it has been awhile....

Hello Friends and Family,
We are sorry it has been so long since our last post. The time has been going really fast, and blogging is one of those things that gets easier to put off and harder to write each time you skip it. But we have put it off long enough and will finally write about what we have been doing before it is ancient history. For those of you who might not know, we decided to not get jobs here and bought our return tickets home. But before we left Argentina we wanted to see as much as we could. With that in mind we have restarted our ‘Big Bus Fun Trip’ and it is bigger, bussier, and funner then ever.

We bought our return tickets about a month ago and jumped on a bus headed to Bariloche three weeks ago. To understand the distances of this country you all need some figures; we were in Mendoza which appears in the upper half of the country…we bused for 19 hours to Bariloche which is closer to the mid-section of the country. We wanted to go further south to the great glaciers of Patagonia, but to then go to El Calefayte…30 more bus hours, and to get to Tierra del Fuego…who knows how many hours. Don’t get disappointed in us just because we didn’t get to the “end of the world,” we saw some cool things. So Bariloche is the major Argentine city in the south and the center of the beautiful lake district of Patagonia. Traveling through the Patagonia landscape brings similarities of Wyoming to mind constantly: vast plains of brutal inhabitable land besides the tough Gauchos (Argentine Cowboys), terrible winds, wide-open nothingness, and then serine beauty captured in mighty snowcapped peaks. The differences are the lakes; they are huge melted glaciers that are perfectly blue and green. Bariloche, we had been warned is the vacation spot for Argentines during January so it can be busy and expensive. We thought since maybe it was late January and we hadn’t seen so many tourists that it wouldn’t be so bad: nope, it was packed and too much for us. We had difficulties not just finding cheap lodging but by late in the afternoon any lodging at all. We found a silly little hotel and were able to stay long enough to do a nice hike up Cerro Otto to get a vista of the city lying on the banks of the gigantic Lago Nahuel Huapi.

For our next stop El Bolsón, you need background information: we were trying to figure out a cheap and fun way to spend some time down in the lake district and were turned on to WWOOF Argentina, an international organic farming organization. Sounded fantastic, we go live on a farm either in bunks or in tents and learn the organic/permaculture farming methods of some easy-go-lucky Argentine hippies. We sent inquires to a bunch of farms and we were organizing our schedule so that we might be able to do two volunteers: one in a community (a little bit rougher) and then a second at a mountain spa that sustains the resort by its farm. First we decided to stay with Blanca Rosa in El Bolsón, a small hippie-hamlet south of Bariloche made famous by its organic and home-made everything sold at their huge artisan’s market. Blanca Rosa offered us to stay at her “hostel” while we organized our WWOOFing. Her hostel was just her house 40 minutes walking out of town and we stayed in makeshift rooms. We had decided to stay there because she was hosting some WWOOFers and we thought it might help us see what we were in-store for and we were glad we did.

The WWOOFers were great Ignacio from Buenos Aires and Ryan from Toronto; they were the perfect yin and yang, both looking for something totally different from the experience but both happy and good friends for Jeff and I for 5 days. Their jobs were not often related to farming and the farm was more like Blanca Rosa’s personal garden, what we saw was loosely: two young kids helping and older women with some chores in exchange for some food and a mattress. We of course heard about other WWOOfers in the area: the best was the volunteers who instead of farming were making wind chimes in this guy’s shop that he was selling at the artisan’s market in exchange for ONE meal per day…this is plain and simple exploitation. Its not like we weren’t expecting that, it’s kind of the name of the game for volunteering: you give your work away not. But we wanted to see some grassroot farming, see what the Argentines were doing in organics that was creative and different… so we decided not to go to work on the farm and travel a bit more extensively in Argentina before getting on the plane. I don’t want to give you all the wrong impression about WWOOF, because It seems like a great organization and I might try it again in the future just maybe someplace where the work is more farming. So instead of farming we took some hikes to the mountains, one towards the Cerro Piltriquitron, the high mountain that gives its energy to the valley below, and another to the “indian’s head.” Both were great because they provided amazing views of the valley and huge Andean peaks in the distance. On the route to Piltriquitron we stopped to see the carved forest, where various artists had taken their artistic skills to the trees. You walked a marked trail and admired the interpretation of an artists’ vision for a trunk, they were transformed into human forms to abstract figures.

From El Bolson we took a short bus ride South to the small town of Esquel. Esquel is the Laramie of Argentina. It is a small (26,000 pop.) frontier town on the edge of the beautiful lake district and the desolate Patagonian Steppe. It was cold, windy, and friendly. We felt right at home. The reason to visit Esquel was its close proximity to Los Alerces National Park. We got to spend two days hiking this park. Its houses some huge pristine glacier lakes, the glaciers themselves, and some amazing trees. We saw the Arrayan trees we had missed in Bariloche (which are a cinnamon colored), and the Alerces trees which is why this park was created. The Alerces trees are really old (some over 2,600 yrs) and grow really slow (1 millimeter/ yr) so their protection is absolutely necessary.

In hind sight we probably left Esquel a little too quickly. We spent two days in Los Alerces but we easily could have doubled or tripled that time and still not seen as much as we wanted to in that national park. But it was unseasonably cold, Lindsay and I were both starting to get sick, and our only sleeping arrangements were dormitories, so we bought some tickets on a short (9 hr) overnight bus to Trelew.

Trelew is Patagonian city on the Chubut River close to where it empties into the Atlantic. It isn’t a touristy town and there is little of interest to invite tourists here. But what it does offer makes it totally worth it. In the town is an awesome dinosaur museum with a couple dozen dino skeletons. And an hour and half South of town, at Punta Tombo, is South America’s largest Magellan Penguin colony. Colony in fact isn’t the right word; it is actually a metropolis of penguins. When we got there we walked up the path and stopped (probably like everyone else) in amazement at the first sighting of a penguin at 20 ft away. But by the time we had gotten over the hill and onto the beach we were surrounded by thousands of them. As you are walking along the path so are the penguins. They are going about their daily business as if you were just one of them. Every now and then you stop as you cross paths with a penguin probably heading to the sea to fish, or maybe coming back to the nest to see how his lifelong mate is doing at the nest. One tough penguin, probably putting on a show for his friends, blocked the path so we couldn’t pass for a couple minutes. It was so surreal being a part of penguin life if only for a few hours.

Well after seeing the dinosaur museum and Punta Tombo there wasn’t much more that Trelew could offer, so we took a bus one hour North to Puerto Madryn, a touristy beach town on the Atlantic Coast. The biggest draw is Peninsula Valdez, which is ‘the place’ to see Right Whales and other sea creatures. Unfortunately we weren’t there at the right time of the year for whales but we did take a tour where we got to see Sea Lions, adolescent Elephant Seals (they were only 3 months old and still gigantic), Guanacos, Armadillos, Maras (weird large rabbit looking rodents), and a Fox. It was an animal packed day of fun, and we were officially introduced to the Maté ritual by our guide (but we will get into that in another post maybe).

Even after Peninsula Valdez we still hadn’t gotten our Sea Lion fix so we planned a bicycle trip to Punta Loma, another Sea Lion colony 12 km South-East of town. It sounded like such a lovely afternoon; little did we know the day was going to turn into Punta Lame-o. We rented a couple bikes and set out mid morning. We wanted to get out there and back before the wind got too bad (it had been really windy most of the time we had been in Puerto Madryn). Well, we didn’t beat the wind, it beat us… The wind was only tame enough on the way out there to keep us from turning around. When we got there a huge sand storm came at us and we had to take refuge in the park ranger cubicle. The sand storm engulfed everything, at one point we couldn’t even see the ocean 200 ft away. When it became visible again we noticed that the waves were actually retreating from the beach because the wind was so strong. The ranger assured us that they don’t get tornadoes in Argentina but the wind was really strong. During a calm moment we got to see the Sea Lions which was cool but not worth the work it would be to get back to town since the wind was blowing against us. For the sake to time we won’t get into it, but the ride/ walk/ hiding behind bushes to get out of the wind and blowing sand sucked. Luckily a couple guys, or as Lindsay refers to them ‘her angels in a pickup’, picked us up a couple km out of town and took us the rest of the way. But alls well that ends well, right?

As of now, we are writing this from Buenos Aires which we just showed up in yesterday. We hope this post hasn’t dragged on too long. We will try and post more often and keep them shorter. We will also post some pictures in the next couple days.

-Beacon and Red