JamieSue

Because I could not stop for death

I like to visit cemeteries when I travel. A bit odd, I realize, but I find it interesting to see how different regions memorialize their dead. Usually, the smaller and poorer the community is, the more diverse the cemetery is. For example, in  a few small town Nevada cemeteries I saw: graves piled entirely with stones to keep animals out, a grave with a wheelbarrow at the head filled with stones amongst them a stone with the death information for a miner,  or a sheet of metal with information scratched into it. This diversity is what I expected to find in the cemeteries of Patagonia as well. But, surprisingly, I did not. With few exceptions, the graves of the poor were marked with a single cross while the graves of the rich used standard modern headstones and the graves of the very rich are small mausoleums. Some of the few unusual included a grave surrounded by upside down, half buried soda bottles; a metal heart punctured with nails to write the information of the deceased, and a mausoleum that was so 50’s styled, complete with a cursive metal nameplate, that I expected Donna Reed to come out the door at any moment.


Buenos Aires contains the very famous (and full of tourists) Recoleta Cemetary. It is massive space where the mausoleums are packed shoulder to shoulder with brick paved walks between the aisles. It truly feels like a small city, mostly populated by cats, and it is very easy to get lost within  the tall mausoleums. Some of them even have spiral stair cases leading into the ground below them (creepy!). There are many gorgeous stained glass windows in the various mausoleums and there are indeed many styles of mausoleum, of course all with the bounds of what is proper in the world of the extremely wealthy.  Recoleta Cemetery was interesting – but I certainly wouldn’t find any wheelbarrow headstones or carved wooden statues of gold miners.  All in all, the cemeteries did not match the variety of landscape and community I found in Argentina.

Where the road disappears

If I were going to do my drive around Patagonia again… Or, maybe: When I do my drive around Patagonia again, I would not visit official parks. Instead, I would rent a four wheel drive and look for tiny, random points on the map down tiny roads in the middle of nowhere. I think it would be fantastic to try to visit all of the lighthouses, or all of the ports (puertos), or a selection of non-tourist ranches (estancias).  The parks themselves don’t have many trails and often have too many restrictions.

Since I enjoyed Cabo Blanco so much, I tried to re-create the experience as I drove up the coast. The map had a mark called “Puerto Lobos” at the end of a long unpaved road. I followed the “road” for more than an hour. Twice I had to turn around because I realized I had lost the road and was driving through sparse weeds. Once, my wheels spun for a palm-sweating few seconds before finally catching in the sand again and getting me out of the bushes. There were no other cars and no houses and no trails or signs with instructions in broken English.  Eventually, the road passed by a roofless building with the words “Puerto Lobos” painted across in happy red and blue and then passed by a small two-grave cemetery. These were the only points of interest. Then, I reached the coast.

I abandoned my car on the non-road. The beach was a vast slope of tiny stones and it was completely unmarked. When I looked in either direction on the coast, I saw only more gray, sloping rock beach. No development. No cars. No people. I stepped on the slope and walk and slid my way down to the ocean. It was low tide and a vast bolder reef spread out for much further than I could possibly walk. The tops of the boulders were covered with tiny clams like they were chocolate cupcakes (mmm, cupcakes). Between the boulders, of course, existed my favorite world of tidal pools. Tiny glowing yellow crabs. Snails. Red and white seaweed. Slick green plants that looked like plastic. The tide was still going out so everything was moving. The wind was extremely strong and I had only been exploring for fifteen minutes when as I was stepping from one rock to another and a burst of wind set me off balance and made me overshoot my landing spot so that I stepped into cold water above my ankle. I cursed. I laughed. I explored. I made footsteps on the perfect beach. I learned that in the middle-of-nowhere Patagonia, it is best to find the edges of the middle-of-nowhere. The places that are not anyone’s destinations. Where the roads disappear and the winds pick up and there is no one there but you.

Other photos can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157605158733577/show/

Dark

More driving through the steppe emptiness of Patagonia. One morning I look at my hands and see that I have blisters and I think, how did I do that? These strange blisters arc across the edge of my palms. What did I do? I get into my car, put my hands on the wheel, and realize they line up perfectly with the arch of the steering wheel. I have blisters from driving and the backs of my hands are so tan that it seems the palms must belong to some other whiter person.

Driving through the steppe that is closer to the coast is still all about huge distances and nothing, but now the nothing is dotted with massive, slow moving oil derricks. These giant black arms rise and fall and churn continuously around me. They produce long lines of trucks which actually mind the speed limit and that I have to pass again and again, my small car being sucked into the vortex of crosswinds created by their bulk.  I pass a line of double-decker 18 wheelers packed with two levels of sheep. Their dark eyes peer out at me from between the slats.

There is a small smudge of blue gray clouds just over the horizon and I wonder if it might rain. I have never seen rain in the steppe. The clouds seem to be very, very low to the ground and I am driving straight toward them. An hour later, I am surprised when the clouds have suddenly merged with the ground and form a low, small mountainous range. Then, on the road far in front of me, I see an 18 wheeler which is floating just above the pavement. I watch as it approaches me and it too eventually merges with the road. The distance is so wide and flat that it is creating mirages with the light. Something I have only seen on the movies. At one point, the sky floods the road and I am amazed.

There are long flat slicks of sick blue water surrounded by brilliantly white shores of salt where small inland lakes have formed, evaporated, formed, evaporated for centuries.  They are white and untouched and ghosts of themselves.

A truck going opposite of me throws up a rock so large that when it hits my window I slam on the breaks and swerve for a second before regaining control. It takes a chip the size of my small fingernail out of my window. It is not the first chip. Driving down the gravel roads I have worn the paint to the metal on casings around the wheels. The car regularly bumps so much that the tail light falls from its suspended place on the back hatch so frequently I no longer bother replacing it and instead just let it dangle and swing from its wires. I think, while driving on the steppe again, that I have hit some pothole that has broken the alignment in the wheels. My upper arms ache from holding the car on the road because it is fighting me to swerve constantly to the right.  Then, when I park perpendicular to the road for a picture and I open my car door, it is literally ripped out of my hand by the wind. . A plastic bag is ripped from my backseat and into the wind and I have no hope of catching it. It is gone so quickly that within seconds the bright white floating plastic has disappeared from my view. I have trouble getting out of the car because of the strength of it. And I realize the alignment is fine. I am fighting the wind to stay on the road. It is blowing the side of my car like this constantly, insisting I get off of the pavement.

In the small towns that I pass through, there are pigs and horses wandering the streets. All the men older than 20 wear small circular hats that resemble a beret. They fill the gas stations with their smoke and conversations as they crowd into the tables near the television. For most people in these towns, the gas station is the only place they have to watch t.v.  And, of course, they’re usually watching soccer.  I pass women with groups of children standing on the road in what appears to be the middle of nowhere. They are hitchhiking. Few people have cars and women often hitch their way for jobs in town.

For the first time during my trip, I choose to drive five hours in darkness. There’s nothing to see anyway since I am driving through the steppe. And then I learn about driving in the dark here. It is entirely dark. This is the appropriate way to experience the steppe. To experience a void. My car beams are on High and they hit nothing. Absolutely nothing. There are the white and yellow lines of the road and beyond it absolute blackness. I roll down my windows. I stop and get out of my car. The stars are silent. The wind still rushes. And around me there is an absolute void. It makes my heart rush and my palms sweat. I discover that the best way to see the steppe is not to see it, but to sense it opening around you. My animal instincts say I should not be in a place that is a dark and without cover.

 

Get in the bloody water, baby sea lions!

Peninsula Valdes is a natural reserve that is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. What does this mean? Mainly – restriction, restriction, restriction. And, it also means guaranteed amazing animals. I camp in the “town” inside the park, though the campground is officially closed for the season, the gate is still open and the bathrooms have running water. Driving through the campsites I discover why it remains open – there are full year residents who live in tin shanties or in tiny travel trailers with added tin or plywood rooms and direct TV satellites outside. In the dawn when I get up to wash and start the hour plus drive to where the animals actually are, the other residents are rising and washing in the sinks to walk the few blocks to town where they work in restaurants, whale watching tour operations, or snack kiosks.

From town, it is still an hour plus drive along gravel roads to a site for watching the animals – there are several sites – all an hour or more apart. The place is huge - and though it is a reserve, there are estancias (ranches) where farm animals graze. Driving in the morning means startling herds of sheep from their gray huddled groups.

Each of the park lookouts is manned by a small adobe park ranger building, a man with a walkie talkie, and perhaps a small restaurant selling Orca t-shirts and hot chocolate. The beach is roped off. The ocean is roped off. The hills. The fields. Everything is roped off and there were no trails of any significance. This, you can guess, pisses me off.

However, the animals are quite extraordinary. The rope stops at the edge of the beach and beyond it are several large sea lion colonies. The noise! They growl. They roar. They sounded like goats. Like bears. Like sheep.  Like Chewbacca. The range is phenomenal. In the mornings, they are active and they climbed from tidal pool to tidal pool, shoving their bodies awkwardly into the water where they become grace and speed. The babies call to their mothers from across the reef and the mother calls back and crawls toward them, then the babies call, and she calls, and more crawling and repeat until they find each other and waddle together. In the afternoons, the sea lions lay in a group, the young ones waddling over the sleeping adults until a male snaps at them and shews them away. The babies crawl over their mothers and the mothers roll dutifully over to expose their teats to the babies. I watch this from behind the rope. I watch with a giant set of binoculars attached to a pole. I watch through my camera. And I grow attached.  Then the Orcas (“killer whales”) come.

That’s when I meet Tony. He has been watching the sea lions and Orcas for several days already from this lookout.  With the underwater reefs the beach drops off quite rapidly and in this area people will often witness an Orca attack where the Orca is chasing a sea lion in the water and comes right up on to the beach to snag him. People are waiting to see this. To catch it on film. Tony has been waiting for days and he has seen one whale beach briefly in the distance.

“I don’t think I really want to see the Orca catch a sea lion,” I say.

“I’m not usually the sort to want to see some animal get it either, but you just wait – as soon as you see an  Orca coming closer to the beach you’re going to start thinking, ‘get in the bloody water baby sea lions!’” Tony says.

We chat and wait. Tony is a Brit who has been traveling for the last 9 years. He was a programmer. With a good job. And a house. And, when he was 32, he quit it all and started traveling. Sound familiar? Now, Tony has sold his house and he teaches scuba diving when he needs money or he works a night job in a ski town so he can snowboard during the day. I keep pressing him for regrets, but he would admit to none.

The whales come closer. They are amazing. There are five of them. Tony knows all of their names by their markings. Their giant fins move through the water so close to the shore that it seems impossible for them to be real. Until I see the reef the  next morning when the tide is low, I don’t understand how the Orcas could be so close. In my South Carolina mind, a gently sloping sand beach continued to be a gently sloping sand beach all the way into the middle of the ocean. I can’t comprehend that just under the water there are channels of deeper water cut into the reef (two shots below with water and reef are of the same spot on the beach). The Orcas patrol the beach in slow, patient groups. They come up to the surface in beautiful arching forms to spray from their blow holes.  As they come closer to the shore, my heart rate increases, my palms sweat, and I feel tense. I had spent all day watching the sea lions. I do not want to see any of them get eaten – amazing Orca on the beach or no.

“I’m nervous.” I say.

“See. When the Orcas come you just can’t help it,” Tony says.

“I don’t think you were right about the Orcas and me. My heart is racing. I don’t want to see any sea lions get eaten.”

Tony looks at me. “My heart is racing too but it’s because I think the Orca might get one.  You’re a woman. You can never tell how women will react to anything,” he says and he laughs. He’s only teasing. I immediately don’t want the animals eaten. He immediately does – and he’s a real granola type. “It’s natural. It’s the hunt,” he says. I nod, but I don’t get it. I don’t get boys. Even with my man hat on. Happily, I win and the Orcas stay patrolling the water.

On the other end of the beach, a British film crew spends the day laying in the sand behind a large log. They are waiting for an Orca attack also and filming the sea lions. I am jealous and frustrated because I want to hike along the beach, not be cooped up behind a rope. Tourist vans arrive sporadically throughout the day. They are painted with giant whales and sea lions with big weeping eyes. They pull into the parking lot and unload their group which is always the same: the old couple dressed in windbreakers, khakis, and leather shoes. The middle aged couple with the man who wears too much cologne, combs his hair before leaving the van and the woman in the fancy sweater and big hoop earrings. The group of young friends with their backpacks, ipods, and knit bright colored Peru hats. They stay for twenty minutes at maximum before they disappear without having seen anything. At one point, I turn around to see the man in the photo below.  With loud crunching noises, he has climbed on to a bush so he can get just a slightly better view – one head taller than the fellow next to him. The bush crunches and cracks under him. He crushes years of slow growth. And, my frustration with the restrictive ropes is resolved. I am glad the ropes are there. I am not glad the people are.

At other look out points, there are massive seals – the scale is lost in the photos but you can see in the drawing their bodies compared to a van. They do not amble around playfully like the sea lions. The seals are like a tube filled with blubber and every movement on land is a massive exertion. I watch for an hour as two of the largest challenge each other by forcing their bodies upright so that they are propped against each other, under belly to under belly, trying to push the other over. They remind me of weeble wobbles.   Armadillos wander up to me while I watch the beach. They sniff around for food and totter off when I get close. I used to snicker at all the Europeans who take dozens of pictures of the squirrels in central park. That’s fine. Argentines, go ahead and snicker, but y’all have cool pests.

I plan to stay at Peninsula Valdes for five days but I only stay for three. My last day there the weather becomes colder. I wear: a pink tank top. A green tank top. My grey Creaturesinmyhead.com shirt. A black shirt. A long sleeved green shirt. My gray flannel. My blue scarf which still smells like the perfume I wore in NYC. My man hat. A pair of sweat pants with jeans over top. Two pairs of socks and hiking boots. I am still cold. I sleep in these clothes and there is a storm. I wake up to a small puddle of water on my sleeping back and the sound of hail on the tent. The wind is so strong that I am the only thing holding the tent down and it blows from side to side around me. I can see my breath. I pack it all up and leave before dawn, turning on the heater in the car with a relish I have never known.

Tony is the first person I’ve spoken to in weeks. We had dinners together and talked for hours watching the animals. He took amazing pictures of the Orcas that I would love to have copies of but I did not get his last name. I did not ask for his email address. I left early in the morning unexpectedly without saying goodbye though he camped in the same campground as I did. Early on when we were talking he told me he was leaving in a few days to go back to England. His Dad has cancer and it has gotten to the worst stage. They’ve stopped the chemo. There is nothing they can do. I wanted to say something wise to him. To put my hand on his shoulder and say something from my own experience. To tell him something that would help. But, there’s nothing that helps. So, I just listened. And then snuck away quietly without getting his email. I don’t want to know what happens. Not this time.

The other photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamiesuec/sets/72157605072957879/show/with/2494102243/