Cafayate, Argentina

Finally got moving today after three mellow nights in Salta. Veronica, the woman who owned the hostel I was staying in mothered me to a ridiculous degree, not only doing all my laundry for me but also folding and ironing everything -- including my skivvies. Spent the mornings drinking coffee watching cartoons with the little boy who fit into the labyrinthine family structure in some way I couldn´t quite suss out and the afternoons and evenings wandering around and sitting in sidewalk cafes with a book.

Tim and Faye, the British couple we lured into Freddy´s jeep back in Oruro, left a day earlier than me for Mendoza and though their company was wonderful as all getout it was relaxing to have some solo time again. Relaxing, that is, until my plan to be in bed before midnight after yet another enormous meal of beef and red wine was foiled by Fernando, the sole non-family member at the hostel (kind of like Al Jardine) who was also very eager to learn English and party his ass off every night. Walking home, I nearly crossed the street to avoid him but it was hopeless and before I knew it I was in a locals bar with him, one of the brothers, and two of their friends trying to explain the one-liners they kept asking about, things like "You can tune a piano but you can´t tuna fish."

It was all rather hilarious, and it ended at 3am with Fernando and the brother having offered and insisted that I accept a job at the hostel (quite seriously, I think) and then tearing off to a disco downtown, grinning broadly and shaking their heads from the window of a cab and shouting, in a way that was alarmingly reminiscent of my friends back home, "Fucking Chad! You come back to Salta, fucking Chad!"

I missed the 7am bus to Cafayate.

In other news, I´ve noticed that ever since Bolivia these internet cafes have become thinly-veiled dens of videogame iniquities. Every place I´ve been has been home to at least a dozen 13-year-old kids going berzerk over communal games of "Shoot the Shit out of Everything.¨ The one I´m in right now, actually, is hosting a mini-concert starring a 13-year-old kid with a guitar and a half-dozen co-ed admirers. So far the set has included Don´t Cry, Start Me Up, Californication, and the opening riff to Sweet Child o´Mine.

It would all be relatively amusing if the guitar wasn´t criminally out of tune and teenagers weren´t chronically annoying.