I'm worn out

Day 42: After posting how disappointed I was to not find a real cowboy experience, I lucked out! The woman who works in the tourist office convinced her son to take me on for a day. I found out later that he trains horses to play polo. How cool! And he rents a little plot of land where he keeps the horses and also pigs, sheep, chickens, cats, and two dogs -- one helps herd the animals and the other can't do diddly. He picked me up way too early in the morning (at my request) and we headed out into the pampas. I spent the day feeding the animals, playing with the kitten and day-old chicks, riding horses, and hanging out with Nicolas, his brother, and their friend -- all three are real-life gauchos. I had an authentic experience, for sure. There was no tourist show, no gift shop, and no doubt that I ended up very authentically tired, authentically dirty, and authentically smelly. As soon as I got to the hostel in Buenos Aires, I took a shower and threw every last thing I was wearing in a pile on the floor. I didn't want it anywhere near my other "dirty" clothes.

The shower was not very satisfying. The water pressure was so-so, there was nothing between too hot and freezing cold temperature-wise, and the bathroom light burnt out as I was shampooing. However, I was clean. That was the only upside. I'm crammed into a room with eight beds, which isn't atypical for a hostel. The problem is that the room is tiny and two of the bunk beds are three-bed stacks. And guess which one I got. The climb to the top is precarious at best and there's no escaping the light when people flip the switch. Plus, the mattress is so thin that my shoulder and hip dig into the boards underneath.

I was even more annoyed when I found out that a band was setting up in the common area outside my room. They played until nearly 3 am, which is -- in my humble, perhaps old fogey, opinion -- absurd in a place where you are

paying

to

sleep.

This morning, I'm still kind of grouchy. I'm tired of being surrounded by tourists. Hell, I'm tired of being one. In ten days, I'll be in Seattle with my family getting millions of hugs and reveling in being "home" -- where things work like I expect them to, food tastes like I expect it to, and street signs are found on each and every corner.