts of lightening. As the corresponding thunder rolled, I realized this was the first time I had seen lightening since I first got to Argentina. This brewed the realization I had been on the road for a while.

Three months. Three months of bus rides; camping; hiking; fishing; blisters; sun burns; hostels; stress; laughs; scenery; friends; hunger; loneliness. The list goes on and on. While I refused to openly admit it, my mind and body could not deny that I was tired. An underlying current of exhaustion coated everything I did. The physical toll was manifest in my weight loss, the subtle forward roll of my shoulders, and my overall unkempt appearance. The mental exhaustion, however, was far more potent. Traveling alone, the mind runs on a loop. Beyond the constant interchange of thoughts of family, friends, and home, there is the running checklist of necessities. ¨Do I have my: passport, wallet, camera, fly rod?¨ Whenever the bus stops to pick up more passengers, I must shoot to the window and make sure no one steals my pack. I have gone weeks without real conversation with people. During these times, the volume on my internal voice is cranked. Without remiss from the continual weighing of concerns, the mind throbs.

My time in Uspallata passed uneventfully. Nursing the wounds of three months on the road, I lazily relished in the forgotten comforts of a clean, single room equipped with a television. Lying there, dressed in the tv´s flashing indigo, I became reacquainted with the world I left behind. All the reports were depressing; record unemployment; plummeting stocks; bankrupt companies. There was even a segment on the growing numbers at soup kitchens. Overwhelmed, I wondered if things had gotten markedly worse, or if my perspective had just changed.

Traveling plugged me into an intoxicating network of positive people. Fortified by a continuous flow of contagious energy, the negatives of the world scarcely penetrate it. Backpackers are free agents, abandoning the expected modes of society´s design, and striving for something that trumps all material: experience. They sacrifice the fundamental comforts of a normal life for the sake of perspective. While I admit there is a degree of selfishness inherent to this, it is a necessary evil in gaining understanding, and in turn, hopefully spawning tolerance. Weighing this perspective with the grim happenings flashing before me, I wondered how to reconcile the two. With a few days before Mendoza´s annual wine festival, I took a bus further east to Potrerillos. Much like Uspallata, Potrerillo´s modest infrastructure grew off a few winding roads that descended down a valley and met an ¨T¨ intersection running perpendicular to a bean shaped lake. On the opposite bank, a mountain crowded the scenery. Uneven throughout, the maroon mountain looked like a crude piece of clay thumbed into a basic form. I trudged up from the bus stop where a local drunk harmlessly called out to disembarking passengers, and found what looked to be a camp site. Passing over a cattle guard and into the property, there were kayaks and rafts strewn on the pebble coated pavement. ¨Hola¨, an unseen voice called out to me. I turned to find a man struggling with a big propane tank. He softly placed it down, and hurried over to me with an extended hand. A long gray beard extended from a stringy mass of ash hair.Wielding an excited smile, he took my hand in his calloused grasp, then took my wrist with his other hand as if to reconfirm the meeting. ¨Me llamo Paco, beinvindos.¨

I liked Paco immediately. He was a product of the sixties, still pushing along strong with flower power. The property looked like a hippy commune. Dogs and children pranced around happily. An open air kitchen was the site´s focal point. An enormous poster of John Lennon, post Bealtes, was bound to the kitchen´s ancient fridge. Dreadlocked men and women sat on the outdoor kitchen´s extended deck, making handmade necklaces and bracelets. They drank from a bottle of red wine that when empty Paco refilled with a big jug. Paco kept all of his money in a tupperware container that he left unattended on the kitchen table. Instead of camping, Paco offered me a bed in his ´hostel´. The hostel was a plywood room with two three bed bunks. A night off the ground and on a mattress cost me only five extra pesos. I picked the middle bed from the stack of three. This proved to be a wise choice as large rodents snuck into the room from under the space in the door and from the gaps in the roof at night. I happily spent the days before Mendoza´s wine festival swinging in a hammock reading.

TO MOM & DAD: Im headed way up to Salta for ten days. Ill give a call when I get settled