A wild ride, and I arrived! (Quetzaltenango(Xela), Guatemala)

The following entry was written in several parts over my past 3 weeks journey from my cushy home in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, to the cold mountain steps of Quetzaltenango Guatemala:

After spending almost two months basically as a city dweller, you'd think I'd almost have forgotten how to travel. And you'd be right!

I finished off my time in Rio in a wild rush. I tried to get everything done that I hadn't done for the past two weeks. To get everything done.... in two days. I finished off my guitar, pandeiro, and Portugese lessons (Thanks Janda!), looked to buy a pandeiro, met up with friends that I sorely hadn't met yet (Sorry Camila and Lulu! I promise to not be such a ditz next time!) and somewhere in the mix get a nice stylish Carioca haircut. I'll save you the suspense, among the rush, I didn't get a pandeiro(yet) and I didn't get a haircut(yet). "P

I did at least manage to meet up with all of my in those last couple days, Juliana, Vivian, Camila, Lulu, and Mikhael and his girlfriend Janda (Who, if you put two and two together, you´ll figure out was my Portugese teacher as well!). Mikhael's family was spending their vaction visiting and showed up a week after I did. I was lucky enough to come along for a couple family dinners, and even more lucky to find that we were on the same flight out to Panama! This was really quite great luck as the flight left at 6 in the morning, meaning we had to be there by 4, meaning there was very little sleeping to be done, and I didn´t have to catch my own cab all the way out to Tom Jobim national airport which is a good deal out away from Copacabana.


Its worth noting that I stopped writing this entry here at this point, and have shamefully let it sit here silent while I´ve been bumbling about Guatemala for the past two weeks.


So Lets Cut to the Chase... As I write this entry I am currently sitting in the office of Xelateco offices, the center of the appropriate technology company Xelateco, located in (not surprisingly) Xela, also know as Quetzaltenango. It´s 5pm, and I´m finishing up a day of work on my water filter project, so I can feel justified in writing a bit on my blog. I´ve been living a life of a pretty steady routine for the past few weeks, working on developing a water filter for implementing in the local communities, living with a local Guatemalan family(la familia Cony), going to Yoga, at least before I got sick last week, but I´m gonna start going again. Either way, the image I´ve been drawing is one of relative stationary work weeks, 1:30 lunches with mom´s and papa Cony, play a little guitar, go to bed, wake up and do it again. All in all, not a bad life, and definitely a big change from the life of the traveller, but how did I get here...

Well, Back to Brasil. Having finally conceded that I couldn´t possibly fit everything I wanted to do in my last day in Rio, I let some things slide. I didn´t get a haircut. I didn´t get a pandeiro, although I went to Rua Carioca, searched all the shops, found the perfect used one for 40 dollars, just went out for 5 mins to check one more store, and they sold it in the meantime. But such is life, lessons in letting go of expectations in the way you thought the world ¨had¨ to be. I ended up using my last sunset in Rio to just take a quiet walk down the beach by myself. I walked from Ipanema to Leblon and back, watching the sun dip behind the favelas, feeling the sand beneath my toes and realizing that it wasn´t in my faintest imagination back in November, that come April, I would be back there in Ipanema, just strolling among the straggelers as darkness set upon the beach. It was a nice walk, and I was even treated to a lightening display walking back down to Posto 10 where Mikhael´s parents´ hotel was. I tried not to think too much about the fact that I´d be flying in that lightning, but there was no need for my flight still wasn´t for 6 hours. In those hours I met up with Mikhael´s family, and we did the only touristy thing that I did in my whole time in Rio. We met up with Vivian´s family and went out to dinner at the Garrota de Ipanema restaurant, supposedly where Jobim and Morales first wrote the tune, but now its just a fancy churrasco joint for tourists. Regardless, it was a great time and felt like a good capping experience on my time in Rio. Of course it wasn´t quite my final experience, as I still had 3 hours before the flight, and Camila happened to be hanging out in a bar next to the hotel, so I went and got one final dose of the Rio nightlife before heading off to the airport.

The flight was fine, but I didn´t sleep. We landed into Panama City jetlagged and groggy, said goodbye to Mikhael´s family, and then I was on my own again. A bit of a scary feeling, but I had forgotten how good it felt. Having no plans... no needs to do anything... except get on the next plane that was leaving in ten minutes :). Which I did. Flying in the air I struck up conversations with the people around me. A young guy from Ecuador flying to visit friends. A middle-aged missionary from Spain who had spent about 15 years doing work in Guatemala. It was about that point, about halfway into my two hour plane flight, that it occured to me that I was no longer in South America, that I was about to be in Guatemala, and that I knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about it. History, culture, food, religion... I was as jumping blind. But the nice missionary man gave me a quick crash course in the basics, not to mention practice for my spanish because I had been speaking portugese for the past month and it took me a good week to finally switch back, although I think I´m better with both languages for the whole learning experience.

So yah, here I am, landing into Guatemala City, and having no idea about where I was, what I was really doing or where I was going to stay that night. A lot like first landing into Quito, except at least then I had a place to stay (oh Centro del Mundo Hostel, I´ll never forget you). Based on what I heard from the plane, I decided to not spend the night in Guate (what they call guatemala city) and just head straight out to the tourist safehaven of Antigua. It was only a 45 min micro drive and I was pleasantly surprised to have an eager van waiting to take me there for a small fee. I was unpleasantly surprised to find that I couldn´t change my 200 Reals that I still had from Brasil anywhere in Guatemala. Only US dollars. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I wouldn´t be needing to since, back in the 3rd world, my money is ridiculously powerful down here (7.5 to 1). As of time of this writing, I´m living on about $8 a day, which is good, since I used up basically all my money in Rio.

So I hopped in the van, with 3 other people. I tried my best to look around, to absorb the new surroundings around me, but the most descriptive impression I could muster was that it looked bassically like the Mission in San Francisco, only larger. Then, after 30 hours without sleep, my head hit the seat, and I woke up in Antigua. I do recall waking up at one point and us driving down an INCREADIBLY steep hill, the driver put the car in first and we hummed our way down hundreads of meters in a matter of minutes. When I really woke up in Antigua, I found myself surrounded by a beautiful colonial village, with volcanoes on two sides, and antique churches where ever I looked (I think I read there´s something like 70 of them in a few square blocks). The two other passengers had hopped out at a fancy hotel, and I was left with a Thai girl who seemed to know where she was going. Having long been devoid of any guide books for quite some time now, I was really just relying on someone knowing where they were going and latching on to them. Of course, I wasn´t disapointed as she got off at a tipical backpackers hostel (the Yellow House, I think) and I decided that was a good a place as any to get off as well.

What ensued was a nap, a meal of fried chicken and rice, and then one of the longest best sleeps I´ve had in my life. Life reviving, world shifting sleep. 16 hours, from 6pm to 10am. I think I was finally catching up on all those sleepless nights in Rio, in Buenos Aires, and not to mention on the plane. Either way, I awoke to find myself in a different hemisphere, a different culture, a different world. The people spoke spanish, and were catholic, and had a large indigenous population, but besides that it was all new.

I guiltlessly spent 2 days wandering around Antigua with no plans, and no objectives. I strolled, and Antigua is perfect for that. Beautiful Colonial architecture lines every street. Ancient churches, destroyed from volcanoes. Small art gallerys in every nook and crany. Spanish schools densely packed into every available space. A tourists playground, and very safe. It reminded me a lot of Parati, Brasil, just south of Rio, the only thing missing was the sea. In replacement of that, however, were two GIANT volcanoes. VOLCANOES! I hadn´t real volcanoes since.... since... well Ecaudor! or Bolivia! Yah, there was one on the Bolivia-Chile Border... but that´s besides the point.... VOLCANOES! Tropical ones at that.

Or... sort of tropical.

If there is anything that has suprised me most it is the Guatemalan climate. I came thinking, Central America, hot, humid, tropical wonderland. But what I´ve found has been anything but that. Admittedly I´ve spent most of my time in Guatemala´s self proclaimed highlands (around 7000ft) but still, whats been most amazing is how similar the climate is, the trees. The name Guatemala is supposedly a bad spanish interpretation of what Guatemala´s northern mexican neighbors used to call it, ¨The Land of Many Trees¨. Not many jungles, although it has many of those too, but many trees.

After the two day transition period I allotted myself in Antigua, I decided it was time to hop a bus to Quetzaltenango, also commonly know as Xela, from the Mayan name Xelaju, just a couple hours down the road from Antigua (Yet a good part across the whole country). I thought about trying to find a 1st class shuttle service, but none left directly from Antigua, and that morning I just packed up my stuff walked down the street and hopped on to what the tourists call a ¨Chicken Bus¨, which is really just a brightly coloured school bus, headed for Chimaltenango, which was my transfer point to Xela. Even though I remember part of the sales pitch by the salesman in REI for my backpack was that when I´m in Guatemala, I don´t want to let those ¨campesinos¨ just throw my bag up top, not knowing if it will be there when I get off. That´s why I needed a small backpack. Well... yah, it didn´t really work like that. More like I could hardly get the pack off my back before it was whisked up to the roof and tied to one of the sidepoles in a slightly comical yet probably sufficient manner.

But the trees. Driving up to Chimaltenango, we rolled up in the hills, curving on ever windier roads up out of the lowlands and into... a pine forrest! Not just any old pine forrest, but a pine forrest on the same continent, nay basically the same extended mountain range as my beloved Sierra Nevadas back home. I knew I had a bad case of the been away from home for a long time´s, when the very sight of the trees made me overcome with excitement. I just couldn´t get over how much it looked like the sierra nevadas. I mean, this wasn´t the Andes anymore, this wasn´t the Patagonia mountain ranges, I swore on my life that I had found myself surrounded by northern california pine. And it brought back all these memories of home, and for a second I even fooled myself into thinking that this little chicken bus was going to drive me all the way back to the front step of my house in Marin. OK, so I was full of it, but it all led me to the thought that now that I was in Central America, there technically was one continuous piece of pavement that connected the ground where I was standing with the front steps of my house. It was just a total mind shift. Unreal. And I don´t care if the Panamerican Highway is dirt in someparts or whatever, I don´t want to hear it. I like the image. I like feeling the concrete (pun only marginally intended) connection between my feet and home.

So my bus ride to Chimaltenango was actually quite pleasent. I started to wonder what all this chicken bus nonsense that tourists make such a big deal about was all about. Arriving into Chimaltenango wasn´t so much of a bus stop as the side of a highway in the middle of a city. I was quickly popped of the bus, backpack still intact, and instructed to go wave something down on the other side of the street. I saw a group of french girls packed together with equally confused looks upon their faces, but they were going to Atitlan so instead of latching on to anything, I just sat there on the side of the road. People were more than willing to offer their services, ¨Xela, xela!¨in helping me find a bus. It took about 20 minutes. I was origionally thinking of waving down a Linea Dorado, a nice ¨1st class¨ bus, but they´re were only two a day, and I saw the chicken bus coming down the street with the XELA written all over it, so I hopped on, based on my last ride, how bad could it be?

Well it was obvious from the start, that this was not the same as my first bus. I didn´t see where they put my backpack among the mound of stuff up top. I didn´t have time. As soon as they took my pack off, the bus started pulling away with 3 people still hanging out the front. I squeezed in for my spot, because Hell if they´re going to leave with my backpack and not me. I wondered why people wouldn´t just go in, untill I finally made my way in enough to see that the whole bus was packed 5 to a row. Now, when I say 5 to a row, I mean 5 average adults, maybe 6 with some children, with 2 on each side and one person sitting in the gap between the two bus seats, seeming held up by nothing other than the sheer friction with the other passengers. Theres something to be said as well for the jarring sight of seeing full grown people, albeit small people, packed into seats designed for children. It just had the surreal look of a strange movie, with a palpable irony that I couldn't really describe with words, but could feel when I finally tried to squeeze my knees into a seat that they hadn't occupied since 8th grade. I stood there standing for a second until I realized that the guy behind me was still hanging out the door! With many ¨con permiso¨´s and ¨disculpe¨´s I wound my way to the back of the bus, carrying my guitar high above my head of course.

It was at that point that I had an interesting realization that they don´t just say ¨excuse me(disculpe)¨ here, they say ¨with your permission(con permiso)¨. I felt like I really needed their permission, forcing old ladies to squeeze against their neighbors as I snaked my clumsy through the tightly-knit matrix of packed Guatemalans, mostly old women in traditional outfits giving me glancing mildly curious looks. I worked my way to a spot in the back where I fit into one of those aforementioned cracks in the center of a row and sat back to enjoy the ride.

I looked out into the surrounding countryside as the road winded higher and higher into the steep cliffed hills that characterize Guatemala's highlands. VERY steep. Bolivia/Peru steep. But the earth was decidedly softer, lots of brown lush dirt, lots of trees, until even the trees became scarcer as we reached up higher. We drove up into the clouds into the climate which I've been living for the past two weeks. I'm living in the clouds. Even if there are no clouds in the sky, they'res always a white, visibility obscuring haze present in the air, that can't just be accounted for by smog or burning of trash (of which, there is a lot of both). As the cold high altitude air filled the bus, I became glad for the body heat of my tightly packed companions.

The driver didn't drive TOO crazy, compared to all my other experiences. I think other tourists call them chicken buses because you wouldn't be too surprised to see your neighboring passenger is actually a chicken in a cage, but as we passed car after car on windy, two lane, blind turns, I began to develop my own theory that its from the drivers kick of life that he gets from playing chicken with oncoming traffic as much as possible.

The ride was full of memorable experiences, a real wild ride, but a great experience. What should have taken 2 hours ended up taking 4 and I realized that not all hours in a bus are equal. Through south america, I became accustomed to long bus rides, 12, or 20 hours were not uncommon for a days travel. But somehow this 4 hours becoming intimately familiar with my neighbors was somehow a bit more of an adventure than a 10 hour Argentinian, Chilean, Peruvian, or even Bolivian bus (I took some good buses in Bolivia). Among other factors, I think it comes from the distances being smaller, and people being willing to accept a bit more of temporary discomfort based on its being temporary.

The reason it took so long is that the whole road between Guate and Xela was under construction. This meant that every 15 minutes or so, 8 times in total, we would stop for a mile long road block as we waited our turn to be let through the construction zone. Instead of proceeding in an orderly single file manner when our turn finally came to proceed, the line of cars would break into a mad scramble to be the first through the one lane entrance. Every time, without file, a mile long line of cars would dissolve into a 3 lane rush, cars squeezing eachother at every angle, skirting inches past eachother, people running back to their cars to not get left behind, having been passing the wait outside, and all the while, a huge cloud of dirt rising up from the poor road. The scene resembled something out of Madmax. People hanging to roofs, dust rising in some sort of mass exodus. Well, thats what it should have resembled, but for some reason to me, I couldn't help but think of the mediocre movie "Rat Race" that came out a while ago and hearing the theme to "Benny Hill" running through my head the whole time. (Ba du du, du du du du, du du du du....). Viewed that way, I just couldn't help but laugh eachtime we all made our clownish mad dash to be first.

The most memorable of these roadblocks was right in the middle of a steep hill. I don't think it was intentionally a road block, but more of a functional one due, to the fact that a fellow chicken bus was stuck, diagonal across the whole of the road. We were high enough now that it was a bit damp, and the dust on the road from the construction had turned to wet sand. This left the bus in such a position that it had no traction to make it up the steep hill. Rather than have the people get out of the bus, a few people jumped out and threw sand underneath the wheels, and putting a stone behind the back wheel. The bus would stutter, start, make about a foot uphill and then start a diagonal slide, hydroplaning, off towards the side of the road, where a 4 foot drop awaited the poor passengers. Luckily, they would always seem to manage to stop the bus before it every actually slipped off into the sandy construction side pit. We watched the whole scene unfold for 20 minutes from an awkward position of being right in front of the bus, facing downward on the equally steep slope. But we had good brakes and a good conservative driver. As soon as any space opened on the road, other cars tried to make their way past the struggling bus, of course only making the situation more precarious and more dangerous. We held our ground. The bus behind them didn't even wait for a space to open up. They tried to hop the 3-4 foot gap down to the dirt construction road to sidestep the whole issue. The bus eventually made a run for it, it was VERY close to tipping over the edge for a second, until the people came upon a strategy. They learned that they could use the hydroplaning to their advantage by getting a bunch of people to push the bus from behind as its wheels spun furiously with the sole effecting of reducing the friction with road. And thus the bus made it up the slope. Sideways. Wheels spinning, hydroplaning, being pushed from behind and from the side to keep it at least straight enough so it wouldn't meander into the oncoming traffic, including us. Once it finally made it past us we kept going on our way, only the pass the unfortunate bus that tried to pass the first bus on the side. It had managed to get its two right wheels off the 3-4 foot drop onto the construction part of the road, but only those two wheels. They were precariously trying to land their front left, but had managed to position the bus so that it wasn't very clear if when they put that wheel over the edge, if they would flip over. It's quite a sight to see a big yellow school bus on the verge of flipping over on its head. Very surreal really. Like something from a twisted kids movie. Well... the bus just went for it. Spun the wheels with all its might, teetered, tottered, and thankfully for all involved got a little friction under its wheels and came bouncing down on its four wheels. We just slowly made on our way, thankful that our driver wasn't such a risk taker.

And that was it. An hour later I came into Xela, hopped in a taxi and showed up on the Cony Family doorstep. That first night I was accepted warmly and openly into the Cony family. We stayed up, sitting around the dinner table, playing guitar, singing and generally enjoying eachothers new company.

But what am I doing now?

So, Me! I'm in Gutemala right now! Quetzaltenango to be specific. Working with a nonprof, AIDG to design a water filter for a company Xelateco to sell to other NGO's (and eventually hopefully community members themselves) to install in local communities. Its a different
type of NGO, because we're not just going installing stuff, we're doing our best to incubate a Guatemalan company that can take over the reigns and sustain itself, continuing to serve the local communities, long after we've picked up and moved on to Haiti, Indonesia, or wherever to start another company. In principle, its a great idea, and it certainly gets the donor dollars flowing. Practically, its been pretty sucessful so far, but AIDG has provided the money for most of
Xelateco's instalations, so it's really crunch time here, because Xelateco has got to step up and secure some customers for themselves. And yet all we can do is support, they really have to take control or the whole point is lost. Also, AIDG's been here for about 2 years in what was envisioned as a 3 year plan, so NOW is the time Xelateco needs to step up, and to add to that, this is AIDG's first incubated business, so if it dosen't work here, that's it, you're not going to get money to go try it in some other country. So, my role in it all, is to work on developing a filter which is cheap, effective, and can become part of Xelateco's product line that will hopefully become it's bread and butter of sales. Up till now, most of their time was spent constructing a hydroelectric installation for 200 familys, which was both a blessing and a curse. It got everyone motivated, showed that they're adept at a quality large installation with metalworking, casting, and electronics, and was a PR goldmine for donors. It came very quickly after the setting up of Xelateco, however, so most they're time so far was spent on it, which means that the other technologies which should be the bread and butter of their portfolio are not as developed as they should be, especially given that we now find the business 2 years old, so they'res added expection of what a 2 year business should be bringing in, even though the product line isn't quite there yet.

So, its make or break time, which is quite exciting, but also leaves you unsure if your work will still be here in a year or two. Like I said, make or break. It also seems to weigh on the AIDG'ers more than the Xelateco'ers because this isn't just the sucess or faliure of a business, its the proving of a incubation model which they hope to someday apply globally. Sort of the microfinance of 3rd world infrastructure development.

And that's the best I can do to describe what I've been up to.... from
9-5. Outside of that, I've been living with a cool family about three blocks from the intern house. A family of 6, the house is constantly filled with Mama and papa(Carlos) Cony and their children Elizabeth(mid twenties, owns a pinata shop), Jose ( 23, plays guitar, really fun to hang out with, bassically the Guatemalan version of me, except that he has a 6 year old child in Chimaltenango. I'm sharing a 2 room minihouse out back of the main house with Jose.), Dulce Maria (around 10 years old, and TOO cute, irreseperable from her sister Eva), Eva (around 6 years old, prone to giggleing, can be found with her sister taking piano lessons on little casio keyboards, or watching pirated DVD's of Titanic at least twice a day). This family really has been WAY too nice to me, I don't deserve it for the 6 bucks a day I pay to stay there, but they give me my own room, 3 solid meals a day, and more importantly, treat me like one of the family. I can even regularly be caught calling them my family, saying something along the line of "I've got to go home (to my family) to dinner".

In full disclosure, those last paragraphs were stolen from an email I wrote, but in all fairness, its 8:30 and I'm late for dinner with the family. Of course, I've had more experiences and done more things, and all that, but hopefully I won't wait another 3 weeks before writing my next entry (I only have 5 weeks left!) Scary! And hopefully I've given you all, and myself, a little sense of what I've been up to during all this radio silence.

My best love and wishes to you all!
Jesse

A Day in the Life (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil)

Wow, time sure has passed by fast.

It seemed not too long ago I was first starting out on this trip and now, as of the time of writing this, I have four days left in South America. That´s not to say that my trip is ending, its just changing, as I´ll heading to Guatemala to work work work :) for AIDG (The Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group).

So, it makes about a month and a half ago now that I wrote from another transition point in my trip Ushuaia, Argentina, the southernmost city in the world. At that point, I was struck by how I had travelled there from the equator, almost entirely in bus, slowly making my way south through Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. As I went, I more or less was a tourist. Going from thing to do to other thing to do, always with an ever changing group of fellow travellers.

Ushuaia marked the end of that. From there, I flew to Buenos Aires and started what I would call phase 2 of my trip, Big City Life. In Buenos Aires, I more or less just lived. I did my laundry, got groceries, "worked" recording music, hung out with friends, and went out at night. Sure I spent a few days seeing the sights, but my time was more spent just absorbing the life of a "porteño". It was a refreshing break from the months of moutains and natural desolation in Patagonia.

When I left Buenos Aires, I had a brief respite of laid back beach life in Florianopolis for a few days before catching my bus to my new home for the next few weeks, Rio de Janiero.

So what did I do when I got there? What have I been doing all this time? Lying on the beach sipping cocktails?

Well.... a little bit.

But not as much as I could have or probably should have. I´ve actually been working quite a lot. And while I´m not being paid (on the contrary I´ve paid quite a lot), I feel like its really been paying off. I came to Rio with a pretty directed mission, to learn Samba and to learn Portugese, and that has shaped my whole experience of the city. I haven´t gone to the touristy things like Pão de Azucar or Corcovado, although I did go to a Futebol match at Maracana, the largest soccer stadium in the world, and I haven´t spent as much time on the beach I could have, but instead I´ve been taking Portugese lessons, and Guitar lessons, and Pandeiro lesson, and practicing my butt off, much like I do at home.

To give a taste of my day to day life, I´m going to describe my day today.

Today I woke up around noon, after going to sleep at 4 yesterday, and ran out from my hostel in Copacabana (about a block from the beach). I walked up to Rua Barrata Ribiera, grabbing a pastry for breakfast on the way, and hopped in a public van (R$2 ~1 dollar) headed for PUC, the catholic university that all the IHouse Brazilians went to, which is located in Gavea, past Ipanema and Leblon. A walked around the campus for a little while before meeting up with Juliana, my friend from IHouse way back in the day. It was great to see her and we caught up on all our IHouse gossip as she gave me a tour of the campus (Rochak! We´re talking about you, Mr. Wedding in November!). I also met one of her friends, Edson, who is going to come to Berkeley in Fall and I´m make sure to look up and hang out with when he gets there.

Juliana had a dentist appointment, so we parted ways and I darted across the city to my guitar lesson with Luis Brazil. The lesson was at his apartment in Cosmo Velhmo, and I took the long way to get there involving two buses and a metro! Luis is the director of Na Roda, a school of teachers, players really, who have formed together to provide quality to lessons for serious musicians who come to Rio looking to learn. He is a FANTASTIC guitarist, of many genres, not just Bossa and Samba, and has played and orchestrated for Caetano Veloso for 10 years. I´ve been taking lessons with him for the past two weeks, and with Clarice a Pandeiro (Brazilian Tamborine) player, to work on my rythem. I felt very proud of the lesson today, because it was sort of a marker of my achievement in more ways than one. I spoke Portugese throughout the whole lesson, and on guitar I was right with him the whole time, playing the rythems I´ve been learning comfortably and competently, which is to say that it just felt natural. I just felt like I was sitting out on the porch, playing music, without attention to the fact that I was playing Samba or speaking Portugese.

Thinking back on the lesson on the bus ride home to Copacabana, I realized that´s all I had wanted before coming to this city. So, yah, I felt a bit proud. Its not to say that I have mastery, after three weeks I would more say that I can play a basic samba and speak a decent "Portugñol". Functional really.

Arriving back to the Hostel in Copacabana, I put on my only pair of shoes and went for a run down the beach just after the sun set. I wasn´t alone, as the beach sidewalk was filled with walkers and runners of all shapes and sizes. If there´s anything "Carioca" really pay attention to it´s fitness. Every block is another Academia(Gym), and the beaches on a good day are jam packed with people that just, well, just have immaculate bodies. Men and Women alike, people don´t look the way they do by accident, they work for it. So, in honor of my new home city, that´s what I was doing, working for it.


After a good run, I decided I deserved a treat, so I bought an ice cold Coconut from a beach kiosk and ate it up right there on the street. The vendor gave it a few machete hacks to make a hole and the top and gave me a straw. A few observations:
1. Coconuts have a suprisingly large amount of milk. Really quite alot... and sweet :)
2. After drinking all the refreshing juice, he chopped it in half revealing the tasty white insides. He chopped off a little corner of the thick shell for me to use as a scoop to extract said tasty white insides.
3. While effective, such a scoop requires skill to remove said insides without scraping off all your fingers.

But it was a good experience, and I managed to get a good portion of the meat out without killing myself or making it so I couldn´t play guitar ever again. Also, I was suprised to find that real coco meat is actually quite good and not anything like that white powdery stuff they sell in stores.

After that ordeal, I decided I was deserving of a real meal, so I showered, and went out to my local fruit shop, picked up some apples, oranges, and mangos, and went to my local Churrascaria, and picked up a whole bucket of barbecued meat, took em home and ate them all. Just following my cravings, but unintentionally following the atkins diet :). Just taking a short break from all the beans, rice, and farrofa (manioc).

With dinner out of the way, I put in my mandatory couple hours of practice, playing the song "Chega de Saudade" that I learned in my lesson. By the time I tore myself away from that, it was time to go out. Today is Wednesday(Cuatra Feira) So I decided not to go all the way to Lapa with its big Samba clubs, and instead headed around the corner to Bip Bip.

Bip Bip is a little bar located less than a block than my hostel. That´s not a coincidence, as I moved hostels just to be close, and so I could walk home late at night without having to walk a real long ways. Its just a small bar. Not even, more a hole in the wall, a kiosk, down a walking only street, next to the beach. But despite its small stature, its an institution of Rio music. Each night, musicians from around the city crowd into the small club, and play a mixture of Samba, Choro, and Bossa Nova, while everyone sits on the street enjoying Chopps (Beer). I probably go to Bip Bip every other night and if I´ve learned anything about Brazilian music, its been there. Last night, I actually finally got up the nerve to pick up a guitar (well first I played Surdo...) and play with everyone and it was a truly great experience.

What Bip Bip has taught me about Samba, besides the basics of all the instruments, and the way they interlock, is that the heart of the music is not in the rythem, its in the lyrics and the songs. And boy are there a lot of them! I pretentiously came to Rio thinking I´m going to "learn Samba", to find that there are hundreds upon hundreds of songs, all with really poetic lyrics and beautiful melodies. Hell, single artists like Chico Buarque or Gilberto Gil have hundreds of songs just by themselves.

Why is this where the heart is? Because Everyone sings Everyword to Everysong. Its wonderful and strangely amazing at the same time. They´ve just been learning songs since birth and they´re all stored up in there. Not to take too much of a tangent, but this highlights an interesting cultural point I´ve found, which is that Brazilians seem to have amazing memories. In Brasil, services come first and you pay after. If you go to a kiosk, you sit there eating, ordering more, eating more, and so on until you´re done, and without a piece of paper, the atendent comes to you and tells you exactly what you ordered, despite the fact that he´s also had to keep track of 10 other people. When you hop in a van, you don´t pay as you get in. You ride along, sometimes for a half hour, untill you decide to get out at which point the fare collecter remembers whether or not you, among the 15 other continuously rotating people has paid him yet. When you put the fact that at a night in Bip Bip, we can go for 3 hours straight singing from song to song, no stops, and everyone sings everyword, and I think you´ve got a good case for the memory argument.... I´m just saying...

So tonight was Bossa Nova night, which means two great guitarists and 7 great female singers, doing four part harmony on the spot with just a look. I´ve taken to singing along even though I don´t know the words. It´s a bit like singing hebrew in synagouge when I was a kid :).

And after all that, I closed my day by coming back to my hostel, which is also a internet cafe (an EXPENSIVE one at that) and wrote this. Also typical of my experiences over the past weeks, as I´ve drowned many a good dollar at the altar of the Internet connection.

I don´t feel like a tourist, but I don´t feel like a "carioca", more like a wierd halfway that lives in a tourist house yet dosen´t do toursity things. Some of the most fun I´ve had is seeing old Ihouse friends. I´ve spent time with Juliana, Vivian, Mikhael (Janda, his Brazilian girlfriend is the one giving me Portugese lessons), Camila, and LuLu. Also I´ve met some great other travelers in my hostels over the past weeks. In my first hostel, some guys from Spain and girls from France, and here some guys from Colombia and girls from Brazil. Its my favorite combination, where not everyone speaks portugese, but no one speaks english.

And at the begining I said that this time is now coming to an end, Phase 2, Big city life, and its true for in 4 days I fly to Guatemala. I was pleased to find that, just by sheer coincedence, I´ll be flying on the same flight as Mikhael´s family which is in the country visiting, so that´s nice. I´ve been spending the past month and a half living up city life, city culture, seeking out music. But I´m already looking on to Phase 3, volunteering in Guatemala. I recieved an email from Benny Lee, the director of interns for AIDG today and it got me really excited for Guatemala. It´s going to be so different from everything I´ve done up until now.

First off, its a developing third world nation, and to be honest, I´ve been travelling pretty much in the first world since I left Bolivia, 3 1/2 months ago. I´m also slowly realizing that whatever I do there, is going to be pretty much up to me. I´ve been assigned to test, develop, and distribute two different technologies: Water Filtration Systems and Water Pumps. I requested to work on these and I´m really psyched and everything I´m going to have to learn to get going on them. And learn fast! I´ve really been more and more aware that clean drinking water is such a basic and necessary resource for everyone, and I´m going to be inspired and proud to be working to help some people have clean water to drink.

Anyways, that´s all for the next entry, everything now is just speculation. I think one of the best parts of the experience will be being part of the team of 5 interns that is currently working with AIDG, other grads from colleges around the US, including berkeley, who should be a great community to be apart of.

Ok, its 4 in the morning, so I´ll have to sign off if I want to get up tomorrow before lunchtime (lunch meeting in the center with Vivian!).

Much Love to Everyone!
Jesse

Camping on the Beach (Florianópolis, Brasil)

And with that, I finally got my act together, bought a bus ticket to Brasil and goodbye city, hello Beaches!

(This is a continuation of the previous entry since it all seemed too long to put in one entry)

Looking forward... I find myself now in Florianópolis, Brasil, 2 hours before my bus leaves to Rio where I plan to see old friends again and study Samba. In Rio, I had been talking with Mikhael (From Ihouse) about spliting up the 50 hours of Bus to Rio with a stop over in Florianópolis, a small capital (300,000 pessoas) surrounded by beautiful tranquil beaches. After a 26 hour bus ride (which I splurged for Cama and slept the whole way, Best Bus ever), I arrived into Floripa. My first victory was just the fact that the let me into the country! I had a visa from my visit about a year ago, and it technically said that it was good for 5 years, but I still wasn´t sure that I would be allowed in until we were past that border and eating Feijão (beans) and rice. Oh how I´ve missed beans! For some reason, they just didn´t eat them anywhere I went on the trip, but a big serving of feijão is essential to any brazilian meal. I think it´ll be the same in Guatemala, so I have beans to look forward to for the rest of my travels...

Anyways, on the vaguge directions provided by Mikhael (Praia Moçambique, Gingi Birra Camping) I headed out from Floripa onto the Ilha Santa Catarina at around 4 pm. Hopping on a croweded bus, and transfering to another, I squished up against the normal passengers with all my big bags and guitar. Towards the end of the bus line, I realized that Praia Moçambique is 18km long and no one had heard of Gingi Birra (Gin Gee Bee Hah). Someone thought they knew and told me to get off at the last stop. I did as I was told and found myself alone on the road in the middle of who knows where brasil, looking for a campground that no one had heard of. I walk a hundread kilometers up the road and found A camping, with a nice family living in a little house out front.

Vos hablas español?
Não.... um pequinho...

At this point I went about my best trying to explain myself in my broken portugese that I had picked up on the bus reading an XMen comic book :), where I found out that I can more or less actually read Portugese, which was a bit of a pleaseant suprise. Its also where I came across the great realization that the majority of Brazilians can more or less understand spanish, even if I struggle to comprehend what they say back to me. Its all just crazy beautiful pronunciantion.

Anyways, just as I found out that they had never heard of Gingi Birra, a torrential downpour suddenly came out of nowhere as I ran around front just to keep myself from getting soaked. At this point I didn´t know what to do. Before it started pouring I figured I was just going to put up my sleeping bag and sleep the night, find Mikhael tomorrow. But when it started pouring, and it started getting dark, I realized I need a roof, and for this I needed a Pousada. The people at the campground were so nice, that they all got together and found out where Gingi Birra actually was. They even offered to drive me there. With the rain pouring like nobodys business I accepted the offer. The only problem is that the person that was nice enough to drive me was deaf! I figured he knew where he was going, but I soon found out he was expecting me to know! I tried my best to communicate with him, but the double barrier of understand deaf speak portugese was just too much for me. I had him drop me off a local pousada, where I would have stayed the night, but ironically, they knew where Gingi Birra was and offered to drive me around the corner to it.

Now when I thought camping, I was thinking trees, campfire, maybe a spot on the beach, but Gingi Birra was really just a patch of grass with a concrete floor and a protective overhang in someones backyard in the town of Rio Velhmo. To my relief, and his suprise, I got out of the car to see Mikhael just sitting there, totally not expecting me to show up this late. As I got my bags out the car, I realized that he wasn´t sitting there, but actually managing a small horde of misbehaving children who where consumed with some sort anger I couldn´t explain. Mikhael had set up his tent on the concrete and hung a giant hammock from the cross beam. I was just happy to finally arrive.

The spot was my home for the next two days, as Mikhael shared his tent and walked to the beach each day. In exchange for the basic accomadation we got a beautiful 10 minute walk to the beach, through town, a marsh, past ´watch out, killer bees´ signs, through a pine forrest, and emerging to a pristine virgin 18 km white sand beach with downright BIG waves. I went for a dip, relaxed in the sand, watched the crabs walk by, and enjoyed the realization of a whole different style of life that I could be living.

As tranquil as the beach was, life back at the camp was just as interesting. So the 4 kids that were so upset (ranging from 5-10 years old), were having to face the fact that there mother just got arrested for traffiking drugs a few days ago and would be in prison for the next 5 years. These wild children were the only ones in the camp the first day because the father, who said he would be back at 4pm, wasn´t back till 4am, was, in lue of having anyway to support the kids, was out trying to score some hashish which he could sell. He took the 14yr son of his wife with him. The family was living in the campground while the father was trying to put together some way of supporting them. We all lived together like one big interesting family for a few days.

Also interesting enough, I managed to calm them down that first day with a little guitar and beatboxing. There was one kid in paticular who took to the beatboxing in serious way. He totally had rythem at his age that only comes from just banging on everything you see and dancing all the time, you know, brazilian. Anyways, while at times I think they were on the verge of driving me crazy, I really enjoyed getting to know this crazy mixed up family living on the verge of or below the poverty line. We even got together and cooked a Churrasco (Brazilian Asado) the last night, which the kids ate for breakfast. They also had two dogs who were always so hungry, because in a family where they´res only enough food to feed the 5 children, they only got the scraps of what was left. Plus the kids would always just go up to them and kick them and hit them, because thats what the dad did when they were poking their nose where it shouldn´t be. There was also a punching bag in the campground, that the dad liked hitting alot, and when he did, he would grit his teeth and his face would get red, and you could just see the frustration and anger coming out.

It was just a temporary stopover here in Florianopolis, and I was supposed to take an 18 hour bus yesterday, but I got sick and decided to stay a night in the city and take care of myself. It was just a cold, but I´m feeling better now. Truth be told, I´d like to stay another day here, just for the fun of it, but I already bought my ticket, and I missed the deadline to push it back while writing these two massive entries :). Oh well! Rio awaits... and my bus leaves in an hour, so I gotta get outta here!

Chao amigos!! All the best to everyone and I hope to talk to you all soon!

Buenos Aires, Hugo Chavez, and Beaches (Florianopolis, Brasil)

Yay! I´m back! After a long 3 week period of silence, it was brought to my attention that I´ve pretty much dropped off the face of the earth... well no more I say.

So what have I been doing? Where am I? Where am I going?

In Short, I´ve been lazying around Buenos Aires for the past three weeks, meeting up with friends, playing some music, dancing a bit, and just living the life of the porteño (someone from Buenos Aires). After all my time in patagonia, I was eager to get to a big city, somewhere with culture, music, dancing, people, food... I was eager to get back in touch with people after having spent so much time getting in touch with nature. I was eager for all these things, and Buenos Aires did not disapoint.

First, a word about the flight. On my trip, I had traveled all the way from Lima, Peru to Ushuaia, Argentina soley by bus. So it was quite a strange thing to pack up my bags and head off to the airport in Ushuaia. It was rathere spotaneous that I bought the ticket, but it was there, it was available, it cost roughly the same as a bus would, and the 3 hour flight meant I could avoid a 50 hour bus ride. So on a lot of levels it made sense. Then again, there are some things about flying that I had forgotten in my months of buses, like checkin, security, and after all that your plane is 3 hours late getting out of the Ushuaia airport. But its okay, because it provided me the opportunity to meet Ruben (40 something porteño on the way home to see his family) and Monica (20 something Dutch girl). I had the pleasure of acting as a translator between the two of the them and enabling us all to have a good time passing the time waiting for our plane.

We arrived into BA at 2óclock, said goodbye to Ruben and headed off to our hostel in the upscale neighborhood of Belgrano(Monica had no hostel so I found her a spot in the one I was staying at). The first thing I noticed was the weather. The day that I left Ushuaia, it snowed covering all the mountain tops with a thick blanket of white. Three hours later, I found myself disembarking from the plane into a muggy thick hot humidity, at 2 in the morning.

We came in at nighttime, and what a surprise to wake up the morning, look out the window and see that I was now in the middle of a huge city. Monica and I hung out for the first few days, getting all the tourisim bugs out of our system. We walked around the historic center, Plaza de Mayo, Congresso, took a coffee in Cafe Tortorini, the hangout of the likes of Borges and others. You know, touristy stuff. One nice experience I wasn´t expecting was when we walked up to the Congress building, we stopped into a cafe along the side of the ´mothers of the disappeared´ or something along those lines. Inside was not only a café, but also an organization center for this very active group that stages protests every week demanding truth and reconciliation about the tens of thousands of people that were ´disappeared´during the military occupation from 1976-1983. Not only that, but it was also a library, the only library I´ve ever seen where the section titles read like ´Communisim, Socialism, Anarchy...´. The mothers are still very active, and for those of you who were paying attention when Bush came down to Uruguay, they were the ones that hosted Hugo Chavez in Buenos Aires at a counter rally... but more on that later.

Belgrano is a 30 min Subte(Subway) ride out from center, so I moved to Hostel Ostinatto, located in the Bohemian and touristy district of San Telmo. I stayed there for weeks more or less. What I really spent most of my time doing was meeting up with friends, both those from California and those who I had met along the way. I spent a lot of time hanging out with Rebecca, who I met all the way back in Arequipa, Peru. I helped her move into her apartment, which was a few blocks from the hostel. She moved to BA to teach english and had a pretty busy schedule each day of students (mostly tour guides). We passed the time playing guitar, and just hanging out.

I also got to see Jose Luis, my traveling companion in Bolivia who I just met crossing the border. Jose was born in Bolivia, and he really helped me have a different experience of Bolivia. Even though he´s of Bolivian descent, he´s really a Porteño at heart, having lived almost all his life in the city. When we went different ways in La Paz, we knew that we would meet up again in Buenos Aires, and after many failed tries, we finally did. He lives about an hour train ride outside of Capital Federal (the center) in a district called Merlo. After coming back from Colombia, Jose found himself to be a huge salsa fan, so we spent a couple nights dancing it up at the local salsa club ´Azucar´. One of the things I´m most proud of is that I introuced Rebecca and Jose to eachother because they really seemed a perfect match to be great friends. They both LOVE salsa, are super nice, and even Rebecca teaches english and Jose is trying to learn english. I felt really happy that after a couple nights hanging out in the salsa clubs together, they both came to me and said, ´you know, that Rebecca/Jose is a really cool person´. Jose also gave a slice of porteño life, having me over with his family friends for an asado (barbecue), and my last two nights I spent out in his family´s place in Merlo, a nice quite suburb away from a lot of the madness of the center.

But what about the people I already knew from California? Well, when I started this whole trip, I wasn´t alone, nay, the only way I got off my lazy northern california butt and started traveling was hitching on to the trip of Ben Lawson. Ben and I travelled together in Ecuador and Cuzco, but split up when I decided to stay in Peru as he flew to Santiago on his way to Buenos Aires. Well, in the two months I was slowly working my way down through Chile and Argentina, Ben was studying spanish in Buenos Aires. When we met up, for me it was a little like the completion of a cycle, the end of one stage of my journey. We passed a good day, trying to go to a Boca Juiors futbol game but not having tickets, walking around the 4 blocks of Boca that are not rundown and dangerous, but actually übertouristy, with brightly coloured buildings and tango in the streets. We walked through the sunday fair in San Telmo, checking out antiques, icecream, and yet more tango in the streets. Ben´s spanish has really improved and when I talked to him, his plans had become more ambigious with time, not sure if he wanted to stay in Buenos Aires or move on to some other country like Spain. From what I hear, the Lawson clan are on their way down right now to visit him in Buenos Aires.

A big surprise was getting a facebook message from my Physics buddy Jamie Tolan that he was going to be passing through the city. Coming off of a month of glacier and peak climbing in southern Chile, it was great to meet up with him for the three days he was there and do my inept job of showing him all the city had to offer (seeing as I had only been there for a week). One paticular friday, it seemed like the world conspired to give me too many things to do. There was a South American Music Conference all day that tempted me with its workshops working on new music production programs like Ableton Live, which I had been doing all summer before the trip. But I opted to skip that to hang out with Jamie, Monica, and Esteban and Julia, two folks I met in the hostel. Esteban is mexican american and studies moss in San Luis Obispo, and might actually come to berkeley next year. A great guy, never in my life have I met anyone so excited about moss and algae. We headed out to the Hipodromo (racetrack) and got a taste of the highlife, sitting out on the green, watching the races pass by, actually quite tranquil in comparison to the city. I lost 7 pesos (2bucks) betting on a horse, but Julia won 50 pesos(~$15).

Now, I had been reading the newspapers the day before all about Bush´s journey to the south. Irronically, Bush is really easy to understand when he´s translated to spanish because he speaks so simply :). All the accounts and stories ranged from protest and outrage to a mild nonplused. But I also saw that Hugo Chavez was coming into BA to meet with Kirchner (Argentinan President) the same day that Bush would be in Montevideo, as a counterprotest. I really wanted to go, and after the race track, I convinced the group to take the subway out to the end to go see him. What we found was really quite impressive. Crossing the traintracks we came up to the soccer stadium (Cancha) which was filled with 20,000 people, all armed with a variety of huge banners and samba drums. The seats were packed, and on the field people were mulling about. You couldn´t see the stage from most positions because of all the banners in the way, but you could hear the voices roaring over the loud speaker as the crowd responded, with shouts, cheers, and above all, banging on those drums. Some people were intently focused on the speaker, others seemed to just be walking around, and some seemed more interested in their drums than actually hearing what the speaker had to say. When we entered, a woman was shouting out on the loudspeakers in a shill tone. We worked our way across the stadium and up into the bleachers on the side where we could get a better veiw of everything. When the woman finished, Hugo took the stage, but you couldn´t tell it from the tone of his voice. He spoke in a very soft and controlled tone, talking about the need for South American independence from foriegn dependence, South America for South America and the like. His tone gradually increased and increased in volume, talking about solidarity with Cuba (which got a huge cheer) and Bush. He never mentioned Bush by name, prefering to call him ´El caballito del norte´ (The little cowboy from the north), saying basically ´No hace falta´ (We don´t need him). In terms of oration, he was really one of the better speakers I´ve ever seen in my life, with great control of his voice and the crowd. He also talked for a LONG time, in the end, I had to leave after an hour, but aparently he went on for a few more.The experience was really interesting although I have to say that I did feel just a bit out of place, I just feel for Jamie, who I dragged along and then left there, not speaking any spanish really. But he got back alright, and really was happy to have gone too. I would have stayed with him but I had to leave because I was late to go record.

Record? Oh, yes I haven´t mentioned that yet. What I did more in Buenos Aires than anything else was to help Renee, from I-house, to record an album of hers. She had been living in the city for 6 months and over that time had found herself in 4 reggae bands and knowing a bunch of producers. She took advantage of the situation to decide to go ahead and record a full length album of her songs. She got 4 reggae tracks down on record before the producer lied to her and tried to mess with the project. So, when I entered the situation I found her with a new producer, picking up where she left off and without the cadre of musicians that she previously had. In total, I probably spent 7 or so days working on her tracks in the home studio of Carlos, her new producer. I tackled the task of coming up with guitar parts that would support her songs and bring out the feel she was going for. For the songs I was working on, that mostly meant Rock. It was great to get back into a studio situation, feel the thrill (and the agony) of recording, and get to play ELECTRIC GUITAR! Oh... how I had missed it. My guitar of choice for the recordings was Carlos´s custom Fender Strat, American made, with a Floyd Rose whammy bar and fine tuners in the bridge, 9 gauge strings. A great guitar with lots of good bluesy sounds, but also a humbucker pickup at the bridge to get the crunch when I needed it. We recorded straight into the computer, using GuitarRig2 software (top of the line, what I have at home) to emulate guitar amps in the computer itself. Not quite as good as the real thing, but suprisingly close some times. If any of this means anything to you, great, but if not, just apreciate that I got to play around with a bunch of tools that I haven´t seen in a long time and it made me happy, and eager to get home and get rocking with my own home studio. Now all I need is some good monitors... and a decent midicontroller... and some pro headfones.... if only I hadn´t spent all my money traveling :).

I really enjoyed the time I spent with Renee, and in BA in general. I got the change of pace that I had been looking for, but after 2 weeks or so, I found that... I was tired of it! All the loud noises, you had to shout on the street all the time just to someone next to you. All the pollution, apparently the buses haven´t heard of smog checks. All the people, all the filth, it was just too much... I needed a break!

And with that, I finally got my act together, bought a bus ticket to Brasil and goodbye city, hello Beaches!

Buena Onda (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Ok, here comes the shortest blog entry of all time. I just got back from a house party in Buenos Aires, just two small rooms, lit by three candles, with everyone dancing tango, chilling out, and drinking wine, a mini-"milonga" if you will. All I got to say is that Buenos Aires really is cool in its own way. It´s got a good vibe, buena onda.

Journey to the End of the Earth (Ushuaia, Argentina)

I think it´s only fitting that I call this entry that given that my first real entry was titled "Journey to the Center of the Earth".

And here I find myself in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. Surrounded on all sides by lush yet jagged mountain peaks, nestleing the picuresque Beagle Bay, on the southern tip of Tierra del Fuego, Ushuaia really does have a "end of the world" feeling. Everyday boats disembark from the harbor destined for Antartica, a growing tourist destination in its own right. This place is an appropriate place for some reflection on my trip...

According to Ball of Dirt, I´ve travelled 10,838km so far, starting at the Equator and working my way down here, bassically all via bus except a flight to Peru. This is the southernmost point in my trip, and each step from here on out is one more northward, one step in the direction of home.

Home.... I haven´t forgotten it, in fact I think about it a lot these days, all you guys sitting back in Marin. But I still have a long way to go before I come back, and many more experiences left to be had. In fact, I´m only about halfway done! I do feel like I´m entering a distinctly different phase of my travel. The day after tomorrow, I catch a midnight flight from Ushuaia, to Buenos Aires (I know that´s cheating, but its 50 hours in bus, and would cost nearly as much).

When I get there, I have friends waiting for me to hang out with. Jose Luis who I travelled with through Bolivia. Rebecca from way back in Arequipa, Peru. Ben Lawson, who I started all this trip with. Even Renee from IHouse will be there finishing up recording an album, which hopefully I´ll arrive in time to help out with however I can.

After BA, I´ve been planning to head to Rio de Janiero, Brasil, to study music for 2 weeks at a highly recommended school. And after that, the plan is to catch a plane to Guatemala, to volunteer with AIDG (www.aidg.org) for two months, finishing up in June in time to come home for JazzCampWest on June 23rd.

When I lay it out like that, it seems so small, short, contained. Bassically just 3 cities. 3 1/2 months. But of course plans always change, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. I also hope to get to know these places on a deeper level than I´ve experienced my whirlwind rush south from the equator to Tierra del Fuego.

Tierra del Fuego.... I just realized I haven´t even described where I am! Too much sticking my head in the bucket of the future. Tierra del Fuego has totally superceded my expectations, primarily because I didn´t know what to expect. Leaving Punta Arenas, Chile, in a bus it was 10 hours to Ushuaia. After a short drive, we came to the Straight of Magellen, a short passage of water at our crossing point. We loaded the bus up onto a ferry and took a quick 20 min cruise across the straight. Luckily that day the water was quite tranquil despite the serious wind. Just left it up to the imagination what it must be like on a bad day.

Upon landing on the otherside, we found ourselves in a climate much like I was expecting for the end of the world. Loonnnnggg.... empty..... fields of grass. A sort of empty desolation that demands silence from its audience.

Oh, that and lots of minefields (aparently the area was victim to Chilean-Argentinian tensions from years past). The Guanaco herds didn´t seem to mind as the galloped through the fields, and I tried to avoid imagining the collision of these two worlds.

Anyways, openess... vastness... strong whipping winds. After a typically long border crossing, I was lured off to sleep by the vast emptyness. I awoke a few hours later to find us smack in the middle of a dense lush forest of beech trees. The forest rose up into sheer stunning mountains, huddleing around the lake at the middle of the island. We climbed high into the snowpeaked pass, into mountains that, for reasons I can´t really explain, striked me as some of the most beautiful in all my journey (and that´s a lot of mountains!). Maybe that I didn´t have any expectations, or maybe it was that the sun was setting, but the effect was just truly awesome. After several failed attempts to capture it on camera, I just sat back and enjoyed the ride.

Ushuaia itself is quite a bustling little city of 30,000 or so people, really well laid out for tourists. A strange combination of tourist town like Bariloche, and industrial port to Antartica and ships coming around the cape.

Yesterday, I went out for a hike, taking a chair lift up into a valley and climbing to the base of, yet another glacier. It was a beautiful walk, and better than the glacier itself was the stunning veiw down the valley on the town and the bay. Also they´res a lot of israelis at my hostel so we did a little kiddush last night for shabbat, and I spent all today having a lively debate/conversation about all those things that people stereotypically talk with israelis about.

Then I was lucky enough to just find a plane ticket a few hours ago (they´re normally booked this time of year), and I´ll be off onto my next phase of my journey soon.

I want to say a special thank you to everyone who´s been sending me letters lately. It can get a little lonely traveling alone and its been great having an inbox brimming with love each day :).

So that´s the news from lake wobegone,
Chao for now!
Jesse

Colds in the Cold (Punta Arenas, Chile)

Well here I am now, sitting around, lazying if you will at the bottom of the earth. I´ve been recovering from a cold for a few days now in Punta Arenas, Chile... on my way to Ushaia, the true southernmost city in the world tomorrow, but I get ahead of myself...

When I last wrote, I had just arrived into El Calafate, Argentina, and everthing went pretty much as planned. The next day I headed out on the "alternative" tour to Perito Morreno Glacier, which didn´t really mean anything more than it took a different bus road to get there, but such is life. It didn´t really matter that I think I overpaid for the tour, because it was really amazing. The Morreno Glacier is one of those things that you just can´t deny its grandeur, and you forget about the touristy stuff when you get there.

What is it? Its a glacier, 70m high, several kilometers long, that actually cuts a lake in two at a small channel. The two sides of the lake thus have different water levels. This, among other things, contributes to it being one of the most constantly evolving glaciers I would think in the world. For me, this meant that by midday, every few minutes you could see a chunk of ice a few stories tall fall off the face of the glacier, land in the water forming a tremendous splash, and an even more tremendous sound. Unfortunately, I didn´t get any of it on video, but the sound was really the amazing part. Like gunshots. Explosions. And it came after the sight of the fall so if you looked when you heard it, all you would see was the huge wave and icebergs emerging from the splash site. My tour include a boat trip up to the face, and a nice walk along the channel where the glacier meets the land. Very touristy, but quite spectacular as well.

But after hiking in El Bolsón, I was really feeling the urge to get out and use these new leg muscles I had discovered, thus I decided to head up to El Chaltén. 4 hours north of El Calafate, El Chaltén is a small town litterally at the base of Mt. Fitz Roy. You walk out of the town directly into Parque Nacional Los Glacieres. Funny fact, before coming down here, I thought there were only a few glaciers in the world, but then I found out that the park alone holds 360 glaciers, of which I ended up seeing about six.

I decided to take a tour to El Chaltén as well, because I´m going alone at the moment, have no tent, wanted to stay inside the park, and it just seemed to fit all of my needs. Glad I did, because it was a great trip! I think officially called "SuperTrekking", whatever that means, the real kicker for me was that we got to climbing on a glacier. We took the bus up early in the morning, a group of 4 (Lovely and active old couple, and a late twenties girl traveler, all from England.), and met up with our two guides (Lucho and Jorge) once we arrived. I really enjoyed talking with them, learning slang, how only foriegners say (uh... es possible..), and joking around as we walked. We hiked up to a lookout on Mt. Fitz Roy, but it was clouded over! Luckily the clouds lifted after about a half hour and we were treated to a stunning veiw of the truly magnificent mountain. Hiking over the mountain ridge, we decended to our campsite near the Mt. Torres, and its glaciers and lake that rest at its base.

The next morning we woke up early for what was, all told, a really long day. We woke up at 6am and, under the veil of clouds, climbed up to the Glacier Grande at the base of the mountain. To get there we needed to pull ourselves across a river on a rope hand over hand, and hike along its beautiful glacial lake. Once there, we strapped on our crampons and got a lesson in glacier hiking (Flat feet, legs apart, side step on steep surfaces, always align your feet to the ice grain). Hiking on the glacier was absolutely fantastic. I had done it before with my parents in New Zealand on the Fox glacier, but this was less travelled, no set route, with steep falls to either side, really quite an experience. We made our way up to a flatter section (I learned there are two types of sections V´s (that we were hiking on earlier, which are steeper but safer because you can see the bottome) and A`s (that are up much higher and more dangerous because the drops are covered by a thin bit of ice)). Once actually, when we were walking along, we heard an ominous booming sound with each step, and carefully moved ourselves off the hollow ice. So we walked our way up to an ice wall a bit up on the glacier, and had our lunch there, while Lucho climbed up it and attached a bolee to the top. We then proceeded to get our 5 min lesson in ice climbing,(left ice axe, right ice axe, left crampon, right crampon) and each had our turn trying out our new skills on the wall. Tirirng, but really fun. On our way off the glacier we saw about 20 people getting on, from the 5 other companies, so it was wonderful that we got up so earlier and really had the glacier all to ourselves for several hours.

From then on it was a race to hike out of the park and back to El Chaltén in time for the 6 o´clock bus. We busted our butts and got there with 15 minutes to spare before being wisked away back onto a 4 hour bus ride to El Calafate. As fate would have it, I met a musician(guitarist) named Daniel who lives with his family in El Chaltén and was on his way into Calafate to play with his band that night. Calafate was just beginning a 4 day festival of Argentinan music (Rock Nacional) and all the famous bands of Argentina were coming in to play a big open air concert. Daniels band had just won a battle of the bands in Buenos Aires, and was set to play right next to the festival in a popular bar. We talked about all things music, and ended up with him asking me if I wanted to stop by and help his band setup before the gig. Of course I said sure. When we got back I ran back to the hostel, dropped off my stuff, picked up my earplugs and headed to the festival. When I got there, I found they had A LOT of equipment (I´ve forgetten how it is with Rock bands...) but also a LOT of people to help setup, so I just sat back and enjoyed. I caught a bit of the large concert outside and had a long cold walk home to my hostal, planning to get up at 7 the next morning and catch a bus to chile.

But life had other plans. I did indeed wake up the next day, to find myself with a big fever, and there were no bus tickets till tomorrow for chile. So I slept, and rested, and nyquiled, and rested. I cooked myself some chicken soup, imitating my moms recipe as best as I could remember and I think I did a descent job. Did make me remeber that I want to learn every little recipe she knows when I get home, because they would have been so helpful on my trip :).

The next day took me across the border to Puerto Natales (still sick). Playing it safe, I decided to continue down to Punta Arenas that night to get checked up on the next day. When I arrived, I found myself straight up pampered by the loving chilean couple in charge of my hospedaje. The dad is a judge and took me to the best hospital in town where he knew the doctors and stayed with me to make sure I got the translations of everything right. Turns out I´m ok, just a little bronchitis that I´ve spent the past few days recovering from. My travel fatigue wears at me and I feel the urge to get to warmer environs of Buenos Aires, a change of pace, so I think I will save Torres del Paine for another trip.

All said, I´m still very happy I came to Chile, because I got to see a side of Chile other than Santiago, one much more friendly, casual, still expensive, but also filled with people that I can actually understand. I thought it was because I was getting better at spanish, but I watched a TV show last night and I just think its that people from Santiago speak a rare breed of spanish. In fact I´ve found that in all the countries, that the cities have their own languages which are always more difficult to understand... no difference with the US either....

Ok, Love to all, and hopefully I´ll write again a bit sooner this time :)
Oh and Pictures are coming! Many many pictures, as soon as I find a good connection.

Jesse

Glaciers! Glaciers! (El Calafate, Argentina)

So, I´m in El Calafate, Argentina... and its only been... 10 days? I spent 10 days in El Bolson?! How? Why? Well, Its a funny story. I was waiting for my bank card, which I lost all the way back in Santiago to show up from the states. The funny part is that it was sitting in the bus station, just waiting for me for a week, while I toiled, labored, sweat, and cry, trying to work it out with Fedex representatives, Wamu representatives, Club Andino (where I sent the card) representatives, and Correo Argentina (where I redirected the card) representatives, over the phone, on the internet and in person.

Am I still upset? No, but I do feel more than a little foolish.

Luckily it provided me with the time to do a sublimely wonderful 4 day trek in the mountains around Hielo Azul. Accompanying me was the usual company of Kathleen, Andreas, and Katrine, but we also had the addition of Bruno from Rosario (which is a few hours north of Buenos Aires). It was a wonderful hike... heres the lowdown.

• 1st Day: 6 hour hike up 1300 meters to the base of the Hielo Azul Glacier(Blue Ice, go figure...). This was the testing day to see how my leg would fair, and it felt great! It also was a reminder of what I learned in Colca Canyon, that 1000m is actually quite a lot more than 1000 ft. :) (3.3 times to be percise). Awaiting us up top was a beutiful refugio with water pressure, home cooking and great veiws. We celebrated Kathleen´s birthday in style with the free homade beer they gave us.
• 2nd Day: We changed our plans and stayed an extra day at the refugio so that we could climb up to see the glacier. The path was steep... well no, the path was nonexistent! Which made for a great adventure on the way up and tricky footing on the way down. I walked up alone, and it was quite an empowering feeling to boulder up some unmarked terrain to a glacier up high in the Andes.
• 3rd Day: We descend to Cajon del Azul, walking for 3 hours over a mountain ridge and then decending into the neighboring valley. The thing is... in argentina, they don´t really understand the concept of ´gradual´, so on our way down we were bassically falling, running, grabbing on to trees to stop ourselves from sliding down the mountain. And of course, half way through, the trail just disappears. At that point, Kathleen and I just started running, hopping logs, really hauling, and we decended the whole 1000m in around 45 mins. The Cajon is a small canyon carved by the crystal blue river and was just beautiful.
• 4th Day: With what scraps of food we have left (I think it was 7 crackers and 2 pieces of salami) we walk back out to the road. I walked with Maria, from BA, who we met in the refugio, and we talked all about cooking zucchini. Apparently, down here they do zuchinni boats down here too, mom, but they use a white sauce! Also they use these cool round zuchinnis that they have down here... and white eggplant! I should bring some back... give you guys some variety.

So, as soon as my card arrived, I was out of there, hopped a bus that day to Rio Gallegos..... 24 hours. And not an easy 24 hours either, like in Chile, a LONG 24 hours. When I got there I was more than ok with the fact that they had no buses to El Calafate till the next day and I finally got a good nights sleep (I´ve been sleeping on bad mattresses for 10 days now).

And now here I am!

A small town El Calafate is about one thing and one thing only, Glaciers!

Tommorrow is the famous Perito Moreno and the next day I might hop the 4 hours up to El Chaltén to do some hiking and maybe even, if I´m up to it, ice climbing.

Chao and Love Chicos!

Home of the Hippies (El Bolson, Argentina)

Hey Everyone!

Just a quick update from Patagonia...

I now feel comfortable saying Patagonia because everywhere I look is some new sharp snow covered peak or glacial lake. Where we last left off, I was working my way south, then located in Bariloche.

Bariloche was a very touristy, yet equally beautiful town with a fetish for chocolate, mountains, and all things german/swiss. The buildings all had a swiss architecture to them, and it was almost to much for Katrine, who just felt that she was back in Europe. It´s also the chocolate capital of Argentina, and we definately put in a good effort on understanding the whole breadth and depth of artesenal argentinian chocolate.

Unfortunately, I left my backpack in the taxi on the way in and lost it! AGAIN!

REALLY unfortunately is that it contained my journal. Now this is sort of my online journal too, but my journal really meant a lot to me, had a lot of the personal thoughts and contemplations, and just in general was shaping up to be a great memory keepsake. So I spent at least 2 days sort of... well sulking around, asking the taxi company if anyone had found it, and doing a whole lot of nothing. I then got my act together, chalked it up to the continual process of accepting change, and started looking for some of things I lost. Which means, books (Matilda in spanish, spanish dictionary), sunscreen, medicine, and my journal. Not all that much really, once again I was lucky that I didn´t have any valuables in there, just goes to show that I should never stick valuables in my backpack :).

So... after all this, we decided we wanted to go for a hike. My friends decided to go on a 3 day hike, up over on a glacier. It sounded wonderful. It didn´t occur to me until we were walking around that day, but I realized that I couldn´t go with them. I strained my leg pretty badly outside Copacabana, Bolivia, and ever since its been sporadicaly feeling strained again. I realized that I wouldn´t want that to happen to me again out in the wilderness, but yet I´m going to have lots of trekking opportunities in the near future and want to do them, so I would start up slowly and work my way up to multiday treks again.

The next day, they left on the trek, and I took a newly met Israeli friend up to Cerro Otto, what was supposed to be an easy 4km hike up and down for a nice afternoon. Well the trail, was a nice gentle slope, but I didn´t really see it, and we ended up walking up an extremely steep incline that went all the way beneath the gondola to the top. My friend decided halfway up that he wasn´t so into it anymore, but I continued on to the top, and then took the trail (which turned out to be 9km) down. All in all, it turned out to be longer than I had expected, but it felt great! I realized that my calf is just strained and tight, and that with lots of streching and strengthening, I can be back up and trekking in no time [knock on wood :)].

But enough about me, what about the places I´ve been?

Well, after the hike, I grew ancy about Bariloche, eager to move on, so I hopped a bus last night, beautiful bus ride by the way, to El Bolsòn. Described in Lonely Planet as, `the closest you can get to Berkeley, California in South America`, I would offer my own description as a mix between Berkeley, California and Sedona, Arizona, swirled together into one big hippie-organic-energyfield bundle and splashed down into the Patagonian Andes.

What does this mean? Beautiful mountains, a laid back feel, lots of parks with lots of backpackers and hippies lying around barefoot and guitar wielding, and some of the best ice cream in Argentina.

I´m set to stay here and relax a bit until my debit card finally shows up (I lost it back in Satiago). In some ways I feel like the rythem of the the trip has been for me to lose things, find them, replace them, lose them, replace them... oh well, asì es la vida.

So, Chao Chao for now,
Jesse

Southward... (Bariloche, Argentina)

Man, where has the time gone, it feels like January just disapeared...

I´ve spent the past month traveling from Mendoza to Bariloche, something I thought would take me just a day. In fact, I almost just bought a direct ticket from Mendoza. Of course, I didn´t, and one month later I find myself here. I´ve been traveling with a group of friends the whole time, a group thats fluctuated from 3 to 5 people depending on the various locations we´ve been.

You´ll see these people littered throughout the 3 new albums of photos that I´ve posted (I´ve also updated the map, give it a look! http://ballofdirt.com/journeys/15065.html), so let´s get to know them...

Left to Right: Kathleen, Andreas, Katrine, and Johanas

1) Kathleen, 24, tree planter girl from Canada. I´ve been traveling with her since we met in Copacabana, Bolivia, with exception of a week detour into Chile. She´s an artist, guitar player, and soon to be teacher when she returns to BC. Great companion who, among other things has taught me the value of taking care of myself, contributing to the group, and cooking.

2) Andreas, 41, traveller from Austria/Italy. Andreas brings a touch of class to the group, with his ever-poised demeanor, fine italian cooking, and heaps of sarcasm when you least expect it. He met Kathleen in Mendoza and we´ve been together since. He´s taught me new understanding of ´going with the flow´ and how to cook a mean aldente pasta.

3) Katrine, 24, occupational therapist from Belgium. With her big brown curly hair and welcoming smile, Katrine does good as an ambassador of Belgian good will. She used to be a gymnast and thus has been teaching me the value of streching, and Kathleen the art of handstands and flips. Fresh off a Columbian romance, she´s also quite good with the spanish and brings a ´can do´ spirit to everything she does.

4) Johanas, 25, criminologist from Belgium. The other half of the fearsome Belgian twosome, Johanas is a very friendly and empathetic human being. Through in a good sense of humor and a desire to address societies ills, and you get some really good company. Unfortunately, he had to return to his native land two days ago, before we came to Bariloche, but we wish him all the best in his future working with refugees!

So... quite a interesting bunch, and as you´ve now read, we´re down to 4 at the moment. That will probably thin out more as things progress, as Andreas is moving west towards the island Chiloe in Chile, although Katrine and Kathleen are both working their way towards Ushauia as well.

And that´s where I´m headed. Down South. Way South, 1000km from Antartica, and the most southern city in the world. Along the way I hope to see some glaciers, penguins, and the sharp rocky mountains that charecterize southern Patagonia.

Yes... that´s where I´m going, but what have I done for the past month? Where have I been?
Well, as I listed in the last post, From Mendoza, I´ve snaked my way rather slowly down through:

...6 hour bus south

• Malargue - Small rural town nestled up against the Andes, I spent a week here with Kathleen and Andreas, hiking, farming, siestaing{it was really hot}, eating ice cream, biking to a fish farm and finally finishing my oversized book, The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul by Rudy Rucker
  

...2 hour bus north

• San Rafael- The urban connection point between Malargue and Mendoza, I just spent a few hours in my sister city, dinner and then back on the bus south

...8 hour bus south

• Neuquén - The capital of the district of the same name, a large pleasent city with nothing of note besides the fact that I flew next to someone from Neuquén on my flight from Lima to Cuzco. Of course at the time I never thought I would actually go here, so it was a trip. Kathleen and I spent an afternoon waiting around and then hopped a micro to push onward.

...3 hour bus south east

• Junín de Los Andes - yippied (yuppie hippie) up small town, close to ski resorts, and briming with a lake tahoe vibe. The first place where Kathleen and I encountered the fact that its actually tourist high season and its possible to not have a place to stay if you don´t reserve ahead. Luckily, our taxi driver knew someone (a local shop merchant) who rented out a house, so for a night its like we were local Junínians, with a little cottage to ourselves.


• San Martin de Los Andes - Whatever we found in Junín, San Martin (just an hour south) was like an enlarged version. Bigger city, with a big lake, pronounced moutains, covered with trees... San Martin would be our home base for the next week.
• 
  

We also found ourselves with the problem once again of having no place to sleep in San Martin, but once again we also were helped by a recommendation from our friendly taxi driver. This time it landed us at Casa Coco, the abode of one charesmatic reinasance man by the name, not suprisingly, of Coco. It wasn´t a hostel in the technical sense, as it was just a house, but Coco had set up the upstair room to squeeze about 20 people into a row of bunk beds and every little nook and cranny of the attic. All I can say is we loved it.

First off, the back story, Coco is an extremely charesmatic later-aged man who welcomes everyone to his house with a hug and a kiss. He really is a reniasance man, a painter, an arquitechet (He actually built the odd looking Swiss style house), a tango singer with a PA in his living room and a mind full of melodies and lyrics, a chef who would always prepare some asada (barbecue) or pizza each night, and a lover of travel and language.

The real highlight for me was getting to see him use his singing talents, which we employed quite frequently due to the fact that there were two professional tango players who lived in the house! Julia (Bandoleón, a strange button accordian that shows no sign of organization) and Dardo (Accordian, his name means Dart in spanish) were a wonderful pair of musicians and people from Rosario (North of Buenos Aires). They were in an Orchestra Típico together back at home, and playing in the resturants of San Martin for several months. I had the great fun of sitting around Casa Coco with them on several nights, doing my best to keep up with the tango skills. To be honest, I think we did best when we played some buena vista social club tunes.

But this is how Casa Coco was, always full of music, always full of life. For our first few days, there was a group of 8 or so 20 something guys from BA (Buenos Aires). Every night was loud and rocous until at least 6 in the morning, and since the whole house was basically just one giant room, we had to learn to sleep with it. Still, we didn´t mind too much, it just added to the great feel of the place.

Anyways... according to plan, Kathleen and I met back up with Andreas, Katrine, and Johanas in San Martin and decided to rent a car for a week and drive around touring the many surrounding lakes that make up the Argentinian Lake District. We piled a bunch of food and tents into the car and took off for Parque National Lanín. Simply put, this trip was a vacation from the vacation and it was wonderful as such. We were treated to astounding veiws of Volcan Lanín and the surrounding lakes. Rather than see all the lakes, we took a day or two at each one we visited and got to enjoy the tranquility of camping, even with our lacking of supplies. Luckily, all the sites had fire pits and we found ourselves cooking some Parilla (barbecue) in true Argentinian fashion ( you burn the wood in a corner and move the coals under the grill when they´re glowing hot, suprisingly enough, you don´t need that much wood to cook a bunch of meat).

As an unexpected highlight, we looked up into the sky at night and were suprised to find a VERY large comet just sitting there, streaming in the sky. Comet McNaught (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_McNaught), which supossedly is the brightest one in the past 40 years. The beauty of which being that it really wasn´t in my plans to go comet hunting, but McNaught is only visible from the southern hemisphere, and was only discovered on August 6, 2006 anyways. The first night I saw it, I actually just thought it was an airplane in the distance, over the lake, so i didn´t tell anyone. But the next night, it was brighter, and it was clear that it was something quite special in the sky. I did my best to take some photos, but ran up against the limitations of my night photography equipment/ability.

When it was all said and done, it was time to travel south to Bariloche, the launching point for southern Patagonia.... but thats a story for another day....

ALL THE BEST!

Enter Argentina (San Martin de Los Andes, Argentina)

Two Weeks!

Two weeks, and not a single entry.... that leaves a lot to fill in! For starters, I´m in Argentina! And all respect to Chile, I think I like it a bit better here primarily based on two reasons:

1. It´s Cheaper
2. I can actually understand what people say

Its suprising how much these two things contribute to your experience.

So... since the last entry (where I was just about to enter Argentina) I´ve been wine tasting in Mendoza for a few days, hiking and siestaing in Malargue for one sweltering week, passing through San Rafael, Neuquén, and Junín de los Andes in search of cooler pastures, and now find myslef lounging on the lakeside beaches of San Martín de los Andes.

Along the way, my memory card decided to break, AGAIN, so I lost all my pictures of wine tasting in Mendoza, and have only a few of my recent travels( coming soon! ). Luckily, I´ve decided to follow my parents advice and get my self a new card (worthwhile expenditures, Tools and Memories!)


Oh... but the internet cafe is closing... so this will have to be all for now... but know that I am alive and well!

To be continued...

Feliz Año! (Santiago, Chile)

Well now, don´t I have a lot to catch up with. I find myself in the bus station of Santiago, with several hours to kill, waiting to hop on a bus to magical Argentina (Mendoza).... So what have I done in the past week?

Well I´m so glad you asked. Since fleeing the heat of the Atacama Desert I´ve found myself diving into the industrialized, modernized, Europeanized, world that is Santiago Chile. The streets are big and clean, the metro works better than New York, and everyone is decked out in super trendy clothes and ´trendy´ european mullets. The best I can describe it is like an odd cross between Los Angeles and Spain.

And what have I done here? Why, I´ve had the wonderful opportunity to visit friends from my I-House years. I arrived into Santiago after a 23 hour, yes as in 23, bus ride from San Pedro de Atacama, good thing the Chilean buses are some of the best I´ve ever been on, sorry US, even Peru´s got you beat. So, I stumble out of the bus, culture shocked and what not, and meander my way to the suburban outskirts of Estoril, Las Condes, where I am graciously greeted by Nicolas (Nico) Brenner, a friend from IHouse who I haven´t seen in 3 years. But no matter, he sets about making me feel the most at home I´ve felt on this trip. THANK YOU NICO!

The next 3 days, I literally just wandered around Santiago. I found my way to the Palacio de Moneda museum, and Plaza de Armas, but mostly just spent my time getting lost on the Micros (Buses) and enjoying watching everyday Santiago life. What a contrast! All the pros and cons of modern society were shoved up in my face and left me in a very conflicted mood. I was lucky enough to meet up with Diego for a night on the town where he introduced me to one of the two reasons ´Chileans are Alcoholics´ Piscolal, Pisco mixed with Coca-Cola. (The other being cheap good wine). THANK YOU DIEGO!

I also met up with Johanna from all my Jungle adventures and Rahel from Uyuni. We took a night, cooked some pasta, went out for a bit and enjoyed eachother´s company. Its strange how often I see the same people when travelling but I guess that´s the point of the whole ´steam´ of tourists thing (Ask Jerome Engel if you need further explanation). Rahel also was leaving to New Zealand on Dec. 31 so she GAVE me her Lonely Planet South America to replace the one I lost in Arequipa. THANK YOU RAHEL!

But what was I going to do for New Years? Enter Juan Eduardo Justiniano and his gracious family. I hopped a 2 hour bus to the coast, skipping the beach institutions of Valparaiso and Viña del Mar, and heading to the small elite hamlet of Zapallar. Juan´s family really took me in and embraced me as one of their clan, and when I say clan, I mean clan! In addition to immeadiate family, there were cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and all of their friends. I never got an official headcount, but I think we came in at around 12 or 15. Juan had a very nice house positioned a skip and a toss from the beach and everyone piled in to make for a very wonderful atmosphere.

Not content to just let me sit on the beach, Juan got me up real early (10:30) to go mountain biking in the hills, which for all in the know, look EXACTLY like the hills of Marin! I was in a wierd time-space warp, where I had travelled thousands of miles to come..... well.... home. In a combination of a poorly set up bike and me being a bad mountain biker, I proceded to, over the next 4 hours, almost kill myself several times while Juan Eduardo hardly broke a sweat. Alright for Jesse being out of shape!

I barely made it back to the house, surviving the good intentioned chiding for all at how long it took me, to find myself presented with one of the best lunches I´ve had on my trip. The family Justinano really knows how to eat! I relaxed on the beach, was suprised to meet Diego again on a chance encounter, learned the mysteries of paddle ball, took another nap, and woke up fcr the beautiful display of fireworks (LOW DOWN!) that I´ll never forget. Forget partying, I was exhausted, so I went to sleep at a tidy 1am, to wake up to a New Year. THANK YOU JUAN EDUARDO AND FAMILIA JUSTINANO!

And that brings us to now... where.... I don´t really know what I´m doing. I´m going to Mendoza, and from there south, back on the road. I could have stayed much longer in Zapallar, and the family Justinano were more than gracious enough to let me stay (I payed my rent with guitar music), but I felt almost TOO comfortable there, if that made any sense. A cross between Marin and Monterey, it was beautiful, wonderful, and relaxing, but well, like being home. Which makes me realize what a great place I live, and I have all that to look forward to when I return.