The morning started very early. I woke up happy and with the best intentions. You know when you want to express all your feelings like if it is going to be ‘now or never’! Unfortunately for several reasons it didn’t go that way. I am now feeling pretty drained and it is only 10.30am. During the time of writing, I am now in the bus and it is very comfortable, which considering the last 4 buses I have taken, it is a great thing. I am crossing the Chilean desert at the moment getting into Argentina. I hope I will arrive in Salta as per schedule around 8pm. In a way it is very good to be here now, in a long journey by bus on my own looking outside, writing at the same time and relaxing. The landscape is always overwhelming: little lamas running around and chasing the bus while the sun shines on the white and red stones and sand. It is always a great scenario to watch, something I think you never really get tired of. I reached Salta around 9.30 pm and with a guy I met in my tour in Uyuni we found a cheap and decent hostel in downtown of the city. We left immediately after saving our bags in the room going to some local restaurant. We found one which reminded me when I was little in Rome... Similar host and venue with very good food. I was finally feeling in a very familiar environment. We ate and we continued walking toward the area with the bars and clubs. We had a local beer in front of a good tango exhibition and we headed back home around 2.30am. It was the first time in long time (Sydney I guess) that I finally didn’t have a proper night out like in the past. It was an unexpected pleasant evening.
I have time to recollect my thoughts and feelings, and also to think about many other different things. I found it very curious and very sad on how lots of people that are to me simple friends, people that I do not really talk to very often and do not share many things when I am back home, are the ones that know everything about my experience, about my travelling, that know where I am and what I am doing, always being present and curious in such an incredible and surprising way. On the contrary, unfortunately, some of the people that I thought were the closest to me and that apparently constantly claim they know me very well, are not ‘really here with me’. I feel them very far away; they do not really even know what I am doing or where I am; the few time they ask about my plan, the impression they give is that they are asking more as a form of politeness, of showing to me that ‘they care’ but without really showing a proper and genuine interest for what I am doing right now, for what I am feeling, and for what I might have gone through so far, sometimes even dismissing it with some superficial irony throwing themselves back into their own thoughts and activities after few minutes. I obviously do not expect anything considering that everyone has got his/her own busy life but from some few people I expected much more. If I hadn’t known them, I would have thought that they were even a bit envious of what I am doing. At the time of writing I feel genuinely fine: these few lines here are more the result of a serene thinking rather than words of anger or dissatisfaction.
I think, as I always keep repeating to myself, that this trip is probably not only about discovering a part of the world and a part of myself, but it is, as well, the best test to revaluate the people around me. I know I will have new close friends after this experience, but unfortunately at the same time, I guess (and I hope to be wrong) that with some of the closest ones it won’t be the same anymore. I might have been very naive and definitely a fool to think that three and half months were overall a short time, too short to ‘loose’ important people or for them to change somehow their feelings or behaviour simply because they have other things to do, or even worse, because they have met ‘new people’ while I was away... It did already happened once to me in the past and I can foresee, based on experience, that this is probably going to happen again in the very close future most likely even before I will go back home. I hope to be very wrong...
Faithfulness, in friendship as per in love, is unfortunately something extremely rare.
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