Comodoro Rivadavia

Ricardo picked us up on the outskirts of Trelew, a literal two-horse town with a picturesque main drag about two city blocks long. As promised, Daniel had dropped us off at a trucker stop right on the border of Trelew, where he had to be for some mysterious reason he hadn´t elaborated on. As much as people have cautioned against walking the highway and hoping for luck (for various reasons, the most obvious being that if you are caught in the middle of nowhere when night falls, you´re kind of screwed), it seemed like it was where all of our luck was being found. So, after a few failed attempts, we started hiking down the highway, chasing the afternoon sun, and in no time we hitched a ride. Easypeasy.

Ricardo pointed out a strange looking animal he called a Guanaco. It looked like a llama, but he insisted it was different, and continued to tell us about how he unknowingly ate its meat for some time. "Delicious," he said. "But they should have told me before I ate it." He paused for a moment as he passed a truck, then he continued, grave and serious, as if surviving the brief encounter gave more weight to our lives, "Here, any food that they say is Patagonica, assume it has Guanaco meat." 

We all fell silent for some time. Maybe from Ricardo's wisdom. Maybe from the persistent drone of the unchanging landscape. It seemed like we had all fallen asleep. It seemed as though even Ricardo had fallen asleep at the wheel, and by some Argentine voodoo, he was able to continue driving with his eyes closed, weaving through trucks and slower moving cars with unnatural ease.

A British tenor singing a Spanish song in the style of opera came on and almost as if on cue, the road changed. The monotonous flatness of the countryside morphed into hills and cliffs. And in response, the once faithfully straight road turned into a snake. Dark green foliage clung to the dusty red cliff sides, with canyon-like valleys carving through every so often, allowing glimpses of the dark blue calm of the sea to the east. All of this hung on the backdrop of a light blue sky smattered with white-washed clouds. It was beautiful. 

The cliffs grew in size, or the road carved closer to sea level, making the cliff look larger by way of optical illusion. Whichever may be the case, they became more impressive and I became more and more aware of my tiny, so easily measured mortality. As we entered the boundaries of Comodoro Rivadavia, the green no longer clung to the dusty red earth. Even the red faded. The earth was just dusty. 

The city of Comodoro Rivadavia was strange. After being on the open road for so long, drowning in such an unchanging landscape, suddenly being sandwiched in a city carved between cliffside and sea felt strange. Not good. Not bad. Just strange. There was an intangible awareness suddenly forced upon me. An awareness of what, I had no idea, but I wouldn't mind finding out. The city reminded me of the video game series, Zelda. Specifically, the cave city of the Gorons. The people running about industrious and serious, dwarfed by the scale of their surroundings. 

Butted right up against semi-skyscrapers, the dusty gray cliff loomed. On its face were carved lines, like wrinkles drawn in with a ruler, zigzagging with industrial vehicles made for mining deep into the earth, sucking out precious minerals. The cliff looked pale, like a tired old woman fighting some ailment born of being malnourished. 

The streets creeped up and down steep hills, reminding me of Ankara, Turkey. It was a city clinging to a cliff so ready to unburden itself of the foreign population, ready to let everything slide off at any moment. Probably from the mines, or the fact that many of the streets were nothing more than unpaved gravel paths, even the most minute of motions lifted dust into and around the air. Comodoro Rivadavia was shrouded in a constant cloud of dust.

La Ciudad Gris, Soledad had called it. The Gray City. Having never been, and only hearing of the city, she admitted that she had no idea why. Walking through Comodoro Rivadavia, I suddenly understood why.

Tanta tierra. Much earth.

A little after 6AM. Lyndon's alarm rang. 

Ignored. 

A few minutes passed and mine rang. 

Ignored. 

It's always hard to crawl out of bed, adventure or not. After soaking in the last remnants of warmth from my lent cot, I finally, rather begrudgingly, got up and prepped for the trek ahead. 

Filled water bottle, check. 

Camera wrapped and stowed, check. 

Snacks (very important), check. 

Lyndon got up from his cot and did the same. When we were ready, Lyndon knocked on Javier and Sol's door to let us out. I could never wake people up. Sleep has always held such a sacred space for me that I've always found it extremely difficult to cut anyone's dreams short. 

We hobbled down the stairs, still a bit asleep, out the front door, through the gate, hugged and kissed Javier and Sol and started heading off.

"Hasta la vuelta, chicos!" They chased us with one last sentiment. Until your return, kids!

It's always a little bit more difficult to hitch a ride within city limits, so with Javier's suggestion, we walked to a bus station and took a bus and got off at a trucker stop near the edge of the city. The same exact spot Miguel had dropped us off almost two weeks ago. The sun was just beginning to rise. We wandered around asking trucks for a hand in helping us continue on our journey. We hobbled around awkwardly striking up conversation with anyone behind a wheel for a few hours without any luck until Lyndon suggested that we walk down the national route and throw our thumbs up into the air, like we did at Bahía Blanca. Out of ideas myself, and feeling a bit low after being turned down so many times, I agreed. So we walked down the side of the highway, taking turns strumming random chords on the guitar while the other stuck out his thumb at anything with wheels.

Anyone who's hitchhiked anywhere will tell you that rejection is normal. Some go days without successfully hitching a ride. Luckily, Argentina's asphalted backbone, Ruta 3, had been kind. And in the crisp Patagonian air tampered by the hot sun blazing across the flatlands of southern Argentina, a black SUV veered off the road onto the gravelly shoulder of the highway. 

"You guys coming or not?" A middle-aged man's head popped out the window, yelling in our general direction.

Accommodating our packs into the back seat, we settled in, Lyndon in the back with the bags and me in the front. Without much more than a smile and a hey-how's-it-going, we were off. Most will say no, some will altogether ignore your existence like some phantom from a Jack Kerouac novel. But, luckily, all it takes is one smiling soul to pull over and the journey continues.

We did the normal pleasantries, introducing ourselves, describing our faraway homelands, searching for something in common for interesting conversation. His name was Daniel, and he liked to practice his English, so we spoke in this lingua franca, each straining to neutralize his accent. It took some time before Daniel even asked where we were heading. Ruta 3 is long, stretching north and south. Wherever we were heading didn't really matter, since we were heading south just as he.

"We're heading to Comodoro Rivadavia," I said, "we've got in touch with another traveler from that city and he's agreed to house us for a bit."

"Ahh, that's kind of him," Daniel said, not looking away from the road. "Well, I'm headed to Trelew, so I can't take you all the way there. But I can drop you off at a petrol station where a lot of truckers pass by so you should be able to make it to Comodoro Rivadavia by the afternoon."

"Great," I said smiling, still not fully believing our luck with hitchhiking. "That would be really helpful!"

The conversation drifted toward Australia and it's sun-drenched beaches. I looked out the window looking for the random llamas dotting the vast landscape. 

Tanta tierra. 

Much earth. 

A blog about a blog, kind of like inception.

Boy it´s been a while. I´d apologize for letting this blog almost sizzle out, but to be fair, I´ve been busy living in the woods of an island on the edge of Patagonia (near Antartica). Out here, internet connection is a luxury that comes low on my list of necessities, you know, after plastic bags to wrap my feet in under snow boots and before peanutbutter sandwhiches. Yeah, I´ve reorganized my entire list of priorities. It´s been liberating.

For reference, a photo of what my "backyard" looks like:

Yep. Cold. And this was taken before the recent snow fall. Now we have ski slopes, but no skis. We do, however, have inflated life-saver-like devices what we use as sleds. I think I´ve crushed my coccyx and possibly a few internal organs.

Anywho, I´d like to tell y´all that I´ve been getting back to the writing. But before we dive back into the whole hashtag-memoirs-of-a-hitchhiker series I´ve been spouting out before the sabbatical, I´d like to share the latest blog I´ve written. Yeah, I know, I wrote a blog for a blog that wasn´t my blog, which I have all but ignored for over a year. It felt almost like a vivid inception-like dream of commiting regicide - if the king were a little-read journal on some interwebs.com, and regicide meant ignore. But hey, we must destroy to create (Shiva reference because sometimes I let my hippie show).

Back to the blog, I´ve recently teamed up with one of the most beautiful souls I´ve run into in these humble travels that have become my life. Jessica Brookes is a yogini, healer, writer, traveler, photographer, reader of poetry, and all around swell superhero of a gal. Founder of The Shanti Space  and Jectaspecta, she´s been featured on The Telegraph, so you know homegirl´s legit.

The blog post talks about a little adventure Karma Yoga (a little project of mine) had with Qultural Nomade, and how general hippiness ensued on a patagonian beach. I´m sure you´ll dig it.

Thusly inasmuch and what´s most importantly of all, click on all of these links because this is how we writers feed our faceholes.

Pura vida!
ERK

Puerto Madryn con Javier y Sol

Waking up in Patagonia. Breathless.

I collapsed onto the ground. We had hiked about 20 kilometers with huge knapsacks on our backs. The sun was hot. I laid down on the rocky cliff overlooking the ocean and fell asleep for a few minutes. I dreamt briefly of California. No real place in particular, just cabins made of rough-hewn timber sitting underneath the Californian sun.

When I woke up, the sun was beginning to skirt the horizon. "We should probably set up the tent before it gets too dark to see anything," I said to Lyndon.

"Where? Right here?"

I looked around, "Sure, why not?" We were on a rocky cliff overlooking the ocean. The tide was already beginning to recede, baring a glistening rocky coast, rubbed smooth by the lapping waters. It was beautiful.

So we set up camp, placed our bags in the tent and, as if by cue, twilight came. I suggested we did some yoga, Lyndon agreed, so we did a variation of Chandra Namaskar (Moon Salutation). Synchronizing my breath with my movement under nothing but the light of the moon and the few stars peaking through twilight with the sound of waves behind me, I felt completely at peace. Even the cold Patagonian air stopped it's slow creep into my bones. I felt warm and happy.

Fully enveloped in the night, Lyndon and I sat at the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean and pulled out the bottle of whiskey we'd been saving since Bahía Blanca. We drank and talked about yoga, hitch-hiking, and how nice Javier and Sol were for lending us their tent. We had arrived the day before, cooked up a mean dinner of pineapple vegetarian curry. Discussing things to do, they suggested that we take the hike we just took to get to the point where we were now sitting and even offered to lend us the tent we were now using.

The night was unbearable. The wind picked up and at one point, I was convinced ogres and trolls were outside, growling and shaking the tent. I barely slept, gladly welcoming sunrise. The wind was still roaring in the morning, although a little more subdued than during the night. I decided to do a few rounds of Surya Namaskar (Sun Salutations) to greet the sun and I instantly felt better, as if I had a full night's sleep. Waiting for Lyndon to wake up, I grabbed my camera and explored the surrounding landscape. I even bumped into the herd of wild horses Lyndon had suggested trying to tame the day before.

On the hike back to Puerto Madryn, 20 kilometers seemed to be a shorter distance than when we had hiked it yesterday. We ended up staying with Javier and Sol for a little over a week, being delayed by rain. But it was nice. They had a notebook of recipes shared by the travelers who have passed through their home, all vegetarian recipes because Javier and Sol refuse to harm animals. I taught them how to love vinegar like a Filipino, Lyndon shared his ANZAC biscuit recipe, Javier taught us how to make bread, and Sol gave me a list of foods that help regulate seratonin and melatonin, helping to combat insomnia.

Javier and Sol playing with lights in the dark.

When the rain had looked like it had passed, we decided to continue the trek to the end of the world. Javier outlined the best way to get back on Ruta 3 to continue hitch-hiking.

"So you guys heading to Comodoro Rivadavia for sure?"

"Yep, found a couchsurfer willing to host us. Left his number and said to just call once we've arrived." I don't do well with goodbyes. With our departure set, I could already feel my voice growing awkward as I spoke.

"Be careful in Comodoro Rivadavia," Javier said in a serious tone that worried me a bit. "I've never been, but I've heard stories of travelers being robbed. It's a city built on oil money, so it's huge and hardly gets any travelers. The ones they do get, I hear they treat poorly."

"La Ciudad Gris," Sol said with her signature seriousness wrapped in a smile. The Gray City. "I don't know why they call it that, I've never been," she continued. "I just imagine a city with tall buildings under a perpetually cloudy sky."

Maybe Comodoro Rivadavia would be like a gritty Seattle, stuck in the age of industrialization. Looked like we'd find out.

The Arrival: Puerto Madryn

It was still dark out when Miguel came knocking on the truck. Time to head out. We drowsily rearrange the contents of the carriage, pull out the makeshift stove from the day before, boil some water, pour the mate herb into the gourd with a little sugar, pour the water, sip, pour, pass, and we were off.

Miguel was obviously hung over so we rode in silence. We pass two tiny towns before Miguel informs us, rather somberly, that Puerto Madryn is a ways off of the highway. His proper Spanish was back so my ears didn't have to bend over backwards, getting lost in translations, stitching meanings to sounds. He said he would drop us of at the junction, and from there we could hike about five kilometers to town center or we could try hitch a ride. When we reached the junction, we hopped off the truck. A little over 12 hours from when we left the Estanga home, we had made it about 700 kilometers. Not bad.

"Mucha suerte y buen viaje! Cuídense, locos!" Miguel yelled as he waved, honking his horn as he drove off, continuing down Ruta Nacional 3.

We crossed the junction from the national highway into a feeder road and began walking. Thumbs coming up as vehicles passed. No one stopped. The road went downhill from the highway, causing cars and trucks to coaster at a speed inconvenient to stopping for hitch-hikers. We didn't mind too much. It was kind of nice to stretch out our legs after being cooped up in a truck for so long. We breathed in the cold air and passed the guitar back and forth, strumming chords into combinations to fit the landscape.

As we round off the main highway, the cliff gave way to the sea. I looked, blankly at first before it registered. This was the first sight of sea my eyes had taken in since leaving the Philippines almost a year ago. Before Buenos Aires, I had always lived by the ocean. Buenos Aires was a port city, but its waters formed a river, with Uruguay looming in the distance. Here, there was only open ocean. It was still early morning and Puerto Madryn was still clinging to a thin, misty fog. I thought of San Francisco, California. It was beautiful.

At the border of the town, there was a check point. There are check points all over Argentina, where officials check to make sure you aren't bringing in anything non-native and highly invasive. Some check points spray vehicles with some sort of pesticide for extra measure. I looked at this check point from a distance, wondering if it was being manned at the moment. Didn't look like it. Vehicles passed without stopping. Good. No problems.

As we got closer, I noticed a uniformed man stepping out onto the sidewalk, taking his post. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest. He looked ready for battle. Fuck, what do I do? My mind started to run, will he shoot me for not having documentation? We got closer. I got more nervous. I take note of my pace. Too fast and he might ask, "What's the rush? Are you a terrorist? Show me your papers!" And I'm fucked. Too slow and he might ask, "Why are you walking so slowly? Bag too heavy? What are you hiding in there, bombs? Show me your papers!" And I'm fucked.

We got close enough for eye-contact but I coolly avoided it by casually looking over the guitar as I non-chalantly slung it over one shoulder.

Fuck, did this look too movie-like? Was this attracting more attention?

We arrived at a distance that required eye-contact so I look in the guard's direction.

My heart stopped.

He was looking away.

Was this a good sign or a bad sign?

He turned his head and made eye contact.

I smiled and gave him a slight nod. He did the same. And I continued to walk past him, trying to keep from running as far away as possible before he realized he could stop me and ask for documents I didn't have. But after a few deep yoga breaths, I found my center and I was able to continue in the same non-chalant pace.

We'd passed a few of these control check-points with Miguel on his truck, but they never seemed to notice us stowed away in the carriage. This was in the broad light of morning and we were clearly foreigners. We were bound to have something not suitable for passage. But nothing. Just a smile and a nod. Maybe it wasn't such an impossible feat after all to try to hitch-hike into Antarctica without a passport.

Then I realized, that was just a city border. The guard was probably still half-asleep. Antarctica might be a bit more complicated.

His name was Miguel.

View from inside the carriage, Miguel as el Capitan

"So, what's your name?" The question felt oddly out of place. We had been sitting in his truck, sharing mate, and making small talk for some time already.

He quickly took his eyes off the road to look at me, slightly confused, "What?" He asked.

"What's your name?" I said almost sheepishly, having been forced to repeat the awkward question.

"Miguel," he simply replied.

I sat askew for a moment, waiting for the usual follow-up question, "And you, your name?" Nothing. He said nothing. He just kept on trucking.

"I'm Erick," I finally offered after a sufficiently long awkward moment had passed. Miguel just nodded.

"Lyndon," Lyndon offered from the back seat.

"What did he say?" Miguel asked me.

"That his name is Lyndon."

"Lyndon," Miguel sounded out the syllables as if his mouth had never had to produce such strange sounds.

"Are we still in Buenos Aires Provincia?" I ask. After arriving almost a year ago, I have never left the Province of Buenos Aires. Granted, it's hard to leave, not at all in the poetic sense of not being able to resist the pull of the magical city that is Buenos Aires, or whatever. Rather, it's physically and geographically difficult. It's a huge province, it takes hours of travel in any direction to reach its borders.

"No, this is the province of Entre Rios," Miguel said and I looked out the window with more amazement than the moment before. Nothing changed in terms of landscape, everything still looked the same. It was just the sudden knowledge that I had crossed some invisible border only outlined on maps. Finally, I was outside of Buenos Aires. Suddenly, the trip began to sink in.

After such an awkward start, we quickly learned that Miguel was quite the character. He was born and raised in a villa, a slum on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. He has since moved to another slum outside of Quilmes, a city a few kilometers outside the capital. He's been working as a truck driver for over 20 years, has seven children, and really loves beer.

Once he opened up, Miguel did not stop. He is a man with stories, many of which should not be shared. But, share he did. It also probably didn't help that he would stop every dozen kilometers or so to piss and buy more beer. At one point, Lyndon and I started skulling the beers in an attempt to syphon beer away from Miguel. He was driving a fairly large truck, and we really weren't in the mood to die.

"I wish I didn't leave my parrilla at home," Miguel looked genuinely disappointed. "You see, I normally bring a parrilla so I can grill my own meat. And in case I pick up hitch-hikers, we can have a roadside asado, drink beer and shoot the shit." At the beginning, Miguel's Spanish was proper and very easy to understand. After a few beers, he began to loosen up and the slum Spanish started to creep out and it became increasingly difficult to decipher what he said.

You travel with a full on grill? Where the hell would you even put that? I wanted to ask Miguel, but at this point, nothing he said would have surprised me. He went on to talk about a hitch-hiker he'd picked up recently who was an escaped convict. He outlined, gesture by gesture, in excruciating detail, his reaction to this hitch-hiker's sudden revelation. I had a mini-heart attack everytime his more than slighly enebriated hands left the steering wheel to make a gesture that was apparently crucial to the telling of this tale. The story ended with Miguel dropping off the hitch-hiker less than two kilometers from where he picked us up. Hence the tension when we first hopped on. He was wondering if we were also escaped convicts.

There was also a story involving the sale of cocaine and marijuana. I won't go into further detail. Just know that illegal substances were discussed.

At nightfall, Miguel pulled up into a petrol station in some rickety town that looked like some strange hybrid of an old Western and an old Mexican movie. I kept looking out the window, expecting to see tumbleweed role by, or at least a man named Juan Ramirez in a poncho, leading a donkey. Nada.

We didn't have a tent so Miguel let us sleep in his truck. He had a friend in town who runs a resaurant/bar/inn so he spent the night there. The night was cold. The wind blew hard against the truck, turning every crevice and lip on its steely surface into whistles.

The first ride.

Our shadows as we hitch-hike

We left the Estanga home a little after 7AM. The density of the night sky was already being cracked by slivers of light, but the sun still hadn't broken over the horizon. The patriarch of the home, Norberto, had pulled out a taped, torn, and re-taped map of Argentina and handed it to me, unfurled like a sail waiting to catch adventures.

"About 700 km," he said. "Bahía Blanca to Puerto Madryn." Two places I had only heard of in passing until very recently. "You can most definitely arrive to Puerto Madryn by the end of the day," he said, eyes to the ceiling, calculating in his head. Then, quickly adding behind a smile, "With a little luck, of course."

Of course.

We arrived at the YPF petrol station a little before half past. We got out of the car, heaved our heavy packs out of the trunk, and briskly said our goodbyes and see you laters as we shifted the masses on our shoulders, redirecting the weight to shifting legs. We wandered aimlessly around the station for what seemed like hours, following the sound of humming engines, searching for truck drivers revving up for a long haul. Taking turns, we awkwardly asked for rides south, down Ruta Nacional 3. Everyone said no, usually quoting a new company rule to not take on hitch-hikers. One guy even told us we were too ugly. Literally. Those words exactly. "You guys are too ugly."

In the cold wind I fingered the plastic bag of chocolates Lili, the matriarch of our home in Bahía Blanca, had packed for us. "In case you get hungry," she said to us with a look of concern. As if we genuinely had no clue what we were supposed to do when we felt hungry. You know, maybe eat something. I measured hunger against craving, and finally decided to save it for later.

At a little after 9AM, tired of the directionless pacing and the cold of the autumn air starting to seep into our bones, we decided to start walking alongside the highway and try our luck Holywood style, throwing out our thumbs and smiling big goofy grins, squinting against the strong sun of the southern hemisphere. Cars passed. Trucks passed. More cars passed. A few people waved. Most made a tiny, but visible swerve as soon as they saw us, like you would do if you saw a homeless man on the sidewalk you were walking down.

We were beginning to lose hope. Maybe we had made a mistake. These packs are heavy. Hitch-hiking isn't easy at all. We weren't 17-year-olds full of teenage angst looking for movie-style adventures before schlepping off to some expensive ivy league. We were educated professionals. I was hungry. The sun was beginning to hurt my eyes. Maybe this was a mistake. Who fucking hitch-hikes, anyway? What the fuck were we doing with our lives?

Finally, at around 10AM, a truck driver made eye contact and slowed down, coming to a full halt fifty meters or so in front of us. This was it, we were doing it! We half jogged, half skipped with excitement, up to his window and exchanged pleasantries while probably smiling way too much. He asked where we were heading, to which I replied, "As far south as possible."

He mumbled something about the south being vast and the word "south" being too vague. Something negative, and I could feel our first triumph slipping away.

"We have some friends in Puerto Madryn," I lied a little. We didn't technically know anyone in Puerto Madryn. Javier and Soledad were couchsurfers who had passed through Bahía Blanca, stayed one night with the Estanga family, and Ayelen contacted them before we left. We had never met and I don't think they even believed we were coming. But whatever, we weren't going to lose this victory over semantics. "We could talk to them to see if they could put us up for a few nights." He nodded pensively, weighing something invisible but heavy.

"Do you kids like mate?" he broke the awkward silence.

"Of course."

"Let's have some mate and talk about your trip a bit. Although, I must warn you, I take my mate with sugar."

I smiled and repeated a cheesy Argentine saying I'd come across a few times before, "Take mate with sugar when life is sweet, and bitter when life is bitter." He grunted and motioned us into his truck where he had a makeshift stove to heat up a little kettle. The herb was poured into the gourd, steel straw placed methodically in, the water, sufficiently hot, poured onto the herb, and we were sharing mate.

"I've got to make this delivery to Rio Gallegos, but I don't think I can take you that far south. Puerto Madryn, that sounds more possible."

"That's perfect!" I said, visibly relieved. He nodded with a faint smile, squinted at the road, revved the engine, and just like that, we were off; kettle still on the makeshift stove and mate gourd still full of hot water.

The beginning of the trip.

Lyndon and Carlos discussing strategies to conquer Patagonia

As per last blog entry, I have embarked on a journey to Antarctica. Maybe. Thusly inasmuch heretofore my blog entries will be about hitch-hiking (read, trying to survive) Patagonia. Mostly. Maybe.

Author's note: I apologize for the weak photo-to-word ratio but I am blogging from a mobile app that confuses the bananas out of me. I promise to try to add photos when I get my act together and figure out this fancy technology.

Anywho, without much further ado, I present to you, The Beginning Of The Trip:

"What do you even want to do with that?" Carlos asked. Even in the thick darkness of the abandoned building, I could feel his right eyebrow raise as his right hand lifted to rub his left forearm, one of his ticks. Something he does as an attempt to make silence more tactile, less threatening.

We were standing in a room that Jorge Luis Borges himself had frequented, the office of the President of a printing press. I was holding acetate pages of a book, or a "pre-book" - the negatives of pages once printed here. I felt like I was holding ghosts, or at least, something truer to haunting phantoms that I'd ever come into contact with.

"I don't know," I replied. "Borges..." I trailed off. I wanted to say something profound. Somewhere along the lines of these being artifacts of a past suspended only within the vaults delineated by these abandoned walls. Something profound. But, I kept quiet instead, letting the heavy silence speak for itself. I've been doing that a lot lately. Letting the silence speak.

It's like the night sky. I imagined all that space getting jealous of the stars and all the songs that get sung about them. I imagined my silence was like the blackness of space, allowing the stars to standout. Either that, or switching between so many languages was beginning to render me mute.

"Well, here," Carlos picked up another book, it's plastic pages plastered together from the hot humidity of Porteño summers stacked one on top of the other. "You can take this and no one will probably notice." He pulled out a few pages from a nearly solidified block of plastic pages. I took the treasure into my hands, trying to wipe off what looked like dust, but must have been dried ink.

We climbed onto a back terrace and there, in between two buildings crumbling brick by brick, on cracked terra-cotta tiles next to some vines of ivy creeping across rusty railed windows, we lit up. Bellies full of wine and lungs full of smoke, we spoke about our insanity. A trip through Patagonia with winter quickly coming. We discussed hypothermia and frost bite and sunburn. I asked to borrow Carlos' identification documents, maybe it would allow for easier passage through the south. He said no.

"Thanks, Carlitos. I thought we were friends."

We walked back to Chanta's apartment in Balvanera. The Buenos Aires air was chilly. I pictured a world map in my head. Buenos Aires is by Brazil. Brazil is hot. Patagonia is the last stop before Antarctica. If I'm cold now, how will I survive this trip with hot island blood in my veins?

Back at Chanta's we drank more wine and filled up on the left-over chicken biryani she had cooked up earlier for our despedida. We played music from two different phones, listening to see where two completely different songs would briefly intertwine, causing chaos into harmony. We made music from music and fell asleep on couches.

It was early afternoon by the time we woke up. Chanta was brewing coffee and packing us cookies she had hidden the night before from Carlos' grubby hands. Carlos complained of a stomach ache and Chanta yelled at him for turning into a two-year old around freshly baked cookies. We sipped on the leftover wine as Chanta and Carlos continued to wonder if Lyndon and I actually understood the concept of how cold grows colder as you near Antarctica. Sipping on warm wine and cold coffee, we lingered in this close-knit friendship that had somehow formed for as long as we could. We checked our bags one more time and we headed out.

Chanta had to go to work so she hugged and kissed us goodbye at the door. "Don't leave me," she whined, slightly hunched over and hugging herself as we started to walk away.

"See you later, Chanta!" I replied, waving off the gravity of goodbyes.

We waited at the stop for a bus to Estación Constitución. Carlos laughed and said something along the lines of, "The train station at Constitución is probably the most dangerous part of your trip." We waited and waited. Buses passed but not the one we needed. Carlos laughed again, "You can't even get to the train station to start your trip!"

"You're just full of jokes today, aren't you, buddy?"

The bus finally came. A few more hugs exchanged. A little gift from Carlos, "To make the horrible train ride a little less horrible," he smiled. We awkwardly boarded the bus, obviously still acclimating to the weight of our packs, and we were off.

"We're actually doing it," Lyndon said as we sat on the train platform, waiting to board. "No turning back now."

"It hasn't hit me yet," I replied, trying to decipher his grin. Where does one journey end and another begin?

We boarded the train, Pullman Class, the most expensive. Not exactly a luxury sleeper cabin, but neither was it a cargo car. I didn't want to imagine how the more "economic" stagecoaches looked like. I've been in worse, I thought, as we heaved our backpacks onto the railings above the seats meant to store luggage, thinking back to that 18 hour train ride from Bangkok to Chiangmai.