The Land Before Time

There is something inherently magic in really old trees, and, for that matter, ancient forests as well. Standing underneath something that has been alive since the beginning of human beings' ability to record history - and is still alive today - makes mankind’s achievements seem a bit superfluous.

I felt compelled, no driven, to spend some time in the Alerce forests. The Alerce is an evergreen tree growing in the Andean rainforests of southern Chile and Argentina and is the second oldest living organism on the planet, after the Bristlecone Pine. I missed my opportunity to see the Alerce when in Esquel, and so I have seized the chance here, close to Puerto Montt, in the Parque Nacional Alerce Andino.

This place is really so much more than the Alerce trees though - it is a primeval forest with hummingbirds and woodpeckers in force, bees the size of a walnut (with shell) giant trees completely covered in epiphytes, and of course, multi-thousand year old Alerce trees. This is truly The Land Before Time...I don't care what Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas say (actually that movie was an anthem for me when I was six).

Moreover, the weather gods have finally smiled in my direction. I was given two cloudless and utterly beautiful days in a place that generally recieves 3.5 -4 meters of rain per year...very rare. I thank you, oh Weather God, be assured that I have sacraficed in your honor (maybe not a lamb, but definately some flies!).

On a completely less magical note, I am trading temperate rainforests for Chile's central valley's agricultural hub. I am off now to work on a farm in Los Angeles for a guy I met while on the boat last week.

Love (?) Boat

Three and a half days on a boat can provide for interesting social experiments. The closed social atmosphere of a boat is a catalyst for rumors and weird behaviors.

I have just landed my rubbery legs after a sea voyage out of Patagonia on a Navimag ferry. The ferry crawled and creeped through the channels and fjords of Chilean Patagonia and found a majestic yawl during our twelve hours on the open sea (although I am sure some of the passengers would find fault with the world ‘majestic’ as they stared into the toilet with a heavy head and a turbulent tummy).

All in all, it was a good trip…we saw dolphins, whales, a seal, a glacier, a rainbow that touched both ends of our ship, and to top it off, the entire crew of the boat believed that one of the passengers, a young woman from London, was really a man. This, in fact, became the main theme of the voyage as speculation grew into hysteria. Unfortunately, the mystery will remain unsolved as no one was game enough to test out the theory.

The boat was full of Germans and Swiss, and thus, beer was on the menu. In fact, this is almost all we did; drink, talk about the supposed transvestite, try to understand the crazy old Japanese guy who danced all over the ship and took pictures of everyone while muttering nonsensical Spanglish, and, of course, every good ship voyage ends with a healthy night of Bingo to finish off the voyage. Can’t beat that, right?

So now the rides over, the horizon has stopped swaying, I've started eating real food agian and I think my body has finally passed all the alcohol through it. Maybe it's time to hike up the volcano that stands shimmering across the lake from where i am staying in Puerto Varas, Chile.

Northward Bound

The road south ends in Ushuaia, and, although there are some islands further south and, of course, Antartica, I'm not rich enough to explore them...so the road south has ended for me. It's all north from here (and maybe a little east and west, here and there)! So, in a sense, it is a very exciting prospect to be making tracks toward my destination (which I guess, in the end, is the US). I've only got 7500 miles, or 12,000 km left till the US border. Piece of cake...right?

Ushuaia was a lovely city flanked by the Beagle Channel, snow capped mountians and Chilean islands. I cought up with a good friend from my wwoofing days and we celebrated New Years with some Argentine P.H.D. candidates and an Australian travel writer...partying all through the night...which isn't that hard considering there is only five hours of dark. Also, while in Ushuaia I was robbed for the first time in South America, nothing too serious just a loss of sixty bucks or so...but we'll chalk that up as a first. Let's see what the tally can get to before I leave SA. On the same day, I found out that my wwoofing host from November (refer to earlier post) has been acused by another wwoofer for sexual misconduct and gross wierdness...the wwoofer has petitioned to the organization for removal of the farm and all. Exciting, I can't wait to hear the next chapter in this.

Tomorrow I (should be) jumping on a ferry and sailing through the fjords of Chilean Patagonia and making tracks to the north where summer is more synonimous with beautiful people wearing as little as possible...or some sort of fantasy as such.

Fin del Mundo

I'm here. This is it, the big Kahuna. Buy the ticket take the ride...all that jazz. Well, I bought the ticket, taken part of the ride and the rollercoaster has spat me out in Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world.

But I've been spat out tired and beat-up...like butter spread over too much toast. I've spent the past two weeks jumping on buses, crossing borders, seeing the sights, and trecking in the mountians. In fact, I've done two treks, one around Mt. Fitzroy and the second in Torres Del Paine National Park. Both were amazing, but Torres del Paine is something above special...its got everything; glaciers, hanging glaciers, glacial lakes, glacial lakes with big icebergs floating around, mountians (obviously), rivers, breath-taking views, and, of course, the iconic granite, glacial sculpted cuernos del paine. I spent Christmas on the trail, and had a delicious (note sarcasm here) pasta and tomato sauce dinner. But I met some great people on the trail to spend Christmas with and we managed to celebrate late into the night....i think til about 9:30pm before we collapsed into a fatigued slumber. I also got up at 3:30 am on my last day to see dawn on the Torres, but mother nature thought better and covered me in a few inches of snow as I sat on a rock, camera poised and coffee in hand. Still, it was a stunning sunrise, even if the towers were shrouded in snow clouds.

So, now, I'm back in Argentina recuperating my sore legs and tired cranium at the last stop before Antartica. But...i'm planning my escape already. There are just too many tourists in Patagonia at this time of year, it's too expensive and, gosh dangit, i'm cold...i'm gonna head somewhere where summer actually means sun and sweat and not more than one layer of clothing. So...hopefully in one week i'll be on a ferry heading north through the fjords of Chile.

Happy Holidays to all.

is that, is that a, uh, glacier?

Words just aren't ample.....

The Essentials

A word of advice – if you are going to take a long bus ride down ruta 40, a gravel highway that runs down through Argentine Patagonia, take extra food and water with you. Ruta 40 is a primitive road flanking the eastern side of the Andes and runs predominately through arid steppe land and is only dotted every few hundred kilometers by villages and towns. Why, you may ask, if I only have a 13 hour bus ride, would I want to take kilos of food and liters of water? A good question…

Let us look at a hypothetical situation: A young traveler departs from a town in Patagonia for another, more southerly Patagonian town on a thirteen hour bus ride with a reputable bus company. While he is on the bus he opens his bag, takes out some food and is swollen with pride (and a bit conceited, maybe) for thinking ahead and boiling potatoes and eggs for dinner on the bus. What a grand fellow he is. After dark, with a full belly, our vagabond traveler falls asleep content. Dreams of great adventures follow. Around 2am he notices the bus has stopped and people are outside talking, taking not much notice he falls back asleep. By three the bus is still not moving, a realization dawns that something more serious than a flat tire has occurred. The bus driver confronts the passengers, ‘uh, the, uh bus is broken. We can’t fix it. We’ll have to wait until the morning when, hopefully, the bus company will send another bus to get us. It should be here by 8 am’. Ok, our traveler is annoyed, but whatever, a few hours more of sleep and then we’ll be back on our way.

Yes! a car stops. They have a satellite phone! Bus driver calls his boss…but, something is wrong. Oh, he doesn’t have the right number. Car, with the phone speeds off into the night.

By 11 o’clock he realized that the bus driver had no clue when, or if another bus would come. The sun was hot, penetratingly hot. And dry. Even drier because our conceited traveler who had a three course meal last night only brought half a liter of water and gluttonously ate all the food last night. How the high and mighty fall. Damn the sun is hot; there is not even a tree in sight. If it wasn’t for the hills one might think they were in the middle of Australia.

Consultation with the bus driver produces the knowledge that hope is centered on vague hypothetical possibilities. Hopefully the bus company at our destination will realize, when we didn’t show up at 5 am like planned, that something had happened. By 7 they might get worried, but by 8 they will have sent a rescue bus. Maybe. But there is no real procedure for this. We can only hope.

A semi stops. The driver looks at the engine, no hope for him to fix it, but he thinks he might be able to tow the bus. Fix the chains and away they go, with the passengers walking along beside the bus. They make it one-hundred meters and stop. Seems that the truck driver underestimated the weight of the bus, he says sorry and drives off. Tough luck.

Our traveler really regrets not buying that extremely expensive bottle of water at their last stop. He showed that shop owner who has the consumer power.

3pm. Finally, salvation…a rescue bus shows up. Gear and personnel are transferred…but…what’s the hold-up? One of the baggage compartments doesn’t open…another thirty minute wait. Finally on the road again…our traveler only has to wait another three hours until the destination before he can have a drink and a bite to eat.

Now let us assume that the previous story wasn’t hypothetical. In fact, if you haven’t already guessed, it happened to me. But, after the fact, it was worthwhile because now I am in El Chalten, a small village at the base of the amazingly spectacular Mt. Fitz Roy. In fact, I just returned from a four day trek through the mountains and around the glaciers, drinking their tears as they cry about global warming. Coffee never tasted better than when cooked from a glacial stream.

Tomorrow should see me hitchhiking to El Calafete…so if you happen to be on the road, give a poor vagabond a lift because this one is sick of busses!

On the road again, just can't wait to get on the road again

It’s been a while, and for that I apologize to all those who were hanging onto the edges of the their seats waiting for the conclusion to the ‘pick your own adventure book’ (its still not done).

I’ve left my little wwoofing ‘farm’ because I ran out of things to do and the guy who lived there got weirder and weirder as the days went on. Actually ‘weird’ isn’t even the correct word…its more like eccentric lunacy. Also, the farm had earned the nickname among us wwoofers as ‘the container’ because ideas, events and happenings in the outside world seemed to be unable to penetrate into the inner world of ‘the farm’. Even thoughts lacked the normal free reign and scope. So, an escape was needed from the container…and an escape was realized.

I left the farm with two other wwoofers and headed down to Trevellin to help renovate a hostel in exchange for room and board. Unlike the ‘farm’, there was plenty of work to do here…carpentry, construction, gardening and such. In sort, the kinda work that leaves one satisfied and hungry at days end. The hostel was run by an Isreali with anther Isreali volunteering with us (three Yankee blokes)…all very nice people. But, alas, we only lasted two days. Not because of the work or the people, but because we wanted to be in a place that forces, or at least gives us the opportunity, to speak Spanish. In short, to get something more outta the work than just room and board.

So now, Proc, my traveling companion from NY, and I are in a tiny town on the Chilean border in Santa Cruz province situated on the second largest lake in South America…Los Antiguos. This is the cherry capital of Argentina and we are somewhat hopeful of finding some sort of work, but if not, it’s at least a good place to chill out for a while and for Proc to nurse his finger that he brutalized with a jig-saw in Trevellin. We are camping in a municipal campground and found out last night that when Argentines camp on a Friday night they don’t plan to sleep much…and they like loud music booming from car speakers…and they love Asados.

If nothing works out here workwise I guess the next stop is El Chalten for a nice long, refreshing five day hike.