I thought I had mollified my brittle patience enough to grapple with the linkstuff again and now everything on blogger.com sites is excruciatingly slow. Fine. It stays this way. Hrumpff. Am off, will let the sun tend to my freckles and my miffed mood.

First of all: I'd love to get some comments on my entries. I haven't got a guestbook and I don't want to have a hit-counter because... well, I just don't like the idea. Any comments are good - even bad ones. Thanks.
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I'm back in Mendoza. It's siesta on a Sunday and it's 36°C, so there's not much to do other than browse the Internet in an airconditioned locutorio. I don't mind the heat though, after it reaches 40°C it starts to bother me, I think I was born in the wrong country. To the right parents, but in a wrong climate. The Internet has struck it big in Argentina, there are Internet cafés all over and it's cheap. There are however pros and cons - I sometimes think it's better to cut all strings to home when travelling, except the occasional phonecall to calm the parents. Maybe because that's what I was used to. It's tricky to live in two worlds at a time.
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Went to Parque Provincial Ischigualasto on Friday. It's a national park in a desert valley between two sedimentary mountain ranges where desert flora of shrubs and cacti complement the eerie landscape. It's fantastic, but to decribe the feelings induced by a place like that is impossible. Maybe the photos will help.
http://www.argentinaxplora.com/destinos/sanjuan/valuna.htm

I know I'm supposed to be able to link to the page in a fancy-pancy way so the title becomes highlighted and stuff, but I can't. I am not stupid but I can't. I know it's supposed to be simple and I hate when I can't do simple things. And when I can't do something I become extremely pissed off, I am used to be able to do whatever I want to, well, within reasonable limits. Usually it takes a lot so that I lose my patience. I am not waisting more time on this (grumbling, hissing, making very un-ladylike sounds).
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I'm out of reading material (read as CRISIS). I've scoured all bookshops in Mendoza and San Juan and the very few books I found in English are so uninteresting that I think I'm better off without them. Things will have to get significantly worse before I read Desmond Bagley or Alistair MacLean, that's just not my dish. I've gone through the book exchange at a few backpackers guesthouses but in no avail, I did find a few National Geographics from 1982 in a second hand bookstore yesterday and that will have to do until I get to Santiago. I read a good book the other day, A million little pieces by James Frey. It's about a guy who at the age of 23 goes to rehab after drinking and using what ever drugs he could get for 10 years. The topic didn't really interest me, but his style did.
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And that's it for now. Am going to Chile tomorrow and will travel around Chile for about 3 weeks.

Mendoza is so great. I'm going to San Juan tomorrow, partly because I know that if I don't leave soon I'll end up staying until Christmas, it's just that kind of place. The staff at the hostel is great, it's a party place like Milhouse but smaller and has a cosier atmosphere. Yesterday there was a BBQ at the hostel and after eating huge chunks of beef we went dancing. In Argentina bars and clubs open late and stay open late, so I was rolling into bed at 6 am, sneaked off pretty early.

On Sunday I went rafting, it was great and the highlight was when we jumped into the river and let ourselves drift down a long strip of white water rapids. I didn't think it was a good idea at first, not a good idea at all, but after a few seconds in the water I was feeling pretty confident, well, considering circumstances.

This weekend was a festival of nationalities that live in Mendoza. On the main square were stalls where you could try traditional food from lots of countries served by people wearing their national costumes and many stages with entertainment that reflected the nationalities, everything from a choir from the Czech Repupblic to belly dancers from Syria and Lebanon. And of course the events had Argentinian timing, starting at 9 pm (since it was a family oriented festival) and going on until daybreak

On Monday I went to wineries, saw acres and acres of wineyards and tasted lots and lots of wine. A nice day.
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Yesterday I went to the mountains, up to the borders to Chile and saw, amongst others things, Cerro Aconcagua. It's a magnificent sight. And the area is extremely beautiful, in a rugged, harsh kind of way. I took a short hike near Cerro Aconcagua and went close to the base camp. The trek is fantastic but I got a mild bout of altitude sickness, felt a bit light-headed. Maybe I won't stand on the top of Kilimanjaro on my 40th birthday then, that seemed such a good idea. I'm going to Chile next week and the elevation on the way ranges from 500 m to 4000 m, better be ready for a bit of nausea, as if the way Argentine drivers ignore speedlimit, road signs and even traffic signals wasn't enough.
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Today, to prove to myself that I'm not a complete wimp, I went paragliding. And it's fantastic! When I grow up I think I'm gonna be a bird. A huge condor soaring over the Andes. That's settled then. Since I haven't done it before it was a tandem flight, so I didn't have to think about anything but enjoy the moment. And I certainly did. The wind had picked up in the afternoon and was quite strong, so we glided for a long time and took a few acrobatic spins when descending. Absolutely terrific. After we had landed and packed the parachute and were having coffee on the way to town my knees felt a bit weak and my hands trembled, but that's normal after an adrenaline rush, just felt a bit weird because I was fine when in the air and right afterwards. But the feeling when your feet stop touching the ground and you ascend into air is just... indescribable. And I hear it's possible to do skydiving in Bariloche where I plan to spend Christmas...

Am in Mendoza. It's a beautiful city nestling at the roots of the Andes, surrounded by green fields and wineries and seems very lush after the arid landscape of the Pampas. It's actually in a desert, but a very old and expansive system of river-fed aqueducts has changed the area.

I took the bus from BA bus station, which is as big as a medium sized international airport (not of the Reykjavík and Kathmandu scale), last night. There have been major reductions in long-distance train service in Argentina so it's either taking the bus or flying - and since I'm a foreigner it costs way more for me to fly than if I were an Argentine resident (how can a resident/tourist price difference be justified? Aerolineas Argentinas and Icelandair are on my top ten list of most hated companies. What have consumer's associations got to say about this?). The bus system is great and the long-distance nightbuses have huge comfy business-class style seats that would put many airlines to shame. A person twice my size would be comfortable in these buses. Meals are included, served by handsome co-drivers and the blankets provided are warm and nice, not the flimsy Icelandair handkerchief size type (yes, I really have a grugde against Icelandair!). Well, nothing's perfect, at 7 am when only 4 hours were left of the 14 hrs. trip accross the country the bus broke down and we had to wait for 5 hrs. for another bus to continue. I didn't mind the least, slept some more, read, listened to music and sunbathed, all things I thoroughly enjoy doing and couldn't have cared less if I did it in Mendoza or in the middle of nowhere in gaucho land.

This afternoon I met a guy who runs a hostel here in Mendoza, is a guide and runs a travel agency. Adventure travel is the thing here, everything from paragliding to climbing Cerro Aconcagua (South Amerca's highest mountain) can be arranged. But I'm a wuss, so I'm gonna start with rafting tomorrow, then I'll see.
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Warning: a mushy entry.

I realized last night (you see, I re-invent the wheel on a regular basis) as I sat in the bus and watched the starry sky what a fortunate person I am - and the world is nearly perfect. Sigh.

News travel fast. The word is out – all the mozzies have found out where I’m staying. And boy, do they love my blood! So much that I got malaria when working in Kenya and because of the that the Icelandic bloodbank doesn’t want my blood. And I was going to be a good citizen and donate blood regularly. Hrumpf. I have now got beautiful bitemarks in various places. To my utmost pleasure there is minimum risk of getting malaria in Argentina. And if so I would definitely recognize the symptoms.

Some things about travelling I always forget after a while. Like how annoying a mosquito bite can be. And how uncomfortable sunburning on the top of my head can be. And that I really don’t need all these pairs of socks, I could have packed an extra book instead. And just wear flip-flops. Well, I guess some things I’ll just never learn. I mean - it still takes me by surprise how stupid eating popcorn in bed actually is.
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Travel literature is an interesting thing. And rummaging through leave-or-swap bookshelves in hostels and backpackers guesthouses can be highly amusing. There the selection ranges from make-the-world-a-better-place-through-personal-enlightenment selfhelp books to read-about-me-and-my-great-achievement books. My land and my people by Dalai Lama can be found in the living room of any backpackers of any worth, books by Jon Krakauer and Tao by Lao Tse can often be found sitting on the shelves and Touching the Void by Joe Simpson and The famished Road by Ben Okri are traveller classics.

The endless accounts of overland travels and my-years-as-a-volunteer written in poor penmanship have made me firmly unswerving in not to write about my travels, so no risk of that. I have a hard enough time committing to write my journal, which is more of a scrap-and-sketch book than a diary. I have read heaps of these books; descriptions of surgical operations made in Sierra Leone on a door as an operating bench by a recently graduated doctor, with fluctuating electricity from a dodgy generator; risky jeep rides through mountain passes in Bhutan (which, by the way, decided this week to become the first tobacco-free country in the world. Everything’s possible in tiny, landlocked monarchial kingdoms, what to do – make the king resign?). And so further.

Recently I read a book about an overland trip from Cape Town to Cairo, no masterpiece, but the guy went to some places where I’ve been, which made it an interesting read. He even stayed at the same guesthouse as I stayed at when in Nairobi, but everyone seems to stay at Iqbal. Even though it’s at the wrong side of the tracks, or in this case the wrong side of Riverroad and has a security guard at the front door 24 hrs. But the staff’s nice and there’s often water in the showers all day (how much more can you ask for!).

Reading a poem about Iceland by José Luis Borges when in Argentina, in Spanish, is a bit surreal. So is walking into a bookstore and here songs by Björk played on the store’s sound system.
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I have planned my travels for the next month or so. I don’t like planning, my plan is usually not to have to many plans, I just want to take off and see whatever there is and decide as I go along where I’ll go next. But when I don’t pay for the accommodation I have to book it beforehand, can’t ever have it all, can you?

Am going to Mendoza tonight. Mendoza is the main city in the winemaking heartland of Argentina, has over 2000 wineries and produces 80% of Argentina’s wines. Mendocinos, inhabitants of Mendoza province, call their home La Tierra de Sol y buen Vino, the Land of Sun and good Vine, sounds inviting. I also intend to leave Mendoza five days later, but my sence of time is blurry enough as it is. Am looking forward get out of Buenos Aires - and to winetasting, ‘cause Argentine wines are often very good. An dirt cheap, so I am going to indulge in a drop or three of the region’s wines while in-country. Argentina has been the world’s fifth-largest wine producer for some time but the domestic market drank almost every drop of the stuff. Now however Argentina is exporting a few dozen big-brand labels and Argentine wines have become a common sight worldwide.

I’ve decided after some mind boggling thinking to leave my computer in Buenos Aires, which means less frequent and shorter entries, and fewer of them in Icelandic. It also means not being able to change the music on the MP3 player, so it’s just the radio for me then. Don’t like the thought of that, but I think it’s worth being able to travel a lot lighter. I tried to travel without music in India for a few weeks, it ended by me raiding the shelves in Music World in Calcutta, going bonkers from the selection. Of cassettes. So now I’ve got loads of space-consuming cassettes and a broken down old-fashioned Walkman which I bought in Uganda, another time I was losing my marbles because of too long without music. Maybe some more Spanish will seep in if I listen to the radio enough.

Am not revealing any more of my plans at the time, because somehow plans always change. Mine at least tend to change a lot.

OK, it’s been a few days without entries, so this is a bit of what I’ve been up to.

On Tuesday night I took part in a two hour tango course at Milhouse. That was OK. On Wednesday night I took part in a two hour salsa course, also at Milhouse (everything’s possible at this hostel, one wouldn’t have to leave the building for months and could still lead a great social life). That was more up my sleeve than the tango, I’m getting close to the point of being all tangoed-out. It’s just everywhere. And I had learned a bit of salsa before, or at least I was taught how to dance salsa when I lived and worked with some people from Ecuador in Spain a few years ago. But me taking in what I was taught is entirely another thing.

And on Thursday there was a daiquiri and pizza party at the hostel and I finally got to do some work for more than two hours. The reception is very busy and lots of staff working at a time so admittedly I haven’t done much work. I’m supposed to be working for my accommodation so I really want to help, but I also remember what a nuisance it sometimes seemed to be to get a trainee at home. Yes it always helped but it also took some time to train them so they would actually be of some help. And here things are a bit more complicated. And people seem to think it’s beneath my dignity to mop the floors. Well it isn’t. Oh well we’ll see. Maybe I just have to let go of the ever-icelandic have-to-be-doing-something mentality for once. Doing nothing certainly won’t kill me. And the chances of me being caught doing nothing at all are rather slim anyway.

Friday was completely devoted to studying Spanish. And we are talking hours here, lots of ‘em.
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On Saturday I went to Creamfields, an electronic music festival, here in Bs. As. Me and about 49,999 others. The music wasn’t entirely my cup of tea but it was great fun. The events had very Argentinian timings, started at 3 pm and ended at 7 am. Or were scheduled at these hours, at 7 am this old hag was snuggled up in bed and doesn’t know what was happening in the real world at the time.

At 10:30 when Groove Armada entered the stage it started to rain. And when it rains in Buenos Aires it pours. In the throng of people next to the main stage it was so packed that most people were drenched with sweat anyway and very few of all the tall, dark and handsome guys were still wearing their shirts. Well I didn’t mind the least bit! And not dancing wasn’t an option, although you can hardly call it dancing, because you kinda just moved with the crowd. And because of the pushing-jumping-and-stepping-on-toes in the horde my feet now resemble a Rorschach inkblot test and my ankle it about as thick as my thigh – quite a few inches that.

50,000 is a lot of people. There are countries with fewer inhabitants than that. I didn’t realize the quantity of it until after midnight when I tried to venture to one of the bars. I thought that the crowd was only this thick close to the stages but it just kept on. And on. And on. Then I understood why all the security guards and safety precautions, helicopters and ambulances.
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Sunday was like Sundays should be. It was still raining so I didn’t feel the least guilty about lying in bed or one of the numerous comfy sofas and read and solve crossword puzzles. Went for a walk in the lovely rain and had wonderful coffee and croissants and then went to the cinema. I saw an Argentininan film, El Cielito. A really good film, it has taken part in several international film festivals so even Icelanders might be able to see it at home.

The film is about a lonely and rootless guy in his early twenties, a drifter, who starts working on a small farm owned by a couple with a year-old boy. The atmosphere in the house is oppressive when the farmer is around and it becomes increasingly apparent that domestic abuse is a problem. When the wife kills herself the main character takes off and takes the little boy, whom he has grown very fond of, with him to Buenos Aires. After a while they become homeless and it’s all very tragic.

When the film was over I wiped the tears off my cheeks (yes, I'm just a big softie) and walked into the warm and rainy night. And on my way home I walked past lots of homeless people, sleeping on the sidewalks, using newspapers as covers. And begging streetchildren. And it somehow seemed just a bit worse then usually. But I hope I never get used to it, that would mean that my slightly-too-soft heart has become hardboiled.
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And today was another day devoted to Spanish. I’m highly pleased about my progress and feel like I’m sooo smart (modesty isn’t my forte). The last class is tomorrow and after that I’ll soon make a move, it’s time to see something else than Buenos Aires, as lovely as it is.

Ég er enn ekki búin að laga linka og fleira hér til hliðar, lærði það seinasta daginn heima en hef ekki tekið tíma í það ennþá.

Buenos Aires er reglulega falleg borg, með tilkomumiklum gömlum byggingum á hverju horni og skemmtilegu götulífi. Í borginni og úthverfum hennar búa um 13 milljónir manna og hér er tangó málið. Tangó og nautakjöt. Sem ég vissi fyrirfram, bara ekki að það væri svona yfir-og-allt-um-kring. Og Diego Maradona, sem er þjóðarhetja þrátt fyrir allt. Það eru myndir af El Diego út um allt, allar samt síðan hann var ungur og stæltur, engar eftir að hann varð gamall og umm... þvældur.

Ég skoðaði í dag hverfi sem heitir La Boca og sá meira að segja heimavöll Boca Juniors (ég, af öllum, að skoða fótboltavöll!). Fór með fleiri ferðalöngum frá Milhouse hostel og tók meira að segja nokkur nett *hóst, hóst* tangóspor við bráðmyndarlegan kavaler á kaffihúsi eftir miklar áskoranir, strákarnir voru hins vegar flestir skræfur og létu ekki tilleiðast.

Og á morgun held ég áfram á spænskunámskeiði, tralala...

My Spanish course started today, it’s a week long for two hours a day. I’ve been using Spanish a lot, I only resolve to using English if I absolutely can’t make myself clear in Spanish. And since my Spanish is very poor I make lots of mistakes, and without being the least embarazada (ha ha, a joke for english/spanish speakers). Often Hispanicizing English words helps but it can also turn out horribly wrong.

Þá er ég komin til Argentínu, heil á húfi. Mínar helstu áhyggjur seinustu tímana áður en ég lagði í ‘ann voru að ég hefði pakkað of litlu, því að bakpokinn var bara hálffullur og vóg aumingjaleg 12 kíló, með svefnpoka og öllu saman. Sennilega er ég bara loksins búin að læra að raða almennilega í pokann því ég sakna einskis – nema hárblásara og svoleiðis útbúnað tekur maður einfaldlega ekki með í bakpokaferðalög.

Ég lagði af stað frá Keflavík á fimmtudagsmorgun og flaug til Stansted, tók rútu til Heathrow og flaug þaðan til Madrid þar sem ég skipti um vél og flaug til Buenos Aires. Eftir öll flugin var ég vel úthvíld, þar sem ég hef þann hæfileika að sofa hvar og hvenær sem er og þurfti sannarlega á svefni að halda, seinustu dagarnir fyrir langferðalög reynast einhvern veginn alltaf of stuttir. Til að minna mig á hverju ég væri að missa af þá sýndi Vetur konungur sig með snjókomu í Keflavík og olli töf á flugi vegna afísunar. En hann nær sko ekki í skottið á mér þar sem ég er núna.

Í Buenos Aires er að koma vor, sem þýðir 20-26° C, kjöraðstæður fyrir freknurækt og almenna vellíðan. En meira um Buenos Aires seinna, mín bíður borg til könnunar.

Tonight there was a nice goodbye get-together held at my friends place. Love the lovely friends. And the best thing about going away this time is that I already look forward to coming back. Which hasn't always been the case, but life just keeps on improving. And when I come back there will be an even nicer hello/birthday party, hurrah!

The next two days will be hectic, but most of the necessary stuff is covered and I've only got fun things left, like lunches and dinners with people I care about. And a fair bit of goodbyes but something considerably more dramatic is needed to bring out the tears in me. Right. Off to bed, hope my thoughts will soon stop swimming in caffeine and start basking at sunny beaches.

And can somebody please teach me a rule on when to hyphenate words? And remember that I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer so it has to be simple.

Na Sylvia; asante sana kwa barua yako, nimefaruhi sana!