Buenos Aires - Cordoba - Jujuy - Buenos Aires - Valparaiso...

ok, i'm going to try and keep this one as brief as possible, although it's been two weeks since the last update i think...

the last update was from buenos aires - i think i was there for one night before heading to cordoba on an overnight bus - possibly the best way to travel if your journey is 12 hours or so! so i actually slept pretty well and was met at the bus station by jorge castro, one of the organisers of the santo noise festival i was there to perform at. i was shown to the hostel i would be staying in (sharing a room with 5 20somethings who were all still in bed when i checked in at 11am!) and then taken to la cupula, the site of the festival. i met the group of yound musicians and artists who are now co-running the festival, going on a beer run with them and generally hanging out. i was also given a walking tour of part of the city by gustavo, which was nice - good to see a place rather than just a venue and lodgings!!

the show itself was good - a photo session (that i hope never sees the light of day...) and then 4 acts played - a guy playing guitar and electronics, juan castrillo and bianca (field recordings and nice visuals), axel pulgar (beats/dark electronica) and me. a really respectful and appreciative audience - it was a pleasure to be part of it!

i did actually manage to sleep in the hostel - i heard one roommate come in and go to bed around 3, but slept through all the others coming in - then had to wake up around 7:30 to go and meet juan jose calarco at the bus station. except he wasn't there. he'd got in early and gone straight to juan's place. i met them there and we spent a couple of days hanging out, listening to great music, planning our trip north.

so on 10th april we head to san salvador de jujuy, where juan's dad has a place we could stay. we spend an evening there and then head further north to yala, where juan's dad has another place we could stay. we tried to explore the termas de reyes - some hot springs nearby, but heavy rain stopped us going to far. that night we discovered the cooker wouldn't work, so had to build a barbecue/fire and cook pizza on it! by the time the pizzas were cooked i think we'd have eaten anything! pizza with a strong taste of woodsmoke and some hardly melted cheese on top is an experience you have to have once in your life!! after a second day of trying ot record around yala and getting rained on again, we decided to head even further north, this time to a hostel run by juan's uncle 'cookie'.

it was very beautiful at 'hosteria rural huasadurazno', which is set back off the main road quite a way, with the mountains rising up behind it, and we had the place to ourselves really. however, trekking up towards the mountains, the sky gets very dark and once again we get rain - this time a heavy downpour that doesn't last very long, although long enough to soak juan jose through once again (get a waterproof jacket!!), making his cold worse...

we explore the nearby village of uquia, which is a strange little ghost town that seems to be run by young children, and also spend a day in humahuaca, visiting the touristy places, the nearby hills (almost getting trapped on top of them), the market, many coffee shops and the hills once again.

on our last day in this most northern part of our journey we try to find a 'windmill' that has been spoken about for a few days. we visit a farm very close to uquia, where we climb the hills nearby once again, make some contact mic recordings, get tempted to record some beehives (me) and am advised not to (by juan and juan jose), and then try and record the animals and the farm's pond... which means entering a field that has all manner of animals, including two bulls and one young cow that has long horns and is apparently a little feisty.

so we are happily recording away, and then realise the farmer and his wife, who accompanied us into the field, have left us there. then the young cow decides to see what we're doing - sniffs around juan jose, who manages to escape the attention of it, meaning it then goes for juan. it actuallt started butting him with it's head, forcing him to climb out of the way up a tree! this sounds funny now, but at the time none of us wanted to mess with the cow, so i tried a couple of times to rescue juan's recording gear that was still on one side of the pond, but every time i went for it, the cow would show interest in me!

well, we managed to find the farmer and he got it to leave juan alone by chasing it off with a big stick - then we resumes our search for the windmill, which turned out to be a non-operational watermill. i had tripped while trying to save juan equipment, so my knee was killing me, juan jose was close to passing out with his sickness, so we decided to call an end to the trip and head back to san salvador, where we spent a night, and then juan jose and i got the bus back to buenos aires - a journey that took 22 hours...

back in buenos aires for 2 nights, getting a tattoo based on a design i had my friend alejandro calderon do for me while i was in residence at campos de gutierrez, and now i am in valparaiso to run listening and field recording workshops for the next three days. which means i now need to sign off and get some sleep!