{"id":1432,"date":"2012-02-10T19:42:13","date_gmt":"2012-02-10T19:42:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.velabas.com\/travel-stories\/?p=1432"},"modified":"2014-05-28T20:16:29","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T20:16:29","slug":"falling-in-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.velabas.com\/travel-stories\/peru\/falling-in-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Brazil but for Pebbles"},"content":{"rendered":"
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…Travel stories in Argentina<\/a>…<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

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Ghostly white and wrinkled hands, cupped and looking up more than I looking down into them they, they were wet. Hate me, hate me hate me. Why can\u2019t you just hate me? Hate me and I can break and crack and fall, then time\u2019s boundaries guide and heal just knowing that they\u2019re there. Nothing but tears gentle as they are but they fall like stones into my cupped hands. I shed them for fear and for wonderment of whatever it was I was about to do. I might shed them for fear of loss, but also for love of newness; for love of new unknown. The sun beat wicked against the back of my neck and I breathed in heavily, and again, and again. But my chest retained its hollow.<\/p>\n

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Buenos Aires glistened like a jewel, but already I\u2019d left it behind. I also left half my gear at Julian\u2019s; mostly cold-weather gear that Brazil wouldn\u2019t have any climates for, and a number of plastic bags filled with ticket stubs and coins. The night before I left, Julian, his mom and Landro took me to the Quilmes brewery where we ate and drank well. In the morning I was gone with a promise to return in one month\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

From the Retiro station I boarded a train to Zarate, the city just beyond the limits of Buenos Aires province. It cost 3.5 pesos. Steel discs screamed and horns yelled as it chugged into movement, the red leather and slit seats sweaty from an afternoon sun beaming in through smudged windows.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Retiro train station in Buenos Aires, Argentina.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In the evening I\u2019d arrived with a ride to Gualeguaychu, about 2 hours north of Zarate.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou ought to hang around here,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is Argentina\u2019s top carnival.\u201d<\/p>\n

I knew it was. I\u2019d watched the procession on television back at Julian\u2019s place. But my mission was one of greater grandeur. In my two years of travel I\u2019ve made it my business to find the best and nearest carnival whenever February came along. First it was Veracruz, Mexico. Then it was Barranquilla, Colombia. Now, it was Brazil. Camilo had recommended Recife, on the far eastern shoulder of the massive country, and I had decided on it. This would entail possibly weeks of hitchhiking. But first, it would entail a visa.<\/p>\n

Brazil has a reciprocity policy when it comes to visas. The U.S. requires everyone who is not part of our Visa Waiver Program (that is, anyone not from a \u201cdeveloped\u201d country) to spend 150 dollars on a visa and appointment. So, I would need to do the same to enter Brazil. The Brazilian embassy in Buenos Aires issues visas, but all the online appointment spots were booked. However, the Brazilian consulate in Argentina\u2019s Puerto Iguazu does not have a waiting list, and issues visas in a matter of days. The city is located on Argentina\u2019s long and skinny northeastern arm, at the tri-border with Brazil and Paraguay. It is also home to the country\u2019s most visited spot, the Iguazu Falls (ever seen The Mission<\/a>?) I could kill two birds with one stone, I thought. I even knew how to sneak in thanks to other hitcher friends.<\/p>\n

So, I found myself dropped on the highway just outside Gualeguaychu in the fast fading light. Once my ride had driven off I crossed the street to a gas station and large restaurant to ask for work. Instead, I walked out with water and a bag of bread.<\/p>\n

The night had come, so I took my bread back to yet another gas station\u2014for it seems to me that traveling in Argentina by thumb is only manageable from these places. There was already an armada of big rigs gathered on the pavement to sleep for the night. I walked towards them.<\/p>\n

As I navigated between two trailers toward a patch of grass where I thought I might pitch my tent, I ran into a merry man rummaging through his truck\u2019s underbelly compartments.<\/p>\n

\u201cOi!\u201d he cried in joy. \u201cQuieres banana?\u201d he said in thickly accented Spanish.<\/p>\n

\u201cSure,\u201d I replied, and began peeling the gift.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonde eres?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cChicago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOooo, gringo! Hambre, tienes? Hungry?\u201d<\/p>\n

I showed him my bread \u201cAbout to go eat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNooo,\u201d he cried, slapping my back with a large paw. \u201cYou eat goooood tonight gringo.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was Brazilian. Although he was not the first Brazilian I\u2019d met, it was the first time I got to practice a bit of the Portuguese I\u2019d been studying from a small Portuguese grammar book my family had given me two Christmas\u2019 previous.<\/p>\n

\u201cFalo portugu\u00e9s,\u201d I said. \u201cEstou aprendando falar, quero vialhar no Brasil.\u201d I wasn\u2019t speaking perfectly but hell if it mattered, what with his rough Spanish and my rough tries at Portuguese melding in the air. And the night progressed like that; as a sort of spectacle of linguistic confusion that, were colors applied, you\u2019d see them all.<\/p>\n

By the close of night, the trucker had cooked us up a meal of rice, meat, fried chorizo, cheese, onion and tomato.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks a lot,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith one hand you wash both!\u201d he cried in Portuguese. \u201cWe in Brazil help one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

I thanked him again, and felt a twinge of excitement for the upcoming adventures in his country. Indeed, what better introduction to a new country could there be than a border town trucker barbeque? We had written many Portuguese words on his dusty trailer, and it looked funny in the topaz hue of the gas station lamps. I thanked him and went off to sleep.<\/p>\n

In the morning the trucker was gone. I began to ask others, but like him, they were headed to Uruguay, since this was the main land border between Argentina and that country. I decided I needed to walk down the highway to where a police checkpoint slowed the cars down. And so it went.<\/p>\n

Just beyond the checkpoint I stood, my arm and thumb outstretched whenever a batch of cars would pass through, as these local cops\u2014not Gendarmia\u2014did not let me ask stopped rides.<\/p>\n

The sun was brutal. My sunblock seemed weak, but I\u2019d damaged my umbrella and it wouldn\u2019t open. An hour waiting turned to two, which turned to three. From time to time I\u2019d look down the highway in the direction I was trying to go. 1,000 kilometers to Puerto Iguazu. 1,000 kilometers. On the map it didn\u2019t look like so many. Concordia was the next stop. There were plenty of cars, and plenty of empty spaces, but no one was stopping.<\/p>\n

I looked back at the bridge under which the cops harassed drivers. Cars and cars and trucks and trucks. They passed with such frequency that it surprised me how long I was waiting. But then I\u2019d look down the road again and I felt like I could see 1,000 kilometers laughing back at me. The road disappeared into flatness, flanked by fields of patchy green wheat or corn that hugged it tightly and strained it, causing pressure, which perhaps caused the cars to drive faster and speed by me like squeezing through a funnel.<\/p>\n

I sat on my pack and lamented the sun. Then I stared at my map with no real thought entering my head. I could see Iguazu there, and I could see Recife many thousands of kilometers away. But I felt nothing. There was nothing but the idea of it. I just stared and stared, and threw my thumb at cars without feeling, without will.<\/p>\n

Finally, when 7 full hours had passed of me burning in the day and not one car had stopped, I did something different. I hauled my pack to my shoulders and walked in a daze out into one of the grassy fields. There, I sat down and stared blankly into my hands. They were ghostly white, and the wrinkles looked older than me. My mind was empty. There was nothing.<\/p>\n

But the hollowness in my chest rang then suddenly, and gave me hiccups. I was bent over in an agonizing depression of sorts that seemed to consume my ability to rationalize. I thought of nothing\u2014complete emptiness. And then they began to stream down my checks and fall into my cupped ghostly white hands. My hands were wet and I blinked drops like stones into them. Why, or what, or what the hell\u2026 I wept for a desired future that no longer seemed mine\u2026 and then thoughts began to enter.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t care for Iguazu. Brazil feels forced. Everything feels forced. I\u2019m not ready. I haven\u2019t felt ready for months. There is an unmistakable love of the road that expresses itself as a rush of life that pounds through your chest every time you begin again. When was the last time I felt it? Patagonia? Was it in Chile? Have I written convincingly of that feeling?<\/p>\n

Godammit, I thought. I\u2019m in love…<\/p>\n

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10 days, 20 rides, 4,357 kilometers and 1 dollar later\u2026<\/h2>\n

It had been four months to the day that I\u2019d been gone. Her building looked nostalgic, its off-white and peach columns glowing against the streetlamps. I walked up those wide marble stairs that had been so familiar to me, each step seemingly accompanying a beat in my chest, its soundless sound haunting my ears all the way to her door.<\/p>\n

Would she have already changed out of her professional garb that I liked so much? Would she be wearing those pink crocs? How long would her hair be, and would it still be jet black? Would I see the same chocolate eyes I\u2019ve seen everywhere since I met her? Would they look into mine as they did? Or have I been gone too long?<\/p>\n

I ran my hand through my wet, dripping hair, and then reached forward and knocked a few times on the door. I heard the lock. The door creaked open.<\/p>\n

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…Travel stories from falling in love in Lima, Peru<\/a>…<\/h1>\n