So, three months in Patagonia and now I’m back in the thick of Americana. Is it weird? (Everybody asks that: “Is it weird being back? Are you adjusting? Is your entire head just going to explode and spew undigested steak all over me?”) On the one hand, being home is certainly a little strange. I still feel like everytime I leave a town or city, after 10 minutes of driving I should be surrounded by miles of flat, arid nothingness. That’s what exists outside all the towns I traveled through — and that “Patagonian steppe” (not sure what steppe really means, but all the guidebooks use that phrase to describe the nothingness landscape) became strangely comforting the more I saw it. So much broad emptiness gives your mind a rest, and so coming back here and just seeing community after community, one backed up right against the next, seemed unnatural. I wanted a physical break between populated areas. Then I went to New York City to visit friends, and after being there for five days my mind felt like it was filled beyond capacity with visual stimulation. I think undigested steak really did start flowing out my orifices.

I’ve also noticed I’m far more aware of the sense of competition that permeates American life. My first weekend back I went to a ballroom dance competition my cousin was part of. Outside the fieldhouse where the event was held there was a track meet. I went to get a coffee and the NBA playoffs were on TV. Today I saw an ad for some TGI Friday’s-sponsored show in which people send in recipes and then someone decides which dishes are the best. That makes me think of the existence of chili cookoffs. And rodeos. And lifeguard competitions. And “Deal or No Deal.” Now, I don’t think any of those things are necessarily bad. I think they’re all pretty entertaining, actually (you haven’t lived until you’ve watched a room full of ballroom dancers all foxtrotting their hearts out). But I’ve just started to wonder why everything has to have a winner. In South America, competition isn’t lacking at all — if I see another soccer game on TV in the next six months, I may very well throw up. But there’s more of a sensible limit to it all. There’s no Iron Chef. There’s just the joy of cooking. There’s no beer pong. There’s just sitting around and getting wasted. Maybe it’s because so much weight is put on soccer there’s no competitive juice left for anything else. Maybe it’s because the countries down south are poorer than North America, so people don’t have the disposable time and income to turn every aspect of life into an organized sport. Maybe firefighter competitions happen all over Patagonia and I just didn’t expericence any. Whatever the reason, since returning to the States I’ve felt like most everyone here is focused on winning something somewhere. That current of competition has obviously helped the US become really rich and really good at making chili. But I just wonder what it’s done to our collective ability to relax. 

But hey, enough with the negatives. I must appreciate some stuff about the US now more than before, right? RIGHT? Well, first of all it was nice to have salad dressing again. Yeah, down south they just do the oil and vinegar thing. And me, I need something creamier. And croutons. And black olives. Wow, I didn’t realize how much I hated South American salads until right now. It’s also been nice to go into book stores and have thousands and thousands of books in English. Most of the bookstores I came across while traveling either had no English titles or they had a handful of really poorly translated guides on things like Uruguayan waterfowls or they had a decent amount of Englsih titles but 99% of them were romance novels. So yeah, my first trip into Barnes & Nobles was nearly orgasmic. And in orgasmic, I mean steak just flowed out of a crack in my skull.

But really the best part about being home has been just being home. It’s nice being in a place where I don’t need a map and where I understand all the slang people use and where every day I can talk to people who’ve known me since before I can remember. And that’s one of my favorite things about traveling: when you go to another place and see how natural and comfortable locals tend to be in their own place, you remember that you’re a local somewhere too. You can’t really love home unless you leave it.

 

Well, two days left in this big ole place I like to call “South America.” After finishing Torres del Paine and spending a couple of sweet days hanging out with a couple of other wandering gringos I know from my days as a kitchen slave in Montana, I headed to Santiago and then Valparaiso, a bohemian-feeling seaside city in central Chile. It’s the kind of place where graffiti is encouraged (there’s a outdoor musuem dedicated to it) and a traveler can spend days – nay, weeks … nay, fortnights – just meandering tilted streets, stopping every ten minutes to drink cheap wine in artsy cafes. You can also regularly use this sentence in conversations with the locals: “Hey, there’s a college in the U.S. called Valparaiso and their basketball team is sometimes a sleeper in the NCAAS.” I said that to one woman and she immediately invented a whole new internet. I’d put in a picture of Valparaiso, but the blog-creation/circus-management company I use changed around their interface and I can’t figure out how to add photos. Well, just imagine colorful buildings perched on hills above a busy port. Oh, also throw in Tom Brokaw in a mini skirt. You got it? Good. Let’s move on.

I guess since my trip’s about done (I’m taking a bus to Buenos Aires tonight and then fly home Tuesday evening) it’s a good time for some reflection. You know, looking back. Also, it’s raining outside and I really have nothing to do today except wait for the bus so, yeah, please use caution: random thoughts are approaching…

-Uno: I’m glad I decided to part with vegetarianism for this trip. The meat in both Chile and Argentina has been pretty fantastic. The first thing that comes to mind is chorizo, really tasty sausages that are a standard part of the Argentinian asado (barbecue) experience. I was a vegetarian for about two and a half years before coming down here, and I found that if you really, really wanted the taste of any meat product, you could find it to some degree in some brand of imitation meat. But chorizo. Hot damn. The Morningstar company cannot replicate that. Impossible. Brokaw in a mini skirt. Also, I definitely would have missed out on a central aspect of life down here if I had insisted on only lentils. I enjoyed quite a few really great evenings that were wholly centered around cow consumption. When I was in Trevelin back in February, there was a guy who was friendly with the owners of the hostel where I was staying and he was having an asado to celebrate this new cabin he had built and I got invited to come along. The cabin was way out away from town and he didn’t have electricity up and runnng yet … all we had was the glow of the fire where the meat was cooking and some of the most ridiculous stars I’ve ever seen. There were maybe 12 of us there — Argentinians, Belgians, Americans — and we just ate and drank and ate and drank and drank and drank. There wasn’t a veggie option. There wasn’t even a veggie. It was just meat that came off the fire and onto your plate. The quantity of steak I ate that night was probably equal to the amount I ate throughout my entire childhood. It was excessive, and really fun. That’s one thing Argentinians have figured out: enjoying excess. You basically eat cake for breakfast here and steak the rest of the day (well, there’s ham too). Yeah, it’s unhealthy but I think the mind set is: if you’ve got your family around you and the food is good, nothing else is really that important. A lot of people have asked me if I’ll go back to vegetarianism once I go home. I think I’ll once again probably keep meat out of my diet for the most part. But every once in a while when the company and beef are both stellar, I’ll gorge myself on steak and chorizo. Absolutes, I’ve decided, just make people go loco.

-Dos: While I think I could stay down here for years just seeing the beauty of the land and people and whatnot and meeting other people traveling, I’m also ready to head back home. It’ll be real nice to just put my bag down and know I won’t have to decide a few days later whether I want to stay or go. In that way, traveling gets tedious. Especially traveling solo, you constantly feel like you’re starting all over. A new town means you’re telling a new set of people where you’re from, what you’re doing, where you’re going next. Obviously, this introdcutory part of a conversation is over and done with in minutes, but still, it’ll be great to see people that already know my whole back story. But even though I am kind of tired of that aspect of traveling alone…

-Tres: Traveling alone is absolutely amazing. I can’t express how wonderful it’s been to just do exactly what I want to do every step of the way. The only thing I had planned coming down here was that I’d work on the farm for an unspecified length of time. Everything else has just been pure feeling. When I saw that there was a boat to Puerto Williams, for instance, I could just kind of say “Yeah, I’m going.” It was a pricey trip and I didn’t even know that much about what was there. I just knew it had an allure and I wanted to get there. If I had a companion there would have been a bunch of deliberation, hemming and hawing. It was priceless to just be able to follow my own feelings, regardless of the rationality and reasoning behind them. Also, coming into a new place and knowing absolutely no one means you either strike up conversations or you talk to yourself. I’ve already heard everything I have to say (and none of it is too interesting or based on fact), so I got pretty good at meeting other people. And I think while I was a little intimidated at first to go up to someone sitting quietly in a hostel and start talking to them about nothing in particular (especially if I had to do so in Spanish), I found out that for the most part everyone I approached wanted to talk to me just as much as I wanted to talk to them. If you’re backpacking down here, chances are you’re not a complete asshole. You’re looking for experiences and new people and long, drunken talks about whaling regulation — well, SOME of us are into long, drunken talks about whaling regulations. I think I’ve had conversations with at least 70 or 80 people here over the past three months. Maybe more. I haven’t kept a log. And even if I did, I don’t know how to count. But really. 70 or 80 people that gave me viewpoints and stories. In this way, traveling has been like the an explosion of friendship. Back home you have the people you know well around you and you talk to them constantly, but it’s a bit of a rarity (for me at least) to move outside that, to get to know just random people you see somewhere. If I walked into a Starbucks at home and saw someone sitting alone at a table I never would have gone up to them and started talking. But here, if I’m in a hostel and someone’s sitting there, I’ll talk to them without hesitation. I guess the difference is that there’s an underlying feeling that everyone traveling wants to get to know each other. I will certainly miss that, but hope to bring a bit of it back with me … so if you’re sitting alone in a Starbucks and I come in, look out yo.

-Cuatro: The worst thing you can ever say to a traveler is: What’s the best thing you’ve seen/done on your trip? It’s impossible to answer for one thing and, also, the response changes, I think, based on your mood or whatever moment happens to come to your mind. Also, sometimes all you can think about is a car made out of cats and that response just freaks people out. But, still, I’ll try to answer it here. The best thing I’ve seen/done? I think first of Torres del Paine … because every step there was stunning. For five straight days I either had a glacier, a spectacular mountain, a perfect valley or all of the above surrounding me at all times. Also, the hike I did with my Welsh friend John was really memorable – I had such a good time hiking around and eating dulce de leche and talking about the genius of Ricky Gervais. Then there was the two weeks on the farm during which I was probably more relaxed than at any other time in my life. And then there was Mt. Fitz Roy. And Tierra del Fuego. And the views and sunsets during the Nahuel Huapi hike. But the BEST thing I’ve seen? Brokaw. Mini skirt. Fo real.

Cool. The next time I write it’ll be from the other America.

 

Hello there, dear reader. Are you in a happy place? Would you like a pillow? Here, here’s a pillow. What? A hot cocoa? You want a hot cocoa? I don’t have any unfortunately. Seriously. No, you’re not getting any. Fine. Leave, see if I care. What do you mean, you always knew i was like this? I did too care about you. Hey, put down my goldfish tank. Stop! STOPPPP!! YOU SMASHED MY DAMN GOLDFISH TANK! Well, I don’t ever want to see you again either! [Hear a successsion of doors slamming, then a car starting and speeding off, then a lone child crying in the distance, then a waiter at Bertucci’s reading the specials}.

Aha. Ha. Hey. Sorry about that. Me and dear reader have been having a thing. Relationships aren’t always roses and stir fry, right?  Anyway, let me tell you about a magical place called Torres Del Paine. It’s what many guide books call the best national park in all of Latin America. I don’t know if I can say that (best is such a dangerous word, isn’t it? filled with venom and black ice and made-up vowels), but I will say the place is hot-dang incredible. The centerpiece of the park (which is located in Southern Chile) is a dramatic mountain range that is actually geologically separate from the rest of the Andes. I don’t know how exactly. I read that in a brochure, and now I’m writing it here because I went to public school in the US so fact regurgitation is like the one thing I feel comfortable doing. Anyway, regardless of the mountains’ formation process, they’re stunning to look at. This is a picture that I may or may not have created in a Willy Wonka dream incubator…

 

 

Looka them craggy peaks. Yeah, it’s just a visually stunning place, and the Chilean park service has done a real good job making the park accessible to the outdoorsy set — well-maintained and well-marked trails, good backcountry campgrounds, a variety of entry and exit points so you can vary the length of your hike and an extensive refugio system. And that last part, the refugios, really separate Torres from just about any other park I’ve been to in terms of accessability. Basically, if you really want to, you can hike the main Torres circuit – which takes around 8 days to complete and covers 70 pr so miles of terrain — without carrying a tent or any food. The refugios set up along the trail have beds, heat, food service. Everything but a goldfish tank. Oh, oh my poor goldfish tank. I hate that rapscallionish Dear Reader. So anyway, de to the refugios the park attracts a lot of people who otherwise probbaly wouldn’t do an overnight, long-distance hike. On the one hand, I find the whole system, well, retarded. I think the American backpacking mindset is you go out to the woods to face the harsh realities of nature — the cold air, the hard ground, the owls who sing Temptations songs all night. But on the other hand, any system that gets more people out into nature for long stretches of times should be encouraged. If I had had just a week off from work or something and went hiking in Torres to get away from the world, I would have been annoed to see these big heated structures and so many trekkers out on the trail. But since I’ve been lucky enough to do so much hiking over the past three months and have had some pretty amazing solitude out in the middle of pristine wilderness, I was glad to see so many people gazing up at mountains, being generally amazed and realizing how there’s nothing we can make that’s as perfect a river that’s never been altered. Well, I guess a gold fish tank would rank up there, but we won’t talk about that. DEAR READER!!!!!!!!!!

The version of the hike I did took five days and covered maybe 45 or 50 miles. And though I definitely appreciate the refugios for they add to the accessibility factor, I didn’t use them (I think a bed cost 40 bucks a night or so), choosing instead to sleep slept in my tent. Now that summer’s pretty much long gone down here, the sun was down by 7:30 and didn’t come up again till around 7:00 the next morning. I’d usually talk to some other campers while eating dinner, but darkness brought some serious chilliness with it, so I was in my sleeping bag by 8:30 and then slept gloriously for at least 10 hours every night. Well, everry night except for one. Torres del Paine is renowned for its wind and constanly changing weather. They say you get all four seasons every day. I say you get all four seasons every milk. Nobody else says that it’s completely nonsensical. Anyway, one night (my third on the trail)  the wind thing really came on strong.  I woke up to find my tent getting slammed by gusts that were definitely more than 50 MPH. The it started raining as well. Then hailing. After an hour or so the wind died down and I fell back asleep, but got woken up by even stronger wind a cople hours later. This time it snapped a chord that connected my rain fly to the tent itself and I had to rush out and do a repair nder the glow of my headlamp (in “repair,” I mean I tied a bunch of knots and swore at the air arond me). The wind continued off and on the rest of the night, and somehow the rainfly stayed on. At one point I found myself sitting upright watching the main pole of my tent bending as the gale blew through. “Please stop, wind,” I said, half crying. “Just please stop.” And guess what? It did!! Like three hours later!! No, seriously, that wind powerful. You might say it BLEW my mind. Wow. Nothing like a pun to change the mood. Okay. Some more pics from the trail.

 

 

And these here be the torres (towers) from which the park gets ts name. Me and some other fools climbed a mountain in the middle of the last night to get a look at them as the sun came up. Seeing them glow at sunrise may have been the best moment of my trip…

 

 

1) This post will have nothing to do with ice cream floats. I just liked the rhyme. Sorry. We’ll all survive. Probably.

2) I’m now in Puerto Natales, Chile, about to hike for a few days in Torres Del Paine national park. It’s supposed to be pretty fantastic. Mountains, rivers, insane wind. But no ice cream floats I don’t think. Really. I’m sorry.

3) In a city south of here called Punto Arenas I took a boat to an island inhabited by thousands of penguins and nothing else. Look. Look at these crazy little guys. I wanted to eat them all. How many did I actually digest? 400.

4) I have noticed the Chilean news media likes to refer to the U.S. as Gringolandía. I like to refer to the U.S. as Seacrab Henry. My reasons are unclear even to me.

5) In the past week, three people have told me my beard makes me look like a terrorist.

6) Ice cream foats for everyone.

Well, I’ve accomplished one of the mini-goals I set for myself on this trip. That is, I made it to Puerto Williams.

 PW (nobody refers to Puerto Williams using an acronym, but I’m a BLOGGER so I can do what I want) is a tiny town on Isla Navarino (or IN, as I think I’ll call it), an island in Tierra Del Fuego that belongs to Chile and is actually farther south than the Argentinian city of Ushuaia. This is interesting because Ushuaia makes a big deal about how its the southernmost city in the world. Puerto Williams usually gets kind of forgotten. And that kind of makes it a cool place with the backpacker set. I’ve talked to a lot of travellers who said things like “I really wanna get to Puerto Williams because it’s truly the bottom of South America” or “I really wanna get to Puerto Williams because everyone else is going to Ushuaia” or “I really wanna get to Puerto Williams because when the sun goes down there everyone turns into a muppet.” Also, the Lonely Planet Trekking Guide (which everyone who’s into the outdoors and is travelling down here has a copy of) describes a pretty magical-sounding hike that begins just outside of the town. So Puerto Williams has a bit of an aura to it, a place everyone knows about and talks about. But among all the people I talked to, nobody had actually made it down there. This is mainly because getting there is a bit of a pain in the ole necko (I’m assuming that’s how you say it in Spanish). The guidebooks all say you can either charter a boat from Ushuaia or take a plane from Chile, and both those options are fairly expensive and take quite a bit of planning. On their way down to the bottom of Patagonia, I think a lot of backpackers figure they’ll come up with some way to get to Puerto Williams, but then they get down to Ushuaia and just kind of realize they don’t have the time/money to make the trip.

But me, I was just like “I’m getting there.” And after not too much searching I found there actually is a boat service in Ushauia that goes across regularly. The fare was a bit expensive (triple what I’ve paid for any bus ride), but I hadn’t really made any outlandish spending decisions in the two months I had been travelling so i decided I was due. So last Thursday me and five other backpackers jumped on what looked like a glorified life raft and headed across the Beagle Channel. A half hour later we were on Isla Navarino, where we got picked up by a van driven by a little old Chilean man with no teeth and a colorful sweater and an hour after that we were in Puerto Williams.

 As soon as I got out of the van, I knew I made the right decision in coming over. I could tell I was finally off the gringo trail — the route all the foreign tourists follow. No chocolate shops or bus tours or packs of Eurpoeans with expensive cameras. Just a little town on the ocean where the wind was always blowing and all the houses seemed uniform and had likely been built by the military (Puerto Williams’ main purpose is to serve as a Chilean Navy base). Everyone has wood stoves in their homes and the smell of the smoke was oddly comforting. Like the entire town was sitting around a fire with no place to go. And maybe that was part I liked most of all. There really was no place to go. I went up into the mountains and camped for a night, but other than that I just hung around the hostel (basically just a guy’s house) reading and playing guitar and talking with a pair of British guys who came over on the same boat I did. I was on the island four days in total and would have stayed longer but apparently the boat company’s contract with the town was set to expire and if I didn’t leave when I did, there was a chance I could have been stuck on the island for quite a while…like until June.

So PW, I’m happy to have seen thee. I’ve been to the bottom of the bottom and now I’m headed back up.

 

Dan Leif the Grand Inquisitor: What’s up, Captain Yoohoo Skybox?

Dan Leif the Responder: That’s not my name.

Grand Inquisitor: Should be.

Responder: Why?

Inquisitor: Cause you gots tables for feet.

Responder: Okay. So this is going to be one of those blog posts that don’t make sense.

Inquisitor: No, no. Calm down. Just setting the mood, you know? So, where are you? I’m dyyyyying to know.

Responder: Was that sarcasm?

Inquisitor: Sure.

Responder: Fine, well…

Inquisitor: TABLE SARCASM!!

Responder: What?

Inquisitor: You just got slammed, boy. Now, really, where you at?

Responder: I’m down in a city called Ushuaia, which is actually the most southern city in the world.

Inquisitor: Um, Antarctica is the most southern city in the world.

Responder: Antarctica is a continent.

Inquisitor: Table time!

Responder: I’ll just ignore that and talk about Ushuaia. It’s in Tierra del Fuego, a group of islands off the southern tip of continental South America. To get here I took a bus that drove onto a ferry and then crossed the Strait of Magellan, and as we sailed away I stood on the back of the boat and saw the continent get farther and farther away and really felt like I was going down to the bottom of the world. Then these dolphin-like things started jumping out of the water near the boat. I had one of those moments where I was just like, “Damn. I’m so happy I went on this trip.”

Inquisitor: I’m so happy you just stopped talking. So what’s Ushuaia like? Full of people wondering what the hell they’re doing so far from everything important?

Responder: No. It’s a real nice place. Right on the ocean, on a body of water called the Beagle Channel. Mountains behind it. Lots of good hiking. Look…

Inquisitor: Great. Really great. One time I went to the most southern city on Curtain Head.

Responder: On Curtain Head?

Inquisitor: Yeah, it’s a planet where everyone has curtains for heads.

Responder: Listen. You’re wasting everyone’s time.

Inquisitor: You’re wasting your time not going there. Free beer all day. And no one has to worry about getting sun in their eyes.

Responder: Oh. Cause they have curtains for heads?

Inquisitor: No. Because the sun is MADE from their eyes. It’s a double negative!

Responder: All right. So the real great thing about Ushuaia has been the people I’ve met. I ended up not getting into the hostel I wanted to…

Inquisitor: Cause you have tables for feet…

Responder: So I went to this random one I had a flier for and ended up meeting some really cool people from all over — Italians, Belgians, Dutch, a 64-year-old New Zealander who has more stories about life than anyone I’ve ever met. We’ve done a lot of hiking together and then made a lot of really good food every night for real cheap at the hostel.

Inquisitor: I have something to say.

Responder: I’d rather you not say things any more.

Inquisitor: CHILDREN!!!!

Responder: Jesus. Here are pics of some good folks.

Inquisitor: Those pictures reminded me of when I was captain of a watercraft in Woody Harrelson’s brain.

Responder: You’ve really kind of lost it, huh? You’re not even asking questions.

Inquisitor: You ask the questions. I’m going to watch that show Night Court.

Responder: All right…

Inquisitor: Night Court on Ice!!!!!

Responder: Um, so to anyone reading still: I’m staying in Tierra del Fuego probably for another week. It’s supposed to start raining a lot, but I’m actually looking forward to that. There’s something about being down at the bottom of the world in really dreary weather that seems appealing in an adventurous way.

Inquisitor: The really tall bailiff just did a triple axle!

Responder: Anyway. One more picture. It’s from a hike I did today and is one of my favorite shots of the trip so far…

Well, hi there. So I’ve done a lot, seen a lot since my last update. The trip has gone as follows: After my hike in PN Alerces, I hung out for a while in a real laid-back village called Trevelin, then took a 20-hour bus ride from Esquel (city near Trevelin) to Rio Gallegos in Southern Patagonia, then made my way to Calafate and saw one of the world’s most famous glaciers (it’s called Perito Moreno and it’s the most massive goddam thing I’ve ever seen) and finally headed to a small mountain town called El Chalten, which served as a base for a nice three-day hike around Mount Fitz Roy I finished yesterday. That’s a lot to write about — so instead of using that boring, time-consuming prose thing, I’m gonna make like the Japanese masters and describe each experience in (more or less) 17 syllables. Put on your poetry hats, ya’alls. Are they on? Do they have chin straps? Good. You’ll need chin straps…

Trevelin

Idle days in the shade

with Americans, Belgians and

banana ice cream

Esquel

Bus station gypsy

says she has a knife, I say

“No hablo español”

On the bus

Burnt, treeless landscape

so I sleep; wake up hours later

and see the same thing

Perito Moreno Glacier

An ice field bigger than

Boston, chunks crash into lake,

tourists all say Ahhhhhh

Mount Fitz Roy

See it from outside

town — towering in the sun –

think of my grandpa

El Chalten (pessimistic)

Once an outpost for

alpinists, now bulldozers roll,

hotels replace gauchos

El Chalten (optimistic)

Still no ATMS,

still no tour buses and still

at foot of Fitz Roy

After three days in the woods

Beer and chocolate

while sitting bootless in grass,

hiking’s best when it’s over

Leaping Leif in front of Perito Moreno

International trekking squadron

Contemplating Fitz Roy

This particular picture shows myself, two French guys I worked with my last week on the farm and a truly enlightened dog I named Black Sabbath (because of his color AND because he knows how play “Iron Man” on the harp — yeah, in Argentina animals play all the same instruments humans do so just calm down). If I had to use one word to describe my facial expresion in this shot, I’d go with “overwhelming.” Also, for those of you tracking my journey on space-time-continuum charts at home, I was working at the farm until last weekend, then I met a friend and hiked in El Bolson, then I went south to Parque Nacional Los Alerces and did another hike there (pictures from those treks will be shown further down in this post, so seriously just calm down).

Well, here’s me on my last day working on the farm. In this photo I’m cleaning garlic, a job I was given frequently because it involved very little strength, skill or interpretive thinking. If I had to use two words to describe my facial expression here, I’d go with “cunning” and “fruity.”

My Welsh homeboy John Crockett. We met in Buenos Aires, and then when he came through El Bolson, we trekked together for tree days in the mountains outside of town. Those trekking poles of his were perfect for knocking back overgrown brush on the trail and for mortally wounding other hikers who had better food than we did. Gimmee them chocolate-covered raisins or die, son.

A pristine (read, not filled with kid piss) lake we climbed up to. That glacier behind it is called Hielo Azúl, or Blue Ice. I think Blue Ice would also be a good name for a depressed American Gladiator. GIMMEE THEM DAMN CHOCOLATE RAISINS!!

Johnny Crocks serenading a kitten back on the farm (we crashed there for a day after the hike). The guitar actually belongs to me. Despite having limited musical ability, I bought it in El Bolson and am determined to learn at least three songs before I return to America. I’m also writing a tune called The American Gladiator Blues. All I have so far is the title and a vague notion of what the G7 chord sounds like. If you have any ideas for lyrics send them along. I think the opening line should be something like “Oh, I got a tennis-ball launcher, but love keeps shooting me down…”

Here’s me looking down at Lake Futalaufquen in PN Los Alerces. I completed a three-day trek around the south side of the lake and managed to nab no less than 45 boxes of chocolate-covered raisins along the way. No that’s a joke — would you PLEASE just CALM DOWN?!?! There was actually hardly anyone else out on the trail, which meant I had all those beautiful, beautiful mountains to myself. And now I’ll leave you with a picture of…

FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

… is called Ella lo Sabe. That translates to She Knows It. What exactly does she know? I’m not sure, but I do know this group’s front man needs his own TV show.

I had my first, and hopefully not last, contact with Ella lo Sabe when I went a little music festival two nights ago in a town called Lago Puelo, which is 10 miles or so south of El Bolson (where the farm I’ve been volunteering is at). I was expecting traditional Argentinan folk music — that is, lots of fast-paced accoustic-guitar playing and plenty of mentions of the word arriba. And that all happened. But not before Ella lo Sabe opened the evening with its own unique version of rock/pop and roll.

It was still light out when the groups´s piano player, bassist, guitar player and drummer took the stage. They started rocking slowly, but slowly picked up steam. Then the pianist held down a high, sustained note. Was this an intro or just a weird song? I didn’t know. And then he appeared. The lead singer, dressed all in black, cigarette in hand. I don´t know what his name is. I´ll call him Greg. I imagine his name is actually along the lines of Fernando, but to me, he looked like a Greg. Greg saunters out, head bobbing with the music. No rush. He’s focused. His goatee is glistening in the late-afternoon sun. Also, he’s smoking a cigarette — I know I said that already, but hot damn, how sweet do you have to be to come out on stage smoking? (If you’re a lounge singer, okay, but a rock/pop and roll singer? That takes a certain breed.) Greg raises his hands, does a little jump and then starts howling into the microphone. Greg´s voice is lacking, well, pitch and smoothness. But that´s all right because what he lacks in vocal skill he more than makes up for in general on-stage enthusiasm. At the end of the second verse of that first song, Greg backs away from the mic and the guitarist goes into a pretty nice solo. Greg nails every note on air guitar. Then the pianist takes the melody. Greg is right there on air piano. Now, it’s the bassist’s turn. Can Greg complete the air-instrument traid? No. He’s inhaling tobacco. But when the song’s last note hits, he’s right there, jumping up and landing on the final beat, fist in the air, cigarette sparkling.

Every song pretty much follows the same pattern. Greg gives a little intro and thanks the audience. Then he sings somewhat out of tune. Then he does awesome things with his hands. Then he smokes. As each song comes to a close, Greg does a little hop and takes a swig of Pepsi. In one song, he yells out “Gar!” repeatedly. For me, this song shines brighter than all the others. Ella lo Sabe plays for half an hour and then Greg waves goodbye as he and his bandmates walk off, making way for the other, presumably more well-known bands. Ella lo Sabe’s set may be over, but over the next day and a half I continually replay it in my mind.

Gar!

I´m sorry. I´m really sorry about the title of this post. I wrote it. Then I was like “Good God, don´t do that.” Then I was like, “No, keep it. Someone somewhere will like it.” Then I was like, “Yeah, you´ll like it.” Then I was like, “Exactly.” Then I realized I was saying all this out loud and that the Argentinians around me were whispering to each other, so I decided to just leave it and move on.

 I´ve been working — volunteering actually — at an organic farm called Chacra El Cielo for a little over a week. The farm´s up in the hills above this fast-growing tourist town called El Bolson, which has somehow become the hippie epicenter of Southern Argentina. The first time I walked through the main plaza/park it seemed like a Phish concert had just let out — lots of 18 and 19-year-olds wearing clothes made out of curtains and selling things they had made and poorly playing the guitar. But while I scoff at these kids` “artesanal crafts” I like their general sentiment toward life. A few times a week the town blocks off one of the roads around the plaza and have a kind of giant craft fair where people sell their stuff (if you´re into moon-shaped jewlry it´s your personal heaven) and they usually have some bands playing. The musicians aren´t famous or really even known by too many people in the crowd, but everyone crowds around the little makeshift stage and claps with the beat. After a song or two, the hippiest of the hippies (that is, those that clearly don´t have homes) will start dancing in that formless, I-don´t-care-if-I-look-like-a-fool hippie style. Then more of the crowd will join in. Then more. And by the sixth or seventh song, even the dogs are up on two legs and passing hash pipes to one another. Well, that´s a lie. The dogs here go straight to the heavy drugs. But the point is that people will just dance here. In New York, even at shows that were really tough to get tickets for and that featured some of the greatest musicians in the world, everyone would just stand around and text message their friends. Bam, New York music scene! You just got hated on. Anyway, it´s refreshing to see people let themselves have fun and get their gravel on…

But anyway, the farm. I like it a lot. It´s a bit smaller than I expected. Only a couple of acres or so and the only people who work on it are the two owners — a woman named Rosa and a dude named Nano who are married and real nice — along with whatever volunteers happen to be there at the time. Last week, that was me and two other American kids, one from Oregon and the other from California. The main house doubles as a hostel and most of what is grown is sold to people staying at the hostel or used by Rosa when she cooks for her family and volunteers. There are a bunch of organic farms around El Bolson and I figured there´d be a big farmer´s market where everyone would sell their stuffs, but there doesn´t seem to be one, which is kind of a shame. I´d rather go around and sample people´s raspberries than walk around and look at all the mutlicolored scarves the hippies are hawking. Oh my God, I just wrote a paragraph and didn´t use a single parenthetical. This is good, I think.

 Charca El Cielo has a lot of stuff packed into its little patch of land on the hill. They grow peas, cabbage, basil, raspberries, boysenberries, green beans, corn, tomatoes, garlic, sunflowers, squash and probably a whole bunch of other things I haven´t seen yet or am forgetting. There´s also chickens, ducks, rabbits and a bunch of cats and dogs (that don´t get eaten, I´m pretty sure). So far, I´ve spent a lot of time pulling garlic out of the ground cleaning them suckers. I´ve also harvested (I love using harvest as a verb) peas and beans and squash, I´ve helped cut down some dead trees, I´ve cleaned a kiddie swimming pool, I´ve carried around bags of animal feed, I´ve run after chickens that got out of their pen, I´ve eaten rabbit and I´ve developed a pretty horrid case of the diarrhea (from the water, not the rabbits I think; my stomach´s getting better now, though). Damn, parentheses are where it´s at.

Also, I´ve been surrounded by adorableness (can´t believe I used that word). There are three kittens at the farm that will jump into your arms and then fall asleep almost immediately. And the owners of the farm have two kids, Salomé (age 1) and Danté (age 4) who are both cool as hell and look like little kids — that is, they´re rel cute. My job for an hour one afternoon was to take them for a walk in the woods so Rosa could clean without worrying about what they were getting into. We walked only about a quarter of a mile and the scenery was pretty bland, but it was one of the best hikes I´ve done in Argentina. You know, cause I had these two little kids with me that looked at every bush like it was the most amazing thing anyone had ever put anywhere. Photographs:

Cielo means “sky.” El means “the.”

View from the farm down toward El Bolson.

The other volunteers: Robert and Katie. It was nice being around native English speakers because I could make puns. Robert and Katie never, like, laughed at any of them, but it was satisfying to know my stupid word plays were at least understood.

Salomé and Danté. They´re not full-grown people.

A beast.

And, finally, I went with the other volunteer Katie on a good backpacking trip this past weekend (we don´t work Saturdays or Sundays) up into the mountains on the other side of El Bolson. As is becoming gloriously usual, there were pristine lakes, expanive views and lots of colors when the sun went down…