JamieSue

Tent Intrusion

My tent door has four zippers on it.  It can be a real pain in the tush when you have your hands full. So, this one night, I set up my tent. I went hiking. I ate dinner. I built a fire. I read a book. It got dark. I approached my tent and realized that I had left one of the horizontal screen zippers undone. 1 zipper. 1 zipper of 4.  I thought, “Crap, I hope there aren’t mosquitoes in my tent, but there’s nothing in there to attract them. It’s probably fine.” Why would a bug want to go in my empty tent?

Let me pause here for a moment to mention something.   I have a totally irrational and uncontrollable fear of spiders. It’s not a specific fear. Small spiders, hairy spiders, poisonous spiders, friendly keep your house free of insect spiders, my reaction is to each is the same. I’m terrified. I know it is irrational, yet, knowing that doesn’t stop the fear. A kind (or unkind, depending on how you look at it) boyfriend of mine once put a live wolf spider in a glass jar and gave it to me, thinking it would help me overcome the fear. Just from holding the jar my entire body shook and when the wolf spider did his wolf spider jump thing I gave a little muffled scream. Had I not been prudent enough to keep my lips pinned together the scream would have been a blonde-girl-in-a-scary-movie kind of scream. So, we’re clear. Spiders = Fear.

Back to the four zippered tent. You may have an idea where this is going. I unzipped the other three zippers, threw some stuff in and crawled in after it. Nope, no mosquitoes. Great! I crawled to the opposite end of the tent and spun around, my flashlight in hand, to straighten out my sleeping bag. That’s when I made a half movie scream and literally threw my body backward against the back wall of the tent. A spider. Not a small spider. A spider that was larger than Susan B Anthony dollar.  Brown with giant brown folding horrible legs and the worst part - it was on the inside of the DOOR to my tent. I had no escape. Immediately, I began to shake which caused the flashlight to wobble in a horrible B movie effect throwing shaking spider shadows everywhere. The spider wasn’t thrilled about the light and he started to crawl up the tent door toward the ceiling. Being a dome tent, his movement upward was also bringing him closer to me and in better pouncing range. Wait, wasn’t he already within pouncing range? Wasn’t that how it was on the movies they shot it in slow motion and the spider could lunge for absolute yards.  I realized I was making tiny whimpering noises and, with some difficulty, I stopped myself. There were people near me who might hear me, I thought. Wait- there were people near me who might hear me! I could shout out to them for help. Rescue was possible!

The next tent over was maybe15 yards away and it was a couple. I’m sure the machista argentine man would love to later tell how he rescued some dumb blonde American girl from a spider in her tent.  I don’t mind being dumb, blonde and American. But wait. I didn’t know the word for spider in Spanish. And if I shouted for help,  the man would charge in my tent door. The very door the spider is hanging on, which would leave the spider only the option to run toward me. Or outright attack me. That eliminated the shouting for help possibility.

I couldn’t be rescued. I couldn’t escape. I couldn’t run. Fighting was the only option so I examined the battle field. I could take off one of my shoes but the spider was on the plastic of the tent and so I couldn’t squash him. I would have to catch-squash him in something. Catch-squashing is a  maneuver I had witnessed my father doing many times when there was a spider on my bedroom wall at home. I would scream. He would come in. He would get a piece of toilet paper. Approach the spider with stealth and with a quick jabbing action he would catch the spider in the toilet paper and squash it. Of course, my Dad would also throw the toilet paper at me or drop it on my bed or otherwise terrorize me in some way, but that step was optional. I had my solution. I would have to catch-squash this spider. I looked around. There was a plastic bag near me. I dumped out the contents. Perfect. I put my whole hand into the plastic bag so I had protection up to the wrist if I missed, but then I thought the plastic was too thin and I would feel the huge spider body through the plastic and it could perhaps bite me. I removed my hand from the bag.

I folded the bag in fourths to make it as thick as possible. I got up on my knees. I got close to the spider. My whole body shook even more and I breathed in little trembling gasps. I lunged and simultaneously muffle screamed. For a second I had him. For a second - and then I felt his horrible cruncy spider body between my fingers and I freaked out and let go of him and made a wobbly uuuuuuuugh noise. I dropped the spider directly on to my backpack and it started to crawl toward a pocket. 
I needed another plan. Fast. Really, the situation had improved – I told myself this in hopes of being encouraging. The spider was no longer within lunging range of my face.  He was now on a surface on the ground. I could regular squash him with my shoe or something.  He started to move again toward a pocket. No time to unlace my giant hiking boots. But my water bottle was near. I grabbed it and slammed it down on the spider. Square on. I got him.  Kinda.

Like most bottles, the water bottle had an inverted dome on the bottom, and that’s where the spider was- trapped in the dome. I could still see him moving, his horrible spider body now distorted by the curve of the plastic and the water so that now the spider was gigantic. Threatening. Horrifying. With the distortion he was no longer a Susan B Anthony Size. Now it was Spider Takes Manhattan Size. But, no matter how I squished or twisted the bottle, I couldn’t complete the squashing.
Fine, I thought. I’ll put the whole backpack outside the tent. Maybe the spider will go away in the night. But the bag had everything important to me in it. All of my money. My books. And my car keys. And, the bag had a thousand nooks and crannies and pockets and there was no way I would be willing to stick my hand into that bag again if there was a chance the spider was still occupying it. If the backpack went outside, I’d have to accept it as lost forever. A casualty of war. 

I needed to kill the spider. I realized, if I could get my hand into the backpack, then I could press upward through the material into his little water bottle sanctuary and crush him. I unzipped the backpack. I started to slide my hand into it and thought, wait, I don’t want to squish him with my hand through the backpack material. It’s too thin. That would re-create the horrible touching the spider sensation that freaked me out earlier. I looked around the tent and saw that laying right next to me, having fallen from the plastic bag I had emptied for my previous weapon, was my pair of clean underwear for tomorrow.  Perfect. I grabbed them. Made them into a spider-fighting-underwear glove for my hand. My left hand was still holding down the bottle, so I had to put my flashlight in my mouth.

But wait, I thought.  What if I still miss. I don’t want him running into the tent somewhere. I’ll never be able to sleep in here with him. I should move the whole backpack outside that way worse case scenario,  I leave the backpack outside. Brilliant.  Perfect.  I started to navigate my way, carefully, out of the tent.

I needed both hands to both lift the backpack and keep the water bottle imprisoning the spider, so I slid one hand through a leg hole of the underwear-for-fighting-the-spider. Pause for a second to really imagine me here. Backpack in one hand, death grip on the water bottle pressed to backpack in the other hand. Flashlight in mouth. Pink and green stripped underwear now dangling from one wrist. Waddling my way out of the tent, underwear swinging. On my knees.  Stricken with fear.  I’m glad it was dark.

I got outside. I slid into the backpack the deadly underwear weapon. I pressed down on the water bottle. I heard a tell tale crunching noise. Still, it took thirty seconds for me to summon the courage to lift the water bottle. Eventually, I did. And the spider was crushed. Twitching. But crushed. And of course, I took a picture.

Now, when you see the picture, you will probably feel sorry for the spider. Me, I have a tinge of guilt. But let me point out here that  I don’t go out into the world seeking spiders to kill.  If I see a spider I just avoid it. In fact, I don’t even fear spiders out in the world. I sit on the ground. I climb trees. So, spider, with that entire big beautiful natural park out there for you to live in, why come in my tent. I do not apologize. The initial act of aggression was his.

People keep saying I’m so brave for traveling alone. So brave to be in a country where I don’t speak the language. So brave to be driving in the middle of no where. I haven’t really felt brave because I haven’t felt scared. For some reason, those things just don’t scare me. The spider. He scares me.  The spider war me feel very, very brave. Well, I felt brave at least until three nights later when staying in a hotel – I had one of my spider-on-the-wall reoccurring nightmares and woke up standing in my bathroom at four in the morning completely scared. So, it was a temporary brave. Still, that’s something. 

Neverland

My first excursion using my super new stickshiftorama car was to Yuco Park just outside of San Martin de los Andes. Of course, the Argentinean definition of “just out side of San Martin” is being used here which means that it was about an hour away on a gravel/rock road straight up a mountain. It was my first trip outside of the Disney-world town of San Martin and it was fantastic. I’m pretty sure I was about 10 years old again. Maybe 11.

I spent a lot of time in the woods around my house when I was a kid usually building forts with my cousin or just wandering by myself. I still have a mental map of those woods even though most of them have been replaced by trailers and campground. There were three particularly secret places (and you mustn’t tell anyone).

1. The hill which was certainly an Indian burial mound and where, after much excavation, I found a piece of wood which was obviously an Indian hunting boomerang, though age had worn the returnness off of it.

2. The section of taller trees and little island-like tufts of grass which were sometimes swamped. In order to get there you had to run at great peril across a corn field which was clearly evil (have you SEEN Children of the Corn? I’m surprised I even still eat the vegetable after that movie).

3. And most secret and magical off all, the place that was set so far into an area of identical pathless woods that you couldn’t always find the secret place even when you knew it existed – or perhaps it just didn’t always want to be found: the cluster of forty or so dense trees whose branches were covered in thorns and were so close together that underneath them nothing, not even grass, would grow. There were no trees like these anywhere else that I had seen, ever. It was clearly magic. I assumed fairies – or later, after discovering Star Trek, I alternated between imagining it to be a holoroom or perhaps a rift in the space/time continuum allowing me to step into another planet where perhaps Wesley would fall madly in love with me.  Or, maybe just fairies.

Those were the 3 best places in my woods. Well, don’t tell my 11 year old self, but Yuco park was better than all three of those secret spots. The park is on lake Lacar but unlike San Martin de los Andes it is not next to a major tourist town so it was pretty much empty. I saw only one other person while I was there and I didn’t even make it to the remote trails – just down to the beaches. I couldn’t even see any boats on the entire lake. The day was cloudy so the pictures aren’t great but the beaches were rocky and the water was completely clear. Best yet, there were all sorts of rock islands to explore, strange leafless trees growing out of rocks, tree roots exposed and covered in mosses where surely gnomes lived, gorgeous gnarled driftwood, and fantastic old trees with branches perfectly suited to climbing and laying in. To put it more succinctly, it was an exact replica of my vision of Neverland island.

I am admittedly “too old” now, but my mind still works the same way. In Yuco park, I know the tree where the fairies live – I saw them hurrying to hide their lawn furniture. I can tell you which rock island would be best to defend for a fireworks war. I climbed and scouted the tree where I would build my fort and decided which limb was best for the water pulley and which was best for the emergency exit rope. I know the best cove for building rafts or launching junk-boat races. So if you need a guide to Yuco park, just let me know.

My other photos of Yuco park are here:http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157604391476220/show/

Welcome to the Horse Butt Highway

San Martin de los Andes is a tourist town – for Argentinean tourists escaping the cities. I knew that and I knew that it was going to be heavily populated during Holy Week. I thought it would be interesting to be there when all the other city folk were…and it was interesting. There main road through “town” is Ave. San Martin and it’s populated by a thousand shops selling artisanal chocolate, artisanal jewelry, artisanal woven sweaters, artisanal ice cream,  and artisanal t-shirts. Okay, so they didn’t claim the t-shirts were artisanal, but they probably would have if they thought the tourists would believe it. There are many fancy eateries and a few pizza places for families.

There are many places to buy sneakers, hiking gear, snowboarding and skiing gear, plus of course a few ATMs – all the ingredients of a good family vacation.  Everything is a very eye-friendly golden wood: the buildings, and street signs, the benches, the fences. San Martin de los Andes is on lake Lacar in the mountains and has a nice beach where people lay in the sun, play soccer, drink mate, and rent kayaks or crazy unstable looking bicycle/boats perched on floaters. And, I’m glad I was there during a period of high season because a tourist town just isn’t the same without the tourists.
 

Most of the houses in the downtown area are rental cabanas, or parts of hotels, or full rental houses. It is all very quaint. I rented a bike for half a day and covered every street, several times. In San Martin de los Andes, there is no “wrong side of the tracks” but there is an “other side of the river” where it seems that most of the actual people live – the people who populate the jobs – cashiers, waiters and waitresses, taxi drivers, and tour guides. The other side of the river is more worn down. Where there is tin for roofing it is because tin is cheap, not because it looks quaint.  I could hear chickens clucking in many of the back yards. Old rusted cars were not abandoned on the road side, they were advertised for sale. The road was gravel, not paved. I rode around this area of San Martin de los Andes on Easter day when the rest of the town was mostly shut down. Families were out in the streets with their kids on bikes and their dogs running free. They carried silver mate thermoses tucked under their arms. There were loud gatherings in the backs of yards. For this reason, I didn’t take too many pictures.  I didn’t want to intrude. I never felt danger in the “wrong side of town” but it wasn’t all wooden sign posts and artisanal foods.

I signed up for a horseback ride on one of the weekend days. I figured it would be crowded and I signed up for a four hour tour thinking that fewer people would ride for that long. I came to think of the first two hours of the tour as the horse butt highway. There were so many people for the ride and the horses followed so closely to each other that it was horse head to horse butt up a plantless path along the mountain. It was extremely dusty and all the horses in front of me kicked up so much of the dust that most of the time we were riding in a cloud. You can see in the picture below how dirty my hands got from the ride. I wasn’t miserable, but I was close.

The second two hours of the tour were marvelous. I was right – not many people signed up for the 4 hour tour – in fact, it was just me. About 1.5 hours into the horse butt highway, a twelve year old kid in a broad brimmed hat riding a horse with just a blanket and no saddle led me off from the rest of the group. Two of the yard dogs followed us. The boy led me down narrow winding paths covered in green moss, through trees that leaned so completely in on the path that I had to duck to avoid them. He had me ride in front and shouted “right” or “left” when the path forked. The dogs made a commotion in the trees and then crossed our path chasing a rabbit – the tiny dog with the always flipped over ear led the chase. We crossed streams where the horses were allowed to drink a little and the dogs rolled in the muck and laid down in the water. We rode under trees that had lost most of their leaves and created a stream of yellow leaves for us to cross. We passed through wide fields with sheep, short grass and grey rock. For me, this was what riding a horse was supposed to be like. The silence and the steady roll of the horse underneath actually making me feel more like a part of a mountain instead of just a tour.  But the best part of the trip was at the few gates which had to be opened and shut along the paths. The boy slid off of his horse, moved the gate, and then put one arm over the horse’s neck which was higher than his head, the boy took a few steps and threw his body up into the air, around, and smoothly onto the horse’s back. It was like watching a picnic sheet open on the wind and then settle. Pure grace.

More Horse stuff here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157604253304093/show/

Other general San Martin de los Andes photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157604307878369/show/

Vroom Vroom

I had a plan. A vague plan, but it was a plan. I was going to take the bus to San Martin De Los Andes, rent a car, and then drive around for a month. For me, that constitutes a plan. I put the plan in action. I contacted a bunch of car rental places in San Martin De Los Andes to find the best deal. Easy Car Rental gave me the best price for a month rental and so, to me, my plan was finalized. Two weeks before I was to leave for San Martin de los Andes I discovered through sheer chance in talking with a local that all the cars here are manual shift cars. I should have known this but I am so used to renting cars in America that I didn’t even think about it. I contacted Easy. Jorge, the owner, wrote me back and apologized that he did not have any automatic cars and neither did any other dealers in San Martin De Los Andes. He told me that Hertz and Avis in Buenos Aires did have a few. I contacted them. To rent those cars would cost me four times what the rental price of the manual car was and, besides, they informed they didn’t have any available for the timeframe I wanted.  So, I wrote Jorge back and asked if there was any other way to get to trails in Patagonia and he responded with:

Dear Jamie,
To tell you the truth, is really hard to get around the parks if you don’t have mobility.
There is no buses in the parks.
I think you have only 3 solutions:
1) Renting an automatic car.
2) Renting a manual car (and refresh your driving experience)
3) Get a boyfriend that can drive you around (Sorry, I was kidding).
If you want when you arrive, I can refresh your memory in manual shifts, (I teached my 3 kids to drive) and if you feel comfortable you rent it.
Sincerely,
Jorge.

He would teach me. He had taught all his kids to drive. I could take out the bus and he would teach me to drive the car and then, if I felt comfortable, I could rent it.  That sounded terrifying. Far scarier than coming to Argentina alone.

I tried twice to drive a shift stick. Attempt 1: My first boyfriend tried to teach me. He was fanatically neat about his car. He took it for oil changes EXACTLY when the odometer told him to. He noted the mileage in the sheet in the back of the owner’s manual for every oil change. He did not allow passengers with soda.  You can imagine how this story will turn out. We pulled into the empty Piggly Wiggly parking lot. I got behind the steering wheel. I made the car lurch back and forth several times. He suggested I not try again. I cried.

Attempt 2: My second boyfriend tried to teach me. This seems to be something boyfriends think they ought to do. He was far more patient and I actually did drive the car, badly, until at a stoplight on a hill at the mall I almost rolled into the guy behind me and I resigned all stick shift driving.

That was, oh god, more than 10 years ago now so when the owner of a rental car agency, who I had never met, who should be paranoid about the condition of his cars suggested that HE would teach me, I began to look into any other possible option. For example: a motorcycle, a moped, a four wheeler, horseback, a bicycle, hiring a driver, bribing a friend (turns out she can’t drive stick either), and finally, public transportation. For the trip I wanted, nothing worked or it was far too expensive. I considered his 'get a boyfriend to drive you' suggestion, but afterall, my doorman had a job. So, back to Jorge.

I watched a youtube video on how to drive  a stick shift…at least 10 times. I read three different websites on advice. I read <a href="http://auto.howstuffworks.com/transmission.htm">Howstuffworks </A> which actually helped a lot because I’m more of a trees than a forest person in the “can’t see the forest for the trees” debate. I did not have high hopes.

I told Jorge I would come to San Martin de los Andes and try. I borrowed the tent that I would, theoretically, use for my road trip. However, I accepted failure from the beginning. I knew, without a doubt, that I would not be renting a car. I would travel from town to town by bus and make the best of town life. End of story. I even started feeling sorry for myself ahead of time just to be proactive.

Then, I met Jorge.  His office was right in downtown San Martin De Los Andes. Now, when I say “downtown” what I really mean is “town” because there isn’t much of a town. No stop lights. Just lots of dangerous intersections where people play chicken to decide whose turn it is to go. I had asked Jorge to take me somewhere that there was less traffic and I imagined him taking me to some side street and me failing there in front of the world. But, no.  I met him at 5pm. He closed down his business for me. He drove me 15 minutes out of town to the airport because the last (and only) plane of the day had already left so the airport was basically empty. He was chatty and friendly the entire way out and made me completely relax.  When we got to the airport, we switched seats. He made me practice going through the gears with the car off (boyfriends, please take notes here) and without looking at the stick. He made me start the car and intentionally stall it. He made me start the car and get it to roll forward without using any gas at all. He said calmly things like, “Now do you know why the car just did that? You put it into fourth gear instead of into second.”  I am particularly talented at putting the car into fourth gear instead of second. Jorge was downright awesome.  I drove and stopped and started and drove around the parking lot. I practiced backing up. I practiced parallel parking. Eventually, I said I thought I was okay and Jorge had me drive us back toward town but then took me down another road so we could find a hill so I could try starting on a hill. He taught me to start using the emergency break up so that I wouldn’t roll.  By the time we got back to his office it was 6:30pm. He had spent an hour and a half of his time with me teaching me how to drive. We got out of the car and he said, “Now, you shouldn’t feel obligated to rent the car from me because I showed you how to drive it. If you want to think about it and then decide…” Crazy!

In America:
1. No company would want to rent me a car to begin with since I wasn’t used to driving it
2. No one working for a company would be willing to spend that amount of time with me teaching me to drive it
3. If any one of the above two WERE possible, I would have probably had to sign a thousand waivers and forms declaring I was responsible for any damage to the car, the employee, myself and any plagues that were the result of or might have maybe been the result of my lesson
4. Certainly if all of the first 3 were true, I would already have had to pay the company something.

Jorge was awesome. I gleefully rented the car.  He also told me important facts like the speed limit here doesn’t really mean anything. You can go as fast as you like and almost never get pulled over. Oh, and those pesky double yellow lines painted on the roads near curves or hills, those too are really just a suggestion but people pass during them all the time. Also, though the rule at an intersection is that the person to the right has the right of way, no one uses that and it’s just a matter of pulling into the intersection first.  Jorge also said, “I really like the United States, but there are so many rules. I just can have that many rules.”  His reasoning for why Americans drive automatics and Argentines drive manuals was because “Argentines like to have fun while they drive.”  Fun, stick shifts are fun. Sure. 

I am now a stick shift driver. After I paid Jorge and got into my new ride, I even managed not to stall the car while he stood there watching me back up and then pull away. Of course, I stalled it at the next intersection, but that’s not what matters.  What matters is that I can drive a stick shift, baby. Ain’t nothin’ holdin’ me back now (thanks to Jorge - and of course, I forced him to have his picture taken).