The Pampas to Patagonia

Last Week

2007-02-08T14:37:00.000-08:00

These days are running together. I try to call Melissa and its hard to get a hold of her, not a promising sign. I try payphones and locutorios, indoor phone booths, to no avail and then I go back to email. I set up a date, an appointment she calls it, and the distancing has officially commenced. We meet in San Telmo at a mediocre café and it feels a little off. It may be the persistent crick in my shoulder that is healing very slowly and putting a damper on my mood. Or else it could be the stale medialunas and disappointment, mine, her’s, or me sensing and reacting to her’s. Nevertheless I get the feeling that this will be the last afternoon I’ll be spending with her and that’s the correct notion.

We take the subte to vast and snooty Palermo District and to the modern visual arts museum, LUBA, where she can’t get enough of the crazy shit pasted and random scribbles framed and put on the walls, and I have a hard time understanding, but I’m in no mood for debate, so I politely agree. We head to the museum gift shop and I look over her shoulder at a nude photo book of stars and prostitutes until the movie begins.

Rio Arriba, a documentary about Iruya highlighting the exploitation of the sugar industry there, is genuinely affecting and one of the best things about the museum that day. The shaman and spokesman for the people of Iruya who I met a month and a half earlier is highlighted in the film. I met him in the San Isidor cultural center that day and drank coffee with him in Iruya. My time in Argentina is unifying strangely. The story is an old one: the gringo stealing the land from the peasants and renting it back them with the sweat of their labor, hardship and blood.

The traditional farming terraces, with their tenders working the plantations, washed away in tremendous mudslides, erosion events known as volcanoes to the people. They were indebted to the company store and grew even more dependent on the sugar plantations once their former livelihood was washed down the river. Technology eventually made the slave labor obsolete and the people returned to their diminished land and diminished futures.

We take the subway back and say some compulsory goodbyes with a promise for a future meeting that will never happen. So it goes.

I return to LUBA a couple of more times to buy a Rio Arriba CD and to watch a silent Western in the auditorium accompanied by a live band playing the background music. I watch a few movies of varying quality. Little Miss Sunshine is a black comedy gem. The Secret Life of Words is sad and reminds me of the recent history of Argentina with its torture and executions, and I feel the undercurrent of sadness that must still be alive here.

I chronicle the stencils and graffiti along the streets passing more Pizza cafes and parillas then would seem supportable even in a giant city like Buenos Aires, but they almost always have a decent crowd. For the most part the weather is stifling. I find a percussion performance one night on Sarmiento, off of Corrientes in an industrial yard. The music is infectious among the crowd which includes a sizeable hippy following.

Sometimes I’m bored, sometimes frustrated with the pollution and the traffic and throngs. I never find myself in the mood for one of the adopted national dishes, Milanesa. I’m being antisocial at the hostel. My heart isn’t in it and I need to conserve money regardless. The soccer championship passes and I watch the waning minutes with Boca faltering, just as they did two months ago, but even this seems like a depleted experience. I’m merely waiting out my time. I’m getting a little restless to move on to the next step in my life, wanting it to be a true step, not one that is disingenuous to myself.

Through the motions

2007-02-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

For the first time during many days at this hostel, I make it up in time for breakfast. I reacquaint myself with the streets of Buenos Aires. I head back to Palermo walk for a while, but I feel tired and vaguely ill and not in the mood for exploring. I have no plan, and though this often leads to the best kind of adventures, today it is leading no place in particular.

I go to what some consider to be the best pizzeria in the city, which is saying a lot, on Corrientes. Old men stand by counters with knife and fork, eating a rarity in Argentina, pizza by the slice. I choose to sit down and the pizza is very good indeed.

My shoulder is still stiff and in pain and I’m walking around like a whiplash victim. I make it another early night and save quite a bit in beer money, but not having much fun, really, and starting to question why I arrived in the city so early when I could be relaxing on a beach.

A long, cramped ride

2007-02-08T14:16:00.000-08:00

I attempt to find a position I can sleep in and put a good crick in my neck and shoulder from contorting in the seat. The AC is cranked way too high and I brought nothing warmer in my pack than my safari shirt. An old, somewhat befuddled, gentleman boards at some vague juncture midway up the coast and removes a styrofoam cup jammed in the vent, the only thing separating me from hypothermia. I suffer through it cursing the blameless codger and finally stuff my hat inside the hole to quell the flow.

A sublime sunset looms out my window with clouds lit up like embers. Storms rage in the distance, every crack of lightning visible over the fathomless pampa. We catch up with the rain, and a rivulet of water flows through the bus.

The old man leaves, mercifully, in Bahia Blanca, about the time to sleep. In the morning we pass thousands of head of cattle and almost at the point where the estancias end, Buenos Aires begins and it feels like a kind of home. Its warm, but not as stifling as I feared. I check back into Che Lagarto and in my room are naked people in bed and it’s a strange sort of symmetry with my very first night in the city. I stop at a café and eat more pizza and then sit down for a very nice dinner in San Telmo. I return to the hostel and start catching up on sleep.

Norte a BsAs

2007-02-08T14:02:00.000-08:00

I ask to quiero pagar and instead the girl at the desk asks my name and wonders why I’m leaving so soon. I like her instantly and has me questioning beyond reason why I AM leaving so soon. There’s nothing more on earth, though, I want to do here. She phones for my bus ticket and I go back to my reading.

I buy food for the ride and finish up some last minute chores. I’ve been eating a great deal which makes sense considering my recent physical stress. I still haven’t fully recovered as I’m reminded every time I climb a modest hill or some steps and feel the burn.

As I walk back towards the hostel, I meet the desk girl on the road. She says goodbye and gives me the customary kiss on the cheek and a nice hug and we chat for a bit and she hugs me even tighter, and by this time I do feel like staying longer, if only momentarily. I arrange my stuff at the hostel and leave and an older Dane in my room does the same.

He went on an Argentina trip 28 years ago, when he said that the country looked much the same except that there was a palpable tension in the air. It was the height of The Dirty War. He met a family with a small child and became close. She found him recently through the internet and urged him to come back and visit. The child is now a mother of her own child. The woman that he met is now the director of the theater in Buenos Aires and has colaborated in creating a play about 1978, Matri, based on generations of women dealing with the crisis.

We are in Rio Gallegos again, back to the refugee camp. It is going on evening and much warmer than my first visit, and I only have to wait a couple hours. I board the bus for my first sustained trip North in a month. The seats in front of me crank way back, but I relax and spread out as much as possible and read the final chapters of Moby Dick. It’s a dull read for me, but it passes the time, and there are thirty hours of traveling remaining. The movie is a bad drama about Flight 98, and seeing it makes me feel slightly ill.

Amazing sights, but I must go...

2007-02-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

I wake up too early. Two South Africans I met the day before join me for breakfast of toast, dulce de leche, marmalade and even a scoop of cereal.

The glacier is huge, booming and calving sometimes in dribbles and other times whole boulders of ice tumble into the ice clogged corner of the lake. Other, relatively rare times, whole sides of the glacier cleave off and collapse and everyone rushes to the fence, telephoto lensed cameras in hand. Its large and amazing, but hard for me to enjoy. I want a quiet corner without the bustle, the cooing and striking of poses, but that’s impossible.

I sit my butt down on a rock and eat and watch and wait and eat and get up whenever something promising happens glacierward, then fade back again, and repeat until it is time to board the bus again. We take the long ride back to El Calafate and I’m tired and realizing now that its time to make the longer than seems sane ride back to Buenos Aires. I walk town again, cook ravioli, read Moby Dick and turn in early.

El Calafate

2007-02-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Omar calls me through the bathroom door. My bus is not picking me up at the hostel, as I thought, but three blocks away and I have five minutes to get there. I take off running with two full and heavy packs, but I make it. Customs, this time, is relatively smooth since we are going to Argentina which is not as strict as Chile. El Calafate is a pleasant if not particularly notable town. I walk up the dirt road to a nice hostel and its finally warm again.

The main drag of town is as touristy as advertised but pleasant nevertheless with a boardwalk and chalet like facades. I eat my umpteenth mozzarella pizza and drink yet another Fanta, and find a bus ticket to the Perito Moreno Glacier the following day. I try to find a quiet corner of the hostel to read and relax. My trip back north is scheduled to begin in two days, but with the ticket office closed until Monday, this isn’t written in stone.

Recovery

2007-02-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

Today I chill out and do laundry and take a much needed rest after one of the most strenuous weeks of my life. I find a nice, if gringo oriented, café and eat a cheese and avocado sandwich on artisan bread and sip a doble in a narrow yellow ceramic cup. I browse an English rock magazine highlighting the comeback of the NY Dolls and Bjork plays on the sound system. I spend the afternoon reading and watching movies like American History X and Twelve Monkeys. Its time for bed and El Calafate tomorrow and the end of my Odyssey through Patagonia is within sight.

The sun appears as I leave

2007-02-08T13:37:00.000-08:00

I heat up cup after cup of Milo and soup. I compact my food and throw away, trying to make it an easy hike out this morning. I dry all my things in the sun that finally emerges this morning. In combination with the wind, this doesn’t take long and I feel revived even if my feet feel iredeemably soggy and cold.

The Torres make one last appearance, and it isn’t from the perspective that I had hoped, but I felt blessed all the same. I start down the road towards the Lago Amarga station where I began. I spot large cat prints in the sand and follow with caution.

A wilderness guide from Minnesota who I greeted briefly at Perros is also waiting for the bus at Amarga. Soon a middle aged German with an earring who gave in after a day, joins us. Despite his lack of tenacity this time, he has been trekking and bike touring worldwide. It feels good to be on the bus, though it takes a while for the engine to turn over. We pass untold numbers of rhea and guanaco on the way through the pampa. I return to Omar’s hostel and take a long and lovely shower and go out to eat a full meal and some fruit salad. I drink a beer. I return to the hostel and drink more beer while I watch Return to Neverland with female Finlandian hostelmates and then The Big Lebowski with a group of American and Canadian guys who also completed the circuit that day, starting, untypically, at Lago Pehoe via ferry shuttle.

Hobbling in Rain and Gales

2007-02-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

The light, but persistent, rain this morning makes it difficult to get up and start the day. My plans to go to Camp Chileano to the base of the Torres will be waylaid by the afternoon. The wind seems to have abated compared to the day before, but as I approach the next refugio, this proves to be a false assumption. The trail passes a lake with colors one rarely sees away from tropical lagoons, but this was anything but. The ferocity of the wind compares to that of a bonified hurricane. I crouch to wait out the onslaught, but once or twice the gusts catch me off guard and I am knocked down into the bushes. While walking up a hill the wind lifts me up a steep embankment. I am close to flying.

The cold rain fallls harder and I duck into a refugio for the first time on the circuit with the pretense of buying camera batteries. I bask in the warmth and marvel at working toilets before moving on. I don’t want to be spoiled by comfort. After laying dormant for several weeks, my injury sustained in Mendoza resurfaces. Its what I feared most the whole journey, but at least I am only a couple hours this time from completing the circuit and being safe. I can barely walk on it, though. I sit and stretch it out as well as I can and not wishing to be stranded, I limp on. A group of Israeli students ask me how far it is to the next refugio oblivious to my predicament.

My knee loosens to some degree, then came back in full force along with the rain and the cold. A young American guy sees my limp and asks "estas bien" and offers to carry some of my load. It is only one hour to camp and I estimate that I will make it there. I pass by the crossroads, with the alternate trail leading to Chileano and the base of the Torres, but the weather and my condition make the choice a no-brainer.

I pass the immense hosteleria and I’m tempted for a few moments, to check in, even as I look like a wet rat, but I know how expensive it probably is and hobble on. I walk to a campsite full of exuberant high school kids gathered around a big pot of food. They have a big fire stoked and I want to be a part of it. I start setting up the tent. A high school girl gives me a sweet hola, and I ignore the warning signal. One of the leaders, I presume, warily asks me "Necesitas ayudar?" Oblivious, I reply "no, gracias" and continue setting up until my weather and fatigue addled brain comprehends that I don’t belong here. I check the signs to confirm this and stuff my dripping tent back into the bag while a gracious student offers me food, and its tempting.

Everything is wet as I set up camp in earnest. I flop myself inside the tent and light up my stove going through the arduous and ultimately futile task of drying out. The camp host comes by to collect fees and she notices that my fly is being held to the ground tenuously by rocks. In the hasty process of setting up, I bent my stakes trying to penetrate the hard ground and she comes by with her own stakes and puts me back in business while her little boy directs her where to place them. Even in sogginess and disappointment, I sleep very well that night.

Pulling my tent out of the sky

2007-02-08T13:11:00.000-08:00

The Americans take off earlier than I do, but I get the feeling I’ll see them again that day. The pack feels good today after two days of lightening the food weight, not to mention a full day’s rest.

Its a lot of up and down once again, but nothing to compare with the previous leg. This is the start of the shorter, and much more popular, W route and backpackers and daytrippers are around every turn with metal hiking poles clacking and taking up the entire trail. They don’t yield, and after a few incidents I barrel straight towards them.

The wind kicks up in a big way. In exposed areas I’m fighting to stay on the trail and I often don’t, pivoting my foot off of rocks and banks to recenter myself on the trail. My American cohorts come wandering back onto the trail after straying onto a side trail and we’re together again.

As I go down the valley towards Lago Pehoe, the wind is especially persistent. The lake looks like a sort of turquoise jewel in the distance. It burgeons into a full blown lake, a large ranger station and a luxury hotel on the shore. A crowd of backpackers queue up in the bluster by a fairy stop. I get temporary respite from the wind behind the ranger station and eat another cookie lunch. The Americans join me not long after and the pilot calls me a show off. He estimates the wind at 50 knots and asks noone in particular if anyone has ever seen water picked up off a lake like that.

I leave them and continue on to Italiano through occasional showers and the imposing and truly majestic backdrop of peaks. The hiking goes quickly and I cross a bridge over a turbulent mountain river carrying glacier water from the famously scenic French Valley and I walk into Italiano.

Now that I’m no longer burning calories at tremendous rates, I feel the cold aided by the howling winds. I get the poles into my tent in a wrestling match of sorts and I weigh it down by placing stones inside the tent. Regardless it takes off like a kite and I catch it before it enters the tree branches. With the aid of much heavier rocks, I erect the tent and hunch down inside and cook my dinner there forced out only when I run out of water and need to piss.

Ice Trekking

2007-02-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

I wake up to showers. My sole intent, today, is to trek the glacier, no matter the 70,000 Chilean pesos it may cost. The ranger from the day before hikes by wearing purple gaters and a backpack. He has to hike to Grey for his days off to catch the boat across the lake and out of the park. I walk up to the cabana aside the tents that sell the tours. A college aged guide is doing chores and he tells me that the next tour is full. I give my story, that I arrived the day before and they promised me a space, so he assures me he’ll ask.

He comes by my tent in a little while and tells me I’m on. I go back to the cabana to chat with him and get out of the damp, chilly conditions for the rest of the morning, and part of the afternoon, and drink mate. It feels good to be next to the fire on such a day. I read comments in ten different languages from the guest book, only comprehending the English and Spanish, about how this was the highlight of their Patagonia trip, if not their life. The guide cooks dinner and listens to the Pixies.

A large group of mostly English and a couple of middle aged American tag alongs enter the cabana while a guide barks out instructions. One of the Americans is a Dallas, Texas pilot and he asks who the other American is, and I volunteer. Juan, the guide, overhears me talking about doing the circuit and says that I’m lucky I’m not doing the pass today. The clouds lift enough to reveal the fresh snow on the mountains. Juan guided a group in the middle of winter, in July, when it was possible to jump down the trail leading steeply from the pass. The snow was almost hip high.

We gather on the zodiac on a cold ride with pelting rain across the lake and around dark blue icebergs. Its an odd contrast to my rainy but tropical power raft ride through Iguazu almost a month ago. Juan notes how far the glacier has receded in just over a decade, hundreds of meters at least.

We climb out onto a rock and gear up. We slip on crampons, the complex strapping we leave to the guides, and pick up an ice axe and step into harnesses. After a few quick lessons on the correct technique of walking on different grades of ice, we walk up what has the appearance of fused ice cubes, intermingled with stone along the first stretch. We pass deep crevasses and small streams running through tunnels in the glacier and end at a waterfall and pull out cups to take a drink. In just days, due to the motion of the ice, all this terrain will be vastly different.

We backtrack to a wall with ropes set up. The ice climbing feels a little unwieldy at first, but once I trust the ice will hold me, I’m able to climb without much trouble, though I never get my legs wide enough for stability.

The sun makes a brief appearance, illuminates the glacier and forms a weak rainbow over the lake. The rain begins anew once we cross the lake in the puttering zodiac towards camp. Back at my tent, I cook more pasta and exchange pleasantries with the Americans. We’re all headed for Camp Italiano in the morning. I gather my cooking utensils and hunker down in my tent for another rainy night.

Over the Pass

2007-02-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

Its getting cloudy today, but its pleasant enough. I make tea and cereal from the vestibule of my tent and pack quickly, eager to hit what appears to be my most difficult day as early as possible. Everyone else seems to have the same idea, but I get out before the rest and I feel strong once again. The way is steep, extremely marshy with mud that sucks my boots to the ankles. Woods and marsh give way, at last, to the tree line and I continue on dry land, rock and talus. I rest spotting a group of ten not far behind, and then dig my boots into the footprints up the steep snow fields and get surprisingly good traction.

I hike over the pass and on the other side is a spectacular panorama of Glacier Grey, spanning for miles from the mountains, larger than what I imagined and seeming to engulf whole mountains. I’m in awe once again. I descend quickly into the woods. The trail winds steeply and relentlessly down and I’m grateful for the ropes tied on the trees along the way. My left hip is stiff and in pain but not injured. It’s a muscle that is not accustomed to the stress and weight of a full backpack. Every once in a while I hear the thunderous report of glacial calving.

I arrive at a ranger station where the young ranger asks me in for tea. He asks about any hot girls at a previous camp. All old German women I tell him. He says that it isn’t often that someone arrives here from Perros so early. I ask him why the trail was marked closed a few days ago. He tells me a landslide hit one of the canyons, but if I move through the area quickly, I should be fine. Soon the German tour group arrives, so I eat my lunch of bran cookies and move on, merely a few hours from Camp Grey.

And if I was expecting the going to be easy after the pass, I’d be wrong. Narrow, cliffside trails rise and descend over loose dirt and stone. Tall, wooden ladders are rigged to descend and ascend the landslides. It feels precarious with my heavy pack that weighs about half of me, especially on a ladder that is tilted to the side against the rock. The pack wants to pull me flat and twist me off the ladder. I walk past a "peligro, no entrance" sign and down the final hill towards Grey where the glacier flows into a large lake with scattered icebergs.

I arrive in Grey close to 4pm, a hard, long but very satisfying day. I set up camp with the crowd and eat another big pot of pasta, drink some warm Milo and fall asleep with the sunset.

Un perro, los perros

2007-02-08T12:28:00.000-08:00

It’s a beautiful day. I sleep in for as long as I can, but how long that is I can’t say. I eat, pack and still embark before almost everyone else in camp. This morning a group gathers around, with cameras in hand, a wild canine of sorts that has wandered into camp for some easy vittles, no doubt. I climb a hill to some more amazing vistas to the mountains and walk towards my first large glacier of note. A Brit and his guide pass on horseback going the opposite direction and I ascend some rocks to a small glacial lake and the rumbling of some snow and ice eroding off the glacier, Los Perros, hanging on the cliff.

I slip and fall down a silty path, but brush myself off with no injury. I walk by some amber colored ponds and into the woods where I see the next camp, also called Los Perros. Its early, and I contemplate, just for a moment, making a push towards the pass while the weather is good and I’m feeling strong. But, no, I reason, better to go off in the morning when I feel my best. I cook a big pot of pasta and sleep very well, very long.

Overstaying breakfast, Trail Kinks

2007-02-08T12:00:00.000-08:00

I wake up at 6. I sit at the breakfast table at 6:30 to find a French couple, who want to speed through the Circuit in five days, diligently shoveling Muesli. Bleary eyed, I pour cereal and reach for the milk and the French girl says politely in Spanish that it is their milk and that’s when I notice "Greg" written on the carton in big letters. Regardless I get the urge to choke them with their Muesli for being so petty. Omar arrives and makes a plain omelet for me. The table gradually fills with other trekkers and as I reach for another tea bag, Omar says something about other people. I assume that he means that the tea is running low so I put it back. He grabs my plates from me and tells me, sorry, he must wash them, others must eat. I shrug and leave the table and he rolls his eyes like I’m an idiot, and he complains, in Spanish, about how long I’ve been at the table.

The bus arrives at 8 and we ride down another dirt road toward the park. We soon approach the jutting towers on the horizon. They are clearly magnificent. We stop at the admission gate to buy our tickets and I realize that I am at my stop. According to a sign in the office, The Circuit is closed, but I decide almost immediately to disregard this. I shoulder my pack and walk down the road with the Torres looming on my left. My pack already is weighing me down and its so cumbersome, I have an ominous feeling about the next week.

For the first few hours I think I am alone on this stretch of trail, but I take a break and another couple passes me. I walk through a cow pasture and around cattle into muddy fields, and this trail is not feeling very wild. After a mere 18 km I’m doubled over with fatigue on a flat, smooth stretch of trail. I pale to think how I will make it up passes and over rough terrain. I eat my lunch at Camp Seron, a small horse ranch, and think about it. I start fiddling with the straps on my backpack trying to get a better fit. I see what I imagine to be an American redneck and his son smoking and taking a break. As they pass me its clear that they’re two young Norwegians finishing up The Circuit in the opposite direction.

The adjustments make a big difference and I get a renewed burst of energy and confidence for the next stretch of trail. And just at the right time, since my first test is ahead of me, a steep hill crosses a very windy saddle. When I cross I see a dramatic bird’s eye view of mountains and Lago Paine. In the mood for celebration, I shout down at the lake. The way down is rolling and I eventually hit woods and water again and I’m getting very tired again. The last 5km to camp drags and I overtake small hill upon small hill expecting Lago Dickson to be visible from the crest. I consider, as the light fades, making an illegal camp on the spot and risking expulsion from the park, but saving my tail. The trail broadens and turns sharply uphill. I have a very good feeling this time, and there it is like a beacon, horses grazing, a group of tents and a refugio cabin, Camp Dickson.

I nearly slide down the loose rock into the valley. When I arrive, the young caretaker asks, "Como estas? Cansado?" Si! I set up camp and quickly boil two packets of ramen before darkness sets in completely.

Getting Ready

2007-02-08T11:49:00.000-08:00

Everything today revolves around getting ready for my trip on the circuit. I eat an Omar breakfast and do some food shopping, then replace water bottles that are now rolling in the holds of various Argentinian buses. I buy a map from the store and a bus ticket from Omar. I stop at Erratic Rock to get a briefing on TDP from the mate sipping American . His information is helpful to be sure. I rent a backpacking stove and at that point my preparation is complete and I pack my bag. I watch DVDs the rest of the afternoon with some Irish blokes. Requiem for a Dream is particularly strange and good. I eat and I return to packing mayhem in my room. Everyone is prepping for a trek. Everything settles, soon enough, and I call it an early night for the early one tomorrow.

Early Departure

2007-02-08T11:43:00.000-08:00

I spend my last day in Ushuaia in rest. I send out postcards and do a little reading and relax for the challenging Torres Del Paine circuit. When I tell Luca, the Italian, cigarillo smoking proprietor, I’m leaving, he says "finally! I thought you were living here."

The hostel is still noisy when I try to get some early sleep. I’m in for a restless night. The Irish woman on the lower bunk has an early bus into Rio Gallegos. At my request, she nudges me awake at 4:30 AM. I eat my remaining fruit, since it cannot come with me across the border to Chile, and walk down the street already glowing in first morning light.

I board the bus with a large group of mostly Germans and a few French for another 15 hour journey. We ride the ferry once again and file through customs. It soon becomes apparent that we are running too late to make the connecting bus. An Israeli girl with a nose ring walks to the front of the bus to inquire and she comes back with a dubious answer. The head of a German tour group goes to the front to ask more questions. We are dropped off at a police checkpoint outside of Punto Arenas where we will be picked up by the connecting bus.

We stand along the side of the road in the coming dusk and wait. The bus arrives and we are shuttled into a rainy Puerto Natales. I walk to the popular Erratic Rock Hostel and have a bad feeling about my chances for a room, and alas the gregarious balding Oregonian proprietor confirms that they’re full and points me around the block to another hostel. I walk in on some backpackers eating dinner and they tell me to shout "Omar!" The beds are lined with plastic and have no sheets, but it’s a place to lay my head. Omar tells me his home is my home.

I walk to a restaurant where half my bus is by this time eating, as well as one of the bus stewards, an odd, but funny guy who uses mime to communicate. I eat salmon and an avocado salad and pay 4300 pesos for it, which could be $100 for all I know about the Chilean exchange rate (Note: about $8). Nevertheless I pay it and return to the hostel for glorious sleep.

Canon de las Ovejas

2007-02-08T11:34:00.000-08:00

The bus to Pto Natales leaves on Wednesday. Today’s Monday so I decide to explore the last of the trails that originate in Ushuaia. I weave my way through the omnipresent schoolchildren who just completed the trail. The way goes along a stripped railbed which transitions into a muddy pasture road. This leads to a waterfall. I cross a beautiful, marshy, sloping horse pasture with bogs and stands on dead trees and fallen logs against a backdrop of craggy peaks.

This is the start, a sign indicates, canon de las ovejas, so intrigued I follow the pasture road into a valley surrounded by tall peaks and towards a snowy range in the distance at the end of a stream. I climb a ladder over the pasture fence and find markers for a trail. It gently slopes up into the forest paralleling the stream through more swampy terrain. The way turns sharply downhill and then out of the woods for good and onto a sizeable scree slope. The trail then follows narrow banks in the scree undulating up the slope until it finally continues up the valley again, where I want to go.

The yellow markers guide me across the exposed slope intermittently through bushes across more scree and over steep slopes of lingering snow. I dig my boots into the snow hoping I don’t slide into oblivion. My boots, after drying in the past day, are soaked once again.

I reach the range with small glaciers clinging to the rockface and narrowing to thin waterfalls cascading down the cliffs into the canyon. One large scoop of snow has fallen off one of the glaciers causing a big scar in the glacier. The trail winds up to a pass and I cross some snow to the top.

It was getting late, 7pm, as I retrace my steps through the horse pasture. The horse eyes stare at me either out of curiosity or malice, but not wishing to test the correct interpretation I step gingerly past them. I make it back to Cruz del Sur at 9, dinner is in full swing, but I manage to cook and eat a decent meal for once.

No Direction

2007-02-08T11:27:00.000-08:00

I eat a long breakfast, chat a bit with Mia, then I take off down the road in search of Valle de las Ovejas. As I go down the highway I come to another town, this one more intensely industrial than Ushuaia with cargo crates piled along the shore, more barges and less frills. I cross a bridge over a river and check my map and turn around and pick up the road I missed. I walk by cabanas and homes, horsefarms and a nursery with greenhouses. Roads with no names, no signs spur out everywhere and my map fails to give specifics so I continue on faith, which isn’t often reliable. The road narrows and becomes deeply rutted. I pass a perro cuidado sign and the dogs in question track me down. A sheep dog shoots me a wary look and his cohort slinks underneath a gate and they cut me off and start growling. This convinces me I’m going the wrong way.

The next way I try seems wrong as well, so I acknowledge defeat and turn around. I settle in at the hostel finding lunch and starting Moby Dick. Mia comes back, not to thrilled with TDF, or Ushuaia, a cynic if there ever was one. She' s disappointed in the lack of beavers, of all things. I let her read my journal, as I promised the day before, and I continue reading. She leaves to fly back to the north of Argentina and suddenly I’ve lost my entertainment in Ushuaia.

Two Paths

2007-02-07T13:56:00.000-08:00

I head towards the top of town not quite sure where I’m going but I manage to guess my way there and I find the Glaciar Martial trailhead, and I have another muddy, boggy yet beautiful trail to myself. I cross a road and see the chairlift to the top. But chairlifts are for skiing. The way gets steeper and muddier and then emerges from the woods, crosses a stream and leads past a refugio based at the top of the chairlift.

I skip across logs and rocks to cross a bog. A young American couple complain, "Why did we come this way? Because we’re stupid, that’s why." The crowded snout of the glacier is populated with everyone from old Argentinian couples to European backpackers and American tourists. I walk across the well trodden glacier and continue up a steep trail with loose stone. And the way becomes noticeably chilly and windy.

After a long slog, I cross a couple more rocky hills and some snowfields to face a bowl of craggy mountains. A girl gazing off one of the hilltops turns around and motions to me. She’s used up her batteries, she explains to me in Spanish, and she wants to borrow mine. She snaps a few pictures and tells me MUCHisimo gracias and offers me her trail mix. I lunch on the vista before turning back toward warmer climes. On the way back the trail I encounter a Norwegian couple I noticed on the bus to Ushuaia. She gives me a cute smile while her boyfriend grunts out a hello.

There’s a lot of daylight remaining when I reach the road so I walk towards another trail further east. I pass through meadows and enter the woods once again, climbing and feeling the fatigue starting to settle in. But I press on compelled by the curiosity of where the trail will end.

I surpass the treeline and cross some deep snow. I’m chilled and rain showers start falling. I set a deadline for 6:30 and keep moving finally spotting a sign for a laguna. I lose the trail so I point myself towards a saddle and cross the mossy talus.

The laguna is slushy and nearly frozen over even as it approaches summer. I turn around and follow the stream back down, having lost the trail hopelessly this time. As I hop dead trees and push through vines and bogs, I’m still not sure, so following the stream is still my surest bet. Once the way becomes too treacherous, I climb up the ravine and search for the trail in earnest, and I find it fairly easily.

I make it back, a 26 km day, and eat whatever’s left in my pack for dinner. In my dorm an Israeli girl, Mia, comes in and immediately talks about her adventure around South America. She makes me laugh so I’m happy to listen.

A ride home

2007-02-07T13:40:00.000-08:00

I decide to hike to Tierra del Fuego 20 km away. Its spitting rain and I layer clothing, this time, pull on gloves and a hat not wanting to get caught off guard by the weather. A group of backpackers in front of me try to hitch their way to the park, unsuccessful the whole time they’re in my sight. Beautiful snow covered crags and horse farms line the muddy dirt road along the way. I pass by the Tren fin del Mundo, that looks like an amusement park ride, that shuttles back and forth to the park.

I sidetrack onto a trail and down a mossy, muddy, ferny, boggy hill full of roots and clover, a nice switch after a month or so of desert environment. I walk to the lake and down a muddy path and I have the place nearly to myself passing a tour group on occasion, or a backpacker couple. The drizzle continues, but I’m walking briskly and I keep warm. At the end of the lake trail I pick up a road to a campsite and look for batteries for my exhausted camera at the confiteria, to no avail. I eat my lunch at a picnic table.

Now 27 km into my day, I continue down another trail and climb a mountain stepping up slippery footholds and muddy slopes that slide beneath my soles. My feet sink into bogs and saturated moss. The four kilometer trail seems much further. I finally cross a mud pit alongside a small stream to another mossy bog. Snow and crags are all that’s ahead of me. I can’t resist climbing, but its getting late, even for me, and my day is eclipsing 30 km. The summit appears elusive so I turn around knowing I’m setting myself up for a dark walk home, but at least not in the wilderness.

At km 35 a young man in a transporte van asks me "a Ushuaia?" He insists, "suba." and I get in. He asks others, along the way, the same question, so I assume he’s collecting fares. He sings along to the latin faux Brittany on the radio and shows me points of interest along the way. We dodge a swooping hawk in pursuit of a rat or a rabbit, he says.

He lets me off in front of my hostel, my small noisy hostel, and when I ask him the fare, he plainly states "nada." I thank him profusely. This leaves me time to drop off laundry.

Fifty hours to El Fin del Mundo

2007-02-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

I start a fifty hour journey on an old bus sparely supplied with a liter of water and weak, sugary, coffee. The steward hands us each a packet of Maty’s cookies with a psychotic looking clown pictured on the front. I find out that the dull, coastal, oil town of Rivadavia is my layover of eight hours until my next bus to equally bland Rio Gallegos, my second stop on the way to Ushuaia. It’s a blustery Patagonic spring day with snow flurries. To pass the time, I surf the net and go to a café and a pizzeria. The espresso doesn’t even dent my fatigue.

The bus to Rio Gallegos is almost an hour late, and we cross the desolate beauty that is Patagonia. We arrive at an hour late, as well, 5am, but this works out for the better. The next bus to Ushuaia is not until 9am. I rush through the cold and into the bus station with its sheet metal that makes it as inviting as a warehouse, but its gloriously warm and I snooze in fits and starts. Other travelers, as buses arrive, do the same, and the whole place has the feel of an emergency shelter. A whole line of backpackers are splayed out napping atop their bags on the floor.

The boleterias start opening at 8am and I go in search of a ticket to Ushuaia. They’re sold out, at least the company I first try, and I’m sunk, until I find their competition the next booth over. The bus leaves in an hour.

Another eleven hours and no food on this bus as well. We go through Argentine, Chilean, Argentine and then Chilean customs once again. Our bags and passports are scrutinized for the small strip of Chile we happen to be passing through. We reach the ferry on an extremely windy day and the bay is whipped into a frenzy of whitecaps. Once our bus pulls onto the ferry, several people get off to explore the boat. We have to brace ourselves on the deck in order not to fall over and into the drink. I’ve had my fill of storminess and get back into the bus. Out on the water, waves of spray wash over the eight foot sides of the boat and inundate the entire bus.

We are squarely in Argentina and the Andes reemerge in the horizon. Lakes and snow filled craggy peaks pass by the window, and then there is snow on the ground. We descend into the beautiful, if no longer so much frontier town of Ushuaia in the light of 9pm. I check into the Cruz del Sur hostel, shower and eat and sleep with great anticipation.

Trouble on Cerro Catedral

2007-02-07T13:29:00.000-08:00

I’m up too early. I’m up before the hostel lobby is open. But the clock finally strikes eight and I have three cups of peach yogurt and head out the door on another showery day in search of a bus to Cerro Catedral. I wait in the chilly breezes for what seems like hours at the bus stop. Several groups of people are picked up and more take their place. I’m about to start walking when I see a sign that tells me for sure that the bus will stop here eventually. It finally does.

I start climbing Cerro Catedral. The rest of the bus scouts for lift tickets. I’m in my windbreaker and I pull on a llama hat. This feels like plenty as I generate heat plodding up the mountain. I jump a stream and lumber straight up the slope of a steep hillside. I reach patches of snow which soon coalesce into a full mantle of grainy slush and ice. I see patches of pure white scattered here and there, fresh snowfall.

I dig my boots into the sloping snow until I pick up a snowcat trail which leads to a lodge halfway up the mountain. I catch up with the snowcat digging a road through the snow which is still layered several feet thick at this altitude.

The wind accelerates as I go higher and it starts to snow. I follow slalom poles to the top. When I get there I’m buffeted by the stiffest wind gust I ever felt in my life. A several story tall cabin, lodge and refugio stands at the top with a long menu of hot food and drinks and a sign, abierto. But its most definitely cerrado. There are picnic tables on the deck if it wasn’t for the howling winds and snow squalls. Snow is piled six feet high on the side of the cabin. Even in this weather I go in search of a back trail down the mountain.

But I never find it. Instead the snow sandblasts my face from the wind that nearly knocks me off my feet. I follow the rocks that jut from the mountain crest and try to keep in constant motion so the cold doesn’t overwhelm me. I reach an impasse, a very steep slope of snow which may be possible to pass, but the consequences of slipping or the snow breaking away look dire. If I break a bone or even twist an ankle, death is a possible outcome.

After scouting the area, I scramble down a rock outcropping towards a lodge a quarter mile away but hundreds of feet lower. I cross a small slope to another outcropping, but it soon becomes clear that the slope is still perilous. The choices are narrowed down to one, I’m turning back. The cold aided by the wind is penetrating by now. I repeat a mantra of reassurance that all will be well and that I can do this. I retrace my footprints and the way back goes by surprisingly quickly. I lope downhill as quickly as I can manage. I’m soon on a muddy, snowless road with a light mix of rain and snow falling on my head. I tell an instructor of some sort how far the snowline begins so he can bring his class there, and then I pass the group themselves noisily negotiating the hill.

I end up back at the bus stop feeding on cookies as I wait. I doze on the bus and nearly miss my stop. I go in the hostel bathroon and peel off my mud stained pants and soaking socks and change into clothing of questionable cleanliness, head out the door to catch my next long bus ride with a half hour to spare.

Chocolate by the Lake

2007-02-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

I pack and finish American Psycho. We gather outside. The hostel mates I never knew hand the bags to the top of the jeep and we start the precarious ride down. And I’m staying in Bariloche for at least one more day. The way to Rio Gallegos, the stop before my ultimate destination, Ushuaia, is not just long, but in two legs and not catered the entire way. It doesn’t leave until tomorrow. The clerk hand writes my ticket, not very auspicious.

I sign in at 1004 Hostel and go into Bariloche to find some famous Mamuschka chocolate. I eat over half the delectable box on a bench overlooking Lago Huapi. I read The Jungle Book that night while the rest of the hostel divides into cliques. I feel isolated once again. I can neither read or summon up the gumption to join anyone, so I go to bed.

Mulling over espresso and American Psycho

2007-02-07T13:22:00.000-08:00

I wake up on a showery day and a rainbow arches form town to over Cerro Otto. I am up early, way before everyone else. I finally master the Italian espresso maker and decide that I want one of these.

The rain continues, and I feel beat up, so I stick to the indoors today. The showers arrive in blurred waves over the mountains. I read a hostel copy of American Psycho, the most disturbing book I ever read, but hard to put down for the same reason. I turn the pages while watching the day pass. A loud group of Dutch stoke the fire. I read through the afternoon and evening getting up only to change position and then make dinner. I fall seventy pages short of finishing the 400 page novel. I tell the hostel hostess, a Swiss immigrant named Ana, that I want to leave in the morning, but she’s not sure there will be room for me on the jeep, but shortly after she concludes that there is.

Walking a Bike

2007-02-07T13:03:00.000-08:00

I get out the door as early as I can muster to walk into town. I pass a group of gauchos on horses gathering in the parking lot wearing traditional garb for a parade I have to skip in favor of adventure. I'm outfitted with an old orange GT mountain bike and a bag, but no map. I find an outdoor shop that sells a good one with icons to indicate mountain biking trails.

I ride towards Cerro Catedral, this time bypassing it to circumnavigate a sizeable lake, Lago Gutierrez. I find a dirt road aside the lake that passes campsites before climbing towards the village of Cerro Catedral once again. I pass wild apple trees and encounter a couple with a child taking a walk. A truck fishtailing wildly passes me, but nothing else does until I enter the village. I eat my lunch and determine the rest of my route, unsure of which road I take next. I spot a group of bedraggled trekkers head up a dirt road and that’s where I go. I find a narrow path of smooth singletrack and follow it. I cross a stream over a precariously angled log with my bike shouldered. The mountain streams by this time become more frequent and are filled with spring melt. The trails are barely maintained and often washed out and I spend much of my time pushing my bike up and down steep banks. I reach a brisk, but somewhat narrow stream with no bridge and I have to get my feet wet. A trekker on the opposite side helps me across the icy flow by grabbing my bike.

From then on, I’m mostly walking. I reach a washed out stream and lug my bike on my back, and tossing my bike on the bank while I climb. After a few kilometers of this, I find the junction, to my relief, leading downhill to, I’m hoping a level and smooth path around the rest of Lago Gutierrez. There are precious few more opportunities to ride. I pass a couple of more mountain bikers, a guy and his frustrated girlfriend and I soon find out why the consternation. At the bottom is a lengthy string of deadfall and overgrown trail, icy stream crossings and a trail that undulates up and over cliffsides. The map lied. This is not mountain bike territory no matter the skill level of the cyclist. I struggle through bamboo stands. I say a little prayer before I balance the bike on my back and cross a narrow log above a turbulent river.

The trail ends at the base of a spectacular waterfall cascading in several stages off a mountain face and I hear the distant shouts of people swimming in a lagoon too far away for me to see. But I’m tired and its getting late and I press on along the edge of the lake. The highway and some cabanas come into view at long last.

I reach a dirt road, but I am disheartened. The lawns look too freshly manicured to be public. I soon spot fences and private property signs and I tense in anticipation of the imagined guard dogs, but they never appear. I’ve reached the grounds of exclusive cabanas which I find no apparent way around. I finally decide to crawl beneath the fence balancing on the narrow strip of rocky beach aside thorn bushes that border the fence. I am forced to wade through frigid streams and to step into the equally cold lake several times. I follow a group of Argentinians ahead of me to a road where the fence finally ends. The road leads to a packed campground and I continue until it leads me to the highway.

I wearily pedal against the wind, even small hills testing my endurance. Ordinarily this highway would be a magnificent ride along a white capped lake and a horseshoe of snowy peaks. I have just over an hour to arrive back in Bariloche, but the missing variable is the distance. I’m not sure where I am. I grab handfuls of wheat crackers and press on, refusing to check my clock again until I reach town. I finally do with fifteen minutes to spare before the bikeshop closes.

The bike shop clerk asks if I’m alright. Where did I go? I show him and he congratulates me. With dirt smeared shorts and abrasions covering my shins and calves, I return, in the dark, up Cerro Otto. A wave of fear comes over me as three dogs seem poised to attack me, and bark in warning. I hold my breath and the dogs let me pass, all bark after all. I soon reach La Morada and a crowd eating dinner at 9:30. After a rejuvenating shower, I cook a big meal and I relax before getting some richly deserved sleep.

Taking my new, shoddy camera to Cerro Catedral

2007-02-07T12:57:00.000-08:00

I tromp, gingerly, down steep Cerro Otto, not accosted by any dogs this time. I make the 5km lakeside walk back into Barlioche passing the chalet style cabanas in construction on every spare bit of land. I go into one of the famous chocolate shops. One of the clerks donning a red scarf on her head asks if I need help, but I don’t know where to begin, so I feign miscomprehension, though I briefly stare down some tiramisu and shaved chocolate. The day before, I had discovered a jammed lens on my camera so I take it today to one of the many shops. Repair is futile so, after a few moments, I pick out the cheapest Kodak digicam, which is still no bargain, and half heartedly pack it away feeling the sting of 500 pesos.

Half the day is already past. I eat a brief lunch and trek away from town borrowing my Irish roommate’s map, but not sure of my destination. Before too long, many lakeside cabanas later, I spot a sign for Cerro Catedral and this looks intriguing. I turn down the road leading eleven km further to the ski resort not sure how I’ll get back before dark.

I follow the road and look for a trail and I find a jeep road and try that instead. This leads to a cluster of multi story chalets at the base of the ski resort, Cerro Catedral. I dunk my head underneath a roadside spring to take the edge off the heat. The resort is mostly deserted with several ground attendants working and tourists milling about and riding the ski lift. A lovely, modern gondola station lay
idle for the season.

I find a maintenance road on the ski hill and take the twisting and steep way to the top, my knee barely holding on. I cross remnants of snow fields and a way station below the summit. If I turn back now I will make it back, but the last kilometers will be in the dark. I hobble back down the hill with my gimpy knee and spot a public bus stop in the parking lot. I hobble even faster hoping to get a ride into town. I make it in plenty of time. I am about to board when the driver mumbles "alli" and gestures towards the kiosk packed with people. I board with the rest finding the last seat in the back of the bus.

Bariloche

2007-02-07T12:38:00.000-08:00

And we arrive, as advertised, in the Alp-like resort of Bariloche, also a former Nazi hideout. Christmas trees and snow capped peaks abound, but they're not nearly as high as those to the north. Most top out at about 2000 meters, slightly below my home of Flagstaff.

I start my slog form the bus station and as the kilometers pass, I realize the center of town is much further away than I thought when I looked at the LP map. Four kilometers further, balancing two backpacks and my LP, I find my way to the Bariloche Center and up a cargo elevator ten floors to the penthouse hostel, 1004. I want to go to their sister hostel La Morada, isolated on the slopes of Cerro Otto, and I’m only here to wait for a ride. I’m instructed to buy groceries and come back in two hours.

After wandering the town, I lug my groceries up to the tenth floor and wait. I’m piled into the back of a jeep with a bunch of bricks while my new Irish cohort scores the front seat. We switchback up and increasingly steep and rutted jeep road as I wait for the pile of bricks to tumble down and crush me. Instead, my eggs fall on the floor, but I lose only one.

We are here at La Morada and the view is amazing like a Lake Tahoe vista. I eat and take a late afternoon hike up Cerro Otto following a trail that leads straight up following the gondola lines that go to the top. I walk a road for the last short leg and walk past a refugio, a revolving restaurant and a kiosco all closed for the season. I stop at a mirardor and follow the raptor like journey of some paragliders first being uplifted above the summit by updrafts and then slowly swooping into town far below and landing in a soccer field.

I try to find a more gradual trail back down that won’t aggravate my sore and possibly injured knee. I finally find one that starts to descend at a slight slope past a refugio cabin, but quickly turns impossibly steep and I begin to notice a pattern. I’m impeded by a fence blocking the trail and as I try to find a detour I’m met by a woman speaking rapid Spanish which soon transitions into perfect English once she realizes who she’s dealing with. She’s a middle aged missionary, I assume, originally from Poughkeepsie, NY, now living in Bariloche after spending some time in Chile. She leads me down the mountains past innumerable dogs and I thank her and am silently glad she didn’t try to minister to me. I find the cerro trail back up once again and push my diminished legs towards the hostel, dinner and sleep.

Into Caves, Under Bushes

2007-02-07T12:30:00.000-08:00

Over dry toast, I talk with an aging German woman who was visiting friends in Brazil. We talk about travel in the Middle East and she tells me that, apart from the kidnappings, it’s a very nice place to travel. I leave to start my day of nothing, stopping off at Norte supermarket and getting food for the day. I nap underneath a bush along the beach and then wander to the pier and back again. Then I head off to the post office, after their long siesta is over, to mail some postcards and meet my Irish friends and we exchange awkward hellos.

I return to my bush, lazing on a warm day after some chilly weather in previous days. A group of teenage girls engage in sand wars screaming and chasing one another. The blonde one instigates, and torments the rest until they finally surround her, take her down and smother her in a barrage of sand.

I walk to the end of the beach to find a place to urinate. The beach tapers to a white, moonscape outcropping of rock in which I find a small sea cave and relief is at hand. The rock is pocked with pores that make perfect footholds and I climb until better sense and cowardice overwhelm me.

Coming back from the cave, to my surprise, I have to wade across the incoming tide. It pounds in at a surprising rate. The cave I was exploring minutes before is quickly filling with gulf water. I climb the rock at a place with a less daunting slope. It is not long until my bus so I walk back along the suddenly narrow beaches. My Irish friends are waiting for the same bus as well. I board and find my assigned seat in the back of the bus and sleep until I’m awoken to eat a cold spinach crepe.

Whales and a Dusty Tour

2007-02-07T12:21:00.000-08:00

I wake up to another breakfast of dry toast, marmelada and weak coffee before being called, along with the Irish couple in my room, to the tour bus. We are touring the wilds of Peninsula Valdez today, guided by our tall, unshaven reggae loving guide, Marco. We see capyberas, rheas and guanacos. The driver slams on the brakes and backs up every time we spot some Patagonic fauna.

We start the morning at Puerto Piramedes where whale watching vessels are being towed to and fro on the beach. A retriever wades in the gulf for a long while. Groups pass by in long yellow raincoats and the standard orange life jackets to board raft style boats which are situated closer to the water and closer to the whales. One such raft was named "Moby Dick." We board one of the regular boats.

We quickly spot a right whale and her calf. The captain of the boat has a timbre of genuine excitement in his voice when we spot the whale breaching or showing tail. At one point we are surrounded by whales. A calf comes up to investigate the boat and slides underneath. They sometimes surface showing the white, wart like growths on their heads.

Our group boards the van and continues on to a long peninsula composed of a sand deposition, also the beach side haven for a few dozen sea lions. I spot the tall Israeli and his red headed girlfriend who I hiked with at Aconcagua. I wave and say hello, but don’t linger for small talk.

We file behind an endless string of buses each one towing along a dust plume. The rumbling ride over gravel is growing monotonous and I am reminded why I avoid tours. I think about getting back and picking up my laundry and buying a ticket to Bariloche. I eat one last pizza, from the favored café, with Serrano ham, which I can barely tear through with my teeth.

Cruising the Coast

2007-02-07T12:09:00.000-08:00

The bike rental place I’m looking for is an empty shop, out of business. LP promises that the waterfront is full of bike rental shops, and I have plenty of opportunities to rent a car, but not a bike. I go down the beach a bit further and find a gear rental shop with working bikes. I procure efectivo and comida and I start pedaling to Punta Loma.

My first stop is Ecocentro, a multimedia marine information center, that is full of beautiful displays. The modern and clean bathroom alone makes me happy. I browse the displays and climb the stairs to a tower overlooking the ocean. There’s a library along the wall in case one wants to hang out there for a few hours which wouldn’t be a bad idea.

I continue down a wide, sandy road, never getting deep enough to bog me down. I reach Punta Loma, a popular sea lion viewing point, and the attendant tracks me down to greet me and collect 10 pesos, but I decide to move on. I soon reach an impasse. Large dunes eclipsing 100 feet hem me onto the coast and the road peters out in some smaller dunes. I scamper up a road on a larger dune barely keeping my footing on the steeply pitched pebbles and sand. I’m not sure who in their right mind would and could follow this road with a vehicle.

I roll and carry my bike through thorny flora, occasionally stepping over guanaco guano, but never spotting the actual animal. I cross and climb washes and finally come to rest on a dune overlooking the ocean and eat my lunch. I return along the beach and the sand and rock shelf on the coast is a great medium for riding. I head towards some sand cliffs riding atop the undulating white rock intermitantly growing seaweed in its divets. I catch my tire in a colony and slip into a murky seaweed filled hole which sucks me in and I have a difficult time getting out.

I steer as far as I can from the seaweed on the way back and find my way back to the road much quicker than my journey from it.

I cruise back, passing the familiar landmarks quickly. All’s well until I pedal up the last hill and feel myself starting to bounce and fishtail. I have a flat tire almost three kilometers from home. Rather than trying to negotiate the tiny pump I start to hoof it home pushing the bike. This is when I fully realize the pain and stiffness in my left knee. I aggravated it while riding the leaden bike in Mendoza and now its reaching its full, painful, potential. I hobble down to the beach and plot out the straightest line I can to where I estimate the rental place should be. I return the bike, which in addition to the flat, is splotched with sand and bits of seaweed. The young attendant wishes me suerte.

I while my time away writing postcards and sipping a submarino at Havannah before dinner which is a much worse version of pizza than the night before.

Nemo

2007-02-07T12:05:00.000-08:00

I arrive after the longest bus ride of my life, 24 hours, which I spend, mercifully, almost completely on my own. For the last couple of hours a mother and child sit next to me, and the child started screaming. The mother had forewarned me about ruido. Astutely the steward cues up the next DVD, Finding Nemo. "Nemo!" the child squeals. "Que suerte," coos the mother, "Nemo! Que suerte!"

In Puerto Madryn, I find my hostel through some afternoon sprinkles. I go out in search of food. Towards the pier, a rainbow is superimposed against an orange sky. I’m officially in Patagonia and the prices go up accordingly. I can’t find a restaurant meal for under 30 pesos. I find a restaurant specializing in forty varieties of pizza and it is among the tastiest pies I’ve had in my life.

Sweet Idleness

2007-02-07T11:54:00.000-08:00

It starts out as a brilliant day. I take a book along and sip a doble at Havannah café, an Argentinian chain, and also a freshly squeezed jugo de naranja with an ice cube. Noone says a word as I linger over an hour at my table on the pedestrian mall under the sycamore trees. I get up finally and mill around town and settle in the park to continue my general laziness and its sweet.

Towards midday I migrate south of town in search of a renowned lomito (an Argentine style steak sandwich) joint. As appetizers I get bowls of peanuts and potato chips and my usual Fanta. The main course is a lomito on a toasted long roll topped by tomato and cheese, a sweet thousand island type dressing and a couple of fried eggs. I find another park in the center of town and lay beside the fountain and continue reading.

At first I’m not sure if the stray drops falling on me are diverted from the fountain by the wind or coming from the sky. But the grey clouds tell me what I need to know. I high tail it to the gelateria down the street. As I cross the street towards the shop a young man holding fliers looks up and smiles at the rain. The customers eating their gelatos stare at the downpour as if it hasn’t rained in years.

In the commotion of securing the outside seating from the rain, the waiter never takes my order, but I get shelter out of the deal, if not another sundae. My bus for Puerto Madryn is leaving in an hour. As I mount my backpack on my shoulders, the downpour renews itself with and even more torrential reincarnation. I wait underneath the pavillion of the Facundo Parilla for the rain to abate. It never does completely, but after weeks in the desert I can use a little watering.

Aconcagua

2007-02-05T22:05:00.000-08:00

I do force myself up, somehow, at 5 and I’m out the door walking briskly across the deserted city except for a popcorn stand that for whatever reason remained open throughout the night. I get there early. We pile on the bus, a few tourists, but mostly locals. One of the river guides from my raft trip takes this bus to work.

The barren foothills gradually transition into towering Andean peaks over 4k meters. We pass a small ski resort and then stop at even smaller Puente del Inca with a small Quechan souvenir market with llama wares and a few crystals thrown in.

I walk to the orange creamsicle mineral formation this site is renowned for. There are barriers blocking entrance to the site and with the gaping holes on the boardwalk leading there, it becomes apparent why. I walk back and find a small market selling provisions and purchase fruit juice, bananas, tangerines and a salami and take off for another unknown destination. Another group of travelers stop me and ask if I speak English. When they ask if I know what I’m doing, I shrug.

I meet what turns out to be a group of four Israelis on the road again. They found out about a small lagoon on the way to Aconcagua, so I join them. They’ve been to most of the places I’ve been so far, but stopping at Cachi and Calfayate as well. The tall one hands me a brochure for bikes and wines, an organized bodega tour, but I’ve had my fill of bodegas and bikes for now.

A valley opens up to give a clear view of Aconcagua, caked in an impermeable layer of ice and snow. It’s a month and a half until trekking season which doesn’t seem like enough time to melt much more of the snowpack. Footpaths weave up the valley, so it appears reasonable to follow and assume they lead someplace and they do. We take a break and the Israelis share a roll filled with dulce de leche with me. They urge me to see Puerto Madryn and the whales since the mating season is winding down within a month.

The sign I spot for the ranger station makes it official, we are on the right path. A large St Bernard belonging, aparrently, to noone in particular follows us, comically walking in and out of my path and body checking me. The red headed girl asks me if I ever saw a dog with such a big head before and I shake my head incredulously.

We reach a snowfield and the Israelis start snapping pictures. The tall one tells me there is a single mountain in Israel that gets sufficient snow to support a ski area. The St Bernard, meanwhile, is having a blast. First he eats the snow, then he rolls and writhes on it. He runs full tilt around the snowfield looking as if he was about to plow down one of the Israelis.

At the ranger station, a young female ranger emerges and hands us maps for the kilometer trail around the mountain lagoons. The wind funnels through a gap in the mountains with such intensity that it is hard to walk at times. It picks up bits of gravel and dust that blasts our faces. We reach an Aconcagua lookout and the St Bernard poses with some schoolchildren and then abandons us for a younger crowd.

We explore up the trail further and a German couple directs us to a large snowfield one kilometer more. The tall Israeli hopes this is a good place to take pictures. And they do take picture upon picture, at one point trying to take one of the reflection of Aconcagua in a pair of sunglasses. I feel compelled to head up the mountain further, as far as I can in the time that’s left, but I quell that impulse and practice being satisfied with the moment.

Back down at the ranger station, a new ranger explains why the way to an intermediate peak is closed. Originally, the Israelis were going to trek and camp here, but the season for doing so is almost two weeks from starting. The search and rescue is not fully staffed and only they have access to emergency equipment. The ranger himself has summited Aconcagua many times, the first time when he was 16.

I go out ahead of the group somewhat anxious I won’t make it back in time to purchase a return ticket. But I get to the ticket kiosco, that doubles as a souvenir stand, in plenty of time. I linger on a bench waiting for the bus and watch groups of retirees and schoolchildren in turn walking to the puente and through the souvenir market pawing the crystals and crafts and returning to the tour buses. Clouds gather and the wind picks up again and I put on every piece of clothing I brought that day. The Israelis sit in the snack bar, but I feel a little alienated at this point.

A long, strange ride to a bodega

2007-02-05T21:56:00.000-08:00

In the morning, I go in search for a ticket to the base of Aconcagua. I begrudgingly buy one that departs at 6am. At first I can’t understand the ticket salesman’s Spanish and he gets frustrated. He tries to drive home the point that the ticket costs 13 pesos long after I understood the fact. I’m exasperated by the time the exchange is complete, but I reason that its all part of the journey, the only way to cross the barrier, the only way for me to learn to deal with the human race such as it is.

Its getting late and I still haven’t found a bike to rent, so I cut to the chase and find a leaden mountain bike, that I wouldn’t trust on a gravel road, at my hostel. Both tires are flat and the brakes rub against the rims, but I’m willing to try anyway. The concierge and I take turns pumping the tires up with a tiny portable pump until the tires are semi-inflated and just about out of time and patience, I leave it at that. Negotiating the chaotic traffic of Mendoza proves to be interesting, but not as daunting as I feared. The cars, despite all appearances from the sidewalk, work with you. I reach the highway to Maipu, the town central to the bodegas.

Along the way, I pass a constant stream of garbage and a putrid smell, road kill. Dog carcasses in varied states of decomposition lay rotting on the side of the road , some partially wrapped in garbage bags, some not. I pass several bodega signs but continue several more fruitless kilometers on my plodding wheels. I turn around certain that I’ve gone wrong, then finally pick up the exit in question.

I make yet another wrong turn on the road towards the bodegas and add another 8km to my tour. I finally reach the sole bodega I will visit that day, La Rural. I take the tour along with an older American gentleman sporting a Virginia University hat and accompanying a young, shapely, Latina. She is either his interpreter, escort, guide, mistress, or adopted daughter. He affects awe at the most mundane operations of the wine factory and his companion takes pictures of every detail. To my untrained palate, the wine we try is excellent and with that I remount my bike to try to find my way back home, pedaling hard, but feeling like I’m going backwards. My knees are on the verge of exploding.

I sit in the gelato shop and savor an incredible banana split, my desert preceding my not so spectacular dinner that night of bland fettuccine and salmon in cream sauce. I look for an alarm clock to aid me in getting up the next morning at 5am. I think I finally locate one for the unlikely bargain of 7 pesos, with a radio to boot. The salesman records my information down to passport number. I take a stock number to the checkout, and the price he tells me comes as a shock, sesenta y nueve. I take another look at the price tag, and confirm that I looked at the wrong number. I should know to always look for the higher number hidden in the margins, especially after working retail. I have a good laugh and leave the store.

Primero Rio

2007-02-05T21:45:00.000-08:00

A white tourist van picks me up at the hostel. We stop at hostel and hotel until the seats are full, and we go a few dozen kilometers up a canyon below the cordillera which is crowned by Aconcagua, the highest peak in the western hemisphere. We don wet suits and river boots and pick out helmets. We take a bus ride to the launch and push off into the river. I have fun on the rapids and the waves that are full of fresh glacial melt are more than invigorating. One of the three young Englishmen flips out of the boat and disappears for what seems like minutes. He finally emerges and the guide pulls at his lapels and gets him back into the boat. He got stuck underneath the boat for a time. The guide directs him to sit in the middle of the boat while he regains his wits and catches his breath.

The rest of the way goes off without a hitch. We pass some particularly turbulent rapids. Our guide tells us that these will be much bigger in a month or two once the summer melting intensifies. The diminished rapids of late spring are fun regardless. We purposely shoot them backwards and surf a wave by turning the boat sideways on the crest of the wave and the raft is churned as if going through a wash cycle. The icy water splashes into the boat with each churn and I’m chilled to the bone.

For a finale, we shoot rapids that border on class IV and then row into port and start the drying process. The Englishman makes good on our pact: anyone falling from the boat buys everyone a beer. He pours out glasses of weak Quilmes lager. I take a nap by the pool at the rafting headquarter, still hopelessly behind on my sleep.

Back in Mendoza, I try my second super pancho, a long but bland hot dog, and spread on some sweet mustard, and pass on the optional ketchup and mayonnaise that are commonly added. I vow that this one will be my last. I acquire a bodega map for tomorrow, when I plan to independently tour the wineries by bike. I eat at one of the many parillas lined up along the street in front of my hostel, and the waiter chuckles when I refuse wine.

Next Bus

2007-02-05T21:38:00.000-08:00

Today is another travel day. I talk to a French traveler embarking on an expedition atop a 20k volcano for the bargain basement price of $60, a promotional offer. I skip the much needed sleep and look for a ticket to my next destination. I can find no more reason to stay in San Juan. Valle de Luna would be a nice excursion, but its so much like the scenery in Arizona, presumably, that I think its better to move on. I easily find a bus to Mendoza leaving later in the morning.

I hoof it to Winca’s hostel from the bus station. I decide almost immediately to get on the river and white water raft. With an expedition company every third store, this is not a problem. I find one for $40. I visit a restaurant that is reviewed as having the best pizza in Mendoza, but I’m not so sure. It goes down like Pizza Hut. Days behind on my sleep, I call it an early night, preparing for an early morning aventura.

Backwater Barreal

2007-02-05T21:31:00.000-08:00

And exactly what kind of place Barreal is, I’m not sure. But its all up and becomes increasingly beautiful. The snow covered Andes emerge above the foothills. I am the only Gringo, or tourist for that matter, on the bus. I bring warm clothing with me and contemplate finding a cabana for the night, but decide not to. The Andes come into clear view and everyone on the bus has a specific place to go but I. I’m told I’m in Central Bareal, to my surprise, so I get off and cross the length of town. All the shops are closed for siesta at one pm except for one kiosco. I buy an ice cream and a liter and a half of water and I walk towards the mountains.

I pass farms and cabanas advertising expediciones. Motorbikes and rickety bikes go by along with the usual packs of dogs. I weave past farms with horses, chickens and roosters towards the mountains. I hit a crossroads. Mary is there, enclosed in glass. I follow the road through an impromptu junk yard to an impasse, a rushing river fed by snowmelt. It is frigid, wide, fast flowing and insane if not impossible to cross by foot. I follow upriver hoping to find a bridge or a narrow crossing.

Nothing exists. I leap across several tributaries and wade across a wider crossing nearly rendering my feet numb. I find a place to lay down in the grey sand amongst the rocks and take a short nap. I return in the darkness. My timing is perfect for 9pm dinner. I gnaw on tough lomo topped with cheese and ham and drink a liter of Quilmes dark, to pass the time. At nearly 11, I can dawdle here no longer and I go out in the chill air to take a walk. I’m tired to the point of exhaustion and not sure how I will while away the next four hours. I hit a crossroads and afraid of getting lost, turn back. I take a nap in the park until I’m awakened by a brisk wind and the cold. I huddle behind a wall in the central square and hug in my knees to try to keep warm.

Time passes slowly as I check it on my camera every few minutes. Chilled to the bone, I finally notice 3am pass. Several people gather on the streets waiting for the same bus. Mercifully, my seat is on the back of the bus where I can spread out and sleep for most of my journey back to San Juan.

A Long Walk

2007-02-05T21:26:00.000-08:00

Today I hike to a reservoir, Dullum, which sounds attractive in my LP. I go through a long stretch of suburban neighborhoods all lined by yellow tiled sidewalks, past parillas and kioscos until I reach the countryside and army training facilities. I walk between some barren hills until I reach the river and walk up towards what looks like a miniature Hoover Dam, given the geography. On the near end of the dam is a snack bar and motocross course going through the sandy mounds and small hills. On the far side are some scattered waterfront clubs, but no public beaches, and not much activity on the water, from the few glimpses I get from between the hills. There is an abundance of motocross and mountain biking, and guys taking their girlfriends for a ride on their motorbikes for the afternoon.

I turn down a road for a club, bypassing the admission sign, and catch a water view or two. My 40 km hike ends back in town where a fair is taking place. The market in the fair stays open past midnight on a Sunday night and there is a bandstand with singing. I sit down in a pizza parlor and eat a doble mozzarella that’s a rare disappointment. I try to get a good night’s rest before my bus into the Andean town of Bareal the next morning.

Give me The Cure

2007-02-05T21:17:00.000-08:00

Today is another travel day as I finally leave the Salta and Jujuy provinces for good. But first I layover in Jujuy for 8 hours. I eat a hamburguesa with fried egg and pace the length of town.
I take an overnight bus eighteen hours to San Juan. While there, I walk what seems like a far distance down tiled sidewalks, beneath sycamores, lined by deep gutters carrying meltwater from the Andes. Most are fetid and garbage filled and smell quite rot. I am a sweaty mess as I am in a warm climate for the first time since Iguazu. The beaming, pony tailed proprietor of Zonda Hostel asks if I need a towel for a shower.

I eat some very salty, ham filled, lasagna and turn back towards the hostel hoping I’m not arriving back too late. But I’m far from it. I forget that its Saturday night in Argentina. Music and dancing fill the dining room. Recovering from illness, I’m in no condition for heavy partying, and I watch TV for the night and early morning while the concierge pours me complimentary glasses of wine.

The Cure plays and the Argentine revelers sing, "Tell me how you do that trick.." at the top of their lungs.

Salinas Grandes

2007-02-05T21:10:00.000-08:00

I’m sick this morning, but drag my butt to the square regardless. I’m way too early so I wait. The market sets up and opens and one of the women selling her wares directs me to buy water. It soon becomes apparent that she is affiliated with my tour. An older couple, a younger one and I pile into the van. Both the couples reside in Buenos Aires. The van climbs over a 4100 meter pass and descends down again, passing a few guanaco grazing in the desert. The old gentleman snaps pictures almost constantly and replies to statements with a drawn out "ehhhh" which is not helping my headache.

The Salinas Grandes appears as a long stretch of brilliant white disturbed only by an isolated group of rectangular pools dug into the flat. Men with shovels and picks chip away at the crystals and pile them next to the pools. A barely perceivable road is etched on the flat, itself formed in interconnected hexagons.

Some tables, a llama, an owl and part of a house is constructed out of salt. Its very impressive but I want to crawl back into the van and sleep. When we get back I return to the hostel and pull up the covers and resolve not to get up until I feel better, and a fitful twenty hours later, I do.

Leaving with reluctance

2007-02-05T20:59:00.000-08:00

The eye puffiness has subsided a bit and will go back to normal before the day ends. I wait on the patio for Melissa to emerge from sleep. We find a place for coffee and pan caseros, the standard Argentine breakfast. Melissa convinces the café to make the next cup of coffee stronger, since the Tilcara cup is perpetually weak. We are charged a lot for what we get and we leave.

I decide to leave that evening at 6. Purmamarca, my next destination, is not worth spending an extra afternoon in and I weigh that with spending one last afternoon with Melissa. I go to Pukara once again. The pueblo is heavily restored, which disappoints her.

Right as we leave, the tourist buses stream in, but its just about time for me to pack for my bus. Melissa walks to the station and is about to detour to the cyber café since I am a "big boy." I retort, "Only on the outside."

We say goodbye no less than three times. She asks me what would have happened if she hadn’t asked me to dinner that night. I say that I’m sure we would have met anyway since the weird and wacky ones usually find their way to me.

Purmamarca is a retired traveler’s haven. I bumble into a few extensive hostelries that all but slam the door in my face. I finally find the place that’s right for me, a very simple hostel with beds and camping. I return to town to sign up for a ride to Gran Salinas, eat dinner and go to bed.

Wind at my back, dust in my eye

2007-02-05T20:41:00.000-08:00

I entrain myself in the easy rhythm and way of life in Tilcara. I like how at ease I feel and I’m making quick friends of Melissa. I don’t want to leave. But that feeling also tells me its time to leave. I’ve just about exhausted how much I can grow here, and I want to grow along this journey, as much as I want to bask in carefree feelings.

Melissa settles into a chair in the hostel yard to read Gabriel Garcia Marquez all day. I decide to take a hike above the canyon to see how far I can climb into the distant red striated mountains. I meet few other people on this incredibly clear desert day. I follow a dirt road that climbs gradually and passes above the Garganta of the previous day. The catarata looks diminutive from above. I want to climb down to it but I’m bound by private property. I forge ahead.

I finally find a way into the canyon and I lunch here. A lone, native, hiker rushes past with a jacket covering her head for shade and grunts a reluctant "Hola." I’m wary of any more farm dog encounters and I give wide berth to any farms I see. I climb atop some foothills. Snail shells are scattered on the ground. I cannot see a way up to the summit and regardless it is getting late. I turn back to the valley with a brisk wind at my back.

Soon Melissa emerges and we sit in the kitchen and she opens a pack of coca leaves she bought at the market. We sit down and have a long and satisfying conversation. Tea slips into dinner and we find a restaurant with seven peso estafado. My eye, blasted by windblown dust all day, puffs into an itchy ball. Melissa can’t stand to look at me any longer and rushes through dinner.

An older man with a pot belly and long hair is chatting with the proprietor at the hostel and I excuse myself to extract my contacts. The man offers me some eye drops and I hope the sting means its working. The man is in my room, unfortunately, and releases loud farts and snores guturally throughout the night. I go out in the middle of the night and make a packet of soup I find on top of the freezer, and then some coffee.

Finding La Garganta

2007-02-05T20:29:00.000-08:00

I eat breakfast and drop off the laundry, and send the mail and the postman is surprised when I tell him "Estados Unidos." Melissa emerges after 11 hours of sleep. She goes to eat breakfast and to buy provisions for the day and we’re off to search for Garganta once again. And it’s a beautiful, crystal day and I make the correct turn this time after passing the water treatment plant with resident sheep grazing on the grounds. We walk up a trail across a barren hillside strewn with rocks, manure and saguaro cactus, but not much else.

Melissa is not yet acclimated and rests and drinks water frequently. We reach an arrow pointing to the Garganta. We follow a trail steeply descending to a small dam and hydroelectric plant. The water channels into a small cement canal, and after descending a ladder, I follow it into what looks like a tiny railroad tunnel. A small pool of water lay just above the canal and Melissa takes the opportunity to strip into a bikini and wade into the pool and I applaud her for it.

There are no other signs or evidence of a trail so we assume the Garganta is the deep black rock ravine following the dam. Somewhat disappointed we search for some small cataratas upstream to have a picnic next to. Melissa hesitates as she skips the rocks crossing the stream, apparently never gaining a facility for these things growing up in Montreal.

We eat some incredibly succulent roast beef sandwiches. Melissa scouts for a place to nap and I investigate further upstream for bigger and better cataratas, and it doesn’t take long. A spectacular one cascading off a cliff in long beaded threads pounds onto the canyon floor into a very small lagoon. Long grass bows off the rock face on the opposite side where the prevailing wind blows the mist from the falls. On the near side the rock is barren.

I drag Melissa up from her nap and pull her up the rocks. "You’ll curse me along the way," I apologize, "but thank me when we get there." And she does. I reassure Melissa on the way back that I do know the way. A panorama of mountains and canyons lay ahead of us and its all downhill after emerging from the ravine.

In town, Melissa takes me for my first submarino at the café. We sit on tiny chairs on the lone outside table and the poor befuddled waitress snaps our pictures. We drop squares of chocolate into a tall glass of hot milk and the whole concoction is stirred with a long spoon. Specks of soft chocolate float within never quite melting completely. The sun descends over the mountain casting a subtle orange glow over the domes of the chapel which peaks over a shingled roof adjacent to the café.

We rest up for dinner at the hostel. One of my hostel mates shows me how to operate the calefaccion and I feel profoundly indebted to her. I take a wonderfully scalding shower for the first time since Iguazu and I reach a nirvana of sorts.

The hostel mate joins us for dinner that night. She is Melissa’s traveling mate. They chat in Spanish and I am mostly uncomprehending. The gimpy pooch does an elaborate pirouette before curling up in the corner of the restaurant and we all order the lomo and papitas, which are laced with oregano. For me and my $5, the dining experience is dreamy. Melissa, as usual, is very drowsy while the hostel mate and I pick at a side order of papitas. After wrapping herself in a yellow shawl, Melissa leaves. Christina and I briefly argue who will pay more of the bill, each of us insists on it, and then we return to the hostel. I find out that Christina lived for a time in Queens, NY, not far from where I once lived, but Buenos Aires is her home in more ways than one.

Aimless Wandering

2007-02-05T20:13:00.000-08:00

I eat breakfast at a small café, El Mate, buy two liters of water and cross the river in search of a way up the beige and green rock so reminiscent of Arizona. After a fruitless search for an established path, I follow a silty wash that descends out of the maw of the mountain. The omnipresent barking of dogs fades away as the wash ascends and narrows. I spot an Argentine flag on one of the summits. Where there is a flag there is a trail, I reason, but my search fails.

I follow a tributary that could lead me to the top. The terrain is loose rock and loose rock cemented tenuously in place by packed mud. As the way steepens I get the idea that the earth and stone will break easily beneath my feet, so I go back, practically sliding on my ass, to the main wash to find a different way.

I find it. After a couple, brief, easy scrambles up shelves of packed mud and stone, there is a relatively gradual ascent to the top and a panoramic view of Tilcara, and on the other side, a large arroyo and red mountains nestled in the larger range. I know where I want to go next.

I follow some abandoned railroad tracks parallel to the Rio Grande to a trestle, full of gaps and unsafe to cross. It traverses a large, silty arroyo which I will take to the red hills. I pass a farm with the odd looking appendage of a Direct TV satellite dish and I brace for the farm dog to give chase, but not this time. I pass the largest, densest grove of saguaro I have ever seen, that grows more sparse as the red hill ascends.

The arroyo I trace soon narrows to a slot and I feel just a bit more claustrophobic as a few clouds gather overhead and some stray drops start falling. I climb as far as I can, but the way becomes loose, steep and way too precarious and I make my way down having risked all I was willing that day. I spot a stone monument atop a small hill which turns out to be the crest of Pukara. I don’t find a shortcut across the river, so I trod on, the wind, by this time, blowing with some force.

In the Tilcara market, I find a beautifully carved box of distressed wood with a llama a mountain scene carved on the lid. I get a map of the town with it, and a free postcard. I plan my next route on the map and save the postcard. I set out for Pukara, not quite knowing what to expect. I soon understand that I’m on my way to the monument I spotted earlier in the day. I pass gated llama at the entrance and one gives me such a puckered look that I fear it will spit at me, so I exit to the ruins.

They are eerily similar, an analog, to the pueblos in Arizona. This could be Tuzigoot in central Arizona. The houses all look about the same except that the church had an altar for unspecified sacrifices. For some reason, I feel hungry and tried to stave off sugar starvation with a $3.50 Pomero Gatorade. Over a dollar for this, and it seems like the price is jacked up for my benefit.

A place called Garganta del Diablo is noted on my map, and though I’m not expecting anything remotely similar to the one in Iguazu here in the desert, my curiosity is piqued. I climb up the road past a water treatment plan and turn a bend and it soon grows apparent that either the map is wrong or the Garganta isn’t what I expected. The road hugs the mountain then loops back into the highly situated barrios of Tilcara.

The clouds are lowering and gusts blow by with increasing force. Some lightning bolts zap far off mountains, so I make my way briskly towards the hostel. When I encounter chaperones of some high school kids I point in the general direction, correcting for my error in navigation, and hope they don’t mind walking in storms on exposed mountain ridges, a condition a little too scary for my lily liver.

A dog runs with purpose towards home and I walk in the same vein. I make it in just as the storm begins and put on a pot of water. I drink coffee and eat a cylinder of cookies I keep for such an occasion.

I take a very cold shower after I fail to work the calefaccion once again, and change into the last of my clean clothes. A girl, Melissa, sticks her head into my room and invites me out to dinner and I marvel how easy it has suddenly has become here in Argentina.

She’s a sexologist, she tells me, as we open a bottle of wine and I take almost instantly to her, but not because of that. We listen to reggae and talk. But she is nearly falling asleep so we leave. She pops back out of the hostel and a few moments later she is dragging me back out. A Bolivian singer is performing at the café in which I saw jazz the night before. Alas, when we arrive the show is done, but a show of sorts has ended up at our table. A drunk native with missing front teeth serenades us trying to convince us he is part of the act. He chats us up, well, mostly Melissa, and we try to tell him "chau." He finally falls asleep at our table.

Goodbyes in Tilcara

2007-02-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

When I wake up at 5am, the pena is still going strong. Fabian instructs me, bafflingly, to shut the door after him. I, shrug, get my pack ready and follow. He tells me, no, that the women are traveling with me, and he is headed towards the Bolivian border. So we say our goodbyes and in truth it does feel good to go back to bed.

Laura is ill with a headache and stomach pangs that morning when we go to breakfast. I suspect the altitude is getting to her. We part after breakfast to meet that afternoon for the bus to Tilcara. I take one last walk past the market and hike down the road towards San Isidor. Children play along the path as villagers walk their burros. I bottom out in the canyon and turn back in time to make my bus.

I find Laura laid out on the church steps. I sit on the plaza wall and write. We board the bus and a very white American man taps on the window summoning us outside. The ladies have a SUV ride into Humahuaca, the stopover point to Tilcara, but I was rejected. But the ladies deserve a comfortable ride. Beatriz gives me a hug and leaves in the SUV with plans to meet me in Humahuaca.

When I find them again, Beatriz gives me a hug hello, happy that I made it. As I search the town for an ATM I arrive back to the bus and Laura and Beatriz have managed to carry my overstuffed pack to the bus.We buy our three peso tickets to Tilcara and board the bus within a half hour. As I search the town for an ATM I arrive back to the bus and Laura and Beatriz have managed to carry my overstuffed pack to the bus. We pull into Tilcara and I’m taken aback. The town and countryside is beautiful. Its another adobe filled village with funky cafes and artisan shops. Its surrounded by red buttes and beige mountains. The place we stay is like a villa. There are murals on the walls and the toilet tank is of a bygone era, fitted high on the wall with a chord to activate the flush. The lamp shades are the multiholed skeletons of saguaro cactus.

I walk around town briefly and return in time for dinner. I meet up with Laura and Beatriz for our last meal together. The café is playing modern jazz and has a nice, mellow ambience. A dog with a gimpy front leg hobbles through the digs, and she looks familiar. Beatriz makes sense of it for me. The people who own our hostel run this place as well. We order a quinoa stew, corn stew, and a plate of steak and pureed squash. We share plates, as usual. I eat the most sumptuous steak on the planet, I imagine, and I’m no beefeater. Beatriz talks to me about my timidity and the warmth of Argentine culture and the coolness of mine.

I eat most of Laura’s lomo and squash. She is still feeling ill. I say goodbye as they leave for Jujuy and Buenos Aires in the morning. I listen to a hip jazz trio, part native, part beatnik. I return to my hostel sated.

Lesson One

2007-02-05T19:42:00.000-08:00

I awake that night to a ruckus at the door. There are fumbling keys and frantic talking and the hostess comes in and says something in Spanish and Fabian moves his things into my room, further words are exchanged and he moves them back.

In the morning an older woman walks by my door and tells me. "You are not Argentinian."

"No. Estados Unidos." She gives me a sour look and goes back downstairs.

Fabian has already established a rapport with the lady and her friend. I walk down the steps and we all go out for breakfast. Bread, café, two kinds of marmalade, manteca, goat cheese all for half an American dollar. Beatriz tells me, to no great surprise, that she hates Americans. When she sees an American she sees Bush, imperialism, killing, using the world at our disposal with little regard. She asks me if I know about Pinochet and the coup in Chile. Then she asks me if I know about the Argentinian Dirty Wars of the 80s: "The US intervened," she explains to me, and made it worse. I like Beatriz immediately and it doesn’t take long for her to warm up to me as well.

We are looking for a truck to San Isidor. Being who I am, I want to walk, but I keep this to myself. I want to keep the group together. We wait by the plaza as Spanish hippies lay out their jewelery for sale on the plaza, and await the next busload of tourists. The influx is such a trickle that I wonder how they eat, even in Iruya. Beatriz chats with them as they share the mate.

Fabian comes back to say that the next truck will not leave until tomorrow. Beatriz then disappears up the street and comes back with a ride. We breathe in the aire libre as things unfold at a decidely Iruya-like pace. We huddle onto the four chairs set up on the back of the pickup and pull on a woolen blanket. We head up a valley in between red and green shaded mountains past farms, natives on horseback, and Quechans towing pack mules to and from their farms. We splash through the river a dozen times and gradually climb the valley.

Once the stone on the road becomes too loose, we get off and walk the last several hundred meters to San Isidor. Its another small village with a blue steepled church and a mirardor. A cemetery lay high above town on the summit. A pair of goats play in a field and Laura, Beatriz’s companion, hugs one while I take the photo. Our group walks past a Jardin de Ninos and into the village proper to the comedor with llama woven crafts and food. I find a Andean style llama knit hat and pull it on to everyone’s amusement.

Inside a cultural center we meet with a pony tailed Quechan shaman of sorts. He describes the culture and demonstrates some ceremonial instruments that correspond with the seasons. An enormous feathered condor skin, big enough to wrap around a grown man, hangs on the wall. We follow the switchbacks to the mirador and gated cemetery where the dead enjoy a vista over the town where they lived. The stones and crosses are draped in plastic hoops circled with pastel colored plastic flowers. We go back down to the truck with the shaman and pile in.

Its time for coffee again in Iruya, along with pan and queso. The hippies take their spot at a table in an adjacent dining room. We go into town to walk around the open market filled with clothing and work supplies, soccer balls, kettles of food on charcoal, and a papas fritas stand with mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup for condiments. At dinner we order Cordero estafado, a lamb stew, papa and quinoa tortillas and a traditional stew and pass each dish around. We open a bottle of wine. Beatriz gives me a Castelano lesson, "The pouring of the wine." : Deseo un vaso de vino, por favor. Por supuesto! Gracias! De Nada! "Lesson one." Fabian shows me how to twist the bottle after pouring to prevent spilling a drop.

As dark takes hold all of us walk to the mirador to see the town at night. Why does that sign have ice cream written in english, I ask. Fabian tells me that it is a brand name like McDonalds. "This is what I mean!" Beatriz says. So I say, "Cuando construyen un McDonalds en Iruya es el fin del mundo," which earns knowing laughs from my friends.

On top of town in an unlikely posh hotel, so we climb the steps of this apparition. The pristinely appointed lobby, exclusive dining and even the radiators stand in stark contrast to the rest of the town. Finely woven Quechan textiles are displayed under glass and for their price one could have food and accommodation in Iruya for a month. We pose for pictures in the lobby and then return to the dirt, garbage and dung covered cobble. A storm rattles the tin roof of our café. Beatriz whispers to me. She thinks the Quebec man at the next table is a Nazi. She showed him a necklace she received from a Jewish friend and he looked repulsed. I have a bad feeling about him as well and he sets me on edge when he asks me what I’m thinking.

Back at the hospedaje, the women plot out the rest of my route through Argentina. We take turns looking at each other’s photos and get to bed just as the all night pena outside our window stokes up.

Arriving in Iruya

2007-02-05T19:27:00.000-08:00

I eat my breakfast at La Posada this morning. Fabian sits down with me to pan, marmalade and dulce de leche and asks if he could travel to Iruya with me. He tells me about another town, Purmamarca, and the beautiful salt flats, Gran Salinas, and I’m sold. I add it to my itinerary. A rope is handed down from the top of the bus to Iruya and the bags are pulled to the roof and secured. We get into the bus filled mostly by Quechan elders. The bus climbs a narrow cliffside road that no bus should rightfully be attempting, and the tourists in the bus gasp.

We top the 14k Condor Pass and start weaving around the hairpin switchbacks without a clear sense of where the edge is. We cross the line where a bus ride becomes an adventure. Fabian asks for a translation to the English expression when shit runs down your leg out of fear. "Shit your pants."

Iruya is smaller and sleepier than Humahuaca. It is nestled in a canyon and tilted at a steep angle sloping down to another canyon with a wide river bed with narrow channels. The majority of the bed is filled with rock and silt awaiting to be picked up by the next flood. Touts accost us right off the bus and lead us to their hospedajes going for a $2 a night. The first one we walk into is hospedaje Lili. There are simple accommodations here, plain beds and a tin roof and an outside bathroom with no toilet seat. It overlooks the church belfry and the red and green mountains and this is where we stay.

Fabian finds the tourist office. I go to sit down, but instead of disturbing the dead, stuffed cat from the seats, I stand. The agent sells us a small, one page map for 10 centavos and circles the attractions of the town: the mirardor atop of town, Villa Campo, the neighboring peublo and prime spot to take photos of Iruya, and an even more isolated village 10 km upriver and a thousand feet higher, San Isidor.

We hike to the mirador and then walk down again, and cross the river into Villa Campo and up the steep cobble past the adobe houses. Burros and dogs have the run of the streets. We make it to the top of town and are stopped there by private property signs and the sight of Quechan men leading burros down the mountainside switchbacks. The burros carry a few pieces of dilapidated wood on their back for some undetermined purpose. We hear a loudspeaker from Iruya calling for men to do work.

We return to Iruya and rest before dinner. I see a group of schoolboys doing a bobbing and weaving traditional dance in the middle of the street while their instructor whistles the music. At dinner, the waiter writes down the menu on a napkin and hands it to us. I eat two grilled flank steaks and potatoes and Fabian orders a Quinoa (a traditional grain) Tortilla. With our drinks we pay 13 pesos, all told, $2 each. I shake my head to Fabian, "imposible!"

Walking the countryside, running from dogs

2007-02-05T19:13:00.000-08:00

I skip the hostel breakfast to see what I can find in town, thinking I’ll save some money. I find little. I slip into an empty restaurant (not the one pictured) and after some confusion with the waiter as to what I could possibly want there, he brings me weak coffee and a few hard squares of pan and some orange marmalade. What this restaurant functions as I can’t tell, but its definitely not to serve food.

I buy a liter and a half of mineral water from the hostel wet bar for 2pesos. I find a donkey trail over the hills of red clay and rock that look every bit of Sedona, save for the saguaros. I soon find my siren call, a cluster of mountains striated red and green . I start a steady ascent across the rock and thorny shrubs. I follow a dirt road and spot a small village in the distance. I sidetrack towards my destination on a narrower road traversing the base of the mountains. From a tiny hut set up in a wash a dog gives chase so I back away and give the hut and a the dog wide berth.

I switch between traveling burro paths and washes until the wash peters out to rivulets, an ominous sign. I reach the terminus of the ascent and I’m staring down into a deep canyon. I parallel the cliff and skirt the perimeter of a small peak until I find a burro trail leading down from a saddle to a road I spotted from above. It leads to a tiny village of farms and a large arroyo draining the mountains I want to reach.

I find another burro trail hoping to bypass the farm and the possibility of more vigilant dogs. I’m stopped by a barbed wire fence enclosing another farm and see the day’s laundry hanging out and I hear a farm dog. I climb straight up the mountain trying to clear myself out of the dog’s range. I see him from my perch, big, black and running down the trail in pursuit of me. I scramble further up a wash and cower behind a hill but the dog holds its ground. But, eventually, the dog is satisfied he has secured the farm and retreats down the trail. I cut back to the trail and make my way back to Humahuaca.

I’m tired and running low on water, and the way back up seems longer than I remembered. The road is fairly deserted until I reach a wider dirt road on which perhaps a dozen trucks and tourist vans pass me in a couple hours. As I near town I encounter Quechan women tending their goats hemmed in by thick walls of briar. I meet my friend, Fabian, on the road back to the hostel. He spent the day in Jujuy to fix a credit card problem. We talk a bit, him practicing English, me Spanish. I decide on my next destination, Iruya, a pueblo even smaller and more isolated than Humahuaca, as much as that strains the imagination. Its an 80 km trip over mountain passes and down a narrow, cliffside, road.

The others return to the hostel from a trip to the Bolivian border. Not much to see there, they inform me. To no avail, I try to stoke up the hostel califacion, so I take a much needed, but freezing, shower and get a good night’s rest.

Mate in Humahuaca

2007-02-05T18:48:00.000-08:00

I sit in the bus with Quechan women in bowler hats and colorful sweaters heading for the Andes. The town I arrive in reminds me of small Quechan towns I’ve been to before in Peru. Adobe, cobble, an unlikely internet café , but the landscape is like the high desert in Arizona, if it wasn’t for the hulking saguaros. But for that, this is Quechan territory through and through: textiles, pan pipes, sheep, chicken, goats and dogs everywhere. The restaurants serve little else but meat and potatoes, if and when they decide to serve at all.

When I enter my hostel I waken a napping porteno. He’s excited to practice his English on me. A group of twenty something, educated and well dressed, portenos invite me for mate. Its my first time trying the tea ceremony. The silver cup is filled to the brim with loose yerba tea and the head of the ceremony holds a thermos of hot water. She fills the cup and the person sips through a bombilla, a curved metal straw until the brew is consumed, then the cup is passed back to the person with the thermos.

They chit chat rapidly in Castelano and I understand nothing but a few words. The group slowly files out and its me and two others. We talk about books. She likes John Irving and I think of Garp and try to remember who played him in the movie, but can only remember Mork. Surpringly that rings a bell with her. Its Robin Williams, I recall, my memory of home is as distant as the geography.

I find a nice restaurant, Casa Vieja, to eat llama steak and listen to traditional music and vanquish half a plateful of boiled red potatoes.

Salta, for a day...

2007-02-05T18:31:00.000-08:00

As I ascend the stairs of Hostel Terra Oculta at 5am, the young concierge comes down the stairs, "full" he says. I crouch down in the dark on the sidewalk with a Lonely Planet and without a clue. I find a sleepy concierge at Condor Hostel who gives me a brief tour. I crawl into bed at 6. I awaken several hours later with the rest of the dorm and walk out into illuminated Salta. I like it, but I’ve had my fill of plazas, malls and cafes for now and my mind was set on getting out. I immediately decide to go to Humahuaca, a small, Andean village settled by Quechans, descendent of the Incas.

People pedal curious looking chain driven cars down the sidewalk through the park close to the bus station. A tractor train decorated with Daffy Duck and Tom and Jerry graphics pulls cars full of ninos. I wander deeper into the barrio. Shards of glass are glued to the top of walls to deter burglars. A sermon blasts from a loudspeaker that can be heard for blocks. School children jump the wall of a school, and another group play futbol in the street. Close to the evangelizing loudspeaker, witch face graffiti is tagged on a electric pole with a phone number underneath. I eat pizza that night then wander the square. I gather dried fruit and salami, cereal, cookies for whatever the next few days might bring. I want to break free of the turista umbilical chord and simply wander.

Cookies in the Park

2007-02-05T18:22:00.000-08:00

Its surprisingly chilly this morning given yesterday’s heat. I search the streets for breakfast and encounter Martin once again, easily distinguishable through his scruffy facial hair and Eastern European features. I gather my meal in the supermarket, unlike the supermarkets I’m accustomed to, stocked mainly with staples. I pick up mozzarella, jamon, a liter of juice and a cylinder of cookies and I’m on my way.

I picnic in the square. A man with a canvas attache pulls out Christian Literature and talks to me about my salvation. I earnestly tell him that I don’t understand Spanish, but he’s heard that line before and preaches on, jabbing me with his finger when I drift off to look around the square and eat my cookies.

I head back to the Parque 2 de Febrero and check on the progress of my drying sleeping bag and I start to pack. The sun emerges from the clouds and I feel the familiar heat once again. I chat with Martin. He has no idea how to assimilate with his Czech friends and family once he returns in two weeks after nearly five years away.

The Brazilian hippies form a drum circle in the center of camp, while others carve crafts and shell pods. My gear gets close enough to dry so I stuff it together and find the colectivo to the bus station. I meet an Irish couple who were in my hostel in Iguazu and also made the unlikely journey to Resistencia. They thought the town was quite nice. Though it was a bit hot, I agreed. They thought the rain was nice.

Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong plays on the way to Salta. Ann Bancroft hesitates briefly before embarking for the adventure and love of her life. The writer character is caught in subtext before exposing what he believed was obvious about his feelings towards her. I don’t know what my own journey will reveal yet, but I sense I am very close to the crossover point.

Am I a Hippy?

2007-02-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

I awake to confusion. I slip on my shoes and run outside to ask the steward in muddled Spanish "Where is the city?" and then just plain "where?" while pointing down, not having the wherewithal to simply ask "where am I?" Resistencia. I’m here but not sure what kind of place I ended up.

Trusting my Lonely Planet map, but not sure why, I walk at least a kilometer or two down the road towards a mythical campground. Not satisfied that I’m getting any closer to anything of the sort, I turn back. A couple lingering on their porch ask me where I’m going. They direct me to the appropriate colectivo, public bus. Then they ask me if I’m a hippy. "No hippy." They survey my body for jewelry and agree. Not wanting to get lost again I take a taxi to the campground in Parque 2 de Febrero.

The park has a playground and a pond, picnic tables, stray dogs, bathrooms that look like army barracks but smell like the zoo. Shower curtains are torn away, the toilets are clogged and seatless and camphor is spread liberally. The shower will have to wait for my next destination. Here, I wash up in the sink.

And there are hippies from Brazil. They are busy shelling pods from the trees, gathering in drum circles, smoking pot and playing Marley nonstop. A circus bus is parked with hoops for affixed to the side. A small tent is pitched there with circus stripes. I set up my tent and walk into town in the hear to find a bus ticket to Salta.

I find a restaurant giving homage to Charlie Chaplin and eat a decent enough pollo naranja. I take a colectivo to the omnibus terminal. A wall of black cloud gathers that is so ominous and green that I scan it for funnel clouds. Dust blows across the highway. A mule and buggy driver gallop at full speed towards home. I collect my ticket and hop on the first colectivo I can find into town. It pours with a vengeance. The water drips through cracks in the bus and through the ceiling onto the driver.

We drive through newly formed rivers on the road and when we reach the town square, I get off. I huddle under a magazine kiosco along with two giggling schoolgirls. As cars pass, the water comes in waves across the road and drains into a hole in the sidewalk. Dozens of cockroaches emerge from the hole and a few misguided ones attempt to find a new home somewhere up my leg.

I follow a disjointed route back to my camp trying to bypass the standing pools of water covering the roads. My tent is intact, but holding a couple of inches of water. My sleeping bag is drenched, my clothes stayed dry in the backpack. Overall, I made out well. I was camped next to a pond and had visions of my tadpole shaped tent going back to its home.

A Czech hippy, M, shares a common predicament. Like me, he skipped putting up the tent fly which may have prevented the water intrusion. He’s been touring the north of Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia for the last 8 months and farmed organically through the WOOF program in Ireland the four years previous to that. He’s more than happy to give me advice about my next destination, the Salta and Jujuy provinces in northwest Argentina, a beautiful and not as intensely touristed region. He felt uneasy in Paraguay, though, sensing that the people there were mistrustful and closed, brutalized by years of dictatorship.

I walk the downtown which is bustling the night before Dia de la Madre and the cooks are gathering whole carnicerias of meat on the grills for that night’s parilla that will begin late in the evening. I go back and flop on top of my soggy sleeping bag for much needed sleep. More rain and club music invade my bed, but I sleep surprisingly well.

Finding monkeys, nearly missing a bus.

2007-02-03T19:20:00.000-08:00

My bus out of Iguazu is not until late in the evening and the day is too lovely so I gather some pesos, and a camera and board the cataratas bus once again. Iguanas are out in force throughout the park sunning themselves. The coatis scrounge for handouts by the food courts. I take the catwalk above the falls, a section I had mostly neglected before. I then revisit the lower falls in sun rather than torrential rain.

On a popular connector trail, the Green Trail, some park visitors are gathered by the mangroves. They spot a coral snake. I make a note of it and am wary of stepping off the trail from that point forward.

I search in vain at first for the Sendero Machuco which I finally find next to the train station. I am immediately relieved to abandon the throngs of tourists, senior citizens, school children and wander off in relative solitude. The trail is favored by the occasional group of young Argentinians clad in bathing suits and bikinis walking to and from the lagoon several kilometers out with a lone waterfall and flat rocks for sunbathing. I stop by a group peering into the canopy above. Small monkeys are swinging high in the trees and they, and I, are following them with digicams.

This is one of my favorite spots in the park. These falls are isolated and unfenced and accessible by a challenging trail. Exploration and adventure inevitably heightens beauty and solace in a way accessibility never can.

I return to the hostel hungry and listless and wait out the rest of my time by the pool wielding a Fanta and a book.

Here I am at the bus station staring at the Andesmar bus to Mendoza for twenty minutes not thinking to ask if it is going my way to Resistencia. As the bus pulls out, the baggage man frantically asked me my destination, snatches away my backpack and ticket and rushes me onto the departing bus. I settle in for a not so champagne, this time, semi cama ride drinking warm Fanta and eating cold ravioli, and not sleeping well for my ten hour ride.

Washing, Baking

2007-02-03T19:14:00.000-08:00

Today is my day of rest, to go downtown, take care of some delinquent chores and then lay prone by the hostel pool with a book and bake. And that’s what happens. The sun is hot today, and spring is just beginning. I will not book any trips here in the summer. I throw my soiled dainties into a garbage bag and hump it to the lavaderia, a kilometer further then I anticipate. I eat another tasty hostel buffet and Irish invites me to a social gathering with his friends, but it is time to pick up my laundry. After such frantic activity in BsAs there isn’t room in my budget for too much more beer, regardless. My laundry is late, so I take another stroll around town.

Laundry in hand, I sit by the bus stop. An Argentinian girl in her twenties asks me, I presume, a question about the bus which I am too confused to answer, but she doesn't give up and proceeds to talk to me. After several discombobulations, she recommends that I use a diccionario, and how can I argue? But what really stifles the conversation is when I tell her my age. A friend of hers stops by in his car and takes her away and that is that.

Gran Aventura

2007-02-03T18:59:00.000-08:00

I intend to go into town, mail postcards, gather provision for the day, but the day has other plans for me. The same Aussie who often joined us for nights out in BsAs ended up in Iguazu as well and he is along with El Salvador, another BsAs hostelmate, and Irish, a young lad I ate dinner with the night before. We share a taxi to the falls.

A black cloud billows as we sign up for the gran aventura tour and I worry the whole thing is going to be a little corny, but I go with it for once. The rain comes pelting in a full fledged tropical downpour as we take a guided, and open, jeep down to the river. A poncho holdout, I’m drenched to the bone. An older Argentinian woman working the dock asks for my brazo and slips on a clear plastic poncho. Our gear which is by this time drenched as well is nevertheless dropped into dry bags. The power raft driver lets us know the score right at the get go. He accelerates to a ridiculous speed and banks the boat at an angle so steep that the passengers on the side of the tilt can dip their hands in the river. The rain feels like sleet as we shoot ClassIII rapids up river. The sadist captain then points the raft straight towards the maw of a miniature niagra and accelerates. We skirt the torrents and the large, warm drops pour down.

The four of us take a circuitous hiking route around dozens of cataratas, many in coves isolated from the main falls, over a large network of metal grate catwalks. I eat an overpriced salami sandwich and sip on coffee and we backtrack to the boat launch to embark on a short ride to Isla del Sol. No sol, but plenty of rain. From the island, we get a close up view of the cataract that seemed to be on the verge of swallowing us hours before. Next to Garganta del Diablo, it is the most powerful fall I observe in the park.

I revisit Garganta Diablo, with the posse. No rainbows today. In sharp contrast to the morning, we take a languid raft ride back through the mangroves, sans motor, sans rapids, but several alligators lurk in the vegetation. The row man assures us that we’ll just throw in the fat one. Toucans are perched high in the canopy, well out of my camera range.

Parilla is served at the hostel that night and we have entertainment. Brazilian dancers in Carnivale costumes shake their nearly naked booties and grab as many in the audience who are willing to shake along.

A Iguazu

2007-02-03T17:30:00.000-08:00

I say a rushed goodbye to L who is moving to the Palermo hostel with the will o the wisp. Out of curiosity, I wander the lovely sycamore lined lanes of Palermo, where the wealthy reside, that day and when I get back it is time to leave.

I nearly doze on the cement bus platform, dabbled with stagnant puddles, before I find myself wide awake on my full cama seat, in pleasant solitude, but a smidgen too close to the water closet. The steward walks by, in turn, with a shot of rum, a candy drop, cheese strata, tomato salad, chicken and mashed potatoes, wine, cake and then a champagne night cap before lights out. I read Travels with Charlie by Steinbeck instead of watching the four action movies that play. The 16 hours to Iguazu goes by mercifully fast.

I arrive at a resort of a hostel with club music playing at all hours, an outdoor pool, hammocks, a bar by the pool and an indoor one as well, and a restaurant. The place has not strayed far from its casino roots.

I almost immediately make my way for Iguazu, the cataratas, in the soup, the hot sticky air. I walk down the road and a guide in a tourist van, probably questioning my sanity, pulls over and gestures to me. He wants to know if I need water. Out of pride, or reticence or simply sheer stupidity, I wave him off with a gracias and continue to trod on in full exposure to the sun. I am 11km away when I feel like I should be 5. I consider waving a bus down, or anyone really, when all I have left are a few ounces of lukewarm water.

I’m quite frazzled from the heat and sun but I make it and head into Iguazu NP, board the park train and cross the catwalk to Devil’s Throat, Gargantan del Diablo, one of the most dramatic cataratas on planet earth. The drought plaguing the region several months before is not in evidence now.

Swallows zig zag in and out of the towering mist rising from a deep chasm into which the raging falls disappear. Whole seas seemed to be drained in the space of minutes. A rainbow sifts through the vapors. I take some pictures and walk to the bus stop at the entrance of the park.

The Longest Day

2007-02-03T17:24:00.000-08:00

We go to a club named Museo tonight. The ambience and music is much better than Club 69 a couple nights ago and I feel like a dancing fool. Dance we do and I’m with the usual group of revelers. The American girl, L, is here for the dancing, the two Aussies to pick up women. Only the girl is successful. The will o the wisp, who I got an unusual introduction to my first night, has disappeared from the hostel to spend some time in Palermo and almost certainly having her fill of men there.

I come back from the bathroom and I have lost everyone, but I’m funky and tipsy enough to continue dancing on my own. I find my way into a posse of beautiful portenas (BsAs women) and we dance around each other until the portenos swarm in and pursue them with characteristic relentlessness until they stop dancing altogether, to my disappointment. Then, as if by some miracle, another cute girl pulls me back onto the dance floor and we dance very close.

The club gradually clears out and my hostel posse comes into view. We’re the last four on the dance floor at 8am. The Aussies are drunk and obnoxious and the two Americans, me included, are putting up with it. We leave the club and one of the Aussies is asking of every taxi driver, street vendor and innocent bystander, in a German accent, "Do you like it hardcore?"

At the request of the Aussies, the taxi driver takes us to a café with jamon and eggs. I order a smorgasbord with croissants, bread, cake, orange juice, peaches, espresso and I devour every bite. Back at the hostel the Aussies order a pitcher of beer at 9am. L has had quite enough and goes off to bed.

I rest on the couch but stay awake to depart for the River Plate vs Boca match. We arrive in the River section and the stadium is spare, a two tiered bowl of cement steps, but this suffices since sitting is rare. A German, Brit and I cleave from the group and chaperone and plop ourselves in the middle of the public section. Once our section fills, the festivities begin: singing, dancing, arm waving in tomahawk fashion, the calling out of "puta" at every offense, real or imagined, of Boca. It is impossible not to get caught in the thrill and though I come in with a soft spot for Boca I can’t help but root for River.

Bags of balloons and newspapers circulate throughout the stands. The balloons are inflated, the newspapers torn to confetti. As the game commences, confetti rains down onto the field and red and white smoke bombs obscure the air.

A large team flag is unfurled and passed down until it covers the whole section and a thousand or so hands take hold and wave. Our section is ninety percent male and college aged, shirtless, pierced, tattooed, fashionably unshaven and shaggy haired.

River goals unleash pandemonium all three times. Fists pump, strangers embrace, and the rush of humanity is enough to knock the unsteady or unprepared off their feet. My Brit neighbor takes cover during every score. Afterwards it is nonstop dancing, jumping, arm waving and singing team songs. This continues well after the 3 to 1 victory. Police cautiously clear and escort the Boca section. The singing continues all the way out of the stadium to the cars and buses all the way to the train station where the cars are overflowing with fans elated with the outcome. They hang out the windows and doors and smack on the metal to keep the beat for their songs. The celebration continues in the Retiro train station and onto the public bus. I wait for the parilla at the hostel and then head to bed giving L a high five along the way, my first sleep in thirty hours. The will o the wisp returns to the hostel from the game and wishes me bueno suerte.

Museum Night

2007-02-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

On two separate occasions, I pass people laid out on the pavement, within blocks of each other, being tended to, one an elderly Portena and mention of corazon, the other, a man on the ground next to his bicycle, lying still on his back but no blood. Tren Alegre passes, a two car wheeled train for the kids. Winnie the Pooh looks down from the train mournfully or gleefully, who’s to say? I pass the glowing embers of am outdoor parilla and hear the flesh sear.

I search for a Correo, but don’t have a chance in hell on Sabado. I sit down at a café in San Telmo and settle in with a large basket of crusty homemade bread, an agua sin gas, a cylinder shaped scoop of mashed potatoes topped with poppy seeds, some lamb and a stewed tomato and I’m good to go.

I start late on my quest to find Boca and fall way short. I pass some prostitutes. As I cut through San Telmo, antique markets abound. Markets and native dances occur in seemingly every square this weekend.

As I approach Centro that evening, a museum spews steam from its veranda. Techno music and red and blue fluorescent lights spur portenos to point their digicams and camera phones towards the spectacle and I do the same. I fade back from the crowd to the soundboard underpinning it all and decipher the signs posted there. Its museum night and this is one of many museos putting on a show and opening its doors for free tonight.

Club 69

2007-02-03T16:59:00.000-08:00

Again I’m stumbling home in the daylight, this time from Palermo, the center of nightlife, from Club 69, a spectacle of a club with a fat transvestite and two slutty characters in gaudy costume performing on a platform. They are sitting on antique furniture above the entrance and feeling each other up and down. Breakdancers perfectly ripped and showing it, dance equally on their flawless arms and powerful legs. The rave-like pounding is relentless and unvarying. Smoke wafts by both tobacco and marijuana.

We dance, or try to, but it comes out as a lame bounce to the droning beat. The transvestite whores pass through the crowd on the dance floor on a cart livening the intrigue for just a moment or two. Argentinian men pursue the hostel women relentlessly. One function I have that night is to block their advances. I sweep one of the girls away and "Es mio," she fibs.

I wake up that afternoon and sit down for an excellent Argentinian style pizza and some strong espresso in a nondescript white cup and a dish of cookies. I work my way down to the newly developed strip of Puerto Madero. Along the way, temporary fences are being repositioned and riot police are gathering for a political rally of some sort. The port looks gentrified for gringo tastes, a malled up version of Argentina staples with just enough western chains for the tourist not to feel astray in a strange land, TGIF, Hooters and parillas galore. A bastardized version of Sydney Opera house, a dance club anchors port life while a pedestrian bridge reminiscent of a marlin fin holds the other side. Inexplicably, in the center of it all, sits a communist information kiosk.

I take the subte, circuitously, to another tourist haunt, Avenida Florida, a pedestrian mall. I stop to watch tango. By this time, ralliers are gathering in the square along with a dozen news vans. A mix of people line on the steps shouting "Argentina!"

I walk back to the hostel. A parade of ralliers with banners and drums file down the street and I weave my way through and watch.

Tonight its Thelonius Monk Jazz Bar, a mojito and martini, trumpets and mood lighting, a player with feathered hair, like that guy in Taxi, or John Travolta circa 1978. Then afterwards its salsa dancing and me falling asleep on the sidelines watching inspiration on the floor, tango, sex with clothes on. We take a taxi back to the hostel. My friend coaxes me to close the shutter with the coat rack to help silence the morning birds, our term for the lunch crowd that gathers to eat on the patio. Along with a hostel and bar, our place is also a restaurant. A new dormmate wired and wide awake leaves for the dicey Boca neighborhood to find a ticket for the biggest futbol game of the year. I sign up for the hostel field trip to the game, 240 pesos or 80 dollars, replete with parilla , bus ride and chaperone, a nine hour tour.

The Wrong Direction

2007-02-03T16:18:00.000-08:00

The day ends or begins walking, aimlessly, from a club in some far off neighborhood, finding a pedestrian bridge over the highway to a train station. I pay for a ticket and stumble onto the train and take my seat until the conductor and two security personnel approach and try to tell me it’s the wrong one. I deboard, cross the tracks in the chilly dawn and make my exhausted way on the next train to Retiro. There I grab a strawberry topped pastry and take the circuitous subte route back to the very rough proximity of my neighborhood. I pass people engaged in the early morning ritual of hosing the dog crap off the sidewalk and go twenty or so blocks and make it home four hours after I started, 9am starting at 5.

The night starts when I grab a beer with the hostel set. I am quickly introduced and almost as quickly dispatched as the clan abandon the hostel pub to get something to eat, and never return. I fall in with a Brazilian girl and her friends and we set off on a misguided quest to find the club Suzuki. We got the name wrong. We are directed to a motorbike shop. When she asks me what I do for a living, I tell her about the forensics toxicology lab. When she still doesn’t get it, I give her some examples. "Marijuana?," she says " I love marijuana!"

She’s a self described Communist who embraces me when I tell her I hate George Bush. Abandoning our search for Suzuki, we duck into Ugi’s, a pizza chain, share a pie and a liter of Quilmes lager. My new friends chat about soccer with the pizza man until he crouches down and pumps up his fist shouting "Boca!" the name of the immensely popular blue collar soccer club in Buenos Aires.

The Brazilians are too tired and drunk to go out, so I join an Aussie and an American who have dibs on another group of Brazilian girls in a different hostel. We take a taxi to Puerto Madero to a club modeled, roughly, on the Sydney Opera House. Nearing 2AM on a Wednesday night, the action is breaking up preternaturally early. So that’s when we get on another taxi to the hinterlands of Buenos Aires to a club that was a melange of cigarette smoke and bad techno music. Inside is a token transvestite and a token whore dancing sinuously while balancing a cerveza on her head.

I wake up that afternoon and subte my way to Recoleta and grab lunch and espresso. Recoleta Cemetery is enormous and baffling. The coffins are in full view inside the mausoleums, housing a crucifix, candelabras, and small flower arrangements. The departed are often cast as a bust or included as part of a religious scene. A certain percentage may have ended up here after finding themselves hopelessly lost in the labyrinth and finally succumbing and eaten alive by packs of the feral cats residing within.

Literally out of nowhere a downpour lets loose and I duck into the free art museum. I tour the galleries with as much deliberation as I can muster, but its no use, the rain continues. I make a mad dash to the modern art museum where a puddle is forming on the marble floor from the dripping dome above.

On my way back, the downpour restarts in earnest and I try to sweeten the way with a side trip to Freddo, who mix up a mean, gelato like, ice cream. I’m soaked, but it ends, finally, and I dry in the howling, chilly air that follows.

Como Estas

2007-02-03T15:55:00.000-08:00

She asks me "Como Estas?"
"Cansado."
"Si. Tomo cerveza y drugos..."
"Drugs? What sort of drugs?"
" I was out and someone drugged my drink. The girl I was out with said not to worry about it. This is South America."
"No. That’s crazy anyplace."
"Yeah. I threw up after two drinks and I can hold my liquor so I knew something was wrong. I wish I could of confronted the guy so I could throw up on him and beat him up at the same time."

It's cool and drizzly that day. Cool enough for my fleece pullover. Cool enough for London. I walk and walk, make my way to Recoleta, Retiro and Centro and to no-man’s land by the Newberry airport. The women are as lovely as advertised . Cafes abound with wine bars and postres, cafeterias, but not in the American sense. I sit down for a late lunch, 15 pesos, five dollars for chicken breast and a cream sauce strangely reminiscent of creamed corn and tapioca pudding, or it could have been either for that matter.

I wander past Recoleta, somehow missing the immense cemetery altogether, into the endless links of parks and slip into the botanical gardens where punked out kids in Chucks wield shovels and scrape mud off their shoes. I shoot pictures aimlessly while artists sit in the grass with their sketch pads.

I walk the perimeter of the zoo catching a glimpse of some camelid creature or another and the top of a carousel. A clown with a tattered umbrella showing half the metal framework runs amongst the gridlocked traffic in the avenue miming an act, receiving little in return. I pass his bike laying on the ground with a baby doll and an attache propped up on the back wheel.

I pass pizzerias, hamburguesas, chorizo stands, vendors selling bags of brittle, brewing syrup in pans. Pancho, hotdog, stands are everywhere. I walk in a mall of sorts touting the usual underground assortment–dojo shops, alt comics, piercing, tats, toys, Hello Kitty, studded belts and bongs galore. The Ramones, Clash and Social Distortion.

Foamy espresso and cookies are nibbled by dainty women and stately looking gentlemen bearing resemblance to Gabriel Garcia. This is the cup of choice. That night, I grab a dark room at the Farmacia restaurant and sit down on a wooden cube, lean on canvas pads tacked to the wall and, as chicly as I can, order cordero rounds wrapped in jamon on a square white plate with an orange sauce drizzled artfully along with a third round of ratatouille.

First Night, Buenos Aires

2007-02-03T15:28:00.000-08:00

As I walk into the dorm room at Che Lagarto Hostel she tells me to turn on the light. She covers her naked body with a sheet.
"What kind of guitar is that, acoustic or electric?"
"Not my guitar."
"What’s your name?"
"Matt"
"Hey Matt, I’m ..... How’s your sex?"
"Lacking."
"Wacky? I know what you mean."
She slips in with the guy in the bunk below me. "No offense, Matt. You walked in on the middle of something. Did you meet the people downstairs yet?"
"Nope. Not yet."
"I’m going to go downstairs again." She dresses, leaves.
"Hey man, do you like stories?" The guy on the bottom bunk says.
"Sure, I love stories."
"Okay. She walks into the room, undresses, bends over by the window and then comes over, straddles me and starts doing me. Twice. We were going to go a third time on her bed, but I need to get some rest."
"Does this usually happen in hostels?"
"No, this is the first time it happened in a hostel. Its happened in parties and stuff. This is one to tell the boys back home."
I hear drunken conversation coming from the patio below my window. They’re talking about her.
"She snubbed me. Told me I was too young."
"You played it all wrong, man. You gotta act like you don’t care. That’s all there is to it. And then she’ll wonder about you and start to like you."
The guy in the bottom bunk starts laughing.
"Stick it in her! That’s all you gotta do. Just stick it in her!" This advice doesn’t make it to the patio.
Voices from the patio:
"I said what’s up to her and she was all rude to me, ignoring me and shit."
"I tell you. I don’t normally like this kind of stuff, but you gotta play push, pull with her. Do a little fishing. That’s all."
Bunkmate:
" You know, when she told you her name, that’s the first time I heard it, otherwise I wouldn’t know. She is a rare find, but you should make sure the thing is wrapped up good before you go at it."
"Double bag it."
"Yeah, double bag it."

Why I Travel, Part I (Peru Retrospective)

2006-08-26T12:18:00.000-07:00

(On the Inca trail en route to Machu Picchu) It's the Brits more than the rest of us who see the hilarity of spreading Fanny Jam on their Bimbo brand bread, but we all laugh anyway, as we do almost constantly at every meal break. A young goat wanders our camp and sniffs at a mother turkey and its chicks. In the morning the chicks keep warm beneath the mother's skirt of feathers, she practically purrs out a tender gobble. A rooster, at 5am, an hour before sunrise ascends the steps leading to our camp, crows, and then struts back towards the farmhouse. An old woman crushes maize with a semicircular stone, rocking it back and forth over the corn. A gang of campesino men drink chicha, a corn beer, in a dark room.

Its chilly that night. I had forgotten a sleeping bag and I sleep fitfully in hour intervals dreaming in Spanish, sweet Peruvian dreams.

Posho

2006-08-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

Argentine Spanish, especially in the vicinity of Buenos Aires, is so unlike any dialect in the rest of Latin America or Spain that I'm afraid I won't comprehend the simplest statement. The ll and y are pronounced with a "sh" sound. Instead of ordering an empanada con pollo (po-yo) I need to remember its "posho." And after all this time conjugating verbs in the standard manner, I have to relearn it using vos instead as the Argentinians do. Perhaps it will be in vain since the accent is notoriously difficult to understand, even for those with a decent grasp on the language. Not me.

If this weren't enough, I recently discovered a new twist on the language in case I wanted even more of a challenge. According to this article, word inversion (think: pig latin) is quite common in Argentina. Taking common words, the ones I managed to learn, and flipping them into unrecognizable ones that can't be looked up in the dictionary or phrasebook. Not only will I be seeking directions to the nearest bano, but also the "nabo." My morning copa de cafe is also "feca." Hmm...maybe it has something to do with the coriolis effect.

On Resigning

2006-08-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

It was easy. My supervisor took it well. He even congratulated me. The letter, as of yet, isn't written or filed away. A few lines of official sounding drivel printed out this weekend, tossed on my bosses desk, and that will be the start of the anticlimatic end of my four year tenure at the factory lab. The emptiness that looms ahead, like any emptiness, is incomprehensibly thrilling in its possibilities and leaves me excited and breathless, and for the same reason terrifies me. It must be the same feeling that a skydiver experiences the moment before he pulls the chord erasing the momentary doubt that he will fall into oblivion.

Trip Stats (Preliminary)

2006-08-22T22:45:00.000-07:00

Time to travel from Flagstaff, AZ to Buenos Aires: 25 hrs. (layovers not included)
Total days spent in Argentina: 78
Approximate miles I may cover: 7000
Hours of bus time: 223, more or less
Average speed of tranport: 31 mph
Other countries I may visit: Uruguay, Brazil, Chile
Countries I'll come close to: Paraguay and Bolivia
Total number of stops: 13-15+
Oceans and seas: 3 (S. Atlantic, S. Pacific, Scotia Sea)
Projected espresso consumption: 80-100 cups
Hours spent up past my bedtime (bedtime=00:00): 50 or so.
Penguins I expect to see: too many to count.
Scoops of Helado: in the hundreds
Empanadas from street vendors: close to a hundred
Steaks consumed from a parilla: at least 50.
Gallons of mate sipped through a bombilla: one, perhaps.
Bottles of Mendoza Wine: 6-12
Miles of Buenos Aires street walked: 80 at least.
Cafes to while away the morning/afternoon: a dozen or dozens.
Trekking mileage: a hundred, maybe more.
Mountain biking mileage: yeah, about a hundred.
Tangos witnessed: Thousands, I'm guessing.
Tangos attempted: ??

The days are melting away like so much Argentine helado

2006-08-21T22:27:00.000-07:00

Everything, my bookings, my finances, my mental state, is on target and on a steady course. I’m two weeks from resigning, and this will undoubtedly be a watershed moment. Yet another burden will be released and my self assurance will ratchet that much more skyward. I bought my third backpack for the occassion. I needed more space to stuff rain gear, cookware, a trowel, my sleeping bag. I strapped on my tent and I’m stuffing long underwear and fleece into any space I can find. I’m discovering new bits of information which are nudging my plans, such as they are, this way or that. Iguazu has been reduced to a trickle. I’m still going, of course, but my expectations are adjusted accordingly. Bariloche is a South American mountain bike paradise, so I’ll have to cram a jersey and some shorts into my pack. Single track, chocolate, and mountains will make it difficult to leave the Lake District after a week. But there is plenty to draw me out of my stupor such as calving glaciers, diving whale and waddling penguins, not to mention Chile, and the Torres del Paine circuit.

My books are boxed. My car battery is dead. I need to make a stop at the drug store for all those miscellaneous things that drug stores are good suppliers of. For all my life, I have used duct tape fewer times than I watched American Idol (twice out of morbid curiosity and mind numbing boredom), but its recommended universally, so how can I buck that? I’ll pick up a bottle of Dr Bronner’s soap to clean my body, my hair, my dishes, to lather into shaving cream…I don’t think it works as laundry detergent but I’ll read the sermon on the side of the bottle more thoroughly to make sure. Within a week I need to start tranferring what’s left of my stuff into storage. Very soon I’ll eat my very last piece of cake at work and ride my bike up the mesa without a second glance. The friends I made there, though, I’ll keep for as long as I can. Written 8/19/06

Cinco Meses

2006-08-21T22:22:00.000-07:00

These days I stockpile all the beans, rice and canned tomatoes that will fit on the cupboard shelf. My cereal is poured out of plastic bags and portrays a mascot that my inner child reviles as being the wrong one, a friendly enough looking but strange wide eyed animal that has no relation to the usual gang that has sat on my breakfast table for the last umpteen years. It feels a bit like contortion. I’m stretching and turning rituals on their head to save a few more bucks. But at the same time it is a cleansing process. It must be amongst the reason the priesthood survives and the Amish carry on and Budhist monks are so happy. As I simplify and organize my life in order to save, my mind both absorbs and reflects this change and I gradually shed anxiety.

I’ve managed to cut my food bill in half, almost instantly, and I thought that would be the hardest thing to save on. I’ve budgeted between $2500-$3000 for this trip and I’ve already saved half of that with barely a month of serious savings. As soon as I receive payment for my travel book work, I will immediately spend a good portion of that money for a plane ticket and all but seal the deal. As it stands now, a 7k mile bus trip around the whole of Argentina, through the pampas, into the tropical Iguaza Falls region, across the north into the desert, then following the spine of the Andes into wine country, Mendoza, to the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, Aconcagua, continuing to the Lake District, Bariloche, across into the famous Fitz Roy peaks, hiking the Torres Del Paine in the Chilean Patagonia, witnessing the calving of the Moreno Glacier, standing on the southern tip of the continent, Tierra Del Fuego, turning back north, looking for right whales in the South Atlantic, bumming on the beach in Mar del Plata, and absorbing the culture of Buenos Aires. Written 5/1/06

Taking out the Trash

2006-08-21T22:10:00.000-07:00

I sorted out my mess, filled bags and bags full of clothing, tapes, movies, papers, love letters (not really), you name it in an attempt to get the physical clutter out of the way that was feeding into my mental clutter. It worked. I feel free and and relaxed and a bit more confident. I did a few rough calculations and the savings I planned for seems quite within reach, but its going to take a bit of discipline and lots of beans and less meat and almost no take out burgers or restaurants of any sort or nights out.

I hung up a world map and an Africa map right next to it on my mirror with a thin strip for looking in just to make sure I don’t resemble Alfalfa on any particular day. Though I had little doubt that I’d be able to bring this thing together, this weekend put the “how” into perspective. All the methods that I’m using to save feel like a wonderful game with the reward already predetermined. It does not feel like sacrifice at all. I get a kick out of inventing another set of meals out of what I have at hand instead of making a shopping trip. My bike trips into work, as I’ve already mentioned, are a blast. Even at work I watch the hours pass and think of how a couple of hours is going to fund another day in Argentina. When I go into overtime, I can taste the bittersweet mate pouring into my gullet. Written 4/16/06

Bricklaying

2006-08-21T22:04:00.000-07:00

Though money will be an issue up until the day I achieve true financial independence (read:pipedream), things are definitely looking up in the last week. I found, as of today, 2.5 k that I didn’t know existed. That should be enough to fund my trip and I should have plenty left over to reintegrate myself back into the humdrum workaday life that we all must live, within reason.

As I plan and obsess over it, I’m seeing that this trip is fully manageable and it grows less and less of a risky venture the more I plan. Its coming together as a theme now: If I want it, there are ways to make it happen. I have told only one friend about the full extent of my plans. My parents have the idea that I’m doing the usual two week jaunt. But I feel a need to get enough of the details of this straight and as solid as they can be before dragging my parents into what they will almost certainly see as the begining of my descent into lunacy. Written 4/12/06

Out of the Smoke

2006-08-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

The curative for my major anxieties, the relatively minor ones will always be there, is simply that I’ve done this before in a different form. Several years ago I moved here, to Flagstaff, from across the country. I had meager savings. I had no prospects, no living arrangements. I had no source of income. I wanted to do it and sick of being in situations in which my life controlled me and not the other way around. I reserved some storage thirty miles out of town, loaded the moving truck and took off with few regrets.

I stopped at a hostel in Santa Fe, NM and even from that distance I could see several large plumes of smoke from the horizon. The Southwest was suffering its worst wildfire season in a long time and I was driving straight through the maw of it. A large black cloud loomed closer as I crossed the Arizona border and I was in the thick of the haze soon after. I was wheezy and fully cured. I tasted of ham. As soon as the road lifted out of the basin and climbed over the Mogollon Rim I also rose above the low lying plume to the clear mountain air of Flagstaff.

I looked for an apartment while squatting in The Grand Canyon Hostel for two weeks. The hostel television switched between World Cup Soccer and coverage of the inferno that several hundred thousand acres of the White Mountains had erupted into. I secured an apartment and a temp position that turned perm in the nick of time, right before I ran out of funds.

I don’t recall ever being in a panic. In fact this was one of the happiest times of my life. I set out to do what I want for once in my life and I was doing it. I felt an uncharacteristic bravado. I was realizing the truth in the idea that if you simply do what you want with your life the rest will eventually come into place. And its true. Its not just the plot of the feel good movie of the year. So I will take that flimsy logic into the coming months and straight into the glaciers of Patagonia.
Written 4/10/06

A step towards frugality

2006-08-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

I dusted off the mountain bike on Friday and took advantage of the waning winter weather to ride to my job. The snows are winding down after just winding up in March here in Northern Arizona after a long dry spell. Right around two inches for almost the totality of the winter and fall seasons when normally close to one hundred inches accumulate in that time. I want to bike into work and put the Corolla up on the ol’ metaphorical blocks for a few months, driving it just enough to flush out the cobwebs.

If I can keep up the auto-abstinence, that’s an extra three hundred in my pocket right there. And I found a prettier, more adventurous route back home as well. A jeep trail climbs the side of a mesa into a small patch of Ponderosa pine trees in the back of where I work. It was a bit of a grunt up a steep bank and over some black, jagged volcanic rock, but once I get my lungs and legs back it should be fun going. I look forward to tomorrow morning when I can buck and weave my way down those same rocks and into my otherwise tedious day.

Who says frugality can’t be fun? Written 4/9/06

The Motorcycle Diaries

2006-08-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

“At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly–not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice.”~Ernesto (Che) Guevera

I sat at work today eating pasta out of a can and sipping bad coffee reading The Motorcyle Diaries and thinking about my true vocation. Something about that moment was strangely titillating, to read somewhat subversive phrases during the work day with the VP sitting across from me waiting for his TV dinner to heat in the microwave. Then it was back to the cold efficiency of the factory lab in which I must have everything timed down to the last second to make the best use of my time in order to make a deadline.

I find myself doing all I can to occupy my senses to the fullest, and while doing my job quite well, escaping its numbing effects. I have my iPod filled with hundreds of songs and do a subtle dance around the workplace in an effort not to be nullified and deadened. There is nothing stimulating about the way I spend a good chunk of my life. What I do is not a craft and, in fact, is becoming more and more automated by the day. But now, at least, I have my dreams to lift me above the routine, into the stratosphere. Written 4/6/06

As of Today...

2006-08-20T23:27:00.000-07:00

The largest task at hand is taking each individual fear and quelling it. If I face whatever is there with the frame of mind of the survivor I know I can be, there is nothing really to be aprehensive about. I can save the money, easily, not just for the trip, but for a few months worth of safety net. I can find a new job when I get back. In fact, my old one was leading me nowhere, worse than nowhere, towards a miserable existence in which I stopped growing. The six months I plan to put up with that is probably six months longer than I should put up with it, except that now the money I earn is going towards a good cause.

The feeling that I must have everything in order before I leave is a fiction. I should have enough in control that my life isn’t in total chaos upon my return, but so what if everything isn’t spelled out to the letter? No. Its just another dimension of my fear, the very thing I wish to quash through my travels, through my lifestyle.

For now I’ll work on the basics. Getting a backpacking stove so I can hike Patagonia. Brushing up on my Spanish well ahead of time, so I can have decent talks with Argentinians. Reviewing logistics, keeping an eye on ticket prices. And for the long run, getting in the mind set that this is how I want my life to proceed from here on out: my job is a means to gather resources for my traveling and not that my traveling is a way to recuperate so I can exhaust myself in the workforce again. I hope that my job and my writing and my traveling will all be intermingled in mutually supporting ways soon, but for now its just a thought. Written 4/5/06

Early Travels

2006-08-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

I got out the map and routed my journey. The first place I ever wanted to travel was not Nepal, or Morocco or Peru, it was Salisbury. Not the Salisbury in England, but a small nondescript suburb just across the political boundary of the industrial town I grew up in. I was ten, or thereabouts, and wanted to see what was on the other side of that imaginary line on my county map.

I set out for several miles that day, passing blocks of row homes, across the lumpy sidewalks, uplifted and crumbling from the maple tree roots growing underneath. I got to the park and laid my map out on the grass to double check the rest of the way. There was one potential hazard, but, or so I thought, I had successfully contained it when I was planning the way. Hamilton Street was a dangerous throughfare. It may as well have been a storm swollen river. The map, and why would it be wrong, showed the highway narrowing and dribbling out to an ordinary city street which I would simply cross.

I came to the intersection and found my map reading skills lacking. One tributary of the highway indeed did transform into a lightly trafficked city street, but the main way veered to the left. There was no way around it. I would have to cross. To make matters worse I would have to do so illegally. A no pedestrian crossing sign was clearly displayed.

I took a deep breath and continued. I got to the other side. I like to imagine that in doing so I set the stage for what I would become. In some alternative universe good sense would get the better of me and I would fold up my map, head home, make it in time for dinner, do my homework, meet a nice girl, get married and set up a plasma tv with surround sound in the rec room. Fin.

But I got to the other side and the last several blocks were predictably anticlimactic. I crossed the road, that I vaguely remember as East Texas Blvd, that demarcated the end of the city and the beginning of Salisbury. The weather, the culture, the look of the houses, the make of the cars, everything was virtually the same on this side of the boulevard, but I was elated anyway. I made it. I was somewhere else. And if I were not already late for dinner, I would have continued on to the next imaginary line on my map. Written 4/4/06

Origins

2006-08-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

What started as plans for just another sensible, but ridiculously harried, two week vacation to a foreign land, grew. I looked at a map of Argentina spanning the depths of the Southern Hemisphere from the rainforest to Antarctic seas and I knew I’d need a month. I tried the thought out, took it for a ride, felt the goosebumps bubble up, sensed the wildness in my eyes, and knew that it had to be two months, maybe more.

This will be my first extended trip. I can’t think of any practical reasons why, but this decision is about as right as any I’ve made in my life. Its a risk. I’m burning the candle at both ends. I’ll be spending a chunk of money while earning none. I’ll be dumping a stable job and a steady paycheck and wiping the slate clean. But I felt the vibrations in the air, turned out the lights, stopped the music, cleared my mind and listened, and had no doubt that this was right.

I’m six months out, but sense its time to start building this thing. I’m gathering resources, budgeting, nicking away at hard rock, dreaming of penguins and gauchos in pampas, googling ticket prices and laying the foundation for something much bigger than a trip to Argentina. I’m setting out on the very first leg of what I was meant to be. I’ve flirted with it all my life, stared at it from afar, came closer dipped my toes in it, then rushed back to what was safe, but miserably banal. But I’m ready now. That niggling feeling in the back of my head months ago is coming into fruition, starting to resemble something palpable and I’m, finally, brave enough to follow. Written 4/3/06