Hernando

Mostly since the beginning of my exchange in argentina, I had planned on visiting my friend Cande, who lives "close" to Iguazú.  So, finally, after a tedious few weeks of signed letters, authorizations, parental consent, and invitations, I came to visit her. (I'm there right now) Cande's town is called Hernando, and it is about an hour south of Córdoba, the 2nd largest city in Argentina.  Although it looks pretty close on a map, it really isn't that close.  The bus trip from Iguazú to Hernando was about 21 hours long.  I think about 880 miles or something; for those of you reading this from greenville thats like going from PA to Florida, more or less.  It was long, but very worth it, to see one of my good friends again.  I got off the bus to see Cande and her mom waiting for me in the Córdoba capitál bus station, and after several long hugs, I got my baggage and we went to Cande's grandpa's apartment, to eat lunch with her grandparents and cousins.  After lunch we went for a walk around the city, and it was pretty cool;  I'd love to stay there sometime.  On the walk, we came across 2 people from near London, (cande asked them for a lighter in spanish and they didn't understand, so I had to translate) and I talked to them for awhile.  I always love meeting travellers; its so interesting to me, and I'd love to just travel around the world for fun sometime.  After that, we drove about an hour back to Cande's house in Hernando.  Hernando is a pretty small town, with about 16,000 people.  Although it doesn't have as much to do, I think I prefer it to Iguazú.  Everything that my south american friends told me south america would be like, the school, the people, hernando is.  I've made tons more friends here than in Iguazú, in less than a week than I made more friends than I did in over 2 months in Iguazú.  I mean, I have friends in Iguazú, but not the kind that I can just hang out with and have a good time in just that.  My first 2 days in hernando I went camping with cande's classmates, and that was really nice, to get to know everyone.  The only "bad" thing was, around 5:45am (we went to bed around 3) there was a pretty terrible wind storm.  It blew over some people's tents, and was LOUD.  Very cold, too.  We had to move everything & everyone to the dining room, where we slept a few hours more.  Man, was that wind cold.  When I woke up (due to my friends pushing me and yelling my name, not because of the windstorm) I was so cold.  The wind made the tent act like a sail at first, and once they took off the rainfly (it was about to break off) it blew right through the tent.  My hoody was literally useless.  And, to add to that, I had lost one shoe.  That night, I had set my shoes outside the tent, just like everyone else.  I ended up not finding it until about 2pm the next day.  But, despite that, it was really fun.  After that, around 4 I think, we went home.  That weekend was so fun.  I met one of cande's friends, Martín, who plays guitar, and it was the first time I've played on a decent sized amp since I left the US; that really made me happy.  The next afternoon, I went over to a kid's house where Martín's band was practicing.  It was really sweet to jam with them, tons of fun.  After that we chilled, ate some facturas, and around dark, I went home.  After an awesome dinner of asado (steak, except thicker) I went out with my new friends for la previa, the party before you go out to the club to dance.  that was from about midnight until 3:45, when we went to Villa 8, the club in hernando.  It was pretty sweet, more for socializing than dancing.  Perhaps worse music than Cuba Libre in Iguazú, but equally sweet.  Also, cheaper.  The entrance, in dollars, was about $7.50.  We left the club around 6:30, and I slept until 3 or so the next day.  Sunday was pretty sweet, I mostly just chilled out downtown from 6pm or so until about 11, when I went over to my friend Nahuel's house where we ate some pizza for dinner.  School the next day (today) was pretty fun, being that I did nothing but mess around with my friends.  Also, school starts here at 1:30, which is pretty awesome.  Overall, I'm pretty bummed that I can't live here.  But hey, shit happens.