Two tired tourists and painted hills

I count myself among what I would imagine is the majority of tourists when I say that I don't like tourism.  I hate it.  It was obviously invented to fatigue a human in every possible way.  It tires the mind, making it hard to concentrate on anything other than bags, bus terminals, crowded sights.  It stretches our capacity for appreciation, making us question the very underpinnings of human empathy.  It tires the body, making it hard to do mundane tasks such as washing your face, or even necessary ones such as get up to turn off the burner on the stove... So the question is, why do we do it?  Well even as Caitlin and I struggle to get to point B from point A we feel the need to go to museums, walk around towns and even go see sights occasionally.  And although the question is perhaps not an interesting one, after all, "how else do we get to see another culture?  Even in our pain we might learn something new." But actually, I disagree.  The reason to be a tourist is to occasionally see the incredible while almost swallowed under a sea of boring.  The Iguazu falls for instance, rising above the thousands of gawking onlookers on concrete paths with crying children.  The multicolored hills of Purmamarca poking through the endless streams of hippie hawking street vendors and deadlocked dawning consumers.  Even in our haze of sensory overload which has rattled us the past few weeks it was the lone bagpiper echoing through the painted hills who woke us up to why we are still seeing the occasional sight, experiencing the occasional bout of tourism.  The abnormal and the wonderful.

But that's enough.  Tomorrow we head out to the border with Bolivia.  Enough with hitchhiking--this time it's not worth the 10 dollars on the bus.  On the 1st Caitlin and I go our separate ways.  On the 1st the hypocrisy  of tourism ends and I become my true self again, an itinerant farm laborer.  Home again.

Oh and check out the new photos if you haven't (in the sidebar)!

Hitchin' a Ride

Many things in my life make me feel like an old man.  People often tell me I was born either in the wrong decade, or have the demeanor and habits of an 80 year old.  Well I take issue, I think 50 year old is more apt.  And no matter what I do, I cannot avoid it.  Setting out, reading Italo Calvino, listening to bluegrass, we decided to hitchhike to Buenos Aires from Puerto Natales.  Where did our encouragement come from?  No not the traveling youth as you might expect, but rather from everyone over the age of 50.  Who else can understand the joy, the wanderlust, and the despair at traveling "a dedo?"And the stories would come "Ah I remember when. . ."  So, in homage to my perpetual middle agedness (even when doing foolhardy or mildly reckless things)  Here is a montage of the past few weeks.

1. Rio Turbio It was cold when we left.  Our first ride took us 4km.  First lesson learned--don't start a day at 8pm, unless you want to camp where you start.

2. 28 de Diciembre to La Esperanza Oh these names are not made up. Our thumbs were poised and ready at 7am, and the car stopped soon after. Well actually it passed us and then 3 minutes later came back to pick us up. We think the conversation went something like this “Hey mom can we stop?,” says Ana “Ask your step-dad,” says mom. “No. . . they have so much stuff.” he replies. Ana, “But really, I want to speak English or maybe even Polish and the car is empty!” (Read: I can't stand it in this car for one more second) “FINE!” Car screeches and turns around. The daughter, 19, spoke to us the whole 2 hours.

3. La Esperanza to a national park outside of Piedras Buenas We picked up this other family of three at the gas station. The father Antonio looked like Che Guevara and had no fewer than 10 images of him in the van. The mother served us more mate in that ride than I had ever even dreamed of. She was clearly a depressed lady, and did not seem happy that we were there. But Antonio was just as certainly leading the revolution and hitchhiking apparently had it's place. They let us out at their next family vacation destination. We were alone again, on the road. The sign read “Buenos Aires 2530km” Caitlin replies “Somos Locos”

4. Jaime and Nano Well there's no way to really understand this ride.  My journal entry: "This is crazy, Loud Led Zeppelin, Hit Guanaco=9pm”  He had a guitar (left), he had a son (below).  We were happy there.  Then he totaled the car, which is sadly what we remember most.  The Guanaco is about the size of a large deer.  Drivers from all around stopped to check in on us, even though it was clear that no one was hurt. It was very nice actually. Turning to us Jaime insisted that we take advantage of the situation and jump in a truck. The police agreed, and hailed a driver down.

5.  Carlos, Guanaco-Comodoro Rivadavia

A Chilean trucker through and through.  Neat, worried, uptight, very nice, disliked Argentines. . . what more?  He took us that night at 9pm and again the next morning at 5am. 

So occasionally the Argentine police just want to check your passports at 12:30am. . . We went about our own business decimating those tufts that make pitching your tent really annoying.  Great sunrise too, but you'll have to check out those photos later.

6-8.  Rivadavia to Trelew Two shortish rides took us to Norberto.  He is our Argentine archetype.  Although he barely said a word in the 400km we were with him, he seemed to us the exact person Carlos despised.  Too tranquilo for his own good perhaps.  We traveled at 70kph.  (Below)

In Trelew we took a little rest.  We saw the archeological museum, and stayed in a hostel.  How strange to not feel the hard asphalt underfoot?  Even stranger was not sticking up our thumb at every passing car for a few hours.  The next day arrived and we set out, this time determined to get far, very far.  We spent two hours trolling the gas station.  We rejected rides, we were picky, it payed off.

9. Trelew to Bahia Blanca (900km) Diego took us at around 2pm from the station and drove late into the night.  He was trucking north with rejected beer bottles, and used cans.  He was a little cold at first but soon warmed up.  Soon enough we were singing along to the music together.  Then the Mate came out.  Then night fell and with it the 1980s rock ballads from his DVD player.  Finally he flips on the black light and we are set for the ride.  He was gunning for home to get his one night a week with his family.  But boy did he love his truck. 

One more night spent on the roadside behind the next gas station. Trolling worked once, so we tried again.  No luck.  It was back to the thumb.  

10. Bahia Blanca to Guamani Finally at around 9am Juan picked us up.  He was incomprehensible.  Somehow through the serious campo accent we understood his love for mate.  We also understood his complaints about the large land owners who grow all the grain the eye can see.  Beyond that it was his smiles and demeanor that kept us amused for hours.  

11-12 Guamani to BUENOS AIRES!!! "So beware of police officers" Juan told us.  As chance had it, that was our next ride for 80km.  But what is even funnier was our final ride.  Remember those land owners who exploit the local economy and its workers?  Well Juan-Carlos was that exact man.  Half the ride this 70 year old was on the phone with Chicago checking the price of grain.  The other half he was chatting with us about the US.  I must say, for being a capitalist, he had very socialist tendencies, supported health care and state pensions, just didn't want the government involved in wheat price fixing.  His air conditioned SUV was a godsend.  

4 Days, ~1700mi. 

Well it's 2011, the latest in what is starting to seem like an arbitrary series of well marked chunks of time we continue to call years.  Maybe it was the park over the last month, or maybe the fact that I have been structuring my own life for the last half year, but time has seemed like a very odd thing lately.  Today I said goodbye to Kendra who I had only met a month ago at the beginning of our volunteer program, but years seem to have gone by since I was last in Puerto Natales, where I currently find myself trying to tune out Snatch while writing my blog post in this heaven of a hostel. Even more confusing is how the coming of this new year has affected the way I see time passing in my life on a grand scale.  Soon I will be 'prime' as Caitlin keeps reminding me.  I will be 23, and indivisible.  How strange.  Still I guess it's useful to mark time's passage regardless of how I relate to it overall.  Don't ask me why though.

On a less confusing note I will try to explain what has happened in my life over the past few weeks.  As Caitlin puts it again, we have only created and said goodbye to a "universe."  AMA and Torres Del Paine has been that universe, and a strange one indeed.  It was created through the normal and of course strange interaction of three, then four people and their various eccentricities.  Although this might not seem out of the ordinary, our particular universe, at least at its height involved things such as the eating of a lot of raw garlic. We climbed incredible mountainscapes while searching for that elusive door to reality, and when we found it within our tent christened "La Ultima Esperanza" (also the colonial name for Puerto Natales) toasted with garlic of course.  We woke up at 3:58 to watch the sunrise shine on glacier Grey, where we discovered that garlic eaten raw needs a chaser, whiskey works.  Finally, on the last day of the trek we started on New Year's day our 2 cloves of garlic a day caught up with us.  Or rather, we were found out in the van ride back by an Australian with a mediocre sense of smell. . .   But this makes us seem like garlic addicts and nothing more!  We also ate at least 1.5 bars of chocolate a day, taught Kendra to love Nutella, all the while bonding over terrible foot fungus.  In short, I have lived in an alternate universe of absolute diversion and fun.  

On the 5th of January we left the park for good.  The goodbyes were actually sad, which I guess is the mark of a good experience.  The Erratic Rock hostel, owned by wonderfully odd Oregonians offered to put us up for free, so here we remain 2 days later.  It is now time to recalibrate our world yet again for traveling--entering what Caitlin calls (yet again) our transition through liminality. . .   We will be moving northward on the eastern coast of Argentina, gunning for Buenos Aires by the 19th.  Wish me luck!