sábado, 13 de marzo de 2010

Aqui estoy en Bariloche...

Hmmm, I don´t really even want to write anything right now.

But...


Hiking half a day from "lago sin nombre" (which somehow we named, "Pirate Lake"), to Lago Vidal after finals was a nice easy and beautiful hike for us all, and arrival at the lake was very bitter sweet for we all knew that it was our second to last night together in the backcountry, though we had an asado to look forward to, the sweetest part of the bitter-sweet feeling...

Brett, Benji and I walked over to the casita of the "old man of the sea," who has the most amazing ears of any human that has ever existed. You know how ears are one part of our bodies that never cease to enlarge? His have folded over at the top like dried apricots and accentuate his timelessness in such a way that can only occur along with a life of tending modest herds of cows and sheep in one of the most pristine pieces of the Valdivian Rainforest. He and his wife arrived at Lago Vidal over 40 years ago, and it is there that they have passed their lives clearing the rainforest per government mandate (the Chilean govt used to have incentives in place to simply clear vast areas of land of forests), tending their herds and living off of the land in a way that is the lifestyle of the land and culture here; though ecotourism, the creation of new roads and highways through Patagonia, and the inevitable encroachment of modernization are very lucid realities to those living in this way. Yet another re-creation and form of a world wide homogenization.

The old man´s son had already killed the borrega (female lamb) and was just setting it up for skinning and gutting when we arrived. The skill with which this man prepared the lamb was incredible, it vey much can be likened to - as Brett likes to say - how we go into a refrigerator for a bowl of leftovers. It took him all of 20 minutes to carnear (kill and prepare). Mangy mutts voraciosly licking their hungry chops never taking their eyes off of the lamb, knowing very well that as long as they hung around they would have a chance to fight for a piece of the tasty conglomeration of guts that would soon spill forth from the chest cavity pranced under foot expectantly. Following the normal violence that ensues amongst a pack of semi-wild dogs litterally fighting for their food, and the smiles from the old man and his son as they continued to carnear (sorry for any spanglish previous and from here on out) I found myself smiling very widely with them - as the old man´s son actually headbutted the chest cavity from the back to open it wider so as to be able to cut it in half right down the spine - and there was something about that moment as the cirrus and strato-cumulus clouds rolled in from the northeast, as the dogs fought eachother and the frantic hens for the last scraps of innards that made me feel very much at home and content to know and feel the "rightness" of their lifestyle - no matter the slash and burn forestry that was practiced 40 years ago...

We raised the very much naked lamb high up into the tree to cool down and went inside to talk about weather, herds, fish, wind, and helicopters. The old man´s wife had baked us three kilos of bread for our asado, and also provided us with a small bag of potatoes that the oxen had gotten into and they had to pull. After laughter and confusion on my part (the whole castellno thing), we went back out to cut the lamb in half, weigh it, and make our way back to camp to sharpen the asador, build up our fire, salt the meat and begin the endless rounds of mate as we spent the next 3-4 slowly and perfectly roasting the meat.

There is simply nothing like an asado, nothing compares.



domingo, 21 de febrero de 2010

In half-toothed spanish:

I`m gonna stop playing ketchup and speak more recently...

A couple of days ago I went down to the beach here in Pucón, Chile at Lago Villaríca to, well, go to the beach really. The urge to go to the bathroom came as it does, and as I walked myself over to the baños I passed two elderly men and a woman, all of whom gave me a funny look as I made my way. I`m used to this, as in general I`m nearly twice the height of many people in latin american countries, so I thought nothing of it.

When I came back out, refreshed, the older woman proceed to describe in a combination of hand gestures and spanish through about half of the amount of teeth as one might have, that if I did not pay her $200 pesos (the equivalent of about 40 cents) for use of he bathroom, she would kill me - and she emphasized this fact by dragging her fingers across her jugular in the "ccchhchchct, curtains" manner. Obviously she was joking (was she?) and they were all having a good laugh at me. The semi-scary part was the 3 1/2" nail in her hand along with the pesos that she had collected from others, which when I saw I asked her, "El clavo es para mi si no pago para el baño?" (The nail is for me if I don`t pay for the bathroom?)

Tomorrow we leave for the Valdivian rainforest, up the Rìo Cochamò, and outa sight for two more weeks.

Suerte a todos.

jueves, 18 de febrero de 2010

It`s all happening, so fast...

Backpacking is like being a poorly-planned and unfortunate snail...

Or, in the words of the late Mitch Hedberg, "Wearing a backpack and a turtle neck is like having a midget on your back tryin' to take you down."

Hmmm, this is a hard thing to keep up with. Well, I`ll have to distill quite a bit in the interest of not spending too much time on the computer here.

So, after bringing Brett the horse and getting our feet back in our boots and ready for the trails, we had yet another complication with a particular student developing signs of what we determined was an excercise-induced asthma condition, and on two separate occasions she showed signs of the condition worsening, so we made the decision to very much unfortunately end the program for her, she simply was not in ample physical health to continue on such a strenuous backpacking trip in the harsh conditions of the steppe. So, two days later there I was hiking out yet again in the ninety-something degree cloudless dust-maze of horse and goat trails, making the distance in one day that the group had hiked in a total of three (from the base of cajon serra negra on the Río Picunlèo to the casco at Ranquilco for those of you who may read this and know where I`m talkin' about, i.e. Sam and Will). By the time I had reached the confluencia about 7 hours into the hike I was feeling a bit heat-strokish, so I doused myself in the river and rested enough to get myself the rest of the way, about another hourish.

The new grand plan hatched again by Brett and myself over a mid-day maté was for me to hike out to go and get TA (Brett's friend) to bring a horse in to pack this person out back to the casco, and whether I came back in or not was dependant on horse availability (there weren't extras, so I stayed and split firewood, read, ate, drank, and all of that good stuff).

Once she arrived with TA the next night (about 13 hours of riding for him, poor guy) and passed the night there, we left the next morning riding out to where a taxi met us to take us to Zapala, where she saw a doctor to make sure she was ok to travel alone, and she got on the bus back to BA.

Upon seeing her onto the bus I promtly made my way the short distance to a little parrilla ("grill," it basically means that if you walk into a place called this you will be served large and delicious juicy pieces of meat) by the name of Las Familias where my order of 1 liter of beer, papas fritas, salad, an empanada, bife al chorizo (the best piece of meat grilled anywhere in the world that I´ve yet encountered) and flan casero was taken by the abosolute cutest 10 year old girl who spoke very clear and perfect castellano.

Show me a place in the U.S. where you can order a liter of beer from a 10 year old girl, and it´s not wierd at all, I dare you...

Well, dinner time, it´s been one of those rediculously long days where it feels like it´s been 2 or 3 days all smashed into one. More to come...

martes, 9 de febrero de 2010

Oops I blogged...

Well, I truly honestly really really super mega totally never thought I would do this, but in case anyone´s interested, I figured I would give it a go...


First off, the very word, ¨Blog¨to me sounds like something one might leave in a toilet, and to have "blogged" is reminiscent of yet another way we might have slanged the action of defecating. Sorry for the grotesque opening, but if anyone ever asked me what I was doing on a computer and I replied, "Oh you know, just blogging," I preempt what I can only describe as a feeling of embarrassment - embarrassment for not being seated on the throne while answering that question through the safety of a bathroom door.


So, without too much more disclaimer other than the fact that there is obviously no possible way in ____ to relay months of experience and traveling in a beautiful foreign country where language is a constant source of struggle, and to also note the fact that I so much despise disclaimers, here we go...


I was gonna start with a journal entry, but I decided it would be a good idea to first attempt an abridged recall of some of my favorite times in Buenos Aires (hereafter, BA).

I´d never used a bidet before, never even seen one. There are three knobs on top, and while experimenting with which side is hot, which cold, and what the hell the third one is for, I inevitably - and in hindsight, humerously - shot myself square in the right eye with a stream so strong it watered the ceiling. Whoops.

Ok, that´s actually all I wanted to get out.

1/17/10 - 0:38

"Sweet, mission!" Says my 14 year old brain...

11:50

(con´t from last night)

Opps, fell asleep. Well, Brett´s sick with some kind of lung infection, he had a 102 degree fever for a couple of days, though it´s down now, his hiking abilities are compromised. Lemme backtrack, rebobinar un poco...

After the storm subsided, and wheeeeewy what a storm that was, we had an asado. It was indoors due to the weather, but still we had our first asado as a group. Wine and goat and bread. Mmmm. Goat (chivo) that was living, breathing, walking, grazing, and thinking whatever the hell it is that goats think when they do their goat things, earlier that day. Good thing we eventually got out of here though (here, what am I doing back here?), I think everyone was beginning to get a skewed idea of what Sierra Institute is all about. Salads, wine, goat, big castles overlooking vast river valley of the patagonian steppe, beer, roofs, flushing toilets, bidets...

We left the casco (main house) of Estancia Ranquilco for the confluecia of the Río Trocomán and Río Picunléo the next morning, barely an hour and a half hike from here. Breakin´ em in - the students, that is. Our 3 days and nights at the confluencia held many experiences for the group: for some it was their first time actually backpacking in somewhere, setting up camp, filtering their water from the flowing glacial melt of the Andes, making dinner over a fire in a setting not quite so kitchen-like, sleeping under blankets of down-filled sleeping bags and stars... Many firsts. First circle, feelings and emotions emerging naked and unburdened through the firelit spaces between our faces to be welcomed, sheltered and reflected amongst our fellows, woven into beginnings of community and comraderie. It goes something like that. First times cutting salami with new virgin blades, resulting in 3 salami-related finger lacerations in the first 3 days...Sheesh.

We saw andean condors, olivaceous cormorants, torrent ducks, black-chested buzzard- eagles, trout, lizards, snakes, trees, flowers all in a green-brown blur that will systematically become more focused as we delve into both macro and microscopic worlds that exist perfectly regardless of how we classify them.

So, leaving the confluecia on the 4th morning for vertientes de los radales began hot and hard. No wind, no cluds, full sun by 9:00AM, chaped faces and burned forearms, blistered feet and heavy packs, all the while Brett in the middle of a 102 degree fever. I was sweeping, which essentially meant pulling a couple of people up the scrambly scree slopes until we reached our midway mid-day shady rock outcropping of salvation where we ate lunch and slept for 5 1/2 hours. Vertientes was only another hour hike, but at 5 in the afternoon in the unforgiving (and what reason does it have to forgive in the first place?) January summer sun in the Patagoinan steppe, it was still damn hot. It doesn´t get truly dark here in the summer until 10:30-11ish, and then the stars, oooh the stars...

Finally reaching our oasis-like mud-sopped meadow with Brett feeling like he had been run over by a bus, we struggled to find sleeping spots somewhere in between goat trails, steep prickly slopes, and the meadow saturated with inches of water and mud. This proved a chore.

We cooked a stew of vegetables and split peas and slept promptly and deeply under that blanket of southern cross, of Magellanic clouds, of nebulae and void, of planets and supernova, of that darn southern sky. Getting closer...

Now on a course of antibiotics, poor Brett, though still damn high in character and spirits (and maté) is unable to hike any further to our next destination where the resupply had been arranged via horsepackers from the casco. The plan we came up with yesterday morning over a maté was for me to hike back to the casco, drink a few beers and wait for Ashley, TA and everyone else to return from town and inform them of the change of plans. To continue any further Brett will need a horse which I will ride in along with the resupply. There we have the part where the 14 year old part of my brain thought, "Sweet, mission."

I haven´t ridden since I was 5 or so, and the way horses are used out here actually make sense: they are a necessity, not a luxury. In a way it makes me laugh at/question the whole equestrian crowd a bit in the states where the horses are ridden for pleasure, and are also somewhat of a status symbol in more ways than one. This was not the only time I had to ride around doing various errands for the group, and I´ll get into further detail of my horseback adventures at Estancia Ranquilco following these events as I have time.

You stay classy, san francisco.

Opps, I blogged...