It´s funny how intuition works. I was just talking to someone the other day about how I hadn´t thrown up in years and how it was actually a fairly interesting experience. Yesterday, I wake up in my bed on the farm with wooginess in my stomach. I take my waking slow and go out to work, but nothing doing, I´m not feeling well at all. I head back to our lodging and Azucena makes me some infusion of medicinal roots to fix me up- little did I know that by ´fix me up´ she meant it would make me eject the contents of my stomach. The rest of the day was spent in bed feeling to weak to sit up strait. Finally, by 5 or so I summoned the strength to walk 2 miles into Tunuyan and catch the bus back to Mendoza. The bus arrives relleno, not a single open seat, so I sit on the floor in the aisle, clutching my backpack a plastic bag and feeling every bump in the road reverberate in my gut. One of the longer hours of my life.Oh well, that´s what you get for eating uncooked produce in a small town in Argetina.
The day before was quite interesting. We get sundays off on the farm, and I stayed longer this time because this next week I don´t have many classes, it being the quasi-spring break here. So myself and the three other workers on the farm decided to head for the mountains. We take a bus an hour to the south to a little town called Pareditas, having foolishly trusted a tourist guidebook that said that a volcano was nearby. We get there, find out that the volcano is at least an hour´s drive up into the altiplano and there aren´t any buses that go that way. Ok, so the mountains look fairly close from the service station where we are, so we start walking west along a country road and get way out in the middle of nowhere, nothing but fields of garlic and membrillo trees and desert. After an hour or so the road stops and we cross a field and encounter a fence, on the other side of which is a dense barrier of spiky desert vegetation, and those goddam mountains look as far away as they were an hour ago. We decide to cut our losses and sit down to eat by an irrigation ditch with a line of huge weeping willows. We´re way the hell out, and figure the owners of the land are nowhere to be found. But after a while a young couple with two kids comes along, leading horses. They say hello and set to work hoeing the field of oregano across the way. We decide to ask them if there´s a good place to visit nearby. They laugh and say there´s nothing, and add that they thought we knew the landlord and we probably shouldn´t be there. We take our time packing things up and then here comes the owner. A middle aged guy with curly hair and sweatpants and workboots. We expect trouble, but when he comes closer he welcomes us and starts to converse. Turns out he´s a professor of literature at the local finishing school. He says he was sitting in one of the willow trees just yesterday practicing nudism and he had a feeling that somebody would come, and here we are. He invites us to join him for coffee and we start a fire. We talk about a famous french pilot who crashed in the mountains nearby, an episode mentioned in the book Wind Sand and Stars, which one of the girls had read. He talks about the importance of spending time on this land to recharge his positive energy to attract coindicendes, which is directly related to the book I´m reading at the moment, the Celestine Prophecy, which I found a translation of in spanish abandoned on a bookshelf in my house in Mendoza, and my host mom wasn´t really sure where it came from. Maybe belonging to her brother? Anyway, we pass hours talking, and later he gives us a ride back to Pareditas, stopping to show us a little shrine he started to San Expedito, the patron of urgent miracles. He said he was in this place in the middle of the desert and picked up a red stone and asked San Expedito for help resolving family troubles, and his wish was granted. Since then, thousands of pilgrims have come and collected red stones along the pathway to the little wood shrine, covered with plastic flowers and a little statue of the saint. He says he doesn´t really believe in all of it, but it´s impressive how much it helps people to believe in such things. We return to the town, and are invited to return some other weekend to ride horses.
Other than that, not that awfully much is new with me. I took a midterm in my class of history of the political ideas of Latin America last week. It took 2 hours to answer five questions, but I think I nailed it. Last Thursday I spent all day helping a local non-profit organization that works with kids and young mothers to translate their application for a grant. They want money to buy five computers to teach job skills to young women- half of whom haven´t completed seventh grade.
Oh, and I almost forgot. Two weeks ago today I finally couldn´t take it any more and I bought a bike!!! I searched all through town and finally found the cheapest, rickityest, ugliest piece of crap I could find. It cost about $40. The front break doesn´t exist, it has one gear, the tires are almost worn through, the seat is like a rock, and I adore it! I decided to name her Rocia, after Sancho Panza´s donkey. She aint pretty, but I can get places so fast, and no more taking the wrong bus and ending up out in the boonies. I just have to take it easy. Argentina is up there with Italy for the most reckless drivers on the planet. There are virtually no traffic laws, or at least nobody cares it there are. So, you know, I take my time and don´t count on being seen. A little daily terror is part of a balanced diet.
And that´s the way it is. Yesterday marked the first day of spring, and two months since I got here. Almost halfway over already. Time just isn´t something that is paid attention to here much, so it sneaks by.