Leaving South America: Like a tornado that takes you home...and it feels like Oz

In spanish cultures, the idiom "when pigs fly" meaning "I doubt that will ever happen" is translated "when frogs rain down."
This is an art project by my friend Fransisco Castro and others at an indie art exhibition and poetry show in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

During my last week in Bolivia, I met up with Aline on her way to Lima and our friend Fransisco from CIDEP in Argentina traveling through Cochabamba. It was nice to be able to say farewells to them all. But also hard. I found it hard to anticipate how leaving was making me feel when I hadn't left yet. To me, life was still life in Bolivia and in South America. Little did I know just how used to it I had become, just how much of a shock NOT being in South America would be. Little did I know how "south americanized" I had become.

My last week at Mosoj Yan, I was starting to feel a little bit like a lost wandering of the world already. I suppose I had put down some roots in Cochabamba, and the effects of being uprooted were evident. Pasking up again, traveling again, alone again...all the more exciting and bittersweet because it was to be the last adventure of my journey in the south. I had saved a beautiful natural wonder to cap off my travels, though, and I was excited to finally be going to the amazing gigantic waterfall that cascades down and across the border between Brasil and Argentina in the atlantic jungle: Las Cataratas de Iguazu (Iguazu Falls)! I hopped off more than 50 hours on cold-night gravel road Bolivian bus rides to find myself in a beautiful magical wonderland that really melted my heart with its dewey verdant lushness.

It is an Argentine national park, equipped accordigly with all the tourist necessaries. I hear the "Brazil side" is similar.

Amazing

Breathtaking. Though there place was absolutely crawling with tourists, at least there was no lack of people to offer to take my picture for me and then wonder at me while I snapped self-portraits anyhow.

Left side Brazil/Right side Argentina

So then I found a gorgeous jungle trail and went for a run--and nearly no one else followed me. They were all in the wine bar-chocolate shop, I think.

Left side Argentina, Right side Brazil

Then it was time to hit the road one last time. I was nearly floored when our bus hit the outskirts of Buenos Aries. I hadn't seen that city in over 8 months. And now it was just to say goodbye. And I'm afraid seeing a completely different side of the city made me fall in love with it all over again, I had visions of all the argentine-ness and south american-ness mixed with italian charm...and I decided I wasn't so sure I wanted to leave after all. Or maybe it's just that I always want to change my mind as soon as I think it might be made up. Luckily, my beautiful hospitable friend Veronica from CIDEP opened up her home and her busy film producer's life to me for a few days so I could fall in love with life there again and develop a healthy desire to return. I felt right at home in the heart of San Telmo, arguabley Buenos Aires's most artsy and happening neighborhood, the first of the city and the birthplace of Tango. We walked, went to cafe's, shopped at the artesan fair and, on sunday, I even got to experience a first-hand look at the Argentine congressional elections!

Here's Veronica looking for her name to find out where she'll vote. We already met up with her mother, father, brother and aunt to drink espresso coffee out of teensy cups and go to the polls as a team. We didn't dicuss voting choices; according to Veronica's family voting is just something the argentines really appreciate and want to make a familiy affair. Aside from the fact that there was a dictatorship within recent memory of most citizens (in the 70's and 80's), voting here is also mandatory!

The ballot squad

After I got in the cab, that's when in hit me: I was so sad to be leaving. Argentina and latinoamerica had become my life, my reality. I didn't know what the next reality was going to look or feel like. I had plans, for sure. I planned to visit my family, ride across the country with my brother, finally see my friends in Oregon and climb and be in the mountains with them. Beautiful lovely thoughts...but as soon as the plane landed, I realized that I was in a new and challenging, at times oh so unfamiliar world. And I began to adjust, here, in Tennessee. I'm still far from being adjusted. But I also don't ever want to fully "adjust"--or have things be like they were before I got "south american-ized." I want to be changed, remain changed, live and dance to the beat of a deeper and broader drum. And, just like that, I know I'll have to go back soon.


Road trip time!

note: to contact the volunteer organization go to www.sustainablebolivia.org