flea marketing.

Just when I thought we had seen everything at the Bogota Flea Market but the kitchen sink...

the kitchen sink showed up too.

Also, it's flooding here. It's either sleeping in a pool of your own sweat on the Caribbean coast or drowning next to a motorcycle engine in the chilly capital. Life can just be so difficult sometimes.

cool infrastructure, evo.

Leaving Sucre

Heavy summer storms from the muggy air occurred almost nightly in Sucre (being at certain altitudes is like a personal ticket to see how storms happen up close. If we were in elementary school, Miss Frizzell would have taken us to Sucre to watch summer weather patterns collide), and we had gotten used to walking home through deep rivers with lightning cracking directly above us. So when we heard the first shudder of thunder directly over our heads on the night we left, we thought little of it. It wasn't until the sharp, bright lightning took out electricity for the entire city as it filled the air with purple bolts when Jorge rushed from his room to shoo us out and rush us into a cab. "HURRY, before the rain starts!" he rushed.

Our cab driver was more sanguine about the storm. "It's already passed, it probably won't even rain," he said confidently as the first droplets started to pelt the windshield.

Sucre rain, also, is no ordinary event. It falls in heavy pellets that fill your boots and swirl down the edges of the streets in thick mud rivers within minutes. It doesn't hold the chill that Seattle rain does, but it's nearly impossible to escape it dry. Sure enough, to add to the ear-splitting thunder and blinding lightning that were happening directly above our heads rain had started at full force.

The bus left without incident. It was only after 45 minutes on the road that we shuddered to a halt and waited. Directly to my right, I peered out the steamy window and saw that we were driving along a massive cliff face, which was crumbling off in heavy boulders and piles of dust. It really annoys me when avalanches happen right next to my physical person, especially when directly in front of us, the cause for delay is a huge mudslide that wiped out the road. Another bus had gotten stuck on it and was spinning its wheels fruitlessly, in a vain attempt to free itself. Traffic was lined up on both sides and the squealing of tires was matched by Marlo's furious muttering next to me and the voices in my head that urged the driver to turn back to Sucre so we could forget the whole "Cochabamba idea" until after New Years, or at least until the national infrastructure became decent enough to travel on.

Oh, development. You really are a slow-moving beast, aren't you?

our day in salta.

I counted 72 monster mosquito bites on my physical person this evening (why yes, I do look like a leper: 68 on my legs, two on my shoulders, and two in places that a lady shall not mention. Argentine moskeets will get fresh with you and ask no questions), while Marlo handled some personal biz in the water closet. Despite some physical ailments and a lull before Bolivia, here's what we managed to do today...

Wait out another thunder and lightning storm. Look to the sky to catch heavy raindrops in our mouths.





Track down Urux in the bus station and reroute his whole vacation around our plans for him (ie. helping us cross the Bolivian border).


See beautifully and ostentatiously ornate cathedrals...

...including Biblical hieroglyphs made out of cement.

The rain was more welcome this time than it was during the Tigre disaster, because Salta is a hot little potato. Our first day, we had just enough time to dry out our backpacks after FlechaBus left them under the air conditioners and returned them to us completely soaked. It's ok, I didn't want all of my earthly possessions to be dry anyway! Oh travel. I'm off to put more calamine on these bites and make sure Marlo is alive, but I'll leave you with this pensive gentleman waiting for the puddles to dry:

drowned rat chronicles

"I'll laugh about this once I don't look like I have a combover." -Marlo Hartung

Original plan: Colonia, Uruguay. Until people told us it was expensive and boring compared to the utopian Tigre, the town of 500 rivers that look like tiger stripes. "It's a little Venice!" people said. "It's the best kept secret in Argentina! You have to go! They have water-ambulances and water-schoolbusses and water-pizza delivery!"

So on another hot and sunny morning, we hopped on the train with the unwashed masses and headed an hour north to check out Tigre for ourselves.

The clouds rolled in alongside our train.

At first, we laughed at the droplets. Then got a little quieter when lightning streaked above us. Then completely gave up trying to stay dry as every single business, boat launch, and water taxi closed up shop and we were left outside, wading through puddles as deep as our shins and laughing as hard as we could about our luck.

Eventually a tour bus driver swung his doors open, pulled us onboard, and gave us towels and garbage bags to put over ourselves. Then, in classic Argentine style, took pictures on his camera phone and asked us when we would all have dinner together. (Sir, that all depends on how quickly we recover from the whooping cough that I feel developing in my lungs as we speak.)

Finally we found our way to the train station through the tormenta and have never been so glad to see shelter.

Tigre, by the numbers:

1: % of the city observed

2: dulce de leche ice cream cones consumed because we felt sorry for ourselves

0: jungle tours taken

0: steak dinners ordered

0: leather purses found at the Mercado de Frutos

Oh yes. We've been to Tigre. If anyone has any questions about the town, we're your girls.

rain

Mark told me that in Sierra Leone, when a big rain comes, life freezes. Wherever you are, you stay there.





Meetings can wait.

Meals can wait.

Life can wait.


It's a delayed existence that celebrates the present tense. As Seattle was caught in a deluge of Biblical proportions this morning, I was grateful for the torrential downpours that created Sabbath in the midst of busy-ness.