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