The little farm that could, continued...

I'v almost been in El Bolson for two weeks now. I've settled into my wwoofing lifestyle. The first few days were hard, especially because we were stuck inside a tiny house by the cold rain. But the weather improved, actually, the weather became amazing and an outside lifestyle was realized.

There is no set work schedule at my farm. Because nothing is produced for commercial value we (the wwoofers) are able to pick our own projects, in fact we must use our creativity to create our own work. I'm in the midst of creating a vegetable garden, adding to a stawberry garden, creating a fountain, carving a bowl from a knot of wood I found in the mountains and trying to germinate some seeds. Also, we have daily Spanish sessions...today was on pronuciation (reading from a book called 'Conversations with God'...I have no clue what the author was saying).

I have also started on a new endeavour...reading a book in Spanish. It's a 'pick your own adventure book'. So far I've found out I'm a thirteen year old adventurer who was asked by a famous scientist to accompany her on an expedition to find the sole surviving dinosaur living in the depths of some obscure ocean. It's very exciting.

Other than what's related above, my life consists of walking in the absolutely stunning snow-capped mountians and (attempting to) playing guitar as an accompianament to another, very talented, wwoofers mandolin. We try to make beautiful music, sometimes it works and sometimes it doens't.

The little farm that could...

I have arrived in El Bolson to experience the world of wwoofing (google it if unsure of meaning). El Bolson is named after a geological term/phenomenon that occurs when a glacier carves out a valley to an exaggerated extent. Thus, El Bolson is situated deep in the Patagonian Andes but is only 300 meters above the Pacific Ocean making it ideal for growing fruits and vegies. It also is a community started by hippies and retains a bohemian feel to it. The ´farm´ I am wwoofing on is more of a hobby farm. Roberto (the owner) owns 1/4 hectare and grows fruit...actually, there are some fruit trees hapazardly scattered around the property and that`s about it. Some previous wwoofers have started small veggie gardens, but not much is actually grown. The `house´is made from recycled cedar planks put together in a house-like structure with lots of gaps. It`s kinda like the tree house you always wanted to build but never got around to it...oh ya, and it´s not in a tree. Given that it is raining and about 3 degrees today it doesn´t seem like the most efficient design. But the floor is very practical...loose river stones - never needs to be cleaned. Also on the farm is a pregnant sheep (Matilda) that just stares into the window, a golden retriever (Toby) who likes to drink milk, a cat (yet to be named) that was here for three minutes before it ran away and another wwoofer from Denmark (Anders).

In the Misty Moutains...

I escaped the sprawl of the city and took a charming (read: grueling) 25 hour bus ride to the edge of the Andes...to Bariloche. I have substituted a city with a seemingly southern European feel for a smaller city with a noticibly Swiss feel to it. Bariloche, located in the lake district of Argentina, hugs the coast of a massive turquoise alpine lake with back drops of snow-capped peaks. Its quite a terrible place, all there is to do is ski, hike, mountian bike, fish and suffer through a beer with some of the cheapest steak in the world. But, fear not, I did manage to escape the meloncholy of this place and rent a car with some other travellers to see the famous 'black glacier'. After an hour and a half of driving through pothole filled and flooded over dirt roads at the hands of a phsycotic Isreali who thought it was fun to drive through water at dangerous speeds on a curvy mountain road we made it to Mt. Trondodor (mount thunder)...so named because the mountian 'thunders' every so often as massive pieces of snow and ice come tumbling down the peak. That, combined with the black glacier at its base, makes for quite a nice and scenic Andean peak. Tomorrow I'm off to El Bolson to meet the 'farmer' I will be hopefully working for/with for the next month.