The accepted nomenclature for articulating the escalation of the intensity of an inconveniece goes a little something like this:
Annoyance -> Operation -> Fiasco -> Ordeal -> Hassenfeffer
We are currently at Code Hassenfeffer here. Anything above and beyond this string begins to elude the realm of language and instead manifests itself in maddened deeds (arson, acts of mayhem, etc). But first, to bring you up to speed...
My last update originated over a shared dial-up connection from the windswept hole of Gobernador Gregores, that sweet oasis in the sand. From there it was another woeful journey west to the trekking Mecca of El Chalten, nestled at the foot of the Andes on the border with Chile. Heading west meant taking the 35 mph wind straight in the chops like a repeated clothesline from Ricky ¨The Dragon¨ Steamboat. In an effort not to repeat the same dreary explanation that I doled out in the last E-mail, suffice it to say that it was soul crushingly miserable and - if possible - worse than the day before. The highlight was spotting some wildlife: a big armadillo that could neither smell nor hear me in the fierce wind, so that I was able to get within about three feet of him as he went about his digging business, and later a group of ten huemul (like a Dr. Moreau blend of a llama, a deer, and a horse) that took off hot-footing it across the desert when they sensed me motoring toward them. Wildlife thus outnumbered cars eleven to zero over the first two hours. And I only got blown off the road three times.
I made it into El Chalten late at night and checked into a classy army barracks-style hostel run by a bearded man with teeth stained dark brown from cigarettes. The little town is the gateway to a trekking circuit that pipes around the surreal, craggy spires of Mount Fitzroy and its supporting cast of shoulder-high compadres. I headed up into the mountains for three days, where the briskness was in rich supply and the views spectacular. This would be a good place to insert a couple of pics, but this computer doesn´t take kindly to USB devices. Then again, it is the first computer not to have a shared dial-up connection in some time, so I shouldn´t complain. The best part (though it didn´t seem to be such a great idea while arduously peeling my eyes open) was waking up at 4:30 AM to hustle up a steep grade to the Laguna de Las Tres to watch the sun come up on Fitzroy.
While in the town, I also met one of the most inspiring people of the trip, a 73 year-old German named Deiter. He had bought an old pick-up truck and was driving around the continent, sleeping all the while in the back of the truck and deliberately seeking out horrible mountain storms, which he described over the painful crooning of the permed lounge singer in the restaurant as ¨the greatest show on Earth¨. He capped off the night by paying for all of the drinks for me and the four other motorcyclists in our group - two Swiss, an English woman, and a Scot - and inviting us to visit him in Germany.
From El Chalten I headed south to El Calafate, the draw of which is its access to a series of titanic glaciers. The main attraction is the Perito Moreno Glacier, located within the Parque Nacional de Los Glaciares. It is one of only two advancing glaciers in South America and one of only a handful in the world. Every 12 years or so (approximately the cycle of Argentina´s boom/absolute bust economy), it succeeds in cutting off the flow of meltwater from the mountains towards Lago Argentina, until the pressure becomes too great and it gives way, giving off such a thunderous boom that it can be heard fifty miles away in El Calafate. Alas, I had no such luck while I was there, but it was awe-inspiring nonetheless. Chunks of its massive sapphire face collapsed into the water at least a dozen times while I was there, each with the approximate report of a small cannon. This naturally sent the masses crowded onto the elaborate wooden lookout structure scrambling - the foreigners for their cameras and the Argentines for the exits (people in Argentina, as it is well known, have a terrible fear of pirates...they probably mistook the booms for an attack from pirate ships).
The drive through the other parts of the national park afforded one of those transcendant, almost spiritual experiences that only a motorcycle can provide. It was a winding road along the coast of a completely still, alpine lake with the visage of the glacier-topped mountains predominating the vista. The well-paved road curled through pine forests which would suddenly open up and give you a different panorama of the white mountains and then the blue, scabrous spine of the Perito Moreno glacier. The clean smells of the forest and the palpable taste of the crisp breezes coming off the lake heightened the immediacy of it all, how it is all was just thrust in your face, and soon you´d just forget you were even downshifting into the corners or steering at all. You just looked and you were there, soaking it all up in the process.
The next morning I surrended to another early riser, boarded a bus, and was herded like cattle along with perhaps 500 other people from all over the world onto a modern vessel that plied along through the crisp waters of the Brazo Norte on a day tour of a half dozen other glaciers. Everyone seemed to have a neckwarmer except for me and a Hungarian couple, though they (God bless Eastern European style) were dressed in a mixture of pink and yellow skiing gear, and thus clearly took the cake in the style department. The thin canals that brought us up to the heads of the glaciers were littered with bobbing indigo icebergs that had broken away from the the gargantuan bodies of ice coming down the mountains, and when I wasn´t getting beaten back by strong winds and the frigid waters churned up by the nose of the catamaran or, for that matter, watching people lose their balance (including a broad shouldered Austrian that took down two old women while trying unsuccessfully to regain his balance) and sometimes their hats, it was all quite a sight to behold. One of the glaciers was named after someone called The Spegazinni, which strikes me as probably the greatest conceivable name for a glacier, sub sandwich, ice cream sundae, or despot.
El Jugoso developed a few ailments along the way to El Calafate, some of which I was able to address by myself and some not. First, the clutch cable went. This was a bad sign for an aftermarket cable that went by the name of ¨The Terminator¨, and I took the obvious affront to Schwarzenegger´s character to heart. Here the sage foresight of Swami Neubz came into the light yet again, and I gave him a salute for his brilliant idea to zip-tie the stock cable to the aftermarket one. Even in the 30 mph winds and light rain, it was a snap to get into place, and soon I was no longer broken down on a remote mountain road.
The more serious problems were the continued deterioration of the rear sprocket and the failure of the shifter, the teeth of the latter having worn away completely and thus rendering it incapable of engaging the gears. El Calafate was not a big town, and the consensus amongst the locals was to seek out ¨El Mono¨ (The Monkey). Clues as to where The Monkey lived or worked (a drugstore, a taxi stand, a gas station) all came up empty, though the search did result in the predictable comical awkwardness of walking into a store and saying, ¨I´m looking for The Monkey...¨
In the end, I cut out a small piece of a beer can and used it as a shim to fail the small gap created by the loss of the shifter´s teeth, thus vindicating a late night at the bar with a couple of Australians. It worked for a day, and got me all the way to the Atlantic Coast of the continent and into the drowsy burg of Rio Gallegos. With a population of 80,000 it is the largest city I´ve seen since January.
Here I have remained for the past five days on a tour of the city´s welders and motorcycle mechanics. All I needed was a few parts (3 of the rear sprocket´s 43 prickly, tired teeth remained when I arrived) and for someone to do a little weld work on the shifter. The ensuing witches brew of incompetence, apathy, and addiction to alcohol whipped up by one of the mechanics set me back a few days, but I´m close to pay dirt now. At the present I am waiting for a machinist to finish fusing parts of two front sprockets together so that I´ll have a compatible piece to work with. This town is terribly depressing (it reminds me of rural Russia), and the only consolation is a revolving door of odd characters that shows up every evening to set up shop in my shared dorm room. My current roommate is Homer Simpson incarnate.
Provided that I ever leave, it is a measly 400 or so miles to Ushuaia and the ¨end of the world¨.
- Tom
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