tired, or retired?

ive always admired retired people. the freedom they have. ive always imagined it as a kind of paradise thing wher eyou get to sit around and admire the facet that youve done lots of hard work throughout your life. you can sit around if you like, wake up late when you are tired. wake up early when youre not. you can rekindle past hobbies if you like, take long walks, take classes, bike ride across the country, you can. if you want to watch tv, throw pie into your face and do headstands on the middle of broadway, you can.
anna and i are effectively retired. we wake up at 9, or 10, then lay in bed for a little while longer. we drink coffee and eat peanut butter sandwiches (our last canister of peanut butter is rapidly disappearing and a new one is out of the question for some reason here in buenos aires, thus our style will be somewhat cramped, but we will improvise for the last month...) and play free cell. we go to the gym. we go about our daily business (one goes to this cafe, the other to that, with the basic end purpose being that we have different stories to tell each other when we reconvene at 7 for wine/fruit/nuts/olive hour. then, we watch a comedic dvd, play more free cell, then, go out to eat, or cook something. at this point, when we are done, it is approximately 11 or 1130, at which point we have the monumental decision as to whether or not we should go to a bar/club/cafe/movie/bed/tango show.
retired from what? you may be asking. and yes, i have asked myself this as well. the retirement was not what we had wanted. exhibit a) we came to bsas with a job connect that turned out to be terribly shady and in the end to not even contact us. exhibit b) the english-teaching job market in bsas is illegal at best, takes a while to develop a good schedule at average, non-existant at worst. exhibit c) teacing english to individuals yielded a student who was going to give us a few hours each week and then decided first that she didnt want me to teach her, and has since begun flaking on anna.

alas

so we are coming home in june anyway and have enough money to live cheaply until then, so all the efforts in job-search are being put forth to the new york market. so, until then, anna and i get to live the retired life. i write, i read, i walk, etc. however, my mini-retirement isnt quite as i would want my real retirement to be - you know - the one that will start 5 years from now after i make 1 billion bux. the main difference being that when you retire after having worked for a long time, you get a pension! that means that whatever you choose to do, you dont have to worry about money. free-time is a misnomer at best, an oxymoron in reality.

but, dont feel too bad for us :-) being tired of being retired is still the good life category!

my pics up to argentina

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4030&l=b4150&id=599517094  ecuador

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=5152&l=e2998&id=599517094   peru

 

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=5153&l=e05b5&id=599517094 colombia

whales, luxury, engagements

so puerto madryn was cool, although we were there a little bit after the season where you purportedly definitely see orcas, we managed to have fun. months of traveling have taught us to sniff out a place where there is one thing to do, do it, and get out. so, we got into puerto madryn, relaxed, went on a tour the next day, and left the next. the town was kind of dead, being that the tourism season is over, and since we didnt overstay, we liked it. our hostel was cool. hostel viajeros, or something. the only thing was that they made us rent towels, which was just sneaky. but, the rooms had cable and there was a kitchen.

the tour we went on was also good. it was just us and one other guy. ther ewas a lot fo driving around in proportion to how much out of the car time we spent, but it is patagonia - it is big and barren. durin gthe driving, however, we saw lots of guanacos, sheep (which dont count), we saw a fox, these weird ostrich-like birds that ran fast, giant rabbits, and armadillos. when we did stop we saw sea lions, sea elephants, penguins and even a franco-austral whale jumping around in the distance. apparently we were lucky to have seen these.

we were out of bs as for 2 weeks and 4 of those nights were spent on busses. so, for the final bus, we decided to go all out. that sleeping at a 35 degree angle, though loads better than the 90 degree angle provided by good ol' greyhound, we were still not satisfied. so we went for it. we spent the extra 10 bux and got the 180 degree seats. the fat leather seats build for rhinocerii the fold back and extend to a full bed. we got a special section of the bus, sectioned off by a curtain that snapped shut so that we souldnt have to see or smell the other people on the bus - the poor slobs who toiled in anonymity in their inferior seating arrangements. we got asked what kind of food we wanted. we chose steak. we got steak. and, unlimited wine (thats an exaggeration) throughout the dinner portion of the evening. and, we arrived back in buenos aires well rested and without the creeky bones that often accompnay a morning after a night bus. then, we immidiately joined the local gym. then, i lifted weights and tor every muscle in my chest and havent lifted my arms in 5 days. then, it rained tempest style and the rain came into our apartment because we were out and the windows blew open and the rain ruined my charles darwin book i was reading. boo hoo.

but, the interesting news, that which the 4 people who read this blog might be interested to know, is that anna and i got engaged. finally. a couple people know that ive been carrying the ring around with me ever since new york. well, it finally went onto her finger last night. we were coming back from cafe tortoni, which is the fanciest cafe in buenos aires, but the coffee is only 30 cents more than everywhere else. it is more like a theater where they have tango shows. the cafe itself is build of marble and has pillars with ornately carved designes in the molding. the waiters wear suits. anyway, we were walking back and stopped in the middle of july 9th street which is the widest street in the world and has a lit-up obelisk at its center (ok, we werent in the middle of the street but the street is broken up into 3 streets with 3 pedestrian walkways running parallel. we were on one of those.) we sat on a bench-like thing. i asked her, she said yes, and then we went and ate steak and drank wine (for a change) to celebrate. refer to annas blog soon for more girly/romantic-like details, but it will have to suffice to say here that i am happy and i hope she is too!

deciding how far to go

so, there are some aspects of travel that people get confused about. one is that it is hard to do. no. all you have to do is save up enough money, buy a plane ticket, get to the airport on time, sit on the plane and get served lunch and dinner, or dinner and breakfast, take a little nap and then poof, youre there! youre a traveler!
then, people think that it is difficult to put up with a lot of the things that traveling serves up. ok, this can be true. but if you are in buenos aires, apart from the weird, darker-than-a-rubber-band genocide that seems to have happpened, life is much like life in new york. even in cuenca - sure there was a slightly higher percentage of ecuadorians there than you may find in areas of queens, but, people still drank water and breathed air. it wasnt too shocking in that sense. even if you go to a place like principal - a tiny little village where people live so extraordinarily different than we do in new york that it is quite amazing, you are still just a bus-ride away, and anybody can ride a bus. so, what is it then about travel that makes it so fun and worth such vast portion of ones savings? i dont know. different people get different things out of it and its very personal.

however

its pretty cool to say youve been to the end of the earth. this is one objective travel goal that needs no justification. the end of the world - where the earth turns to ice and global warming hasnt really done its damage yet. wow.

so, with this not yet in mind, anna and i decided on extending our vacation from bsas to come south from mendoza here to bariloche - the northern portion of patagonia . its hard to gauge where you are in the world while you are traveling. for one, the world is flat in all locations, so even in cuenca you werent thinking, "wow, im so high" because the mountains that surrounded the city didnt look any higher than mountains that start at sea level. you cant really gauge latitude without a birds eye view of the entire world or a digitized map that updates your every movement. so, as the 19 hour bus due south of mendoza sped down the highway during the night, all i could really do was be impressed by the vastness of argentina. argentina is a country slightly smaller than india, but with only 40 million inhabitants. india of course has over a billion! of the 40 million agentinians, 15 million live in buenos aires. so, while traveling throughout the rest of the country, you can really notice how devoid of people it is. we traveled hours through the flatlands with nothing to see but sky and wheat colored grasses. a 19 hour busride is a necesary evil here because its not like there are villages abound for you to get off and break up the trip. 19 hours up the east coast of the u.s. brings you through boston, new york, philly, baltimore, dc, norfolk, etc. plus, there are suburbs the whole way through. even in the most barren parts of the u.s. there are farms here and there. while we were going from mendoza to bariloche, there was nothing nothing except the peopless aspects of the world.

eventually we got out of the flatlands and turned towards the andes. 19 hours south of mendoza, the andes have are mostly snowcapped and hre in teh lake region, they provide people with lots of adventure travel opportunities. but mostly they are beautiful to look at. when we got off the bus, we could also feel immidiately that the 19 hour southward trip had brought us into a new temperate zone. the air here was chilly and the trees were changing colors even though we were only in the beginning of april (beginning of october for you northerners).

our hostel was nice. they celaned the bathroom ever now and again. the people there were cool and nice and interested in doing things. us too. we hiked a few mountains (but took the ski lift down) and saw some nice views of the lakes and mountains and the emptiness of patagonia and we were going ot ride our bikes but hte last couple of days have been rainy so we havent. instead we have done internet adn enjoyed the coldest air weve felt since march 2006 back in new york. bariloche is a nice town to be cold in. it is small enough to not have to walk from one cafe to the next. and, there is an obsession with chocolate here that makes any grey day a little sweeter. although, it is a weirdly swiss obsession with chocolate. all teh houses look swiss or german, they have st. bernards roaming around the main square ready to have their pictures taken for a price, and they like chocolate. the restaurants are kind of expensive, but, the hostel has a kitchen and clean pots and pans so when you cook you dont catch backpacker disease.

but, now that we are here in patagonia, the temptation has gotten even stronger to go down to ushuaia, the last city in the world (currently the only other country - not including chile - that has any parts more south than us is new zealand). there we would see mountains made purely of ice and weird hairy animals. also penguins who are weird too. however, it is a 50 or so hour bus ride from here and an expensive flight. actually when i logged onto the internet today my intention was to look for cheap tickets down there, not to blog. but i had no luck. we met a gril who had just come back from antarctica and did a cruise and since the world is smaller down there actually wound up in africa. its very strange. but, i think we will probably head on to puerto madryn, at equal latitude with bariloche, but on the east coast, to see sea lions and penguins there. we might not make it all the way to the end of the earth, but i guess thats ok...

mendoza, wine, backpackers, and trees

so now that weve decided to come back to new york (june 2), we have been able to structure our lives a bit more. perhaps coming up with time-limits on coffee drinking. perhaps setting boundaries for how late into the morning we sleep. things like this. first though, we decided to take a trip out to mendoza to do our sideways thing.

mendoza is in the heart of wine country and is right smack square on the tourist trail. mendoza also has the distinction of being on the argentinian vacationmaker trail too, and, this is easter week, which apparently is the biggest vacation week for argentinians in the late march/early april timeframe. and, we didnt make reservations.

luckily one hostal did have a room for us. a room, of course with no lock on the door, bunkbeds and no windows. and in a hostel filled with a thousand dirty 20 somethings vying for backpacker of the year award (1002). there we have to contend with the american who refuses to speak english. this character is one you can expect to find in most every heavily backpacked area. they are learning spanish (or whatever language) and have taken to heart all of the snide comments of foreigners concerning being an american - you know - the comments about george bush that are meant to rattle us and shame us to the bone. it is not uncommon to approach people in spanish - it is the common language after all. but, once done, and once the conversation reaches the "where are you from" level, and it is determined that you really are both from the same country and thus speak the same language, and yet when you attempt to switch to said language and the other person doesnt - this is when it gets strange.

we have to contend with the digeridoo playing hippie who isnt from anywhere in particular and isnt going anywhere in particular. lets face it. it isnt easy to meet new people. but, when traveling it is. a simple, "where are you from?" or, "where are you going?" usually suffices. however, when captain hippie decides that he is from "his mother", "the world", or "earth" the conversation cant go much farther.

at any rate, mendoza is a clean, new city. it is not the place to come if you want to see old archtecture or ruins. the streets are tiled rather than cobblestoned. the plazas are actual parks where you can have picnics and whatnot. its definitely a city built around tourism, however. the restaurants are more expensive and fancy - you wont find $2 steaks here. and, everywhere is offering to bring you to a vinyard, a mountain, or white water rafting. all of which are within easy reach and if you make it our of the city to the city park, which is about as big as the city and includes a lake and leaves turing fall colors (probably not all the time), you will see the mountains with their snowy peaks. however, being a wine oriented city, you can only imagine, of course, that mcdonalds has gotten its hand in the game. so, yesterday for lunch anna and i went to mcdonalds without knowing exactly what was in store. i ordered my two big macs because it has been well over 2 years since ive eaten at mcdonalds and i was in the mood fo a big mac or two. but, also onteh menu were little bottles of wine. and this was no mcwine either. this was regular, local wine. the mcdonalds marketing peopel are so clever...