To survive for more than one week I'd have to change my mentality. I had to learn to be.

As it turned out Argentina had something in common with Canada: it was very expensive to fly regionally. I'd done very little research before I left. Not by design, but by laziness. I quit my job on the 1st of December, my last day was the 14th. I went home to my parents for Christmas and I left on the first of the year. The time I spent at my parents house in Colorado was pure distraction. I did everything to distract myself from my impending trip. Through the autumn I had such a singular focus on running away, but it never seemed like it would happen. As the countdown turned to single digits I was petrified to show my fear, but all consumed by my fear.

So much so that I didn't prepare. Two days before I was set to depart I hadn't planned for what would happen when I landed, how I would get from the airport to downtown or where I would stay. I was not so secretly pleased when my dad booked that hotel.

Once I landed fear was replaced first by awe, then by anxiousness and then by boredom. Once the boredom set in I knew I needed at least a "next day" plan. What would I do the next day? I had two months to kill in South America before my next planned flight. I didn't want to blow all of my money on plane tickets, and I had time to spare. It seemed then that the best solution was to traverse all the accessible (and even those that would prove less accessible) areas by bus.

Argentina and Chile in particular, but also Uruguay, Bolivia and Peru were fairly well serviced by bus. Establishing Buenos Aires as my base, I repacked my pack and starting listening when fellow hostellers chatted about worthwhile destinations, and cheap hostels on the other side.

My first trip was a feet wetter. Booked by the hostel I traveled the overnight bus to Iguazu Falls, on the Brazilian border. I would only later learn that I was totally ripped off, so for that trip I lived the bliss of early ignorance, assuming that the Argentines really had nailed bus travel.

The bus sold seats in levels similar to first and second class. There was wine and steak and dolce de leche. Taking overnight buses would also help me to save on a night in a hostel. I'd start seeking longer rides just for the chance to have more sleep time on the bus. Two months later I'd predictably grown annoyed with the randomness of the movie choices and the inconsistency in service. But it would take me almost 300 hours on various buses to finally tire of the experience.

My first trip was to Iguazu Falls, housed partially in Argentina and partially in Brazil.

As part of the package booked by my hostel in Buenos Aires bus travel and 2 nights at their sister hostel in the town near the falls were included. I opted for an 8-bed female dorm, which it turns out wouldn't have mattered since no one followed the gender-specific bed assignments anyway. The best part about the hostel was that located at the end of a road in the middle of nowhere it had a pool. I spent one day in the rainforest looking at the falls and two baking in the sun by the pool, drinking 50-cent Argentinean beers, reading David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest.

Always an avid reader, my reading took on an obsessive quality when I travelled. The first week in Buenos Aires I was fairly engrossed by the city. I'd stop and read for a couple of hours, but I was more focused on walking and seeing (and also not so secretly afraid of being pick pocketed.) With nothing else to do other than sunburn in Iguazu I started reading with fervour again. I also started making lists of books I'd read and books I wanted to read.

On my friend trip to Greece five years earlier (the only other time I'd stayed in a hostel,) I became fan of the travellers practice of discarding unwanted goods, especially books (and it was when I first became thankful and not self-loathing that I spoke only English.) Every hostel has a library of free to take books. The assumption being that you'll discard whatever you don't want to take with you. The result is that books in all languages, guide books, fiction, travel books and often even the bible are available for the taking. When traveling, I have always suffered from the great problem of how many books to take. I fall in a perpetual cycle of seeking, voraciously consuming and then desperately seeking again a new book. I could read a book in the day and leave it at the hostel library at night, keeping my pack light and my list growing. As I prone to, I became obsessed with counting how many books I could read during a single hostel stay, the list would turn into a competition, but not until later. When books are available, hostels provide a great solution to my never-ending quest for the next book. It's the take one, leave one policy. It's just how books should be shared.

Later in my trip one day in Bariloche I stumbled upon the public library. Positioned beautifully on the corner of the lake, next to the Patagonian environmental museum, it was quaint in every possible way. To my great surprise, the library contained one shelf of English language books. To my even greater surprise, they were free for the taking.

My lists later proved to have a secondary benefit. Years later when re-reading them I would remember where I was when I read each book. My future self would remember what it was like to be somewhere else, somewhere warm, suspended from my once again real life. Back in those days when I left everything behind.

For the moment, in Iguazu: Unable to cross into Brazil without a visa, and unwilling to pay the nearly $200 for access into Brazil from the border, I was stuck on the Argentinean side of the falls. Not really a point of complaint given the sheer beauty. With the humidity at 100% and the temperature nearing 40 degrees celsius my hair was wet for 3 days.

I met two girls from Switzerland at the bus station. It turned out they were staying at the same hostel as me and with their limited, but still more expansive grasp on Spanish than mine, we hitched a ride from the station into town. I ate dinner with them one night and never saw them again. The hostel was filled with Australian and Israeli backpackers who were mostly interested in getting laid. I was interested in staying away from everyone. I read my book alone at the pool and when the sun went down I read inside. I watched people constantly, hoping for a cue on how I was supposed to act in this communal environment. After three days I embarked back to Buenos Aires. I had my first bus trip under my belt. I was less precious about my time and my money, but I still kept mostly to myself and nervously tiptoed around other backpackers. It would take some time before I got comfortable in my new transient life.