What the hell am I doing online? It's 5:42 in the morning, I'm still in Argentina, and I'm breaking the promise I made to myself not to touch the internet till I got back to Santiago. Well, the guy in the next bed over in the dorm room will tell you that His New Snoring Technique Is Unstoppable. It's amazing, he sleeps with his hands on his face in just the right position to chop down a 400 year old oak tree. I sat there looking at him wondering how my socks would look if they were hanging out of his mouth. And then I wondered how my feet would look if they were hanging out of his mouth. They'd probably still be just as dirty as usual, keeping him awake and therefore rendering his sonic boom snore useless. I got up to pee a minute ago and found all the couches in the living room area inhabited by sleepers seeking refuge from this evil son of drunken sailors. They've got the right idea, even if there isn't any more room for me. After he gets done keeping everyone awake tonight he's heading off to Acancagua and I think he'd make a funny face if he was pulling out his camping stove for the first time on the mountain to find I'd left a huge turd in his big pot. Oh man, I'm on the computer in the lobby a couple rooms over and I can still hear him, maybe I can still seek refuge on the roof.
Anyway, Argentina's been tons of fun. We head home at noon, enough time before that to go to the used bookstores a few blocks down. I really like Mendoza. The big plazas and wide wide streets that the Argentinians are apparently so proud of make strolling around town a fun thing to do, plus getting shade from all the overhanging trees is nice. I found nutritional yeast at a health foods store here, the first time I've eaten it since I left Reno. I know that's a pretty odd thing to write about my experience from this trip, but you don't know how much I like nutritional yeast or the vegan macaroni and cheese that I can make with it.
Next weekend is for going somewhere uninhabited by myself, there's a couple really cool sounding places to camp not too far outside of Santiago that I might go see. I'd really like to get to a lake but apparently all the ones close to Santiago are man made and who wants to swim in a man made lake? They're probably not nearly as cool as the Sparks Marina anyway.
About the whole southern Chile vs. Bolivia trip that I'm taking in March, I've decided to head down to southern Chile. Torres del Paine and Tierra del Fuego sound amazing and it'll be nice to be able to see my breath for the first time during this endless summer. Bolivia will not escape me, however, as I've decided to take the last week of February off school and just go. The most dangerous road in the world is just too alluring to pass up, I can't wait to be breezing down it on my way down to Coroico.
I met an interesting Israeli chap out on the town earlier in the evening who'd been down that road in a bus and on a bike, I thought he was fucking crazy for going down it in a bus since a couple years ago a truck loaded with 100 farmers plunged over the edge, causing the automotive accident with the single highest death toll in the history of the automobile. He said it's fun, so that seals it. He also said some other interesting things, like how mad cow disease is actually a recessive gene found in, well, mad cows, and for some reason Jews in north Africa. If you know anything about gene theory, when two people with the recessive gene make a baby, the kid's gonna get the recessive gene and in this case end up with mad cow disease, otherwise known as My New Brain Eating Technique Is Unstoppable. Him telling me this came out of me asking him about Jews actually being their own separate ethnic group, something Dan told me in Cuba that I thought he was bullshitting me on. It turns out it's true, so go figure.
Well, back to bed, maybe if I can rip a really disgusting fart I'll be able to sleep while Blackbeard enjoys the pleasant aroma of whatever I've been eating the past few days, but it's probably not going to happen since the gas I had a few weeks ago seems to have evacuated from up in my guts. It's probably better that way.