Notes From Nowhere

From 3.7.08


It´s 2:15 PM here on the bus, and I am surrounded on all sides by the desert of the Patagonian steppe.


I´ve tried to start writing three times now. It´s 5:40. My mind is utterly empty. This landscape just sucks everything out of you.

I´ve arrived now at the Koshen Hostel in Perito Moreno. Writing was impossible on the bus because of the gravel and dirt roads. Took too much concentration to not allow my hand to be jolted from the page.

But we´ve arrived now, thank goodness. The hostel is very quaint. I´m sharing a suite with five other people - four girls from Ireland who are traveling together and John from San Francisco, who also quit his job and bought a one way ticket. The beds are upstairs - 2 bunks and a double, and downstairs is a full kitchen with table and chairs and a bathroom. Perfecto!

The ride today was sort of blah. Not great, not terrible. Had two seats to myself, which is always nice, but once the sun came out, it was quite hot and stuffy in there. Woke from my post lunch siesta in a sweat.

We made three stops - El Bolson for coffee, some other place for gross gas-station sandwiches, and Rio Mayo for mid afternoon stretch and snack. The woman working the register at Rio Mayo looked like a church lady. So properly dressed. Hose with reinforced toes with sandals from the 60s. Orange lipstick. And that skin. Like an uncooked cinnamon roll. Doughy, pasty, soft.

The towns are nothings. Quite literally the middle of nowhere. My view out the window didn´t change for hours. Desert- green, grey, and straw shrubs, rocks, endless. And the sky. The sky here is magnificent. Vibrant blues that just dilute as they melt down towards the horizon. Liquid blue. Like water out there. The wispy clouds hang so low. I felt like I could just put my hand up and move them around if I wanted.

The scenery was dull, actually, but very calming at the same time. I just lost track of everything staring out at it. I kept trying to conceptualize where I was in relation to the rest of the world. To the world I know. But I couldn´t make sense of it.

The bus driver. Exactly like the SNL guy who always plays the fat Mexican. He asked two guys where they were from, and when they said Taiwan, he said, "Oh, Taiwan! Sianara!" and sort of bowed his head and burst out laughing. So un-PC. Hysterical.

The SF guy thought I was Argentinian, even after hearing me speak to the woman at the cash register. Yes!

******

From 3.9.08

Sunday evening. Sitting in Aylen-Aike hostel, looking out at Rio de las Vueltas. An eventful two days.

Yesterday morning, I woke early with the Irish gals to venture out to Los Antiguos to see the Cave of Hands. The van picked us up at 7 AM, and we rode - 15 of us total - for 3.5 hours, over rocky dirt roads. There was a beautiful sunrise, but otherwise, the journey was mostly unremarkable. Saw a huge line of cattle, being herded from one big area of nothing to another big are of nothing. "Que lindo bife," a fellow passenger said. The cows were quite pretty.

John from SF said he wasn´t going to the caves because it seemed like a tourist trap. Definitely not a tourist trap, though to me, tourist trap looks like Gatlinburg. Nobody was there but us. Middle of nowhere. There was a 45 minute walk past the cave art, with a guide, speaking at turns Spanish and English, though I could tell the Spanish speaking audience was getting much more information. There were no caves to go into. We walked along the Canyon de las Pinturas, the wind was blowing fiercely, and the clouds were firmly covering any chance of warmth we had from the sun. Chilly.

The art was interesting, though I´m still undecided as to whether it was worth such an early start. I suppose it´s sort of like asking yourself, "Would I go 3.5 hours out of my way to see that painting by that artist that I´ve seen reproduced over and over again in books and pamphlets?" In some cases, of course, the answer is yes. But I don´t know. Something about this just seemed fake to me. I mean, I had moments of thinking, "Wow. Crazy that people lived and survived out here. And crazy that this art has survived out here in the open air." But I don´t know. The guia kept giving all of these elaborate explanations for what and why (ritual - for good luck in the hunt, etc.) but what I found myself thinking, as I was supposed to be marvelling at human origins, was - this is probably just the remnants of their graffiti. Or this is probably what the mommas and the poppas set their kids to doing to keep them out of their hair. I minored in art history. I like this stuff. Think it´s fascinating. But sometimes I think there´s gotta be a simpler explanation for things. Though, I guess, in a thousand years, if someone tried to interpret graffiti in a NYC subway, they´d (rightly) find more in it than just some kid´s desire to leave his mark.

We had one hour more in the van after the tour, til we met up with the big bus and the group that opted to sleep in. It was a different bus than the day before. No bathrooms! At fisrt I thought, What a mess this is going to be. What if I really have to go? But as soon as someone indicated a need to the driver, that bus just pulled right over to the side of nothing, and people were free to squat as they pleased. That´s how utterly desolate it was.

The scenery wasn´t beautiful exactly, but it was striking. Like that friend you have who people call beautiful once they get to know them or have time to adjust to their face.

It was a slow, long day. Two hours had passed, and I had done nothing but stare out the window, lost in thoughts of people and places and lives and also just nothing.

I am sick of my music. I set the thing on shuffle, and then skip through 40 songs, trying to find something new and refreshing for my ears.

Finally stopped trying and turned to my book. What an incredible book - In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin. He has such a precise, concise, amusing writing style. Three pages at a time. One Patagonian story after another. He was fascinated, enchanted by this land. He tells a good story. An alternative history. Me gusta.

One thing he´s constantly drawing attention to is the immigrant backgrounds of the "locals" he meets. Irish, Scottish, Italian, German. Everyone having abandoned their roots in search of something else, better, different. North AND South America are full of immigrants - not just the US. I forget sometimes. It´s crazy to think that some people, over in Germany, have roots in the same place, going back forever. What a sense of self and identity that must provide. But me? Americans? Who are we? I don´t know my story. I need to know my story.

Was reading about Chatwin´s encounter with an old Italian opera singer when CRACK! right next to my ear. I was so lost in my book, I wasn´t even that startled. But when I looked out the window, I could see nothing but black lines and tiny, odd-shaped circles. The window was shattered. The Irish gal behind me had a lap full of glass. It must´ve been a rock - not really all that shocking considering the road we were traveling - but wow! It´s an utter miracle that no on had a face full of glass. No one - neither me, nor the Irish girl, nor anyone around us - had a cut. Incredible.

The guy who wrote the intro to my book said that Patagonia is a crazy place, where anything is possible, and now I believe it. Man and nature are at odds out here. Man has not yet conquered all.

We all moved into available seats toward the front, and I spent the next hour fighting nerves and trying to convince myself that I hadn´t somehow swallowed a tiny piece of glass, that had pierced my esophagus and would eventually cause me to bleed to death, internally. It would be too late, of course, to save me by the time I had any symptoms.

Luckily, we soon stopped at a nice estancia for a meal. (I forgot to mention that all of my meals thus far have consisted of my own crackers or granola bars or gas station sandwiches that are totally inedible and yet! I found a way to eat.) There were homemade chicken empanadas and pizzas, so I got myself an empanada and a slice and a grande Quilmes and supped with a super nice older couple. Maybe 60s. He´s German, she´s Ecuadorian (?), and they move from home to home at various times of the year. "Because I´m retired," he said, "so I have the freedom." Yes. Claro.

The empanadas didn´t taste quite like chicken to me, but everything was delicious and I relaxed and smiled and talked. And had an amazing piece of pie - dulce de leche with coconut. The pie version of a Samoa. Yum!

After dinner, I wondered out into the front yard of the house, and found a man shooing two guernacos down the main driveway. They´re like llamas. Then I turned back in the direction of the house, noticed the dogs feasting on something, and went over to observe. A few feet in front of the dogs were three guernaco heads. Just the heads and necks. Poor things. I started wondering, as we bumped on down the road, what is done with the bodies, if the heads are dog food? My empanadas! Es posible? Creo que si.

The sun made a very dramatic exit last night. Curtains of rain falling from fat clouds in the distance glowed pink. Los nubes were lilac grey.

I spent the last two hours into Chalten listening to the SF guy tell his whole life story to two of the Irish girls. They were in the first row, and I was probably in the tenth, so I imagine the entire bus was woefully aware of how he just up and left his girlfriend of three years and bought a one way ticket to SA. He gossiped about his own life the way a girl does. Unbelievably irritating to listen to.

Finally arrived at the Rancho Grande hostel in El Chalten around midnight. The receptionist assigned me to room 8, and off I went, down a long corridor. The room was dark and sweaty when I opened the door, and I could make out two bunk beds and two bodies sprawled out on the bottom bunk of each. I didn´t know what to do with myself for a few minutes. I felt utterly alone. Surely there´s some kind of hostel etiquette for this situation, I thought, but what is it? Should I turn on the lights so I can see to prepare myself for bed? I don´t know why this situation stressed me so, but in the end, I left the door ajar just enough to see my things, made a quick trip to the bathroom to wash up and change clothes and then just went back to the room and climbed onto a top bunk.

Nicole, who was here a month ago, told me that she had bugs in her bed at Rancho Grande, so I spent thirty minutes swatting invisible bugs, scratching non-existent itches. Finally fell into a deep sleep and woke this morning refreshed, unbitten, and free of the scaries of the night before.

I packed my things, enjoyed a filling breakfast of toast and butter and jam and all you can drink cafe con leche, got directions to my next hostel and headed out.

I could see nothing of Chalten when we arrived last night, but when I stepped out this morning, I found myself in the mountains.

My Lonley Planet describes Chalten as a city that was "slapped together" and I wasn´t sure what that meant exactly until I saw it. Indeed, slapped together is exactly what it is. Started in just 1985, Chalten looks like a model train neighborhood. Small square houses in bright colors, half of which are under construction. Small gravel roads. It´s a work in progress. There´s nothing here but the mountains.

I found Aylen Aike - also a recommendation from Nicole - dropped my backpack and then went out. Found the park ranger´s office, got a map of the area and several recommendations for day hikes, and then hit the mercado, where I bought pasta and sauce and a few things for picnic lunches, too.

I hiked Lago Torre today. A little over 12 miles total. The hiking wasn´t difficult, and there were many people on the trail - a few from the bus. The lake itself is nice. Sits right at the bottom of the glacier and is situated right plop in the center of the mountains. Like the last piece of fruit in the bowl. Couldn´t see the lake at all until I climbed right up to the edge of it.

It was a solitary day. I briefly stopped to answer some questions about the lake for a couple that couldn´t decide if they wanted to keep going, but that, and the occasional "hola" to passers-by, was it. As I made my way back though the streets of Chalten to the hostel, the wind was blowing hard, my feet were hurting, it was growing colder, and I started wondering what I was doing. Can I really do this for four more months? This kind of solidarity?

I took a hot and perfectly pressured shower, got a cerveza and sat myself in the main room here, for a little reading and writing.

I met Neal, a 40-50 year old guy from Utah with a ponytail, straight off his "moto" as he calls it. He has a 15 month sabbtical from Univ. of Utah, were he teaches 3-D digital art and photography, and he´s riding all over SA. He concentrates very hard when he speaks. I want to get some photography tips from him.

Stomach started grumbling so went to the kitchen to prepare my penne with tomato sauce and parmesan. Fell into a conversation with a really nice 20-something couple from London. Got some terrific tips about Torres del Paine - turns out I can do it by myself, as there are strategically placed refugios all along the circuit. Definitely going to do that, after Calafate.

And so I answered my question. Yes, I can do this. Absolutely. I am certain I am going to be struck by intense loneliness along the way, as I am certain to experience intense happiness, too. The adventure has really started now. The exciting and scary and hard part.

Now time to plan tomorrow´s hike and hit the hay. Long day.