Boo YAH I'm in Chile

In Punta Arenas for my coldest Cup Match ever. It's snowing. Can't feel my tootsies. Have seen the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Straits of Magellan in a 24-hour span.

Come on, Somerset!

(It IS Cup Match this weekend right?)

Are we there yet? (Or, how to amuse yourself on a bus for more than 40 hours straight)

Because after all, who cares about volcanoes and Fireland and Belen's hot friends and the edge of the world when you could read about what we did during the bus ride down to Rio Gallegos?

This, naturally, is a long post ...

July 22, 2005. 9.05 a.m.
Half an hour or so outside of Bahia Blanca - stopped there this morning around 8 a.m. Sleepy so not surprised that the cold blatantly ignored the jacket, was shaking like a leaf out there. There's classics on the radio being sung by what sounds like the original artists but in Spanish. By classics I mean Bryan Adams, Everything I do (Todo lo que hago, hago por ti); Toni Braxton and Unbreak my Heart, whoever that chick is that sings All By Myself in the beginning of Bridget Jones' Diary. Mariano, the attendant (not Martin this time, how disappointing!) is handing around cups for coffee and tea. The water he pours has already been sweetened. Argentines are serious about their sugar - "Did you see how Belen never takes any sugar?" her friend Bebe asked me one day as we made coffee in Rosario. As Belen had just that second dumped a spoonful into her cup I thought it was a joke, and laughed politely - until Bebe poured about six tablespoons into her own cup, then started dipping her crackers straight into the sugar bowl. Not exaggerating. The sugar packets are at least twice the size of the ones in Bermuda. They survive on a diet of caffeine, nicotine, and glucose.

I'm hungry.

In Bahia Blanca Belen did her "Good morning, I'm tiny and supercute" routine, and is even now sitting in the copilot's seat taking mate with the driver and talking a mile a minute. I should've gone with her, but was feeling too drowsy and, surprisingly, comfortable ... will go next time. Tea and vanilla cookies constitute breakfast. I hate everyone who is eating at Robin Hood right now.

The scenery. Windows beaded with moisture, rain spattering, but beyond can see the sky. Looks a lot earlier than it actually is. If you glance out the window, it's just Canada. Keep expecting to see that lovely nuclear plant along the 401 that signals it's just another half an hour to Port Hope.

Yesterday. We took a coche cama to Buenos Aires from Rosario, the bus left at about 4 p.m., arrived around 8 p.m. Didn't want to sleep but couldn't help it - we hadn't gone to bed the night before (July 20 is Dia del Amigo) and knew full well we wouldn't be sleeping easy on the semi cama to Gallegos. Now the radio is playing Roxette, It Must've Been Love. Same song that woke us up every morning on that swim trip to Maryland.

Was nice to be back in BA - sad how good it is to be in a familiar place, particularly when that familiar place is the Retiro bus station. Checked email - _______ had her baby. Said a prayer for Cassidy, and for a happy ending to it all.

Sky brightening, land undulating. As you drive by the hills move laconically, like ocean swells. Got on the bus last night in high spirits. They showed Intolerable Cruelty, which reminds me - must find man with unimaginably sexy voice like George Clooney. Matthew McConaughey would do if necessary. Every once in a while a dirt road leading off the highway out to sea.

The people. Last night was observing the guy across the aisle in front of us. Long-legged, lanky, nice sweater, Universidad de Buenos Aires books. What if he's the love of my life? I started to wonder. I'll never know if he is. What if he is? I probably wouldn't go up and randomly strike up a conversation with him anyway, even if he spoke English. Oh God, that's the love of my life sitting right there and I'll never know. And sixty years from now I'll die alone, except for my two cats Ernesto and Jack ... Suddenly, he turned around, and I saw his face. Oh. Ok. Definitely not the love of my life. Phew.

To sleep or to read?

2.30 p.m.
La Prudencia es Vida - sign blazed below an old, rusted out car mounted by the side of the road, 10 feet in the air. Stopped in another town - San Antonio, on Rio Negro. Everything brown, dusty, wide streets, low houses, old and worn. Only colour came from the sky burning overhead. Tiny children playing football, cars kicking up dust. In Rosario in the Locutorio one day small boys were sitting there for hours just playing games on the Net. It drove Belen nuts. We used to just play outside, in the street, she said. All day outside. Their parents should be sending them to sports or taking care of them or something. They don't even play football anymore.

3 p.m.
Looking at landscape and can see why geology would be fascinating. All flat and then for no apparent reason a hill shaped like the prow of a boat rears up. Earlier saw one that looked like some creature straining to burst out of the earth, two roads over it like ropes tying it down - Gulliver with the Lilliputians (those were the little people, right?). If only could remember any of the geology learned with SEA, but can't even remember the awful geology puns Emily and I made up. Very schisty (hehe). Stopped few minutes outside San Antonio in Las Grutas, beachy touristy area. Water blinding. Now super warm out, could've sat outside and suntanned. Houses more colourful, Spanish red roofs. We've left Canada and have arrived in California. I can't believe Becca got me hooked on to The O.C. I was doing so well without TV.

7 p.m.
Leaving Puerto Madryn. Movie, please, movie, please!

Very boring afternoon. Driving bus, the motion of the ocean lulls you into a trance, don't want to read, don't want to play cards, nothing. Belen sleeping, my mind lazily daydreaming. Scenery now starting to look more like South Africa, the krall. What, do all big countries look the same? Must break out Story of an African Farm again when get home to get the right lingo down. Jugged hills, more ragged. Belen awoke, we ate crackers and drank chocolate milk. Only one sandwich left in our pack but then only 17 or so hours to go. No problem. Rick Astley on the radio now, images of a young Jasey dancing around and singing. "Together forever and never to part ..."

Sun was setting as finished our snack, spectacular over the flatlands and clear skies. Looked for the green flash but didn't see it. Belen announced we were arriving in Puerto Madryn, another beach resorty type town. I looked around and saw nothing but plains for miles, couldn't fathom the sea being near. Then suddenly the ground dropped away and we rounded the top of a valley, the city spread out below us in the sun's last rays, massive cranes on the loading docks, and the water. The good ol' Atlantic, I'd missed it. Stopped for five minutes in the bus stop and three children were running over a bluff jutting up behind us. The sun had just set behind it, the sky blazing red, the bluff jet black, the children silhouettes. Cursed having left my camera in the big bag, buried in the bowels of the bus.

A single star low in the sky as we leave Puerto Madryn, maybe 20 or 25 degrees. I'm going to bet it's Sirius and hope none of the Seamans crew ever read this.

July 23, 2005. 4.30 a.m.
Am starting to vaguely dislike buses. Time passed smoothly after Puerto Madryn for a while as they played two Vin Diesel movies - hours of staring at arm muscles I never even knew existed. Then reached Comodoro Rivadavia. Disembarked for the expected five minutes and ran to buy water but on the return we were told we'd be waiting another 40 minutes for a bus to arrive with people who were connecting with us. Had a bad feeling immediately - we were scheduled to arrive in Caleta Olivia, a city further don de road, at 1.40 a.m. to make the bus for the last leg to Gallegos, leaving at 2.40 a.m. Drank coffee in a dingy cafe and reasoned with ourselves that if our bus was waiting for passengers, the bus in Caleta Olivia would wait for passengers too, if for some reason we were late.

Clearly we were wrong (and clearly the other bus took longer than 40 minutes). Arrived in Caleta Olivias around 3 a.m., the wind hurling the stars around, a dry, dusty cold. Memories of arriving exhausted at the Kingston bus station at 3 a.m., the relief of P'Tim coming to get me. In Caleta Olivias our bus had left without us. Nothing for it but to wait until the next one - no cafe in Caleta Olivias either, and naturally it was the most rundown and unpleasant of all the many bus stations we'd seen. No water in the bathrooms, including to flush the toilets - felt like how everyone in Bermuda must've felt during the drought. There was a kiosco selling Friday's newspapers, at least - caught a glimpse of the Clarin headline as was doing the 19th lap of the dingy station. That was the first we'd heard of the second (failed) attacks in London. All seemed very surreal, at that hour of the night, that far away, to suddenly think of the friends there, and that it had all happened two days before - a jolt. Thank goodness they failed. People here keep asking me now if I'm nervous to be moving to London. Jihad has no place in South America. Perched on our bags as Belen chain smoked and tried not to think longingly of the Special Bed. Ten minutes, the guys in the station told us. It'll just be ten minutes.

An hour and a half later bus arrived. By now so tired that not tired. Windows clear, nothing but plains again, and can't stop looking at the stars. Like the beginning of Far From the Madding Crowd as Gabriel watches the heavens catapult around. Like dawn watch. A shadowy figure naming the constellations for you, Vegas, so close, coffee hot in your cold wet hands, the deck rolling. Impossible not to fall for someone who can show you the stars.

12 p.m.

We were supposed to arrive in Gallegos at 8 a.m. After finally fell asleep last night awoke vaguely this morning feeling more greasy, grimy and braindead than either of us have ever felt in our lives. They are now playing some Dreamworks animation show, these little Pequenads or something, tiny Patagonian - somethings - who re-enact old Patagonian legends and preach that to be a superhero you don't have to save the planet, you just have to preserve it. They're actually hilarious, they're showing outtakes right now - love it when they make cartoons do outtakes. Can't remember the last time we ate or drank anything and are now devouring crackers and a bottle of water. The coffee and cookies were brought around again this morning but we slept through them.

2 p.m.

Have just arrived in Rio Gallegos, six hours after were supposed to. A frontier town in windswept Patagonia. Belen's parents just pulling up in the car. Am going to have a lot more to say about all this - after a sleep and a shower ...

"The flight back in the airplane takes three hours," Belen just said.

The last frontier

So. I'm living on the tip of the continent, in a town that has a bank which, a hundred years ago, was robbed by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Today I climbed down into the mouth of a volcano and saw a ship larger than the Seamans stranded on the land. Tomorrow I go to Chile (it's not right without you, Bec, but I must take this chance - carpe diem!), and I really am going to the end of the world next Tuesday.

Am a wee bit behind on the blog updates ...

Carpe Diem!

Is that how it's spelled? I'm not sure. Don't do that freaky-deaky French stuff. (Is that even French?)

The point is, the Unfathomable Bus Ride from Hell begins tomorrow. Belen and I bought our tickets ages ago - to my horror we were forced to use Andesmar once again. Apparently good ol' TAC used to go to Rio Gallegos, but does so no longer. (Damn you, TAC!)

Belen seemed to misinterpret the look of terror on my face when she steered me in the direction of Andesmar. "Oh they have heaters on the bus," she told me seriously. I struggled to control my features as Internal Sarah promptly threw a fit of hysterics, and managed a manic grin which I hoped expressed relief but seemed to worry Belen even more. I didn't want to get into the whole story of Martin with her. Remembering my Bruce Chatwin (and ignoring the fact that the first time he mentioned Rio Gallegos was to note that it was a boring town) and all the pics of Patagonia I've seen, I suggested hopefully that it would be worth it, with all the amazing scenery that would be passing by our windows.

"Not really," she replied offhandedly. "There's really nothing to see."

Which (finally) brings me to the point. With 40 hours worth of nothing to do and nothing to look at, there will be plenty of time for reading our books, conjugating verbs, and drafting blog entries. Study time. We must use this time wisely. We won't fritter these 40 hours away. Honestly. I'm excited.

Fortunately Belen's dad managed to get us on a flight back to Rosario, so this won't be a repeat performance. And the flight back to New York in a few weeks is going to seem like NOTHING. Easy as pie.

Rio Gallegos, here we come!

Argentine Tea (actually, it's unofficial name is Paraguayan Tea, not Argentine, but this is my world)

The first time I remember hearing of Belen was when my mother told me that she was sure the latest Rotary Exchange student living at our house was on some kind of previously-unheard of Latin American drug.

I was in Kingston at the time, more concerned with braving the Arctic Blast and how long it would take before our resident Dish Nazi chastised me for leaving my dishes in the sink, so I didn't pay a lot of attention. As far as I recall, by the time I went home for the Christmas holidays and met Belen she had finished all the yerba she'd brought with her, so I was never treated to the sight of her pattering around our house clutching her mate with its silver bombilla, overflowing with grubby herbs. That old mate (mah-tay) still has a place of honour in our kitchen cupboard - the one where Mom crams all the stuff we don't use.

Like the rest of my family, I am also pretty convinced that there's not much wrong in the world that a cup of tea won't set to rights. Studies have been done that show the very ritual of making tea can soothe you - the familiar routine of putting the kettle on the burner, the straining of the leaves, the stirring of milk and sugar - or not, depending on the type of tea you're drinking. In the cold and dark of those winter mornings before Squad the cup of tea my mother would make for me would be the only reason in the entire universe to get out of bed. My father makes it for my mother on weekend mornings, my sister and I make it together on Hangover Sundays, and we make vats of it when there's a football game on and our TV room is crowded with the usual football gang - who all sip it elegantly and rest their cups daintily on their saucers to cheer when someone scores a goal. Yell, "Who wants tea?" from our kitchen at any point on any given day and you're almost certain to hear an affirmative hollered back from some corner of the house.

My grandfather used to take it only with condensed milk, and we would imitate him, feeling we were partaking in something slightly magical. A ritual that extended far beyond us - the idea that he took his tea like that during the war years, a reality that for us had only ever taken place in books, would provide endless fodder for the imagination.

And, of course, you make it with friends. It's the reason for field trips, a temporary escape from That Place with certain skank-ass b's or crazy fools, for a good goss on the way to and from the gas station. It's the most wonderful present you could ever receive when someone brings it for you in That Place, and the most devastating thing in the world when someone goes on a tea run and you don't get your order in. There's something nurturing about tea - it's what you do for a girlfriend when the latest guy has trampled over her heart (god, men). What you make when someone's feeling down. What you do when someone comes over and you just want an excuse to sit and put the world to rights with them.

Enter the ritual of mate. Take how the English feel about tea, multiply it by perhaps a thousand times, and you've got how Argentines feel about mate.

Yerba mate is a dried chopped leaf that's somehow related to the holly plant and bears an intriguing resemblance to marijuana (hence my mother's aforementioned but unfounded concern about Belen's non-stop consumption of it).

Now, mates themselves - the containers that you drink the drink from - can range from plastic Boca Juniors products to silver and gem-plated treasures. The most basic and most common that you see, however, is just a gourd, about cup-sized, usually in a silver cradle of some sort so you can rest it on a table. The gourd is hollowed out, and you fill it to perhaps halfway or a bit further with the dried leaf. Also in the gourd you place the bombilla - a metal straw, usually silver, with a bulbous end that filters the leaves so that only the liquid travels through the straw.

You pour the water near the bombilla, slowly, so that it creates a small froth, and fill the mate. Then, well, suck away. (Oh, if I had a peso ...)

The ritual is such that, despite the countless restaurants we went to in Buenos Aires, we never once saw it on a menu. Almost the entire point of mate is sharing and talking. You sit in a circle, and the cebador, the person pouring the water, usually passes the gourd clockwise. When it's your turn you sip until all the water is gone, then pass it back to the cebador, who refills it with water and passes it on to the next.

Mate "provokes a gentle perspiration, improves the appetite, speedily counteracts the languor arising from the burning climate, and assuages both hunger and thirst," one Jesuit wrote ages ago. On Sundays walking down the Costanera in Rosario you see hundreds of young people gathering to take mate together and pass time, checking each other out and watching the boats on the river. Belen and her friends gather around the table, cigarettes lit, to gossip with the mate. In some regions they add sugar, in others they take it amargo. Maria adds bits of orange peel to hers as she watches the Argentine version of "the story" - Amor en Custodia. The brooding, melodramatic stars of Amor en Custodia stare pensively and darkly into space while drinking their mate. The kiosco owners take it while reading the newspapers they are selling. Old men sit on park benches and argue passionately while sharing the mate, refilling the gourd with water hot from a thermos. Every Argentine you meet has a thermos, in public places vendors wheel carts overflowing with thermoses of hot water around, while others cart their thermoses under their arms. Take your empty thermos just about anywhere and ask them to heat water for you, they'll do it.

When Belen finally convinced my mother that she wasn't on drugs and talked her into trying it, my mother apparently made such a face that Belen still likes to imitate it, three years later. I won't lie, the shit looks disgusting. And on the first taste the bombilla is too hot, the liquid is too hot and bitter, and you have to wonder what the heck all the fuss is. That's what we three thought back in Buenos Aires when we tried it for the first time with IG's mate.

But, especially if you're used to herbal teas, it grows on you pretty quickly. Like tea, it's hard to say whether it's the taste or the ritual itself that becomes so addictive, but one thing's for sure - I get it now.

And I really hope Matty F is working at the Airport again when I come back home, cuz I'm pretty sure our diligent Customs Officials will have plenty to say if I come home from South America armed with heavy packages of what looks like a mind-boggling amount of marijuana and try to explain to them that it's yerba mate.

La Cuna de la Bandera

The Seat of the Flag. Rosario is the city where the Argentine flag was born, and they have the monument to prove it. Biggest monument I've ever seen.

The first morning I awoke here was 9 de Julio - a date which, I'd surmised from the grandeur of Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires (16 lanes wide already), must be an important one. "I don't know, it's some kind of fucking holiday," Belen told me cheerfully (her English is still fantastic). Lonely Planet declared it was Independence Day. So off we trotted down to the flag monument. We looked at it for about two seconds then went shopping. That was enough culture for one day.

Rosario is laid out on a grid so it's much easier to navigate than Buenos Aires (oh yeah and it's maybe 1/13th the size of Buenos Aires, which also helps a little bit). As with any Argentine city all the major streets have familiar names - Cordoba, Corrientes, Mendoza, 9 de Julio, San Martin, Sarmiento, etc. It lacks the blazing lights and overflowing abundance of the big city, but has a far more Latin American feel to it. Buenos Aires does have its own personality, of course, but when you come down to it, all big cities are really very similar - BA, Toronto, New York. It's in the smaller cities that you really start to see the distinctions. Of course BA is really the only major city that I've spent longer than a weekend in at a time, so I could be completely off base with that.

The rosarinos remind me of some friends in The Tick. Rosario is locked in a bitter contest with Cordoba for the title of Argentina's second largest city (when Belen discovered that Lonely Planet has the audacity to call Rosario the third largest city, she wanted me to throw it away). The city also chafes against its neighbour Santa Fe, because Santa Fe was made the capital of the Santa Fe province, even though Rosario is much bigger and more important. Sounds familiar.

You don't feel like you're soiling your lungs every time you breathe in, but so far I still prefer Buenos Aires as a city. I would never dare to tell Belen such a thing, however. I'm afraid I'd be thrown out on the street!

Rosario, Rosario, where for art thou Rosario?

The city where Che Guevara was born. Now we're talking.

Of course I haven't been to his house yet, but it's on the list.

I arrived late Friday night, weirdly homesick - just when you get used to a place you up and leave it, and everything gets scary and unknown again. The bus passed by the airport and I could see the American Airlines flight waiting on the tarmac to take off for New York - I came very close to leaping off the bus and making a run for it.

Pride kept me onboard, however, and the second I heard Belen's voice yelling for me in the Rosario bus station, I knew it was going to be alright.

She lives with her grandmother, Maria, the daughter of an Italian who has a habit of breaking into piercing streams of ranting Spanish (complete with the Argentine Italian accent) while stirring pots of steaming fideos. The themes of her rants are what you would imagine - it wasn't like this when I was young, young people today, my mother used to say to me, etc etc. She's a bit more brash than my own grandmothers - our first conversation was about the merits of casual sex versus love. I haven't had that discussion with Granny or Nana yet. Sure can't wait for it, though.

That first night Belen dragged me home and dumped about 40 photo albums in my lap to look through. Of all the pictures she has taken in her life, maybe 39 rolls were of Bermuda - the last roll was of a birthday party one year. As we went through them tons of memories came flooding back - setting up the hair salon in our kitchen, the terrible gingerbread cookies we tried to make with my sister at Christmas (with Papa's vigorous assistance), World Cup games in Flanagan's. The time Johnny S found Sheldon by the side of the road. My brother's brain-stabbing call to Chester: "Kittykittykittykittykitty!". A certain Rotary Exchange Students fan running through our kitchen in tears the night of the goodbye party. The birth of the Spontaneous Ice Queen Milkshake Runss/Moulin Rouge Singalongs. We'd also put on that stupid CD that Matty F and the rest of the herbalist crew had made for her and were laughing our asses off - though by the end when Matty "sang" about her father and mother, two sisters and two brothers who would never forget her, I'm ashamed to admit we both got a little teary.

Every night in our twin beds in her room we read our books - she's reading Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones; I'm reading Famous Five go off in a caravan - Latin American version. Los Cinco en la caravana. Any excuse to go back to Enid Blyton. Every ten minutes or so she asks me what a word means (usually I don't actually know), every 30 seconds or so I ask her what a word means (usually she can't explain it). We wake up late every morning because her classes don't start til around 5pm. To my never-ending dismay Argentines are not big on breakfast (get your butt to Robin Hood right now, IG), so we have coffee and a snack of sorts then head out in to the world. We split up when it's time for school, and meet back at her house around 10 or 11 at night, in time to make dinner and read again while listening to Maria discuss the state of the world.

It's a very cozy life.

"I'm so desperately lonely!"

That quote's just never going to get old.

I bring it up, however, because I am in the Locutorio and the Johnnys are playing the radio - The Killers, Mr. Brightside.

Due to the mysterious stomach ailment Rebecca has fled South America early, leaving me all on my lonesome until Friday - well, me and Florencia, who I spent an exhausting half hour with this morning. The gang at Piacere really hate us now.

Fortunately I happen to consider myself good company and quite enjoying hanging out with just me, so I wasn't homesick for the Chicas until I heard the song. Lucky for me the homesickness is being tempered by the fact that Johnny II is actually singing along with it to Juanita, who has just walked in. As Juanita is chronically angry she doesn't seem to be overly thrilled. Johnny II, on the other hand, appears very proud of himself.

Being alone so suddenly after having two gabby girls glued by your side for six weeks (I mean that in the nicest possible way, mi amors) makes everything a little bit surreal. Last night's traditional marathon walk took on mythical proportions. Especially as if you closed your eyes and just listened to the wind scrabbling through the falling maple leaves, and felt the quality of the air - a perfect Torrontes, unusual for muggy and oppressive Buenos Aires - you could have been walking in Canada on a cool fall day. Prime for day dreaming.

We never made it to Chile. After enduring the trials and tribulations of the Mendoza hospital and coming to terms with the reality that the border crossing was closed and was staying that way indefinitely, we held a meeting and voted to beat it back to Buenos Aires as soon as possible. Mysterious stomach ailments in the outdoor activities capital of Argentina with nothing but a hostel bed to lie on (and Owen as your neighbour) are really not conducive to a good weekend.

The bad karma held up, unfortunately. We bought our tickets back to BA the next day and then, on a whim, asked if the border crossing had been re-opened yet. Oh yeah, they said. It's open.

But by then it was too late. I can't stand being so close and yet so far. Reading the newspaper the next day and seeing it had been open only for a few hours and then was closed again, now with some 2,000 vehicles on either side, was small consolation. But we had to be reasonable - who comes to Argentina in the winter and expects to be able to cross the Andes in a bus?

We had lost faith in TAC by that point and elected to pay a little more and try Andesmar, another bus service. We should've known better. You don't mess with karma.

The seats were perhaps half the size of the good ol' TAC seats, and there were twice as many people on board. I braced myself for discomfort but had no idea how Becca was going to be able to last the 15 hours. We perked up at first when Martin, the oddly enthusiastic attendant, made us all play Bingo - we nearly won a bottle of wine and both promptly developed crushes on Martin.

Unfortunately Martin then fell asleep in some mysterious cubbyhole in the bowels of the bus, forgetting he had left the heat on. Heat poured in. We'd stripped down as far as was decently possible. I kept dozing off, only to be awakened by nearly choking on the dry, hot air. All around us passengers tossed and turned.

It must've been around 4 a.m. when both myself and another woman went yet again in search of Martin. Unable to find him, she reached the end of her rope, and simply busted in to the driver's cab and begged him to turn the heat off. She also helped herself to a cooler full of Fanta, pouring cupfuls for all the passengers - who were all awake and all extremely thirsty.

The cold air was a relief. Then we put our sweaters back on. Then our winter jackets. Then suddenly it was hot again. We stripped again. Cold again. Hot again. I really don't know how Rebecca survived that trip. As we got off the bus in Buenos Aires neither of us could even look at Martin.

Luckily, it was only a few days before we were laughing about it. Always keep your sense of humour.

So, we didn't make Chile. And phase one of Operation Alfajor is now over. But phase two is coming up, which means Belen and Rosario - and, later, the 40-hour bus ride to Rio Gallegos. (I'm not thinking about it, I'm not thinking about it.) It might even mean Brasil to visit another old roomate in Rio de Janeiro, there as part of her med school studies. (Unfortunately it won't mean Ecuador as we'll be in Patagonia by then, but you better say a big hello to Rachel for me, Em!)

Who knows - it might even involve speaking some Spanish. I'm pretty sure that was the whole point of the operation in the first place - though alfajores certainly have become more of an objective than I thought they would be.

Speaking of which, I'm really very hungry ...