At devotees who thought this article would be a kind of remembrance of Pope Wojtyla, sorry to disappoint, Juan Pablo is an Argentine of twenty years he has traveled much of Latin America on foot, by bus and boat, studies using their jewelry and their ability as a juggler.
I met him last night, had just seen a film that chronicles the anxieties of a young abortion in the midst of suffocating environment of Romania in the last years of Ceausescu, the dictator who would later be executed with his wife at Christmas 1989. The tape in question, worthy of European cinema was full of anxiety and distress, making digestion sluggish, so that to make the process less bitter, I decided to accompany it with strawberry juice and milk offered a kiosk has taken over the street only one block from the mall where I usually watch movies and a dozen of the door of the building that houses me.
Iba, mouth sweetened by the "strawberry milkshake," I thought I'd write this week. Had decided For several days talking about the rain, the rain comes, everything is flooded, all overflows and clean everything. Metaphors and ideas pondered looking at the light as usual, at the corner of the park, next to the gas station. The light had just changed and the red car stopped and I gave way in the opposite direction was up and slim blonde girl playing with something in hand, stood in the middle of the track, passing his hand, saw that manipulated colored balls with which he began to juggle.
closed as it was night, the balls, which were lit in colored lights and psychedelic, stood out. The juggler dominated his office, playing with them as the lead subject of some invisible thread, made them blow up, they are passed through the arms, shoulders, down his face, and performed her routine so well that he left me amazed spectator of the function. Ten seconds before the light turned green which again, work stopped, bowed and walked to the car smiling and more than a window relented and awarded more than one person working with a few coins.
I waited. Curiosity got the better of my desire to go to sleep and greeted him. He said friendly and soon we were talking animatedly about his adventures along the American continent.
is twenty
years and is Juan Pablo. It is Argentina's third generation, his great-grandparents arrived in Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century and his grandparents moved to Bariloche, where he was born and where the "ninth" founded a funeral home. In the blood carries more blood (Creole, Italian, English and even a gypsy form their genealogy), but "I am Argentine, although I am vegetarian and do not like football." Gypsy leads in the veins, "we know migrants to stay put," I said in that plural I confirm that I am a stranger in this land. America began to go "just gave me the passport," because "in my country you can manage and buy beer from eighteen but you can not travel without permission from your old until you have twenty-one ", so I just put together a backpack fulfilled them with their things and left to roam the world. Earlier in the transport truck guy had gone half Argentina.
has lived in recent years thanks to two talents, his studies of gold, which allowed him to create with their tools, earrings, necklaces and bracelets that were sold or exchanged for food and housing (one bedroom, a mattress on the floor, a little water, even cold, but of course the first thing you have to do to get to any city is to find out where to spend the night on the street ever, it pays to be adventurous but not stupid ") and his folly (" the plantains are stubborn, years ago, when I was studying jewelry, my then-girlfriend showed up one day in the workshop and it took me three balls to juggle and challenged me to learn to use them, the balls were there several days, looked and looked, until one evening I started to throw into the air and it seemed impossible, I fell, I could not coordinate, they do not was the trick, but I'm banana and foolish and did not stop until I did, I took over a month, but I did, then I learned it's all about rhythm, if you have a musical ear is much easier but if you're someone like me without musical talent, you always are the numbers, each movement has a number and combination of them gives you a routine, now I can teach anyone the basic work in an hour " .)
long ago, his best friend ("friend of the soul?", "No, friend of life") emigrated to Mexico ("they came for laburo and now works in advertising model and doing well") and he made him a firm promise to follow suit ("I do not know when, but I will.") He did not realize, but at twenty, when with his knapsack on his back began his journey "by travel a bit, "he began to keep his word.
With passport in hand he headed north by train, first to Buenos Aires, this wonderful wilderness, later, Mendoza, Cordoba, Tucuman, Salta and from there on, start jumping borders. Bolivia seemed a beautiful place, "especially the part of Santa Cruz", the people are friendly and welcoming, then Peru, "a spectacular country, Puno, Cuzco, Arequipa, Lima, Trujillo, Cajamarca, Piura," I I toured all, working everywhere, I was living in Barranco, do not you think that look Barranco and Countess?, I think so, but most like Palermo in Buenos Aires, I loved Huanchaco, what beautiful beach, lived in an academy of surfers, eating ceviche, because the best of Peru is the food is delicious. " After Ecuador, "where they live half self-conscious about the issue of the dollar, the police chasing you because you expect to take their dollars, as their own and not of the gringos." After Colombia, "a beautiful country with friendly people and educated, but Cartagena is a very hot, a lot of drugs, many raids" and, finally, Venezuela "where I came twice and I do not know why, is where worse they treat you, do not let you work, you pursue, if they see someone laburando in the streets and stop it if you stop you put against the wall, you take all the money you have and will eventually rob you and go, I've been everywhere, I've gotten to poor areas and dangerous areas I never felt afraid, after I went to Brazil, Venezuela, I lived in favelas and I never had fear, the only place where I was afraid it was in Venezuela, and only when he saw police everywhere in America the police want something, Indeed, in all countries if they stop you, they'll make money, they ask for a contribution, some coins, some mangoes, and they know that you like them and you have to earn a living, but you get bullied Venezuela , say there are many Argentine hit you and steal; here in Mexico, for example, do not bother with one that is working on the streets, on the contrary, the patrol pass by and stare, even invite me a drink, the other day a girl half I cried out of place in this same corner, he said it was a cheapie, the patrol was watching my juggling stopped the traffic and the speaker said he would identify the person who committed the offense against good manners, was very funny see the police defend myself .... "
America has traveled a lot, "I could not continue my journey by land to Central America because there is no road, you have to take a plane to City Panama hundred dollars and require you to guarantee, in addition, being in Caracas I found out I was going to be an uncle, so I decided to turn around to see my sister, I went through the savannah, I went through the jungle, I was in the rivers, Amazon toured the ship and seen the sunsets, lying in my hammock on the deck, Mateando and pursued by a dozen pink dolphins that accompanied the ship as playing, I crossed all over Brazil and fell in love several times, which mines most beautiful after I went through Paraguay and Argentina and I was with my sister for the birth, I still spent a couple of months, bought new tools, new gems did, I put together some money and threw me back when I came to Peru for the second time I called my friend and said that now that I was doing a field in their depa, who was already there, a year after the plane took Caracas and arrived in Mexico. "
"The future? I do not know, I would not worry too much, I keep traveling, I want to know people and places, I think I'll stay a while in Mexico, I love, I live in the Condesa, a fifth, fourth little hard for me and with what I get working, I reached, of course, do it all, working as a waiter and model for commercials and extra in soap operas, I move all day, call here and there and always get something, thankfully I have never gone hungry, I always had something to eat and a place to spend the night, I have a backpack with my stuff but almost nothing is indispensable, several times I have sold everything to buy passage to the next city, I like to stay in one place for very long, but here the barbaric way, so I'm regularizing my papers to a lawyer working on migration trucho still owe five hundred dollars and still not give me back my passport, but I have a work permit when I get tired I'll go, as always, where?, I go to Europe, I have friends there, what I do and do very well and returning each year to see family, I first wanted to go to Mexico to fulfill my promise, then we'll see, if not together enough, maybe I'm going to Central America for a while and return to Argentina to see my old lady my mom always tells me wonder .... "
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