when i watched the lion king, i had a crush on simba,
particularly when he was just a cub and just couldn´t
wait to be king. i´ve never told anyone that before (i
don´t think). some of you may not be surprised,
considering that during my high school years, i also
developed crushes on diefenbaker (the husky in the
canadian series ´due south´); daniel larusso (but only
in karate kid 1 and 2 - he lost it in 3); and the
pre-pubescent protagonist of the japanese animé ´neon
genesis evangelion´.
WHY I´M TELLING YOU THIS:
i met this italian dude last week who is a cross
between the monkey magic guy, the baddie with wild
hair in ´The Incredibles´, and ..dare i say it.. my
boss from the gelati shop on lygon street. (jus,
mariana, wennie, laura, and everyone else who knows
who i´m talking about - please please please don´t
tell either donna or robert that i said this - i feel
strange enough about it as it is..) for those who
don´t know any of the above-mentioned characters,
let´s just say that this guy is not conventional
looking.
so now i´m confronted with the solitary traveller´s
dilemma of: do i continue with my rough journey plans,
or do i go along with his plans? some would say ´don´t
stick with plans, go with the spontaneous´, and others
would say ´don´t lose sight of what you want, and go
after something that you don´t really want´... oh, i´m
all confused. he wanted to meet up in Ushuaia (the
southernmost city in the world, aptly nicknamed ´the
end of the world´) for new year´s. quite a pretty idea
of joining spacial ´ends´ with temporal ones, but it
would mean accelerating my tour down the atlantic
coast. any thoughts from you guys?
HOW THIS CAME TO BE:
when i arrived at the campsite of Viedma this time
last week, i was lucky that the municipality had
decided to reopen the place - it had been deserted
until then. apart from one other guy, i was alone that
first night with very limited facilities. i woke up
the next morning to the roar of motorbikes hooning
around - viedma was holding its first ever motorbike
convention, and over the next day or so, a total of
400+ bikies hooned up to stay at the campsite. it was
hilarious.
italian-dude was one of the bikies, and like me, he
just happened to stumble on the convention, and
because we were the only non-spanish-speaking people,
we kinda hung out together. the best/funniest thing
about it *and this is exactly why i love languages so
much*, is that he didn´t speak spanish, and my spanish
is so bad that i doubt he could really understand me,
but we had the longest conversations in our own mix of
spanglishalian. although i´m still not sure if that´s
because we connected, or if it was just because it
took about half an hour to get one concept across to
each other.
THE START OF MY MOTORCYCLE DIARIES:
so for 4 glorious days, i went on bike trips with
various people (being the only unpartnered girl there
definitely provided me with opportunities bike wise),
with some glorious photos of the atlantic coast, which
i´ll attach. and oh, what the heck, for you motor
enthusiasts out there (yes matteo, i´m talking to
you), here´re some shots of the bike meet.
OTHER RANDOM COMMENTS:
i spent the day at the beach today with a bunch of
marine parrots squawking overhead (see photos), and it
occurred to me that they were probably looking at all
the humans, saying ´ha! - look at that loser in the
water´ and things like that. they seriously seemed to
be having fun taking advantage of currents.
in spanish, the word for ´retirement´ is ´jubilación´,
which obviously resembles english jubilation. i love
that. i wish we had the same thing happening in
english, so that work was called ´misery´ and holidays
´bliss´. (so how´s the misery going? - i wouldn´t
know, i´ve just had 2 weeks of bliss.)
i´ve been staying at various campsites now for almost
2 weeks, without a mirror. the current campsite has
one, and last night, i saw my face for the first time
in ages. as i was washing, i tried in vain to remove a
spot on my cheek before realising that it´s a mole
i´ve had for..oh..the last 10 years or so. for a brief
moment, i was one of those monkey species who couldn´t
recognise themselves in reflection.
(more photos: 'viedma' gallery)
