We are in Peru right now, and it might end up being my favorite country of them all. We went to Machu Picchu a few days ago, and it was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. We almost skipped it because it was so expensive and difficult to get there, at least by the standards here, but it was well worth it. Getting there was something else though! The Inca trail, which is how a lot of people usually get there and involves 4 days of hiking, is closed during February because of all the rain, and the train to get there is super expensive, so we heard about this DIY way of taking a bus to this small town, then taking another bus, then walking a while, then walking some more, so we decided to do that. The bus was supposed to be five hours but ended up being 8, and it was the craziest bus trip I have ever been on. We were hugging the side of a mountain, with sheer cliffs of 12,000 feet below us, and there were rivers flowing across the road, literally probably a foot deep. It was insane! We didn´t get into the town until dark, so had to spend the night there. We were informed that we would have to leave the next morning at 6 am because there were rock slides on the road that led to the next town we had to get to, and if we didn´t leave at 6 we wouldn´t be able to cross the road. So we get up and are ready to go at 6. We take a car about an hour into the mountains, and then at a certain point we have to stop because there is indeed a rock slide, and there is a large group of people, some with parked cars, others on foot, standing and milling around on either side of a huge pile or rocks blocking the road, while enormous boulder size rocks fall down the side of the mountain. A few crazies ran across the pile or rocks anyway in the midst of the rock slide and barely missed getting clobbered by giant falling rocks that would and could have killed you in a second. Everyone else just sort of stood around waiting for something to change, although what or how that was going to happen was anyone´s guess. We thought we were screwed and didn´t really know what to do. Then we saw that there were a few people climbing down the mountain, into the ravine below, and up the other side, which was a ridiculously steep climb down and up, but you were safe from the rock slide. After standing around for about an hour with no apparent change in the situation, we decided to do that. We had our giant backbacks, and it was a hell of a journey, holding on to bamboo for dear life on the way down, but we made it! Then we had to walk another 20 kilometers through the rain to get to the town of Aguas Calientes, which is where you go to Machu Picchu from. It was quite a day!
Anyway, now we are in the Sacred Valley, which is the valley that connects to where the Machu Picchu ruins are, and is also filled with Incan ruins. This is a truly special and beautiful place, and I find myself at a loss to describe it.
We have just a few weeks left, and then we will be rejoining you all in the US. It will be difficult to leave here, but we are so excited to see friends and family.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Living the High Life
Here we are in La Paz, huffing and puffing our way around at about 13,000 feet. Actually, today we are both feeling much better than we have in a while. We spent a couple of rough days in Potosi, the highest city in the world, at an altitude of 14,000 feet. Our bus arrived at 3 in the morning, so that didn´t help either. For some reason all of the overnight buses in Bolivia seem to arrive at 3 or 4 in the morning, which is not so fun for the passenger. Potosi was such a sad, beautiful, and fascinating city. Anyone who is interested in getting a feel for where we are right now must watch the documentary titled El Minero del Diablo, or The Devil´s Miner. It is one of the most heartbreaking things you will ever watch, and it paints a very clear picture of a city with a very complicated past and present. Potosi was once the richest city in the world due to it´s silver mines, and most tourists go there today to tour the mines, which are still in operation, although most of the silver supply has been exhausted. The mines are incredibly dangerous, and almost all of the miners who work in them, including children as young as ten years old, die by 35 or so. We did not tour the mines because we did not feel comfortable taking a tour of a place that continues to kill so many people, but the city itself was still quite fascinating to see. I cannot recommend this documentary enough. Please watch it.
We spent the last several weeks in the city of Tarija and its surrounding areas, working for about ten days for a strange man in the city with a garden of sorts and some very sad animals, but we had a free place to stay in a truly wonderful city. You can hop a micro bus (which sometimes is actually the back of a pick up truck) and be in mountains or by rivers or in cute little towns in thirty minutes as well from Tarija, and we took full advantage of that because we only worked half days in Tarija. Creepy Mauricio, the man we worked for, hooked us up with another cool gig in a town called Valle de Concepcion, which is a wine producing town about thirty minutes outside the city. All of the wine in Bolivia is produced around Tarija. Most of it is pretty bad, but it was still cool to be in the region. There we spent a week picking leaves on a vineyard. The work was excruciatingly boring, but the place was stunningly beautiful, and we met some great characters there. In the first five minutes of us being there, Jesus, the owner of the vineyard, sliced his hand open on a bottle of wine that exploded, and he just continued to smear the blood that was oozing out of his finger on the wall of the wine cellar for about ten minutes as it bled and bled. It was sort of like that, if that makes any sense.
We celebrated what we thought was Luke´s 30th birthday there, and it was a total bust. We took the day off of work and walked about 2 hours to a town that we were told was beautiful, but turned out not to be, and it was 100 degrees. We tried to go out for a special dinner and everything in the town was closed. Everyone at the vineyard said we would drink wine and celebrate when we got back from dinner, and when we did everyone was nowhere to be found. Nothing went right. BUT then we woke up in the morning and realized that we had the date wrong (we are sort of living in the twilight zone here), and that what we thought had been Luke´s birthday was actually the day before, and we were given a second chance! We did it right on his real birthday, going back to Tarija, spluring on a place with our own bathroom, going and swimming in a waterfall, and eating Chinese food! The whole situation was pretty hysterical.
And now, La Paz. This is a beautiful city that is incredibly intense and overwhelming. It makes walking around the streets of NYC feel like being in the countryside. Every time we cross the street we almost die...seriously. It is totally insane, but the architecture is stunning, and the set up of the city, which is stretched out over enormously steep hills, is like nothing I´ve ever seen. It is filled with amazing artesenal crafts, and it´s fun just to walk around and take it all in. We were supposed to leave this afternoon but missed our bus because apparently a bus and two taxis crashed into Lake Titicaca, which is where we were headed, and they suspended afternoon service, so we are here for one more night. We´ve got a few days left in Bolivia and then we´re off to Peru for the last leg of our journey. We are hoping to possibly volunteer a little bit more, because we like it and also for financial reasons, but as of right now we have nothing else lined up, so we´ll see. We head back to the states in early March, so we´ll see you all then!
Just a little funny tidbit to leave you with...two days ago we were heading to La Paz and had to switch buses in Oruro, another large city, and I went into the bathroom in the bus station. There was a woman with a lamb on a leash in the bathroom, and the lamb was just pooping all over the floor of the bathroom. Oh Bolivia!
We spent the last several weeks in the city of Tarija and its surrounding areas, working for about ten days for a strange man in the city with a garden of sorts and some very sad animals, but we had a free place to stay in a truly wonderful city. You can hop a micro bus (which sometimes is actually the back of a pick up truck) and be in mountains or by rivers or in cute little towns in thirty minutes as well from Tarija, and we took full advantage of that because we only worked half days in Tarija. Creepy Mauricio, the man we worked for, hooked us up with another cool gig in a town called Valle de Concepcion, which is a wine producing town about thirty minutes outside the city. All of the wine in Bolivia is produced around Tarija. Most of it is pretty bad, but it was still cool to be in the region. There we spent a week picking leaves on a vineyard. The work was excruciatingly boring, but the place was stunningly beautiful, and we met some great characters there. In the first five minutes of us being there, Jesus, the owner of the vineyard, sliced his hand open on a bottle of wine that exploded, and he just continued to smear the blood that was oozing out of his finger on the wall of the wine cellar for about ten minutes as it bled and bled. It was sort of like that, if that makes any sense.
We celebrated what we thought was Luke´s 30th birthday there, and it was a total bust. We took the day off of work and walked about 2 hours to a town that we were told was beautiful, but turned out not to be, and it was 100 degrees. We tried to go out for a special dinner and everything in the town was closed. Everyone at the vineyard said we would drink wine and celebrate when we got back from dinner, and when we did everyone was nowhere to be found. Nothing went right. BUT then we woke up in the morning and realized that we had the date wrong (we are sort of living in the twilight zone here), and that what we thought had been Luke´s birthday was actually the day before, and we were given a second chance! We did it right on his real birthday, going back to Tarija, spluring on a place with our own bathroom, going and swimming in a waterfall, and eating Chinese food! The whole situation was pretty hysterical.
And now, La Paz. This is a beautiful city that is incredibly intense and overwhelming. It makes walking around the streets of NYC feel like being in the countryside. Every time we cross the street we almost die...seriously. It is totally insane, but the architecture is stunning, and the set up of the city, which is stretched out over enormously steep hills, is like nothing I´ve ever seen. It is filled with amazing artesenal crafts, and it´s fun just to walk around and take it all in. We were supposed to leave this afternoon but missed our bus because apparently a bus and two taxis crashed into Lake Titicaca, which is where we were headed, and they suspended afternoon service, so we are here for one more night. We´ve got a few days left in Bolivia and then we´re off to Peru for the last leg of our journey. We are hoping to possibly volunteer a little bit more, because we like it and also for financial reasons, but as of right now we have nothing else lined up, so we´ll see. We head back to the states in early March, so we´ll see you all then!
Just a little funny tidbit to leave you with...two days ago we were heading to La Paz and had to switch buses in Oruro, another large city, and I went into the bathroom in the bus station. There was a woman with a lamb on a leash in the bathroom, and the lamb was just pooping all over the floor of the bathroom. Oh Bolivia!
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Is that a baby under that chicken stand?
Ah Bolivia, where the food is cheap, the street dogs are cute and plentiful, and the people look at you like you have six heads. Bolivia brings up a lot of complicated feelings in Luke and I as we travel throughout its beautiful lands. There is much to see here--tons of natural beauty, from misty and lonely mountains with herds of wandering sheep, to deep red canyons where there is not a soul around. Everything is here for the viewing and the experiencing. Some things are unbelievably cheap here, like food. The last few days we have been eating our dinners in the central market of Tarija, and for the two of us to eat dinner it costs just under 2 dollars. Granted, the first night Luke accidentally ate shredded cow stomach, but still. You can get salteñas, the amazingly delicious traditional Bolivian breakfast food for about 15 cents a piece, and a freshly made in front of you apple carrot juice for fifty cents. On the down side, food hygiene leaves something to be desired. Raw chickens are on every counter top of every corner store, and on the hands of most people who are handing you your change, whether you are buying chicken or not. We´ve seen pigs being cut up on the sidewalk in front of clothing stores, and yes, babies hanging out underneath meat stands where blood and guts are running down the sides. Needless to say, it keeps you on your toes! Also, in general, it definitely feels like people do not want us here. We feel like outsiders in a way that is profound, and that is challenging. Yesterday we spent some time with a wonderful and odd Bolivian family on our way to a lake out of town, and they told us it was their first time interacting with foreigners, which was exciting. It was so fantastic to be so taken in by them off the side of the road, and so special to feel a little bit accepted for a brief period of time.
We are currently in Tarija, which is the heart of Bolivian wine country. The wine is not so good, but it´s still a beautiful area with lots to do and see. Unfortunately we are now in the rainy season, so it rains pretty much very day. This has put a damper on some of our outdoor adventures, but we are still making it work the best we can, getting a bit soggy in the process. We have climbed some beautiful large hills/small mountains, hiked through some amazing canyons, seen petroglyphs, and eaten some pretty delicious (and some fairly dicey) food. We spent Christmas in Tupiza, which did not turn out to be quite what we had hoped for, but we got out and did some trekking around in the surrounding countryside. There is a serious, and I mean serious, littering problem here, but we are not contributing and trying to get far enough away from the heart of things to get away from it. We begin what will probably be our final job today-tommorow, meaning we arrived at our host´s house today, but we begin work tomorrow. He growns organic greens in the city and sells them to a few local restaurants. We will work only mornings with him and have the afternoons to ourselves. His place has a bit of what I imagine a Bolivian prison cell would look like look/feel, and we are praying for not so much rain because there is a hole in the ceiling over our "bed", but we have our game faces on! He´s really nice and hopefully in the dark it won´t be so bad. I´ll keep you posted.
We are currently in Tarija, which is the heart of Bolivian wine country. The wine is not so good, but it´s still a beautiful area with lots to do and see. Unfortunately we are now in the rainy season, so it rains pretty much very day. This has put a damper on some of our outdoor adventures, but we are still making it work the best we can, getting a bit soggy in the process. We have climbed some beautiful large hills/small mountains, hiked through some amazing canyons, seen petroglyphs, and eaten some pretty delicious (and some fairly dicey) food. We spent Christmas in Tupiza, which did not turn out to be quite what we had hoped for, but we got out and did some trekking around in the surrounding countryside. There is a serious, and I mean serious, littering problem here, but we are not contributing and trying to get far enough away from the heart of things to get away from it. We begin what will probably be our final job today-tommorow, meaning we arrived at our host´s house today, but we begin work tomorrow. He growns organic greens in the city and sells them to a few local restaurants. We will work only mornings with him and have the afternoons to ourselves. His place has a bit of what I imagine a Bolivian prison cell would look like look/feel, and we are praying for not so much rain because there is a hole in the ceiling over our "bed", but we have our game faces on! He´s really nice and hopefully in the dark it won´t be so bad. I´ll keep you posted.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Bolivia Bound
Why hello again. I am trying to cram in a lot of info in one big dose to update you all on our latest adventures.
We are in the very north of Argentina right now, and in about a week we will be crossing the border into Bolivia. We just finished a week of work in a very remote reserve just outside of the town of Jujuy in Argentina´s northernmost province. We planted corn, dug holes, planted beans, weeded, cooked, cleared brush, and did a smattering of other things. The region has been experiencing a serious draught, so once again our bathing practices were quite limited. We had to clean up in a ¨river¨that was a few inches deep, using a cup to pour over ourselves. One day it was 105 degrees, so you can imagine how sweaty we were getting. It was pretty gross! But we had a great time. We worked with three Swedish guys and another American, who actually went to Penn as well, as well as a girl from England. It was funny to talk about college in a small and very remote reserve in the middle of nowhere of Argentina with someone.
Anyway, our plans have changed a bit in the last few weeks. We were supposed to work in Mendoza for a month, but that fell through at the last minute, which was really annoying, but I think it was a blessing in disguise. It means more time in Bolivia and Peru, which we are super excited about. We are looking around for some more work-volunteering in those places. We are thinking of working in Pisco, where there was a huge earthquake a few years ago, and they still need many volunteers to help rebuild the entire town. So far we have one gig lined up in Bolivia. Today we are headed to some remote villages in the north of Argentina for a few days, where we will do some hiking and waterfall viewing and things like that. Then, for Christmas, we are headed to Bolivia, where we will spend the holiday in Tupiza. For any of you who have seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, the town we will be in is where they die. Luke is pretty excited about this, as am I. It is supposed to be just beautiful, with tons of outdoorsy things to do in the area. Then, we are headed to Tarija, which is a bit off to the east, where we will work for one to two weeks with a guy who provides organic produce to local restaurants. It is also Bolivian wine country (we´ve heard the wine is not so good, but still, we will try some). Last night we ate llama for the first time, and it was yummy. I think there will be much more llama to come in Bolivia, although truth be told, we have eaten almost no meat on this journey. We did split one steak since we are in Argentina, but our budgets to not allow for much meat eating.
Anyway, I will try to do some more frequent updating so I am not trying to cram in an entire country´s worth of stuff into ten minutes of writing. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season, and know that we miss and love you and are thinking about you all.
We are in the very north of Argentina right now, and in about a week we will be crossing the border into Bolivia. We just finished a week of work in a very remote reserve just outside of the town of Jujuy in Argentina´s northernmost province. We planted corn, dug holes, planted beans, weeded, cooked, cleared brush, and did a smattering of other things. The region has been experiencing a serious draught, so once again our bathing practices were quite limited. We had to clean up in a ¨river¨that was a few inches deep, using a cup to pour over ourselves. One day it was 105 degrees, so you can imagine how sweaty we were getting. It was pretty gross! But we had a great time. We worked with three Swedish guys and another American, who actually went to Penn as well, as well as a girl from England. It was funny to talk about college in a small and very remote reserve in the middle of nowhere of Argentina with someone.
Anyway, our plans have changed a bit in the last few weeks. We were supposed to work in Mendoza for a month, but that fell through at the last minute, which was really annoying, but I think it was a blessing in disguise. It means more time in Bolivia and Peru, which we are super excited about. We are looking around for some more work-volunteering in those places. We are thinking of working in Pisco, where there was a huge earthquake a few years ago, and they still need many volunteers to help rebuild the entire town. So far we have one gig lined up in Bolivia. Today we are headed to some remote villages in the north of Argentina for a few days, where we will do some hiking and waterfall viewing and things like that. Then, for Christmas, we are headed to Bolivia, where we will spend the holiday in Tupiza. For any of you who have seen Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, the town we will be in is where they die. Luke is pretty excited about this, as am I. It is supposed to be just beautiful, with tons of outdoorsy things to do in the area. Then, we are headed to Tarija, which is a bit off to the east, where we will work for one to two weeks with a guy who provides organic produce to local restaurants. It is also Bolivian wine country (we´ve heard the wine is not so good, but still, we will try some). Last night we ate llama for the first time, and it was yummy. I think there will be much more llama to come in Bolivia, although truth be told, we have eaten almost no meat on this journey. We did split one steak since we are in Argentina, but our budgets to not allow for much meat eating.
Anyway, I will try to do some more frequent updating so I am not trying to cram in an entire country´s worth of stuff into ten minutes of writing. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season, and know that we miss and love you and are thinking about you all.
Way overdue post--El Bolson, The Mapuche, and lots of other exciting tidbits
This post is very outdated. I started writing it about a month ago and didn´t have time to finish, but here it is. I will write a new one as well.
So many things have happened since I last wrote a post. It now feels as though our adventures have really begun since leaving Chile. In the past month, we have worked at two different places, met so many amazing people, and learned a lot about a country and a people that have so much to teach us. We have so much more to learn, and we are just about bursting at the seams with enthusiasm. I know that probably sounds pretty geeky, but it´s true!
First of all, Argentina...What a country. It´s natural beauty is astounding, at least where we have been so far. When we first took the bus across the border to Los Antiguos, we were a bit disappointed. As many border towns often are, this one was fairly lame, and we were given some false information at our super crappy hostel about when the bus left for our destination (a town called El Bolson) so we got stuck in Los Antiguos for an extra day. When we finally were able to get on the 14 hour bus ride to El Bolson, we were itching to get out of there. The only bus to El Bolson got in at 2 am, which we weren´t too excited about, but we had no choice. Luckily the bus got in early, and around midnight we were dropped off on a random street corner in a town we had never been to with nowhere to stay. We had been accustomed to being in the middle of nowhere, where it´s no big deal to throw a tent down wherever. Now we found ourselves in an actual town, and we wandered around for a bit feeling lost and worried that we would not find a place to stay. Fortunately, we found this amazing place where we spent a glorious few days beginning our relationship with a town and an area which is one of the coolest places I´ve ever been. El Bolson is nestled in the valley of beautiful mountains, an area well suited to the cultivation of many things. It has tons of fruit trees, vegetables, locally made beers, cheeses, jams, etc. We were originally supposed to spend all of our time working for a group of Mapuche people who had recently reclaimed their land from the government. Our contact to do this was a woman named Blanca Rosa, who is part of WWOOF. El Bolson has an incredible craft market four times a week, and she told us to meet her there the following day and discuss plans. When we met her, we were immediately taken with her. She is about 70, and she was selling handmade windchimes made by one of her sons, and various medicinal plants from her garden, as well as home made teas. She offered that we come and work for her for a bit before heading to work with the Mapuche people. We gladly accepted her offer, and began an amazing two weeks with this very special woman. We worked in the greenhouse, her massive garden, and even did various things around her house, like painting and construction. I can´t really do her justice by describing her, but she is a firecracker of a woman who wanted to teach us all she could about plants, bioconstruction, Argentine politics, and a host of other things. She runs a hostel as well as a WWOOF operation, in addition to being a local advocate and celebrity in the field of permaculture. The local government consults her constantly on issues relating to the environment, because this is an area in which people actually care so much about how humans impact the environment. It´s the kind of place where lots of people come to WWOOF, and then they decide to live there permanently. We met an ex Wall Street banker who came to WWOOF after everything crashed, and now he lives in a Yurt in El Bolson. Needless to say, we made some great friends staying at her place.
Next, we headed into the mountains to work for the Mapuche. Again, the experience is hard to sum up, but I will try. A friend we made at Blanca Rosa´s, who had just come from working with the Mapuche, had warned us that the situation was very disorganized and a bit frustrating, but very rewarding at the same time. It proved to be such. Basically, this large extended family has a piece of land in the moutains, surrounded by beautiful lakes and trees. Rigth now, the land has one very rustic house-shack on it, in which the 85 year old matriarch of the family, Zoila, lives, sometimes alone, and sometimes with 19 year old Alexi, her great nephew. Zoila is about four feet tall, with one eye, almost no hearing, and no teeth! At first she was a bit intimidating because she gives something of a chilly reception, but by the end we were great buddies and she even gave me her shirt to take with me. It was quite touching actually.
Our main contacts, Elba, Zoila´s daughter, and Claudia, Elba´s daugther, would come every few days to work here and there, as would various other members of the family. Our job was to set up living for future volunteers. No one other than Blanca Rosa gave us any direction as to what to do. Our first order of business was to make a shelter for our tent, because every night horses, cows and oxen would come onto the land, and we were told that they would trample us in our tent, which we got a brush with the first night. It was a bit scary! In that area, it is not an animal owner´s responsibility to contain his-her animals, but rather everyone else´s responsibility to keep other´s animals off. Animals wander through the dirt roads all the time, and every night we were visited by animals in the night. Luckily after the first night we had a shelter in the trees constructed to keep us safe. Next we had to build a shack to do our cooking in, and to protect us from the rain and very intense wind. We had only an ax, a hammer, a machete, and a very shitty saw to do so. Various family members owned chain saws, but no one would leave one for us to use. Things like this proved to be a bit frustrating, but we managed to construct a make shift structure that protected us more or less. It took three days of rain to get us to get some proper walls up. There´s nothing like getting soaked to put the fire under your ass! Then we built, or rather rebuilt, an outhouse for our own use. I never thought I´d be so excited to have access to an outhouse, but man, when we finished that thing, it was pretty darn exciting. Our only way to bath at this place was to jump into a freezing cold lake (where talking Patagonian waters here), but the water was crystal clear and quite refreshing seeing as we were covered in dust at all times.
In the end it ended up being a wonderful experience. We met some incredible people and I for one refined my sawing and chopping with an ax skills...not really though. I still stink at both, but I´m working on it! They family had a big deep fried empanada lunch for us on the day before we left, and we got to meet some members of the extended family that we hadn´t met before. We got more offers for long term work, which we passed up because we were committed to work in Mendoza (which subsequently didn´t end up happening, alas, but so it goes). El Bolson and its surrounding areas were absolutely incredible and we wish we had spent more time there. If you ever have the chance to go, GO!
So many things have happened since I last wrote a post. It now feels as though our adventures have really begun since leaving Chile. In the past month, we have worked at two different places, met so many amazing people, and learned a lot about a country and a people that have so much to teach us. We have so much more to learn, and we are just about bursting at the seams with enthusiasm. I know that probably sounds pretty geeky, but it´s true!
First of all, Argentina...What a country. It´s natural beauty is astounding, at least where we have been so far. When we first took the bus across the border to Los Antiguos, we were a bit disappointed. As many border towns often are, this one was fairly lame, and we were given some false information at our super crappy hostel about when the bus left for our destination (a town called El Bolson) so we got stuck in Los Antiguos for an extra day. When we finally were able to get on the 14 hour bus ride to El Bolson, we were itching to get out of there. The only bus to El Bolson got in at 2 am, which we weren´t too excited about, but we had no choice. Luckily the bus got in early, and around midnight we were dropped off on a random street corner in a town we had never been to with nowhere to stay. We had been accustomed to being in the middle of nowhere, where it´s no big deal to throw a tent down wherever. Now we found ourselves in an actual town, and we wandered around for a bit feeling lost and worried that we would not find a place to stay. Fortunately, we found this amazing place where we spent a glorious few days beginning our relationship with a town and an area which is one of the coolest places I´ve ever been. El Bolson is nestled in the valley of beautiful mountains, an area well suited to the cultivation of many things. It has tons of fruit trees, vegetables, locally made beers, cheeses, jams, etc. We were originally supposed to spend all of our time working for a group of Mapuche people who had recently reclaimed their land from the government. Our contact to do this was a woman named Blanca Rosa, who is part of WWOOF. El Bolson has an incredible craft market four times a week, and she told us to meet her there the following day and discuss plans. When we met her, we were immediately taken with her. She is about 70, and she was selling handmade windchimes made by one of her sons, and various medicinal plants from her garden, as well as home made teas. She offered that we come and work for her for a bit before heading to work with the Mapuche people. We gladly accepted her offer, and began an amazing two weeks with this very special woman. We worked in the greenhouse, her massive garden, and even did various things around her house, like painting and construction. I can´t really do her justice by describing her, but she is a firecracker of a woman who wanted to teach us all she could about plants, bioconstruction, Argentine politics, and a host of other things. She runs a hostel as well as a WWOOF operation, in addition to being a local advocate and celebrity in the field of permaculture. The local government consults her constantly on issues relating to the environment, because this is an area in which people actually care so much about how humans impact the environment. It´s the kind of place where lots of people come to WWOOF, and then they decide to live there permanently. We met an ex Wall Street banker who came to WWOOF after everything crashed, and now he lives in a Yurt in El Bolson. Needless to say, we made some great friends staying at her place.
Next, we headed into the mountains to work for the Mapuche. Again, the experience is hard to sum up, but I will try. A friend we made at Blanca Rosa´s, who had just come from working with the Mapuche, had warned us that the situation was very disorganized and a bit frustrating, but very rewarding at the same time. It proved to be such. Basically, this large extended family has a piece of land in the moutains, surrounded by beautiful lakes and trees. Rigth now, the land has one very rustic house-shack on it, in which the 85 year old matriarch of the family, Zoila, lives, sometimes alone, and sometimes with 19 year old Alexi, her great nephew. Zoila is about four feet tall, with one eye, almost no hearing, and no teeth! At first she was a bit intimidating because she gives something of a chilly reception, but by the end we were great buddies and she even gave me her shirt to take with me. It was quite touching actually.
Our main contacts, Elba, Zoila´s daughter, and Claudia, Elba´s daugther, would come every few days to work here and there, as would various other members of the family. Our job was to set up living for future volunteers. No one other than Blanca Rosa gave us any direction as to what to do. Our first order of business was to make a shelter for our tent, because every night horses, cows and oxen would come onto the land, and we were told that they would trample us in our tent, which we got a brush with the first night. It was a bit scary! In that area, it is not an animal owner´s responsibility to contain his-her animals, but rather everyone else´s responsibility to keep other´s animals off. Animals wander through the dirt roads all the time, and every night we were visited by animals in the night. Luckily after the first night we had a shelter in the trees constructed to keep us safe. Next we had to build a shack to do our cooking in, and to protect us from the rain and very intense wind. We had only an ax, a hammer, a machete, and a very shitty saw to do so. Various family members owned chain saws, but no one would leave one for us to use. Things like this proved to be a bit frustrating, but we managed to construct a make shift structure that protected us more or less. It took three days of rain to get us to get some proper walls up. There´s nothing like getting soaked to put the fire under your ass! Then we built, or rather rebuilt, an outhouse for our own use. I never thought I´d be so excited to have access to an outhouse, but man, when we finished that thing, it was pretty darn exciting. Our only way to bath at this place was to jump into a freezing cold lake (where talking Patagonian waters here), but the water was crystal clear and quite refreshing seeing as we were covered in dust at all times.
In the end it ended up being a wonderful experience. We met some incredible people and I for one refined my sawing and chopping with an ax skills...not really though. I still stink at both, but I´m working on it! They family had a big deep fried empanada lunch for us on the day before we left, and we got to meet some members of the extended family that we hadn´t met before. We got more offers for long term work, which we passed up because we were committed to work in Mendoza (which subsequently didn´t end up happening, alas, but so it goes). El Bolson and its surrounding areas were absolutely incredible and we wish we had spent more time there. If you ever have the chance to go, GO!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Ciao Chile y Sus Torros Locos
Barring anymore wild circumstances, this should be my last post in Chile. Sunday we are set to take off for Argentina. Our visas expire in a week, which is crazy, because we never planned to be here this long. I guess that is the beauty of this trip--that we have the flexibility and willingness to change plans as we see fit and as is necessary. A few days ago it seemed as though we might be here for considerably longer again. I will relate the following story and hope that it does not cause too much alarm.
Last week we took a trip to the "big city" of Coyhaique, where we flew into three months ago. We went to do some errands for Mary Ann before we left, and we spent a frenzied few days running around. We returned on Saturday afternoon tired from many many hours in the car on pot holed filled dirt roads, but we at least we got to see tons and tons of baby animals (piglets, lambs, goats, calves) on the side of the road throughout our drive. On Sunday we were out working on the ranch with Mary Ann when we heard the dogs barking wildly. She ran out to see what was going on. Then we heard what sounded like shouting, but we thought she was just yelling at the dogs. We had been inside of this yurt that is on the property doing some work in there. Luke ran out just to make sure everything was okay and I stayed in the yurt. A few minutes later again I heard what I thought was shouting and got concerned. This happened once before, as some of you know, about a month ago when one of the dogs viciously attacked another one. I never wrote a blog post about this, but with the crazy wind here and the large expanses of space, it's sometimes hard to tell what is legitimate shouting and what is just yelling at dogs, excitement, whatever. Anyway, I stepped out of the yurt and a bull charged right by me. I was very confused, but it happened so fast it didn't really scare me. I could tell things were not as they should be, and I ran out to see what was going on. Luke came running and told me we had to go. Mary Ann had been charged by the bull and was very hurt. One of the neighbors had been crossing her property with his animals, and a bull had gotten loose. The bull was already angry, and then the six dogs had gone up to it and surrounded it. Mary Ann tried to call off the dogs, and the bull charged her, ran her down, and plowed her into the ground. Fortunately Luke ran up and diverted its attention and the damage was not worse than it was. What ensued was a rather insane eight hours or so. Her finger was broken very badly (I won't go into too much detail, but it was really bad, as in bone sticking out) and her back was also in a lot of pain. She sent us to find the neighbor, and unkind words were exchanged, which I also won't go into. We then had to try to get her into the pick up, which was very difficult considering the back and torso problems she was experiencing, and drive an hour along pot hole filled dirt "highway" to the town of Cochrane to go to the nearest hospital. I use the word hospital loosely. The doctor there was not equipped to deal with her injuries, and we experienced an absolutely ridiculous lack of adequate medical care. Her finger looked like an accordion and you could literally see the bone, and the doctor tried to tell us it was not broken. Anyway, it was a horrible experience for her. We went and got some friends of hers in the town, and we decided that she was going to need to go to Coyhaique, which is a five hour drive (where Luke and I had just come back from) to go to the hospital there. Luke and I went back to the ranch, packed a bag for her, and waited for two hours by the gate for her friends to come back with her. When she arrived back after dark, she informed us that she was not going to Coyhaique, and was going to take her chances healing at home. This concerned Luke and I a great deal, (as well as her friends Nela and Carlos), but she was adamant. The next morning she was in tremendous pain and made the decision to go to skip Coyhaique entirely and go to Santiago. This was the right choice. We have heard from her and she is going to be fine, but she had a bad blood infection from her finger, and broken ribs that were pushing on a nerve. We offered to stay and help her for as long as she needed us to, but her sister is coming from the states.
Needless to say, it's been a crazy few days. We are taking care of the ranch until she gets back, and then she is insisting that we still head to Argentina on Sunday. So that's the plan for now.
On a lighter note, we will be spending our first spell in Argentina in the El Bolson region, working with a group of old Mapuche women who have just reclaimed some of their land and are beginning to farm. The Mapuche are the native people of this area. So far, despite joining wwoof Argentina, we will be working off the wwoof grid. We got this opportunity through a wwoof farmer that we contacted, and I think our next stop will be in Mendoza working with a small farm that is also not part of wwoof but that we got through a wwoof contact. It's interesting how this is all working out.
We have spent an incredible three months here, and we are ready for our next adventure. We are so relieved that Mary Ann is okay, and of course we gladly would have stayed as long as necessary (although this would have involved having to get an extension on our visas) but we're really excited for the next step and to move on to a new country. Chilean Patagonia is so completely isolated, and although we will still be in Patagonia for a few weeks in El Bolson, the Argentine side is completely different. We will be entering a land of phone service, internet service, mail, and possibly paved roads. The food will not consist only of torta, white bread deep friend in animal fat (which actually tastes pretty good, but you eat one piece and that about does it) and meat. Don't think this is all we've been eating here, because it's not, but there have been times when these are the options, and when we were in Coyhaique, the regional capital, our options for eating out consisted of meat, french fries, meat and french fries. The little hospedaje where we stayed included breakfast, which consisted of Nescafe, hamburger bun like giant pieces of cardboard white bread, and a slice of bologna and American cheese. This is what people eat here! I kid you not. Here we come Argentina, with your delicious food, locally brewed beer, and phone service. We're ready!
Last week we took a trip to the "big city" of Coyhaique, where we flew into three months ago. We went to do some errands for Mary Ann before we left, and we spent a frenzied few days running around. We returned on Saturday afternoon tired from many many hours in the car on pot holed filled dirt roads, but we at least we got to see tons and tons of baby animals (piglets, lambs, goats, calves) on the side of the road throughout our drive. On Sunday we were out working on the ranch with Mary Ann when we heard the dogs barking wildly. She ran out to see what was going on. Then we heard what sounded like shouting, but we thought she was just yelling at the dogs. We had been inside of this yurt that is on the property doing some work in there. Luke ran out just to make sure everything was okay and I stayed in the yurt. A few minutes later again I heard what I thought was shouting and got concerned. This happened once before, as some of you know, about a month ago when one of the dogs viciously attacked another one. I never wrote a blog post about this, but with the crazy wind here and the large expanses of space, it's sometimes hard to tell what is legitimate shouting and what is just yelling at dogs, excitement, whatever. Anyway, I stepped out of the yurt and a bull charged right by me. I was very confused, but it happened so fast it didn't really scare me. I could tell things were not as they should be, and I ran out to see what was going on. Luke came running and told me we had to go. Mary Ann had been charged by the bull and was very hurt. One of the neighbors had been crossing her property with his animals, and a bull had gotten loose. The bull was already angry, and then the six dogs had gone up to it and surrounded it. Mary Ann tried to call off the dogs, and the bull charged her, ran her down, and plowed her into the ground. Fortunately Luke ran up and diverted its attention and the damage was not worse than it was. What ensued was a rather insane eight hours or so. Her finger was broken very badly (I won't go into too much detail, but it was really bad, as in bone sticking out) and her back was also in a lot of pain. She sent us to find the neighbor, and unkind words were exchanged, which I also won't go into. We then had to try to get her into the pick up, which was very difficult considering the back and torso problems she was experiencing, and drive an hour along pot hole filled dirt "highway" to the town of Cochrane to go to the nearest hospital. I use the word hospital loosely. The doctor there was not equipped to deal with her injuries, and we experienced an absolutely ridiculous lack of adequate medical care. Her finger looked like an accordion and you could literally see the bone, and the doctor tried to tell us it was not broken. Anyway, it was a horrible experience for her. We went and got some friends of hers in the town, and we decided that she was going to need to go to Coyhaique, which is a five hour drive (where Luke and I had just come back from) to go to the hospital there. Luke and I went back to the ranch, packed a bag for her, and waited for two hours by the gate for her friends to come back with her. When she arrived back after dark, she informed us that she was not going to Coyhaique, and was going to take her chances healing at home. This concerned Luke and I a great deal, (as well as her friends Nela and Carlos), but she was adamant. The next morning she was in tremendous pain and made the decision to go to skip Coyhaique entirely and go to Santiago. This was the right choice. We have heard from her and she is going to be fine, but she had a bad blood infection from her finger, and broken ribs that were pushing on a nerve. We offered to stay and help her for as long as she needed us to, but her sister is coming from the states.
Needless to say, it's been a crazy few days. We are taking care of the ranch until she gets back, and then she is insisting that we still head to Argentina on Sunday. So that's the plan for now.
On a lighter note, we will be spending our first spell in Argentina in the El Bolson region, working with a group of old Mapuche women who have just reclaimed some of their land and are beginning to farm. The Mapuche are the native people of this area. So far, despite joining wwoof Argentina, we will be working off the wwoof grid. We got this opportunity through a wwoof farmer that we contacted, and I think our next stop will be in Mendoza working with a small farm that is also not part of wwoof but that we got through a wwoof contact. It's interesting how this is all working out.
We have spent an incredible three months here, and we are ready for our next adventure. We are so relieved that Mary Ann is okay, and of course we gladly would have stayed as long as necessary (although this would have involved having to get an extension on our visas) but we're really excited for the next step and to move on to a new country. Chilean Patagonia is so completely isolated, and although we will still be in Patagonia for a few weeks in El Bolson, the Argentine side is completely different. We will be entering a land of phone service, internet service, mail, and possibly paved roads. The food will not consist only of torta, white bread deep friend in animal fat (which actually tastes pretty good, but you eat one piece and that about does it) and meat. Don't think this is all we've been eating here, because it's not, but there have been times when these are the options, and when we were in Coyhaique, the regional capital, our options for eating out consisted of meat, french fries, meat and french fries. The little hospedaje where we stayed included breakfast, which consisted of Nescafe, hamburger bun like giant pieces of cardboard white bread, and a slice of bologna and American cheese. This is what people eat here! I kid you not. Here we come Argentina, with your delicious food, locally brewed beer, and phone service. We're ready!
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Back to Civilization?
So much has happened in the last month or so. I know it’s been a very long time since a post…possibly longer than a month. It will be difficult to describe the last few weeks, but I will try to.
Luke and I got back a few days ago from two weeks at the Sol de Mayo, a ranch that is owned by Jonathan, Mary Anne’s ex husband. The Sol de Mayo is the most remote place I have ever been and probably one of the more remote places left on earth. In order to get there, you have to drive (or ride a horse) about two hours through ranch land that winds through enchanted looking forests, past wild horses, through mud and over rickety bridges. Once you reach the end of the car journey, you take la balsa, which is a wooden raft attached to a cable that uses the current to transport people and supplies from one side of the river to the other.
We spent one night camping on the other side of the river because it was nightfall by the time we arrived. It was Luke, myself, Jonathan, and a Chilean man named David, who is our age and from Santiago, but who had recently done something similar to Luke and I and decided to leave his life there in search of something else.
The next day, our journey began. We hiked sixteen miles through deep mud, up steep hillsides, down others, and through a land that it felt like time forgot. We passed through three ranches, each of which seems to hail from another era. We stopped for lunch at a ranch belonging to Julio, who is about seventy and lives outdoors with his animals. He has no connection to the outside world, other than Jonathan and his troops passing through to get to the Sol de Mayo. At the end of our hike, we had to cross, barefoot, a river of glacial runoff, which had freezing cold water up to my waist. It was almost dark by the time we made it to the river, so needless to say it was pretty darn cold. We arrived at the Sol de Mayo after about eight hours of walking. There is no other way to get there. It sits at the edge of an ice cap, surrounded by glaciers, and the beauty and intensity of the view around us was truly stunning. There is a radio that you can use to communicate with other ranches, but other than that, you are completely cut off from the rest of the world, with no way to access anything or get out other than this same sixteen mile journey on foot. A couple of days ago (after we got back) something called a glof (glacial lake outburst flood) happened, which is when a lake drains through a glacier due to the rapid glacial melt, and the rivers and lakes in the areas flood. People’s entire ranches, animals and all, can go under water if they don’t get the news on their radios and get to higher ground in time.
I can’t go into all of the happenings of those two weeks right now, but I will say that we have stumbled upon a world here that is much more complicated than it originally seemed. We worked our tails off for the next two weeks, hauling five gallon buckets of water from the flowing river for all of our water needs a few times a day, building things, taking things down, weeding, shoveling shit, and cleaning what had become a pretty disgusting place. The man who takes care of the ranch lives in squalor, and what we found when we arrived there was pretty gross, especially against the backdrop of such a beautiful place. The buildings at the ranch are quite basic. Rotting panels of wood that you can see the ground through make up the floor, and in the winters there it gets to be 0 degrees F. We were woken up by eight roosters every morning at 4, which was trying. By the time we left, the place was fairly transformed. It was a very interesting experience, albeit one fraught with certain tensions and difficulties that were beyond our control. We were offered a full time job there to live at the ranch and take care of it for as long as we wanted, and we seriously entertained the offer. The idea of having that place as something of our own for six months or so was truly tempting, but there were many factors that contributed to our ultimately turning the offer down. We feel sure about this decision, and we know it is nearing our time to move on.
We are now back at Mary Anne’s. We have stayed here longer than planned, and will probably be here for another week or so, but we really love being here with her. The spring is a very busy time here, and there is lots to do. We were out of email contact for so long that we missed our chance with a few farms in Argentina, but we are hoping to get something nailed down in the next few days. Time is flying. I can’t believe we have been gone for two and a half months. We have already seen so much, and it’s hard to describe the world we have become a part of here.
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