Long bus trips around South America are a pretty common experience. The continent is so vast, and the buses are relatively inexpensive. The climate ranges from beautiful tropical beaches in Columbia to the worlds largest salt flats in Bolivia, and there’s even the option of skiing on the Andes Mountains in Argentina and Chile.
Yesterday morning we completed our second long bus trip so far on this journey through South America, traveling within Argentina, from Córdoba to San Rafael. A casual 12 hour overnight bus trip. I woke up in the middle of the night on the bus, body shivering and bladder bursting. Damn they really know how to crank up the air conditioning on the busses. But luckily I woke up, because I got to look out the window and see the nature in all its magical glory. As the bus cruised along the flat landscape, the sky lit up for a few seconds at a time, then the blackness would engulf us again, then more brightness and so the pattern continued. There are many fires in this region around spring so the rain is much appreciated and the lighting really put on a show for us to watch. It was a beautiful way to observe the landscape passing us by and spend time reflecting on our journey thus far.
There’ve been some people we’ve met that have truly touched our lives and a few of them who deserve mentioning. These include our wonderful spiritual mother Elizabeth, who guided us and taught us incredible lessons about life. She’s been through the toughest life possible and yet, the radiance still shines through her soul. Another kind soul we met was Damian, an Argentinian guy. His English is as bad as our Spanish, yet instantaneously upon meeting him, it was clear that he was an earth child of the same mindset as ourselves. Although sometimes it was infuriating to only be communicating with hand signals and clicks and frustrated nothingness, we still connected, and it’s a beautiful thing to see that language is not the only way to communicate. Music brought us all together and his great taste in music allowed us all to communicate on a deeper level. He will hopefully join us later on in our travels, and it will be an incredible experience to be able to actually converse with him (when our Spanish has improved somewhat, and the same goes for his English). I could go on mentioning beautiful souls for days on end, but that’s not too interesting to read about if you haven’t been there to absorb the experience. Nonetheless, there is one more person I have to mention and that’s our dear friend Freddy. He is a Columbian guy who took us under his wing from day one and treated us like his little sisters. We will definitely be meeting up with him again on this journey, as he is also going to be winding his way home to Columbia. Our paths will undoubtably cross again and I’m so grateful to have met him.
…and so here we are now, safely in San Rafael, in Mendoza Province, Argentina, the beautiful wine region filled with fresh air, nature, and smiles all around. We’ve finished our second day of work on a farm called Andes Lands. We’ve painted a well, been grocery shopping and helped prepare dinner, stripped many branches of bamboo, helped sand down raw timber to construct new pool deck chairs, started painting a mural on one of the walls in the house and even driven in the most broken down pick up truck know to man. We couldn’t be happier. Tranquilo.
Earth Child Adventures 