Written 18 March 2008 in an email to George Evans, then edited:

Good to keep a glimmer of optimism in the midst of pessimistic inclinations: I ended up with a penthouse
(small, mind you) in an aging hotel where I stayed  when I first arrived in Montevideo before the beach
days. Then, after an initial wall of completos, when I returned to the bus station the next day nabbed a
ferry ticket to Buenos Aires and an afternoon bus to Rosario, where I'm staying in a hostel for three nights.

Now I'm in Rosario, a town where all of the hostels and hotels are booked, tight as a tick,  and I'm trying to manage a place here for a couple more nights. Folks take the coincidence of end-of-summer and the week before Easter very seriously (just one click shy of their love for the ham and cheese sandwich).

Last night I dined at La Marina, an honest little restaurant where I was probably the youngest guy
there. The baked tuna with peeled potatoes and a smattering of vegetables wasn't spectacular, but it had home-cooked soul (needed salt).

A lively acoustic bubble of conversation filled the dining room, and when I went to pay, the waiter discovered that one of my twenty-peso notes was counterfeit. He felt so bad about it that he wouldn't accept my tip, insisted, with great aplomb and kindness, that under the circumstances it'd please him if I would keep the gratuity, and his face said it all, without any condescension or ill will: poor, clueless foreigner. Then he led me through a lesson on recognizing bogus notes.

Onward to try to find a bed for Thursday and
Friday in this town.

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Following a fruitless couple of hours searching for a bed in Rosario, I retired at three a.m. The following day, I received an email from a posada owner I'd emailed with my request who wrote that he would create a bed for me, so I can stay here for Thursday and Friday and relax until then.

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From an email to Sheila Broatch written on March 19, 2008 after the Bob Dylan concert:

In the United States, I've passed on attending giant Dylan concerts. They seemed like a waste of time to me. I couldn't see myself standing among throngs of folks looking up at a giant projection of Bob on a mega-screen. The idea of seeing him here in Rosario, a second-string, medium-sized venue, appealed to me though. The concert was at the Hippodromo (phoenetically spelled), which I always pronounce incorrectly, confusing cabbie and everyday citizen alike. I´m good like that. Bawb (Bob Dylan) croaked his way through several old chestnuts redesigned for his newer, laidback Bawb. Some of the reworkings--"The Masters of War", for example, fit the new mode--some others raced Bob's lyrics into the new pacing and seemed forced. Bob's style is relaxed. He plays, enjoys the gig, or so it appears, but never said a word outside the singing and the raspy lyrics. The band came out to play the obligatory encore, rocking crowd-pleasers ("Everybody Must Get Stoned" and "All Along the Watchtower"); then they returned to stand in a spot and bow. It's just easier that way, I figure. He understands that to accept/endure the cheers and adulation and bid good-bye through a moment in the limelight and a bow, sends a clear signal that the encores are over. Some hours after the concert, I was thinking about how his selection of particular older songs are his way of putting his stamp of approval on them; these are the ones that last for him, at least for tonight.

Two Brit boys and yours truly cabbed to the Hippodrome, where I´m told the horses race, but when we got to the general-admission standing-room-only area for which we cheapskates paid, the guys wanted to sit on some steps while the warmup band played, which struck me as a bad idea. I wanted to jockey for a reasonable view from our distance from the stage. I told them that I wanted to scope out a spot and bid them a hail "yonder". In my place among the other cheapskates I met three young folks who wanted to talk concerts, Bawb Dillawn, and sundry litttle thangs about the states, my travels, and the strangenesses of our two languages and trying to communicate in´m. They must´ve been twenty years old, and they were very kind to me, just treated me like a person, not like an old person; we had a human exchange, minus the usual silly age tags. I figure everyone is old to someone--ask a three-year-old about an eight-year-old--so it's generally a good idea to go with equal personhood as a stance. Afterward, they gave me a ride back to the hostel, where I treated myself to one of the good Belgian beers so temptingly stored in the fridge with other good beers for sale. I haven´t had dinner, though it´s midnight, so I think I´ll step out for another decadently late bite of something.

I spent way too much time copying photos to DVD today. The photo shop turned a one-hour task into three hours, and the ticket outlet for the Bob show had just returned all of its tickets a mere five minutes before my arrival. They suggested I buy one that evening, to which I responded that there would be thousands of people and I wouldn't even know where to go. I asked if there was somewhere else I could purchase a ticket. Only because I asked, I was told that the music store four blocks down could sell me one. Tomorrow I make up for lost time and wake early enough to explore .

Of course, I don´t know what I´m doing, so I´ll have to figure a thing or three or puzzle everything out along the way. That condition isn't an annoyance; it's part of the pleasure of surfing through the unknown.