hostal hustle

**i'm completely back blogged due to some unforseen.... errr... natural disasters and pequeno pueblos without internet... but here's one for the road...**

8am. I'm sitting in a tiny café in Humahuaca, Argentina. Just one of the many little pueblo towns in northern Argentina that I've been hopping non-stop for the past week. I was awake at 6:08am though. No, wait. Actually, I was awake at 3:17am, 4:24am, and 6:08am-7:48am respectively and for different reasons. The first being the girl at the foot of my bunk bed who decided 3:17am was the perfect time to re-pack her bags, zipping and unzipping every zipper she could find to zip and unzip on every single one of her bags. Each zip was like a violent scratch across the chalkboard of my ears. I passive-aggressively dug for my earplugs with a few looks to kill glances at her. Ok, maybe more aggressive than passive. She zipped on, unaware. The second awakening coming when the guy next to me started coughing, trying to choke up whatever had lodged itself in his lungs. He was failing, miserably. I pulled my sleeping bag over my head and tried to breathe as little as possible, remembering where I put my emergen-c. Note: take immediately after getting up. The third time was the drunken idiot who thought it imperative to flick on the lights to the room to find his upper bunk bed above little miss zipper-head. With eyes blurry from booze, he struggled to climb up, wrestling with the bed, and as soon as half his body was on, he was snoring like a broken trombone before the bed had a chance to stop creaking. Leaving… the lights on! Thanks jackass. I grabbed my sleeping mask and ipod and struggled to not hear his violent attempts to catch the next breath. After an hour and a half, I gave up, grabbed my mac and headed out for some peace. Luckily people don't really stir until well passed 10am, so at the prime hour of 8am, the town was quiet and this little café just opening.

Welcome to… the hostal hustle. (cue song here) do the hostal hustle!

The sleeping situation in hostals suck. There's no way around it. You have no privacy, no space, and no absolute power over the bathroom. If lucky, there might be a private bathroom for each room with 6 beds but only if you're really lucky. More often than not though, it's outside, down the hall or downstairs for the entire hostal to share. Summer camp, anyone?

When I was a kid, I remember hearing stories about how cool summer camp was. It was a very American thing to do… go to camp. You got to sleep in bunk beds, meet other kids from far away schools, hike in groups while singing camp fire songs, get crushes on the dudes and maybe even your first kiss in the bushes. I dreamed of it. I watched tv shows about it. I imagined my name sharpied on the tags of all my t-shirts. The closest I ever came to camp was going to the Poconos with my family. Surely, not the same thing.

But when traveling alone, the easiest way to meet people is to stay at a hostal. I have stayed in 'five star' hostals that came with a pool, hammock, ping pong table and tv room. And, I have stayed in 'minus star' hostals that had styrofoam for a roof, potato sacks for a ceiling, and a storage room/bathroom with no toilet seat on the loo and a shower that barely dripped freezing water out. Score.

Though, the saving grace is, by far, the people I have met. Like a quick high school study, groups and cliques are quickly formed and broken. Couples are joined and shattered. And promises of potential friendships are built and, sometimes, severed. I met this guy who was traveling to the same places I was so we decided to hit the road together, only to find out a couple of days later, that outside of our previous hostal life, we did not click whatsoever. So, we parted ways. It's like 'life' on speed. Things happen quickly, deeply, and honestly. There isn't any time for bullshit on the road. Nobody wants their trip to be overshadowed by negative energy, so you call it as it comes.

On the other hand, the trust that you place in others is unparallel. My sassy French travel buddy, Lulu, and I walked into a packed small empanada restaurant the other day and stood waiting for a table. After a few short minutes a group of guys from buenos aires invited us to sit with them, offered us their empanadas and a glass of their wine. We happily obliged. After about an hour of chatting, we found ourselves in their car heading straight for the implausible crimson colored mountains, singing Spanish songs in a natural amphitheater, and climbing into the 'devil's throat' alcove to sip mate (a local tea they drink in groups and in fervor) while watching the clouds morph formations. Trumpet! Penguin! Sombrero!

I looked up at the sky, sipped, smiled and thought… "Now this, THIS is the perfect summer camp day." Sip, sip, sip….

besos besos besos** y una mas...