Pale South African Traveler, Trilingual Tour Guide and another couch surfer drinking coffee on the ledge (look below for what they´re looking at…)

I come outside with my cup of coffee and find Trilingual Tour Guide and the other two couchsurfers sitting on the top of one of Valparaiso´s many (many, many, many) staircases, sipping their coffees. And admiring the stunning cliff, beach, mountain and city view that reappears unexpectedly around corners and between buildings here.

TTG, our couchsurfing host, lives on the southern end of this small but incredibly vibrant, artistic city. The northern end hits Viña del Mar and several smaller beach towns. Downtown Vaparaiso – literally the flat part by the water – is a long (north to south) and only about four blocks wide, fitting in most of the restaurants, bars, markets and plazas before the residential and university buildings take over the Steep hills and cliffs. (Though bakeries, kiosks, small shops and pubs can be found around the many small parks and tucked into neighborhoods.)

Staircases and ascensors – angled outdoor elevators – help people navigate up and down the steepest areas. The overused descriptor for here is undoubtedly bohemian, and parallels to San Fransisco are very common. In addition to the terrain and music and art scene, Valparaiso and San Francisco are (randomly) the same distance from the equator, share some similar (unexciting) history and are close to larger cities that overshadow and yet underwhelm them. More about that later…

Read up on the event, put your name on the list, leave and hope for the best. After deciding to take an impromptu trip to Oktoberfest, Pale South African Traveler and I quickly discovered there was nowhere to stay in Villa General Belgrano (big surprise). Couchsurfing to the rescue! A bunch of the CS from Cordoba had already organized a campout for the weekend in a nearby town called Santa Rosa de Calamuchita. Having little idea what to expect, PSAT and I took the nine-hour busride to the city of Cordoba (we started Oktoberfest off right with mini caipirinhas in small plastic watercooler cups - made with bootleg cachaca a farmer gave PSAT when he was teaching English in Brazil), a two-and-a-half hour local bus to Santa Rosa and walked the remaining kilometer and a half to the municipal campsite. After waiting for about 10 minutes at the administration area, an Argentine guy and a French woman walked up to us to see if we were with CS (thank god) and lead us to the camping area.

A weird cross between Spartan and hippie, the actual campsite was no more than dirt with a few overtrimmed trees and grills (parillas). The CS campout looked more like music festivals in the US than anything I’d seen previously in Argentina. But the attitude was distinctly Argentine.

In total, about 100 people - less than 15 weren’t Argentine - showed up to share 30-some tents, a lot of beer, wine, fernet (an herb-based liquor), mate, cigarettes, pot, food and good times. When there weren’t cups, people cut open empty 1 or 2 liter soda bottles and used the bottom half. For every meal there was something on the grill - blood sausage (morcilla) for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and steak, ribs and chorizo for dinner. The only meal that wasn’t on the grill was the ever-popular (here) ham and cheese on white bread with mayo. People showed up at all different times, coming from the nearby city of Cordoba, as well as Mendoza, Santa Fe and BsAs. The partying lasted well into the daylight hours and started again around 9 am.

Argentines seem to have an endless ability to hang out, even with strangers, drinking, smoking, sharing mate and talking.

In spite of me waking him up at 8 a.m. on a Sunday, Gregarious Host is more than welcoming, introducing me to the city of Córdoba before taking me on a common Sunday excursion to a (currently dry) river park in the countryside. GH, Bear Boyfriend, GH´s cousin and I climbed into BB´s car and drove to the park 30 or 40 minutes outside the 1.3 million person city on roads sporatically occupied by other cars, motorcycles and people on horseback.

Having stopped to pick up hot water for mate, a flavored water - a combination of small amount of grapefruit juice and sparkling water that tastes quite a bit like a mimosa - and flatbread that looks and tastes like cooked pizza dough without any toppings, we climb down into the dry riverbed. Quizzing me about what Argentine foods I´ve had (as many people do), GH and BB prepare mate and pass it arund. A few of groups of friends and some families d the same nearby, as cows and horses chew on the rich grass that spends half the year underwater.

Cinematographer Friend stands by the sliding glass door, her hand holding her cigarette outside in the crisp air. Between puffs she talks rapidly in Spanish as Sommelier Host, SH’s brother and his girlfriend jabber back just as rapidly, each trying to be the loudest yet somehow not yelling. I’ve lost the conversation way back. CF is planning to leave the gathering to meet a date, and the others want her to stay so they can fix her up with Phys. Ed. Teacher Friend, who’s on his way over. Four hours ago I’d come back to SH’s apartment, where I’m couchsurfing (see an earlier post if you don’t know what that is), find her and CF sitting around a bottle of wine, several kinds of cheese and a basket of bread and crackers. The excited talking and intermittent bites of food continued for hours, supplemented by SH’s brother, his live-in girlfriend, their small but very overweight dog, more wine, empanadas from a local shop, guitar playing and yerba mate (a very popular South American tea drank loose leaf out of a gourd with a metal straw that tastes like burnt rubber to me). They’re still singing when I pass out, exaughsted from walking, speaking in Spanish and the overwhelming merriment.

For the first time I can remember, someone actually answered yes when I asked them if they knew what couchsurfing is today. I was first introduced to the idea of the site (put simply, people offer to let you stay with them and/or show you around) when a friend I had done some traveling with before was about to embark on a trip for several months to South Asia and the Middle East. I quickly joined the site to see what it was about and offered up my apartment as a place to stay, but didn’t actually use the site for several more months (no one seemed interested in couch surfing in rural upstate New York).

My first experience with couchsurfing was fantastic. I was traveling to Uruguay for a few days from Buenos Aires by myself and knew no one in the country. It’s only a short trip from Buenos Aires to Uruguay by boat (one of the closest parts, Colonia, is actually a common summer destination for Porteños), but I figured it would probably be my only trip to Uruguay ever and thus had to be a good one. After spending a short time in the touristy seaside town of Colonia during the offseason, I took the bus to Montevideo and met my couchsurfing host. In addition to introducing me to some of the best parts of the city in a really short period of time, he took me a couchsurfing gettogether where 12 or so people from the city who had hosted, surfed or just liked the idea of it hung out for hours at one person’s apartment.

A fantastic introduction to Uruguyan culture, we sat around, intoducing ourselves, talking, laughing, nibbling at salami, cheese and bread, drinking wine and beer and smoking cigarettes for at least two hours before we climbed down a rickety ladder to the basement. Only then did the host start the fire for the parilla, another almost two hours of talking, laughing, wine, cigarettes and pot before their standard late-night dinner. Followed by dancing and more wine. Oh, and more talking and laughing.