So I just arrived in Buenos Aires and checked into my hostel after three bus trips across the continent.  It’s after midnight and I’m really tired so I won’t be going out to check out the city until tomorrow.  Yesterday all the buses to Argentina were sold out in Valparaí­so for the day so I took one to Santiago where I was able to find a small bus for a good price to Mendoza, which left after a couple of hours of waiting.  It turns out I chose the worst seat on the bus, which didn’t recline and wasn’t fully coupled to the floor and wobbled like mad as we crossed the road over the Andes.  So on that account I didn’t sleep much.  There were some kids from Mendoza on the bus who were pretty cool though and shared some yerba matte with me.

After we arrived in Mendoza at five this morning I found a bus for Buenos Aires that left at seven.  I’ve heard this trip is pretty bland and to some extent it is, but it wasn’t quite so boring as I had expected.  The landscape of the Argentine pampas is exceedingly flat, like I’ve only seen before in South Texas.  However it is green and covered in farmland and pasture and has a lot of streams and small lakes beading through it.  I saw a lot of ducks, birds of prey, and surprisingly some flamingos.  Really, this part of Argentina is absolutely indistinguishable from the agrarian areas of the US Midwest and some areas on the West.  It looks the same down the the modern grain silos and the signs for what pesticide is sprayed or what GMO crop is used in the fields.  If you’re interested in this sort of thing here is a link to an article concerning the genenically modified soy crop in Argentina:  Argentina Soya-fication.

I’m really looking forward to exploring the city tomorrow.  Goodnight.

(more…)

So this morning I arrived back in Chile, and it feels better than I expected it would to be back.  It took me a while to get through immigration and out of the airport, then to the bus station, and then here to Valparaíso, but once I got here I checked into a really pleasant hostel and spent the afternoon walking around the hills and the downtown.

There is something enchanting about the electric trolleybuses, the pedestrian alleys and stairways that wind seemingly without direction around the hills, the multi-colored houses, the endless murals crowding each other for space, the smell of piss in the streets and stepping in green dogshit in the middle of the sidewalk.  So, it’s not perfect, but that’s Valparaíso.

Even though it wasn’t that long ago that I left this place it really feels as if I’m discovering the city for the first time in my real life after dreaming about it for nights on end.  I had forgotten how much I love it.  After five months living here that weren’t always easy I feel like this Valparaí­so still has a lot of secrets and surprises waiting to unfold for me.

Beyond these fanciful expectations I’m certain that if I do end up living here in a few months my experiences will be radically different from before, given both that, even though they run into each other, Valparaío is so much different from Viña del Mar where I lived before and that I have a much better command of Spanish now than I did before.

(So I left the charger for my camera in the States and to save the batteries I’m not taking any pictures until I get to Buenos Aires.  With any luck though my mother will be kind enough to send it and it should arrive soon.  I’ll have many more opportunities to photograph Valparaí­so.)

So after getting back to Seattle from Vancouver, BC to celebrate the New Year my friends and I went to a bar a shared a bottle of Malbec from Mendoza, Argentina that I picked out.  The next morning I was picked up by Paul, Mark, Adam, and Twan and we headed down to Portland.  I hadn’t seen Mark or Paul in a long time and it was cool catching up with them.  I hadn’t met Adam or Twan before but they were both pretty cool guys.

After getting there we arrived at the Martin’s brother’s house and had some drinks and then went to bed early so we could get up for skiing in the morning.**

We skied Mount Hood Meadows that day on almost perfect powder right after a pretty good snowstorm.  This was my first time skiing for about three years or so and it took me some time to regain my confidence, but I did pretty well.  I had almost forgotten how much I enjoy skiing.

Afterwards we went to this bar called Charlie’s up on the mountain in a town called Government Camp.  Marvin told me that his dad used to come to this bar when he was young and that it still is exactly the same as it was back then.

(So my camera died at the start of this trip and I had forgotten both my extra battery and my charger, so none of these photos are mine).

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This is us at Charlie’s

This is Adam after his teachers Paul and Marvin threw him in a snowbank and took pictures.

The next day we opted to go to Ski Bowl instead, which I liked better because there were fewer people and the runs were funner and more challenging.  Marvin’s dad used to be  ski instructer here and this is where he grew up, and possibly concieved, as he told me.

Apparently that day at Mount Hood Meadows some old guy got hit by a snowboarder and died and the dude that hit him just took off.  What a bastard.

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We only came off the hill to drink beer and eat nachos.  Actually, I didn´t have any of the nachos becuase I´m a vegetarian now.  Adam did though, even though he is also recently a vegetarian.  If you look closely at his sleave you can see the tears off shame he wiped off there.Â

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A band of merrymakers.

So after rockin’ Skibowl we dropped off Marvin at his brother’s place and had these killer coffee drinks and checked out his impressive vintage stereo collection and drove back to Yakima.

All the rest of the pictures from this trip are here.

I chilled out there for a couple hours until my driver Vik picked me up again and took me to Pullman.  We arrived there a little after midnight but still had time to hit up Valhallas for about an hour before it closed and then went to our buddy Mohamed’s place and hung out. My sister Laura took me to Spokane in the morning.

So due to the fact that I was travelling almost continuously during my trip to the States and that I didn’t often have reliable access to the internet when I was more stationary this entry is a little belated.

So it all started when my bud Vikrimjit picked me up from Spokane to take me to Seattle, and we ended up turning around at Vantage and heading to Pullman because being true to his character he had forgotten his passport.  For those of you that aren’t so familiar with Washington State we drove for a little over five hours to go the distance of about 70 miles or so.  Just a warning.  If you’re ever going anywhere important or far away and then look to your left to see this:

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quiz him and be sure that he is fully prepared to flee the country.  He probably wants to but isn’t.  This docile looking Punjabi would be at best the partial cause of lots more unnecissary driving during this trip.  The cool thing was that we went to Rico’s Pub, which is a bar in Pullman something over a hundred years old that we used to hang out at a lot.  Hadn’t changed much.

In the morning we drove from Pullman to Bellingham, which is near the border and met with Shammi & Rie, afterwich we proceeded to the greener pastures of Canada.  Here’s a cool photo of a peak on Snoqualmie Pass that I took from the car on the way.

We picked up this other wack Punjab named Gurri and then went to our Buddy Jay´s house to Prefunk.

I forgot that I was the only white guy there until just now when I put up this pic.  Then we went to a ghetto club on Granville Avenue which I got into for free and checked my coat for free because I tried paying in pesos.

This was a good start to the night.  As you can see from these photos everything was great.

Until Guree & Rie had some glowing, green mixed drink that turned them into flesh-eating zombies.

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I think Shammi gave it to them and made them to terrible things, but I´m not really sure what.  I don´t trust that guy.  Thank god Guree and Rie slept it off and couldn´t remember what they had done in the morning.Â

There was one girl with us who was a total floozy and was hooking up with all the guys.  Her name is Rie.

 
Rie hookin´up with Guree         Rie hookin´up with Shammi

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Rie hookin´up with Vik

As you can see from these pictures she just couldn´t make up here mind.  (Actually, she´s a really sweet girl and would never actually consider getting involved with any bad, bad types like us.)

  The next day is a blur (no, I wasn´t hung over) of sitting in Indian restuarants and eating and talking.  We got caught up in this and did it for so long that we forgot that our Punjabi driver and navigator had no idea what they were doing and left way too late to get into the Cambie, a really rad bar that was also the only one that didn´t cost like fifty dollars or more to get into that night.  So we spent the New Year in line outside the bar, which isn´t really so bad all in all but we still began to torment Vik the driver because of it.

 The prospects for the night were looking pretty dull since we weren´t willing to fork out exhorbitant amounts of money to get into a club and for some reason it´s illegal to sell alcohol in British Columbia after 10pm, even on New Year´s Eve.

We did manage to infiltrate a private Japanese party and had tea and scones.Â

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   So we were a little put out about the way New Year´s Eve had gone…

But then Guree got his hands on one of those New Year kazoo flapper thingies, which he vetted his frustration at towards everything in the street for about two hours, which was a rather entertaining spectacle.Â

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You can see here that Vik has finally cracked from all the ridicule we gave him for making us miss the New Year.  Don´t worry about him though.  Shammie took him into his lap and rocked him and sang him lullabies and he´s all better now.

So the first morning of the New Year before we headed out we stopped at Jay´s Little Caesars to have pizza.

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We made Vik beg for his pizza.

And it was back to Seattle after that.  Vik, Rie, and I spent the day at the Seattle aquiarium, which was pretty cool.  They had reversed the order that you go through it since I had last been there and the lobby was closed, I´m not sure if temporarily or not.

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This sequence of photos showing Vik sneaking up behind Rie shows without a doubt that he is a creep.

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Vik creeped up on this octopus too and it attacked him, hopefully teaching him a good lesson.  When I saw what was going on I had to rescue him.  He was my driver, after all.

 

Later that night we met up with Heather and went to a bar in West Seattle.

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Vancouver is still one of my favorite cities in the world and I always love going there.  Even though things didn´t really go as planned it was really great spending the New Year with some good friends hanging out and eating delicious food.Â

 PS You can see the complete photo set for this trip by clicking here.  I finally put up all the pics, so yo