surpreme couching

lulu left buenos aires. today. the end of an incredible era just began. santiago is gonna leave in two days. kiia, the finlandesa, left last week. things keep changing, next monday a girl from holand is gonna move in. and supposably in august a girl from denmark arrives in la madriguera in august.

and there is a new couch. tremendous changes.. we just left jobs bar, the goodbye party of santiago, and found a couch on the streets. well.. i wouldnt fall in love with a couch someone just declared to be garbage, but the guys did. of couse. how could they eventually leave a couch just stand around somewhere in recoleta, buenos aires?? so they carried it home, put it in the ascensor, now its being around. in the living so far, supposably its being moved to the balcony soon.

well. lets stick to the basics. lulu and kiia left. some days passed by that we all seven spent together which was unique enough; today i said goodbye meet ya in europe to lulu. what was what she told me half a year ago in ezeiza international airport buenos aires?! think about it. lifes crazy.

i love these people. lets see what happens to the new couch.

pic..

..tures online, aggregated to B.A. reloaded album. everyday locura and soccer game public viewing!

sleeplessss in B.A.

moin. might be the jetlag whats keeping me awake. or the countless people in the apartment making noise. or the tekkno in the living room. or everything together, but im not in my bed, sleeping, where i should be that time of the day.

nevermind. ive seen a soccer game yesterday!! i do that, if we take it statistically, like twice a year. its not the soccer that makes me watch it. especially not when i dont have a clue whats going on, cause the commentator shouts in spanish. its the excited people around that make it intresting. well we've been to the public viewing, not to the game actually. but it was still the final of the copa america, uruguay/paraguay, and in b.a., surprisesurprise, there live a lot of ppl of both countries. so it was us partypeople in the midst of a thousand screaming and shouting and laughing and crying and dancing uruguayos and a thousand paraguayos who did the same. fuuuhuuunn!!

things happened on the plaza san martin, buenos aires. ah uruguay won, not surprisingly as i was told. congrats. pictures following.

Buenos Aires Reloaded!!

i'm BACK! noone believed that would happen, less that it would happen that fast. almost exactly six months after departure in february im in buenos aires again. fiestaaa?! i DO think so!!!

what can i say.. im in pain! 21 hours on tour, vianna - london - buenos aires. too much hand luggage as i never manage to get my stuff right. five spare hours in london heathrow (weeeeird people running around there..). carrying bags, walking around searching for terminals and gates, searching busses and the final taxi. every inch is hurting right now. anyway. i'd bet my little left toe its worth it.

arriving at la famous madriguera 9am, waking up (almost) everyone and having a tremendous hugging session is just priceless. walking into the legendary apartment, sensing the smell of last nights party (harrrr), counting like 50 new flyers in the living room collection, a flourishing garden. a damaged bathroom, undefineable chaos in the kitchen. and the rest of the apartment. a "bienvenido marion" swag crossing the living room wall :)

bad enough, they started the welcome party yesterday already.. without me!! but still, first afternoon in buenos aires we are all invited to a barbecue (i uploaded a pic of the dead animal!) so im not too dissappointed. cool start after all :) pictures following. stories following.

salinas grandes y tilcara

in the sierras and mountains of salta there is gps working. cool, i mean of course but cool. out there in the wild with the lamas and you got a digital device working. well didtn help us cause we didnt use it at first and so lost our way on the highways. we noticed too late that we were not on the road to tilcara but up up and up to the salinas grandes.

well could be worse, we thought, and kept climbing up to a mountain pass, leading us to the salinas. the pass itself is more than 3000m high, and up there i can tell you its reeeally cold. dressed in shorts and t-shirt, cause in the desert its quite hot, i left the car up there and frrroze. fair enough, we didnt stay long. went on the lonely road to the salinas. salinas means salt lakes, which are located in the steppe in between the mountain passes between argentina and chile.

theres literally nothing out there. a looong straight road, that leads you right through the enormous salt lakes. looks like an ocean of white, shiny salt. and in the middle of the lake theres a small parking space, so tourists can stop, get out of the car and run around on the salt. i thought, as its called lake, there would be water. but noouu the salt is kinda hard and dry, the water might be unterneath. anyway, you can walk around on the salt without problem. and take your own peace of salt for having a prove youve been there. aside the road there is some indios, selling artesanias, such as ashtrays, lamas or other sculptures made of salt.

problem with the ashtray, you shouldn wash it. think about it.. yeiks. back on the road we went aaall the way back down the mountain to where we came from and this time took the other highway, direction tilcara. we arrived there at sunset, in a village slightly bigger than purmamaca, and at least three times as many tourists. amazing. holiday season in argentina and youngsters and hippies drift off to the sierra. cool. anyway, hard to find a hostel again, and finally we ended up in the house of jimena. really liberal household, resident hippies right there, and some backpackers to fresh it all up.

we stood all together two days in tilcara, a community of nature bound civilization-fleeing citizens, making music and artesanias, selling the to other travellers. guess they think they found paradise on earth. well i dont. its beautiful, and its nice and the people are friendly and liberal. but its not mekka. the music on the plaza is too mainstream and the youth culture of tilcara, all the kids from capital that ran off to search for good vibration actually got nothing to do with the indios in the hills breeding lamas.

anyway, its not as bad as the european teenagers partying in mendoza. its not a town built for tourists like calafate. it got something.. tilcara was one of my favorite spot after all, quiet and spiritual and of an incredible beauty. all the cactus around in the sierra and the colorful mountains around make a scene, uncomparable.

tilcara is part of the quebrada de humahuaca. this is a landscape in the state of jujuy, bizarre mountain formations, poor vegetation, rich fauna and impressive inhabitants. the indigenous people up there are merely short and dark and got a unbreakable pride. i think they dont care too much about the pop culture overtaking there town center, but they do welcome the tourists money they bring to town. so now there is an intresting co existence between capital kids and indios.

i said the mountains got colors. sadly thats not that obvious on the pictures, but for real the sunlight on the mountain ranges is a spectacular view. red, yellow, brown, grey, green, purple. the color comes from different minerals in the ground, that got such a high concentration in the quebrada that the mountains seem like painted.

two lazy, dreamy days later we packed all our stuff back in the car and took off to tucuman. there i had to say another good bye and get myself a bus ticket for the next day to capital. the guys had to get a friend from tucuman and head back aswell. mmm we meet again :)

anyway, these were the last days of my trip to the north. im still dreaming of cactus landscapes and llamas and short indios.

jujuy and purmamarca

after a sad sad goodbye in salta i entered my bus to jujuy, depressed of course for bein on my own again. its like when travelling alone all you gotta do is to follow your objectives and maintain yourself. but the level of personal entertainment is quite low without people to share your trip.

soou, my ears got quite big when i grasped in the salta hostel that theres other travellers going my direction, following the very same objectives. so after breakfast i put the cutest face i got, asking if i could add myself to the trio of argentinians, on their way up north. what i got was a fcourse and a mail address for communication. and after a quite boring afternoon in jujuy capital, which is not actually that beautiful, i started the communication and found the guys again in purmamarca the very same evening.

purmamarca is a village like an hour from jujuy city, enclosed in colorful mountains und right next to the known cerro de siete colores (mountain of seven colors). well i actually saw nothing of this when i arrived in the middle of the night, was rather busy with getting internet connection. not that easy and everything i had to say when getting on my facebook was "and.. now?", to some boys i didnt actually know. and so bright was my smile when i got the answer from a blackberry, yeah come over here we got a place to sleep for you.

a room with space for like 20 people, on matrasses and sleeping bags, built of soil and stones, aswell the bathroom as rustical as it could be and i swear ive barely ever been that happy to see a place like this. and as purmamarca is a tourist party village, more village but also party, we had a great night out before going to sleep on the soil ground.

should mention, my white knights, to name them leandro, matias and hernan were travelling by car. one car. three guys. all their stuff. and next morning the question, you come with us?? how could i say no. didnt understand how, but they made it somehow to compress all the car-content so i would fit in. and in the end i had the most comfortable place in front next to the driver :)

so we took off, middle of the day, from purmamarca to the cerro for a mate and later on to the salinas of jujuy. upcoming story!!

Salta

BAAAM. left the jungle, the sierra, the mountains, the (almost) lonelyness to go back to town. we arrive in salta right on time for sunset behind the green mountains that enclose the town.

thousands of people on the streets, cars, animals, everyone screaming. southamerica. latin america. how i wished for that when i arrived in argentina half a year ago.. a dude on the street with his bike and a basket full of cheese to sell. a car driving by with blareing loud cumbia, in austria hed get a ticket for that. a women walkin by with five kids, in front of her next to her on her and all around her. lazy dogs strolling around the busy streets, searching for garbage that could have been food long time ago. garbage bags, rather on the street than next to the street. shops that apparently sell everything, and probably would sell you even more if youd pay for it. and their jukebox of folklore and local music, entertaining you still, when youre already another block down the road.

how i lllove this charming chaos, but that one moment, setting a foot on saltenio ground i was in pain. missing the empty sierras, the dust and the cactus. anyway, if theres something i learned lately then its to adapt. on a trip life always comes up with another adventure :)

so we get all our stuff out of the car, ready to hand it in the next day, move in to our hostel and start downtown right away. salta is also called la linda, the beauty, i guess for the beautiful city center. the plaza is impressing, one beautiful building after another all around. a huge, pink (?) cathedral, the much more famous iglesia de san francisco which you find in all the travel guides no the first page of the salta chapter. and more beautiful buildings, see pictures.

i was bewitched by the green rainforest mountains in the back, always had the impression, caused by mentioned travel guides, that salta would be desert. veeery wrong, afternoon one in town the heat and humidity collapsed and heavy rain made any more sightseeing impossible. plan b: museum of anthropology. loads of info about the region, further information on request.

we spent two night together in salta, day nr. 3 our ways split. laurine and lea headed down south to mendoza, natalie stayed in salta to go up to bolivia in the near future. and meeeee haha who knows i let you know with the next creative entry of my beloved blog!!

cheers