Don´t worry, I´ll figure out how to slay this dragon

When the couple I had rented my apartment in Buenos Aires from came to check me out they told me if I´d like I could stay the rest of the day without any problem. But I was ready to go. I didn´t know exactly where but I was heading to the bus terminal and buying a ticket out of town.

After being stationary for about two months I have a difficult time comprehending how badly I am aching to get moving again. I had in my hand a certificate of completion from my Spanish classes earned with a solid 85% on our final exam and was ready to move on. The cabbie taking me to the bus terminal struck up a conversation. ¨Where are you going?¨ he asked. ¨To Cordoba¨ I replied. ¨Cordoba is great, which part are you going to?¨ Hmmm...I didn´t think I would be stumped quite so easily.

I just kinda had just a vision in my head of walking in to the bus station and asking for a ticket to Cordoba and that being that. In all my obsessing about which routes to take to get where I was going, I forgot one important thing. The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step, and I didn´t really know where that first step was towards. Well the cabbie told me I should check out Villa Carlos Paz and with that it was settled.

The bus ride was a short 10 hours and I managed to sleep through most of it. Carlos Paz is a small resort town about an hour outside of the Ciudad de Cordoba and a popular spot for trekking and adventure tourism. But as Argentina was currently in the middle of Autumn and winter was coming on swiftly the city was mostly empty.

I headed to the only hostel in town which turned out to be absolutely deserted except for the couple who ran the place. But they had a few good suggestions on day hikes to take so I spent the first day exploring a beautiful river which ran beneath the rolling hills.

As I awoke the next day I already knew where my next step was towards. La Parque Nacional de Condoritos. It involved taking a collectivo about an hour outside of town, walking another 1/2 hour to the park entrance and about a 7 hour round-trip hike to a gorge where condors are frequently spotted and figuring how to get back to Carlos Paz somehow. Time was a bit of an issue because I was planning taking another all night Omnibus to Jujuy that night, which left from Ciudad de Cordoba, another hour away. After being stationary in Buenos Aires I was going to rush through northern Argentina and get to Bolivia fairly quickly.

As I sat and waited at the terminal for the collectivo to show up and start this journey I felt myself tensing up. The collectivo was already 10 minutes late and I strained my neck trying to making out the writing whenever another bus pulled into the station and noticed my fists balling up in my jacket pockets. Finally my bus showed up and within an hour the driver pulled off at the side of the ride and told me to head down the dirt road to the left. I´d see the entrance to the park pretty soon he told me.

The hike was not too hard, not too easy, but just about right. I had plenty of time while waiting to stock up on goodies. The views were spectacular and I actually found myself turning around in a circle with a gaping mouth as I marvelled on the brightly colored canyons and the south tip of this gorge which I could already make out. Unfortunately the condors were not to be spotted today, but the hike was nonetheless spectacular and the view from the northern lookout was humbling.

I hitched a ride from the side of the road where I was dropped off to about 15 kms outside of Carlos Paz. After the 20th car passed me by my heart literally jumped when I saw a pair of brake-lights finally come on. I was still anxious about having enough time to catch the pair of busses I was planning on taking that night. But I caught the next collectivo heading to Carlos Paz without any problems, packed up at the hostel, and was on my way to the Ciudad de Cordabo with a good hour and a 1/2 to spare, plent of time to catch my night bus to Jujuy.

As I made every possible effort not to watch the terrible Meryl Streep movie they were playing on the bus I thought back to my times of anxiety. I had worried about what would happen if I missed these busses, made contingency plans in my head, worked out alternative routes and it was all for naught. And it dawned on me, that no matter what happened, everything was going to work out just fine. There was nothing that could possibly happen that I couldn´t deal with. And by allowing myself to be molested by the faceless anxiety I encountered I forgot to enjoy the unbelievable life that I was busy living.

I´m still trying to learn how to let go and relax. The obsessive analyzation of every hypothetical situation can come in handy with alarming frequency, but it keeps you from living in the moment and sometimes you find yourself busy making other plans while life is happening all around you and sometimes when you try to think back on that god-inspiring view from the tops of those rocks you climbed all you can see in your head is a bus schedule in spanish.