Wednesday, November 29, 2006

 

Overwhelming Sad News

Goodbye Bolita...

If you read my entry on Parque Ambue Ari, (June), you may remember Bolita, the baby Giant Anteater, for whom I built a house, while Norwegian Chris nursed her. I have just heard that Bolita has died. I find it desperately sad that such a wonderful creature that showed so much personality and potential has been lost.

In the intervening months, between leaving the park and this news, both Chris and I had many email exchanges with the Inti Wara Yassi representative in London. We objectively expressed concerns over the issues we had found at the park, but ultimately we wanted to let IWY know that we were concerned that the park did not have the right facilities or skills to offer the best care for Bolita. We sent information, hard copies direct to the park, and in English and Spanish via the representative in London, electronically. It all seems to have been for nought.

My first reaction was to tell people not to support this organisation, but in reality this will only mean the animals suffer. Unfortunately I would not be at all surprised if this organisation stutters and fails at some point, with ultimately the animals being the victims any way. However should you decide to volunteer at either of the IWY parks I hope you have a positive experience and help the animals you work with. If you ever have any suggestions to make don't make the mistake I made of going through the representative in London, not very helpful, and ultimately utterly futile.

Monday, November 27, 2006

 

Chilean Patagonia

Being Prepared

When I was about 9 or 10 years old I turned up at the church hall one evening to be told my presence was no longer required at Cub Scouts. The official reason was that I had failed to show up for the previous 8 weeks and therefore hadn't obtained my Bronze Award - tie a reef knot, make a cup of tea that sort of stuff... However in reality I actually think it was more to do with the reason that I had absented myself for those 8 weeks: that is, I had encourage the other members of my 6 (although there were only 4 of us) plus a few others to abscond from a ramble across Hampstead Heath... Anyway, scouting, trekking and camping have hardly been something I've been particularly interested in since. However for some reason I decided to make a 5 day trek through chilly Chilean Torres Del Paine National Park.

You will not be surprised that I was fully prepared for this trek through the wintry wilderness. My list of equipment included the following:

Despite having a bit of stinking cold all the way round, the whole thing was fantastic. Great weather and good company (including Kylie who made friends with all the park rangers, so got us cooking privileges - and therefore warmth - in their shacks where there was no kind of refugio) and utterly stunning scenes.

Generally the whole thing is one of those spectacular sights that defy description. All I know is I've earned my trekking badge so that'll be that for a while.

If you are heading for this part of the world, even if you don't stay at either of the Erratic Rock Hostels, in Puerto Nateles, go to their briefings (3pm every day), it's open to anyone who shows up. Shed loads of really useful info all worth taking note of, from people who, despite having hostel, hire and guide services, don't get pushy with them at all. They simply seem genuinely interested in helping budget travellers get the most of a visit to Torres Del Paine. Just be aware, if you get Bill started on how the park should attract the "right" kind of visitor you'll be there for hours...


Fjords and Ice Bergs

From Puerto Natales Mike, my trek companion, and I headed up north on the Navimag ferry, passing more incredible landscapes. And drinking quite a bit, especially at the last night's Bingo Fiesta!!! This is Mike helping some college girls with their homework. Are you surprised he couldn't find his glasses in the morning?

When I got back to Puerto Montt I was able to capture on film something I spotted last time I was here, and as a few people I have told thought it was just talking rubbish as usual, here is the proof: Some enterprising young fella attempts to beat the "Nuts-4-Nuts" company, and go one better.


Collective noun of the month:

A puddle of Old Aged Pensioners


Now I'm back in the Chilean Lake District and seriously considering doing nothing for the next few weeks until I fly home...


Thursday, November 16, 2006

 

Argentine Patagonia

Searching for Bad Face


I'm a Londoner. In the past I've managed to not leave it's boundaries from one year's end to the next, without noticing, and can be fairly quoted as having once said "It's nice to come out to the country once in a while" whilst sitting in Greenwich Park. So even I'm vaguely surprised I've chosen to travel across Patagonia. However it so stunningly beautiful that even I couldn't fail to be impressed by it. And in truth I've had a hankering to journey through its vast expanses since seeing a very gentle film, Historias Minimas (Small Stories), in which various characters traverse the region, including an old man in search of his lost dog, Bad Face.

Throughout this leg of my journey I've experienced glaring sunlight (sin ozone), wind, snow and rain, relentlessly long bus journeys through endless, stark, unchanging landscape, as well as having to combat more different accents - If anyone's been to Spain recently and there wasn't anyone there it's because they're currently all in Patagonia, so the conversations have been full of th-th-th as well as sh-sh-sh-che, if you know what I mean.


Switzerland only bigger

Running south through the Argentine lake district are a series of towns that are reminiscent of scenes off the tops of Swiss chocolate boxes (there is also an overwhelming number of chocolate shops in them too). When I arrived in San Martin de Los Andes, I thought it was snowing. Thankfully it was only wispy seeds being blown out of the trees, which was a relief, although they are not as pleasant as snowflakes when you catch them on your tongue. It was in this town I decided to make my first hike in Patagonia this spring...although I had a few false starts just trying to leave town, and firstly ended up at the doors of an Irish Pub, sadly closed. I left with a mental note to at least invest in some sort of map for my next hike...what was I saying about being a city dweller..?

I spent just one night in Bariloche, having stayed there for a week or so in the South American autumn, but at last I met a Norwegian man travelling - I was beginning to think they just didn't leave their own country as despite having met a vast amount of Norwegians, until now only one of them was a man, and he was old with a broken arm (although I'm sure that doesn't exclude him from citizenship). From Bariloche I went down to the rather unlovely town of El Bolson, famous for the beautiful surrounding countryside, being the "first nuclear free" town in Argentina, its (not very) alternative market, more chocolate and being "one of the seven chakras of the world" - I ask you?? Thankfully most of the holiday-hippy contingent seemed to have packed away there draw-string trousers and returned to their day jobs at the merchant banks and petro-chemical firms, although there would have been plenty to keep them happy with the market touting the usual braided tat among the home made jams and mate bombillas.


Basking in the sunshine.

My next stop took me right across the country to the Atlantic coast to a tiny village Puerto Piramides on Peninsula Valdez, where the South Right Wale turn up every year in their hundreds, to coax their calves through their first few weeks. So it was into the boats to watch them splash around, and down to the beach at night to listen to their song, (except it was so bloody cold and the wind was blowing the wrong way, so we gave it up as a bad job). On the peninsula there are also huge colonies of huge elephant seals, which are really just hilarious burping bags of blubber. There are Penguins as well, but to my mind they were disappointingly out of place in the 30 degree heat instead of perched on an ice shelf some place.


So if it's ice you're after...

A long bus ride south and then back east got me to El Calafate. I've seen a couple of glaciers before (including a rather lovely chocolate brown coloured one on Aconcagua) but down the road is the impressively huge Perito Moreno Glacier, (one of the world's few expanding glaciers). Occasionally chunks break off the 60 meter high ice wall and crash into the lake it is currently choking. I also journeyed a couple of hundred kilometres further north to El Chalten to climb on a glacier as well as see the peak of Fitzroy, but the first real snow on my trip closed in and forced us back off the mountain. The falling snow covered the Alpinesque landscape, the storm then stopped and the clouds moved out, revealing the dark jagged mountains, and then the snow melted from the lower slopes exposing the green valley spotted with yellow dandelions, so within 5 hours it was like trekking through sets from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, to The Lord of the Rings and then The Sound of Music.
Narnia...Austria

On the way back and forth to El Chalten our cowboy-hat-wearing bus driver played country and western music and looked as if he'd be all the more happier with a big truck, with an air-horn, (although he did have a CB radio), rather than driving a bus load of gringos around. Having now listened to a huge chunk of non-stop C&W songs I have come to the conclusion that the lyrics can be split into just a few topics, which are solely dependant on speed and gender. It needs a bit of work, but so far my hypothesis is panning out like this:
Slow songs are sad. If sung by a man they are about how he got drunk and left his woman, or his woman left him because he was a drunk. If sung by a woman they are about how her man got drunk and left her, or about being a single mom, (although these generally end with her meeting a real good man, but by the next track he's got drunk and left her). Fast songs are happy. If sung by either sex, and they are about a girl dancing or a pick up truck, or a girl dancing in the back of a pick up truck. I imagine very few Country lyrics are about having a fulfilling life being black and/or gay.


Tomorrow I head for what will probably be my last border crossing of this trip, until I return home, to the snowy wastes of Chilean Patagonia...brrrr. So tonight, Bryan and Gillian, (my glacier trekking pals) and I, will head out so I can say farewell to Argentina with a huge plate of meat...mmmm.


Sunday, November 05, 2006

 

Peru, Chile and on through Argentina

New Friends, Old Friends


My last stop in Peru, before heading into the north of Chile, was Arequipa, one of the more beautiful cities in Peru, which was in the throws of a religious festival, like most of Peru, but included a Mr South America show...lots of guys with make up and tight t-shirts preening themselves on a make shift stage in the main square - really can't say what the supposed relevance was. From here I embarked on a trek to the Colca Canyon. Apparently, although this is occasionally disputed, it was recently verified as the world's deepest canyon. All I know is I had very achy legs afterwards. The canyon is also famed for its condors which occasionally swoop down and pluck tourists from the miradors...OK that bit's a lie, but there are a lot of condors. The accompanying photo is a reconstruction of a real event, no birds were hurt during the making of this picture.

I have been extremely fortunate on all the tours and treks I've taken part in on my trip to have had some of the most excellent companions. This trip was no exception, consisting of a gang of Dutch people, that once again proved to me that the Dutch are amongst the nicest people you could hope to meet; an Australian armed with more film trivia than any one person should have a license to carry; a couple of cool Americans with eco-credentials you don't mess with; two very lovely Brits, Laura, who became my drinking buddy, while we left her friend, Belinda, to languish in bed with altitude sickness; and Ralph Wiggum, from the Simpsons.

OK, that's probably desperately cruel and unnecessary, but here's the quiz:
Which one is responsible for which statement, Ralph or my canyon companion?
1) And, when the doctor said I didn't have worms any more, that was the happiest day of my life.
2) Maybe you've got amoebas. I got amoebas once. Sometimes I still have them.

Once we had descended and ascended the canyon over a couple of days, (spending the night in an isolated village where I asked useless questions like "what do you make out of the furs of the guinea pigs you eat?" and sampled snake juice - a bit like meaty vodka), we stayed in another little village in the arse end of nowhere. While everyone else took themselves to bed with fatigue or altitude sickness, Laura and I found a great little bar, where we could put the world to rights whilst letting one of the Paccha Mama's greatest gifts numb our achy limbs. The bar had mud brick walls, candles for lighting, a fire and of course beer. But, it wouldn't have been out of place in North London's more fashionable night spots, and it's given me the inspiration for a fabulous scheme for my return...

All I need is venture capitalist with more money than sense (think that's a possible definition any way), and the world can be ready for "Adobe"...hear me out. A bar restaurant specialising in beers, wines, cocktails and food from all over South America. In the morning we can open up as a juice bar and serve various breakfasts, from stale bread and gluey jam (a bit of a staple in the North) to fried fish and yucca for those with an appetite; lunch will be the classic "almuerzo", a set menu of soup, main course, pud and juice, dependent on the previous nights left overs to afford a budget price; dinner has a wider menu to suit either the adventurous or or more pedestrian tastes. Set it up in a painfully trendy area and even non-meal times will do a rip roaring trade with music execs and advertising creative teams pretentiously sharing mate or a pot of coca tea, whilst musing over how they will exploit their next unsuspecting target market. I can only see a couple of supply issues standing in the way: HM Customs may not run with the coca imports, but I reckon I could get away with substituting bay-leaves in Lemsip, and the animal rights may not go a bundle on me farming guinea pigs for the pot, but if you cut the feet, wings and head off poussin and run them through a mangle the punters will get a better tasting meal and wont know the difference. As long as I make sure the fruitarian-macrobiotic-wheat-intolerant-vegetarians are covered off with a few options, I think it's got legs... Who's in??

We celebrated our return to Arequipa with dinner and drinks, enough so that I managed to get lumbered with giving my Aretha (Say A Little Prayer) to a thankfully all but empty karaoke bar. Once again Laura and I found ourselves the only participants with any back bone and finished the night with a line of pisco sours, leaving in the wee small hours with loose plans to meet in Santiago at some point in December. And I hope we do, as without a doubt Laura is up there with Matt, Tone and Poe, Carrie and Katharina (star billing reserved for Norwegian Chris, obviously) at the top of a list of the very many fabulous people I have met as I have been trundling round this bit of the world.

Speaking of Katharina, one of a triumvirate of Swiss guys that NC and I crossed the Salar with and met up with throughout Bolivia - which helped me to concluded that the Swiss are also amongst the nicest people in the world you could hope to meet - she put me up for the night in Santiago, where I sought refuge from a very cloudy north Chile. I'm sure you wont be surprised to know that pisco sours featured heavily in the evening. Santiago was the first city I rolled up in on this trip and a place I love, although I think I've realised why many people don't like it all that much. It's modern - if you arrive from else where in LatAm it must just feel very European, and if you make it your first stop it just doesn't feel like what you might feel South America should do: very little in the way of historical buildings, not a gaucho to be seen, no jungle, no blokes with blow-pipes etc. I had also forgotten how impenetrable the accent here is. Katharina says they swallow their words, but they wolf them down, biting off the ends, and peppering their language with a vocabulary all their own.

I then crossed over the Andes to another of my favourite cities Mendoza to wander around in the sunshine for a couple of days, before heading for the chilly southern spring. I left with perfect timing, as the heavens opened and must have delivered more than the average 200mm of annual rainfall Mendoza receives each year, filling the ancient canal-like drains and flooding the town's roads.

If you're planning on visiting Mendoza, stay at the Lao Hostal, (Rioja 771). Started by Mike and Celeste (a Anglo-Argentine couple), a year ago, it's got a great location between bus station, micro-centre and nightlife, clean, with chilled areas if that's what you crave, not to mention great communal areas including a mini swimming pool, and an attention seeking dog. And they can help arrange tours and all that sort of stuff, as well as occasionally throwing booze on the table and stakes on the BBQ, for a small contribution to the collective. The best place I've stayed in Mendoza...and I've stayed in a few.

Right now I find myself in waiting for a connecting bus in a non-descript town of Cipolletti, not far from Neuquen. Around the town the flat landscape stretches out for miles and the water-foul are flying in huge flocks south, and sometimes you have pinch yourself to remember just where you are. But this place seems like the sort of town most teenagers would hope to escape as soon as possible, hence the bus station is plastered with posters asking for information about a 16 year old girl who has gone missing. I just hope for her sake she's safe, working behind a bar or cleaning rooms in Bariloche or Buenos Aires, and not in a hole in the ground or enslaved, in one way or another, like too many other children find themselves in South America.

Vegetable rights and peace, OK.

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