5/5/06
BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

I went to Uruguay. Across cattle country on a double-decker bus I sat next to two accordion players who'd just met and were discussing technique, passing a red Scandali accordion back and forth and pulling out weeping, jaunty music as the cows sailed by.

Crossing the border-- which I had to do by taxi, from Concordia to Salto-- you have to wipe your feet in a solution that kills foot-and-mouth disease. Apparently the virus tanked the economy a few years back.

I had only a few days for Uruguay, not quite long enough to get over the amusement of being there-- Uruguay. What I saw was sleepy and charming-- friendly people carrying maté, wind in the maples by the river, leaves crunching around your feet. For some reason I hadn't thought that this year I'd be getting not only two summers, but two autumns.

Particularly nice was Colonia del Sacramento, a cobbled 17th-century Portuguese port where your only concern might be when the sunlight on the pink stucco will be at its ripest. You can doze off on the pier over lapping brown water, listening to the clunk and flap of a guy painting his sailboat, to gulls, and to the languages of tourists. I borrowed a bike and squeaked it alongside miles of sand and reeds. I ate chivito, thin steak piled with stuff and toothpicked into a hamburger bun. Pretty good.

The ferry across the mouth of the Río Plata goes at night, taking a couple of hours. You travel sealed in a spacious interior that could be a hotel lobby except for the constant thrumming of engines. The lights of Buenos Aires climb higher and higher outside, and the anticipation in the boat heightens as people rally by the doors. For me, it meant closing a loop. Passport stamped, I was off into the city, into eight lanes of zooming traffic, giant advertising, massive plazas, fancy towers raked with spotlights, and snappy dressers with fashion-magazine hair. Buenos Aires looks more extravagant to me today than in November. It's a metropolis for gorging on parrilla (barbecue) at joints howling at the Copa Libertadores game on TV, for shopping, getting lost on herringboned cobbled streets, looking for Evita Peron's grave, and at sunrise watching the foot traffic change over from danced-out clubbers to pigeons and people going to work. I'm not sure when people sleep here.

And today, after all that, it's May 5th. I'm bewildered that it's actually the end of the trip. The calendar doesn't mean a whole lot while traveling-- it seems like years ago that I was in Ushuaia. Now I'll be going back to where I understand can understand the language without squinting.

The backpack has held tight through six months of weather, strained seams, and transport-related roughhousing. I'll be glad to unstuff it without having to restuff it (dirty clothes, swapped paperbacks, sunblock, maps, iPod, camp towel, spoon, battery chargers, boots, heel-crack lotion, camera, hammock, breakable souvenirs, photo CDs, rope, Spanish toothpaste), and I'll store it away probably missing the simplicity.

Tonight I fly to Dulles International, then Denver, then Phoenix. I'll visit Flagstaff for a while and then get back to Portland on May 11th. It'll be great to see people, also to have more than two pairs of pants. Good trip.

Salud,
Mike