Birding Y Jose-ing

In my haste to bash Hermannn, I neglected to write about a few highlights - actually some of the best moments yet - from the previous week, so I´m going to do that now.

Friday morning before the trip to the futbol game, Nicole and I went to the Ecological Reserve here. Since I´ve been living in Hoboken, NJ, for the past several months and not in Manhattan proper, I´ve forgotten how stressful living in a big city can be. Not stressful like work is stressful or Spanish is stressful - just stressful to the senses. There´s never a quiet moment in a city. This particular city feels more stressful than New York, and I´m not sure if it´s because it´s foreign to me or if it actually is more stressful, but nevertheless, it is sensory overload! The buses seem to be especially loud and smelly here, farting out large clouds of gray smoke every time they pass, and even in your casa, you can hear those silly motorcycles rrrripping up the streets.

All of this is to say that as we were making our way over to the Reserve that Friday morning, Nicole and I were both doing a small bit of griping about things. Ugh! Just shut up, city! Just give me a moment of peace, just one!

And then we walked into the Reserve.

The Ecological Reserve is located on the eastern-most edge of the city, so when you get to the eastern-most edge of the Reserve, you hit the Rio de la Plata, which feeds out to the Atlantic. It´s a relatively small piece of land - maybe the size of the Radnor Lake area in Nashville, maybe a bit smaller - but it is an amazing haven from the racket of the city. You walk into it from the streets of the city, and suddenly, all the noise just stops! Silence! Ahhhhhh. The land is very marshy, but there are walking paths around the exterior of the Reserve and a few that cut down the middle of it, too. The Reserve is home to a good bit of wildlife - plants and trees and many, many birds. I was lucky enough to visit the Reserve with Nicole, who happens to be an aspiring birder. I´ve never met someone who aspired to be a birder before (unless you count mi padre), and I´m a bit of a dummy about birds, so being with her made the place come alive a bit for me.

She said she felt like a kid in a candy store with all the birds. Being the sweets addict that I am, I would never compare looking at birds to being in a candy store, but her excitement about the whole thing was a bit contagious, I must say. She had her binoculars, and she´d spot something and then be like, "That is the COOLEST bird I´ve ever seen!" with the kind of enthusiasm that I reserve for a VERY few things. Then she´d make me look, and she´d get out her pad of paper and write down a description of the bird, so that she could look it up in her book later and identify it.

I spent the majority of the time there, walking a few steps ahead of her, and just breathing in and out. The flowers here are beautiful right now, and it was such a relief to just enjoy for a moment. I find it very difficult to just enjoy in a city - things are too distracting.

When we finally hit the edge of the Reserve, there was the Rio, and again, my friends, dirty, dirty, dirty. I have some great pictures of the "beach" by the Rio - bricks and lost shoes and garbage, rubbish, filth. With the exception of my time in Haiti, I´ve never seen such utter carelessness about a place. It´s very sad. It did make me very thankful for some of the sterilization efforts in America (or in the United States, I should say - people here get very annoyed with you when you call the US, "America". "This is America, too" they say. Oops. Good point.)

It was a great morning. One of my favorites since I´ve been here, I think.

The following Sunday evening, I was lucky enough to go to a Jose Gonzalez show at a little music venue here - La Trastienda. The place was comparable in size to Bowery Ballroom in New York, but they had small tables (with seats!) in the central part of the room that you could reserve, so I actually got to sit down for the entire show, which I find preferable to standing - especially for mellow music like Jose´s.

Mis amigos Camilla and Roger (from Holland), Blake (from Canada), Liam (from Colorado), and Emily (from London) all went with me, so we had a little table to ourselves, had a few beers, and just relaxed. It was an amazing show. If you ever get a chance to see him in concert, you should definitely take it. He´s incredibly talented. A real musician.

After the show, we walked over to one of the main plazas in the San Telmo neighborhood to have a few more cervezas. It was about 12:30 PM on a Sunday evening, and this plaza was alive! Cafes circling the plaza all had tables out for outdoor seating, and there was an impromptu dance floor in the middle of the plaza, where couples were tango-ing or trying to tango or just swaying and loving. The air was cool and the winds were mild, and it was altogether a perfect setting, so we sat, listened to the tango music, watched the people, and talked. These moments are the rewards of putting up with the stress of the city. Also one of my favorites since I´ve been here.

A week from today, I´m heading to Bariloche, Argentina (http://www.bariloche.com/fotos.asp for some pics), for two or three weeks more of studying. I cannot wait. After that, the loose plan is to head back to Buenos Aires to meet mis padres (if they would pulease make a plan?) for a week or so, and THEN, then, my friends, I am off. I´m hoping to formulate more of a plan in the next few weeks (perhaps while relaxing by a lake in Bariloche - eeek, I can´t wait), but ideally, I want to head south first, from Buenos Aires, see a bit of Patagonia, then head back up north, through the Andes, Chile, hopefully take a side trip out to Easter Island (I´ll hate myself if I don´t - I´ve been dying to see this place for about 6 years), then head up to Peru. Depending on time and money, I´ve gotten myself very interested in continuing north from there, to see Guatamala and Mexico and places in between, perhaps. I don´t know. The world is my oyster. I am a free woman, as Rosa says.

At times, the idea of traveling solo makes me a little nauseous; at others, it feels exhilarating. It´s scary in the way that jumping off a high cliff into water below is. Even if you´ve watched people do it and survive it and love it (and then do it again), it´s difficult to not let the scariness of it prevent you from experiencing the thrill of actually doing it.

But I´m doing it. Now that I´ve put it in writing, I must!

Hope everyone´s having a great weekend. Much love.