The next day, the new guests headed out on the boat ride while Guille and I spent the day jogging and swimming in the pool on the hotel grounds. He can do cartwheels and even flips on the lawn and can run much faster than I can. He’s also easily embarassed by things I would never even think to worry about — for example, he insisted on holding a small towel over his swimsuit while running after swimming in the pool, yet he snuck his swimsuit off to swim completely naked a couple of times too.

In some ways, travelling with Guille is idyllic. He’s gorgeous for one. When he touches me, I go crazy. And most of the time when he’s not touching me, I’m still lusting after him.

He’s a big fashion fan and loves the stars and everthing that has to do with them. He fantasizes about helping stars who are in trouble and loves the music of Madonna (which I kind of like) and Britney Spears (where are my ear plugs?!), and others. He has little interest in local film, prefering horror and suspense films from the U.S.

I’m not really sure what attracts him to me — perhaps because I’m the first norteamericano he has made love with — or some kind of mythical association with the U.S. and all the stars? He has preferred older guys in the past. And he worries that I am just attracted to him for sex, which is definitely not the case, although I really love making love with him.

He likes to sleep until 1:00pm every day and recently lost a hairdressing job when the owner of the shop shut it down and didn’t bother to contact him. I have to decide how much further to travel with him. Considerations: compatibility, cost, experiences enhanced, experiences missed (like meeting other guys).

Anyway, after a lovely day by the pool, we joined the other guys for dinner at the hotel. The hotel staff, with whom Guille was by now quite intimate, prepared a local gaucho (cowboy) breakfast which looked really heavy and wasn’t vegetarian — they had forgotten to prepare a vegetarian dish for me but showed up with rice and eggs a bit later. Dessert was a flan with caramel.

After dinner, we all went for a couple of drinks — Quilmes beer in large amber bottles — at the only bar in town, which also served as a bike rental and souvenir shop. I met some cute guys from Entre Rios at the next table who worked a tractor in the countryside. I noticed a family resemblance between two of them and asked if they were brothers — turns out they were cousins. One of them laughed and looked at me in a kind of flirting way before leaving, which made Guille jealous.

A local mule trudged up to a window and stuck his head in as if expecting us to give him a beer. A cowboy sat with his pre-teenage son, both sharing a big bottle of beer. Strange black beetles flew into the light then flopped helplessly on their backs on the ground.

On the way back to the hotel, we tried without success to recognize any of the constellations in the beautiful starry sky.

After grabbing a quick breakfast at Hotel El Sol, Guille and I took a taxi to the bank where we kept the young driver waiting for more than a half hour while changing money. We made it to the bus station in time to catch the bus for Colonia Pelligrini, the site of the ecological reserve called Esteros de Ibará.

The bus ride was crazy — an old bus packed full of people and supplies. We traveled to several local homes  looking for passengers before heading on our way to Colonia Pelligrini. The road was packed dirt and quite muddy in places where the rain from a recent storm gathered.

Along the way, we came across a broken-down van with several tourists and a drunk man, probably a migrant ranch worker, who we dubbed the “cowboy”. After shuffling people and luggage around for half an hour, we were ready to continue on our way.

About ten minutes later, the bus’ motor died and the driver and faretaker went through a complex procedure to get it started again. This gave us a welcome break to stretch our legs from the cramped position we were in.

The drunk cowboy offended Guille when he boarded with a muddy bag that he rubbed on Guille’s coat and hand as he sat down, practically in Guille’s lap. Finally, I told the guy to move over onto the wooden plank the faretaker had placed across the middle aisle for him to sit on. Guille said it wasn’t necessary — I replied that it was for me, not for him — and I could see that Guille was relieved when the guy did move over.

Then he started coming on to the Spanish woman seated nearby, which horrified most of the people on the bus. I wanted to help, but there wasn’t much I could do except ask her if she was upset and wanted to change seats. She said she preferred not to change, but eventually the outrage of the other passengers was so great that a forceful local woman practically dragged her to another seat, which she admitted afterwards was more pleasant.

A little while later, we noticed the smell of wine on the bus and a puddle of wine on the floor. Several people checked the cases of wine stored on the floor to see if they had broked, but it turned out that it was a box of wine in the dirty bag the cowboy brought on board that had spilled everywhere. He took the box of wine out of the bag and started drinking more. He was so drunk that even Guille couldn’t understand much of his Spanish. He claimed to have German parents and tried to speak a few words of German with me.

His skin was the texture of leather, hardened and bronzed by the sun. Had he not been eternally drunk, he could have been a handsome man. Finally, he got off the bus at a local ranch and tried to persuade a man there to hire him, or so it seemed.

As we neared the ecological reserve, we saw more of the diversity of animal and plant life, including the first capibaras, known locally as carpinchos, that I had ever seen. Guille calls them big rats, but I think of the carpinchos as huge guinea pigs and I find them adorable. For that reason, I gave Guille the nickname of “carpinchito” (small capibara).

The bus ride scheduled for three hours ended up taking six hours, but we did finally, after miles of “mud skiing,” end up at Colonia Pelligrini, where there is a charming campground and the wonderful Ypa Sapukai hotel where we are staying. After watching the sunset from a little tower on the hotel grounds, we had a vegetarian meal and slept well.