Adventure in the Sierras

When I met Brooke at the bus station i was already an hour and half late... we were supposed to meet at the main bus station at 10:30 that morning. I was pushing twelve when we finally left. Our plan was to spend the day in a small town in the sierras called Ascochinga. First off we left and didnt tell anyone where we were going.. Second we didnt even know where it was or how far it was, only that it was still in the province (which is like saying that it was somewhere in Colorado, okay like somewhere in Northern Colorado) and third, we had no idea what we were going to do when we got there. We didnt have a map, we just had our bathing suits (we heard there was a river) camera and some money. We had no food, nothing. Anyways it had all the makings to be a disaster, but it turned out to be a wonderful little adventure! When we go to ascochinga the bus driver left us off right at the bridge that went over ther river. There was no building in sight, no one except this tortilla vendor, who sat at the entrance to the raod that went down to the river, which in itslef was a little strange becasue I have only seen tortillas here once, and they were way different than what we are used to. Well there had been all these helpful ppl on the bus telling us where we should go, so we found our way down this road that lead to the river. We got to this place where there were all these little kioskos (stores) and some scattered houses. They were across the street from the bank of the river, which was all camgrounds, scattered with grills for making asados. It is pretty late in summer here, so the place was basically deserted, as most people are heading back to work. At first we saw no one, it looked like a little ghost town. The only sighn of ppl was that there were two horses tied to a tree, all saddled up and ready to be ridden. We walked over to the horses, and petted them, their owner was nowhere in sight. "Lets find the owners to these horses and ask him if we can go for a ride!" Brooke told me.
"Are you crazy?" I asked, "ya we are just going to ask some random stanger if we can rent his horses for a while and come back, haha"
"No im serious! they do it all the time here!" she answered. And thats exactly what we did. We walked down the street, and slowly we started to see people. We stoped at the first kiosko to see who owned the horses. The shirtless owner who attended us told us we were looking for Cookie. So off we went asking every person we saw if they knew where Cookie was. We found Cookie, an old guy with a baseball hat on, a few teeth missing, up the road at a little kiosko. We asked him about the horses, and he was so willing to let us use them, that it almost seemed as if he was expecting us. So, we mounted the horses, and then brooke and I explored the dirt roads that crisscrossed the mountain, alone, on our two big horses. It was sooo fun, such a random experience. We got the top of the mountain, and looked out over all the Sierras, dotted with different colored houses, everything green form the much needed rain we had been having the last couple days.
Back down by the river we dismounted the horses payed, and thanked Cookie. After we took his photo next to the horse he asked us if we were coming back sometime, looking longingly at the picture we had just taken... I hope i can go back sometime to give him his picture sometime.
I changed into my bathing suit in an old abbandoned shed, and then we went down to the river. They had built a dam and there was a nice pool of water above it that people were swimming in. Brooke and I refreshed ourselves, washing all the swaet and horse smell off, and enjoying the beuaty of the river. After about an hour Brooke and I got out and dried off.
Where we were was about half a mile down hill from the rest of the town, so we figured we would walk back to town and look for something to eat. When we finally got into town there was nothing open because of siesta. We found a kiosko and bought some criollos, and dulce de leche (which is the equivilent to argentina of what nutella is to Germany, and peanut butter to the states... its awesome!) and caught the next bus to another bigger town called jesus maria.
Jesus Maria was about half an hour away, and we got there late in the afternoon, when the sun was starting to throw long shadows. We wondered around town looking for the center, until we finally asked somebody where it was. Turns out Jesus Maria is divided by train tracks, and the center was on the other side of them, only there was a train sitting there at the moment... The end was a distance down the track, and I wondered what the locals did when this happened. Brooke wanted to hop over the trian, inbetween the bright blue and red cars, but I said no. Since we are both so very stuborn, she said she was going to do it and went. I started walking along the length of the train as I watched a man and his little boy aproaching the train. Then man helped his little son up onto the platform at the end of the car and then looked back and saw me watching him. He motioned me over, and offered me a hand. Well, if thats how the locals did it... I felt strangely exhilirated when I grabbed his hand, and pulled myself up onto the train, wondering what it would be like to sit there for a while, watching the landscape swish by, the wind blowing my hair out of my face.
I hoped down from the train, and saw Brooke waiting for me a few cars down. We went to the center of town, and sat on a little bench eating our criollos and dulce de leche. The train had left when we went to cross the tracks, and I wished I had seen it leave, I wished I knew where it had went. Back at the bus station we bought two bus tickets back to Cordoba, our eyes beggining to droop with the suns ever-lengthaning shadows, and we took our seats on the little bus.
A dark storm had snuck upon us as Brooke and I woke up entering Cordoba. I rubbed my eyes and looked out the window. The streets were wet and the river was a swollen ribbon of coffee colored water, the little amount or rain not nearly enough to clean the city of 3 months worth of collecting grime. We were crossing the railroad tracks when I looked up again, and there was the end of the train I had climbed over, the same colorful cars standing out against the drab grey sky of the city...