I don’t have lots to tell about this series.

La Isla del Sol, during a full day, with a surprise encounter with my friend Marie, who’s a french traveller I met in Patagonia, then again in Tihuanaku for Willkakuti, and then on a beach of the island, by surprise. Also, her brazilian friend. And all the little girls who sell souvenirs.

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Since I was a kid I dreamed of seeing lake Titikaka. I don’t really know why, but it’s a big lake in the mountains, so that must be the reason.

If you ever go to Copacabana, the city on the lake, don’t miss the trout. It’s so good.

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Sorry, this entry is only available in Français.

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I took the highest train in the world. Where? in Bolivia of course… Between Oruro and Uyuni, to be exact. In the middle of the Altiplano. Between mountains and lakes and wild animals and about nothing else.

As I couldn’t get a seat in the Economy class, I chose the last one in Executive class. Executive means lots of tourists. I was seated near the Brazilian guy who bought the penultimate ticket, and we talked about politics, about how Bolivia and Brazil got new constitutions recently and about how it was revolutionnary and emancipative for the common people and the indegenous peoples and about how the promised reforms had been stopped because of some crisis or some globalisation. So I spoke to him about the big conservative wind that’s been blowing over Europe for the last few years and that it was quite different from the progress from the 80’s (at least in France).

Brazil, he told me, is the country of the future. The sad thing he said then, is that in the future, Brazil will still be the country of the future.

And then the sun disapeared over the faraway horizon.

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Ok yeah I’m late. Like, 18 days without writing, my fan-mail piling up on my cyber doorstep, so yeah. No I’ve not been married against my will and I’m not honeymooning in a forgotten corner of South America.

I just arrived in Colombia after two weeks of non-stop travelling. For the last two weeks I’ve slept in busses and crummy hotels (but cheam crummy hotels) near bus terminals, never more than one night in one city, travelling without anybody with me, travelling fast, making the distance. And there’s a reason for that, I’ve got to be in Medellin on the 23rd, to catch a plane to leave the north of South America and go to the south of North America. One day in Lima, and I left Quito without buying a Panama hat (I’m really sore about it and hope I can find panama hats in Colombia). Anyways. I’m now in Cali, Colombia, with five days to reach Medellin (7 hours away), everything’s great.

But I didn’t want to talk to you about that.

Almost one month ago, I was at a special festival… in Tiwanaku, Bolivia (also written Tihuanaco), for the summerwinter solstice on June 21st. And Winter solstice is quite important, I mean, even for us in the western cultures they put christmas over the pagan solstice (you never really thought the Jesus was born on christmas day, did you?) and we’ve also got a new year 10 days later. Fundamentally, we celebrate the winter solstice. I celebrated Willkakuti, the Aymara New Year, in the pre-colombian and pre-inca ruins near the Lake Titikaka. There’s worse ways of spending a night, and the following morning.

Tiwanaku, two hours west from La Paz, near the Peruvian border, has got the most important ruins in Bolivia. I won’t give you the details because I don’t know them and won’t insult you by copypasting the Lonely Planet, but basically it’s ruins that predates the Incas. The Tihuanacota culture is now extinct, but it inspired the Inca culture so it’s not that bad. There was a huge temple from which some stones are left, and a stone gate, the Puerta del Sol, through which the first rays of the new year sun pass every year on winter solstice. But let’s not get too fast. The temple complex is quite mysterious, because we don’t know lots about the culture at that time.

At the present time, Aymara people have their cultural celebrations there, namely, Willkakuti, their New Year. The Aymara people is one of the indigenous people of Bolivia (pueblos originarios in spanish, but the translation is a bit like, “original people, yeah, they have lots of originality”), the Aymara language is one of the official tongues of the new bolivian constitution, same as Quechua or Spanish. The Aymara New Year starts at the sunrise on the day of the solstice. The days are starting to last longer, the cycle has started again. It’s a good occasion to grab a drum and a quena and to go make some bolivian music in the streets, or grab a bottle and a girl and go dancing Morenada or Caporal in the streets to the sound of the bolivian music. So that’s what I did.

If you want the longer story, read it in French. I don’t want to translate everything, 1700 words is quite a lot and I’m not paid (yes I am through micro-sponsors but still). So yeah. I arrived iN Tiwanaku in the afternoon, made some tourist friends there, and then we went for a drink as the night fell, and the music started to play on the stage, and eight hours after that I was dancing with a crazy bunch of bolivians to crazy bolivian music and it was quite fun. At 4 in the morning, it was quite cold. Dancing and alcool and more dancing (and more alcohol) helped while we were dancing, but when we stopped to go wait to access the ruins for sunrise, it was quite cold.

Once near the temple complex we still had to wait for sunrise, after all it’s why we were there, all 2000 of us. So I took pictures of people playing bolivian music with drums and quenas and red ponchos and their checkered rainbow flags (the traditionnal flag of the indigenous people). Inside the temple, priests were conducting ceremonies but I couldn’t watch that. Too many people around.

Then there was a rumor : Evo Morales was in the temple for the sunrise! Evo! Coca grower, Aymara speaker, president of Bolivia! In a reelection campain this year!

And then an old indian guy with a red poncho starts speaking with me, dancing with me, calling me padrino, and then asked me to buy him a flag with the checkered rainbow, so yeah I offered him one, and he was so happy to wave it around! Aymara pride!

Then another rumor! The sun has risen but is kept behind the clouds so we cannot see it. The eldest people in the crowd cannot remember a solstice sunrise with so much clouds. Some people say that the Sun God has a message for Evo, other people think it’s quite bad and then, around 8 or 8:30, Evo left. And the sun rose. The first rays were a bit late to go through the gate of the sun, but we could conduct the rest of the ceremonies, like raising the hands, palms facing the sun, to get the awesome power of the new year. So yeah, I did that.

The legend then tells us that I was invested in the all-powerful energy of the Aymara Sun God. But then the truth will have to be debated by my biographers.

Meanwhile, have a happy new year 5519.

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I don’t really know when it all began.
I would say, what started it all was when I heard music in the street and saw a street band with dancers by the window. Some would say it began when I decided to go take pictures of the whole thing, dancers, musicians and gawkers. Some others would prefer to say that it all began when, after the show halted and I took a drink with some of the musicians, one girl – a Cholita dancer – started talking with me. But how it all started is not as frightening as how it could have ended… I could not have guessed the danger I was in when I opened my window to listen to the music noises down in the street.

Of course, when I left my hotel, I thought I’d be back half an hour later. See the dancers dance and the musicians blow their instruments, take three good pictures (and a hundred bad ones) and go back to classify my travel things. A calm day in La Paz. I heard the music outside, took my film camera and got down the street. The hotel’s doorman (4 yo) tells me “mucha baila“, it’s ok with me. I snap a few pictures, go buy two other films (agfachrome 100iso, but no wait it’s a Mitsubishi with an Agfa sticker), I snap two or three more pictures and a bolivian dancer with his costume starts to speak with me. Where I’m from, do I like Bolivia, and do I drink beer? So I join the group of traditionnal dancers, they’re joking telling everyone around that I’m a morenada dancer too and we drink a little bit more, thank god they also have an empanada because it’s 3pm, I don’t have anything in the belly and it’s way to early to be drunk. Then I have shots with an argentino and a colombian who look like south american gangsters, and the fact that they ask me if I want cocaine conforts me in thinking that, but they are nice enough and didn’t have any south american gangster friends but in the end I don’t accept their generous offer. They like my explanation for refusing “nada para mi, mas para los otros“.

I don’t have to say that I was feeling quite fresh, at 3600m above sea level after some beers, unnamed shots followed by a lemon, one empanada and a pepsi as the only solid food of the afternoon and a few pictures more or less well taken. And then, with the authority of Moses over the red seas, she parted the crowds and came to talk to me. She = one of the traditionnal dancers, with a bowler hat and a shiny pink dress. Me = buying tissues. She tells me she’s a cholita de La Paz, belonging to a famous banda de baila de morenada, and she participated to the festival of the gran poder, where you’ve got to dance eighteen hours in the crooked streets of La Paz. And her brother too is in a dancing band. And people pass beer around and we’re talking about all that and when they tell me the fiesta continues elsewhere, of course, I’ve got to follow them. We arrive in a communal room for social gatherings, and we begin the evening. It’s 4:30pm.

I am seated at the table of the family by the dancer, whose name, I learn, is Monica. And because she’s a cholita you call her Cholita Monica. Waiters bring us food, and we have to pay for the beer, and everytime they go down to buy a 12-bottles pack they ask me to buy one too. I do that twice, at 12 euros the 12 bottles it was a pleasure for me, but I insisted not to have that pleasure a third time. By the way, I thank my micro-sponsor for the 6/26. And so she introduces me to her mami and papi, then to her brothers and sisters, and then to her neighbours, and then we went dancing, and then the father tells me that la Monica is single. Well, that’s nice I say to him, lots of possibilities in this room for good husbands, but I’ve got a girlfriend-novia-fiancée waiting for me in my country on the other side of the world to get married, I say (it’s a lie, by the way), because I feel that something’s fishy.

And we drink and we drink and we drink, and one of the brothers tells me it’s a bolivian custom to drink that much. I have had a quite interesting year, and seen a laotian border guard drunk on Lao-Lao, chinese maoist/MTVist youth sick on beer, citizens of the US of A wasted on expensive cocktails, philippinos with not much blood left in their alcohol system and many other people in many other countries, drinking a lot an telling me it’s part of the culture. So I can say that drinking too much alcohol is a constant of civilisation. Your culture discovers alcohol, your culture gets wasted, and then you call that civilization. It’s my own theory and I’m not a sociologist. But I’m french so I’ve got the right answer about everything.

Now, with so much alcohol and music, we danse, it’s fun, it’s a wild dance with a girl I don’t know, on a music for which I don’t know the steps, with all the flat-haired moustachioed south-americans amused and perhaps a little bit jealous staring at us. One of the brothers asks me if I’m a tanguero, I answer him I tried, but I’m waiting to go back to Buenos Aires to have another go. My friend Monica then takes my camera, it’s big and not easy to carry around dancing on bolivian music, and gives it to her mother, so she keeps it and it wont get stolen. Lovely idea, don’t you see how she thinks of my security? It’s such a lovely attention… And now if I want to leave abruptly, I’ll have to ask the mother first for my camera… So charming and lovely, I tell you! I’m seeing the trap closing in. The father then tells me again that his daughter is single, and what an incredible luck to find a stranger who dances so well with her (note : I don’t dance that well, but with lots of energy), and the night continues thusly : we dance, we sit down and have some beers, we eat a bit (a nice sopa with some meat and some potatoes in the juice), the father tells me about his daughter, the mother looks at me with lots of insistance and we go back dancing because the orchestra starts again.

It came a time when, the father told me, you should come to sleep in my home it’s secure no robbers we have a confortable home, and I saw exactly in which bed he wanted me to sleep. The mother was grinning with yet more insistance and new brothers and sisters were appearing at an alarming rate, and la Monica, with more sighs and soulful looks, wanted to take me by the hand everywhere she went.

There is a confidence I’m willing to make now. I’m not the kind of guy who refuses invitations from people who want me to come over, and when it’s a girl I’ve been known to accept. But when it’s a girls entire family who gives the invitation, when the brothers wink at me like bad conjunctivitis, I may take five to think about it. In that precise case, I could see they weren’t inviting me for one night, but for longer. They would have invited me to a wedding also. Like, the wedding they’d have celebrated between la Monica and me.

At around past midnight I was starting to get tired. I was drinking steadily since three pee em, add to that the hours spent dancing and keeping an eye on the fourth finger on my left hand, I was starting to think an escape was in order to finish my night in a calmer state. One problem was in my mind though, my camera. My nearly-mother-in-law still had it under I don’t know how many layers of clothings, hidden from the robbers since my friend her daughter had given it to her. Finally I just had to tell her I needed it to take pictures (with some 100iso stock? with that light? hahaha) and calling her mami. I had to repeat the question multiple times, because my mouth didn’t speak good spanish, or her ears were drunk, but finally, after miming (hey I’m french we invented miming), she gave me my camera back.

The rest of the night wasn’t so exciting. I left the girl at her doorstep without a kiss (yes, without a kiss, as it could have been interpreted as formal engagement by the family, who I believe was watching us from the inside), I came back to the hotel despite her pleas not to risk my neck and my camera and her chances of marrying a gringo (no she didn’t say that), and the hotel was one street away and there was cops in the street at that moment so I felt safe and I told my story to the doorman (17 yo), but just in a few words because I don’t yet master the spanish language adter so much beer. Then I slept, then I woke up and was sick, then I slep again and felt so much better.

The next morning, a sunday, I heard the music, once again, down in the street, taunting and glistening under the winter sun, and the cholita dancers. But I prefered to let another tourist take the chance of spending a good night dancing, buying beers for a whole bolivian family and having a nice near-wife experience. So I closed my window.

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So yeah, two days ago I took the road and after 22 hours and 3 busses I’m in La Paz. And after one night I don’t have the altitude sickness anymore.

The plan would be to stay in Bolivia and see things during two weeks and then I’ll see. These two last weeks I haven’t taken lots of pictures, I didn’t look at any travel guide, I haven’t had to open my backpack and close it again two days later, I now have some little habits and can speak a bit with the guy at the almacen down the street, and we speak about our national football teams. He tells me Chile is going to win the Mundial, I don’t have any argument to counter with that, because I don’t care about football and “we” lost against China anyway.

Anyway, did I tell you about my Chilean-Canadian friend? Her name’s Nathalie, she speaks French, Castellano, English and Chilean (if you read the french version, the joke’s about speaking French and Québécois, hohoho). We met on the bus to Ushuaia, she told me she was on CouchSurfing and she hosted people from around the world. So after we went in the snow on the mountain, and then we took a tea in a house in the woods like in Canada, and she told me, if you come to San Pedro de Atacama, contact me.

That, I did just as I arrived in San Pedro two weeks ago. She was still on travels in Bolivia and Peru with her Argentino lover but only came back last week. And as she came back she told me she’s moving out, and I’ll have to help her. When you learned I was to travel around the world, would you have thought I’d help someone move in the middle of the desert?

Now I could have thought lots of thing could have happened to me, but moving, well, that’s a surprise. And it’s good to have surprises. I had other surprises, like from my bank. But you know, I didn’t have an answer yet and I’m going to Bolivia, but Bolivia’s not that expensive and it should be ok. And after that, who knows?

Oh yeah. These last days I’ve started once again to want to see lots of things. Maybe it was when I saw pictures from Nathalie’s travels, she went to the Lake Titicaca (and someone financed one day there) and to La Paz, and I want to go there, perhaps even take pictures. After that I don’t really want to go to Peru. I mean, people told me Peru’s crazy touristy. People also told me that about Thailand six month ago, and then I had not the nicest experience there. I mean, it would not be the same of course, Thailand was crazy crazy. But still, I don’t really want to go to Peru yet. I would prefer going to Colombia. People say “Colombia’s dangerous, never go there” but traveller who went there tell me “Colombia’s great, go there”. When you’re travelling, you don’t need the latest Lonely Planet to find your way, but you’re lost if you don’t have your common sense. And my common sense is telling me : Colombia.

We’ll see.

Oh, and I’ll close on a less candid note, before leaving Paris I met (on twitter) two people who were also going to travel across the world on a motorbike, and then we met again for New Year’s Eve in Vientiane and had a great old party. Of course, I’m writing about Johanne and Nico and if you read french head over to their blog aptly named On The Road Again. The bad news is, their travel was stolen from them yesterday. And when I write that, I mean, the bag containing their computer, cameras, passports and money was stolen from them in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia, along with their morale. That’s really bad for them and I think about them and I wish them courage and I hope they won’t go back to France right now…I know it doesn’t replace the stuff that was stolen, but perhaps it can help for the morale. And I know these questions, “no money, the only way is back”… but no, the way is to continue :)

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There is something wildly liberating in biking across mountains and listening to Philip Glass. It builds up along the repetitive rhythm that doesn’t show any sign of change but regulates the speed of the legs motion, the waves of melody coming one after the other as do the ups and downs… The sand on the road halts you but the clarinet introduces a new pattern for the pedaling, the sky, so enormous as if hanging above me and the sun in the face, the lacerated mountain followed by a plain that’s lying about its flatness or a sand dune solely inhabited by ferocious winds, the road follows an amphitheater of rocks and you see sculptures in the distance, made by the forces of earth and the absence of water of vegetation. In the heart of the desert, the brusque and flowing music of Glass belongs to the landscape.

And then comes the moment when the bike can’t go further, the legs ask for relief and the sun hasn’t got lots of time. The music also is over, I rest an instant and I start it again, I climb the path along the dune and follow the path that is too rarely followed by tourists, and find myself at the end of the ridge, where the mountains flows in the valley below and then in the vast expanses of the desert. Far away rocks and hills grip to the sun rays, their shadows extending more and more, the wind starts to push clouds from beyond the horizon, and the moon, at its zenith, is readying for the night.

The moment has come to sit down on the last rock before the cliff, drink some over-sweetened juice and indulge in a coca-flavoured sweet while time itself expands across the valleys rocky flanks. Above me, the sky is cut in half by an airplane trail and I let my thoughts go far away.

And then Philip Glass gives out his last musical breath, the Cordillera stretches rose and orange tints and then melts in the purple of the coming night, the sun gives out its last rays in the turquoise sky and the wind blows cold.

People say that the silence resonating after a Mozart piece is still from Mozart. Glass, I say, spent more time composing the silences after his music than on his music itself. That, or the desert plays with me once again. I’m now deep set in darkness, my bike carries me effortlessly, I fly down the mountain. Scintillating in the distance, San Pedro is but another constellation among countless others.

In my head, the ever flowing music is still resonating, going up and down as if it was the road I’m riding on, trucks drive past me in the ruckus of the winds section, and the wind that blows after they pass makes me think I might not be touching earth anymore. The mountain is nowhere to be found, lost in the blue darkness surrounding me, but the landscape is still fighting, as strong as ever, by habit or by frustration of not being able to stop me forever. At the end of the road I’m back in the little streets bordered by the tiny adobe walls, tourists and wild dogs, Atacameños and locals from elsewhere, nobody knows that the shadow that’s crossing the village like the wind is carrying the mountain back with him ; a handful of mountain seeds in the deep of his shoes.

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As you might know, I’ve been in San Pedro for one week.

One week of doing nothing, taking coffee in the morning sun, drawing postcards, trying to get the hostel’s Wi-Fi signal, buying a tomato, and avocado and some mortadella for a healthy lunch salad, and an empanada for an incredible meaty dinner, reading books and speaking with friends over the Internet, watching a movie when everybody’s sleeping in France, and watching the sunset outside of the city until the first stars appear above the blue-pink horizon. A week with days costing less than 10 euros.

This pause wasn’t planned but now I gladly welcome it. People say, you have to take pauses within the pause. Well, the trip’s not a pause. Sure, it’s a free time between two bits of everyday life… but there’s another everyday life to the travelling. You remember looking for the right bus, searching for a good hostel, wondering what place you’ll go next… And the people you meet, one week later you don’t remember them, just a few pixels on a Facebook. Meaningful encounters are rare on trips. Every few days you discover a new bed, you have to get used to other languages and banknotes, you’ve got to know by yesterday what you’ll do tomorrow, the plan, the planes, what you want. You can manage it a few months, it’s all right. Travelling’s not a big lazy pause, but people are right saying you need pauses in the trip.

I took some time in Guangzhu or Singapore, lazed around San Francisco and had a glimpse of the life in Buenos Aires. But I was always preoccupied by when I would leave, where I would go, and as soon as I got in the next bus/plane/train, the travel routine came back in full intensity, not leaving me time to ask the good questions. So yeah, I see now I had to take time and I have to say, San Pedro has been good to me for that.

San Pedro de Atacama is in the middle of the desertic region of Atacama, 2500 meters or so above Sea Level, in the north of Chile. It’s one of the driest place in the world. The city is between mountains and volcanoes, and there’s a stream but you don’t know where the water’s coming from. Everything is the colour of earth and dust, this pale mix of ochre and pink that’s so very bright in the hours before sunset. The rare tree makes a link between the land of yellow and the sky of blue.

The big blue sky invades everything, tints the far away mountains, turns pink and orange and red and low yellow when the sun sets behind the sculpted horizon, and then turns to a darkness so bright you can walk without the need of a light… I saw skies like that in Mongolia or Laos, but more than anywhere else I’m lost in that sky. The stars that might be familiar to me, the constellations are much more difficult to read without the dippers to guide me. The only familiar sight is Orion, reclining on the horizon, like an empty Moka Express espresso coffee thing…

Orion and me, it lasts from way back, he followed me in the transsiberian train, then in Asia, and he was besides me in the plane from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires, and then right here.

But well, Orion has nothing to do with me staying in San Pedro. I have to stay here because of banking things. Simply put, I thought I could use some money I have somewhere, but I might not be able to because the somewhere cannot be unlocked until 2015 unless, well, unless I try. I’ve got to tell you, it’s quite a drag to have to wait until I know for sure if I can get the money, or not.

When I know, I might have to reconfigure my plan. If I can get the money, I have the possibility to continue my trip as planned : Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Texas, New Orleans, New York and Montreal. If I cannot get the money, my choices are less big : right now I only got enough money to change continents. And it means that I can get find a job wherever I can, like in Australia (meh) or Canada (the visa might be harder to get), or in Paris. But I don’t really want to come back to Paris that soon.

No decision has been made, I just have some nice time right now. Under 10 euros per day, of course.

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Two days ago, I came back from one week spent in the wild and the mountains of the north of Argentina, with the company of my friend Charles, the one I met in Vietnam, eating dog.

This little interlude at the borders of civilization was good, as I was a wee bit tired of running around from busses to hostels to busses to hostels, and I also was a bit dissatisfied with number of things, so let me tell you, this pause was most welcome.

I took my walking shoes and my cameras, and also some warm clothes, and we went in the mountain. First, we had to go to Iruya. With a bus from Humahuaca, it’s a three hours ride and at least two passes above 4000m (above sea level)… a nice welcome to the region. We had taken lot of mate together, and if you add that to the heights high, it’s quite fun. Iruya is a little village at the end of the road. The road, they say, stops right in front of the church. Don’t trust them, the road didn’t stop, it continued to a smaller village in another valley, called San Isidro. But today was the first day, so we didn’t take the road to get there. Three little hours of going up the valley, and really good empanadas when we arrived.

On the second day it got complicated. We had decided to go at the end of the valleys, but it takes time. So we went to San Juan, just behind the mountains right in front of us. To go there we had to climb on the mountains, turn, and walk on a big plateau where we shared some fruits with a gaucho and his horse (the horse had grass, so we didn’t give him fruits). Then San Juan, and the lovely family, the only one who hosts tourists and visitors, because they have beautiful new beds brought by people from the Iruya across the mountains.

On the third day, after the morning mate, we were resolute to go a little further. After two good hours of crossing and re-crossing a river, much to my distress I have to say, two hours of climbing to a pass and picknick, and then two hours of going down then up the next valley, we arrived in Chiyayoc, where there’s no family to host visitors, as the school’s only teacher told us. No problemo though, sez he in Argentino. I host you, have no worries. And I got some nice leftovers from the school lunch. If you add that to the nice corn breads we bought to the mother of a lot of the master’s pupils, we had a very nice night with the maestro de la escuela. It was quite cold though.

On the fourth day, we took the mate with the school cook (who’s also the mother of a lot of the master’s pupil, who brought us even more corn breads), then we saw the raising of the flag by the boys and girls of the school. Then we took our bags and went back to San Juan. But this time, we took another path, one without river bed, but with a plateau we already knew because last time we went there there was a gaucho and his horse on it. We slept -you already guessed it- at the nice house of Jacinta & Hugo, where we had such a good dinner and an even better night!

On the fifth day, we wanted to stay in the mountains. So we sez, there’s one mountain that’s a little bit too much shadowy if you ask me. So we’re going to climb it to teach it life. 4850m above sea level, which is almost as high as the Mont Blanc and Montmartre put one on top of the other… and our village was only at 3200m. It’s more than 1.5 km of going up, at first on a path, and then without a path because yeah, somos aventureros, after all. Once on top, we saw condors and llamas and we thought, the wind is cold and the sun will go down. What do you think about going down? Trust me, it was quite a good idea. So we tried to find a path, but we only found some rock covering a near-cliff, then we went down a river that was dry, then it wasn’t dry anymore so you had to be carefull of not wetting your shoes, and then we went to the bottom of the valley and then we went to the village. After eight hours of walking, we went back at Hugo et Jacinta’s house, and they were happy to see us for they thought we were lost. We didn’t tell them that at some points we really were.

On the sixth day, back. Through San Isidro because someone had left someone else’s washing stuff. We couldn’t have empanadas but our toothbrushes were ours again. Then I lost a sock in the river, as a tribute I guess… or the sock just wanted to be free. It jumped in the cold water as I was crossing it, feet splashing around in great care of not splashing too much because the water was cold. So long, sock. Have a nice trip to the ocean! Your sister’s sad without you…

We celebrated our happy return with some nice Salta Negra, the blackest beer that(s the best in Argentina, I mean, Quilmes Stout is just a joke compared to it.

In these mountains I had the time to make my peace with all the little frustrations and not so little sadnesses of the trip, but in exchange I hurt my feet and lost a sock.

But the loss of a sock doesn’t really matter when all you have in front of you is landscapes so grand that even your 28mm can’t cope.

PS: today’s the end of the 3rd quarter of my trip. Only 3 month to go.

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