summer camp at the clay corral...

well folks i have been a bit remiss with this whole blog thing. you will have to excuse me. there is no other option. i have no excuses and do not intend to. i am fully occupied at summer camp and the days are just packed. it´s a rigorous schedule of waking in the morning and trudging off to a beautiful spot over looking the potato fields to practice my G and C tunes. ipod in one ear, fiddle at the ready, i am slowly hammering away at the world that is standard tuning on the fiddle. it is a wonderful and wild world, full of color and vitality, lacking only the ease of the open string. they do exist...mind you, but are to be used with discretion, for there are many other notes that one must utilize. it is the morning mate that provides the motivation, for the days have grown to autumn here, and the nights are cold and the days windy. one must push on, however, and i happen to be the one to fill this position. only around the time that i get hungry to i have a brief respite to rest and eat something. rushing in i scrounge what i can and fill my belly with much needed sustenance. at times, i return to the fiddle after lunch, but other times i turn to the blue beast that has six strings. she is a wild one, with a bright blue glow, often blinding the unwary. but she sings, oh how she sings! when coaxed just so, she can accompany the saddest of country song, and the loneliest of laments. depending on the weather, there are a myriad of activities: swimming in the ocean, drinking mate on the beach, going for a bike ride, napping, talking to various newcomers...you get the picture.

i was in buenos aires as well and spent a week with molly and leslie, and got to meet up with mike and alli while they were romanticizing through buenos aires en route to patagonia. it was a grand time and fun was had by all. there is a great picture that will come, though the computer i have found is not able to do such things. alas...i must move on. but times were good. i also got a chance to see the argentina national team play against venezuela for the world cup qualifying in buenos aires. i will just say that i waited seven hours starting at one in the morning, four of which were standing amidst hundreds of other rabid fans in what was a great example of the finicky nature and mayhem that is the mob mentality. i got in and got to watch the game from a fenced in, barbed wire enclosure with all these wackos and got to see maradona as head coach for a team replete with stars...messi, mascherano, tevez, aguero...it was heaven.

but buenos aires was to crazy and i headed to the beach. here i will spend my remaining week playing music and involving myself in all of the possible extracurricular activities. sorry for the lack of pictures, but i don´t have internet, and i came in to the big town to find a computer without a usb port. i will tarry away my last days and look forward to coming back to my fair country. it is a place i do miss, and i shan´t tarry too long here. as some of you know i will be heading back east for a bit this summer to work for mom and the older bro and travel around to the musical shindigs in the southern appalachians. it will be a lovely summer and i hope to see you there.

over and out

things i love about argentina

1. they absolutely love the simpsons. it´s on multiple times a day, and it´s painted all over stores and street walls. copyright folks would have a field day i tell you.

2. ice cream and empanadas are everywhere. i mean everywhere. the ice cream is pretty damn good, and with the competition we have in the states, it comes close. i would still say that we win hands down on quality of ice cream. mmmmm...... and the empanadas vary by region and city. up north they were very cheap and very tasty. mostly they either have meat, cheese, or chicken. and i mean literally just meat cheese or chicken. the chicken ones tend to not be so hot, and the cheese here leaves a little to be desired. here in the city of cordoba they have arab empanadas which are meat with onions and lemon, and are quite delectable.

3. almost every town has at least one main plaza. it´s a great way to organize a city, really, because it provides a center, and a place to congregate for folks....and a great place for ice cream stands.

4. the fashion statements here are unbelievable. first off, the mullet...it is the pinnacle of fashion sense, namely because the soccer stars have them. they come in all shapes, and complement whatever attire you desire....the business folks with suits and well groomed tops with their usually short and manicured mullets. the bohemian/hippie types with the range of unkempt mullets, usually utilizing the one stray dred or braid that literally goes down to the middle of their back. seriously, it´s pretty hilarious. secondly they have fully embraced both fanny packs and flavor savors. enough said.

5. mate....it´s a very social thing that for these folks provides something to do at all times of the day or night. it´s actually packed with good things for you, and the caffeine it contains is not as strong as in coffee beans. it´s either taken with sugar or straight, and you see folks of all ages walking around with a thermos tightly clutched under their arms....

6. the music here seems to live in 3/4 and 6/8 time instead of our standard 4/4. it provides a different feel and the dancing is often quite sexy....something about the hips and the latin flair is a bit of an explosive combo.

7. breakfast usually includes lots of bread, cookies, and mate. dinner is after10 and you don´t think about going out until 1 in the morning. lord forbid you come home before 6 in the morning. i swear, i´ve been at restaurants and bars at midnight and whole families, with little kids, are sitting down to eat....and they eat large plates of meat. usually just meat and maybe rice. i guess they start the kids off young, and for them it´s normal. i imagine it helps them sleep through the night, though.

8. the afternoon siesta....man oh man. especially in the countryside, there is not a thing open from 2-5 in the afternoon. literally. it´s the hottest part of the day, and the streets are empty and all the stores close. things get chug-a-luggin again around fivish and are bumping by 8 or 9.
it´s a beautiful thing.

9. there is a strength and vitality to the culture here that is very contagious. people are so very friendly and hospitable. i imagine it comes from not really having much luck politically for so long. there hasn´t really been much work for a while, so this crisis is not really a big deal. the only comparison i can think of is ireland. both countries have developed a culture around music and community that can come only from years of persecution. creo yo.

10. it´s kind of like being in a modern wild west. there´s no such thing as osha, or traffic laws...using your lights at night...for what reason? every intersection is a game of chicken with the crossing traffic, and every street is a rally race including buses, cars, bikes and motos....these people are crazy. it´s great though. you just have to watch out crossing the street, because the cars could give a rat´s you know what if they clipped you or flat out ran over you... you are in their way. the rules only apply so far, most easily paid off by bribes....which i guess has its downsides as well.

the future cometh!

so if you folks didn´t already realize, i´m picking up on this internet thing with quick velocity.

i now have a youtube site! it´s been a while that i´ve wanted to put something on youtube, and now i have....i´ll admit it was a bit anticlimactic. either way...i don´t know the best way to find it other than to say my name is ryanfitzpatrick81, and the two videos are called..carnaval, tucuman...ranchillos and above san isidro.

i also have more pictures on the picasa site...www.picasaweb.com/rfitz81

tucuman

so i left salta and headed for the city of santiago del estero. but....i got to tucuman and it was late and i didn´t want to head to a city and get there at night and well, blah blah blah....

so i made it to tucuman. it´s a pretty good sized city, and does quite a lot of commercial and business traffic within the country. it´s a good looking city with a beautiful main plaza and is pretty hot and humid in the summers. it´s surrounded by fields of sugar cane and is a nice green valley surrounded by mountains. i ended up calling a friend i had met up north camping and met up with him. he´s a great fellow..alejandro vaca, or la vaca...and he ended up giving me a tour on his broken down moto bike around the city. it was quite the adventure riding around on the back of something like that. no helmets, no traffic rules...it´s basically a rally race in the streets here with buses and cars and bikes and motos just weaving around each other trying to race to the next intersection to play chicken with the crossing traffic to see who goes first. there´s not really any stop signs either....

either way it was a wild weekend of discos and bbqs and swimming...there´s pictures on the site. the highlight was definitely the carnaval on sunday. it was the last day of the celebration, and it was held outside of town at a soccer stadium. they had bands playing all day and sold beer and food. the big carnaval aspect of it all was that they also sold packets of powdered paint....that you mix with water or beer and proceed to wipe it on just about anybody that walks by. it was just madness. add to that water being sprayed everywhere and fake snow...latin america is crazy. and awesome. it was a debaucherous afternoon and i was sufficiently covered in paint and a bit inebriated as well.

the lessons i learned from tucuman are...

one...i´m not 22 any more like my tucumano friends. staying out until 6 in the morning multiple nights in a row going to discos and chasing after parties...well. i guess i never really was into that, but especially not now.

two..latin america is crazy. there is a raw energy here that is unexplainable.

and now im in the central sierras of argentina in a quiet little village called la cumbre. it´s after tourist season, so it´s quite nice. getting to play lots of music and relax. and sleep.

Carnaval in Salta

well folks, i have finally left salta. it was nice to get to know the city, and i met a lot of great musicians, and ate a lot of really good ice cream...but i had about enough of the hostel i was in. the highlight was really the carnaval, and was, for the most part, why i stayed through the weekend. on friday night there was a parade with all sorts of crazy costumes, some serious dance revolution moves, and lots and lots of snow. they were selling these spray cans of snow, which really was more of a foamy soap type of thing. it was a blast, though because everybody was just spraying everybody. there are some more pictures on the picasa site, so enjoy. after, that i really didn´t do a whole lot. this country is rabid for soccer, and on saturdays and sundays, there´s soccer on pretty much all day. in the mornings they show the european leagues, and in the afternoons and evenings the argentine league. it´s pretty cool to watch the different european leagues and see the different styles of each country...it´s also way better soccer than anything we get in the states. anyway after a night of pass the pigs, a game a french fellow had, which is actually from england supposedly, and actually quite entertaining, i took off and headed south for a town called cafayate.

the road down to cafayate was beautiful, it´s called the quebrada de los conchas, and is full of really red earth and stone, slot canyons, and a river that runs right down the middle. anyway, i got to cafayate on a monday, and the previous week there was a huge music festival, and the town seems pretty exhausted from it. it´s a nice little town, though, and is known for its wineries....i don´t really know much about wine, but it´s a big deal here. they even have wine ice cream.....which i am not really sure about. i don´t think i really like it, though. i don´t see the need to mix wine with such an already perfect food...now fruit, on the other hand, is quite tasty with ice cream..they even have cactus ice cream....mmmmmm.....i could go on and on about this thing that i love so much. but i won´t.

last night we had an asado, or bbq, and bought a slew of meat and vegetables, 5 liters of wine for 6 bucks, and some cuban rum....and if you can believe it, i was the one who cooked everything. now it is quite an unusual thing for me to be the one who is in charge of the grill. many of you know of my past experiences with the whole not eating meat thing, and it may surprise you to hear this, but for some strange reason i end up running the bbq...not sure why, but i´m at least getting better at it. the meat here really is amazing, and the wine was good as well, and fun was had by all..

so i´m not really in a writing mood, so i´m going to stop there...

the saltanian doldrums...

So, we´ll just address the editor´s comments in a later post.....we have much more important things to accomplish at the moment. Not really much has happened here in Salta. ít´s been almost a week again. I came into town with a rough case of food poisoning...maybe the worst i´ve had. i´ll spare you the details, but i am eating real food again and loving it. i´m not sure what it was, but i was up near bolivia and the water is not as clean as it is down here. maybe it was some fruit, or some bad street empanadas, or who knows what was the culprit. either way, it doesn´t matter much.

that being said, i have resumed my previous schedule here in this beautiful city of salta. i will take the time out from my doings and walk you through a day in the life of ryan in salta. breakfast ends in the hostel at 10, so it is nice to get up before this and wolf down a bowl of cereal and some pastries with some watered down juice. not the greatest start, mind you, but it fills the belly with some calories...after this, a shower with lukewarm water. freshly dressed and clothed in the same pair of shorts and hopefully a clean shirt, i take to the streets and either busk a little on the pedestrian walkway or sit in a park and play my fiddle for a couple of hours. today i chose the park option, as i wanted to fit in a little practice, in lieu of the quasi performance setting when busking. following this i stop by the market to pick up some avocados, tomatoes, and bread for a midday meal. it´s been my lunch of choice to mix up the avocados and tomatoes with some oil and salt and eat it with bread....mmmm.....i really still am not sure about when to put an oe on the end of words or just an o.....i don´t know why dan quayle got such a hard time for that. i think it was him....? either way i´ll sit and eat and watch old american movies on the tele...today it was mad max. illl sit around for a while and drink some mate, and then pick up the guitar and play for a while in the hostel. i just got a cd of atahualpa yupanqui, an amazing guitarist...i´ve really been trying to get some fingerpicking skills under my belt.

then, if the day is hot, which they usually are, i´ll wander over to the other hostel and swim in the pool for a bit and generally lay around. that usually puts me at about 4-5ish and it is high time to come back to the hostel and sit around maybe on the internet and blog about my deep thoughts, but usually i just check my email...this is of course followed by some mate and some more guitar playing, and perhaps a nap. with myself fully rested, i´ll head to the plaza where i pick up a newspaper and sit at one of the street cafes and drink a beer with some complementary chips. it´s quite lovely, i tell you. the sitting in public on the street drinking beer watching the world go by is definitely an underutilized concept in many places. depending on the evening i´ll either head to the casona del molino, a spot much like the bar the moon and sixpence in portland, where there are at least a few musicians just sitting around drinking and playing the local music...it´s kind of like an irish pub where they just kind of sit in the corner and aren´t really performing, per se, but people usually come to listen. it´s a really great place to hang out regardless. other than that, i´ll head to the other hostel for dinner, stay here and watch another movie with the guitar, or head up to a street loaded with bars and clubs...it´s quite a scene, really...

so there you go. now you all know what i do with my time here in salta. there are some carnaval things starting tonight and tomorrow, so hopefully i´ll have something of actual human interest to post. other than that i´m leaving salta and heading south on monday or tuesday.

A brief message from the editor

The editor in chief would like to address an error made in a previous post. It was stated that salta is of comparable size to a Blacksburg or a Bellingham......this is a gross underestimate. It would be more comparable to a Richmond or Portland. We all know that Ryan is full of....well, tends to bs a little bit, but this took it too far.

Thanks and we hope you continue reading.

ed. in chief
Proofread McChecksitOver

pictures.....

so i´m hoping this works. i finally got some pictures on the web after much longer on the computer than i would have wanted.....but see if you can see them.

www.picasaweb.com/rfitz81

the northern mountains

humuahuaca..............................................................

iruya.........................................................................

san isidro..........................................................................

well, as if one post in a day wasn´t enough, i will continue while i am on a roll....

leaving salta, i headed for the northern mountains to a town called humahuaca. it´s one of a string of little towns in a valley in the northernmost part of argentina, right by bolivia. it resembles the southwest a lot, with the red rocks and scrub brush. think northern new mexico and southwestern colorado. i met up with dani, and ended up camping for a couple of days by the river. it was great to be outside and with argentinians. it took a while, but i´m slowly getting better at understanding them. it´s an interesting brand of spanish, although they call it castellano, and they love using the zha sound, kind of like italian, i think. it´s a beautiful language, though, and the people have a really strong sense of community, and they rally around their food and music, and especially their mate, which are all really good. the food, empanadas and bbq meat(asados) and the music is called chacarera and zamba, to name a few. they have not had the best of luck with politics, and it seems that in places where the government is consistently corrupt and oppressive, the people unite and develop a very strong sense of who they are. think ireland, which also has not had the best of luck of many centuries..
it was great, though, as i got to play a ton of music and started learning my first chacareras. after humahuaca, dani left and had to go to the beach to work, and i continued on with some of his friends farther north to a town called iruya. it´s some 53km in a schoolbus with luggage on top, crossing over rivers and up and down mountain passes where no school bus in it´s right mind should be. they do it all the time, though. iruya is a tiny little town built on the confluence of two rivers. from above it reminds me of pictures of european towns i´ve seen, with small winding cobblestone roads, and houses all crammed in together. situated in a tiny little valley, it has mountains rising up on all sides some 3000 feet, pretty much straight up. the town itself is somewhere around 9-10000 feet. we ended up staying here a couple of nights and i held the first squaredance, most likely ever, in this town. we were playing music in the hospedaje and folks were dancing the chacarera, and someone got the notion that they wanted to go to the main plaza and learn to squaredance. hmmm....it was great, though. i taught them the virginia reel, and they absolutely loved it. it was funny, though, for they all stopped about halfway through saying that it was too much of a workout. i also got to learn the chacarera, which is their traditional dance here. it´s a really cool dance, meant to imitate condors, their largest bird of prey here. it was great fun, and afterwards we passed around the guitar playing their songs and me playing old country tunes. it´s funny the requests you get down here. they love the house of the rising sun and blowing in the wind.
from iruya, we hiked 7km up a river valley, continually crossing over the river up to a town called san isidro. an even smaller town, there were power lines running to the town, but they weren´t working at the moment, so candles were the light at night. it is a private community in an even narrower valley perched up on a cliff overlooking the river. the people were so very friendly and i got to play for a bunch of them. it was a nice spot to sit and write and practice my music. hopefully when i return i´ll have a body of tunes that i have written. either way i spent a couple of days hiking above the town to the most incredible fields and valleys. it´s great, too, cause there are donkeys everwhere. every so often you hear the wonderful sound of the donkey fill the valley. i swear i will always die laughing to the bray of a donkey. even the sight of one reminds me of the movie shrek and cracks me up. them and the horses just wander through the mountains grazing and just hanging out. every so often i guess they´re rounded up. i´m not really sure. it was good fun, though and i got to sit on top of the world it seemed and play my fiddle....very dorky, i know, but you know how i roll.
after a couple of days and a day of some serious rain, i am now back in iruya for the night and will begin my trek back south to salta for the carnaval. things are good, and hopefully the same for you...oh, and you would think that after 27 years i would learn to bring sunblock. man oh man i have gotten some sunburn here..

salta

well folks, back by popular demand is Ryan´s blog! all of his interesting thought and actions presented in such literary ways that even hemingway himself follows it from beyond the grave with a tinge of jealousy....yessir...that´s the truth.

so i´ve been out of contact for a while, and i apologize. deeply..for the past week or so, i´ve been doing some camping and staying in towns where there is not electricity, let alone a computer with such things as access to blogs on the information superhighway. so bear with me. i´m doing my best, and trying to maintain the ranking of my blog as first on my list of things to do while traveling.

so here goes. after being in buenos aires for a bit, i started heading to the northwest, where there was meant to be quite a bit of music being played. after being here, it reminds me a lot of the southern appalachians, where the music is meant to be danced to, and where impromptu sessions and dancing can spring up just about anywhere. anyway, i knew that my friend dani was up in the northwest and i had his cell phone number, but could not figure out how to use the phones to call him. i ended up in the town of salta, which they call salta la linda, meaning salta the beautiful. it definitely lives up to its name as well. in a very green, lush valley, it has been a center of commerce and activity for, jeez, who knows how long. the indigenous folks used it and it was overrun by the spanish in the late 1500s or so..it´s a beautiful little town with cobblestone streets, maybe the size of bellingham for you westerners and maybe a big blacksburg...or so. it´s not that big. there arent´really any tall buildings. there are some really beautiful old buildings, though. the churches and the main ssquare are just gorgeous. all the towns down here are built around at least one main plaza, with a church and a big open space with a statue of somebody important in the middle. it´s a really nice way to organize things, however, for it provides a center for everyone to congregate.
anyway, to begin another paragraph, and try to organize my thoughts in an orderly manner, i spent a week in a hostel right by the main plaza. it was replete with an even number of kids from buenos aires on holidays and foreigners, mostly from europe. i always seem to end up with the irish folks, and spent a good time there busking on the streets and wandering around aimlessly just loving being in latin america. i especially love how there doesn´t seem to be a single stop sign in the whole country, nor a railing on any stairway or balcony...life does go on, however without osha approved codes, and there doesn´t seem to be an inordinate amount of people dying in the streets. it was funny though, as the hostel had both free internet and tv, that i ended up watching more tv and spending more time on the internet than i probably did in the past couple months at home. it was a great way to get settled in this beautiful country though, and i met a lot of great folks from ireland and england who i will hopefully visit in the near future.
there is a ton of music here, however, and there were some musicians that worked at the other hostel that was associated with the one that i was staying in and i got to sit in and learn some of their music and play along with it. they were pretty talented musicians, playing a bunch of instruments. they also loved the old time fiddling and the country songs. it´s great, they immediately get up and start slapping their knees with the fiddling. they love it though, and comment on how happy it is. i even got a deliverance comment on the music...it seems that movie transcends international borders....not sure what to think about that.....it was funny too, because these guys love to hear jimmie rodgers songs, especially with the yodeling, which is slowly getting better.
it was a great stay, and i will be returning to salta for carnaval, but i finally got in touch with my friend and decided to meet him up north.

buenos aires

so i made it down here to argentina and am staying with a friend in palermo soho, a borough of the city. they have a funky little apartment right off of a main road, but you kind of wind your way back into the building and can't really even hear the noise of the street. there's a really nice rooftop area that is great for eating and hanging out, especially in the evenings when it cools down a bit to a more reasonable temperature. it's pretty hot here, upper 80's and 90's, and humid, although not as bad as parts of the south.

the plane ride down was long, mostly because of a head cold that i got from staying up playing music and boozing way too late at the old time gathering. in retrospect, it really doesn't make sense to be playing tunes until 5 in the morning....does it?

so this city is pretty freaking huge. i always heard that it was a latin nyc in a way and it seems to be true. there are just people everywhere. today molly and i took a walk around the city, and i couldn't help staring upwards at all the skyscrapers and apt buildings here. they love their tall skinny apt buildings. it's a very developed city as well, and there are some very posh spots and some huge avenues with ten lanes across.

either way i think i'm going to stick around untiil sunday and then start making my way up to the northwest to meet my friend daniel, who is from here, and play and see some music. i've never really been a big city person, so it will be nice to be up in the mountains. hopefully there will be some swimming up there as well.

well everybody, we had a great weekend here in Portland for the Old Time Gathering. lots of friends in town and two of the brothers....The Band i'm in, Ebenezer, got to play for the opening dance on Thursday, which was a blast. It was the most people we'd ever had dancing for our music, and probably the most we had played for in general. People seemed to enjoy the music, and as the dancers seemed to be getting along fine, I imagine we did alright. It's become quite the ordeal, with folks from all over the country descending on our fair city. some pretty ridiculous musicians as well.

Either way it was a good last hurrah for me in town and now i prepare for my flight on wed morning to opposite land where santa wears swim trunks and the big dipper is nowhere to be seen. i have been gathering quite a body of both singing and instrumental tunes, and am looking forward to sharing our music down there and learning a bit of theirs.

so bear with me on this whole blog thing, as it is my first real foray into putting my thoughts onto the information superhighway for just about anybody to read.