San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina
Why Latin American Internet cafes go so heavy on bad pop/dance music is a matter that will eludes me. That said, if any of this becomes incoherent or stops abruptly, you can blame it on current bass attack with only three words repeated throughout: ¨Keep...the...BEAT!!!¨
February brings me back to Argentinian soil, and with it, reasonable prices. Gas has fallen from $5/gallon to $2.50, disgusting motels have been traded for fantastic campsites, and menus are more wide open to a man on a budget. Getting here meant crossing a poorly chosen pass not well suited for vehicular travel, but that I shall deal with that in a minute.
Over the past couple of weeks I have spent a good portion of my time in Chile´s very well maintained and naturally incredible natural parks. Starting out in Laguna del Laja (That´s ¨Lagoon¨ del Laja for you that don´t habla Español...and ¨Laja¨ you ask?...clearly it translates into ¨smooth stone¨...come on, people, I´m not going to hold your hand through the obvious cognates!), I was befriended by the disgruntled park administrator, who allowed me to stay in an unused room of the park headquarters since the sites were for large groups. ¨My room¨ was then cordoned off with a ratty red blanket, which didn´t stop an old woman from walking in on me in my underwear, which must have startled her considerably - at least sufficiently to cause her to drop her bread and utter ¨¡Permiso!¨. She probably thought she saw a ghost, but it was only my chest, still so white that you could watch a movie on it.
The park encompassed a number of remote mountain lagoons surrounding Volcano Antuco and its surrounding range. I spent the next couple of days exploring the place - first by motorcycle and then on foot. During the former, I came upon what seemed to be a funny sort of monument to the Chilean army, comprised of a statue made from a camouflage-painted metal garbage can with pieces of metal welded to it so that it resembled a soldier with a ridiculous face. I found out later by talking to the locals that it commemorated 45 soldiers that died during a training exercise in 2005 when they got lost nearby in a blizzard, which in turn took away a good portion of the humor derived from the goofy statue.
In terms of the hike, I teamed up with a group of seven Chileans about my age from Santiago. It was good to roll with a posse again. The hike was a steep one, eventually leveling off onto a high valley covered with dark volcanic rock from when Antuco blew its top about a 100 years back. Despite the lack of sure footing and the fact that it shredded the lighter footwear of my comrades, it goes without saying that I love magma. Hot...cool...whatever. Love the magma.
The Chileans were kind enough to share their food and wine with me, and I ended up staying there for a couple of days. Such generosity has been commonplace in Chile (with offers of food, drink, and conversation so frequent while camping that I have little need to bring or prepare my own food), despite the warnings from Argentinians who told me that the Chilean people were ¨very cold¨. Then again, Chileans and Argentinians are always cutting each other down, so it seems. In the ´90s they almost stepped into the ring together after a maritime incident in which a temporary guard near the straight of Magellan opened fire on a boat full of Argentines, but a war was allayed by virtue of intervention by El Papa (aka The Pope).
On a similar note, it has been fascinating how much that religiosity has waned the further I have headed south. Compared with countries in Central America, Bolivia, and Peru, Argentina and Chile are much more overtly secular. Catholicism is not even remotely as pervasive in everyday life. The buses do not have paintings of the Risen Christ on the hood. There are not as many American-based churches with evangelical headquarters in the countryside. Bumper stickers do not commonly express the driver´s belief that ¨The success I have I owe to the Father¨. And, as was the most striking example of living the faith, no one is dressed up as Jesus in a crown of thorns with a giant, wheeled, wooden cross braced against his shoulder rolling along in sort of pilgrimage across the country as in Peru and Bolivia. I do not intend here to offend or to draw conclusions, but it would make for an interesting sociological study to track the inverse and commensurate relationship between standard of living and religiosity across Latin America.
All the off-roading in the park loosened up the fork clamps on my bike and kind of threw the steering askew. Neubz had great foresight in assembling the tools (most of which he admitted were purchased in a late-night online buying frenzy facilitated by the comsumption of alcoholic beverages), and he didn´t skimp on quality. But in spite of having near every kind of equipment a man with a motorcycle could want, the socket set maxes out at 24mm, and the stem nut is a 27mm. I deemed the bike dangerous to drive, so I jettisoned the lion´s share of my gear at the park and slowly made my way down a gravel road toward civilization.
Civilization, as it turns out, was a generous word. At the outskirts of the little village, I was surprised to suddenly be surrounded by a group of perhaps a dozen horses who had bounded out from the wooded bank of the road on both sides. My only thought: ¨What in the name of Sidney Poitier is going on?¨ I was soon surrounded on all side by the horses, who ran along in the same direction as me like a cavalcade. I didn´t dare slow down, as there were three horses behind me that I could see in my side mirrors, so I just kept the same speed until they had enough of their hijinx and dispersed as quickly as they had come. The townspeople down the road were likely equally surprised by catching a glimpse of me, my protective riding gear reminiscent of something they had only seen in the Disney classic, ¨Tron¨.
As it went, it was classic Latin America. ¨Oh, you need to go see Pascualito.¨ Pascualito? ¨Go up to the third street and take a right.¨ Does the street have a name? ¨No, but his place is in between the butcher and the yellow house.¨
Pascualito was exactly what you´d expect in an elderly, small town mechanic - aside from the fact that he wasn´t a mechanic. He fixes tires, but that was about as close as I was going to get to what I was looking for. His tools were a mixture of homemade implements and Chinese wrenches that he had busted and since crudely welded back into approximate shape. But we were able to get things situated, and he even treated me to some sage advice as I was driving away: ¨Remember, don´t get married until you´re 50! I didn´t. And it´s the only reason I´m happy!¨ Wise words, Pascualito.
While buying some supplies in town, I was approached by a group of teenagers who told me that I had to go see Jonny. Jonny had seven motorcycles, knew everything about them, and he could make sure that everything was set.
Jonny lived outside of town, and to make a long story short, he did have seven motorcycles of varying quality...none good. He was friendly enough, and wanted to take the bike for a ride to see what the problem was. I never let him, as he was drunk out of his mind and did nothing for the bike except spill a warm beer he was trying to hand to me ¨for the journey ahead¨ all over the seat while trying unsuccessfully to throw a leg over it. He also offered to trade his sister for the bike, assuring me that she was ¨really hot¨. I´ll have to mull that one over.
The rest of the next two weeks were spent hiking in two other parks with a couple of Germans and a Swiss. Then there was camping with the Chilean family, the father of whom told me of the good days in Argentina in 1979 when meat was so cheap that while he was visiting a friend, his friend went out and bought pasta from a restaurant for the special occasion because dry spaghetti costed more than beef. Why my Dad - arguably the world´s champion of beef - didn´t live in Argentina in the ´70s is a mystery to me.
The pass that brought me into Argentina was represented by the rare purple line on the map, which should have tipped me off that it was slightly sub par. As this E-mail is getting long, let me say that it was a five-hour crucible done completely in first gear up a rocky one-lane road, across bridges so rickety that they wouldn´t even have served as visual props in ¨The Dukes of Hazzard¨, including a stop for fuel from a woman in a shack with a wine jug of gasoline, and ending up at a remote border post where the immigrations officer filled out paperwork among the clucking of chickens that walked in and out of his crowded office at will. I imagine that getting that prized post is akin to getting tapped by the President for an ambassadorship to Chad.
That doesn´t sum up the two weeks, but I´ll finish later. I need to meet someone for dinner - a guy from New Zealand also travelling by cycle.
I did, however, manage to toss a nice stack of pics over to Webmaster Alex, and I´m sure they´ll be up in short order. If not, he has to eat a bag of Whiska Lickin´s cat treats, as per our agreement.
Adieu,
- Tom
Quote: ¨Striker, listen, and you listen close: flying a plane is no different than riding a bicycle, just a lot harder to put baseball cards in the spokes.¨
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