the way to salta

After months of planning, googling, stressing and dreaming of travelling through south america, we finally stuffed our packs with too many clothes, books and premade juice packets into my dad´s backpack from the 80s, strapped them onto our backs and endured a 45minute long inferno between our apartments and retiro, the main train and bus station. Full subway, switching lines, 80 degrees, wearing a down jacket i couldnt remove, 2 backbacks, 2 bags. plastic bag breaks. natasha calls. natasha texts. cant find bus ticket. natasha calls again. need i say more? finally we ascended on the crowded escalator into the purgatory of retiro bus station, where robbers lurk around every corner apparently, but the heat was gone and i knew the pain was almost over. soon after we waited at the terminal freaking out when 10 minutes before departure our bus still was no where in sight, but rolled into view 5 minutes before six and left 3 minutes after. this aint SFO. the bus was heaven. air conditioning. leather seats reclining into beds. coffee, cold and hot water and movies literally within an arms length. food places on my lap every couple hours. i could get used to executive class.

i woke up this morning in the same utopian bus seat, plus a window seat watching the province of Tucuman pass by. thicks bushes, shrubs, cacti, oaks and wierd looking trees out of the lorax make the hills look like alligator skin, rolling bumpily off into the andes, which suddenly jut up behind this bucolic haven. its out of a painting. wild horses run alongside the bus, cowboys on horses herd small groups of cows. scattered small farms of corn and other vergetables pass by, but mostly its just wild plant life. occoasionally we pass over clear, rocky rivers, forrsts (literally forests) of sunflowers. some fields are butter yellow, others a bright mustard, with strange spindly cacti reaching out of the ground like the gnarled green plastic witch hands seen on front porches around halloween. spooky.

the more i look out the window thr more i realize how varied this place is. some places are like jungly, some fields, and the colors are constantly changing deep red grasses, bright yellows, every shade of green. the lack of rhythm and rhyme to the mixture of all these landscapes puts them together in a most perfect pattern of randomness. some fields have a single flourishing oak surrounded by only grass for acres.

a mass of thick, pillowy clouds casts a sleepy shadow over it all and i roll over in my cushy chair for a nap.