JamieSue

The Post I Couldn't Write

I have been avoiding writing this post. I don’t have a funny story. I don’t have any clever dialog. I can’t bubble over with exuberance or culture shock. I don’t want to write this post because I don’t know how.  How can I convey a sense of complete peace?

I spent five nights in Puerto Deseado, a small fishing town on the coast in Patagonia. The town feels industrial with rugged men in boots, hats, and rain slickers. Giant metal ships come to port. The houses are unattractive and sturdy. The entire place feels practical. Puerto Deseado’s only real item of note is that Charles Darwin was fascinated with the place when the Beagle traveled through Argentina. Puerto Deseado is at the mouth of submerged estuary – a river that once ran to the sea but has become overrun by the sea so that now all of the water within its cliffs is salt and rises and falls with the tides. The river seems wide, blue and windy at high tide, but at low tide rock islands appear covered in shocking green allege and tiny white barnacles. Birds hunt in the pools left behind and sea lions bark from a raised rock in the middle of the river/sea. One entire island is overrun with penguins.

In the mornings, I drive my car into the preserve along rocky “roads” that are so rough that at one point I can go no further simply because my car is not strong enough to climb a hill. I park anywhere along the road, walk down to the coast, and the follow the exposed cliff, climbing from rock to rock. Textures are everywhere. Even the sounds of the waves and the ship horns seem to have ridges, points, and fingerprints. I take unrecognizable photos. By eleven, I am back at the only nice hotel, sitting in the café area surrounded by rough-looking lunching businessmen, all clearly involved in some industrial trade. They are smoking and I am working. Horrible translations of American bad music plays over the speakers. I hear the Spanish version of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” at least a dozen times.  I work for the most of the day and catch the last light along the river. I repeat this for five days.  I could imagine staying here for weeks in this way. My mornings smell like salt. The evenings feel like the first day of fall.  I have a desire to buy new spiral notebooks and school pencils. There is no good reason for me to be this happy, but I am happy anyway.

Entertainment Patagonia Style

atI recline in my folding chair next to my camping fire at night. My shoes are off and my feet are as close to the flames as possible without getting burned. I have watched the sky go dark and now my fire is the only light anywhere.

As a child in South Carolina, I liked to lay in the damp night grass in our front yard and look up at the stars. I thought the sky was a colander and I was laying under it. The sky was a big bowl with holes poked in it and I was looking up at the light shining through the holes. I thought it was stunning, beautiful. Immense. The night sky here in Nowhere Patagonia. Here, there is no colander. The points of light are too many and grow too small for that. The stars are glowing sand that has been scattered across coal. In some places, the sand is a dense smudge of white light. In others, they glow in solitary boldness. They are amazing. Forgive me for using clichés. But these stars are amazing. There are so many more stars than I ever knew. My childhood was jipped.

Me and My Man (hat)

Let me tell you about my best u$d 3.00 purchase ever. My Man Hat. As you may have guessed from the name, it is a hat. But it is a multitalented hat. It is a black knit hat which does a somewhat-better-than-fair job of keeping my head warm. It is also a little long so that at night when I am in my sleeping bag, I pull the sleeping bag up to my lips and I pull my Man Hat down to cover everything down to the tip of my nose leaving just my nostrils exposed (sexy, no?). Also, wearing my Man Hat would significantly increase my chances at being in a rap video. And, should I decide to dread my hair, it will make an excellent starter nasty-hair bag hat. However, we have not yet discussed its most important quality, the quality for which it is named – its manness.

Reactions to me have changed as I’ve been traveling. In Buenos Aires, people either talked to me, glanced at me and looked away, or if they were selling something touristy they looked at me hopefully. Clearly, I am foreign. In the lake district – from San Martin de los Andes to Bariloche, the locals looked a little longer. They are very accustomed to tourists – but usually tourists from Buenos Aires with an occasional foreigner mixed in.  Driving across the width of Patagonia, through the nothingness and the occasional small town without a gas station and with one paved road – maybe – where pigs and horses roamed the streets – the locals stared.  I drove around some of the neighborhoods of these small towns and entire groups of children stopped playing futbol to stare at me as I went by.  Not smiling. Not glancing. Just open mouthed staring. In Esquel, a toddler who was being carried on his mother’s hip not only stared, but pointed  and said something. I was standing still and the mother was walking passed me, so as they passed the toddler kept his little toddler arm outstretched the entire time with one tiny toddler finger extended until they reached the end of the block, crossed the street, and finally disappeared around a corner.

Along the coast to Puerto Deseado, when I parked on the side of the road for a picture and got out of my car, other cars honked at me. Not just one honk. No. It was “honk, honk, honk…….honk, honk, honk” until they had passed. At first, I thought maybe something was wrong with my car, or maybe they were telling me my lights were off, or maybe I shouldn’t be on the side of the road.  But eventually I realized- it was my yellow hair getting the honks. I hated it.  The road along the coast is busy, so I’d have four or five cars all honking at me any time I stopped.  That’s when the potential of the Man Hat occurred to me. The next time I stopped, I put on the hat, tucked all of my blonde “hey-look-a-foreigner” hair underneath it, stepped out of the car and into …..silence. Anonymity. Bliss. And, from that point on, I wore the hat nearly constantly. With my giantess stature, my loose baggy ripped jeans, my many layers of shirts and pullovers against the cold, and my wonderful Man Hat, I became anonymous. From a distance, I looked like a boy. When I walked into stores or passed people on the street, they still looked. My skin is too light to fit in outside of Buenos Aires, but without the blonde hair that is just screaming to everyone that I’m not from here, people have stopped staring. It’s wonderful.

When I was in college and just out of college, I dyed my shoulder length hair pink. Bright pink. Then orange. Then blue. Way back in those days (boy am I old), it was a shocking thing to do.  I got a lot of comments. A pair of little old ladies stopped me on the street to say, “Honey, you’d be so pretty if only you didn’t do that to yourself.”  As I was walking down the street in Denver,  a bus driver pulled over an entire bus load of people, opened the bus doors and shouted, “Exactly what shade of blue is that?” A grungy 20-something asked me in the street, “If I follow you home, will you beat me like the dog I am?”  What?? 

I got a lot of comments.  I still maintain that dying my hair was one of the most important decisions I’ve ever made because having pink hair made me come out of my shy, avoid all human contact position and deal with other people. There was no hiding in conservative South Carolina with bright pink hair. That’s not why I did it, though.  It wasn’t a rebellion. It wasn’t a political statement.  I just thought it was pretty. I still do. I like color.

Having lived in SC with pink hair, you’d think I should be okay with standing out, but the blonde-hair-honking was different.  Dying my hair pink, I was in a place where I fit in all the ways that mattered – I could communicate. I shared an American background. I knew the community where I lived. In Argentina, I don’t belong in the ways that are important. I can’t speak. I don’t understand the conversations around me. And it is obvious that I don’t fit in to anyone who takes the briefest glance at me. I am clearly a loner, easily picked out, and maybe easily picked off. There was no way to be one of the crowd. Until my small black knit savior. God save the queen, and the Man Hat.

The Mac Daddy of Nothingness

Even if your tent is five yards away from an amazing beach. Even if you had your feet propped by a fire while reclining to look at the stars before going to bed. Even if the weather is not too cold. Even if you sleep fantastically. Even if you don’t have to pee in the middle of the night. Even if there is not a spider in your tent or a puma in the bushes. Even if your life is just splendif-er-freaking-wonderful, you are still allowed to wake up in a foul mood.  I did.

I had planned to stay in Parque Nacional Los Alerces for two nights because it has many trails to hike and my camping spot was pretty darn perfect.  Instead, I woke up really annoyed and raring to hit the road and in a fit of ‘what are you on? A schedule? You don’t need a stinkin’ schedule. It’s your trip, missy.’ I drove out of the park.

I drove away from the grasslands, the horses, the trees, the mountains, the lakes and into nothingness. Remember when I mentioned nothingness before? That I was excited because the drive between Bariloche and Esquel was in the steppe…the “nothingness”. Hahaha…oh, the memories of youthful naïveté.  That nothingness was …er, nothing…compared to what came next.

I was heading into the middle of Argentina – crossing the country from west to east. Leaving the mountains and heading toward the Atlantic Ocean.  True, I was still irrationally annoyed but I was also excited to be moving yet again. The land flattened. Trees thinned, then shrunk, then vanished entirely. There was no water. The road straightened. On the sides of the road the plant life became smaller and smaller until there was little left that was bigger than a soccer ball. Just small bristly brush stuck in sandy and rocky soil. Flat. The colors were flat. The land was flat. The road was flat. For hours and hours and hours.

At one point, I had been searching for a place to go to the bathroom for an entire hour without finding anywhere. “Oh, that’s nothing,” you’re probably thinking, “this one time when I had little Johnnie in the back seat we didn’t find a McDonald’s for two hours.”  No, no.. that’s not what I’m talking about.  I mean that for the entire hour I had to pee I couldn’t find any plant life or hill that was large enough to conceal  most of my body. Just flat nothingness. When I had nearly given up hope and was considering the various angles I could park my car on the shoulder to give me maximum coverage, I found a place. Between two small hills there was a stream with one tree beside it. Miraculous! I pulled over. Climbed out of my car. Walked behind the tree and saw what had to be hundreds of hundreds of wads of toilet paper scattered on the ground. The tree was the South American version of McDonald’s! Apparently, I wasn’t the first person to have reached this point with a full bladder. (and no, for the record, I don’t drop my toilet paper on the ground).

Despite the void landscape, I did get my first glimpse of some argentine wildlife. I guess they had nothing to hide behind either. I saw my first rheas. They look like muppets or perhaps like those bird-like string puppets always sell at renaissance fairs (or the bass festival in Manning).  I tried, many a time, to get a good picture but though the rheas enjoyed standing in the road as I approached them at 120 kilometers per hour, but as soon as I slowed they began running. Despite their backward knees, they run fast. I also played frogger with guanaco, deer, and many horses. I guess the road must be  a pretty happening place for the area since they seemed to enjoy congregating in it.

I reached the small middle of no where town of Sarmiento still in a meaningless rage and having added a really terrible headache. I intended to camp but even the idea of setting up my tent made me contemplate cursing aloud so after driving around the town a little I approached a hotel marked only as “hotel” but it was closed. I did curse aloud. Then, I approached another hotel also marked “hotel” accepted a room with concrete walls and without any windows, shut the door and slept for four hours, sloughing off both the headache and the foulness.

So, just in case you were wondering, even when everything is fantastic you are still allowed to have foul mood days. And, if you’re going to have one, I don’t really recommend driving through the center of Argentina where you will be surrounded by a bleak empty nothingness. .  I’m just saying. It is invigorating for the first hour. The next six hours, however, will drag just a bit.

The "L" Word

All this scenery talk may be nice, but what about the real question? The one that everyone asks or wants to ask, “Aren’t you lonely?”

At the time I’m writing this, I’ve been gone from Buenos Aires for a little over three weeks. During that time I’ve talked once a week to my Mom on Skype and once or twice to a friend (hi Ethan!).  In my daily interactions now with driving and camping, I’m never in a place for long and so I’ve met no one. All of the conversation I have is in Spanish and is only for ordering food or gas. On camping days when I don’t go to a restaurant, I may go 48 hours without interacting with anyone or making a sound aloud. My car does not  have a radio so there is no singing along. Although I must admit that occasionally phrases do slip out aloud such as, “Where did I put that roll of freaking toilet paper?

Am I lonely? I feel like the answer has to be yes. That is what everyone expects. I understand why the answer SHOULD be yes. And, I keep checking and checking again thinking that maybe I’m kidding myself. Maybe I AM lonely. Maybe deep down inside this whole “I’m having a great time traveling alone” blog is all a farce to cover up some part of me that is absolutely depressed to be alone.  But, the answer that keeps coming back is “I’m not lonely.”

I’m sorry. I’m really not. And it makes me feel a little less human. I’m –supposed- to be lonely. I’m supposed to be desperately sad to be separated from my New York City friends of seven years. Nearly every phone call with my Mom she asks, “Do you miss me?” She asks it in jest, but really she wants the answer to be “yes”. And I want the answer to be “yes” for her…but it’s just not., I’m not lonely for my friends. I’m not lonely for my family. I’m not lonely for my job. I’m not lonely for my coworkers.  Sure, I have my moments. Some memory pops into my head: the time my mom wanted to go to Sumter walmart at 2:00am because they were open 24 hours for Christmas and we drove all the way there but they were closed for restocking. The strange trip to see the flesh eating bugs with my friends Sandor and Yalli. The time Amanda, Sammy, Mike, George and Emily – all swing dancers-  went to Downtime – a goth club - with me and we danced swing to goth music. The time that Erika and I got into a fight so bad at work that we ignored each other for lunch for an entire week…and the fight was over a database table name. All of those  moments make me miss those people and drift into nostalgia about those times. And I’m really glad that I had and still have those friendships, and I look forward to seeing them all again. But, I don’t think that is lonely.

And wouldn’t I like to have some significant other traveling with me? Yes. That would be terrific. It would be great to have someone to share these experiences with. Someone to say stupid things to in the car. Someone to hold the other end of the damn tent while I’m trying to pitch it.  That would be great, but I don’t think lonely is the word to describe that feeling either. I like chocolate cake. Right now, I would love to have a piece of chocolate cake. But I’m not sad because I am without the cake. To me, the word lonely implies sadness. And I’m not sad over the cake. Or the lack of boyfriend. Or the lack of other people.

So, I’m not lonely and I guess that makes me a little less human. I do have a need for dialogue but the way my brain works every moment with me there is an internal narrative voice saying, “can you believe the color of those yellow plants. It’s amazing! What does it remind you of? Oh the line from The littlest prince – hair like the color of the wheat field. No. The mustard color in the bull fighting painting your parents had. No. The color of the candy wrappings on those chocolate coins that come in the netted packaging. Yeah, yeah. That’s it. Write that down.”  And lord knows, listening to that all day, even in a car without a radio, or a tent without a boyfriend, or a workday without coworkers – I’m still getting an earful. So, I don’t feel lonely. I guess I’ll just keep writing it down and listening to the voices in my head. Red rum. Red rum!

The Beginning Of Nothing

I know that I am addicted to change. I am one of those people. It’s not that I’m ever unhappy in a place. I loved New York City. I loved Buenos Aires. I loved the Lake District. I’m a pretty happy person under most circumstances. I can be happy anywhere…but there is always somewhere else. I love change. At my old job, there were many people who were the opposite…try to change their jobs, give them new tools, change old rules and they panicked. I live on that change. I love improvements. Efficiencies. Newness. In all parts of my life.  And in travel, I love change in landscape.

Inevitably, boyfriends ask, “Do you like to drive?”  Of course, what they’re really asking is, “I am going  to have to share my manly driving power with you? Like the tv remote control? And politics? You evil modern women stop at nothing!”  I always answer, “No. I don’t like to drive.”   And then, eventually, I go off on some vacation where I drive alone for weeks on end.  So, let me clarify.

I love to drive distances. I don’t care about driving to the grocery store, or on snowy roads, or to go out at night. I really am indifferent to the mechanical part of driving. But I love making the world change around me. Stopping whenever I want. Taking photos and looking at the land. Especially the change of landscape.  Leaving the lake district, I could literally feel my blood moving again…what comes next?  Let me tell you.

Moving from the lake district into the steppe of Patagonia, the many shades of green become exposed mountain rock briefly and then as you descend the green changes to yellow. A pallet of yellow. A thousand shades of dry.  Rolling hills spotted with clumps of scrub and bristly plants.  Giant skies and miles and miles of sight. The pockets of water became rare, protected, and celebrated by brief coves of green. Come around a curve of rubble and sand and suddenly there is a clump of trees, a house, a small spill of water. And then it’s gone and there is more nothing. For an hour.  The shadows of clouds move across the distances like they are hunting something and driving into these cloud shadows feels ominous.  This is all in my one day drive from Bariloche to Esquel. 

In short, I was impressed. I thought, “Wow. This is really nothingness. This is the wide spread Patagonia I have heard about.”  Oh, how quaint to think back on that now. I had no freaking idea what “nothingness” or “wide-spread Patagonia” was.  But, I found out later.

Other photos can be found here: Flickr

Esquel, Argentina

It’s the transitions which are difficult. Oscillating from camping to hotel every three or four days is difficult in a way I didn’t expect. Within three days time I have forgotten the other type of existence. Just when I get used to finding a place to camp, pitching the tent, preparing for the cold, building a fire, sleeping through the noise of the trees at four a.m, when I am in the habit of remembering where I store the roll of toilet paper, it’s time to return to town. All the old intimidations are new again. I’m back to being nervous about shifting at an intersection, asking how much a hotel room costs and if they have internet, handling the stares of the locals, and eating alone. As soon as I am accustomed to the small town I’m working in, it’s time to return to camping.  I am working 20 hours a week – and it is perfect, but it does cause this transition challenge which I didn’t expect. The first transition was the hardest.

After driving and camping through the lake district, I planned to stop in the town of Esquel and work for a few days. Driving into the town, immediately, I hated it.  In fact, I had planned to stop earlier in El Bolson but as soon as I saw the small hovels, the few paved streets, the row of crumbling shops, I kept driving…and so, I had to stop in Esquel.  Esquel is a town of 30,000 people – the largest town in its area.  I arrived in the afternoon around 3pm. I was starving. All the restaurants were closed. I stopped at a locutorio to use the internet and try to find a hotel. I diligently wrote down the names and locations of several and then I went to the most expensive and felt ‘too tired’ to look any more and accepted it.  I have learned that ‘too tired’ is my excuse term for ‘too lazy’. When I don’t want to be bothered to look for a better deal, or a better place to pitch my tent, or one more hike to go on, I tell myself that I am “too tired” and I “need a break”…. A break from vacationing? Oh, my life is so tough isn’t it? Ridiculous.

So, I picked a hotel that was more expensive than I wanted to pay and not worth it at all. They said they have a “small lake” in back but really it is just a hole with some water where there are ducks that are kept in cages at night. It is surrounded by a concrete wall and on the other side of the wall there are slums. Needless to say, I wasn’t pleased with my excuse of “too tired”.

People in the country take their siestas very seriously. It is not possible to get a meal until 8:30 at the earliest and many places don’t open until 9pm. By the time 8:30 arrived, having not eaten since the pear I had for breakfast, I was starving and pissed off. I hated the town. The buildings were not quaint log buildings. There were no artisanal ice cream stores on every corner. The main streets were noisy with cars and beyond the two main streets the other streets were all ripio (gravel). The houses were concrete, tiny, disorganized, and pressed close together. No one smiled at me. Even babies stared. When people stared and I looked back, no one looked away. And I was hungry. And angry. And disillusioned. Here was my first non-tourist town and after all of my B.S. about fake artisanal ice cream and how I wanted to see “real” life, I hated the real-life town and longed for another sprawl of Disney Cottages.  What a hypocrite.

For three days, I hid in my hotel room and programmed unable to wait to leave Esquel. On the morning of the last day, I got in my car and I drove around the town and, of course, on the last day, I found many things I liked very much.

It’s true, the town is not pretty. It’s not quaint. It’s not quiet. It’s located between mountains and there is almost constant dust in the air.  It feels like a frontier town. The neighborhoods are all on gravel or dirt roads. The graffiti is not artistic- it’s just scrawl.. The houses have raised platforms or containers out front where the trash is stored so animals can’t reach it. One house I passed had a gated garage which held an old BMW and several chickens. This is not a Disney town. There is no theme. In general, the houses do not have a uniform style, but many of them incorporate angles in a way that I quickly fell in love with and took many photos of for reference if I ever build my own house, I’ll look back at these photos. Even though the buildings are small, squat, and thick, they often have many planes, sharp corners, sharp rectangles, and several spills of elevation. And the town has character: a bright orange store with green trim, a white house that has been painted with black spots, a house made of tin with a sharp, jutting roof, and a larger building that looks like many buildings squashed together.

And, one day while I was working in front of the window in my room, I heard horse hoofs. I looked up and saw two unbridled horses walking through the gravel lot in front of me. I watched as they crossed the busiest street in town so they could stand in the median eating the rather enticingly green grass. At one point a loud bus drove by and one of the horses started into the street and the bus had to swerve. Some kids came along and approached the horses but they reared up and whinnied. They were clearly not broken horses. Eventually, a man on a motorcycle  passed the horses, turned around, and rode up onto the median to scare the horses off, then he chased them on his motorcycle into a field where they wouldn’t interfere further with traffic.  That’s certainly character.   

Just in time to leave Esquel, I found things to like. I blame the transition.  It’s hard to go from a clear blue lake and sunshine into the dirt and noise of people again.

 

What Matters

I have a new favorite purchase. I bought a folding chair from the grocery store for about U$D 20 . It even has two settings -regular upright chair mode and low rider staring up at the sky mode. I’m sitting in my new chair, on the edge of a lake in Parque Nacional Los Alerces, eating a pear that is so ripe that juice is running down my hand. I have my shoes off and the soles of my feet are warm from the rock beach. I can see no one near the water. It’s cold in the shade but warm on the windless beach. The absolutely still water of the massive lake is spread out in front of me and I sit for an hour watching the weather change. The wind rises and pushes a bank of dark clouds over the mountains and across the lake. The world is easy and empty and, like on the bus, I feel I absolutely have to try to write poetry…but this time, not lyrical.

I know what is happening today
at my old job.
Somewhere, someone’s mouse has broken
and the cursing has begun.
The VP of Something is being instructed
to trim his budget by 3 jobs
and to put the column headers in bold.
An email has been written and sent, “Stop
chewing your gum so loudly. It bothers me.”
And the recipient has forwarded it
to everyone she knows – with the addition,
“Can you believe that bitch?”
The receptionist has lost three calls.
The books will not ship on time.
The CEO’s favorite phone model
has been discontinued and
someone has taken the last chocolate doughnut.
Incoming email is unacceptably delayed.
The fixed bug count is behind
by two point five percent
so another daily meeting
has been scheduled.
In the bathroom stalls,
two women are crying.
I am not one of them.

The rest of the photos can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157604666253794/show/

Shake, Rattle, and Roll

I have to warn you. In this post, I am going to use the words “pee” and “peeing”. I don’t like these words, but I think “urinate” is just as bad and, under these circumstances, “going to the bathroom” just doesn’t work.

When I camp, I never worry about wild animals. I worry about wild people. If I camped out in the middle of nowhere, all I would think is about all the mass murders who likely tromp around in the woods looking for lonely campers like in the movies- because, after all, that would be the most efficient way for mass murders to find victims, right? Wandering through isolated, desolate camping areas as opposed to heavily populated suburbs. When I camp in organized areas, I carefully review my neighbors before pitching my tent. If there are just men, I don’t camp there. Families have loud children with radios and bicycles or noisy dogs. Couples are absolutely perfect. But, wild animals never worry me at all. In fact, before camping in the wilds of Argentina, I think I did a five minute search on animals – learned that there are wild cats like pumas but nothing –really- dangerous. No bears or food worries. Great. So, fast forward to actual camping.

I hate having to pee in the middle of the night. It’s not because I don’t want to go into the dark. It’s because I am snug in my sleeping bag and no I have to get up, get out, unzip lots of things, put on my shoes, find the toilet paper, find the flashlight, find the little trash bag, climb out into the super cold and start walking. So, I do everything to avoid it. I stop drinking liquid a few hours before bed. The very, very, very last thing I do – even after brushing my teeth is pee before getting into the tent for the night. And, when I finally do wake up in the middle of the night, I lay there for an hour trying to convince myself that I don’t really have to go...but I always do.

So, this particular night, by the time I had gotten into the tent, I had already peed once but of course I woke up around 3 a.m. needing to go. I got out of my tent into the really, really freezing cold mountain air and started to head toward the night’s selected peeing spot when suddenly there was a loud bush rattling. If it had been a stage affect, people would have giggled because it was so overly dramatic. Of course, this was not a stage. This was the middle of no where middle of the night in Argentina. I stopped. I pointed my flashlight at the bush. I listened. Nothing. I couldn’t see anything. The rattling bush was between me and the planned peeing place. My heart was racing. I had forgotten entirely about the cold. In fact, my palms were sweating. And of course, since I had lain in my sleeping bag for an hour trying to convince myself I didn’t need to pee and since I was particularly scared at that moment,  I really really really had to pee. What to do? And then bush rattled again. This time, my flashlight was still on it and I actually saw the whole thing shake.

So, I decided to pee near my car, right behind the trunk because I thought worse case scenario I could climb on top of the car. Of course, the car keys were in the tent, but still, elevation would be good. Unless it was a puma – in which case, elevation wouldn’t help at all. This, of course was my line of thought while squatting in front of my car. Not exactly pee-friendly thinking. Pumas wouldn’t rattled bushes though, right? They’re predators. If I was going to be attacked by a puma, I wouldn’t hear it coming. This wasn’t exactly a comforting thought. Yes, I was still peeing, and I had the flashlight pointed at the threatening bush, and if either of the happy couple in the tent down the beach had wandered over at that point they would have gotten a very clear view of me, their neighbor, practically peeing on my own car tire. At this point, the bush rattled again and somewhere else in the night there was a screech that sounded exactly like one of the unfriendly dinosaurs from Jurassic park. I forgot about the cold. I forgot about the pumas. I thought about horror stories.

I’ve always been a bit of a storyteller, you can probably imagine, and when I was a kid, I particularly liked trying to scare my friends with horror stories. Laying in the dark, I’d start telling them about the demon downstairs, or the monster in the cornfield, or the baby ghost in a kitchen that would never stop crying, or my favorite – the one about the campers at a historic revolutionary war site (this one was true, of course) and one of the campers was dragged off by a “bear” but the next morning, boot prints were found by his tent…and the camper was never, ever, seen again. Ever. But the problem with this storytelling is that I always scared myself far worse than I scared the listener – even when I knew I was making up the story. I was always the one left laying awake in the night terrified by my own stupid story. So, squatting in front of my car at 3 a.m. holding a trembling flashlight, all I could think about was horror stories.  And, the bush rattled again.

You know the kind of bush shaking I’m talking about. It’s the movie bush-shaking where the half naked girl is terrified but approaches the bushes anyway, the music rises to a single high pitched note, she pulls back the branch and finds two of her friends drunk and making out…and the tension is broken and everyone laughs. Then, a breath later when there is no music, the hideous monster attacks, killing the two friends instantly and chasing the screaming girl. That’s the kind of bush shaking I’m talking about, that’s what this bush was doing which meant the monster was right behind.

And I was done. My heart was pounding. My flashlight was trembling. I stood up, buttoned my pants, and started turning toward my tent. That’s when the battery in the flashlight went out and I heard this half howling sound coming from directly behind me. I wasn’t sure if I should run toward the tent to try to get the car keys or just jump onto the car, or maybe scream at the other tent and hope they heard me. I hesitated and that was the thing I shouldn’t have done because then it was right behind me. The bush gave one last rattle and I could actually hear the creature panting and I couldn’t see anything. I screamed then and ran toward my tent. I had no idea what was chasing me, but I could hear it. I scrambled into the tent and I was frantically trying to find my backpack in the dark so I could get to my car keys when behind me at the door the tent started to collapse. It was being dragged down the beach. I was thrown forward onto my stomach by the force of the sudden movement and the tent material folded down around me and….okay, okay. I’m completely lying...but just with this last paragraph. All the previous peeing and scary seizuring plant description was real. However, all the scary bits above did play out in my over-active imagination before I made my way, safely, back to my tent. I crawled in. I closed up the zippers which would clearly protect me from the outside world – I’m a true believer that if you don’t hang your feet over the bed, the monsters won’t come out from underneath it. And, they didn’t. This time.

Note: The photos are just random camping and hiking shots. I didn't have time to get to my camera for a snapshot of the monster.

Bariloche

In Buenos Aires everyone told me “oh Bariloche is beautiful. Bariloche is pretty. Bariloche is peaceful. Muy lindo. Muy tranquilo.” Bariloche was the end of the Seven Lakes part of my drive which had begun in San Martin De Los Andes. By the time I reached Bariloche, I had driven by small quiet towns, solitary ranches, lush natural reserves, isolated lakes, and mountains. And Bariloche was….well, I kinda hated it.

 I’m sure if I had started in that city…or if I had only seen that city, I would have liked it very much, but coming to it after all the variety I had already had and the peacefulness of the remote areas, Bariloche was hard to swallow. It was practically a metropolis. They even had stop lights! Shocking. I stopped in the town. Walked around. Bought some supplies. I had lunch at a restaurant so I could plug in and recharge all my various electricity needs while I ate (this has become a very common habit for me now). And, I made the mistake of attempting to re-create my amazing trout experience. I ordered the same dish. Trout. Sauce. Almonds. And this was in a fancy restaurant. After all, Bariloche too was on a lake. These photos show the dish I got (on left) compared to the previous amazing fish (on right). The Bariloche fish looked terrific. Especially when compared to the other trout? Well, it tasted like nothing. And it was tough. And had too many bones. Aren’t I spoiled. Ah, well.

Bariloche is a major town right on the lake. It has tons of tourist options and even mega clubs to go dancing at night. If you’re from New York City, imagine Atlantic City in the mountains. If you’re from South Carolina, imagine Myrtle   Beach without the salt. If you’re from somewhere else, imagine [fill in the blank]. I guess it’s nice if you want a city. I didn’t. In my previous driving, the lakes were open and uninhabited. In Bariloche, much of the waterfront was fenced in or on private property. Just. Not. Great. For me.

I camped at an “autocamping” place where I had hot water, which was nice, but it felt claustrophobic to me after the “natural” camping. There were trash bins and toilets and one tent that had a satellite dish attached. Around Bariloche there are some nice views so I drove the “small circuit” to see the views, but even some of those were strange. I reached one “mirador” around 9 in the morning and there were vendors setting up with touristy artisanal crafts to sell along the roadside. It was so odd to be driving a road through a natural forest and suddenly come upon the same “hand carved” mate cups that were all over Buenos   Aires. I did one hike that was good and tough, straight uphill. I camped. And then I got the hell out of dodge, er Bariloche.

So, if you are traveling by bus and don’t have the freedom to roam, Bariloche is probably a nice choice. Lots to do. All within walking distance. A good tourist support structure. But, if you have a car…baby, take the open road.

Other pictures can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157604465403231/show/

Driving the Seven Lakes circuit of Patagonia

Because you’re going to look at these pictures and think, “Wow. That’s really pretty.” And the pictures do look pretty, but pretty is not the word that comes to mind on actually being here. Stunning. Powerful. Enormous. My photos diminish the lake district. I can not convey to you the scale of these mountain lakes. They are enormous. They are monstrosities. Usually, in the morning, the winds that come over the mountains are still and the lakes are clear and peaceful, reflecting everything around them - but then the wind whips over the lakes and the constant waves begin. There is a continuous sound of water like on the hull of a boat. Standing on the shore of the lakes, I do not feel like I am standing next to an enclosure of water. Instead, I feel like I am standing on an island. I know, at that moment, that the land I am standing on is just a raft on the water. That the whole world is water. Looking out across the water, I am tiny. Distance becomes entirely unpredictable. The shore curves for miles and miles without any break.  The beach is a million colored stones. There are no sharp edges anywhere. The water has worn them from everything.

While driving, the first lake I approached confused me. The road was shady and surrounded by mountain trees. Then suddenly there was blue coming through the trees. I thought it was the sky. I thought I must be driving along a cliff and the blueness was the sky. But the sky seemed to be undulating. I didn’t know exactly what I was seeing. Then, there was an opening in the trees, and everything was water. The blue was not sky, it was the water. The water here is completely clear and extremely cold. The lake floor is rock.  The wind is a physical force.

The drive is called The Seven Lakes but there are more than seven and they are all amazing. The paved road lasts…for a while..and then it to gives way to its surrounding. It becomes “ripio” which is a road covered in gravel and large rocks. Driving down it, my entire car vibrates. It vibrates so much that my turn signal keeps flipping on by itself. Eventually, the light in the ceiling of the car vibrates out of its case and dangles from its wire, swinging madly in my rear view mirror. Places where the gravel is thickest are dangerous and slippery. As I am coming up a hill, a truck comes too quickly around a curve. The back of the truck swings in a wide arc as the truck tries to make the curve but has no traction. It begins weaving back and forth trying to regain control. At the last possible second the truck comes to a skidding halt, his back tires only a foot from an unbarricaded drop straight down. I do not drive that fast on this kind of road from that moment on.

I have been driving this road for two hours and sometimes I feel like I am lost in the woods, randomly driving through trees – it feels so remote. But, I know I am not lost because there are no choices, no forks. Just one snaking long road.  Sometimes, it is surreal to come around a turn and find cows standing in my way or horses lying along the road side. There are no fences.  I feel like I can’t possibly be driving on a major road and then suddenly around a curve there is a bright yellow warning sign and I am surprised to see a reminder of civilization. As I move from one lake to another, the road changes to dirt and the spongy old leaf material found on the forest floor. The trees take advantage of the peace from the water to encroach on the road. There is no undergrowth because the massive tree canopies block out the light. Suddenly, in my path it is dusk. Then ahead, the sun is brilliant again and the blue water is so blinding that I am squinting but I can see absolutely nothing as I make the transition from the forest to the lake.

I had chosen to take a detour on this route to Villa Traful on Lake Traful. It is about 2 hours off the main route (if you drive slowly like I do). It has a small tourist support structure with camp grounds and a park information booth but the town is tiny.  This is their bank. One concrete room with an ATM and a satellite dish outside.

The school is one big room with kids of different ages all in the same class. The town is not fake quaint. It’s just small and perched on one of the massive lakes. Villa Traful is know for the trout caught from the lake I had the best fish of my life (sorry Rob) here. It doesn’t look like much:

But it was amazingly moist, and sweet – with a light sauce and almonds. Created by the restaurant Salon De Te. The town and the views around it were well worth the trip.

The Seven Lakes. Don’t call them pretty. These lakes are not pretty. Pretty is too fragile a word for them. They are powerful. They are vast. They are intimidating in a way that all nature must have been to us once – before artificial light and the weather channel. The clearness of their water, the sheer width between their shores, the pure whiteness at the crest of the waves say “life, life, life” the way nothing else can.

In the long string of pictures above, the third from the top, those two tiny black dots on that long white shore - those are two people fishing...to give you at least a small sense of scope.

You can see a larger version of these pictures by clicking on them (from my blog page - for email readers, you have to come to the blog).

The rest of the pictures (yes, there are more) are at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157604441020368/show/