My Near-Demise on Friendship Bridge

Unfortunate name. Quite misleading. Honestly.



Friendship Bridge is just about the craziest and coolest thing I have ever encountered: thousands of people crossing it by bus, van, car, bike...but mainly motorcycle taxi or foot.

This is the border crossing between Foz de Iguazu, Brazil, and Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. Ciudad del Este is considered on the the most dangerous places in South America, so I decided to spend a few days there.

Es una locura. It´s just crazy. More counterfeit goods than you can shake a stick at: cigarettes, electronics, sneakers, etc.







And the bridge really is awesome...and quite dangerous...maybe that´s what the warning is about. However, there are tons of people walking between the cars selling everything up to fake Pringles as the passengers wait on the bridge to be let into Brazil. There are companies of vans with the simple task of transporting the ridiculous amounts of goods that people and businesses buy in Ciudad del Este.





Another odd aspect is the huge asian influence on the area. There are Chinese and Japonese eateries at every turn.

Also, the changes of language and currency are amazing. Portuguese, Spanish, Guarani (the indigenous language of southern Paraguay) and several Asian languages as well. But the most impressive was watching them convert money, because almost anything is accepted here - even Euros and Pounds.

I had some fun with a little kid trying to hawk some socks. I asked him in Guaranies (the Paraguayan money), Reales (Brazilian), Pesos (Argentine), Dollars and Euros. He couldn´t do Euros, but it was fun. And he could almost seemlessly switch pretty accurately between all the other currencies (I had figured it out before asking). I didn´t mind screwing with him because he´d been following me and annoying the living crap out of me for about 6 blocks.



Other than switching some my old shorts for a new pair, I mainly tried to help two British girls (we had met back in Iguazu) not get ripped off as we went from site to site looking at digital cameras. I think the final result was pretty legitimate.

Valley of Wetness

Iguazu Falls, precariously placed near the infamously dangerous and lawless triple-border of Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, is amazing. It´s a valley of waterfalls, with almost 300 making up its humbling panoramic.



There is honestly no easy way to describe the area because its expanse is overpowering. I only viewed the falls from the Argentine side because I didn´t want to buy the expensive Brazilian visa if I wouldn´t be spending much time there. A large network of catwalks takes you past long several levels of the waterfalls: below, eye-level, and above.



By far the most impressive of everything is la Gargantua del Diablo, the Devil´s Throat, where the largest amount of water converges to create an enormous salto kind of beyond comprehension, at least for me.



The sound is a constant thundering as hundreds of thousands of gallons free-fall per second. One surprising thing are the flat, calm waters that make up the Iguazu river above the falls. Fish and crocodiles lazily swim only mere meters from the seveal hundred foot cascades.



This is tres-fronteras, where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet. In the distance are Ciudad del Este and Foz de Iguazu, split by the Rio Paraná, and Rio Iguazú joins from the right side. That´s Paraguay on the left and Brazil straight ahead.



And these cute little guys are everywhere in the park. "Coaties" look cuddly, but I watched ´em surprise some other unsuspecting tourists for a healthy lunch at the onlookers´ expenses! A guide or park worker even warned everyone of how fast the little guys are...but we tourists are slow and stupid.

Roofing

Several years back I spent a few summers working with some vile roofers back in Missouri. So I couldn´t pass on the opportunity to chat with a thatched-roof, or quincho, worker in Tacuarembó, Uruguay.





José started on this house, located on the outskirts of the artsy town of Tacuarembó about a week ago. In 8 days he brought the roof to life - brought it to life solo. Cutting, carrying, climbing, setting, etc. His week´s work will last for 10 years upon a hill overlooking the small town that is hazardously overcrowded with such horrific vehicles as bicycles and mopeds.







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There were whole blocks parked with nothing but bikes resting on the curb like this.

Where is the love?

Uruguay...the tiny country where people don´t pick up hitchers.

For all of this country´s redeeming factors: small hamburger carts, good dancing, decent prices...amiable drivers is not high on the list.

On day 5, at least I think, I got my first hitch from a Spaniard who works at the embassy here in Uruguay. I had waited hours and hours in different locations trying to hitch over the course of the time there. Even flagging buses in this tiny place was difficult! However, from the Spaniard came at least a little more luck.

Here are some of my hitches in Uruguay, the country where it is just shit-luck to find oneself on a national holiday weekend in the northern stretches of nothingness! This day included 7 hitches of varying lengths andt types.
-2 hours on a COMBINE TRACTOR. We traveled a whopping 40 kilometers, or 24.8 miles!
-the beds of several trucks that went a dizzying 30 kms or so
-a horrifically bumpy several hours with an 18-wheeler, which luckily took my several hundred kms.

Meat Selections in Chuy

Uruguay is known for its beef...the asados, the parilladas, the BBQs. If only I had experienced that aspect. I discovered that they also eat many other sections of the cow!

While in Chuy, Uruguay, which is the rustic sister city of its Brazilian counterpart Xui (also pronounced Chuy), I camped near Carlos´ house. Carlos is a 43-year-old who lives alone, save the many animals wandering the yard, in a one room shack of sorts. We had a great time. It was unfortunately difficult to understand him due to several missing teeth and his large accent.

However, he took me in and we spend the night around a fire talking of dogs, football, the kinds of wines we like as drank some very bad tinto (general red wine), and how long we should leave the meat on.



These crazy hills are everywhere in eastern Uruguay. And they are made by ants. On a side note...I have seen some about the size of half my finger. They´re huge!

The meat was intestines and throat. And Carlos was so nice that he gave me all the leftovers to take with me...meaning that I had sandwhiches for several days!

All In One Fall...Ruptured 2nd Vertebra

My one and only true companion died. A horrific tragedy occurred in the Montevideo bus station, Terminal Tres Cruces, when my trustworthy music-maker took a fatal fall. Her neck broke immediately and my attempts with duct tape made me reconsider my life´s course and realize that medical school might have been helpful.

Se acabó la guitara. She was growing prettier at every junction as I added a sticker from each country as I passed through. I´m not sure what I´ll do now. I think a harmonica might be a wiser move for the future (considering money, weight and space), except for that I don´t know how to play one. I will really miss my girl a lot, though. There was quite an emotional attachment after all these months together after I rescued the guitar from the trash and gave her new life.

She is now a decorative ornament in a Punta del Este hostel.



This is probably the most breaking news this blog will ever carry...so I´ll hopefully find a remedy within the week.

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And I´m in Punta del Este, one of the premier South American Atlantic resort destinations. Come in the summer like it´s intended - my only advice! There is absolutely no one.

Montevideo...

...probably the most relaxed capital that I have ever seen. People are friendly, the views are pretty, and the hamburgers are insanely cheap and amazing.

I spent 2 nights staying out a little too early and getting up a little too late to fully appreciate all that Uruguay´s largest city of 1.5 million or so inhabitants has to offer. However, I loved the small 2-man-run burger/chorizo(that´s sausage) trailers on every corner. (They reminded me of the hotdog booths at a traveling circus or the state fair.) For about $1 you could find yourself inundated with about 20 condiments ranging from steamed cauliflower to chimichurri to corn to mayo on top of a small little hamburger patty! I visited several of them and was pleasantly greeted at every rolling establishment.

Unfortunately I failed to take any pictures of them. Maybe some other Uruguayan towns will have the same wheeled wonders. When I finally get around to getting some fotos up, everyone will have to let me know if it´s obvious. I have only one lens: 50mm. Hopefully I will still find some variety in shots, but we´ll see.

Goo, Gu, Gew

The first thing I noticed in Uruguay was the speech - it´s a little different. The term here for "Wow" or "Oh my gosh" is "GEW!" And it has to be said animatedly to work correctly.

I learned this while spending my first night in Paysandú, a historically industrial city hugging the Rio Uruguay on the western edge of the country, which is slightly smaller than the state of Missouri.

The night was one of my most interesting in South America because I hung out with a large number of homeless men. I met some artesans on the street and they invited me to stay at their place as well as have dinner with them. I grabbed a room elsewhere and then headed off into the night with them. The destination was an old Lion´s Club (Rotary, Lion´s, and quite a few of those other philanthropical clubs are all over Latin America) in which about 30 grown men bed down every night. Ages varied from 18 or so up to about 60.

The food, music, and company were fun, but it was a sad night overall. I helped out a little with groceries and drinks, but it struck me very hard that I had the means to sleep in a decent hotel (it was $6 for a nice place) and if I needed to, I could leave the country at any point and fly home.

Most difficult overall, though, was greeting the same men the next day as they walked the streets and panhandled outside of restaurants.

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On a happier note, I unexpectedly received a personal tour of one of Paysandu´s structural gems, the opera house. It is an amazing building that is supposed to have the best accoustics in South America - but who knows about that.

El Palmar

The Rio Uruguay is insanely wide. It´s what the Mississippi would naturally be...relatively slow moving, pretty shallow overall, and beautiful. The majority of rivers that i´ve seen here are relatively untouched compared to how much we have engineered ours back at home. Although I´m repeating myself...it really is quite beautiful to see a massive river taking its own course and



That was the view from Argentina´s Parque Nacional El Palmar, named after a unique area with a surprisingly large number of palms in the middle of everything else. Like usual, I almost had it to myself.



These weird, large rodent-esque things with mustaches were everywhere. And they weren´t scared - thus making me slightly frightened!

Luckily there were some workers, though, so we stayed up late playing the guitar for one another and enjoying the perfect weather. The morning allowed me to explore some trails and take in the views. El Palmar turned out to be great, although there are huge threats of the vistas and water being marred by some incoming papeleras (or pulp factories) to accomodate the fertile soil in which eucalyptus thrives! Uruguay and Argentina have very, very tense relations at the moment due to this. Over the past year bridges have been closed many times to cut trade.

Echo de menos

I got a little homesick while in and around Santa Fe and Paraná in eastern Argentina because it is frighteningly similar to Missouri. Rolling fields of corn and soy...with some odd ones of rice mixed in as well!

I spent several nights camping while hitching across the center of the country.

Santa Fe and Paraná are roughly sister cities on opposite sides of the Rio Paraná. Although Santa Fe is supposedly more fun and exciting, I prefered Paraná. Santa Fe was flat and pretty boring overall for me. However, Paraná was fantastic. Although almost deserted when I got there in the morning...the entire city eventually makes its way down to la costanera (the waterfront park) by middle afternoon.



The high, terraced hills overlooking the river were splashed with couples, groups of female friends, and kids sliding from one level to the next on cardboard. The sunny Sunday afternoon was punctuated by maté and pot. Maté, a tea-ish drink used like crazy throughout Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay is obvious for the thermos that normally several people out of a group are carrying. Actually, most people have their own maté hand bags, eerily resembling a leather, European man-bag! And pot, which one smells on almost any street in South America, is always evident but impossible to tell the source of. So it was an afternoon of smelling pot somewhere and seeing people fill up their matés time and time again while getting the incredible caffeine kick that the tea produces.

...and he took flight

At the moment I´m in Cordoba as I fly across central Argentina on my way to Uruguay and then Iguaza Falls. Yesterday was mainly spent hitching and bussing. Honestly, the bus systems here are just to die for. If you have time, they are wonderful. We just have nothing like it in the States. The buses are nice, spacious, comfortable, show movies, have blankets...I´m pretty much planning to live on one indefinitely.

Cordoba is another great city. Slightly larger than Mendoza, this college town is really lively. More nice plazas and peatonal (pedestrian) ways.
Oh, and I found a super-cheap hostel. We´re talking $3!! It is pretty nasty...but the people and the price are nice.
Speaking of housing options...these are usually the choices: Hotel. Apart Hotel. Hostel. Hosteria. Hospedaje. Alojamiento. Residencia. And I still have almost no idea what the difference is after a year down here - But I doubt what I´m currently in is a hotel!

Already I can see that traveling like this will be difficult. I do not find myself all that amusing...and the guitar gets tiring after several hours! I´d really like to meet someone to travel with, but everyone I´ve met thus far has differing plans, even if just for the short-run. I´m meeting some friends at Iguazu, and hopefully my pace will slow somewhat thereafter.

How to do it

Chile knows how to do some things, i.e., build mountains, place lakes nicely amongst those mountains, stretch unbearable deserts, etc.




But Argentina is much better at cities. They just get it. Mendoza, for instance, is borderline perfect. It has tons of plazas, large trees shading wide streets, beautiful parks when you need something slightly larger than the plazas, and nice people at almost every turn. Buenos Aires also has it down, but I think I´ve mentioned that before.




It was great! The guy just kept ambling back to the fountain, refilling the watering can, and making his way around the gigantic thing in Parque San Martin.
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I also hopped onto a soda delivery truck with a family of cousins to shoot pictures for several hours. They were great - showed me around the city, offered me soda, let me take photos, and then dropped me off very close to my hostel. I´d been meaning to ride along with a delivery truck all year in Santiago, but I never got around to it.











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After a few nights in Mendoza I was ready to hit the road again and made my way to Difunta Correa. Talk about your weird stories. The town is a shrine and pilgrimage destination in the middle of the desert. This crazy lady, Deolinda Correa tracked across the desert, out of love for her husband, and died of dehydration. Imagine that. But here´s the kicker - her infant child survived several days in the desert thanks to her breast...and was found like that...still living...on her chest. Kind of creepy. Regardless, I camped there and had several boys annoy me to no end. But it was fun.

Oh, and Difunta Correa is where Deolinda Correa is believed to have died. She´s all the rage with the truckers down here. They all stop through - which made hitching easy in the morning.

Puente del Inca

I took some good advice from my sister and stopped immediately after crossing the Argentina border in Puente del Inca.



It´s a tiny town that mainly houses a military base of sorts. However, there are several major attractions right there. Puente is Bridge...and Puente del Inca was one of the southernmost known Incan migratory destinations. The natural land bridge that gives the area its name is an awesome yellowish-orange thanks to the sulphurish thermal springs around it. I stayed in a cool little hostel in the old train station right next to the bridge.

Even more impressive than the natural land bridge, though, was the tallest mountain in the world outside of the Himalayas...Aconcagua. The name just sounds big. At just under 7,000 meters, Cerro Aconcagua is the largest in the Americas. And like I said, the largest in the world outside of the Himalayas. Well, that big thing was smiling down on us and a several kilometer walk took me to a nice viewing point not far from the base. Scaling it takes several weeks of preparation to acclimatize. And you simply can´t try it at the moment thanks to the weather. There are certain seasons and months in which climbing is allowed, and winter isn´t one of them.



Walking to a mirador or viewpoint took me through several cool old train tunnels. There are tons on both the Argentine and Chilean sides to protect against snow. However, they aren´t complete, so I wonder if they were more to park the train in or something like that. All I know is that I´m no rocket scientist!

It begins...Thus something else ends (or vice versa)

Se acabó Chile. My time in Chile is done. After a wonderful year and an oh-so-strenuous week of finals, I am moving on.

While the amazing chapter of my study abroad ends, another one opens - 3 months of traveling!
(That´s right. I just used the cliche metaphor of the chapters in one´s life ending and beginning.)

My immediate plans are to hop the border to Argentina and see Parque Nacional Aconcagua, named after the mountain that happens to be South America´s highest. The next few weeks will work themselves out in northern Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. The eventual goal is Venezuela, hopefully hitting most Spanish-speaking countries on the way.

Although I am sad to leave so many wonderful people and memories behind in Santiago, the next stage seems amazingly fun.

I hope to continue blogging, but it might just happen to become even more random and sporadic than it already is.



I am taking one bag and one guitar. The bag unfortunately weighs more than the guitar. Although I am setting off solo, I anticipate meeting and joining many interesting tipos along the way.

Stay great, mis compadres.

la plaza DE armas DE santiago DE chile

The next few posts all involve life around the Plaza de Armas, one of my favorite spots in Santiago. Three-card, or in this case disc, monte has been really big lately. The teams working the people are pretty impressive. I only got off about 5 photos before they shooed me off. Scared me off is a better way to say it. "Watch the monkey. Watch the monkey." I have no idea how they pull it off. I vow to never lay money down, because I will not get it back. Right before this I had the joy of mistakenly walking around the edge of a mime´s show. With a very purple face I helped him entertain the surrounding 200 people or so as I tried on female underwear that he mysteriously pulled out of my bag! Luckily I´m not too easily embarrassed.

Kiosko 24 - Taller de Cerrajeria

Talking less than 5 minutes with someone can open an amazing world.



Liborio Alvarez has been making, copying, and fixing keys for 35 years. He was lucky enough to be grandfathered into his prime location by knowing the owner of the kiosko, which was brought over from England almost 70 years ago. The original engraving has worn off during his many years of working in the small cube.



Although mainly dealing with keys, Liborio also sells newspapers, giving him a chance to read most of them over the course of the day.



The Plaza, being one of Santiago´s main tourist attractions, has allowed Liborio to meet many key makers from all over the world who stop by and share a story when they see his kiosko at the southwest corner of the Plaza.



Keys range in price. A standard copy will run you $0.80. But a Mercedes or BMW job will jump up to $4,900 pesos, or $10.00 US. Accessories, such as key rings or color bands, are also offered. The crucifix isn´t far from home, as the National Cathedral is about 100 feet across the street.



Liborio takes about 30 seconds to copy a key on a box from Italy that he has rebuilt innumerable times. His breaks from reading the newspaper are never long.

Bird Lady

Much too late into the year I befriended Elena, my favorite person to watch in all of Santiago. Of all the many, many times that I have enjoyed la Plaza de Armas, she is there more than any of character in the grand theatre that is la Plaza.

I really have gone in the past simply to watch her.

Elena is very kind. I know limited amounts about her because she unfortunately mumbles more than I do, making it very difficult to understand. So difficult that often times I give up asking "what?" out of embarassment.



Elena is 70-years-old and sells bags of pigeon feed (mainly corn bits) to anyone who is willing to put down the 100 peso fee...or 20 cents. She knows the majority of the regulars in la Plaza, and like them, has her own spot. She is generally on one of two benches between the water fountain and the gazebo, depending on the position of the sun and the temperture outside.



When I took these photos Elena was arguing about the cleanliness of the pigeons with another lady. She has been selling seed for one year now. Her hair and outfits are always interesting - leading one to believe that she cuts her own hair and someone else chooses her clothing, the opposite of how society normally dictates it.



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While these two photos are almost identical and taken only seconds apart, I find that them to be very intriguing. I think they demonstrate the many types of life that surrounds each and every one of us.
Elena has one son who lives in Osorno to the south.