The river of serendipity
Traveling is like being in a river. Sometimes you go faster, sometimes slower. Sometimes you cross dangerous paths, sometimes safer ones. You swim with the current, not knowing where it will take you.
I don't know how I can be so lucky in some areas of my travels. A friend from Slovenia wrote me last week that she has a friend who's from Argentina. She said she could give me her contact and we could meet sometime. I said, sure, why not. I contacted Lara and after a quick chat, she said she could show me around Rosario, her hometown if I wanted. I'd heard of Rosario, but I also heard that it was the most dangerous city in Argentina, so visiting it wasn't my top priority. But since I had a local there who could show me around, I couldn't turn down the opportunity. So I booked a bus ticket and plunged into a new adventure.
The bus ride from Buenos Aires takes 4 hours, but it's extremely comfortable because I took the ''coche cama'' (which literally means bed seats) bus. It's the most comfortable bus I've ever been on. In Argentina, everything is far away, so this kind of comfortable bus is very common. However, some Argentine families travel these long distances by car and a simple and efficient way to distract their children and shorten the trip is to have them count cows that should be on the side of the road. Unfortunately, I didn't see any cows (maybe it was too hot for them), so I had to distract myself with music. These days I listen to Brazilian reggae on repeat.
I arrived in Rosario and felt like I was in hell. Not because of the dangers, but because it was extremely hot! In the 3 days I spent there, it was 39 degrees. It was so hot that I didn't leave the house until 3pm on the second day. It was probably the first time that I wasn’t tempted to explore a new city. I stayed inside, had the AC on and started playing PES 2011 (football game) on the apartment owner's Playstation. It was also a unique experience for me because I was playing with Barcelona and Rosario is actually Messi's hometown. Also, I haven't played Playstation in years. So in the 3 days, I focused more on exploring the city at night.
For me, it was a very special city to visit because it's very different from Buenos Aires. Of course, it's smaller, more local, more authentic and not spoiled by tourism. This was exactly what I needed after having already spent more than a month in the crowded city center of Buenos Aires. Also, the huge Paraná River, the second longest river in South America, made the city much more pleasant and made me appreciate nature even more.
In Argentina, everything is a social matter. And I'm grateful to have been able to experience many of these local, social activities in Rosario. Lara arranged a barbecue (asado) at her friends' house. Spending the evening with her friends eating delicious Argentine meat and drinking fernet was the biggest highlight of my trip so far. This was the deepest I went in peeling the travel onion.
Seeing new sights, visiting museums, and taking classic tours will hardly take you to the deeper layers of the destination. However, dining with locals who prepare the food they normally eat, in the way they normally eat it, is probably the best way to go deeper. It can't be commercialized. That's why it's not tourism, it's travel. I don't know if it's luck or just my openness to new experiences and exploration, or the good friends I already know who're now recommending new adventures to me. Whatever it is, I like it.
I like it, but I also need time to process such experiences. I don't feel like going straight to new explorations. I feel like processing the previous experience first, taking it all in, noticing the details, and of course, writing it down as I do now. Perhaps it's also my introverted side that needs this processing.
Ruskin believed that we should write down or ideally paint our experiences or the landscape we see to really grasp them and appreciate their beauty and not to rush through our travels. He said that ‘‘there was always more in the world than men could see, walked they ever so slowly; they will see it no better for going fast’’ and ‘‘the really precious things are thought and sight, not pace.’’
This type of slow traveling is great because it doesn't force me to do everything in a short amount of time. I can go exploring at my own pace and increase my chances for serendipity. Like everything in life, you can't force serendipity. You also can't force meaningful experiences on your travels.
You can’t force it, because traveling is like being in a river. Sometimes you go faster, sometimes slower. Sometimes you cross dangerous paths, sometimes safer ones. You swim with the current, not knowing where it will take you or what will become of you when you swim out. Then you go into another river and let the current take you again. And again. The more rivers you go through, the better you can handle the journey. But you can never know what the journey will be like and what it will give you or take away. That's serendipity.
Oh, and if someone is considering Rosario but is afraid of the safety issues, I would say that you should still visit the city, but be extra careful, of course. From what I have heard, people may have their phones stolen from their hands and robberies can happen (more commonly then in Buenos Aires). It's also best to take a taxi at night.