So I am awake again. Hours before any respectable Argentinian or direction-less backpacker. This might have bugged me in my old life. But in this travel hedonism space I now exist, where I literally have nothing I have to achieve today: it doesn´t bother me at all. It´s kind of nice actually. All dark, safe and quiet.
Had two cups of tea already, prepared without lighted aid on a gas stove (the kitchen has a window facing yonder snoring Paraguayan family and I have no wish to wake them before the kindly hour of 10am). But I saw it done in the light yesterday and I have a 6th sense for tea-making (i wish the smae be said of touch-typing). I even found milk.
Read pages of my reduced-size travel guide (who wants to go to Brazil anyway, it took up half the book, weighed an extra kilo and pulled out oh-so satisfyingly with a ri-i-i-p. yes.)read by little hand-powered torch until I feared that my roommate and good friend would be woken by the reow-reow-reow winding of battery-less-more-happy-environment power (I understand it is hard to care for sustainability on a sustained prevention of sleep).
The smiling ¨Willy¨ who works in this hostel with his wife and daughter just came out of his door and gave me a thumbs up. We had a charaded explanation of my strange sleeping habits yesterday ¨Muy Muy MUY cansanda!¨ ¨Si, está manyána en Australia¨. He held his belly and laughed and explained to the Paraguayans my predicament. They also laughed big- mouth laughs.
Willy and his wife Ele are nicest freakin hostel caretakers ever. They completely make up for the mega noisy and/or mega hot room, the stale breakfast media-luna croissants, the lack of any other adventurous or attractive guests, the 5 minute wait for hot water, the polyester bumpy sheets, the long walk into town and this old bulbous computer screen. But maybe that´s just me. Sadly, there aren´t alot of guests here.
Willy has a big pot belly, an easy smile, rides his bike a lot and got a fine for fishing in the river yesterday (that story was a funny game of charades as I am sure you can imagine). Ele has had alot of strange dental work and speaks better English than Willy. They spent hours each yesterday teaching me Spanish and telling me all the fine places to go in Cordoba. They have invited us to Asado (traditional BBQ) tonight and they are both hilarious.
By now, they have both separately come out, patted me on the back and offered me breakfast. Give me a smile and a stale croissant over a dead-eye stare and cotton sheets any day, I say.
Oh, but Willy comes up the stairs with a fresh smelling bag of bakery goods. And Ele brings me tea with milk a smile and two fresh croissants... at the computer so I can continue my typing.
My cup runneth over.
Oh the fine art of hosting is not dead, my heart sings.
The fine art of hosting is not dead.
