enough! Still limping as I was, we set off to explore the upper end of the valley but eventually I had to admit defeat, limping back into camp after a couple of hours or so. There I lay down in the sun and watched the eagles or condors float past, far, far overhead. So blissful to be there so high in the mountains, so unexpected. A little jewel in time.
Next morning it was a mad scramble to get ready to drive down the mountain to catch the bus, which we missed in the end. Luckily we made the next one, for a seven and a half hour drive across the Andes. It is pretty barren there, with little sign of life, no animals or birds and very few plants. We crossed the border right at the highest point of the pass, a windy place with bad hamburgers. Then, on coming down from the mountains we entered wine country, vineyards everywhere with bunches of grapes just visible as our bus zipped by. Finally we arrived in Mendoza, a bigger city than I had imagined.
Stepping off in a crowded bus station we were overjoyed to see Lupo and Mike, our companions for the last leg of the trip, waiting for us. We hugged like long-lost friends and went to our hotel.
There we met up with Marco, owner of the local grow shop, Mantis Paradise. I set to scraping the prongs of grinders to collect some hash, that is how bad the hash situation was over there, where hash is pretty much unknown. Not bad, one grinder gave me three joints. How would I manage the next ten days? People were smoking‘’ Paraguay Brick,” which they did not enjoy at all and which smelled bad. The others in our group also smoked weed and there was always some around, but I really prefer to smoke only hash, after all, I’ m the Hash Queen.
The problem was that the flowering season didn’ t start for another month at least. And everyone had finished last year’ s crop by then, and not much is grown indoors. Any smoke was therefore finished till the end of April, May, so everyone just had to smoke Paraguay Brick and dream of better times to come.
We met Euro, the local celebrity postal deliveryman who, after thirty-two years of service with the post office, got bust with several plants and flung into jail for three months. Due to nationwide action from thousands of activists he was free now, awaiting trial. Everyone hopes that he will stay out now.
68 April / May
He came again the next evening when we had our usual night of presentations and even though it was projected on a brick wall, nobody minded. I was getting much better at these presentations. Right after his talk Simon dashed off with Lupo to meet Geraldine, who was arriving on a bus from Santiago.
Since it was a good day’ s drive to Capilla del Monte, where Mike lives, we rented a car and set off the next morning, only three hours late.
Miles and miles of vineyards turned into flat pampas country, turned into empty desert. Sand devils occur here, the sand spiraling up into the air, sometimes a few hundred meters high. But I found little to break the monotony of the scenery that day, as we drove on, with the Andes to our left. Somehow, after five hundred kilometers we managed, in the middle of nowhere, to miss a turnoff.
As we were also running out of gas, we needed to continue and ended up in the Valle Fertil. We found a place to sleep and a late dinner and headed out to the central square. It was one in the morning and a group of teenagers on rollerblades had taken over the square and the empty streets. There were also young artists all selling dinosaur t-shirts. Why dinosaurs? But we had a more pressing matter to attend to; we had totally run out of anything to smoke; we had nothing at all. So Lupo headed off into the proverbial dark alley to score some of this hated Paraguay Brick, too little for too much money, but what to do?
We hung out on a low wall opposite our hotel, smoking that shit. I got a bad taste in my mouth and a headache. Back in the hotel there were flyers for a museum close by where dinosaurs were excavated. We would be driving past on our way.
As Mike drove away from the mountains the desert surrounded us, populated only with huge towering cacti. Suddenly we came to a place with great cliffs of red stone, getting close to Moon Valley. We found the museum, and yes, they dug up dinosaurs there. We continued driving and after more huge red and yellow cliffs we arrived back in the desert, hours of it. Even so, we joked and laughed as we drove along; somehow these days were very carefree and happy. Of course, we moaned and groaned that we had nothing decent to smoke and I got the full South American experience. I had to smoke Paraguay brick or nothing at all. Driving though the desert in Argentina had not been part of my anticipated itinerary at all, and it was loads of fun.
We kept on going, to make it to Mike’ s village before dusk, since these roads would be no fun to drive in the dark.
Finally we arrived in Capilla del Monte, a small hill town at the foot of a holy mountain. In early times it had been sacred to the Indian tribes living here. Now it had become a hot spot for UFO gazers. A pleasant town, bustling with people, flowering trees line the roads and the bookshops are full of New Age wisdom.
We settled into a wonderful old-style bungalow hotel that had its own landing-site for UFOs, a pool and hammocks under the trees. I decided to spend the night in Mike’ s house, up on the hill. It was quite primitive there, and there were lots of mosquitoes. Mike set off into town and I climbed up a wooden ladder and opened the curtain to stars and cool air and more mosquitoes. It was not much fun and I decided to spend my last night in the hotel with the others.
In the morning we drove around town to invite people for the presentations we planned to give that evening in a disused theatre.
When we arrived back at the hotel we found Simon with his head all bandaged. He had jumped up from the bed at two in the morning to catch a spider and had got hit by the fan and needed stitches in the middle of the night!
We spent the afternoon at the pool and then headed into town. There was no large gathering here, but as everywhere it was so wonderful to see the eager enthusiasm with which people grow and how they all help each other and get together. Impressive how all these activist groups were linked and had active contact with other South American countries to discuss the different drug policies and how everywhere there seemed to be a growing awareness that the time for a war on drugs is over. Time for a new approach!
This is an awareness I’ ve been waiting for all my life. It would be so absolutely wonderful if there was a true change and marijuana was legalized!
That night, at three in the morning, there was a loud banging on the door. It was one of Mike’ s daughters, completely distraught. He had been busted!
Apparently Mike had gone back into town at one in the morning, had seen his daughters and stopped in the middle of the square. Cops came by and recognized him as a known local activ