...thank you for reading...

Thank you

a day idiotas turned evil

have no worries, dear readers, one swallow doesn't make a spring, and one day of bad idiotas doesn't make us the enemies of the state, yet.. but these were some bad things that idiotas have confronted with:

note: names have been changed to protect the identity of the real-life protagonists of these misfortunate events

- by putting backpacks into the wrong bus, Mr Domingo, Mr Mate and Mr Maradona caused two busses being late for departure, a nervous breakdown of the co-driver, a forest fire nearby, 2 giant meteors falling in Australia, a tsunami in Greenland and no cigarette break for the chief of the bus station

- Mr Mate ended up almost being attacked while sleeping by an underage girl in the upper floor of the bus from El Bolson.. luckily, as every concerned parent who smells trouble, girl's father came upstairs to see why his little angel doesn't want to join the family downstairs

- Mr Maradona and Mr Domingo had to chase a mother and a cute little girl away from the bus seats, because a mother didnt have seat reservations, so those two poor things had to spend a whole night on one seat, while Mr Maradona and Mr Domingo streched themselves all over the place

- we're stea... pardon, liberating lighters all the time which, to think of it, isn't really evil (but i have to write something, do i?), and we're forced to play that game cause simply everybody else are, plus we're quite vexed with staying out of lighters all the time, so there you go.. at the moment, Mr Domingo still owns a remarkable little red Bic that he guards with his life and honour, and Mr Maradona a purple one, same brand

- for some unexplained reason, last 3-4 days of feeding created a bit of a mess in our stomachs, which has started a huge wave of chemical warfare, so we're terrorizing each other with all sorts of "winds of war" banned by Geneva convention, and it affects the surroundment widely, but it's ok, we borrowed an excellent excuse for this kind of situation from hollywood & us army - they're only collateral damage

evil, i tell you

Tito

North-Northeast

the rest of idiotas is still on the move, browsing thru capitals! Bariloche was the capital of chocolate, El Bolson was the capital of icecream and hippies, Neuquen the capital of petroleum, and currently in Mendoza, the capital of wines and a bloody lazy place.. if there would be a possibility to wipe all the clocks in the city, people of Mendoza would do it, just to prolong their siesta.. hell, even the busdrivers are driving less than 5km/h in the afternoon time to join the city beat.. i sense this general lazyness, heat and camping outside of towns have majorly influenced on idiotas, we're slowing down - still moving, but slowing down

a yes - in solidarity with the rest of the group, so that other idiotas wouldnt feel too exceptional, i also got robbed, a bit.. the only item that didnt find its place in my kidney bag was the mobile, so finally, idiotas have gone off cellular network, and that's the way it should be..

this is the message to all our fans who still prefer reaching us by phone:

"the number you have dialed cannot be reached - use email"

soon more info on capitals mentioned above

Tito

Some more photos (and below some last words from Idiota Sergio)

Some corner that could be anywhwere (electricity line breaks harmony)

Empty frame in Buenos Aires
Typical photo cannot be bad
Rainbow from bus
Geyser and people
Parque del amor, Ste, Héctor, light, white sky and two people resting without their shoes
Blue in brown background and sky on top
Children in Bolivia, please remind me I have to send them the picture (no computers there)
Salares being photographed

.Sergio, sergium13@hotmail.com

Farewell and greeting (words from being back)

Well... this is also a beautiful place... a lake, frozen.. and me in front of it, almost frozen too.. It is not the south of America and it is not a trip as people would call it a trip...cause this is the place where im leaving... if you allow me though i’d call it just the continuation of my trip... cause you cannot decide it s over when you are home cause you don t even know where home is... well, i m back here where i was before crossing the ocean.. but my legs are already waiting for more moves, or maybe not, but what i can say is that my head is still travelling... and that i thank all the people and the places for being here or there and just.. if you sometime feel you re stuck just look outside the window, then go out of the door and walk somewhere, talk with someone, have a coffe or a mate or a beer with your friend or kiss or hug or greet your loved ones, bring flowers to mum, play with nephews... and then, maybe, that s the point of it all... or not.. i dont know it so i cant tell... Ice can freeze your bones but can wake up what is underneath them...so can sun, the sea or just a word from someone sometime... Have a nice trip.. Next stop...just you will see where...

Gracias,

Sergio Reseco Fernández, desde Tampere (Finlandia)

PS; the picture is actually from three years ago when I was travelling by train to Lapland, in the north of Finland, but that doesn't matter. I'm near there now and it is cold as it used to be then

...and the circle gets closed

..that's the last picture I've taken in SouthAmerica, could have been the first one as well

(written in the plane Buenos Aires-Sao Paulo-Frankfurt-Tampere)

Security checked, passport controlled, boarded and checked in. Three hours to Tampere and I ll be home, if there is home... Hours of waiting in the airport pressumed to be time for thought, memories, reflexion. There was full moon last night; red sun this morning in snowy Frankfurt. By chance or not I had a mate of thoughts and end-of-travel-reflexion. She just came from India and soon, heading home, to Indiana. It s also cold there, like it was waiting in Finland for me. Someho we shared similar stories (even though the distances) thoughts and few pictures.. first victims of our post-trip-moods. Again, people. Travelling is the people you meet; in this trip, some names I still remember, some I will forget, some I never knew them (even if we shared time, words or just an accidental meeting).

…the rest of this text I have lost it between my papers, just remember that I wrote this at some point:

Thank you for flying with us and we hope to see you again

Sergio, on the way home

Hostels in Argentina

Buenos Aires. Hostel One (San Telmo). 22-24 pesos/night -around 7 euros. Located in a lively, nice neighborhood. People there are nice and place is really easygoing but relaxed (we spent new year there, having a leftovers war against the neighbours, everything very freindly).

Puerto Madryn. Camping. We arrived. They said it had been raining so we carefully chose the place. We prepared everything and then we went out, came back, packed the tent and leave.

Esquel. Casa del Pueblo. Great hostel, 18 pesos/night. Reccomended.

Bariloche. Well.. if you read the blog you know where I had to spend night....

Charlie Finn

Hei Charlie... if you read this, hope your trip is going smooth... Hope rain left and that you enjoyed the park...

A short note a bout Charlie,

Charlie, Carlitos, arrived the same day as me to Esquel. We went together with an argentinian couple to visit the Alerces, a national park really beautiful but very rainy, at least these days... What I want to say, Charlie is working as an actor in LA, California. Haven t seen your sitcoms and movies yet but sure everyone now will check out every film to see if they find you in there, Charlie Finn.

www.imdb.com
..find him there... or in Patagonia....

Picture: They all love Charlie... but Charlie you are too tall.

to be continued.....

Sergio, Buenos Aires

Homeless (memory)

(written a day ago while waiting for a bus from Patagonia to Buenos Aires (final target for me)

...leaving now after 3 days of mountain. Almost home. Just came to my head the starting of my days up here. I arrived from Esquel, near beautiful surroundings in the northern part of Patagonia. By the way...

Casa del Pueblo, Esquel. It is an excellent hostel. Ok prize, big kitchen, nice building, good people...
Saludos a todos los que nos encontramos por alla, un gusto...

Much different than the hostel was my stay in Bariloche. Actually it was not a hostel, or a hotel, not even a campsite (without tent and sleeping bag not very doable). The episode is that after arriving I already saw that it was an overloaded tourist town. In fact it is a beautiful place, as a base to explore the mountains around... but you d better book a place in advance. I counted around 50 different places where I called in my serach of roof and floor. No luck. Answers went from No to Not really-Sorry-Full-Noooo-No-No....
At last, when I was going to leave to some expensive place just to avoid the rainy night out, the girl from the telephone place I was calling from seemed to undesrtand my situation and offered me a room in their place. At last it was good, I ended up meeting a really nice punch of people there, it reminded my home in Tampere, and I was a bit sad to leave...

That was Patagonia

Gracias otra vez a todos... Romi, Marcos, Brenda... y a Pato y las chicas de Buenos Aires por compartir techo durante esos d'ias... Cuidense mucho.....


The place.... This table saw one asado, two tortillas and several mate sessions

Sergio, Buenos Aires

trans patagonia express - credits

we thank:
- the dusty old train for gliding us down the edge of patagonia to the edge of cordillera
- the good simple people we met on the train who offered us wine, smokes and lots of song
- the kids for running up and down the vagons, climbing the seats, watching us and smiling endlesly
- the controllers for not kicking us out, putting up to our smoke, noise and constant 16-hour music repertoire, and in the end treating us with free sandwiches and coke

the ones who have nothing - share everything
the ones who ask for nothing - give everything
salud

Tito

Freezing next to the Nahuel Huapi Lake

Finally we arrived at the Argentinian Andian Mountains, Bariloche. We joined a group of young argentinian travelers and we decided to spend the night with them somewhere in the open air. It's cold, windy and raining a little bit, but we don't care...since we bought a tent, we are a real backpackers!!! Some locals recomended us a nice place to camp next to the lake, so we went there. It was a kind of car parking with pavement, actually the coldest place in the town, with an amazing view of the mountains. As I said, it was very windy, specially next to the lake but we didn't have another choice...we stayed there.
We ligthed up a little fire under a kind of stairs that protected us of the cold, to cook some meat and vegetables, listened some argentinian music played by our friends, drinked a little to keep our bodies warm and when we didn't have more wood to burn, we tried to settle down our improvised camp. It was no easy at all!! Too windy to control the tent and "many of us" too drunk to get right for assemble it...After trying it hard enough, we had a place to sleep...well, at least it was a place to lie down, get frozen and listen the waves of the lake...unforgetable night though!!
Our backs start complaining about our sleeping habits after the train trip and the night next to the lake but in the other hand, our pockets are really greatul!! let's see if we can keep saving money so we'll be able to bring you more presents :)

Héctor, San Carlos de Bariloche

i have a kidney!

you know what's a kidney? no, i don't mean the one floating in your chicken soup... i mean the leather bag shaped like a giant kidney with a few pockets, hanging around your waist, out of fashion 10 years ago?... that one! it's a quite practical thingy to keep all sorts of junk you need on the long trip, or even a bold expedition containing 4 total idiotas - such as this one, matter of fact
so, mine has been continously changing it's content since the day one, and in some way doing the coverup report of the most necessary things you need for a particular area you're visiting... at first, i had it full of flight plans, used subway tickets, maps of buenos ayres areas and a dreadful 2-pesos tobacco... then it started swimming in microphone and recorder cables, bus tickets, a much better tobacco (domingo - vanilla taste), and the best bic lighter (green) you can find on the street... unfortunatelly, it's also the one that grows legs very fast, and on these trips you learn that small personal properties of similar kind become public, so the other bic (small red) has walked into my kidney, so all is well again... now my kidney doesn't have much to offer - passport, cash and a small booklet to write all this junk are the usual tennants, and that's what it's for, to keep the most precious stuff you have, on you all the time, stuff that has brought you to a country, and stuff that'll get you out of it one day, eventually

patagonia travels...

We are now in Bariloche, nearby the chilean border, mountains and cold wind blowing fron the cordillera, spectacular landscapes which I am getting used to in this tripping.
But this is not what I wanted to tell.
The way we got to Bariloche deserves an article, and I guess the other idiotas will do the same, so please don´t get mad if we repeat eachothers...
We were in the camping, the other side of patagonia, we didn´t like it so we decided to go somewhere else. We heard that there was a train which could take us near the mountains and chile, much cheaper then the bus. So we go to the station, early, really early. Nobody there. We go for lunch, we take a long siesta and once back, tatà, the sideway is packet with backpackers, travellers, people hitting bongos and playing guitars. I think...I like this! I go for a walk with two colombians, they are not so friendly, but they invite me for a...which is always nice hehehehe...
Once back we start realising that the majority of the people didn´t have any ticket, so we...there are only expensive first class rides, we think too much and fortunately when hector goes to buy, ops there are no more tickets.
As all the others we jump on the train, and its start our looong hyppie journey (when i use the word hyppie i refer to a mix of easy people swinging heads following the rithms of the music, which filled up the restaurant vagon, long hair, dreadlocks, short hair, no hair, guitars, small big and middle sized drums, singing mostly argentinian classics, and the feeling of being out of the law, but at least half drunk and the most lucky stoned, together with the determination of not being kicked out of the train: "they cannot kicked out all this people" we kept on hearing.)
It was true, the controllers seemed to get the spirit of the train, and after some attempts, they just gave up with the ticket issue, letting us travelling for free, for over 16 ours.)
The locomotive broke up in the middle of nowhere, gifting us a majestic sky (hector couldnt stop saying "you dont see this in europe!!!"), the opportunity to familiarise with mny friends, hearing a loooooot of stories, sharing herbal medicaments, red wine. the party in the bar was really cool, then it was time to go to sleep, everybody got its own place, we on the floor, with the gentle lullaby o the train, dreaming about freedom (at least me), realizing how sometimes so little can fill you soo much.
We were all friends in the train, shaking hands, happy to go for free, in a train I felt densly wet of humanity and bullshits.
We met some argentinians, they are on hollidays, trying to get some money from handcrafts and juggling (dunno how to write it), we followed them in a very cold bariloche, found a place near the lake, under a big concrete ramp, we camped there, lighted a fire, grilled some meet and drunk terrible wine. It was real cold, Tito suffered particularly, but in the end we survived the night.
Those two days has been really tiring, dirty, extremely cheap and in the end very "on the road" kinda style, and...I liked it wery much!
Now the idiotas will search for a camping, trying to wash away the dirtyness, but the feeling will stay with us. (And tomorrow we will travel to el bolson, real cool place, argentinians center of road travellers (what ever it means) we will tell you if it is true.

Bariloche,
Ste

Sergio goes to the mountain

Picture... wind blows too hard...
Patagonia, at last. Just to end the trip.

Yesterday's day description (brief and clean.. but full of mud)

• Sergio and Pato (Buenos Aires dude) wake up
• Sergio and Pato buy bread, cheese and salami
• Sergio and Pato wait one hour for bus, after asking cool rasta guy the find out bus changed route so the move
• Sergio and Pato finally find bus
• Sergio and Pato go to base of Cerro Catedral (Bariloche, Patagonia)
• Sergio and Pato see mountain
• Sergio and Pato climb the mountain
• Rains all the time, mud everywhere
• Sergio and Pato make it to the top (high, cold and snow)
• Sergio and Pato go back thinking of the asado which is waiting at home
• Sergio and Pato eat and drink with the others
• Sergio falls asleep, Pato still sleeps right now (day after, midday)

Day over

Sergio, Bariloche (Argentina)

Mountains, Wales and kings

Everytine I am in the middle of mountains I feel immediately better; here there are, many, and again I'm feeling better than in sea-burning hot-side...
Today, by the way, it is the Dia de Reyes in Spain and many other places. Hope any of you got lots of coal (which would mean you haven t been good boys and girls). Me, I didn t get many presents but found myself one. Near Esquel where I am there is a little town called Trevelin which was a Welsh colony. As a consequence the streets are named things like Calle Jones... and there are some places, tea houses, where you -me today- can eat millions of cakes, a lot, many...

And tomorrow, The Larch.... Now, remember:

• Watch The Monty Python
• Read The Idiotas
• Eat Cakes

Sergio, Esquel (Argentina)

Tears not fears and the Patagonian sun

Hola amigos, hola a todos,

Well.. this is coming to an end; in few minutes I will be saying goodbye to my other two + one idiotas and starting my way back to Buenos Aires end of my trip in 8 days. The others are going to stay one more month around, spreading our idioteness -which, by the way, is growing everyday- We are now in Puerto Madryn, entrance to the Patagonia; we saw sea lions, penguins and 42 degrees Celsius. Soon they will head to Las Grutas, a beach in the Atlantic Ocean, and I will be travelling north to the Lakes region of Argentina, to Esquel and Bariloche. Yesterday we went out, the best of all was the sunrise over the disco balcony. The sky here is not real, cannot be, can it..?

Stefano is sitting behind me and the other two are on a table near with all the backpacks. I think I ll go and spend a while with them, this trip is almost over for me, but I hope you all enjoyed it...

(not the last post, don t worry, nightmare still goes on)

Sergio, Puerto Madryn (Argentina)