good luck

While walking in the beautiful city of Rosario I came across one gorgeous girl and one sabotaging bird. That's right.. Sabotaging bird. She was cute and alone sitting on a bench in the park and I was standing at the corner debating whether or not I should go up to her and ask if I was going the right way to the river. I was getting nervous just thinking about it so I decided I was going to walk away until she looked up an smiled. I then cleared my throat and was practicing what I was going to ask in my head. The truth is, I do this in English, but Spanish is even worse..

¿Qué tal? ¿Dónde está el río?"
¿Qué tal? ¿Dónde está el río?"
¿Qué tal? ¿Dónde está el río?"

And then I felt something on my face. Bird shit. More like pterodactyl, large flying thing in the sky, shit.. This seagreen & white toothpaste colored poop somehow managed to fall right between my eyes and roll down my nose. The street had loads of folks causally strolling down the boulevard, the sky was absent of everything, and I was on the way to practice my Mississippi backwoods Spanish with a pretty girl until the diarrhea bird came along and ruined everything! I'm not sure if the girl on bench saw exactly what had happened since the poop blindsided me. I immediately raised my hand in one swift ninja motion, wiped it off my face with my sleeve, and continued walking like nothing ever happened hoping that it is true what they say about birds pooping on you-- it means good luck--- and I'm gonna need it real soon. Just checked my bank account.. Now that's a funny sight to see....

The Dread Mullet

Let me introduce you to a little something called the Dread Mullet



Last night I went to a few bars with some locals and got approached by a guy who just had a mullet. I was already a bottle of wine and 3 cocktails gone to the wind when this guy asked me if he could have one of my dreadlocks. Believe it or not, I've gotten asked this question several times by people from all over. I always politely decline peoples request because I think it is fucking strange, but last night I thought why not?! The guy takes out his scissors and before I know it my favorite dreadlock is now a knub sticking out the top of my head! He then gets his friend to tie my one long blond dreadlock into his short, dark, Argentinean mullet.

It was a very sad moment, but I can't help but laugh when I think about how somewhere in Argentina there is a guy who has one of my dreads tied into his mullet...

weird.. werid.

This is what I've been doing with my life..

wasting it away here







For the past 5 days I've been in Cafayete, Argentina. The Mendoza of the north, this beautiful little wine country is a place I gleefully did nothing in but drink wine and eat empanadas. It is the only place in the world where the Torrontes grape is grown, a grape used to make the most refreshing & well-rounded white wine I've ever tasted. The Bonardo grape is also grown in Cafayete. I bought a case of both of them from Nanni--the oldest bodega in Cafayete, as well as the only organic winery in the region. During a wine tour I was told that the US imports 60% of the wine from Cafayete while they keep the rest. The difference in buying it here as opposed to the States is that it is about $30 bucks cheaper:)

lost in translation

These are my two favorite poorly translated signs




These are my two favorite poorly translated signs

Let me backtrack a bit

This morning I woke up and realized that I never posted anything about my favorite part of Bolivia- Salar de Uyuni!!



Let me backtrack a bit...

Salar de Uyuni, the largest salt flats in the world, has been the most surreal piece of landscape I've seen. Roughly the size of Connecticut, this completely desolate plot of land looks like snow and ice, but is actually the remains of a former great lake. Wow!!



The only way to get there is by a tour, unfortunately, but luckily our guide Edgar was awesome! It was 3 days of waking up at 5:00am in the bone-cutting cold and cruising around the salt flats and the incredible area around it. It is seriously one endless blanket of salt. The people in this area of Bolivia use this salt for everything from cooking to building homes and making toys for their kids.

About 45minutes further down from where the salt flats begin there is this bizarre island of cacti. There were hundreds of cacti all in the middle of a salt island with some dating back to 1200 years and being over 100 meters tall!







There were lagoons, flamingos, geysers, volcanoes, canyons, poisonous lakes etc... all within this 200km radius. Things that scientist have been trying to explain and speculating about for decades!





And there were things I was trying to explain like Why are there gigantic llamas made out of salt? And why is it that I'm always going to places where I have to sleep in all of my clothes as well as under 2 sleeping bags & alpaca wool because it is so damn cold everywhere? Or why is it that people from Europe want to bicycle to the salt flats in the middle of the road so they can get ran over by a tour jeep??

Yep. That almost happened. On the last day our driver was speeding along desolate salt earth, and then, as we cross over the hill there were 3 hippie bicyclist with all their gear strolling along in the middle of the road. We would of ran over all three if Edgar, with his mouth full of coca leaves, jolted the wheel to the left, the hippies jumped to the right, and Edgar's chewed coca leaves went everywhere! No one was hurt, but I think everyone was a little pissed off. Edgar was speaking what seemed to be Quechua swear words, the hippies were giving dumbfounded stares and lifted middle fingers, so I decided my job was to translate what each one was gesturing to the other.

I turned to Edgar and said The hippies think you are a reckless driver.

I then walked over to the hippies and asked if they were okay and then proceeded to give them a lecture on the etiquette of cycling.

What the hell guys?!! I asked. You can't cycle in the middle of a road where tour jeeps go and are notorious for driving crazy, and furthermore, you need a flag attached to the back of your bike so people can see you! I felt like a minivan driving soccer mom lecturing her kids about seat belt safety or something.. It was strange. But there is nothing that bothers me more then people who don't know how to ride bicycles or drivers who don't know how to drive around them.

After I calmed down Edgar and lectured the hippies I got back into the jeep and we drove off while the hippies tried to get back on their bikes and continue their 1 year of cycling across S. America (one guy actually started in San Francisco, California, cycled all through Mexico, Central America, and finally made it to Bolivia..)

It was an 8 hr. drive back to Uyuni, in which I slept the whole time until I had to make Edgar stop so I could go pee behind a cactus. We got back to Uyuni around 5:00pm which was just enough time for me to buy a train ticket to the Bolivian border, then hop on another 7hr bus, get checked by Argentinian officials across the border, then hop on another 7hr bus into Salta. Total driving time= 30hrs. Finally made it to Salta, but that is a whole other story.... :)

learning new things everyday

It seems strange going from a country with toilets like this



to a country with bathrooms like these.



And it wasn't until today that I found out that what I've been washing my hands in is not some strange Argentinean sink placed in an odd location, but a French bidet. My friend had to explain to me that these are used to wash your ass; not hands. Ohhhhhh...

There are just some things they don't teach you in Mississippi...

very important thing to know...

before you visit a country (especially for a long period of time) check to see if they operate on the same electrical system as you because if you don´t you could be stuck with a dead IPOD, computer, and camera like me!!!

Yep. Argentina & Chile operate on an European electrical system. Didn´t know that. And now I have a bag full of dead battery electronics. Simply marvelous..