Taking a breath

Well, my partner in crime arrives tomorrow morning, and for a month we will be traveling together from Buenos Aires all the way down to Tierra del Fuego, and back up again as far as Bariloche. Thus does the first phase of my journey come to an end, i.e. the Northern Chile and Argentina Solo Tour. I'm sitting around in a Buenos Aires hostel waiting for 2pm to roll around so I can check in and freshen up after my 20 hour bus ride from Salta, and am going dizzy sorting through photos of Bolivian lagunas and flamingos which pictures all start to look the same after a while, and so to give myself a break I thought I'd put a few words down dealing less with the Who, What, and Where and more with the So What. Lessons and impressions thus far, if you will. (Updates re the What etc. will pick up where they left of, not to worry; as for looking forward, I'm going to keep those musings to myself if you don't mind.)

First: traveling solo was tougher than I expected almost all the way along until I got to Argentina. Santiago was alright in terms of finding people to meet, but in the smaller towns (La Serena, San Pedro, and Uyuni), it was trickier (the three-day Salar de Uyuni tour was an obvious exception, but those folks all lit out for La Paz as soon as the tour ended so I didn't have them to hang out with post-tour). Possibly the difficulty is related to my avoidance of  the youngest and/or most party-oriented hostels. But I like being able to sleep when I go to bed, and anyway I wasn't really looking to meet the folks who hang around the hostel playing pool and drinking all day. Also San Pedro, for example, has people going on all sorts of excursions all day, often returning late in the evening; so even the active people weren't necessarily around to bump into. So maybe my itinerary also played a role; maybe solo folks don't so much go to small towns in the middle of the desert. At any rate, my sense is meeting fellow travelers is easiest while actually in motion: on buses or trains, in departure lobbies/lounges, in interminable lines at border crossings, or in the back of a jeep as you bounce down a dirt road towards something scenic. I don't know if it was just luck or what but virtually everybody I encountered in those situations in Chile and Bolivia was traveling as a couple. It made for fine conversation at the time, but the encounters weren't so easily converted to plans for dinner or drinks or sharing a cab or coordinating hostels. It was literally on the Argentinian border that things changed: I got off the train from Uyuni, was immediately accosted by two solo travelers who had met on the train, wanting to know if I'd split a cab with them to the border (I did); and then in line for immigration, we met a trio of other gringos who had glommed together under similar circumstances. And, as the gringo line -- which consisted of the six of us -- was by far the slowest one to be processed, we had plenty of time to chat and decide we enjoyed each other's company, and so we coordinated taking the same bus to Salta, staying together, and going out together that night and the next night. And when they left, I had no trouble finding another solo traveler in my hostel to accompany me out my last night. So I don't know if maybe Chile is for couples, or what, but all I know is it's been nice to have folks to hang out with in the evenings here in Argentina.

Second: at least seventy percent of tourists in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina are French. You can instantly tell if people are French because they all invariably have coats or packs by Quechua, which must be the French equivalent of MEC, or what MEC used to be, maybe, in the good old days. Also their guidebooks have French on the cover, which is an even more obvious giveaway. And finally, they smoke more than any other tourists. There have been a smattering of Canadians and a couple of Americans, but really, the French seem to have the biggest role in keeping the South American tourist industry afloat. (Though in Argentina, Argentine tourists may challenge them for that title -- there are a hell of a lot of domestic tourists here, likely for currency exchange-rate reasons.)

Third: the people of Chile are just plain cool. All of them. I want to be friends with them. They're not a condescending, stylistically sophisticated or particularly in-the-know sort of cool, either. It's more that they all seem laid back, and smile easily, and they speak lazy Spanish (dropping s's like galileo dropped the orange, to mangle a phrase) that sounds more relaxed than sloppy. I haven't interacted with enough Argentines yet to massively generalize about them, but I'll let you know when I do.

Fourth: taking the front row of a schmancy bus has its benefits and its drawbacks. Pros: more legroom, massive panoramic view, first to be served snacks/meals/tea/wine/whiskey. Cons: sound interference from the driver's radio; at dusk, an alarmingly loud and constant patter of large bugs smashing into the windshield. On the way here I had such a seat, but eventually switched to one further back for these reasons plus the fact that my seat didn't recline quite as far as it should have. It turned out, too, I had a better, less oblique view of the LCD screen showing movies, which was a nice plus. So, final lesson learned: front row great during the day, not so great overnight.