Some cows crossing the road outside of Cochrane. Check me out in the side view mirror.
Lago General Carrera
Day 5
Manual labor. Man work. First day of real work (in Patagonia and probably in Chile). But this was all in the afternoon so I have to tell you about the usual morning stuff we did first. We prayed Lauds (first prayer of the day) while breakfast cooked on the woodfire stove. Breakfast was usually hot water for tea or coffee, oatmeal, already baked homemade bread that we heated up and then some butter and jam. After breakfast we read over some interesting Papal documents of environmental issues that we had brought with us. We had a brief session of Lectio Divina, in English, and Rodrigo explained all the steps to us so it made a little more sense. Then we ate lunch 3 hours after breakfast. The eating schedules always confuse me. I wasn’t even that hungry but I managed to put away 3 bowls of thick lentil soup. Once again I was moving a little slow afterwards. I laid down to rest and digest for a minute but then we had to leave to go work. We worked with the high school kids in the part of the ranch that was down by the lake. We had to widen a irrigation ditch that was built to divert the water coming down from the waterfalls into the fields. This ditch has been started a few months ago to keep the fields from getting flooded with water so that the cows could graze on them. Jose Antonio told us that cattle grazing is the only thing that could be at all profitable for this land (he said you could probably grow some nice flowers on it but what the hell are you going to do with nice flowers in the middle of nowhere?). However, before they could put a lot of cows on the land they had to convert it from a swamp. So basically we were digging in the ground…in about a foot of water…and I had a hole in one of my rubber boots. But it was nice outside, and we were in a beautiful place, and we were doing some real work so I felt great. I felt like a tough guy. The high school kids weren’t working very hard and this just motivated me to work even harder. I was like a machine with that shovel. But I paid for it the next day. While I was working someone mentioned that when I get back to Santiago and I could tell all my friends that I dug a ditch in Patagonia. So I got to thinking, what I am going to tell people when they ask what I am doing here.
So Charlie, what did you do in Patagonia/Chile?
- Oh, I helped dig an irrigation ditch.
Oh yeah, like for some poor farmers or something?
- Um, no, not really
But that’s not really fair because while the people who own this farm are not poor, its not exactly a money maker. And it felt good to finish a hard day’s work (half day really) and when we got back to the house all the other stuff like prayer and cooking dinner weren’t as boring as they were before because I had actually accomplished something today. Dinner was pretty simple, just salchichas (hot dogs) and arroz (rice) but we had a little pisco sour beforehand and I think we had plenty of wine during dinner. The wine we drank in Patagonia (for every dinner) came in a carton but it was great. Jose Antonio really likes it and he was his usually gregarious self at dinner and told us a bunch of stories.
Day 6
Day 6 in Patagonia was a lot like day 5. I woke up really tired and sore. I didn’t sleep much during the night and I have no idea why because I was thoroughly exhausted after working on that ditch. I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t get back to sleep for a few hours. Thoughts just kept racing thru my mind. We went back to work on the ditch in the afternoon. I wasn’t working as hard as the day before. Before we got started on the ditch however, we got to witness one of the gauchos killing a lamb. This was going to be the lamb that we would eat the next day for the big asado (bbq) to celebrate the Chilean independence day which was the next day. I am pretty sure this was my first time seeing an animal slaughtered and while it wasn’t gruesome it was a, for lack of a better word, interesting experience, which I will retell right now. Basically the gaucho laid the lamb down on the ground, placed a bowl under its next and then plunged a knife directly into its neck. This part, although somewhat shocking for me, wasn’t nearly the end. As the blood poured and then dripped out of the lamb’s neck and into the bowl, the animal continued to move around a little bit and one of its eyes seemed to be looking directly at us. After a few minutes, when it seemed to be over, the gaucho broke the neck of the animal. At this point I thought the lamb was dead, and maybe it was, I don’t know much about lambs or biology in general so I don’t really know how to explain what happened next. For about 10 or maybe even 15 minutes after the lamb’s neck was broken, its legs continue to move around while it lay on the ground. This was really weird. I kept thinking, “Ok, that thing has to be dead now”, but then it would twitch again. When we passed by the same place on our way back from work, the gaucho had already skinned, cleaned and removed all the organs from the lamb and the carcass (or whatever you call the meat and bones, basically all the stuff we would eat the next day) was hanging up in the barn.
Day 7
Dieciocho – The Chilean National Independence Day. So no work today. Basically all we did was have a huge, day long asado (BBQ). We went to a fire pit that was in between both of the house at around 10:30 for a mass. The local priest was nice enough to stop by to say the mass and after he left we pretty much just sat around the fire until sundown, eating and drinking. Seriously, that’s like all we did. I left once to go to the bathroom but I think there might have been some people that didn’t leave the firepit for like 8 hours. It was the people from my house (myself, Cole, Paul, Rodrigo and Jose Antonio) , Joselo, the tutors (Mono and Osito – that’s monkey and little bear for those of you who don’t “se habla espanol”, everyone here as a “sobre nombre” or nickname if you will), the 6 boys from San Benito (“Pajaro”, Miquel, Rafael, Felipe, “Rosy”, and Ignacio) and the two girls from San Benito (Alejandra and Sophia) as well as everyone else from the women’s house (I can’t remember all of their names). Here is a list of what was served.
· Meat – there was a lot of meat. First there was churripan (sausage and bread, like a really good hotdog) then big cuts of beef (pretty sure it was beef, I didn’t actually have any) and then finally towards the afternoon we all devoured the masterpiece that was the roasted lamb. This lamb was pretty much crucified and sat next to the fire for hours. Joselo rammed a steel rod right along the spine of the animal and then stretched the front and rear legs so that the crucifix itself looked like a capital I and the animal looked kind of like an X. This was then stuck into the ground and then rotated a few times during the day while Joselo doused it with something, oil or some other flavoring. When it was finally done they placed it on a huge wooden board that served as a table and went all just went at it like hungry dogs, even though we probably weren’t hungry at all because we had been eating for several hours at this point.
· Empanadas – these were one of the first things we ate. I think the women made them and then we heated them up on one of the grills near the fire. They were delicious.
· Bread – we had some regular rolls and then some fried bread that we ate with some delicious pebre (salsa)
· Cake or some sort of delicious dessert. All I know is that it has manjar in it and it was great.
· Wine – we started out with white wine that was poured into a huge tub along with several huge cans of duraznos (peaches). Later, we moved on to the vino tinto (red wine) that comes in cartons but is still really good.
I think those were all the things we ate. There might have been some other smaller things but this is the jist of it. We ate a lot. To pass the time while eating, someone had the idea to get everyone together and go touch the electric fence (keeps the cows in). So all the young people (tutors, students, Cole, Paul and myself) got in a long line with the last person placing their hand on the ground (this was necessary in order to be shocked). Then the person on the other end touched the fence and we all jumped up, even though it wasn’t that much of a shock. That’s what we did for fun in Patagonia. Also, after that we threw some cow pies at each other. Dry ones of course. We also sang a bunch of songs around the fire. They had a few books with song lyrics and even had some American songs. One of the guys, Esteban, was pretty good at playing guitar and could sing a lot of American songs, even though he didn’t speak any English. They had the lyrics for “Summer of 69” and I was trying to teach him the tune but he seemed more interested in sadder, dreary songs by Nirvana or other similar bands.
Joselo getting the lamb ready
The feast, or at least part of it. From the left; potatoes, empanadas, and a crucified lamb.
We devoured that thing.
Touching the electric fence.
Day 8
The day after Dieciohco was a lot like Dieciocho. There was no way we were going to work today, because if we were back in Santiago we wouldn’t have gone to work the day after the independence day, especially when the day after is a Friday. (Chileans are known to “make sandwiches” often when holidays come around, which means to take an extra day or two off work and sandwich them between the holiday and the weekend. I think the day after Dieciocho is national holiday anyway. (Chileans usually just call it Dieciocho, with no reference to the fact that it’s in September, similar to the way Americans sometimes call it “the 4th”))
The day after Dieciohco was a lot like Dieciocho. There was no way we were going to work today, because if we were back in Santiago we wouldn’t have gone to work the day after the independence day, especially when the day after is a Friday. (Chileans are known to “make sandwiches” often when holidays come around, which means to take an extra day or two off work and sandwich them between the holiday and the weekend. I think the day after Dieciocho is national holiday anyway. (Chileans usually just call it Dieciocho, with no reference to the fact that it’s in September, similar to the way Americans sometimes call it “the 4th”))
We did do a little bit of work. Cole, Paul and I helped Jose Antonio feed the cows in the morning. The gauchos who usually did this were all gone since it was the holidays. So we loaded a bunch of bales of hay into the pick up then one person threw them off the truck as it drove around while the other people pulled the metal wire off the bale so that the cows could eat it. We got there a little late so the cows were pretty hungry. They would just stare at us. I think they knew that their food was coming. Then they would all slowly follow the truck around as it drove across the field. We also came them some delicious oats and salt.
So anyway, for the rest of the day we pretty much did the same thing we did the day before except we went to a spot on the Baker River to sit around all day and eat and drink, and we ate a little bit less than the day before. I ate some pebre out of the jar with the fork. That stuff is so good. I need to learn how to make it. The Baker River is beautiful and it was flowing incredibly fast. All the rivers we saw it Patagonia had this blue/green tint to them.
The Baker River
Day 9
After going without a shower for a few days I finally clean myself up, shaved, and put on some fairly clean clothes. Paul, Cole and I went for a horseback ride around the ranch with Joselo and Mono. It’s a pretty big ranch so we had plenty of places to go. This was only my second time riding a horse and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing at first. It also didn’t help that we started by going straight up a steep hill with Joselo and Mono way ahead of us. But after a while I got the hang of it and I think that I really bonded with my horse Bandit. I also got to wear some sweet authentic sheep skin chaps, like the guachos wear. These things come in handy when riding through Patagonia because every bush and plant on the ground is covered in thorns and we kept brushing up against stuff. Also, there are a lot of small trees and I had to keep putting up my hands to shield my face from all the low branches. And we were riding for several horses and after a while my legs, butt and back started to hurt. But nonetheless it was a great experience. We went up into the hills that surround the ranch and the view was amazing. We were in a huge valley with the Andes on three sides and large hills on the remaining side and a huge lake in the middle. The clouds were really low that day it seemed like there was a giant ceiling directly over our heads, trapping us in this isolated landscape where the only evidence of human beings were the fences and the five of us on horseback. The land itself was very foreign to me, with plants and trees that I had never seen before. At one point it seemed like we were riding through some sort of forbidden forest, like something out of a book. I kept expecting to see some rodents of unusual size lurking about. We stopped near the top of the hills and ate our lunch of lamb sandwiches (leftovers from Dieciocho), some churripan, manjar with crackers and a box of wine. After lunch we checked out the hidden lagoon that is up in the hills above the farm. When we got home I was exhausted once again and couldn’t wait to eat. During dinner Jose Antonio and Rodrigo wanted to know about some typical American desserts so we told them all about the wonders of Dairy Queen.
After going without a shower for a few days I finally clean myself up, shaved, and put on some fairly clean clothes. Paul, Cole and I went for a horseback ride around the ranch with Joselo and Mono. It’s a pretty big ranch so we had plenty of places to go. This was only my second time riding a horse and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing at first. It also didn’t help that we started by going straight up a steep hill with Joselo and Mono way ahead of us. But after a while I got the hang of it and I think that I really bonded with my horse Bandit. I also got to wear some sweet authentic sheep skin chaps, like the guachos wear. These things come in handy when riding through Patagonia because every bush and plant on the ground is covered in thorns and we kept brushing up against stuff. Also, there are a lot of small trees and I had to keep putting up my hands to shield my face from all the low branches. And we were riding for several horses and after a while my legs, butt and back started to hurt. But nonetheless it was a great experience. We went up into the hills that surround the ranch and the view was amazing. We were in a huge valley with the Andes on three sides and large hills on the remaining side and a huge lake in the middle. The clouds were really low that day it seemed like there was a giant ceiling directly over our heads, trapping us in this isolated landscape where the only evidence of human beings were the fences and the five of us on horseback. The land itself was very foreign to me, with plants and trees that I had never seen before. At one point it seemed like we were riding through some sort of forbidden forest, like something out of a book. I kept expecting to see some rodents of unusual size lurking about. We stopped near the top of the hills and ate our lunch of lamb sandwiches (leftovers from Dieciocho), some churripan, manjar with crackers and a box of wine. After lunch we checked out the hidden lagoon that is up in the hills above the farm. When we got home I was exhausted once again and couldn’t wait to eat. During dinner Jose Antonio and Rodrigo wanted to know about some typical American desserts so we told them all about the wonders of Dairy Queen.
I have no idea what this dainty peacock is doing in a rough place like Patagonia. There are three of them on the farm, two males and one female. The guys just strut around all day with their feathers out trying to impress the girl.
A calf.
Cole on his horse before setting out.
Me on my horse, with the lake in the background.
The lagoon in the hills. Lago General Carrera is in the background.
Day 10
This Sunday was pretty chill, which was great because, working, eating, and riding horses was wearing me out. We woke up late and prayed Lauds at 10 am then had a nice breakfast of fresh bread, cream cheese, eggs, oatmeal and raspberry jam. We spent the rest of the day at the family house which is across the road, down the hill and sits alongside Lago General Carrera. This house is amazing and I can’t even imagine how hard it was to build since transportation and technology in Patagonia are pretty old school. Plus I think it was built just after WWI and there wasn’t much in Patagonia then. (There isn’t much in Patagonia now) When I say amazing I don’t mean its something out of MTV Cribs. It’s fairly big and well furnished but still very simple and doesn’t have electricity. What makes it amazing is that it is a beautiful house and it is right next to a huge, amazing lake that has towering snow covered mountains on the other side. And what makes the lake amazing is that it is not only enormous and beautiful (as well as totally calm the day we were there) but also when you are sitting in front of the house, looking out onto the lake, you can’t see any evidence of development or human beings except maybe the faintest hint of a dirt road on the other side of the lake. I have seen a lot of lakes in my day and I have never seen anything like this. If this lake was in America, there would probably be mansions and jet skis everywhere, or most likely it would be in a national park but there would still be development and people around. And not that development and recreation are bad (it depends) but there is seriously nothing on this lake and I was just in awe of that. I almost felt a little guilty being there (at the house on the lake and in Patagonia in general). Who am I to deserve seeing this beautiful place? My 23 years here on Earth haven’t been the most environmentally friendly when compared to the rest of the people on this planet. Why should I get to enjoy all this? Maybe the fact that barely anyone is here is a good thing. I don’t mean to be cynical but as humans we have a pretty good habit of destroying things and maybe Patagonia is something we should just leave alone. But I’m getting off topic. So we pretty much just sat around all day, which was great, especially in this majestic setting. We sat outside and read the rest of the Papal documents on environmental issues. Later on we busted out some fishing poles and I casted a few lines from the shore. I caught a rock. No joke. I seriously caught a rock. The shoreline in front of the house is just a bunch of smooth rocks and they told me it was a good place to fish and since I don’t know much about fishing I gave it a shot. The first time I casted out I hit some of the rocks but I eventually got my line back. I should have quit right there because later on I hit some more rocks but this time the line wouldn’t budge. I struggled with it for about 5 minutes then Jose Antonio helped me bring in the line and there was actually a rock stuck to the lure. I seriously caught a rock. I stopped fishing after that. We ate some dinner outside and then went for a little hike up to the top of a small hill that sits right next to the lake. From there we just sat for a few minutes, staring out at the crystal clear lake and the mountains beyond it. The view was amazing and I can’t really put it into words. I will put up some pictures but they won’t really do it any justice either. When we got back to the house the sun was setting and there this beautiful pinkish glow on the peaks of the Andes in the distance and then an amazing sunset that filled up the space in between two mountain peaks. But both of them only lasted for a few minutes before they faded away.
There is a big island in the middle of the lake that reminded me of somesort of mystical island you would read about in a book or something.
The hike.
The house.
It has a pretty nice backyard
The Andes reflecting off the lake.
Day 10
This Sunday was pretty chill, which was great because, working, eating, and riding horses was wearing me out. We woke up late and prayed Lauds at 10 am then had a nice breakfast of fresh bread, cream cheese, eggs, oatmeal and raspberry jam. We spent the rest of the day at the family house which is across the road, down the hill and sits alongside Lago General Carrera. This house is amazing and I can’t even imagine how hard it was to build since transportation and technology in Patagonia are pretty old school. Plus I think it was built just after WWI and there wasn’t much in Patagonia then. (There isn’t much in Patagonia now) When I say amazing I don’t mean its something out of MTV Cribs. It’s fairly big and well furnished but still very simple and doesn’t have electricity. What makes it amazing is that it is a beautiful house and it is right next to a huge, amazing lake that has towering snow covered mountains on the other side. And what makes the lake amazing is that it is not only enormous and beautiful (as well as totally calm the day we were there) but also when you are sitting in front of the house, looking out onto the lake, you can’t see any evidence of development or human beings except maybe the faintest hint of a dirt road on the other side of the lake. I have seen a lot of lakes in my day and I have never seen anything like this. If this lake was in America, there would probably be mansions and jet skis everywhere, or most likely it would be in a national park but there would still be development and people around. And not that development and recreation are bad (it depends) but there is seriously nothing on this lake and I was just in awe of that. I almost felt a little guilty being there (at the house on the lake and in Patagonia in general). Who am I to deserve seeing this beautiful place? My 23 years here on Earth haven’t been the most environmentally friendly when compared to the rest of the people on this planet. Why should I get to enjoy all this? Maybe the fact that barely anyone is here is a good thing. I don’t mean to be cynical but as humans we have a pretty good habit of destroying things and maybe Patagonia is something we should just leave alone. But I’m getting off topic. So we pretty much just sat around all day, which was great, especially in this majestic setting. We sat outside and read the rest of the Papal documents on environmental issues. Later on we busted out some fishing poles and I casted a few lines from the shore. I caught a rock. No joke. I seriously caught a rock. The shoreline in front of the house is just a bunch of smooth rocks and they told me it was a good place to fish and since I don’t know much about fishing I gave it a shot. The first time I casted out I hit some of the rocks but I eventually got my line back. I should have quit right there because later on I hit some more rocks but this time the line wouldn’t budge. I struggled with it for about 5 minutes then Jose Antonio helped me bring in the line and there was actually a rock stuck to the lure. I seriously caught a rock. I stopped fishing after that. We ate some dinner outside and then went for a little hike up to the top of a small hill that sits right next to the lake. From there we just sat for a few minutes, staring out at the crystal clear lake and the mountains beyond it. The view was amazing and I can’t really put it into words. I will put up some pictures but they won’t really do it any justice either. When we got back to the house the sun was setting and there this beautiful pinkish glow on the peaks of the Andes in the distance and then an amazing sunset that filled up the space in between two mountain peaks. But both of them only lasted for a few minutes before they faded away.
There is a big island in the middle of the lake that reminded me of somesort of mystical island you would read about in a book or something.
The hike.
The house.
It has a pretty nice backyard
The Andes reflecting off the lake.
Sunset.
Day 11
Monday; back to work. The high school students went to work on the irrigation ditch while Jose Antonio took Cole, Paul and I to find one of the gauchos so we could help him with some odd jobs. In the morning we were fixing one of the fences that separates the farm from the dirt road. A few of the wooden posts needed to be replaced so we had to pull them out of the ground, dig new holes and then secure the new posts in the new holes. It was actually pretty tough work and afterwards I had a much greater appreciation for all the fences with wire and wood posts that run along the few dirt roads that I saw in Patagonia. We went back to the house for lunch and then returned to work with the gaucho. (I can’t remember his name, it was something like Elizaho or something. I think it was the Spanish version of some prophet from the bible. He didn’t talk much. He had actually lived in the US for a few years, on a ranch in Colorado. But that’s about all I learned about him, other than the fact that he knew how to do pretty much anything; butcher sheep, tie any kind of knot, fix anything, ride a horse, etc.) Anyway, in the afternoon we had to move some oats and salt, feed for the cows, to another part of the farm. So we loaded up this old Toyota Land Cruiser truck and a trailer behind it with 100 lbs bags of salt and 60 lb bags of oats. The trailer didn’t have any sides to it, just a flat bed, and we had quite a few bags tied down onto it. We almost lost a few on the bumpy ride.
Day 12
More man work with the gauchos. We fed the cows in the morning. We had to load up one of the horse drawn carts with about 20 bales of hay from one of the barns. Orlando, one of the gauchos, took this hay to the cows in the nearby field, while we loaded up some more hay in the Land Cruiser (nicknamed Poderoso or Powerful) and drove it back to the cows near our house. (I can’t believe this truck is still working. They told me it was only from the 70’s but I found that hard to believe. I guess its not the years but the mileage. I rode in the bed a few times I thought it was going to collapse underneath me. The exhaust fumes started to get to me too.) So we dropped of the hay for the cows but we had to take their troughs that they eat their oats and salt from. The cows were going to be moving to a different pasture soon and we needed to bring the troughs there first. I didn’t really understand why we were doing this because these troughs were big hallowed out tree trunks and they were not the easiest things in the world to move. I thought it would just be easier to cut down some new trees and hallow those out instead of lifting these onto a trailer and driving them a few miles down the road. But anyway, that took us a while because we had to make like 3 trips. After that we went back to fixing the fence from yesterday. We had to replace a few more posts and make sure all the wire was connected. And my job was to take a huge knife, pretty much a machete, and hack down all the thorny plants that were growing anywhere near the fence. Now I am usually a peaceful person and I don’t like destroying nature, but it felt kind of good to chop down all these thorny bushes because they had been pissing me off all week, especially when we were riding horses. I got a little too into this job and eventually my right arm was lifeless and I got a blister on top of one of my other blisters on my right hand. I felt pretty tough after that and the ride back to the house was great. Just sitting in the bed of an old pickup truck, flying down a dirt road, with the Andes Mountains in the background.
Day 13
Last day in Patagonia. Woke up around 7 and had a quick breakfast. Said our goodbyes to Jose Antonio and the women. The bus ride to Balmaceda wasn’t bad at all. No stomach problems. We had the same driver as before so we got to hear all the same songs but I liked them a lot better this time. I saw some snow on the ride back when we were higher up in the mountains and it reminded me of Minnesota. I don’t think there will be much snow when I go back to Patagonia in January so that was probably the last time I will see snow in a while. Except for the peaks of the Andes around Santiago, but that doesn’t really count. We got the airport early and to pass the time we sat in the cafeteria and watched music videos from the 70’s and 80’s. They had some sort of music video megamix from both decades. They played all the classic songs but for only 10 or 15 seconds before moving on to the next one. I found it hilarious. I listened to some more American music on the plane ride back, much more recent of course. It made me a little homesick and nostalgic. I realized I hadn’t had any contact with anyone from home in a long time. When we got back to Santiago the city seemed even more foreign to me than when I first got there. Life in Patagonia reduces everything to its simplest terms. You start to understand what you really need to get by. So all the other crap that comes with living in the city seemed strange to me. But we when got back to the house it felt more like home.
Patagonia Sin y Con
In the spirit of the Patagonia Sin Represas (Patagonia without Dams) campaign, here is a list of things that Patagonia has and does not have. (is that proper grammar? I have no idea any more. English is so confusing, especially when I am trying to explain it to students.) This list is not definitive, merely an account of what I observed during my short time in a small part of Patagonia.
Patagonia Con…
· Shit…I mean poop, manure, both of the cow and horse variety. I swear, this stuff was all over the ranch, everywhere I went
· Mountains – they were pretty much all around us.
· Thorns – 90% of the plant life I encountered had nasty thorns. On a macro scale Patagonia is spectacular and beautiful, but on a micro scale, at least during the end of winter, when we were there, the land is rough and unforgiving.
· Clear waters – the rivers have a greenish blue tint but they are still crystal clear along with the lakes
· Lakes and Rivers – they are all over. The lake that the family house is on was incredibly calm one day. The whole lake, at least what I could see of it, was totally still.
· Sheep – the ranch has mainly cows but sheep are ubiquitous in Patagonia
· Gauchos – these guys have a lot of “man knowledge” and “man strength”. They are pretty quiet but fascinating.
· Mate – bitter herbal tea. You fill a small tea cup with this green herb, pour hot water over it and then drink it through a metal straw. It’s really popular with the gauchos. I tried it. It was ok. Really bitter, but I was starting to get used to it. I think it gets addicting.
· Stars – The most amazing stars I have ever seen. I thought Saint Johns had impressive stars when I arrived there from the city but Patagonia is probably way better than any place in America. There was a full moon when we were there but when the moon wasn’t out there weren’t any lights for miles and I have never seen so many stars in my life. You can actually see the Milky Way stretched out across the sky
· The Moon – I have never seen the moon this bright. It’s probably because I am in the Southern Hemisphere and the moon is much closer to the Earth. No but seriously, it was the brightest full moon ever and when I saw it rising over the hills it almost looked like the sun was coming up.
· Wine – we drank carton wine every night at dinner.
Patagonia Sin…
· Electricity – Obviously there is electricity in Patagonia and there is a line running along the road that cuts through the ranch. But the ranch isn’t plugged in and I think the electric fence is solar powered
· TV – I don’t even watch that much tv in Santiago so this wasn’t that big of a deal. I did see a little of the news when were at the restaurant in Cochrane. It was just weird being so isolated from the world.
· Refrigerator – butter, eggs, leftovers? Nah, don’t worry about it, just leave it out.
· Paved roads – There were a few paved roads on the drive in and the city streets of Puerto Guadal are mostly paved, but other than that it’s all dirt/gravel.
· People – not a lot of people in the entire region of Patagonia and they are usually pretty quiet and keep to themselves.
· Laundry – by the end of the trip I was out of clean boxers and socks so I was glad we were going home.
· Showering daily – after a while I realized I was living on a ranch in Patagonia and showering daily was no longer required
· Cars – only trucks. If you don’t have four wheel drive and a lot of ground clearance you are screwed down here. I did see on Subaru station wagon but that was it.
· Email – I had about 70 emails when I got home, about a dozen of which were important.
· Noise – ridiculously quiet
· Traffic – obviously. If you see more than two cars pass the other way on a road, that’s rush hour.
Monday; back to work. The high school students went to work on the irrigation ditch while Jose Antonio took Cole, Paul and I to find one of the gauchos so we could help him with some odd jobs. In the morning we were fixing one of the fences that separates the farm from the dirt road. A few of the wooden posts needed to be replaced so we had to pull them out of the ground, dig new holes and then secure the new posts in the new holes. It was actually pretty tough work and afterwards I had a much greater appreciation for all the fences with wire and wood posts that run along the few dirt roads that I saw in Patagonia. We went back to the house for lunch and then returned to work with the gaucho. (I can’t remember his name, it was something like Elizaho or something. I think it was the Spanish version of some prophet from the bible. He didn’t talk much. He had actually lived in the US for a few years, on a ranch in Colorado. But that’s about all I learned about him, other than the fact that he knew how to do pretty much anything; butcher sheep, tie any kind of knot, fix anything, ride a horse, etc.) Anyway, in the afternoon we had to move some oats and salt, feed for the cows, to another part of the farm. So we loaded up this old Toyota Land Cruiser truck and a trailer behind it with 100 lbs bags of salt and 60 lb bags of oats. The trailer didn’t have any sides to it, just a flat bed, and we had quite a few bags tied down onto it. We almost lost a few on the bumpy ride.
Day 12
More man work with the gauchos. We fed the cows in the morning. We had to load up one of the horse drawn carts with about 20 bales of hay from one of the barns. Orlando, one of the gauchos, took this hay to the cows in the nearby field, while we loaded up some more hay in the Land Cruiser (nicknamed Poderoso or Powerful) and drove it back to the cows near our house. (I can’t believe this truck is still working. They told me it was only from the 70’s but I found that hard to believe. I guess its not the years but the mileage. I rode in the bed a few times I thought it was going to collapse underneath me. The exhaust fumes started to get to me too.) So we dropped of the hay for the cows but we had to take their troughs that they eat their oats and salt from. The cows were going to be moving to a different pasture soon and we needed to bring the troughs there first. I didn’t really understand why we were doing this because these troughs were big hallowed out tree trunks and they were not the easiest things in the world to move. I thought it would just be easier to cut down some new trees and hallow those out instead of lifting these onto a trailer and driving them a few miles down the road. But anyway, that took us a while because we had to make like 3 trips. After that we went back to fixing the fence from yesterday. We had to replace a few more posts and make sure all the wire was connected. And my job was to take a huge knife, pretty much a machete, and hack down all the thorny plants that were growing anywhere near the fence. Now I am usually a peaceful person and I don’t like destroying nature, but it felt kind of good to chop down all these thorny bushes because they had been pissing me off all week, especially when we were riding horses. I got a little too into this job and eventually my right arm was lifeless and I got a blister on top of one of my other blisters on my right hand. I felt pretty tough after that and the ride back to the house was great. Just sitting in the bed of an old pickup truck, flying down a dirt road, with the Andes Mountains in the background.
Day 13
Last day in Patagonia. Woke up around 7 and had a quick breakfast. Said our goodbyes to Jose Antonio and the women. The bus ride to Balmaceda wasn’t bad at all. No stomach problems. We had the same driver as before so we got to hear all the same songs but I liked them a lot better this time. I saw some snow on the ride back when we were higher up in the mountains and it reminded me of Minnesota. I don’t think there will be much snow when I go back to Patagonia in January so that was probably the last time I will see snow in a while. Except for the peaks of the Andes around Santiago, but that doesn’t really count. We got the airport early and to pass the time we sat in the cafeteria and watched music videos from the 70’s and 80’s. They had some sort of music video megamix from both decades. They played all the classic songs but for only 10 or 15 seconds before moving on to the next one. I found it hilarious. I listened to some more American music on the plane ride back, much more recent of course. It made me a little homesick and nostalgic. I realized I hadn’t had any contact with anyone from home in a long time. When we got back to Santiago the city seemed even more foreign to me than when I first got there. Life in Patagonia reduces everything to its simplest terms. You start to understand what you really need to get by. So all the other crap that comes with living in the city seemed strange to me. But we when got back to the house it felt more like home.
Patagonia Sin y Con
In the spirit of the Patagonia Sin Represas (Patagonia without Dams) campaign, here is a list of things that Patagonia has and does not have. (is that proper grammar? I have no idea any more. English is so confusing, especially when I am trying to explain it to students.) This list is not definitive, merely an account of what I observed during my short time in a small part of Patagonia.
Patagonia Con…
· Shit…I mean poop, manure, both of the cow and horse variety. I swear, this stuff was all over the ranch, everywhere I went
· Mountains – they were pretty much all around us.
· Thorns – 90% of the plant life I encountered had nasty thorns. On a macro scale Patagonia is spectacular and beautiful, but on a micro scale, at least during the end of winter, when we were there, the land is rough and unforgiving.
· Clear waters – the rivers have a greenish blue tint but they are still crystal clear along with the lakes
· Lakes and Rivers – they are all over. The lake that the family house is on was incredibly calm one day. The whole lake, at least what I could see of it, was totally still.
· Sheep – the ranch has mainly cows but sheep are ubiquitous in Patagonia
· Gauchos – these guys have a lot of “man knowledge” and “man strength”. They are pretty quiet but fascinating.
· Mate – bitter herbal tea. You fill a small tea cup with this green herb, pour hot water over it and then drink it through a metal straw. It’s really popular with the gauchos. I tried it. It was ok. Really bitter, but I was starting to get used to it. I think it gets addicting.
· Stars – The most amazing stars I have ever seen. I thought Saint Johns had impressive stars when I arrived there from the city but Patagonia is probably way better than any place in America. There was a full moon when we were there but when the moon wasn’t out there weren’t any lights for miles and I have never seen so many stars in my life. You can actually see the Milky Way stretched out across the sky
· The Moon – I have never seen the moon this bright. It’s probably because I am in the Southern Hemisphere and the moon is much closer to the Earth. No but seriously, it was the brightest full moon ever and when I saw it rising over the hills it almost looked like the sun was coming up.
· Wine – we drank carton wine every night at dinner.
Patagonia Sin…
· Electricity – Obviously there is electricity in Patagonia and there is a line running along the road that cuts through the ranch. But the ranch isn’t plugged in and I think the electric fence is solar powered
· TV – I don’t even watch that much tv in Santiago so this wasn’t that big of a deal. I did see a little of the news when were at the restaurant in Cochrane. It was just weird being so isolated from the world.
· Refrigerator – butter, eggs, leftovers? Nah, don’t worry about it, just leave it out.
· Paved roads – There were a few paved roads on the drive in and the city streets of Puerto Guadal are mostly paved, but other than that it’s all dirt/gravel.
· People – not a lot of people in the entire region of Patagonia and they are usually pretty quiet and keep to themselves.
· Laundry – by the end of the trip I was out of clean boxers and socks so I was glad we were going home.
· Showering daily – after a while I realized I was living on a ranch in Patagonia and showering daily was no longer required
· Cars – only trucks. If you don’t have four wheel drive and a lot of ground clearance you are screwed down here. I did see on Subaru station wagon but that was it.
· Email – I had about 70 emails when I got home, about a dozen of which were important.
· Noise – ridiculously quiet
· Traffic – obviously. If you see more than two cars pass the other way on a road, that’s rush hour.
The house we stayed in.
Cole, Paul and I slept in this room.
This is not a joke!
Cole, Paul and I slept in this room.
This is not a joke!
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