Wednesday, August 19, 2009

¿¿como se dice??

Hola!
I write from the great southern land of Argentina.
Firstly I will say that it´s winter again for me. This is not pleasant! I came straight from New Orleans- balmy nights, summer dresses, flower fragrances wafting eternally, cut grass, warm rain, beer, beignets, general goodness.
Currently I´m wearing three layers, a beanie, bed socks. However, I tend to look on the brightside in that these 2 weeks left of August will be the last I´ll be seeing of winter for a whole year. Suck it up, boyz.
I forget when the last time I wrote was. And I can hardly click back -or atras- at this stage of my entry.
So, I´ll begin, say, at Memphis. Memphis is an interesting town. We caught an overnight Greyhound there from Chicago, which was interesting. A pretty bad experience actually- started off with hundreds of people crammed into a small, smelly bus station, getting yelled at by totally disdainful and apathetic workers. Leah said that the only people who catch Greyhounds are the people who cannot afford to travel any other way. Tickets were $25. I certainly felt as though I couldn´t spend any more on travel after our epic 22-hora journey on Amtrak.
We stayed with a cool bloke in Memphis, played instruments (harmonica, guitar, autoharp) on his porch in our lovely dainty dresses. The town has an underlying edginess. We stayed in a lovely suburb but after one guy saying that there were many shootings and robberies and rapes and that kind of business the feeling came. That tends to be over the town and people live with that kind of fear daily. I don´t know, honestly, if it´s really that bad but we were definitely warned about a lot of things.
We visited Graceland, which was INCREDIBLE. Our visit happened to coincide with Elvis Week- probably too big of an ordeal to go into detail right now. However cheap and tacky the experience was (not literally cheap by any means) I left the tour complete with a greater respect for the King Of Rock- taking care of business.
From Memphis we amtraked to New Orleans. As youse can tell from my earlier statement of the place, it´s glorious. I only spent about a day and a half there, which truely wasn´t enough. It is such an alive place. Very romantic in how raw, how full of soul it is. We also couchsurfed there which was wunderbar and we went out with Justin and his incredible friend Horton- maybe the coolest person I´ve ever met. Cool in a ´I can´t believe you actually exist and are talking to me´ cool, rather than connecting with him on an everyday level.
And now I´m here in Buenos Aires! I´m a bit devo that I´m leaving tomorrow. That means about 1 and a half days total so tomorrow I´m planning on going for a big wander. Shall be fun! Today was a bit of a haze really.
Oh, and I think I got majorly ripped off by a taxi driver. He charged me $50, which is super expensive, even for Australian terms rather than Argetinian pesos. However when I confronted him on this matter he talked rapidly at me in accent-riddled Español which left me in no state to continue. Reluctantly I handed over the money and felt extremely jibbed.
The taxi also conked out in the middle of a 10-lane tollway, which was also a bit crazy. Afterwards the taxi driver simply pointed to a cattle truck passing and said ´carne´. Fair enough, really.
Ok so that´s about it, my time is pretty much over here. I´ll update again once I get settled in at Cordoba. So far, all is good.
Love to youse all.
Muchos besos!
Yorya

1 comment:

Helen said...

HI G great to get your update and enjoy the detail of your holiday. Will you post some pictures? Dainty dresses on porches? Great to be alive and soaking it all up hey? xoxoo H