The Persecuted American

An oxymoron you say? Well, maybe but I´m sure feeling a little put off by senseless bureaucracy lately. I'll explain the last few days. After hearing a few whispered rumors during our trip about some new visa requirements for Bolivia solely for U.S. citizens, we thought, "hey, maybe we should check into this before we find ourselves at some no-mans land border." And so, while still in Santiago we visited the Bolivian consulate. The news was no good--yellow fever vaccination, proof of monetary funds, fotos with specific requirements, detailed intineriary with hotel reservations, and the kicker-a $100 fee. Now, I don't know about you but I don't fancy myself the type of person to cough up $100 just to visit a third world country. Apparently these newly imposed requirements (12/1/07) were an act of policitical grandstanding by the non-U.S. allied president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, in an attempt at reciprocity for what the U.S. requires of Bolivians for visas. Fair?-probably, but the policy is economically foolish as the only Americans seeking entry into the country are the financially strapped backpacker-types who have little time or resources for pushing through red-tape. This sort of tit for tat politics is unfortunately only going to hurt the workers in Bolivia who rely on the income the American tourists bring, who will spend their money is other more inviting S.A. countries. After confirming this bad news at the consulate in Santiago we grudgingly proceeded with trying to fulfill these ridiculous requirements. Wanted to get out of Santiago, we figured we could have our last chance at a visa at the northern consulate in Calama, Chile. Begin the longest bus ride I have ever been on. 22 hours sitting in the cheap seats, which was highlighted by our proximity to the bus' toilet. After that experience I feel like I could camp out in a Johnny On the Spot for a day our two without having an aversion to the smell. Officially as a homeless man, this is not out of the realm of possibility.
In Calama, we again dealt with the typical run-around, which included requirements that were actually different than what was stated at the Santiago consulate. Other than a phony intinerary we did not have a reservation in Bolivia or with a tour company to get into the country. They demanded this--and were kind of enough to go ahead a call a tour company of their choosing....
After a brief pow-wow Petro indicated that he'd had enough of the BS and preferred his time spent in a country that wanted him and I don't blame him. So he split for the northen Chile beach town of Arica in Chile before his entry into Peru and I remained to tap dance for the Bolivian consulate. Eventually, I "agreed" to book their tour which did not require a formal reservation or any money and my visa was granted. Having no intention of going with that company, I took the bus to the desert oasis of San Pedro de Atacama for a two night stay before my tour into Bolivia with another company departs Sunday morning. Its a three day jaunt through the Salar de Uyuni, which is supposed to be incredible. The logistics of the expedition are basic lodging, a cramped Land Rover, and some amazing scenery. As luck would have it, the one ATM in San Pedro won't accept my card so I felt a little up shitcreek yesterday until the tour operator, the shiester Lionel, told me he would "loan" me the money for the tour until we arrived in Uyuni--can't wait to see the interest is on his generosity. To compound money problems, this desert town is expensive. I lucked out last night and found an art gallery exhibition with some free food--all I had to do was to do the perfunctory staring at paintings with an occasional head nod of approval.
And so the plan is to see Bolivia for 10-14 days, get sick with Malaria, and then depart for Peru to meet back up with ol' Petro and eventually my parents!
Also, you may of noticed the new addition to the blog--Google Ads. Yes, I sold my soul to Father Money in the hopes that any revenue from the ads may pay for an empanada or two. I'm also sick of you free-loaders as well.

Rolling solo,
BQ

Santiago and Valparaiso

Checking in with you during hopefully what is the last few hours here in Santiago--starting to feel that northen pull that keeps us moving...
The last few days have been great. Our first two nights in Santiago we stayed at this nice hostel that was modern, clean, fun, and served a great breakfast--which is the first time we have stayed at a place possessing all of those characterstics. It might also be considered progressive in the ways of hostelling as the bathroom was just a bunch of co-ed stalls together, making # 2 a whole different experience. Santiago was interesting enough but nothing really out of the ordinary--the only experience of note was the street fight we witnessed during a night on the town. It was actually more of a mini-riot which Petro accurately described as scene out of Westside Story with men posturing and dancing around each other with broken glass bottles. The only visible sign of harmful intent was the continuous hurling of rocks by the hooligans. As participating in a South American streetfight is not on my to-do list, watching at a safe disctance was about all that experience entailed. But it is good to know that if someone in the future breaks a bottle and makes threatening stabbing motions at me, they are most likely not going to actually go through with it. That should be an interesting bluff call...
Experiences got a little more authentic a couple of days ago when we got into communication with a girl who is a fellow couchsurfer from Valparaiso. For those of you unfamiliar with CouchSurfing, it is basically a service where people can offer their couch for travellers to sleep on with the intent of meeting people from all over the world. And so, if you have no qualms about having absolute strangers sleep in your house, you may want to look into this website. Lucky for us, we do a pretty good job of disguising our creepiness on our Couchsurfing profiles and email correnspondence. In this case, Paz, who lives with her mother and two sisters in Valpariaso, agreed to meet us at the bus station and eventually extended the invite to stay with them for a few days. Home-cooked meals, funs times around the city, and awesome seafood defined the experience. During our two days there, we were in a perpetual hang-out with Paz and her friends, which involved an interesting progression of meeting up, setting out for some sort of purpose or experience, parting with those friends, only to meet up at the same plaza to meet up with other friends and start the process over. This circular pattern of hanging out occurred about 5 times one day and was quite interesting as something new and fun came about as a result of each meet-up. On Sunday night we went to a Chilean movie theatre--which consisted of a neighborhood street corner, chairs, a projector, and a pirated movie. We saw The Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith for the second time, but this time was much better....

Now we are in the process of trying to get ourselves way north to San Pedro Atacama--a 20+ hour bus ride, which is something really to look forward to. It will probably be our last stop before Bolivia.

Enough said,
Q

Got any Jelly for this Hotdog?

Hey there kids, Happy Friday--i bet you´re excited, I know I am. Just happy to be alive actually and I will tell you why here in a sec but lets get caught up.
On Wednesday back in Pucon, I left our boy Petro to climb the volcano while I made my two day northern ascent towards the capital city Santiago. With the uncertain goal of visiting nearby vineyards I took a bus to Chillan, which is a mid-sized but non-descript city about 5 hours south of Santiago. After getting off the bus with an aching foot I settling on the first guest house I toured, which possessed a small degree of seediness that made me wish I had my bodyguard Petro with me. With a bag full of dirty clothes and wearing pants for the 7th day in a row, I was in desperate need of laundromat or just a park sprinker. I found neither. Later, during a self guided tour of the city I stumbled upon yet another town festival--either by strange coincidence or the fact that towns must hold mid-week festivals every week--- this is like the fourth time this has happened recently. But having already witnessed the same old hoopla of traditional dancing and candy apples, I was not long in attendance. I had a date with a completo and a beer. A completo in Chile is a hotdog. I ordered a "italiano completo" thinking I was going to get something at least resembling a sausage but instead I received a hotdog in bun with diced tomatos, crushed avacodos, all topped with a thick bead of mayonaise. Disgusting? No, it was delicious...which makes me wonder what other ridiculous ingredients you can mix together and produce that heavenly taste...next up--hamburgers and marshallow fluff (master food mixologist Matthew Kopp can probably give us some suggestions).
And so, having discovered the nearby vineyards are nearly impossible to do by public transport I ditched the idea and made plans for Santiago. In an effort to switch up my mode of scenary intake, I decided to take train to Santiago in lieu of the bus. Sprawling vineyards turn into sprawling suburbs and then arrival into the city.
And here is my first story of almost being killed.
10 minutes off the train in Santiago and I sauntered on over to a street vendor selling huge empanadas. Ravenous from the long train ride, I was not paying much attention to exactly where I was standing while I was trying to negotiate my food purchase when I heard a loud gasp followed by what I perceived was a semi-violent push in my back. Feeling the side of the swiftly right-turning bus push my big pack and me forward and seeing the terrified look of the gasping bystander help me absorb exactly how close I had been to a premature departure from Mother Earth. Shellshocked I told the vendor to just give me the damn empanada, whatever freaking kind she picked out--just get me off this street. It turned out to be a delicious empanada but having another go at life tasted just a little bit sweeter.
After having just narrowly missed getting creamed by a bus my first 10 minutes into Santiago, I thought I should not push my luck with my full pack anymore. Off to the hostel. So far, the low expectations of Santiago that other travellers had conveyed have been proved unfair. The city appears clean and the people friendly (yesterday, there was a group of people with yielding signs saying "Abrazos Gratis" or Free Hugs, which I enthusiastically acccepted in light of my earlier experience..that hugger wasn't prepared for the breakdown that ensued.
And so Santiago has been just great, they try to kill ya then they try to hug it off. This is obviously a premature initial analysis of Santiago but we´ll see if it holds up...........


Yours,
Mr. Invincible

I really hope there is no future irony in that sign-off.........

Rafting the Trancura

Shuewwy, things have become a little more exciting around here--which is exactly what was needed after a couple of more tranquil past weeks. Yesterday, Petro and I decided to do a little whitewater rafting in the river nearby to Pucon. It is noted in the area for some class IV rapids, so it made the idea of parting with double our daily budget a little easier (actually, alot more than double as out "entertainment" budget is somewhere around $5-10 dollars a day--mostly spent on things like wine, useless trinkets, and the occasional back alley craps games with the locals). The process of going about an adventure excursion around here is slightly comical--the day before we tried to sign up for the rafting trip and were told just to "show up." When we did do that the next day, instead of filling out loads of paperwork, signing our lives away, and actually paying for the trip, we were just quickly shuffled onto a bus. The only company document that would even link us to trip was a piece of paper that they asked us to write our names on--which wouldn´t even really link us because we had used our standard false travels identities of Andy and Mike Tiehen. Once again Mike is probably going to get blamed for something he did not do--sorry in advance Mikey--please raise it as your own....

Anyways, so we were off for a little fun. We lucked out with our rafting trip as our guide was great, our group was small (only Petro, I, a German, and a Swiss) and the rapids were often intense. After one particularly exhilarating plunge off a small waterfall where I narrowly stayed in the raft, I was feeling particularly badass until my sense of personal achievement was mildly stifled when I saw the 12 year old girl in the raft behind us conquer the drop right after--nevertheless, the rafting was pretty exciting--part of this excitement stems from the fact that the company seems to possess no liability. The only hint of their acknowledgement of some liability for our safety was the "safety kayaker" who shadowed our rafts. I did get the company to admit that the rescue procedure in the event of emergency went as follows--save in this order: the sue-happy Americans, the Europeans, and then any nationals who haven´t already drowned. With this news I felt assured. In terms of emergency procedures, none had to occur, however, much to Petros amusement, during the last 10 meters of the trip, our raft hit a rock in pretty stagnant water and tossed an unsuspecting me overboard. Good fun for all. And how does a rafting company with no liability congratulate their clients after the trip?--with free beer of course. There are some great pics of the trip, which you can see in the pics section.

Today is a big ? for me. Peter is currently on what should be an amazing trek up Volcan Villirica and sadly I decided to sit this adventure out due to a nagging pain in my ankle/foot that I acquired last week. Stayed tuned to Petros blog because Im sure he will soon have a great account and some pics of the hike.

No Ride for You!

First off, I appreciate all the suggestions so far for places to visit, all will be considered except for the wiseass who suggested Hell, because I´m sure I´ll get enough of that place later in life.
So heres the last couple of days:
After my last email, we packed up our bags with the idea that we were going to head 3 hours north to Pucon, a little lakeside adventure tourism mecca in Chile. So we set off hiking out of town with the solid notion that we were going to be able to hitchhike there. Well, lets just say my romantic vision of hitching the whole way through Chile was crushed that day, but not until after 3 solid hours of standing by the highway and giving our best ¨we wont kill you if you won´t kill us faces.¨ During this experience, our opinions of Chileans were starting to seriously wane when a man who lived in the house across the street from our hitching spot came out and told us we would have better luck with bigger sign---then he went into his house, made one, and brought it out to us. Then, another neighbor in the midst of a barbeque brought us out some Choripan (sausage sandwhich) and water. I guess watching two gringos doing monkey dances for a ride was pretty entertaining because everyone seemed to enjoy our honest effort. At one point a woman, with child, was next to us and she successfully gained a lift, so there was brief talk of dressing in drag and stuffing some clothes into our shirt. But, after 3 hours, we gave up and made the walk of shame back into Valdivia. But as they always do for the chosen ones, things got better...
We ended up taking a local bus to the nearby coastal village of Niebla, where as luck would have it, we obtained a camping spot at a site situated on a bluff overlooking the pacific. The price was right and the owners friendly, so we toasted our fortune. Our camping neighbors, Chilean students from Santiago, showed us the local fare at community food stall area, where there are basically 40 different mini-kitchens with old women cooking up delicious seafood empanadas and the like. It was the closest thing to an all-you-can-eat buffet I have seen so far, so we treated it as such and gorged. The Chileans, noticing the way we were attacking the food, inquired about the last time we had eaten and I told them the half truth that we skipped lunch that day (we actually ate a snack only 3 hours prior). Gluttony is an American deal, they wouldn´t understand.
We loved the camping location and local fare so much we decided to delay our departure by another day.
Speaking of camping, I have yet to talk about or equipment. We are pretty much the laughingstock of any camping area whenever we set up shop. This is due to our last minute purchase of equipment right before our ranch experience in Argentina. The ¨equipment¨ is sleeping bags that I am pretty sure are lined with pencil shavings and have the temperature rating of about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. But these at least pass the visual test. Where our credibility takes a serious hit is in the tent department. Basicially, we purchased, albeit slightly unknowingly, a kids tent that makes the ones that Fischer Price makes look sturdy. It doesnt quite cover us fully, so we sleep with our feet sticking out. This hasn´t been too bad, until today when I woke up under the hot sun and realized I was getting a reverse farmers tan. That thing isn´t going to last the first storm--which I´m sure will be something to write about when it happens.

Chile has been great so far but a little pricey. Another downside is the dollar to peso exchange. Here it is 466 Pesos for every U.S. Dollar, meaning that in addition to the 5 second delay for translation in our dealings, we now have the added 5 second delay for computation of high numbers. Needless to say, we probably look ridiculous standing there in silence for 10 to 15 seconds before ever responding to questions or answers. Just write the number will ya!

Today we arrived in Pucon and are signing up for some type of adventure excursion for tomorrow. Vamos a Ver!

Lifejackets are for sissies,
Q

Hey You!

Alright, so we´re in Valdivia, seen whats needs to be saw, done what needs to be done, and ready to go. Its early here at the time of this writing. Well actually, the funny thing about the time is that we have been in Chile for 2 days and just now did we realize that there has been a time zone change--a little ridiculous, I know. So, if you were wondering if lives can operate without a watch, yes they can. But, only lives that are productive in terms of playing mad amounts of gin, drinking endless bottles of wine, and doing some creepy people watching--all day long.
Anyways, today I wanted to enlist YOU for a little game of Play With Our Lives from the comfort of your desk or home. Come on, stick it to the man and waste about an hour or so doing a little research for our trip. You see, we are ready to bolt SOMEWHERE and have several ideas where but plans are really up in the air. So fire up Google, keep in mind were are in Valdivia (in the south) and see whats going on for us. Also, we take mode of transportation requests so include those. Obviously, if you write go the the ____ Western Union and use all the money I just sent you guys--we are going there and toasting to you all night long.
Any friends or family that participate, will be spoken fondly of during the rest of the trip (Erin P. and Mark S. hold these statuses for past research done). Also, I encourage Johnny and Sally Stranger to voice their opinion as well--we will speak fondly of meeting you someday--well, maybe. And so, please post your suggestions on the ¨comments¨ section and we´ll se what happens. Granted, since we need to leave today and with the time zone difference, we´ll be using your suggestions from whereever we end up tonight.

Just your puppet,
Q

Adios Argentina!

Bye bye Argentina, thanks for not chewing us up and spitting us out. You were good to us. No serious ailments and injuries and we thoroughly enjoyed your carnivorous treats, although we could have done without all that damn goat meat you forced on us. Your people were most accomodating and never seemed annoyed at our sometimes ridiculous excuse for a converstation. All together, it was quite entertaining and is a recommended destination for lovers of wine, beef, and a great dollar exchange rate. One country down, 192 to go.

Alright, so when I left off we were heading to the little mountainous town of Junin de Los Andes, which was our last stop in Argentina. Well, we took the overnight bus from Zapala and got into Junin around 5am in the morning. The sun does not rise ´til around 8am so we really put ourselves in the town at an inoppurtune time. Certainly not under a budget that allows for paying for a room at a guesthouse/hostel for only a couple hours of sleep, we set off wandering the empty streets for the special nook and cranny to hide out. After about a half hour, in an exhuasted delirium, we settled on a nice vacant lot to stretch out our sleeping bags. Our bum skills must be improving because our deluxe accomodations proved decently shaded and allowed us to sleep until 11am, basically in relatively open view to half the town. It probably didnt help matters that we were giving a lover´s embrace to our backpacks, lest they be stolen. Needless to say when we woke up we figured the word must have gotten out around town about the two gringos sprawled out next to Jorge Martinez´s Fishing Store. But the sleep was refreshing and the locals, ever aspiring to pick up on North American trends, followed suit the next night by giving up their comfortable beds to sleep in the newly dedicated Gringo Park.
Junin served as a pretty action packed layover on our way to Chile. The town is bi-sected by an amazingly clear river that was great for a little river-floating and swimming. We kept commenting on how this river was almost our beloved Missouri River, minus the spare tires, dead bodies, and meth-motivated fishermen. We also partook in a couple pickup games of soccer and volleyball with some of the locals. All in all, the day was one of the best we have had in awhile and was capped off that night with the town´s annual festival (i didnt catch the name of the festival b/c it is irrelevant to the story and well, because I just didnt care to), which included some old time carnival activities. Its embarassing to write that we rode some of the carnival rides and spent some money trying to win a bottle of whisky at the Ring Toss Booth, so I won´t.
However, I will talk about an interesting sighting at the carnival. I saw several kids walking around with single packets of Tang (the Kool-Aid type flavoring stuff) and they were just putting the flavor crystals in the palm of their hand and licking them out. I was amazed--ingenious. All those years growing up I had begged my Mom to buy me the pure sugar candy packets of Fun Dip, when all along I had canisters of the equivalent sitting at my house unguarded.
Anyways, we woke up early, shook off or Tang hangover, and headed to the bus station for our 7am departure for Chile. The ride was incredibly scenic and was interrupted twice for the immigration formalities for leaving Argentina and for entering Chile. At the Argertina border stop, a long wondered question was answered, ¨who looks like a more shady character, Petro or I?¨ Well, to my amazement and I hope yours, the answer is I because although we were both wearing zipped up fleeces, the guards had me unzip mine down for inspection. Luckily, the only thing I was smuggling was a pretty appalling body odor. At the Chilean border crossing, and I promise you this is true, one of the immigration officials had me edit and correct misspellings on the English language sign of items that are prohibited from entry into the country. I feel that having a foreigner meddle in immigration documents is a serious breach of governmental protocol, but as you can gather, things are done a little differently down here. And so, if you enter Chile via the Lakes region and you see ¨Stinky Asses¨as a prohibited item, you will know the reason for that.
Now, were are the river town of Valdivia, Chile, seriously considering buying a yacht (with the money we are photocopying) and setting off on a little adventure.

I´ll write if things fall through with that,
Q

PICS & Videos from Patagonia

At the point of drop off for our uncertain hike to Buta Mallin

Video taken right as we arrived at the ranch as the hail commences

The typical night's sunset at Buta---our living quarters in the foreground.

Video of a goat slaughter for those sickos interested (Kopp), OK to watch if you don't mind a little blood. For maximum enjoyment, turn up your computer's volume so you can hear the creepy narrator.

The Ranch

The cable car across the rio to Ranquilco. A very old cable car....

The Jerra

Chipi aka The Laugh Factory at the Buta Ranch

Home sweet home in our living quarter in Colipilli

Patagonian Musings, Part Dos

Well, I'm back with you sooner than expected--just left the land of perpetually fuzzing radios and goat t-bones to head to the greener pastures of Chile. But before we get to Chile, let's do a little catching up shall we?
At last the communication, we had just spent the first week at the Buta Ranch assisting in a little fence work and celebrating the Jerra with the gauchos. Then we headed to the ranch in Colipilli to do some deck/gazebo building. So here's how that went:

We arrived at the Collipilli estancia to to some good news and some bad news. Part of the good news was that we had our own room, albeit it was 10x8 stone dungeon (for Kansas Citians it reminded me of the Fort Osage living quarters & for non KC readers-I've seen solitary confinement cells more inviting), but hey, it was OURS and we were excited. The kitchen was lacking many essentials--you think "what, no fresh parmesean" and I mean like 2 drinking cups for 6 people and cookware that still had the remnants of the last 5 dinners in it. Hell, my old dog Wilson ate out of better things. But, we had grown accustomed to a scarcity of supplies and dismal standards, so this new setup was no biggie. We dealt with it, which brings up the first topic of conversation:

Improvisation.
To make ammends with the absence of essentials we were reduced to Inspector Gadget-like tehchniques. Trying to satisfy cravings for caffeination, we constructed a coffee filter out of wire and a first aid bandage. It worked well for those you who are curious and craving.
An antenna needed to be placed on a tree pole about 10 ft above a shabby roof (about 25 ft total). No real ladder around to do it?--Let's ask the two gringos to do it, they've obviously have some screws loose from leaving their formerly promising lives (that comment could be debated) to come here. And so, trying to fight the stereotype of the useless gringo, Petro and I improvised a ladder by implementing a human totem pole on the roof to set that antenna. Fortunately, we lived to regret that job. (pics on Petros cam of the stunt)
At a plateau in your improving relationships around the ranch due to the language barrier? Solution--Maintain a supply of beverages used for toasting--everyone loves the guys who always have drinks to make you happy, even if they look slightly ridiculous and toast in a horrendus dialect of spanglish. Whisky does translate well.


Relativity.
Upon our arrival at the ranch there was no dish soap to be found. At the time, washing dishes with soap was still a necessary variable in my definition of clean. That soon regressed to only the use of hot water, followed by just the use of room temperture water, and by the end of the experience, if someone spit on a plate and rubbed off any specks of food I might not have even thought twice about it. OK, maybe twice, but I still would have eaten out of it. I learned that man can be conditioned (at least temporarily) to just about anything. Standards of cleanliness are relative to the situation, especially if you live amongst people who eat next to goat carcasses hanging from the ceiling. "Can you pass the cup when you three are done with it?"

Work.
Wow, are things built a little differently down here. Power tools? I hope you mean "power" in the sense that I was happy I got a few sessions in on the arm bicycle at the YMCA prior to this trip so I could go a full 2 minutes before passing out using the handsaws and drills that they use here. Straight wood is an urban legend (or rural?) and the "support" beams for the deck and gazebo are basically crooked trees. The hardest part about the deck project was that the whole time you are spending sawing one 2x6 for 10 minutes or hand driving in 6 inch nails, was the fact that you are aware of how quickly things could be going with the tools that are used to in the States. Nothing is thought of in terms of building codes, more like "will this structure possibly last 5 years and will it stand a 50% chance of non-collapse should it be filled to capacity." If the answers to those questions are yes, then proceed. Overall, a few ingenious "back to basics" techniques in building were learned and the experience will be remembered fondly (slightly). And so, when I get back to the States, if you have ball of yarn, a pile of rocks, some dead trees, and three packs of gum, I can probably build you a deck. Throw in a case of Busch Heavy and you got yourself a gazebo too.

Gauchos.
I explained them briefly in the Part One post and provided a link for further study (i sure hope you did your homework). At Colipilli, we also lived with a couple gauchos but only one is worth mentioning to you. Hugo, aka The Big Cheese. He was with us back at the other ranch and he was the one who threw the Jerra party that we so enjoyed. Revered by all the other gauchos and community members because of his work ethic and know-how, Hugo was somewhat intimidating to be around. He was like the Don Corleone of the area, although slightly more law abiding. Example: One of the nights we were sitting around the "kitchen" eating a meal of roasted goat (what else!) when two uniformed police officers entered our meager dwelling. I immediately began racking my brain for possible breaches of law that I may have committed (un)knowingly that would have these cops in the middle of nowhere. But of course, these two cops (one was the top cop of the area) had come at the invitation of Hugo. He dutifully offered them wine, which they replied "just a little" (which, I believe is the by-the-book response for on-duty Argentine cops because the glasses were filled to the top.
Having heard that Hugo had no time for lazy individuals and little time for the hardworking but useless, we made some conscientious efforts not to fall into either of those catergories. He was our building foreman for the deck project and by the end of the week, for reasons we are still unsure, he invited us to visit the vast area of land that he owns 3 hours away from Colipilli. Very skeptically we agreed to go, hoping to see some different countryside, but suspicous that we may be put to work there as we still could not grasp that we could have fallen into his favor. And so on Saturday we set off, to one of the most uninhabited places I've ever been to. On the drive to his ranch, we spotted some wild ostriches and llamas, which I had no idea even existed in this part of the world. After our arrival at his ranch, which had been recently decimated by a fire and a flood within the past two years (talk about some poor luck), we set off on a ostriche and llama hunt that proved unsuccessful. So did the one the next morning, but that may be due to a ill-timed sneeze by yours truly during an especially important time to be quiet. Petro gave me a most disapproving glance and Hugo just shook his head like he always did after one of the 25 gringo mistakes we made during the week prior. And so, there was no thrill of a kill of something exotic, but the ranch experience was something else. Inspiring scenery and tranquility along with an errie remoteness that was constantly on my brain. At one point, during a lengthly alcohol induced mid-day siesta by Hugo, having comtemplated what sort of major problem we would be in if Hugo would, say expire (he is a hardliving 50/60something) while we were out there, we got a little nervous. And so, we did some hourly breathing verifications during his siesta to ensure our safe passage out of that place. Which happened obviously.

Cam.
Midweek, a new ranch volunteer arrived, straight from his flight from the States. He hadn't even seen the sights of B.A. before he transported himself to the ranch. His name was Cam and he was 18 years old and fresh out of high school. We pitied the kid. Hedged bets on his survival at the ranch and even offered him some of our preciously guarded whisky reserve to lessen the news we were about to give him about what he had just walked into. The goat meat, the accomodations, the remoteness, the crying. Deer in headlights is the best way to put his initial reaction. Uneasy about the prospect of causing a potential runaway, we backed off slightly and talked of the good times and experiences as well. All in all, he turned out to be a pretty cool kid and seemed to be hacking it well, although he did not seem to take the news of our spontaneous departure well.
Departure.
Woke up Monday morning not feeling particularly well in the GI department (too many possible causes to even consider). Also, things in the new experience department were running low, combined with the fact that the ranch owner had fallen way short on his promise to get us some major horse activity led to the decision to pull the plug on the ranch. And so we broke the news to Hugo (who took it hard--again we wonder what he ever saw in us) and packed our bags, stood on the side of the road and hoped that one of the rare occurence cars would pass AND pick us up (Cam had tried to hitch the day before unsucessfully and had to walk 15 miles back to the Ranch). After a one and half hour wait on the road outside the ranch a truck finally passed and and Petro came through with his best "please drive us or we'll die on the side of the highway" plea, and we were off like a prom dress. As it stands, we are currently killing time in the town of Zapala, AR before our 2am bus to Junin de Los Angeles for a day stay before heading accross the border into Chile. First Chilean stop is the city of Valdivia.

Overall, the ranch experience was pretty remarkable and it is kind of amazing to think was what was seen and done in the two weeks. Hopefully, the pics will assist in painting a better picture of our time these past weeks.

As of right now I am going to start uploading some pic and videos of the ranch experience. They will appear on the blog but most of the pics can be seen on the pics link.

I'd also like to send out a tremendous shout-out to the queen of cool, Grammy Keyes, who turns 84 tomorrow. As your favorite grandchild, I would like to be the first to say Happy Birthday!

Back in regular contact,
BQ

Musings from a Patagonian Experience, Part I.

Hello civilization, it´s been awhile since we last spoke (for you only a week, as for me, I´ve aged ten years). There´s so much to say and I don´t know if I can do this entry the justice it deserves, but I´ll take a stab. The good news is I am back in the town of El Hueco waiting for transport to another ranch and therefore I have some time to use the internet. The bad news is that the internet is slow (I´m pretty sure the power for it is being generated by a man hand-cranking a wheel in the back room) and I´m not sure how many pics and movies I can upload but I´ll do my best--I´ll cuss at the man in English to have him speed up the wheel if need be. Here´s much of last week in a nutshell:

Two saturdays ago, we hired a driver to take us as close as his car could go to the estancia (ranch) named Buta Mallin. It is reachable only by foot or by a truck with a high suspension (we were in a compact car). Therefore, at some point in the ride there the driver stopped the car (in the middle of desolate area) and told us that he could go no further. He then proceed to tell us that we had a 4 to 5 hour hike (with our packs) using the universally acknowledged hand signal of ¨in that direction.¨ At this point, I was beginning to start to think that all the people who have expressed doubts of my mental sanity for elements of this trip or just the whole trip in general, may actually be right. I mean, essentially we paid a man a good amount of money to drive us in the middle of nowhere and tell us to walk in a direction for 4 to 5 hours. We had a handrawn map of the way to get to the ranch--wait scratch that, we had a mental picture of the handrawn map, because Petro had misplaced the precious document earlier in the day. And so, eschewing all common sense rules about trekking without a map, we set out a little nervous, but pretty adamant that we were going to find this damn ranch, because we had told you we would (that may have only been the reason for proceeding at this point). And so things from here on out became better: The trek was only 2 hours (the driver was wrong) and we arrived at the ranch moments before a torrential downpour followed by pea-sized hail. As it had not rained for some time prior to our arrival, the ranch occupants welcomed us as rain gods and promised a sacrifice in our honor. As my spanish is a little better than Petro´s, I was able to volunteer him as a potential sacrificial lamb without him knowing. Lucky for him, they forgot about the idea.
Before I get into the details of the ranch, let me give you little background on the entire setup. Basically, an American expatriate bought 100,000 acres of land in Patagonia about 30 years ago. He has the main ranch called Ranquilco, which serves sort of Shangra-La in the middle of nowhere, that is sought out by high-spending clients for the isolation and world class trout fishing (more on that place later). Then, there are two sister ranches, Buta Mallin and Colipilla, that house the gauchos that work the land and cattle. We were to spend the first week at Buta Mallin to do some fencework in the countryside. Fortunately, when we arrived at Buta the owner was there waiting to accompany some clients for the 3 hour horseback ride to Ranquilco. Unfortunately, other than a brief introduction to the gauchos who lived there, the owner´s only other suggestion was that we make our beds by filling burlap-type plastic bags with some of the recently shorn sheeps wool that was being housed in the same abode which was two be our sleeping quarter for the next week. The Buta ranch setup us consisted of a barn, a main house with two sleeping areas and a kitchen, and the structure which we were sleeping in. The is no electricity, water for drinking and washing is procured from a stream that runs next to the house, and all food is cooked by wood fuel stove/oven. The ranch is surrounded on all sides by hills and mountains and so, our frontyard was basically a several mile view of unadulterated landscape, which was pretty magnificent.
**side note-I just found out that this computer will not let me upload pics/movies, therefore I will have to wait another 2 to 3 weeks to post all of them. This is a darn shame, because Petro and I, both having studied photography under the esteemed Professor Joseph Fleming at Rockhurst HS, took some incredible pics. Oh well, I promise to upload them all when possible.

Where were we? OK, so I hope I basically conveyed that we realized that our weeks existence was going to be no different than life in 1850. Which is fine if you didn´t grow up with joys Nintendo and Frutti Pebbles. As they say, ¨you can take a boy out the city but you can´t take the city out of the boy.¨ Well, this boy was going to prove them wrong, at least I thought I was.
OK now really crap, for reasons I don´t know, the computer place is closing until 5pm (1pm central US) and so I will have to wait until then to finish this.

Ok, it´s BQ back at ya. I´m pretty sure the owner of the internet closed the place so he could nap for 4 hours--I´m gonna give him a quick lesson in capitalism right after I get through this blog.

Anywho, back to our life on the ranch. Basically, the tenants of the ranch were Petro and I, three gauchos, and occasionally a gaucho´s daughter and her 5 year old son. Our first several hours at the ranch were very awkward, mainly due to the fact that gaucho spanish is hardly intelligible, even though well spoken spanish is hardly intelligble for us at this point. Also, we weren´t quite sure about how these gauchos felt about our presence there. To give you a quick explanation of gauchos (see the Wikipidia link above for more explanation), they are ¨emblematic figures of the S. American continent¨ and are skilled horse riders and cattle rustlers--essentially cowboys. They were slightly costumic dress apparel and always carry a big knife tucked in a scarf behind their back. They use these knives for EVERYTHING, including cutting up meat, gutting goats and other animals, cutting their hair, brushing their teeth, and soon to be new activity of killing gringos. Employing our best ice breaking techniques, which usually involves self-deprecating humor, we tried to integrate ourselves into the situation. No progress was made until later that night at dinner the old trusty ice breaker--alcohol was intoduced. A little vino loosened up the crowd and soon they were laughing at what we perceived was our irresistible charm, but in reality was probably our ridiculous attempt at conversation and immersion into ranch life. And so, in the dark of the dinner table, Petro and I began to wonder what and the hell we had gotten ourselves into. But things got better....
We slowly transitioned our role on the ranch--gringo laborer. Our job for the week was to assist in the construction of a fence in the countryside, which is sort of ironic as wire fences are what is desceasing the need for gauchos and further pushing their culture into antiquity. And so, for the first work day, things went well, we had horses as a mode for transport and we made some serious progress on some post hole digging. Now, at this point in the story you are probably saying ¨why in the heck are these fools digging holes by their own choice¨--and you´re right, this conundrum was addressed daily by Petro and I. And it contributed greatly to our mental well being as various points during the week. Which brings up the issue of the psychology of travel to more isolated parts of the world. Things get a little tough at some points. For example, during our isolation in the countryside digging holes, Petro and I started to play the game ¨what I would do to eat this particular food right now.¨ Basically things were said like ¨I would pay $50 for Peanut Chicken Wings¨(Petro) or ¨I would pay $100 for a Winsteads Hamburger or Casey´s Pizza¨(Me). This was OK, but was not OK was when the talk turned later in the week to ¨I would kill a man for a bottle of Ranch Dressing¨ which is slightly scary talk considering that the unnamed boy who said it was whittling a knife out of wood and now had considerable experience in digging holes in isolated areas. Needless to say, I stayed clear of that person when I felt his was going through some tough times.
But our mental health improved---a mistranslation turned extremely benificial for us when I requested the purchase of a box or two of wine from a towngoing gaucho. My bad explanation in spanish resulted in a whole case of wine being brought back to our ranch. Petro and I jumped up and down like giddy school children when we realized that now we might actually make it through the whole week. Which brings up the issue of food. Basically, the ranch had only a few stable foods: potatoes, onions, noodles, bread, and an endless supply of goat and sheep meat. Eating started out well. The goat tasted OK and some pretty good stews were concocted out of meager ingredients. What was tough was the eating of goat meat for two meals a day EVERY day. By Wednesday, I had absolutely no appetite for the meat and was reduced to dinner table tactics that I had used when I was younger, such as waiting for a commotion at the table and stuffing the slab of goat meat in my pocket, to be later thrown to the huge pack of wild dogs that somehow lived with us. The sanitary conditions of our week were also very suspect. I will spare you the details of the process of food preparation and cleanup but lets just say our favorite hypothetical game to play was ¨What would Brett Powell do in this situation.¨ Brett Powell is my brother in law and also is a notorious germaphobe. Two days in, we decided that he would have pulled out all of his hair and ran into the hills after witnessing some of the things we did. Petro and I are by no means predispositioned to worrying about germs but some things were pretty appalling. Like the time when Petro was enjoying an asado of goat meat with some of the gauchos and they were using their knives to cut the meat off the carcass for themselves and for Petro, all the while wiping their knive blades on their cowpoop encrusted shoes between bites. Alright, I´ve said enough on this issue, for my own benefit I will not revisit all of the repulsive incidents, but lets just say that we were extremely happy with the custom of eating in relative darkness each night. As for food prep, I will post the video of our participation in a goat slaughter As for the gauchos, they were pretty impressive individuals, whose presence last week and for the next couple weeks, we are fortunate to learn from. The ones we lived with last week:

Chipi: aka ¨The Laugh Factory¨ He was an older gaucho, which through the course of the week we probably understood 7 words that he uttered, but he would laugh when we talked and we would laugh at his Yoda-like laughter. Basically, we just did a whole lotta laughing at each other.

Hugo: aka ¨The Big Cheese¨ A well known and respected gaucho in the area how we are working with next week building a deck and gazebo.

Sergio: Our labor boss--a good guy but his constant lying (jokingly) to us about the availiability of horses for us to use to ride to work did not help our well-being.

All in all, they were pretty impressive individuals and their nomadic lifestyle was a major point of interest. We were very fortunate to be at the ranch during the weekend of the annual ¨Jerra¨festival, which draws about 50 gauchos from the countryside to round up cattle, castrate, brand, and earclip the calves. This process involved lassoing the cattle and wrestling them to the ground. We participated in the process and Petro decided to take his participation to the next level by mocking the gaucho-child activity of riding the calves. I had a premonition about where this was headed so I tried to shoot a video of it. Unfortunately, Petros camera was out of batteries because what transpired was nothing short of memorable Basically Petro ¨rode¨the large calve for about 1 second before he lost grip and slipped underneath it for about another 2 seconds of trampling. Petro got up off the ground with a full bloody grin, which reminds me of the other two incidents in recent history in which he got off the ground smiling with a mouth full of blood. One occurred senior year of high school when I forgot he was standing up in the back of my pickup truck and I turned sharply, accidently ejecting his flag waving body. The other involved our slightly violent invitation to leave a bar during Mardi Gras 04--hilarious story that can be told to the first person to Fedex a vacuum sealed Winsteads Hamburger. The Jerra was alot of fun and served as a nice alternative to the debauchery that was occuring several thousand miles away in St. Louis during Mardi Gras.
Other activities during the week included a grueling 3 hour hike into the Ranquilco Ranch, which is set up like a utopian village. Our stay ended when we caught a ride out of the ranch in a S-10 pickup filled with 8 people and a ton of luggage. The ride into town proved slightly uneasy as there was a 5 minute period of eyes closed riding when the truck was crusing quickly next to a mountainous drop off--but in the end we made out alive and well. Wish I chould share more but our ride to the other ranch is here and I gotta run. I´ll try and write a bunch more next week if I can get myself back into town.
Quick note, last night we arrived into town and had the fortune of staying in the only place in town with Direct TV--needless to say we excited to watch the SuperBowl and celebrated like true Americans with a gluttoness feast. I even had to restrain Petro from killing a street rooster to fulfill his lust for chicken wings.

Get busy living or get busy dying,
or just try and look busy,

Brian