This week in blog history

2011: Hello World (Charlie came home!)



2010: Haiti Earthquake

2009: Well-Rounded Education (I had a pre-wedding nightmare)

2008: Some Pictures (I spent my first week in Argentina)

Unsettled

After a few days in the Evergreen State I find myself back in good ol' Provo and it is a strange mix of comfy and weird. Strange to be at the end of something that has occupied my thoughts and efforts for so long. People keep on asking me what the worst/best/favorite part of it all was, and what did I learn. I find it hard to recap and sum up the experience into a nice neat paragraph when I have yet to fully understand it. It was great, it was hard, it was unexpected, usually are satisfactory answers to everyone but myself. It sounds cliche to say that I see my life and the world a bit differently now, but it is true. And I think it is too early to understand to what extent my semester in Patagonia has affected me. Argentina tossed me way outside of my comfort zone and forced me to take up residency there until my comfort zone grew out to meet me. Now in Provo I feel a bit unsettled; but I think it is healthy to be ruffled now and again.

Patagonia with parents part 5

Pictures are finally here! They are more or less in order in five separate posts. Hope you enjoy!

We had a few hours to burn between flights in Buenos Aires so we walked to this famous, old, huge cemetery that is all crypts, not graves. It is like a city with walkways instead of roads, crypts instead of houses, and the only permanent living residents are the hundreds of feral cats that roam the tombs. Some crypts are really old, some less old, some are extremely fancy, some very plain. All belong to families. Evita is buried here as well as several presidents, rulers, and generals. The cemetery is right in the middle of the modern bustling city of Buenos Aires but it doesn't seem to fit with the rhythm outside it's walls. It was quite the unique and intriguing place.

Patagonia with parents part 4

Crossing the Strait of Magellan over onto Tierra del Fuego was like one of those childhood dreams that you never think would ever happen. I can remember learning about these places in geography and history and wondering what it was like in those far away and mysterious places. On the first crossing a penguin torpedoed through the water next to the ferry. The crossing back to the mainland was a bit rough as waves came over into the ferry and over top the bus as we all rocked back and forth with the rolls.As they say, "this isn't the end of the world, but you can see it from here." Ushuaia claims the title of being the most southern city in the world. It is on the Beagle Channel on the southern end of Tierra del Fuego.

Purple mushrooms in the Tierra del Fuego National Park. We took a nice day hike along the shore and inlets.

Patagonia with parents part 3

Our first view of the towers upon entering the park. The three towers of Torres del Paine were formed from a singe mountain that was ground down by glaciers during the last ice age. In case you were wondering. These peaks, Cuernos del Paine, are neat because the bottom white rocks are a type of granite and the top black rock is a type of sedimentary rock that is only found here. You can see how much faster the black sedimentary rock eroded away in comparison to the tougher white granite below. This group of peaks at the headwaters for all the rivers that flow into the surrounding lakes and it was neat to see the white and black boulders, rocks, and then pebbles shrink in size and become polished smooth as we followed the streams. There were no other types of rocks mixed in and the contrasting colors in the river beds were really pretty.
Along with drugs, don't do fire. (This is for all the Boy Scouts out there).
Camp after a rainy day.
Puerto Natales is on the Pacific ocean. Really good seafood. :)
Perito Moreno Glacier is huge! I have seen a fair bit of glaciers in my day, but this one was REALLY big! And it calved big chunks of ice with shot gun cracks about every 1/2 hour. The glacier comes out across the lake and runs into the land on the other side separating the lake into two. About every five years or so enough pressure builds up on the north end of the lake where the rivers enter that a huge calving event occurs creating a channel the again joins the two sides of the lake. This is predicted to occur any day now so the glacier is being watched very carefully so that it can be caught on film.

The clearer ice is older and more compact. The range of blues was surreal.

Patagonia with parents part 2

Our first peek at Cerro Torre and Fitz Roy from the plane to El Calafate.
The park at Fitz Roy had fun signs and each was illustrated.
Our first look at Cerro Torre (largest of the spires to the left) and Fitz Roy (the big tower) from the bus from El Calafate to El Chalten. You ride along through the brown flat pampas, turn a corner, and wham! you are face to face with what some consider to be the most impressive peaks in the world.
View of Cerro Torre from our first camp.

Even when the towers weren't in view this hike was incredibly beautiful and wonderfully calm as it was after tourist season.
Clouds seemed to appear out of nowhere around Fitz Roy and were often times the designs in the sky rivaled the sculptures of the land.
Dad and I got up early one morning to climb a nearby ridge for a good view of Fitz Roy in the morning. It was freezing! But we still stayed up there for a long time examining every part of these amazing peaks.

Patagonia with parents part one

Mom's Birthday mountain biking around the Lake District. After a day of gathering samples from what are supposed to be the top four chocolate shops in Bariloche we give them our own rating. Here is Mom with number 3. It was a difficult job but someone had to do it.
Sea lions at Peninsula Valdez next to Puerto Madryn.

There is a small penguin colony on the peninsula as well.
A sneak peak inside the CENPAT lab: the lizard collection. This room is full of 1000's of preserved lizards in jars of alcohol.
My last day at CENPAT, Sarah, me, and Natalia.

Heading North

The bus from Puerto Natales in Chile to Ushuaia in Argentine Tierra del Fuego is long enough to be an overnighter, but has to be during the day so that it can catch the ferry across the Strait of Magellan. My childhood facination with geography, history, and early explorers has never really left me, and came bubbling up as we crossed the strait and landed on Tierra del Fuego (land of fire) on the other side. This was the place of daring sea voyages, round the world races, mutinies, and strange new discoveries. The southern tip of Patagonia, and what was once considered that last of the unknown world. A penguin streamed along beside us during the crossing and waves splashed over the deck soaking those of the passengers that strayed to far to the front.

Our destination was Ushuaia, the southern most city in the world. A few cargo ships and several small fishing boats floated in the harbor connected to rickity, worn walkways. On an island surrounded by antarctic seas and snug against the glacier blanketed mountains, the city made an obvious location for the high security prison that founded the town in the late 1800´s. We settled into a cozy little hostel for a few days as we hiked in the nearby national park, and nosed around the town. Like many cities in Argentina, Ushuaia has boomed in just the last ten years due to tourism and the country´s improved economy. With it small beginning, even after a boom in growth, the city is still small enough to thoroughly explore on foot in a day.

We snuck out of town on the 5:30 am bus as the pounding rain became thick snow. We crossed the island and loaded the ferry at the Strait of Magellan. This time we were not allowed to exit the bus while on the ferry because of the waves that splashed over the boat and bus, and caused the bus to sway in the manner of a Disney World ride.

We arrived that afternoon in Rio Gallegos where we have been for a couple of days looking at museums, eatting our last Argentine pasteries and empanadas, and waiting for my bus, and my parents plane that signal the end of our time in Patagonia. The 16 hour bus ride will take me north along the Atlantic coast to Puerto Madryn from where my plane leaves.

There is a spiny bush in Patagonia that bears a small blue fruit called the Calafate berry. It is a firmly held belief in Patagonia that if one eats the Calafate berry she will return to Patagonia. Around the town of Gan Gan there grows quite a few of these bushes that the birds, lizards, and some lizards scientists all eat from during the hot summer days. So this is not "adios" but merely "hasta luego" (until later).

Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, i.e. oh, bliss

Saturday found me in the window seat of a plane flying south along the Andes starring intently out at the masses of snowy peaks. After almost a full two hours of amazing alpine landscapes there was a jagged split in the snow and the teethy grin of Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre welcomed me to Southern Patagonia. We spent three days hiking around the spires and glaciers of these peaks on what might just be the most enjoyable backpacking trips of my life. We were blessed with three days of clear cold weather in a land that is famous for its unpredictably and bad rain storms. The valleys were turning their fall colors around clear alpine lakes boarded by glacier blanketed mountains. And to top it all off, the immense and dramatic towers of Fitz Roy, Cerro Torre, and neighboring spires were our constant companions. We rounded the last day off with a pre-dawn hike up a snowy ridge to watch the first rays of morning sun light up the east face of Fitz Roy, and then hiked out to the snug quiet valley town of El Chalten to catch the bus back to El Calafate. Here we have merged once again with the tour bus crowds and postcard stands for a short while inorder to go and see the impressive Perito Mereno Glacier. We head off to Chile and Puerto Natales tomorrow to see more granite spires by the name of Torres del Paine.

I am adjusting to life as a temporary only child, interpreter, and nature guide. Life is good.

Happy Birthday Mom!

My Mom turned, well, a year older, today. We spent the day riding the beautiful and fun trails in Bosque de Arrayanes national park. The rain has left us and the lake district is shinning in all of its glory. We bought her some more chocolate (another thing the lake district is famous for) at the store we had decided was the best after a long and thorough testing of all of the local chocolate shops. Afterwards we ate dinner at a great retaurant specializing in Patagonian cuisine, finishing off the meal with some flan and dulce de leche. Oh how I will miss that dessert.

In the morning we fly south to El Calafate from where we will travel to El Chalten to start our hike around Fitz Roy. It might not be very cool to hang out with ones parents, but I am not complaining.

P.S. I am not having any luck uploading photos on these computers in town, so you will all just have to look forward to a shmorgasborg of photos in a couple weeks.

P.P.S. Good luck to all of you in the finals push right now.

Rainy Days

Back in dusty Puerto Madryn I often wished for a good rainy day. Well, as they say, be careful what you wish for. The parental unit and I are now camping in Villa de la Angostura just outside a national park near Bariloche, and "enjoying" a good rain day. We rented bikes and headed into the park where there is supposedly some good single-track only to find that the park is closed today on account of the high winds. So we headed up the road a ways to another trail that the local bike shop recommended. It was short but fun, and was home to a lot of bamboo-esc plants that were lovely. We are now thawing our fingers and waiting for restaurants to start opening. Thank goodness for serious rain gear.

A Mendozan Menagerie

Hi all. I am back from a great week in the northern parts of Patagonia (mostly the province of Mendoza, home of Aconcagua, the tallest mountain in north and south America) where I went with some people from the lab for the purpose of collecting lizards. It is the kind of job where you can make it sound technical and important to the people who pay you, but really it is just a bunch of fun.

We stopped by a museum which was really just a random assortment of oddities of the area and had a "family" protrait taken. (Argentina is home to fossils of the largest cornivorous dinosaur. It would make T-rex look like a house pet).

Luciano, the boss, didn´t get in the above picture. Here he is deciding where we should head this day. This daily decision wasn´t very hard: open map, find a faint grey line indicating a temporary road, make sure you haven´t traveled on it anytime inthe last few years, fill up the tank, buy some pasteries, head out of town.
Oh, yes, and check the mate stash. Here is Nicholas boiling water for mate, the all Argentinean drink. On the beach, in the car, in the office, anywhere, anytime. The actual drinking of this bitter drink is filled with customs and social traditions. I have grown to enjoy it a lot, not for the taste as much as for the social activity.
The end of a long lizard hunting day.
We explored a mostly abandoned mining community. I say mostly, because there are three abandoned buildings, and one slightly abandoned building where some live occasionally to pump petroleum from the ground there.
Lizards hide in very pretty rocks sometimes. They are also fun to climb on.

We were in the foothills of the Andes but didn´t see much of them because of the persistent fog that hug real low the entire time.
This sign was at a memorial site to Saint Francis of Assisi (the saint over nature). "It says that nature speaks of God, don´t destroy it."
I was having very little luck finding lizards, Sarah came around the corner with a camara, and this was the result.

Now for the animals! Cows were a regular sight on the roads. The older cows would move out of the way in their own good time, but the calves were very entertaining. They would try to charge the truck as we came rushing and honking up to them!

Toads. I kissed one but no prince charming (or "principe azul," (blue prince) as they say here, appeared).
Horses. So many. And so much healthier looking than those in Gan Gan.
I put this little guy back after I caught him. He was to young to be sacrificed to science.
After this guy went into his shell he still hadn´t come out a half hour later when we left.
Any difficulty I was having in finding lizards I made up in my ability to find snakes, especially the venomous kind. This one isn´t venomous, so I held him until he squeezed the feeling out of my fingers and then put him in a bottle.

This guy is venomous. He is the Patagonian version of a rattle snake. We caught three.
This is the Patagonian coral snake. Luciano told us (as we were searching under rocks for lizards) that they are VERY rare. That day I found two, and Sarah found one other. I also found one non-poisonous snake, and a rattler. Luciano was thrilled (he had never had such luck finding these "rare" snakes in the last 20 years of this), and I was more cautious as I turned over rocks. I think I will add "amazing ability to locate snakes with neurotoxic venom" to may resume.
Tarantulas! We saw a fair bit of these as well.
Spiders in Patagonia are big and have a habit of putting there webs in sneaky spots.
I also saw desert mice, maras (cross between a deer and a rabbit, I wish I had a picture), burrowing owls, guanacos (the local wild llama), goats, foxes, rheas (like ostriches) big insects, and of course tons of lizards. Oh, and ants! There were these facinating ants in the desert that had carved litteral ant highways throught the sand and rocks and carried plant material back and forth on these little roads in a constant flow of little black bodies. They were awesome. Some time the wind would blow an ant with a particularly sail like leaf clear off the road. The little guy would never even let go of his load, but just pick himself right back up, merge into the traffic, and continue on. I followed one of these roads for about 50 feet before I found the hill. Incredible!