A Word to the Wise

When you move, make sure to change the mailing address that your W2 form is being sent to. If you forget to do that, and are moving out of the country; make sure you are on good terms with your parents, old roomies, and the secretary at your old job, because it is not easy to track down a lost W2 form when you are no longer in the U.S. I better be getting a really big tax refund this year.

Feliz Cumpleanos Sarah!

Sunday was Sarah´s 21st birthday!!! It´s a big deal because in Argentina you are officially an adult at 21, not at 18. Florencia is at a friend´s wedding for a week, so it was just the three of us there to celebrate. That thing in front of us in the photo is my chocolate, dulce de leche, whipped cream, raspberry, cake creation. Mmmmm.

At night Sarah and I went down to the beach to see the stars, take a dip, and see the city lights. It was a wonderful day.

A Week of Unexpected Fun

The people in the lab here are frequently inviting us to come over to their house for some sort of Argentine food, or taking us places, or at least finding out all the logistics about a place we mentioned we wanted to see. All of this means that we are having great opportunities to see and do neat things with very little effort on our part. It also means that whenever I think that there is just a normal week of lab work ahead of me, I am sure to be wrong, just as I was this week.
Last Thursday Lorena (a lady in the lab) invited Sarah and I to go with her and her boyfriend, Nahuel, to a carnival in Dolavon, a town south of here. Little did we know that the carnival was just a part of the trip. They picked us up from our apartment at 4pm and we hit the road for Trelew all crammed in Nahuel’s little old VW and drinking mate. Our first stop was the paleological museum in Trelew. There are quite a few dinosaur fossils that are solely unique to Patagonia and this museum also has a working paleo lab that frequently houses international researchers. Sarah and I were very impressed by enormous real fossil snail. Caviar anyone?


After the museum we headed west towards Dolavon, but made another stop in Gaiman along the way. This town was founded by Welsh immigrants whose culture (and tea houses) are still prominent there now. One tea house in particular has become a popular tourist destination after Princess Diana of Wales had tea here about ten years ago. It is a quant little Welsh styled house surrounded by perfectly manicured English gardens. The entrance of the house has a large photo of “Lady D,” as she is affectionately referred to here, surrounded by flowers. Old ladies in pink aprons brought the tea, and hot chocolate for Sarah and I (the best I have ever tasted), and platefuls of buttered breads and small cakes of every variety (all wonderfully delicious). I had no idea that so much could be eaten with such dainty silverware.

On our way out of town we stopped at several small farms to buy cheap, and very good, fruit and corn. It was neat to chat with the different farmers (as much as I could) they were very nice, and surprised that we were all they way from the U.S. Gaiman is one of the loveliest towns I have been to, ever. The sun was setting behind a row of willows on a river bank as we headed back to the highway. I started to have thoughts of living in a vine covered brick house surrounded by fields of fruit, making peach marmalade, and spending summer afternoons taking siestas under a low willow.
The carnival in Dolavan started at 11pm and went until 1am. It was part small town parade and part Halloween. There were a couple blocks of road blocked off and the carnival went up one lane and down the other in a circle for two hours (over and over again) as the crowd of people watched from the side. The majority of the carnival was groups that were half men and boys in bright outfits banging all sorts of drums as women and girls (the other half of the group) danced to the rhythm in equally bright clothes. Infrequently dispersed in between were some small floats pulled by tractors and a larger than life clown on a forklift. I was amazed at how the carnival performers could keep up their intense energy for two whole hours in the middle of the night. But this is Argentina, so I shouldn’t have been. After a long drive home to Puerto Madryn we crawled tired, and happy, into our beds at 2:30am.

Yesterday, another unexpected experience came our way. Natalia got a call from a friend that works in a ecological conservation center in the center of town. Two months ago there had been an oil spill along the coast south of here and several birds and mammals had been saved, cleaned, and nursed back to health. These included Magellan penguins that now, after two months of intense rehabilitation, were ready to be returned to the ocean. They were staying in a small yard behind the conservation office for a few days before their release and Natalia’s friend had called to see if the “gringas” wanted to come and see. Well of course we did! They were tiny and unbelievably cute as they swam around in their little wadding pool and waddled around in their pen. Some of the sick ones were kept separate in metal cages. There was something about the shuffle of their little feet and the way they shook their entire bodies with their flippers stretched out that made me want to squeal like a little kid on Christmas. I am excited for them to go back home.

Just in case you were doubtful, here is proof that we do spend time working in the lab. This is me extracting tissue samples.
Here is Sarah on sorting duty with a piles of dead lizards in jars.

Pictures of Gan Gan

These pictures go along with the last post.

This is a painting in the school. It has lots of little paintings in the hallway. The girl is holding empanadas (very traditional and popular , and good! food here) and mate.
Me and my straw sun hat.
The soil here doesn't soak up hardly any water. This road is the only road out of town. The day before there wasn't even a puddle or depresion here. It rained for a half hour that afternoon and the next morning there was this. This lady got her truck stuck and we pushed her out with ours. I had no idea so much water could collect so fast!
The general store in Gan Gan. Owned by a very friendly, jolly man who had tons of questions about the United States. He used to be a traveling t-shirt salesman when he discovered Gan Gan and decided to stay. He LOVES this town.

Sheep skins drying in the sun.

A Pechi armadillo. I was really excited to see these critters because I wrote a term paper on them for my mammalogy class last semester.

Leolenamus petrophilus. One of the species in the study. Do you see the single yellow bead on the thickest part of its tail? Yellow beads stand for the number one, so this is the first lizard to be captured and marked for the study, three years ago.

Capon, meat from old ram (very tough). Very traditional meal in the campo (rural country of Argentina). And this is the traditional way to cook it.

All suited up and ready to catch some lizards.

Guanacos. The native llama of Argentina. They are beautiful and elegant when they run
Our friend Mr. Bones at the study site. There are limited diversions in the desert, and were were there for two weeks; that is our excuse for dressing up a sheep skull.

Life in Gan Gan

Gan Gan is similar to many towns in Argentina; tiny, very remote, dry, and full of sheep. Sheep and cattle stations dot the pampas and these towns act as a kind of home base for the ranchers there. One sheep station outside of Gan Gan let the CENPAT scientists set up some grids on their land a few years ago, and they return multiple times every year to collect data. There are two grids being utilized for two different studies. One is a home range study which seeks to find the amount of space the lizard species there use in their lifetime. The other is a behavioral study which is looking at dominance signals in the different species. Both of these studies operate by using lizards that have been captured and marked, and released. There are now over 100 marked lizards in this area.

Life in Argentina is slower, and Gan Gan is an exaggeration of the rule. Here is an example of an average day for us in Gan Gan. (All times are loose approximations, schedules are not rigorously followed).

8:00am wake up (we slept in the Gan Gan school which is small, and for all of the kids in town and close-by stations, pre-school through highschool aged)
8:30am normal leisurely Argentine breakfast of tea (or other drink), crackers, bread, and jam. On good days we also pulled out the Dulce de Leche, mmmmmmm!
9:00am leave Gan Gan and drive to study site, listening to the radio, stop to chase down an armadillo
9:30am arrive at study site apply sunscreen, listen to the radio, set up camp chairs next to truck, comment on the heat
10:00am walk grids, take hour break to drink mate, sit in shade, and listen to radio, and walk grids again
1:00pm drive back to Gan Gan for lunch and siesta time (The valid excuse for this is that the early afternoon is too hot for the lizards to be out, so they are extremely difficult to find, and underlining reason is that taking a break during the early afternoon hours is a deeply rooted national tradition; all businesses and activities come to a halt. Don’t mess with siesta time).
1:30pm stop by “Ramos Generales” (the towns small general store) on the way into town. Buy horse meat and cheese for sandwhiches, and talk to Ramos (the owner) about what fruit is available in U.S. general stores.
2:00pm eat lunch at the school
2:30pm siesta time (most everyone takes a nap, usually I read or wrote because this was the only real alone time).
4:00pm head back to the study site, listening to the radio, stop to let goats across the road
4:30pm apply sunscreen, set up chairs, comment on heat, listen to radio
5:00pm walk grids, sit next to truck in patch of shade, watch lizards, drink mate, eat crackers and fruit, listen to radio, walk grids again
8:00pm head for town, stop to watch a rhea (like an ostrich) run down the road
8:30pm stop by the general store, chat with Ramos about arrowheads in the U.S. and look at his collection from Patagonia, buy capon (an entire side of meat from an old ram, very traditional meal) for dinner, and return to the school
10:00pm eat dinner (this is the earliest dinner is ever eaten in Argentina)
12midnight crawl into sleeping bag

The radio across Patagonia is very important. There is only one channel in the remote regions (like around Gan Gan) and it serves as newspaper, mail service, TV, and telephone, because there are no other forms of media available. Obituaries, classifieds, news, and personal messages are all broadcast over the radio throughout the day and this is how the people in the towns and sheep stations stay in communication with each other. Personal messages may be anything from “Maria in Gan Gan, your mother is well,” to “Natalia in Station 6, use 50mg of the medicine for Christopher,” to “Nicholas in Telsen, I am coming by bus next week.” Not much music, but it was interesting to hear about the outside world in this way.

So that is a brief summary of the last two weeks. Chou!

Checking In

Hi all! We got back from Gan Gan Thursday and had a very good and educational experience there. We are however glad to be back to the beach breezes, and improved modern conveniences of puerto Madryn. I was putting together a write-up and pictures this morning on my laptop when the hotwater heater sprung an impressive leak. Tiny water heater, big leak, and poor Spanish skills all adds up to an unexpected adventure. So Gan Gan stories and photos have been put on hold. We walked to the internet cafe to use a telephone to call someone about the problem, so I got to use the internet as well. (Land lines are really expensive here so people either have a cellphone, or don´t have a phone.)

Tonight a lady from work is going to a carnival in another city with her boyfriend and has invited Sarah and I along. We don´t really know what to expect except for another tiny town and good food. And the really big news... tomorrow I am calling my family!!!!!!!!! Whooooo hooooo!