After working hard at the farm in Tacuarembo, it was time for some serious relaxation. We headed down south to check out Uruguay´s famous Atlantic coast. It felt pretty awesome to finally be back on the East coast -- we´re starting to feel like we´ve come a realllly long way from Virginia.
We opted against the famous and flashy beach town of Punta del Este, known as an international beach resort town, and instead went to Punta del Diablo, which isn´t known. There aren´t any hotels there, just a few hostels and a lot of cabañas (one room huts). We switched around frequently, trying to find the best deal -- prices began to go up a few days after we arrived because of Semana Santa (Easter week).
On our first day on the beach, we practically had the entire coastline to ourselves...besides the other couple a hundred feet away sunbathing in the nude. Things never really picked up from here. Everyday was pretty much the same. In fact, the only thing that really differed were the super delicious dinners we prepared. The basic plan was to wake up, eat our hostel´s breakfast, lay on the beach and play in the ocean, eat salami sandwiches, play in the ocean, take a beachside nap, play in the ocean, and spend a few hours preparing dinner. Tough life.
One night, we made veggie pasta for 15. Another night, mashed potatoes, mac n cheese, and daquiris. We spend one afternoon making a traditional Uruguayan asado (read; massive bbq) of chicken, steak, chorizo, fish, and veggies over a wood grill. Luckily, we made friends with a bunch of other travelers from all of the English speaking countries of the world to help us eat eerything. It was a little strange to speak so much English after 2 weeks of solid Spanish at the farm.
Our first night we stayed in ¨La Casa de las Boyas,¨ or the house of the buoys. It has a great kitchen, practically beach front, swimming pool, and friendly staff...but the room we slept in was seriously infested with mosquitos. We discovered how difficult it is to sleep with ¨muzzies¨ (that´s Aussie for mosquitos) buzzing in your ears.
The next day, we bounced across the street to El Diablo Tranquilo, or the Chill Devil, which had a great outdoor bar area, tiny albeit mosquito free dorms, and a semi-functional kitchen. It was also 2 bucks cheaper than the previous hostel, score! Our dorm room did have a great fan, but Stew forgot he was 5 ft in the air in a bunk bed when he got up to pee one night...the fan broke his fall quite well. Don´t worry folks, Stew escaped unscathed. We cannot say the same for the fan.
After two nights at Diablo, we stumbled into renting a cabaña while looking for a campsite. We got a cute little lime green hut with a full kitchen, private bathroom, and even a bed with a box spring! We couldn´t remember the last time we had a boxspring, so this was pretty exciting. That night we through a party in our cabaña and made all of the food we had been really craving, because it was actually possible to make baked macaroni and cheese in our functional oven (these are a rarity in hostels). As Semana Santa had begun, our cabaña was actually cheaper than the dorm, which had jumped from 10 bucks to 22 bucks a bed. However, the cabaña was only available two nights, so we had to find new accomodation.
By now, there were considerably more people at Punta del Diablo. Mostly vacationers from Buenos Aires, Montevideo and other parts of the countries, but some international surfers showed up for a surf competition. The beaches became more crowded but because they were so long, it was possible to avoid the pack by just walking further down the beach. It´s kind of remarkable how lazy people are: rather than walk an additional twenty minutes down the beach to get to the really beautiful parts, they all clump by the entrance. The ridiculousness of this was compounded by the two dead sea lions that had washed up at the entrances to the main beaches.
After leaving the cabaña, we decided to camp on one of the secluded beaches. Other people were doing the same thing, but there was probably a kilometer of beach in between each of us. Normally, walking a couple kilometers down a beach at night with a pack on would be a real bummer of a way to end it (packs on beaches are a difficult combo), but we convinced our group of friends (who roll 15 deep to everything) to walk down with us and have a bonfire till 3 in the morning. The sun rose shortly after, leaving us exhausted and asleep under the heat.
We returned to Casa de las Boyas (where rates had risen a much smaller amount) and took our group of friends with us. All of us had been at Tranquilo, but were frustrated with the increasing rates. The two of us had nonetheless been usin their facilities the entire time, using the cover provided by all of our dues paying friends. Thanks guys! Stew even managed to sneak in an illegal shower, though we found out later we were supposed to be paying 10 bucks a day for this privilege. Suckers...
Our last night, we took a free trip offered by the owner of the hostel to a far out point on the beach which included one of the gnarliest truck rides we´ve ever taken. There were 6 of us in the back of his huge pickup truck which he used to climb boulders, speed down the beach, ski down sand embankments, and generally go nuts. It was worth the butt breaking ride for the view of the secluded beach. Even cooler was the Laguna Negra (Black Lake) that we saw, where the sand is perfectly white and the water dark black. The sunset and full moon over the lake were spectacular.
When we got back, we made bacon and blue cheese burgers with Col (our dredlocked Aussie friend) and Clemmie and Anna (our kiwi ¨not lovers, not sisters¨) before watching tv and passing out early. All that beach can really wear you out.
We caught a bus back to Montevideo where we tried to spend the rest of our pesos. Our waitress told us she felt no need to go to the U.S. because everything Uruguay had was in the U.S. and she had already seen all of Uruguay. While this demonstrates a failure to comprehend set theory, it does give a good idea of the corporate modernity of Montevideo: there is no shortage of malls, McDonalds, or other classic icons (even a World Trade Center) of the U.S. All of the hottest American brands have stores here, though their names can hardly compete with the likes of ¨Tits¨(a women´s clothing store) or ¨Fucking Invierno¨(winter clothing).
Now we´re back in BA (fourth time is a charm) and will be heading up to Salta with Tori´s mom and sister soon. Huzzah!
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Tac-where?-embo
You have to know, at this point, that when we don´t update for a long time, it is generally because we have been off somewhere in the wilderness having an adventure. While we weren´t on remote Patagonian trails, this time, we were in one of the most remote parts of Uruguay. Uruguay is, on its own, a pretty remote place to wind up in. For those looking on a map, it is the blip on the Atlantic coast between Argentina and Brasil, which people usually just swim around rather than dealing with the customs and immigration officers. We managed to find the most remote part, where people dress like gauchos because they ARE gauchos, rather than merely people dressing up for tourists (other parts of Argentina/Uruguay can be almost like colonial Williamsburg in this regard). Tacuarembo is about the size of North Dakota and fairly similar (we imagine), which made is a great place for us to go learn about organic farming in Uruguay.
The farm we worked at is called BIO Uruguay (www.biouruguay.org Batovi Instituto Organica Uruguay). It is funded by grants from the United Nations, as well as the proceeds from the farm´s produce. The mission (in our words, but if you read spanish you can find their words on their website) of the organization is to educate local farmers on sustainable organic methods which are economically viable. Thus, the offer classes, seed banks, a laboratory, library, and demonstrations of farming techniques on the Abambae Farm which supports the school. There are a series of Faros (translates roughly to light house) which are supposed to bring the ideas taught at the school to areas even more remote across the country. It was founded by a group of people, most notably Doctor Alda Rodriguez (Agro-Engineer from Tacuarembo but educated in Montevideo, Havana, and Coroico, Bolivia), for whom we worked.
Our chores began at 8 a.m. when we fed the chickens, bunny, and pigs and watered the plants, sheep, horses, and cows. After this, we were assigned a task that changed daily. The variation was crucial: any task is miserable with repetition. Somedays were worse than others: hauling liculo (a fermented pig waste liquid fertilizer) and removing thorn bushes were considerably less fun than herding cows to be bred, capturing loose chickens, or cutting corn with a machete. We learned to make our own bread, which became a frequent and necessary activity. Given the relatively narrow range of ingredients, we had to get a little creative to avoid boredom in our daily meals. Onion and garlic bread, eggs every way you can imagine. caramelized onion and garlic spread, hot sauce without anything that was actually spicy, honey and flax seed bread, peanut sauce on noodles, flan, rice pudding, and spicy macaronic and cheese were big succeses, though the grilled cheese sandwiches using only farm raised ingredients were pretty good, too. On special days, we got to eat with Alda and her family, which meant we ate things like: sheep from the farm, ravioli, apples in various desserty forms from the neighbors farm, spanish tortillas, and delicious crepes with ricotta and ciboulette. We worked till noon, had a two hour lunch/nap break, and then worked for four more hours. Then we made dinner, washed clothes, made bread, played cards, and fell asleep as early as possible.
We lived in an ecologically friendly house, which means the construction was spotty at times. Our straw roof was fine most of the time, but during the intense thunderstorm on the last day, we found out that it was not entirely waterproof. The semi-permeable walls (probably unintentional) let in lots of critters from outside. There were probably 10 species of tree frogs which came into our house as very welcome guests and ate all of the bugs. This was especially nice because the ants around the farm, while small, left these giant zit-like welts which hurt for days.
The bathrooms at the farm were much nicer than the last farm. Rather than just a wooden box over a hole in an open field (to be fair, it was the nicest bathroom view in the world), we had four stalls with complete walls, doors, and toilet seats to choose from. It was a composting toilet, which is good for the environment but we were glad that the job of cleaning it was a once a year thing...and this wasn´t the time of the year. The showers could be heated, if one made a fire. We did this twice and realized the fire did very little to heat the water and that it was better to just take a cold shower. Thus cold showers are doubly good for the environment because one does not waste fuel heating the water and, moreover, it is impossible to take a long cold shower. Realistically, though, we just didn´t take that many showers. Perhaps the best thing about the showers were the colonies of frogs that lived in them. At first, we didn´t realize they were there, but when the water hit them in their hiding spots, they would jump across the shower or over the walls into the adjacent stalls. Pretty hilarious to have a frog land on your head in the middle of a shower.
One of our favorite parts of the farm were the beautiful dogs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimarr%C3%B3n_Uruguayo (info about the breed)
http://www.gopetsamerica.com/pets/img/perro_cimarron.jpg (a really cute picture that is representative of the breed)
They are called Uruguayan Cimarrons and are generally used as hunting dogs, but Alda´s partner whose name is (phonetically) As-Drib-Bull had trained them to round up chickens and hold them (albeit aggressively) so they wouldn´t run off into the fields. We learned how to round up chickens with and without the aid of the gorgeous dogs (named Cimarron and Francesca. Cimarron, whose name is the height of boring, we decided to call Big Macho instead because he weighed 100 pounds and was very very macho). The two campesino ladies the worked on the farm taught us to chase the chickens with brooms back into the cage, but if there is just one chicken, you can corner it and grab it. In general, chasing is easier than catching but there is so much reward in catching a chicken. For the few that escaped our brooms, the dogs rounded them up and held them on the ground while we ran frantically to make sure that they didn´t kill the chickens. Afterwords, we were told that the dogs wouldn´t hurt them, but we didn´t know that at the time.
This led to the most exciting part of our stay on the farm. Everyone had left and it was just the two of us working in the field. We had come in to do our evening chores (the same as morning with the addition of collecting eggs and protecting the eggs from the thieving dogs) when we realized the latch on the chicken coop had broken and all of the chickens had escaped. Using the techniques taught us, we managed to round up the majority of the chickens. Stew chased them with a bamboo stick while Tori stood by the gate and opened it to let them in when they came near. One escaped and the two free range babies were outside. The dogs, having forgotten that these two babies are always outside, started bringing them down so we could put them back in their cage (where they did not belong). Stew, seeing the two dogs pinning the baby, tackled Big Macho and pried the dog´s mouth open so that Tori could grab the baby and throw it over the fence into the coop, where it would at least be protected. We then chased the other baby at the same time as the dogs, but we got it first and protected it from the dogs.
However, the fence was not designed for chicks, and they escaped under the wire netting from the coop. We realized this while we were eating dinner and heard a horrible squawking. Apparently the excitment led to the dogs to forget their training and they managed to kill one of the babies. The other was still alive, but in the mouth of Francesca. For the second time that day, Stew had to reach in a hunting dog´s mouth to stop it from eating the baby. Tori fended off the dogs with angry yells of ¨Stop¨and ¨Go away!¨ while Stew ran to put the baby back in a more secure cage. We didn´t think it would live through the night because one wing was torn off from the back, but five days later when we left, it had mostly recuperated (though it will never fly). The lesson here being that even though dogs are useful for bringing home stray chickens (the one that ran off to the field was recovered by the dogs safely, along with several others we didn´t even realize had escaped), a hunting dog still has hunting dog instincts and, unless extremely well trained, will probably want to eat some baby chickens every once in a while. They did not, fortunately, make any aggressive moves toward either of us and only wanted their delicious chicken meat. Fairly reasonable demand, actually, but not permitted on our farm.
Now we´re in Montevideo where we intend to do errands (new bathing suit and boots for Stew, VISA´s for both of us, internet, eat some American food, etc), visit some sites (Artigas´s ashes, first World Cup Stadium, beaches) before we head up to Punta Del Diablo which is a tiny beach town of 700 people and hopefully deserted at this point. Though you should probably also realize that whenever we announce our plans on the blog, they do not show up in the next entry. We have a history of changing our plans.
The farm we worked at is called BIO Uruguay (www.biouruguay.org Batovi Instituto Organica Uruguay). It is funded by grants from the United Nations, as well as the proceeds from the farm´s produce. The mission (in our words, but if you read spanish you can find their words on their website) of the organization is to educate local farmers on sustainable organic methods which are economically viable. Thus, the offer classes, seed banks, a laboratory, library, and demonstrations of farming techniques on the Abambae Farm which supports the school. There are a series of Faros (translates roughly to light house) which are supposed to bring the ideas taught at the school to areas even more remote across the country. It was founded by a group of people, most notably Doctor Alda Rodriguez (Agro-Engineer from Tacuarembo but educated in Montevideo, Havana, and Coroico, Bolivia), for whom we worked.
Our chores began at 8 a.m. when we fed the chickens, bunny, and pigs and watered the plants, sheep, horses, and cows. After this, we were assigned a task that changed daily. The variation was crucial: any task is miserable with repetition. Somedays were worse than others: hauling liculo (a fermented pig waste liquid fertilizer) and removing thorn bushes were considerably less fun than herding cows to be bred, capturing loose chickens, or cutting corn with a machete. We learned to make our own bread, which became a frequent and necessary activity. Given the relatively narrow range of ingredients, we had to get a little creative to avoid boredom in our daily meals. Onion and garlic bread, eggs every way you can imagine. caramelized onion and garlic spread, hot sauce without anything that was actually spicy, honey and flax seed bread, peanut sauce on noodles, flan, rice pudding, and spicy macaronic and cheese were big succeses, though the grilled cheese sandwiches using only farm raised ingredients were pretty good, too. On special days, we got to eat with Alda and her family, which meant we ate things like: sheep from the farm, ravioli, apples in various desserty forms from the neighbors farm, spanish tortillas, and delicious crepes with ricotta and ciboulette. We worked till noon, had a two hour lunch/nap break, and then worked for four more hours. Then we made dinner, washed clothes, made bread, played cards, and fell asleep as early as possible.
We lived in an ecologically friendly house, which means the construction was spotty at times. Our straw roof was fine most of the time, but during the intense thunderstorm on the last day, we found out that it was not entirely waterproof. The semi-permeable walls (probably unintentional) let in lots of critters from outside. There were probably 10 species of tree frogs which came into our house as very welcome guests and ate all of the bugs. This was especially nice because the ants around the farm, while small, left these giant zit-like welts which hurt for days.
The bathrooms at the farm were much nicer than the last farm. Rather than just a wooden box over a hole in an open field (to be fair, it was the nicest bathroom view in the world), we had four stalls with complete walls, doors, and toilet seats to choose from. It was a composting toilet, which is good for the environment but we were glad that the job of cleaning it was a once a year thing...and this wasn´t the time of the year. The showers could be heated, if one made a fire. We did this twice and realized the fire did very little to heat the water and that it was better to just take a cold shower. Thus cold showers are doubly good for the environment because one does not waste fuel heating the water and, moreover, it is impossible to take a long cold shower. Realistically, though, we just didn´t take that many showers. Perhaps the best thing about the showers were the colonies of frogs that lived in them. At first, we didn´t realize they were there, but when the water hit them in their hiding spots, they would jump across the shower or over the walls into the adjacent stalls. Pretty hilarious to have a frog land on your head in the middle of a shower.
One of our favorite parts of the farm were the beautiful dogs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://www.gopetsamerica.com/
They are called Uruguayan Cimarrons and are generally used as hunting dogs, but Alda´s partner whose name is (phonetically) As-Drib-Bull had trained them to round up chickens and hold them (albeit aggressively) so they wouldn´t run off into the fields. We learned how to round up chickens with and without the aid of the gorgeous dogs (named Cimarron and Francesca. Cimarron, whose name is the height of boring, we decided to call Big Macho instead because he weighed 100 pounds and was very very macho). The two campesino ladies the worked on the farm taught us to chase the chickens with brooms back into the cage, but if there is just one chicken, you can corner it and grab it. In general, chasing is easier than catching but there is so much reward in catching a chicken. For the few that escaped our brooms, the dogs rounded them up and held them on the ground while we ran frantically to make sure that they didn´t kill the chickens. Afterwords, we were told that the dogs wouldn´t hurt them, but we didn´t know that at the time.
This led to the most exciting part of our stay on the farm. Everyone had left and it was just the two of us working in the field. We had come in to do our evening chores (the same as morning with the addition of collecting eggs and protecting the eggs from the thieving dogs) when we realized the latch on the chicken coop had broken and all of the chickens had escaped. Using the techniques taught us, we managed to round up the majority of the chickens. Stew chased them with a bamboo stick while Tori stood by the gate and opened it to let them in when they came near. One escaped and the two free range babies were outside. The dogs, having forgotten that these two babies are always outside, started bringing them down so we could put them back in their cage (where they did not belong). Stew, seeing the two dogs pinning the baby, tackled Big Macho and pried the dog´s mouth open so that Tori could grab the baby and throw it over the fence into the coop, where it would at least be protected. We then chased the other baby at the same time as the dogs, but we got it first and protected it from the dogs.
However, the fence was not designed for chicks, and they escaped under the wire netting from the coop. We realized this while we were eating dinner and heard a horrible squawking. Apparently the excitment led to the dogs to forget their training and they managed to kill one of the babies. The other was still alive, but in the mouth of Francesca. For the second time that day, Stew had to reach in a hunting dog´s mouth to stop it from eating the baby. Tori fended off the dogs with angry yells of ¨Stop¨and ¨Go away!¨ while Stew ran to put the baby back in a more secure cage. We didn´t think it would live through the night because one wing was torn off from the back, but five days later when we left, it had mostly recuperated (though it will never fly). The lesson here being that even though dogs are useful for bringing home stray chickens (the one that ran off to the field was recovered by the dogs safely, along with several others we didn´t even realize had escaped), a hunting dog still has hunting dog instincts and, unless extremely well trained, will probably want to eat some baby chickens every once in a while. They did not, fortunately, make any aggressive moves toward either of us and only wanted their delicious chicken meat. Fairly reasonable demand, actually, but not permitted on our farm.
Now we´re in Montevideo where we intend to do errands (new bathing suit and boots for Stew, VISA´s for both of us, internet, eat some American food, etc), visit some sites (Artigas´s ashes, first World Cup Stadium, beaches) before we head up to Punta Del Diablo which is a tiny beach town of 700 people and hopefully deserted at this point. Though you should probably also realize that whenever we announce our plans on the blog, they do not show up in the next entry. We have a history of changing our plans.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Dirty South
After El Bolson, we took our longest bus yet (and hopefully this will remain the record) to El Calafate. It was a whopping 27 hours, though we spent 30 minutes at a security check in view of our destination. Moreover, this bus ride did not include any food or drinks, which came as a surprise after we had become accustomed to the champagne service provided on other Argentinian buses. Bummer.
El Calafate is a boring tourist town whose architecture looks like it was selected out of a catalog of generic ski style buildings. Ironic because despite being near the end of the world, it rarely snows there. Nevertheless, we found a cheap hostel (this time without bed bugs), got ¨witnessed¨by an evangelical hostel owner (we´re still in Kansas?), and made plans to see one of only two glaciers which are expanding.
Perito Moreno (not Perrito Moreno which would mean Brown Puppy) is a glacier named for a 19th century explorer. It is massive and spectacular. Every few minutes, in the summer, huge chunks of ice fall of the glacier into the lake below and sound like the crack of a rifle. Despite all the ice falling off, it expands even more in the winter leading to a sum growth each year. We hung out for about two hours tramping around the various viewpoints and enjoying the spectacle. There were also lots of goofy tourists to check out in ridiculously overgeared outfits. It is, after all, handicapped accessible and makes hiking poles and avalanche gear seem excessive. Still, we got gear envy.
In the evening, we jumped on a bus to El Chalten, commonly known as the ¨Trekking Capital of Argentina.¨We arrived after sunset and had a bit of a hard time finding a hostel, but eventually found a reasonably priced place. It ended up being even more reasonably priced because there were insufficient beds and we got a mattress on the floor for half price. We had to convince the owner to let us drink a bottle of wine we had brought with us: apparently this was an evangelical place too and there was no alcohol allowed. Why does this keep happening to us? (It didn´t make the blog but we have been approached and detained by Mormons twice in the last few weeks, as well. Sadly, never while wearing our Nietzsche: 1 Mormons: 0 shirts)
The next day we planned to start a 4 day trek but had no clean clothing and split up the trek into a day hike and a 3 day trek instead. El Chalten is great because all of the trailheads are accessible from the town: when the roads end, there are stairs into the hills and trails start from there. Our first day we headed up to Laguna de la Torre (Lake of the Tower), a fantastic glacier and lake underneath a giant Mordor style mountain peak. Compared to the stuff we did in El Bolson, the hike was not difficult but the glacier was much more impressive.
Our trek began late in the day: we had errands to do in order to get back to Buenos Aires when we returned from the trek. We decided that plane tickets were imperative because a 50 hour bus sounded hellish. These tickets cost considerably more than the last tickets we bought to Guatemala. By the time we got started, it was threatening rain but we stuck it out anyway and were rewarded with a pleasantly cool trip up the mountain. We even managed to get our tent set up before it got really cold and rainy. Somewhat hilariously, we laid down and fell asleep for three hours in the middle of the day when we had intended to continue hiking for the same amount of time. This was an accident, but not a big problem.
Tori woke Stew and Mike up early to prepare for a day of summiting glaciers. A quick breakfast of pastries, now squashed, and we were on a skree laden trail to Laguna de los Tres. We assume the name is in reference to the three lakes in the area, though it really looks to be a lot more like 2.1 lakes, the third being more of a pond. The view was incredible: the Fitz-Roy peaks stood in the background of two glaciers, connected by a 100 foot waterfall. We re-filled our waterbottles directly out of the top of the waterfall and enjoyed the fresh and very cold water. It is the best tasting water you can get.
We returned to our tent for a quick lunch of hearty wheat bread and aged cheese before continuing on a hike called Piedras Blancas (White Rocks). More marble than Marion Barry´s preferred white rock, the hike ended in a field of massive boulders that obscured any sort of trail. We all just ran and jumped between the rocks until we got to the lake where we were right below another huge glacier, this one with considerably more icebergs. We were once again astounded.
That night, we ate white rice and lentils (much like our previous dinner of white rice and white beans). Generally when we camp, we bring white rice and boullion cubes to add flavor. This time, we messed up and had one third of the required amount of flavor. Thus, our dinner ended up blander than Coldplay. We vowed to go to a Tenedor Libre upon descension. Tenedor Libre, by the way, translates literally as Liberated Fork, which is a much better name than All You Can Eat.
We slept in late the next morning, and Stew woke up sick. We had a somewhat less enjoyable descent, as a result, but made it back to El Chalten with plenty of time before our bus to El Calafate. The tenedor libre was everything we hoped it to be and a lot more painful. We split a leg of lamb, ate about half a cow, a brace of chickens, and a real festival of sausage. In addition, we filled the cracks with ravioli, fried pastries, empanadas, pig in a blanket, and canned fruits (how did they trick us into thinking canned fruit is dessert?). We never wanted to eat again. Just kidding, Moms, we ate salads.
Yesterday was our last day with Mike so we went to a museum. It looked crumby, so we waited outside while Mike wasted his money. Stew had forgotten his jacket in El Chalten, so we picked it up from the bus station (isn´t it great that hostels will do things like this?) and then jumped on our plane back to Buenos Aires. We had a lay over in Ushuaiia, which we regret not being able to visit, but honestly it looks like the colder version of Puntarenas.
We spent all day today trying to get to Uruguay, but failed. Tomorrow, we will take a ferry and hopefully make more progress than today. By the way, El Tigre, chupanos. We´re going to Bio Uruguay to try WWOOF again...hopefully it will go better than last time.
El Calafate is a boring tourist town whose architecture looks like it was selected out of a catalog of generic ski style buildings. Ironic because despite being near the end of the world, it rarely snows there. Nevertheless, we found a cheap hostel (this time without bed bugs), got ¨witnessed¨by an evangelical hostel owner (we´re still in Kansas?), and made plans to see one of only two glaciers which are expanding.
Perito Moreno (not Perrito Moreno which would mean Brown Puppy) is a glacier named for a 19th century explorer. It is massive and spectacular. Every few minutes, in the summer, huge chunks of ice fall of the glacier into the lake below and sound like the crack of a rifle. Despite all the ice falling off, it expands even more in the winter leading to a sum growth each year. We hung out for about two hours tramping around the various viewpoints and enjoying the spectacle. There were also lots of goofy tourists to check out in ridiculously overgeared outfits. It is, after all, handicapped accessible and makes hiking poles and avalanche gear seem excessive. Still, we got gear envy.
In the evening, we jumped on a bus to El Chalten, commonly known as the ¨Trekking Capital of Argentina.¨We arrived after sunset and had a bit of a hard time finding a hostel, but eventually found a reasonably priced place. It ended up being even more reasonably priced because there were insufficient beds and we got a mattress on the floor for half price. We had to convince the owner to let us drink a bottle of wine we had brought with us: apparently this was an evangelical place too and there was no alcohol allowed. Why does this keep happening to us? (It didn´t make the blog but we have been approached and detained by Mormons twice in the last few weeks, as well. Sadly, never while wearing our Nietzsche: 1 Mormons: 0 shirts)
The next day we planned to start a 4 day trek but had no clean clothing and split up the trek into a day hike and a 3 day trek instead. El Chalten is great because all of the trailheads are accessible from the town: when the roads end, there are stairs into the hills and trails start from there. Our first day we headed up to Laguna de la Torre (Lake of the Tower), a fantastic glacier and lake underneath a giant Mordor style mountain peak. Compared to the stuff we did in El Bolson, the hike was not difficult but the glacier was much more impressive.
Our trek began late in the day: we had errands to do in order to get back to Buenos Aires when we returned from the trek. We decided that plane tickets were imperative because a 50 hour bus sounded hellish. These tickets cost considerably more than the last tickets we bought to Guatemala. By the time we got started, it was threatening rain but we stuck it out anyway and were rewarded with a pleasantly cool trip up the mountain. We even managed to get our tent set up before it got really cold and rainy. Somewhat hilariously, we laid down and fell asleep for three hours in the middle of the day when we had intended to continue hiking for the same amount of time. This was an accident, but not a big problem.
Tori woke Stew and Mike up early to prepare for a day of summiting glaciers. A quick breakfast of pastries, now squashed, and we were on a skree laden trail to Laguna de los Tres. We assume the name is in reference to the three lakes in the area, though it really looks to be a lot more like 2.1 lakes, the third being more of a pond. The view was incredible: the Fitz-Roy peaks stood in the background of two glaciers, connected by a 100 foot waterfall. We re-filled our waterbottles directly out of the top of the waterfall and enjoyed the fresh and very cold water. It is the best tasting water you can get.
We returned to our tent for a quick lunch of hearty wheat bread and aged cheese before continuing on a hike called Piedras Blancas (White Rocks). More marble than Marion Barry´s preferred white rock, the hike ended in a field of massive boulders that obscured any sort of trail. We all just ran and jumped between the rocks until we got to the lake where we were right below another huge glacier, this one with considerably more icebergs. We were once again astounded.
That night, we ate white rice and lentils (much like our previous dinner of white rice and white beans). Generally when we camp, we bring white rice and boullion cubes to add flavor. This time, we messed up and had one third of the required amount of flavor. Thus, our dinner ended up blander than Coldplay. We vowed to go to a Tenedor Libre upon descension. Tenedor Libre, by the way, translates literally as Liberated Fork, which is a much better name than All You Can Eat.
We slept in late the next morning, and Stew woke up sick. We had a somewhat less enjoyable descent, as a result, but made it back to El Chalten with plenty of time before our bus to El Calafate. The tenedor libre was everything we hoped it to be and a lot more painful. We split a leg of lamb, ate about half a cow, a brace of chickens, and a real festival of sausage. In addition, we filled the cracks with ravioli, fried pastries, empanadas, pig in a blanket, and canned fruits (how did they trick us into thinking canned fruit is dessert?). We never wanted to eat again. Just kidding, Moms, we ate salads.
Yesterday was our last day with Mike so we went to a museum. It looked crumby, so we waited outside while Mike wasted his money. Stew had forgotten his jacket in El Chalten, so we picked it up from the bus station (isn´t it great that hostels will do things like this?) and then jumped on our plane back to Buenos Aires. We had a lay over in Ushuaiia, which we regret not being able to visit, but honestly it looks like the colder version of Puntarenas.
We spent all day today trying to get to Uruguay, but failed. Tomorrow, we will take a ferry and hopefully make more progress than today. By the way, El Tigre, chupanos. We´re going to Bio Uruguay to try WWOOF again...hopefully it will go better than last time.
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