Norte a BsAs

I ask to quiero pagar and instead the girl at the desk asks my name and wonders why I’m leaving so soon. I like her instantly and has me questioning beyond reason why I AM leaving so soon. There’s nothing more on earth, though, I want to do here. She phones for my bus ticket and I go back to my reading.

I buy food for the ride and finish up some last minute chores. I’ve been eating a great deal which makes sense considering my recent physical stress. I still haven’t fully recovered as I’m reminded every time I climb a modest hill or some steps and feel the burn.

As I walk back towards the hostel, I meet the desk girl on the road. She says goodbye and gives me the customary kiss on the cheek and a nice hug and we chat for a bit and she hugs me even tighter, and by this time I do feel like staying longer, if only momentarily. I arrange my stuff at the hostel and leave and an older Dane in my room does the same.

He went on an Argentina trip 28 years ago, when he said that the country looked much the same except that there was a palpable tension in the air. It was the height of The Dirty War. He met a family with a small child and became close. She found him recently through the internet and urged him to come back and visit. The child is now a mother of her own child. The woman that he met is now the director of the theater in Buenos Aires and has colaborated in creating a play about 1978, Matri, based on generations of women dealing with the crisis.

We are in Rio Gallegos again, back to the refugee camp. It is going on evening and much warmer than my first visit, and I only have to wait a couple hours. I board the bus for my first sustained trip North in a month. The seats in front of me crank way back, but I relax and spread out as much as possible and read the final chapters of Moby Dick. It’s a dull read for me, but it passes the time, and there are thirty hours of traveling remaining. The movie is a bad drama about Flight 98, and seeing it makes me feel slightly ill.