viernes, 11 de febrero de 2011

Sundance and Butch

It seems like a land that would draw Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid. I grew up adoring that movie, never knowing it wasn't entirely true. My dad, the same man who introduced me to the classic Redford-Newman flick, gave me In Patagonia before we left for Christmas. It touches upon the legend of the Wild Bunch and their addiction to hold-ups. Lloyd and I are in El Calafate now, in the heart of Patagonia. The town is full of watery-eyed, gortex-clad, walking stick-toting tourists who come to talk amonst giants- the famed landscape of Patagonia. The wind is incessant, and so seems to uproot the majority of the surrounding flora, save for some blustered wildflowers. Artisan chocolate and slow smokoed lamb smatter menus. Microbrews and malbec are guzzled while the sun circles the sky lazily, never fully commiting to the concept of setting for a full nights rest. Parrilla is on every menu, and visible from every restaurant window with the intentions to draw drooling masses inside. A meager, smoky fire sits under inclining steak stretched thin and taut over a wooden cross. Glaciers and ice capped mountains always seem to sit just on the other side of the range, accessible by inventive transport methods- mountain bike, 4x4, horse, Zodiac, and raft. The fruit is surprisingly fantastic, and we are frequently offered fresh raspberry jam, small bowls of cherries while we wait and curiously, a plethora of nectarines, whose orchards surely cannot survive a season in Patagonia's inhospitable climate. Even the fauna is limited to a few small ostriches and some rugged looking llama.

Hiking the W in Torres del Paine National Park

I walk like I'm trying not to wake the baby. I have blisters on the majority of my toes, and before my shower today, I smelled so bad the sleeping bag was threatening not to sleep with me anymore. My legs wobble like a newborn calf, I've been consuming nothing but dehydrated food, I ache in body parts I didn't know I even had, and I'm only on day three of five. Somehow, someway, I still have unfettered, no show of flagging peace and satisfaction, the kind that comes from accomplishing something just slightly tougher than you should be taking on. Hiking the "W" in Parque Nacional del Torres del Paine is my first time carrying my own gear- tent, sleeping bag, mat, gas stove, and food for five days. Luckily, the glacier water is delicious and "safe to drink", I'm assured. But if you haven't heard from me in a while, assume the water is not "safe to drink" and I've died from giardiasis. Lloyd hates to hike, and I use that strong word consciously here. So, I am left to heft my gear myself. My travelling companions have been just shy of completely deranged. At the first camp which sits at the foot of the lake that Glacier Grey spills into, I saw a German man swim out to an iceberg and clambour onto it. I caught him as he walked back to his tent and asked him if he had done it before, secretly hoping he would encourage me to try it myself. He told me it was very sharp, and I looked down to where a beed of crimson began to form on his knee. He promptly wiped up the blood and sucked it off his finger, quickly and with the look of a guilty six year old. He also shaved his entire body, eyebrows included. Later, I came across a young Chilean woman sitting in the scrub just off the trail, shoveling berries she was plucking off the bushes around her into her indigo dyed mouth. Then, during my hike up the Valle Frances from the Campesito Italiano, I asked the world's worst photographer to take my picture. At first, he forgot to actually push the button. After showing him the photo was not actually taken, the picture I was left with was a photo of my moments before I actually smiled, so I have this dumb, relaxed sweaty look on my face I hope I don't usually wear with the glacier behind me, just not in the frame with me. Sigh. I did, however, see horses rolling in the wildflowers, mountains towering around my tiny self, and slept like the dead despite the famous Patagonian winds trying to get into my tent at me.

Glacier Perito Moreno

The first big sight in Patagonia happened to be my first glacier. Breathtaking. It is not the world, let alone Argentina's largest, but it is my first ever, so to me, it is. In the winter, the glacier pushes up against the peninsula that houses the viewing boardwalkds, blocking water from flowing into Lago Argentina. In the summer, the ice melts by the warmed water, creating a bridge connecting the peninsula to the glacier. A cruise ship could fit under this bridge. On average, every two years, the bridge cracks away from the ice and tidal waves into the water. I could use some cute euphemism here, like shamu washing over its viewers, but I can only imagine the heart stopping roar and beauty of something of that magnitude crashing on that moment of that day you happen to be sitting there, taking an unassuming bite of your sandwhich from the viewing platform. Lloyd and I only caught small calvings, six foot tall chunks of ice that crack loudly away from its 22 story mother and slosh noisily into the lake. The glacier is quite active- it moves on average two meters per day. You can hear the cracks and shiftings of ice from deep inside the glacier, and when you hear that boom, you look up from your travel book, and everyone stops talking. The colors in the wall of ice were astonishing. Yes, ice is white, but it is also blue. A rainbow of blue, from a pale sapphire to a solid cobalt to a black navy creeping into the deep calvings to the black veins that show like rings on a tree.  Quite satisfying.