The Finale

I just got back to Venezuela. I think I left off right before New Year's on the blog. Essentially what happened is for New Year's many of my friend took off to Valparaiso, Chile. Supposedly it's an amazing place to be, with thousands of people from around the world coming to celebrate. Me being the worst decision maker in the world, decided to go the day of, and try to buy a bus ticket. Every bus was booked full, I even checked to Santiago, but to no avail. I ran into a french guy who was in the same boat as I was, going to the same place, so we walked for a few hours, and got dropped off on the freeway to try to hitchhike.

One car pulled over, and we thought we had some luck, but it was just a dude making a cellphone call. Two hours later it started pouring rain, so we headed back to town.

Ooh, the day before Claudia's brother was in town and he and his wife took Claudia and I around Mendoza for a little bit. The language barrier was slightly awkward, but other than that it was a really nice gesture. They took us up to a lookout point of the city, which had some historical significance, but not quite sure what it was. Probably had to do with pizza or something.






For New Year's Eve, I was supposed to meet up with Claudia, but by midnight I had no word for her. I hung out with some dudes from Buenos Aires in the hostel waiting, by about 1 O'clock I figured it was a lost cause, and we went on the roof to pass the time. Ends up about 1:30 Claudia showed up, and due to the rain, she wasn't able to get a taxi over to the hotel, so she had to wait for her brother to take her. We went out that night and had an enjoyable time.






The rest of the following days I met a few more people, hung around Mendoza, and stayed up way too late. I changed hostels a couple of times to get a different change of pace. The day before I left I wanted to do something touristy again, so I invited Claudia to come paragliding with me. It wasn't the top choice on my list, but it was the only thing going that day besides another wine tour(which I wouldn't have minded). It was actually quite incredible being up in the air all that time, and if it wasn't for the male guide straddling me hardcore from behind, it would have been the closest thing to flying.






The following day I took the night bus to Buenos Aires, spent the day there. I met up with a friend of whom I'd met before, and he showed me around the city. I got to see a couple of new things, BA is really incredible. We hit a couple of bars and had a few drinks, then we headed to a party at a hostel. The one thing I miss most about Argentina, besides the amazing food, security, beautiful women, great people, outdoors activities, wine, late nights, and everything, is the fact that they have bars. Who would've thought that something like that would make a difference? Well after living in Venezuela for a year and a half, it does.






I've come to many conclusions on this trip, mainly about my own personal life, and what I'm looking for at the moment, and unfortunately it isn't here in Venezuela. I made amazing friends, and great connections for future travel. I met so many people who just up and quit their jobs, to travel and experience the world. Many of the people were couples, many weren't. Surprisingly most of them were from Australia or New Zealand, none of them were from the USA. Some had plans to work in other countries to get by when they were done, others had jobs awaiting them, and some had nothing. I understand much more of what is going on in my life right now, and I felt super trapped for awhile. I'm very happy to have had this experience to point me in the right direction, and not get caught up solely in financial or work issues. Until next time Argentina!