my brother

There were many day trippers on the bus back to P-Madryn - all in highspirits and drunk on the sun, salty sea air and rum.

It turns out that they´re fairly strict about where you sit on buses and i found my tired body was next to a local man of about 45, a goatee beard, long grey hair, leathery tanned skin and not too many teeth through which whistled the stale smell of booze. He started speaking in very rapid slangy slurred spanish but we managed to agree that i was from england and that he was from paraguay, but worked on a construction site in P.Madryn.

He then got quiet excited and said that we were brothers. "¿por que?" I asked not warming to the idea. He then said something i didn´t catch in spanish. "no entiendo" i said regretfully thinking i should have have just smiled agreeably not wanting this happy drunk to turn aggressive. What he meant then became obvious as he said, loudly, first in english and then, for the benefit of the mainly argentine passengers, in spanish: "Because we both hate the argies and love to kill them!".

I hope my pleas of "No Yo, Senor! No Yo!" carried around the bus but i think it may have been drowned out by the noise he made to accompany his mime of shooting uzis in the air like a mexican bandit...

I very quickly shoved on some music and feigned sleep. When waking from the real thing as we arrived in P.Madryn I noticed my brother had had the boistriouness bounced out of him on the bumpy road back. There was a slimy trail down his front that culminated in a puddle of sick at his feet. Miraculously there was not a drop on me or my rucksack - cheers, bro.