Tucuman

so I'm coming home in an hour and a half! but i have a little time now and i wanted to write about tucuman, where i went for Easter week. because it was crazy. this is what i wrote when I got back from it: this weekend was a pretty big adventure. like adventure adventure. it makes everything i've done so far not even seem remotely adventurous. it began on wednesday night when after not sleeping for a week i threw a pair of pants, 2 shirts, and my sleeping bag in my backpack and took the 18 hour night bus to Tucuman to see Gonzalo but i didn't sleep then either because i was talking to a woman from Buenos Aires who lives in my neighborhood. so its been literally a week without hardly sleeping and i'm imagining a weekend relaxing with his family or whatever for easter but i get there and he tells me he's organized for us to go camping with some friends for a few days. which i think sounds great until we get to his friends house to plan when we're leaving and what we need and they start talking about where we'll go. and gonzalo asks if we can go to siambon. and his friend says, yeah but it will be about an extra 8 hour hike! an extra 8 hours! that means we're already planning on doing at least 8 hours! and i don't have any shoes or anything. but whatever! so we go. and meet his friends on the bus and they are old! like could have been my dads! and we got off the bus and the first thing we did was cross a river up to our waists! and i only had one pair of paints! and then we crossed the river 28 more times! but holy shit it was fun. so it was me and four boys, or i guess they were pretty legitamately men. fording rivers, camping in mountains, having mate with mountain people, talking about neitsche. etc. man it was beautiful and so great to be out of the city and in nature. i was super weird and withdrawn and just in myself and the landscape but it was really relaxing and pretty much the craziest thing i've ever done in terms of outdoors excursions. and the mountain people who's fields we camped in were really interesting and totally matriarchal and had lived remote in the mountains for generations and generations. i was generally too tired by the end of the day to ever talk to them but it was sick to show up at someone's house in the middle of the mountains after walking without seeing anyone for 8 hours and go into a hut and sit with a bunch of women cooking over a fire and drink mate with them. we spent a bunch of freeeezing nights shaking with cold and not sleeping at all so never sleeping until the sun came up and wasting half the day afterwards trying to wake up. but that is never a problem for me. and we swam in the river and just drank water right from it (and i don't have parasites!) and man i don't even know what to say. it was probably the most bizarre weekend of my life talking about che and philosophy and religion and sufjan stevens and having lucid dreams and life discussions and being the only girl and only non argentine, non spanish speaker, the weakest, the youngest, the only one not from tucuman, the only one not super into outdoors activities and hiking. i don't even know, but they took care of me and i felt sort of like the daughter/princess but it was good and they were impressed that i made it and we had fun. then the last night we set out too late so we had to cross the river up to our waists at night 8 times. and a rock fell on my foot and i was wearing gonzalo's mom's shoes which were way too big and there were lots of rocks in them and they hurt a lot but i ignored it until we finally got back and found a campsite and i turned on the lights and what i thought was mud all over my feet was actually blood. eeeew. gross! i don't even know. walking in the clouds and i found a giant snake! and on the last day i found out that gonzalo's friends really were old. one was 38 and one was 21 in 1992 when for six years he rode on bike all through south america and the usa and canada. one was 22 and gonzalo is 28 so it wasn't like everyone was super old, but when would i have ever thought i would be camping with dudes who were 18 years older than me. that's weird. but that is just what happens when you are out of the us i guess. so that's tucuman in breif. i didn't take too many pictures but here are a few.