hasta el juevo

She just showed up one morning, hungry and skittish outside our doorstep. The fridge was empty, save a few onions and an egg. Nick fried up the egg and thus El Juevo she became. She scumbags the pueblo by day and comes home to howl at vegetable trucks and waning moons by night. So now we have a dog in Argentina.

I met David coming back from town, juggling two kilos of potatoes and three bottles of whiskey on a crowded bus. Nick and I had decided to host a Thanksgiving asada, so I went into Lujan to see what traditional foods I could find. Not so much, no turkey, no yams, not even good ketchup. Anyways I was coming home when I wound up sitting with David. It only took a minute to forgo our broken Spanish for some good ole red white and blue American. David was traveling alone after his failed attempt to rekindle a love story. He showed up on her doorstep unannounced after 5 years of silence. It was a luke warm reception followed shortly by the "I'm just not that into you" conversation. Thus he was wandering about with a backpack of river gear and a plan to head somewhere south. David came to the party and stayed awhile.


Our Thanksgiving celebration was whiskey wild. We served freedom fries and a couple of chickens to celebrate the greatness of America and its rich history of distracting folk with food and games while raping and pillaging their lands. Asadas are built on the communist mentality-- no plates for serving individual portions but rather chicken cooked whole and eaten with fingers. But similar to the pitfalls of the socialist agenda it encourages lazier folk to show up just as the chicken is ready and take more than their share. Argentine style, we ate around midnight and partied till dawn.


The first week of December Nick and I visited Aconcagua (that's Mexican for big 'ole mountain). It is the highest peak in the Americas at 22,834 feet, standing a few hundred feet taller than Denali. We spent the day hiking about the edge of the park with an old timer from Potre named Paco and two Slovenians passing through town. The five of us had lunch on long forgotten train tracks paralleling El Cueva, a busy creek carving through rock beds and land bridges atop natural hot springs. We ended our trekking excursion at Puenta del Inca, a popular display of iron colored rocks and bubbling pools, exemplifying the delicate balance of eroding rock formations and centuries of spring thaws.

Work is slow, money's tight, and so passes December. Feliz Navidad, y'all.

--nickiD