Eccentric encounters

This is a precarious yet amazingly-successful trio, if ever I saw one. Kerry and Larissa are two English girls, backpacking round South America, as you do. Yuri's a local boy from Rio, and Larissa met him while staying in the big city. Larissa and Yuri are now a couple — and for a few days, at least, all three of these people are travelling together! I met the lot of them on the way to Ilha Grande today, and they're a great bunch, even if a bit insane at times. Yuri's got a great combination of local knowledge (and local language skills!) and adventurous spirit, that led to some really fun times on the island this week.

Most of the Irish lads that I've met on my trip have been too unfathomably blind drunk to really make a proper acquaintance with. Tom is one of the exceptions to this, being one of those rare Irish people who's only blind drunk for about half of his waking life. I met Tom on the way to Ilha Grande today, and I hung out with him on the island a fair bit, for most of my time here over the week. A fairly quiet and reserved guy, but good fun to be around nonetheless. And yet another of my fellow round-the-world-ers. G-d bless us.

This Dutch-speaking Belgian couple are on a really cool adventure: they're touring the continent in a converted Danish ex-army truck! They're staying at Paudimar, here in Foz, where they have space to park the big boy. I was given a tour inside their (dont-f$%#-with-me) home for the year, and it's lovely on the inside. I went to the Itaipu dam with them today, and tomorrow they're crossing into Paraguay to continue their expedition.

My meeting Eric is one of the most random things that's happened to me on this trip. I went into a bar-slash-hamburger place this evening, just to grab a quick choripan (hot dog); and what do you know? I ended up talking to Eric (originally from Lima, now living here in BA), and his alcoholic friend from Mendoza, at the bar. Four hours and about 5 Quilmes beers later, we were still talking. Eric's a computer technician: he wanted me to teach him how to program and to "be a hacker" (what, now? :P), but I suggested that coming back to The Clan for some more beers would be a better idea.

Sebastian's an easy-going traveller from Germany, who's got a massive blonde afro on his head, and who's hanging out in Buenos Aires for the week. Although he's not staying at The Clan — he's at one of the Israeli hostels, along with two girls he's travelling with — he pops into the bar every night, and he can be seen hanging around pretty much all the time. He's also a big fan of the fútbol in Argentina.

Most Israelis in BA choose to stay in one of about three "Israeli hostels", where they don't have to meet anyone else, and where they might as well never have left Ha Aretz at all. Michal and Or are in the small (but very nice!) minority that have chosen not to do this: they're currently the only two Israelis staying at Clan. Great guys: they refuse to come with me to shul for the High Holy Days; but they don't mind going for a beer or a good feed now and then.

She's told me her name about 20,000 times, but I still can't remember it: I think it's something like "Shasti". This blonde, beautiful, and incredibly friendly girl is from the wonderful nation of Sweden, and she's part of the crew here at The Clan in BA. We've come to refer to her simply as "The Swedich chick". Anyway, Swedish Chick is in town for a few weeks, and we see her at the bar on most nights, and sometimes she heads out with us to the clubs as well.

One of the very few South Africans that I've met in the Latin World, Ari is a veteran backpacker who, like myself, is down in Buenos Aires for Rosh Hashanah. He's a real character: he's been travelling the globe intermittently for about 10 years; and he's really into music, especially some of the more alternate local music that they have around here. He's lived in Israel before, so he's fluent in Hebrew; he's also working on his Spanish at the moment. He's hanging round the Chabad House for the new year, keeping the rest of us company.

Menachem is the Rabbi in charge of the tiny "Chabad La Metayel" ("Chabad for the traveller") synagogue, here in downtown Buenos Aires. Originally from Israel, he's now living down here, along with his wife and his new-born son. He's a very friendly guy, and he's also fluent in English, Spanish, and of course Hebrew (he prefers the latter two). He's been very welcoming and very hospitable to me, during my stay here for the New Year.

Victor is an IT guy, who's originally from the UK (grew up in the US), and who's been living here in BA for almost 30 years. Over the past year or so, he's been getting into the Drupal development and consulting world, and he's lucky enough to be attending DrupalCon Barcelona 2007 next week. When I told Victor that I was in town, he invited me over to his apartment for dinner — so tonight, we met for the first time, and had a nice geeky old shmooze.