May 2008

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I arrived in Santiago after a 27 hour bus ride from Buenos Aires. The trip should of taken much less time but while crossing the Andes we ran into a blizzard. I think I missed the page in the guidebook that said "be sure to check the weather before you try to cross."
After driving 17 hours from Buenos Aires, the landscape begin to shift from relatively flat grasslands, to foothills, to earthy red, barren mountains like northern new mexico. As we begin to ascend we watched hollywood movies and music videos including the Rock´s "The Game Plan" and my favorite "The Macarena."
As we neared the top the bus stopped and sat for 5 hours to allow a blizzard to pass.
We finally reached customs control at the summit of the mountain pass and the chilean guards took my can of garbanzo beans.
Santiago is beautiful, rainy, and downright modern.

This past sunday night, as I was doing some homework, I began to hear an enormous racket swelling in the street 8 floors below. I rushed downstairs and was greeted by a stream of persons banging all sorts of objects - mostly pots and pans and waving signs and banners.
They were protesting new grain-export taxes put in place by President Cristina. If you´ve never seen President Cristina then you´re missing out on some of the sexiest political action this side of the Hemisphere (if you´re into that whole botox- collagen injection thing). She wants to take the abundant earnings from grain exports and reinvest them in social programs within Argentina. The farmers and agriculture industry are obviously not having it.
I marched with the protesters until we reached a major intersection filled with more protesters. Everyone joined together in making as much racket as possible while police blocked roads in all four directions. I stayed out of the main mass and tried to look as inconspicuous as possible.
A young woman in the middle of the crowd silenced everyone with a speech then rallied eveyone with a song, I can only assume, was the national anthem. Then everyone dispersed, peacefully and orderly.
Farmers all over the country are allowing the shipment of grain within the country but are setting up roadbloacks all over to prevent grain from leaving the international ports.
As of now, the two sides are trading blows in the media with no clear end in-sight.
On a side-note, I´m allergic to all the grains in dispute.

Don´t mess with sorghum.

This is my last week in Buenos Aires and I'm excited and relieved to be making an exit. At the time of my departure, I will have been here 6 weeks.
The time, of course, flew by because of the routine I quickly settled into: eat breakfast, go to school for 6 hours, drink mate (stain my teeth), walk home, take a cat nap, do homework, fix dinner, have a glass of cheap wine.
I also managed to stay on budget (more or less) because of my lack of time to do other things.
My Spanish has definitely improved - I'm certainly not fluent but can get around.
While out walking today I realized how anxious I am to get into the country, away from the city. I think there is something a bit more telling about a country once you're out of its' population centers. Buenos Aires residents have a reputation for arrogance amongst their fellow countrymen, but I certainly never experienced that. Although, that bastard Barney the dinosaur refused to give me directions to the Japanese tea garden today. I'll show him....
Come Saturday I'll be heading to Santiago, Chile by bus then continuing on to Valparaiso - Pablo Neruda's hometown. There I'll meet one of my closest friends - Frank and his brother Zach. They've been traveling together though Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Before they linked up in Ecuador, Frank was traveling for 3 months through India, China, Tibet (I mean China..), and Mongolia. He stopped over in Texas for a few days then flew to South America.
On Halloween a few years back, I remember Frank dancing through throngs of college students dressed as the Bird Flu - touching as many people as possible. Then he actually got sick the next day because his thin, white coveralls covered in bird feathers failed to insulate him against the Santa Fe night.
Our plan from Valparaiso is to head south to Santiago, then back East to the wine country around Mendoza, then to the Sierra Mountains in central Argentina. From there they'll continue on to Uruguay and I'll head North to Chile/Bolivia.