_Hitching-

I know it hasn´t been long since I last wrote all of you but I figured a good story is worth telling even if it’s back to back with my previous poetic landslide…..and thus I begin again: After frenetically trying to arrange our way out of the port-town of Ushuaia (located at the tip of Argentina), I understood quite clearly that the universe did not want me to leave by bus….things were booked for days to come and the town was closing for the next few days and going on holiday. After I got over the self-annoyance of not having figured out my exit strategy sooner, my thumb began to throb and I started to connect the dots. While camping a few days ago, I had decided that tomatoes and thumb tips would be a delicious combination, so I causally sliced my right thumb tip off while cooking a vegetable soup. And as I now stood ticketless and staring down at my tender mess of a thumb, I knew I would be hitchhiking my way out of Ushuaia.

We packed our bags that evening and set out the next morning. I was trailing a bit behind Cj and didn´t really see what he was doing while we attempted to hitch for the first few cars. But by the 4th car I glanced behind me: while I was modestly sticking a thumb to the northerly, he was zealously waving with one hand, while giving the sky a big thumbs up with the other….and I thought this could be very good or very bad….and naturally began to do it myself. The first guy to pick us up was a toothless laymen, a cheerful fellow who took us a few kilometers and stopped for bread that he later shared. It was delicious until he explained that the little raisins were actually chunks of dried meat, whereby I responded, ´´oh, que lindo´´ (oh, how beautiful).

The second guy told us to get in the back of his pick up, drove us a few more kilometers to a police check point, and then headed another direction. We walked for an hour heading north and then got our first real hitch by a widowed-spiritual-flamboyant- Argentine-hairdresser. He drove us 150 kilometers and talked about his life and all the things he´d seen on the road ranging from the ¨very beautiful´´ to ´´very ugly´´ as he made this daily commute. He continued to share a story about an experience he had with a UFO (“And I saw the cone and stopped my car. I blinked and it was gone.”) and then dropped us off in his home town of Tolhuin, still 200 kilometers from our destination. Thank you Alberto.

We walked for 2 more hours as the cars sporadically passed by (we were smack in the middle of nowhere) and it then began to rain. I remember asking the universe to pleeeease help out and no more than 3 minutes later did a tiny sedan stop and offer us a ride to our final destination. When we arrived we were welcomed by the driver’s family and then hopped back in the car for a small city tour, that turned into a dinner, that turned into a larger dinner, which eventually exploded with extended family and friends. I smile.

With light,

Simon>