tiistai 20. maaliskuuta 2012

Alive and much more

This weekend I went to San Marcos Sierras, a hippie village in nothern Cordoba (the province). Supposedly it's located on one of the spiritual epicenters of South America. The others are Macchu Picchu in Peru and a farm called Aurorita in Uruguay.

Although I made a very slight effort to get company for this trip, in the end I sat in the bus alone. On my way back I understood that it was for the best. San Marcos is my little secret and the place where many interesting things happened. One especially noteworthy event was the following.

I wanted to take advantage of my last day in San Marcos so I woke up at sunrise and started walking to a river some 5 km away. I thought about hitchhiking. It's something that I've never done, although I've given rides to complete strangers and also stepped into a car where I was the only white/female person. Potentially dangerous but sofar so good. So, when walking on that dirt road a car stopped offering a ride, I went for it.

Matias and Juan were returning from a party. Juan was faily drunk but Matias had wanted to go to "his" place by the river, to be with nature for a while. A bit foolishly (I trust people way more than I should) I didn't get off at the main entrance to the river but continued a few kilometers further. With the car and the sleeping Juan left behind, Matias led me to the river, to some exquisite land and rock formations, through the forest and to higher grounds.

Many times I wondered if this was a good idea. There were no people anywhere nearby, so my cries for help would have been useless. My main reassurance was that if Matias was unarmed, I could probably beat him in a struggle. But none of that was necessary. We talked about his family, nature, drugs and Mother Earth. We challenged eachother and climbed higher to places making our own path through the vegetation (the current status of my shoes and my legs is evidence of that). We sat in silence and had geckoes and hummingbirds approach us. Mother Nature was present indeed.

I thought about Leakhena, a girl I met in Cambodia (there's an entire text about her in May 2010). There are people out there who make everything worth while. All our doubts, our questions, our hesitations are washed away when that right person crosses our path. I will probably never see Matias or Leakhena again, but I will remember them as people who showed me why I chose to live this way.

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