Semester in the South

City Observations

2010-07-05T17:34:00.001-07:00

Running and walking are terrific ways to get to know a place. The ground-level approach allows for the assimilation of sights and sounds into one’s impression of a city or region. I’ve had a few unique running-based experiences these past two or so weeks that stood out and I thought I'd share two of them.

Tucumán, Argentina. Tucumán, located in northwestern Argentina, is one of the country’s more forlorn provinces. Sure, the statistics will tell you as much — per capita GDP, unemployment, blah, blah, blah. But so does an experience I had while running the perimeter of the central park of the province’s eponymous capital.

Runners, at least the ones I know, are renowned for peeing in public places — after all, nature is not a call one lets go unanswered. To their credit, however, they generally take pride in discreetness. But the runners from Tucumán, or at least one runner from Tucumán, are in an entirely different league when it comes to audacity for public urination.

While running one evening, another male runner in front of me abruptly stopped, directed himself towards a tree adjacent the sidewalk, dropped trow, lost some water weight, and returned to his workout without so much a glance at the passing rush-hour traffic on one of the heaviest used thoroughfares in Argentina’s fifth biggest city. From the reaction, or lack thereof, of perambulating passers-by, using public parks as a very public toilet is just as normal as the odor that wafts from Tucumán’s public waterways (perhaps not unrelated), the litter on the street, or the countless poor who traverse the city in horse-drawn carts scavenging for recyclables.

Fiambalá, Argentina. Fiambalá is ground zero for organizing this little mountain-measuring excursion into the mountains. It’s a modest pueblito at “the end of the world,” as its residents like to say. It feels the part. Surrounded by desert and near-constantly assailed by howling, sand-laden winds, Fiambalá nonetheless manages to take advantage of its location.

There are two attractions: hot springs and the Andean cordillera. I was there for the latter, but one night I ventured on a run to the former. After managing just a few kilometers beyond the town limits I was stopped in my tracks by the visually arresting clarity of the night sky. When in this part of the world last (two years ago) I made a similar observation in my journal — it is rather hard not to notice. Neither has this escaped the attention of the international astronomical community, which has sited the highest density of high-performance telescopes in the world in the Chilean-Argentinean altiplano region which Fiambalá abuts.

Looking into the sky, I practically felt my own eyes were telescopes. It was all there. The celestial dust of galaxy smeared from horizon to horizon in one shimmering longitudinal stripe, a fallow-yellow crescent moon, and a twinkling firmament stars everywhere else. When the night sky is this clear, this unadulterated, it's the best show there is.

As fortune had it, the night sky was not the only entertainment on the evening. After reaching the hot springs I took a break to enjoy the lesser twinkling cluster of lights of Fiambalá in the valley below, and of course the greater twinkling mass of lights above. That's when the guardrails on the side of the road started shaking. Earthquake!

Aftershocks still echo in this part of the Andes from the catastrophic 8.8 Chilean earthquake of late February. Whether this comparatively quaint 5.3 qualifies as such I am unsure, but it was a fun ride and an impressive second act to the sublime display of natural beauty and power to which I was fortunate to bear witness. Fiambalá may seem to be the end of the human world, but it is also one of the final, increasingly scarce frontiers to the truly natural world.

What's Going On

2010-07-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

Another post for The Yale Globalist.

This is the obligatory, "who am I, what am I doing, and where am I doing it" post. I’ll attack it sequentially. The first is easy. I’m a rising junior in Branford who enjoys studying public policy. But that doesn’t mean I’m without “avocational academic interests.” In fact, this summer is all about avocational academic interests — specifically, a field of geophysics called geodesy (study of measurement of the earth), and more specifically, a field of geodesy called hypsometry (study of altitude).

In general, hypsometry is an antiquated field of study, if one can even call it a field of study in the first place. Remote sensing has done to altitude-measuring mountaineering expeditions what video did to the radio star. But there are exceptions here and there. Mountains that indicate tectonic change, for instance, are of particular interest to geologists, and mountains that represent superlatives, such as Everest, capture the public’s attention. Both require a degree of precision that remote sensing cannot offer.

The summer project that brings me to South America falls more into the latter category; I am working with a mountain of superlatives. Ojos del Salado is the second highest mountain in the world outside the Central Asia cordillera and the highest volcano in the world. It is also in an extremely remote region of the world — the northern Argentine-Chilean border — and has been climbed by very few people and been measured by even less. I am in South America to try to measure it.

There is a primary and secondary goal. Primary: Ojos del Salado has two summits of approximately equal altitude and no one knows which is taller. So, using rather precise GPS units (precision<1 cm) that are worth about as much as I am, myself and my climbing partner will try to get to the top of both of Ojos’ summits and record data that can definitively determine the “true”summit.

Secondary: Using altitude data from Ojos’ “true” summit, we’ll compare and corroborate it with data from Aconcagua and Monte Pissis, ostensibly the highest and third highest mountains on the continent, respectively. Through the twentieth century and up until the advent of the GPS, there was a protracted kerfuffle among mountaineers and geodesists concerning the order of the three highest peaks of South America. While that debate has effectively been settled (the accepted order, from first to third, is Aconcagua, Ojos del Salado, and Monte Pissis) it doesn’t hurt to throw additional data of nearly incontrovertible quality at the matter.

Obviously, though, there are a lot of things that can go wrong with this whole endeavor (for one, the weather’s awful — it’s winter in the Southern Hemisphere). And in fact, something already has gone quite wrong: a major bureaucratic obstacle from the Argentine Federal Police that has set everything back four weeks. So if you see my posts from locations that are not northwestern Argentina, it’s because I’m piddling around, killing time, and visiting friends before getting back to work. Fortunately, there are worse parts of the world to be “stuck” in!

The Beautiful Game

2010-06-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

I'm back in South America and I'm back to blogging. This time not for me, but for The Yale Globalist, a campus magazine. But nonetheless I thought I'd throw a few of my posts up here before they get cut down to size and style...

Hard as it may be to believe, when I found myself watching Argentina’s World Cup squad battle Nigeria's on a flickery TV screen 200 km away from the closest permanent human settlement, 4,000 meters/13,000 feet above sea level, and ensconced between towering snow-capped Andean volcanoes that rank as the highest in the world, it was part of my summer research. Seriously! Admittedly, to fully explain the latter will take a while, so for now I will focus on the former — Argentina, the World Cup, and association football.

Argentina won, 1-0. Argentina also deserved to win. They played better. To those not fully initiated in the ways of the world’s sport (which included me until two years ago) these last two sentences might seem like an odd, redundant thing to say: Of course the team with more goals deserves to win, that’s why you keep track of them in the first place! In football, however, this is not necessarily so.

Football is the most arts-like of sports. Quality of play is adjudicated as much, if not more, by the gut than by the scoreline. After watching a match, deep down, you know which was the better team, regardless of how many goals they scored. How this happens, goodness knows. The "gut" is an incredible organ. But it happens, and at a football match's conclusion you walk away with closure and an opinion. Uniquely, though, relative to other sports, there is a dearth of statistics to confirm and substantiate what your gut clearly knows to be.

Of course, there are goals — a rather important statistic indeed — but they come sparingly in football. So while goals often correspond to the quality of play and indicate the truly superior team, surprisingly frequently they do not. There are ties. Or a team, utterly dominated for 89 of a match's 90 minutes, benefits from a singular error and wins 1-0. Usually in other sports to analyze these sorts of phenomena, onlookers would cite a battery of statistics to show just how "lucky" the 1-0 winner was, or to indicate the "better" of two tied teams. But try as the Nate Silvers of the world might, it is exceedingly difficult to condense a football match into a pithy few meaningful numbers. (Not coincidentally, in fantasy sports — statistics-driven online sports competitions — football has all the popularity of spinach.)

The sport’s resistance to statistical simplification stems from its fluid nature. The clock runs continuously, even through injuries, and the ball is in motion for almost all that time. Thus, football cannot be conveniently compartmentalized into possession, as with basketball, or individual plays, as with baseball or American football. So while you can often partly determine the worth of strikers (designated offensive players) by their goal tallies, how can you do so for defensive midfielders or full-backs or even teams as a whole? Empirically — statistically — you cannot.

As such, in the absence of statistics, football aficionados are left to appraise the on-field product as Roger Ebert does movies or Robert Parker does wine. Football journalists, for example, become more critics than dispassionate reciters of numerical fact. To those accustomed to baseball or basketball recaps — essentially an obligatory litany of statistics rendered readable by an occasional anecdote — the football recaps in The Guardian or the Mirror might seem airy and ungrounded, but it’s difficult to write a grounded 500 words when spectation yields only ineffable “feels” of offensive or defensive energy and changes in momentum.

The lexicon of this journalistic genre is telling. Andrés Iniesta and Xavi Hernández, the supremely talented Spanish national team midfielders, seem to be called “maestros” more often than their legal names. Ingenious passes are “inspired.” Football itself is “the beautiful game.” Though inconspicuous and largely unintentional, the sport’s vocabulary, delicate in its effort to describe the constant stream of on-field creativity that makes football football, betrays the sport’s art-like aspect.

Of course sports fans the world over still like a good old number or two. Enter: player ratings, an epitomizing example of football’s subjectivity, of trying to quantify the unquantifiable. Ebert gives movies up to four stars; Parker gives wines a number between 50 and 100; football journalists give all 22 players a 1-10 rating after their matches for passing creativity, work ethic, and finishing ability. It's essentially a hybrid between a box score and a critical review.

All told, football inspires an almost unsports-like appreciation of the sport. A loyalty exists to the beauty of the game — to the art of the game — that supersedes club and even national identity. Which leads me back to my rather unusual World Cup-viewing location.

I watched Argentina’s World Cup match at Las Grutas, a snowbound Argentinean national police outpost sited on a desolate mountain pass leading to Chile and the Pacific, while acclimatizing for an alpine science expedition. Watching the match with me were Domingo and Juan, the caretakers of Las Grutas’ three weather-worn concrete Quonset huts.

Domingo and Juan are Argentines, of course. So I floated a hypothetical their way. What if Argentina were not to be victorious this World Cup? Who, then, would you prefer to win?

They exchanged a guilty look, understandable considering their answer. Brazil.

Blasphemy! Argentina and Brazil, of course, are like Lex Luthor and Clark Kent or chocolate and vanilla: rivals of the highest order. But nonetheless their answer rings honestly. First, there is South American fraternity; a sort of epiphenomenal pride in having one of the continent’s own claim a world’s prize. But more significantly their admission speaks to a fidelity to football as a sport.

In the estimation of the Argentines, the Brazilian samba superstars of 2010 play brilliantly and beautifully. That even an Argentine can admit this of their greatest foe — of the country, fittingly, that first gave the world the joga bonito style in the ’50s — is proof positive that football is the beautiful game and, partly by consequence, the world’s game.

Buffalo, Chile

2009-08-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

My trip to the Islas Juan Fernández began and ended in the port Chilean city of Valparaíso (pictured). Situated on the coast a mere 120 kilometers/75 miles from Santiago, Valparaíso (and its sister city of Viña del Mar) seems to have shed what could have easily been a little-brother, port-city-for-Santiago identity. (Being defined in relation to another city — e.g., Tianjin, China's sixth largest metropolitan area in its own right, is usually related as "Beijing's port city" — is an unfortunate fate for any city.) In fact, I submit that Valparaíso has not only held its own but even surpassed Santiago, at least in appeal to travelers.

(Photo credit: TripAdvisor.com.)

Santiago is bland, smogy, sprawly, and car-centric. Valparaíso is the antithesis to each of those characteristics and much the better for it. Staking its beginnings as a sea port — sailors would call it Little San Francisco — Valparaíso's fortunes as Chile's entrepôt historically waxed and waned with global trade. While the city has since diversified, a strong connection to its roots remains. Walking the streets closest to the seawall and still-active port, a stevedoring, On the Waterfront ethos persists. The sidewalks and shop façades are polished to dark, gritty shades of brown and black by generations of use and a maritime climate of rain and drizzle (Valparaíso's latitude, 33°, about the same as Los Angeles's, belies a more temperate range of temperatures). On the streets, still bustling with pedestrians and vehicles alike, people make eye contact and smile, but there's a conservative, blue-collar nature to interaction and appearance. Flamboyance is not to be found.

But as I said, Valparaíso has also expanded beyond its historic livelihood and culture, and this is abundantly evident when you move beyond the hard-scrabble sea-level streets. The city is laid across an amphitheater of hills all focusing towards the half-moon bay that doubles as its port (pictured). Hilly urban landscapes always seem to engender charm and character — monotony of cityscape, by topographic fact, cannot exist.

Even the access points to the hills are charming and characterful. For many hill-based neighborhoods, the quickest and certainly most effortless mode of transport is funicular. I wasn't familiar with the word until visiting Valparaíso, but funiculars are anachronistic contraptions perhaps best described as elevators on rails. They transport the pedestrian commuter from the bottom of a steep incline or cliff face to the top, saving the passenger from a sweaty, lactic acid-inducing climb at the expense of pocket change.

(Pictured: Valparaíso boasts of 15 funiculars, the first constructed in 1883. The rickety, weathered wooden superstructure and delicate click-click-click of ascension make you wonder if anything has changed since then. As another blogger writes, "somehow [funiculars] get you there; as with the making of sausage, you'll enjoy the product more if you don't ask too many questions about how it's done." Photo credit: Samuelle Barron.)

Once above, you enter a wonderful world of serpentine streets and alleyways, houses teetering on precipices just barely staying on gravity's good side, and walls that look back at you (all pictured below). Walking along the winding cobblestone streets, aromas waft out of cheerful cafés and restaurants tucked in the most inconceivable nooks and clotheslined garments above you flap in the breeze. Almost all residents get around by their own two feet — there's simply not enough space for vehicles and expansive streets — and houses are haphazardly stacked on top of or against each other creating a most curious smorgasbord of architecture replete with non-ninety degree angles. The city has ensured that many of the most scenic vistas are not consumed by private real estate but instead, through a handful of twisty, airy public promenades, belong to all, allowing you to take in the view of the port below and the polychromatic medley of houses on the next hill over. In short, the hills overlooking Valparaíso's port combine for a lovely if seemingly unintentional aesthetic.

Per the downright weird title of this post, I relate this juxtaposition of hillside bohemia and blue-collar heritage to Buffalo. Buffalo, New York. Such an unlikely comparison is a compliment to Buffalo, and it is an unlikely comparison. I've never visited Buffalo, but I have read this New York magazine article subtitled "What could possibly make someone want to leave New York and move to Buffalo?" The answer: Cheap living and increasingly high quality of life. Buffalo is experiencing a renaissance partly fueled by hipsters, young professionals, and a thriving artistic scene — a phenomenon occurring to differing degrees in a handful of rust-belt cities. I admit Buffalo is no Valparaíso but there seem to be parallels in the cities' histories, and Valparaíso certainly gives faded urbanity the world over, Buffalo included, a model for what can be.

(Pictured: "A wonderful world of serpentine streets and alleyways.")

(Pictured: "Houses teetering on precipices just barely staying on gravity's good side." Photo credit: Bluemoon Interactive.)

(Pictured: "Walls that look back at you.")

(Pictured: Despite Santiago's capital status, the National Congress convenes in Valparaíso in this building. Its architecture is almost as brutal as the regime of the man who had it built, Augusto Pinochet. Photo credit: Kelsey Gilmore.)

(Pictured: The Chilean armada, homeported in Valparaíso.)

(Pictured: Zooming in recommended for this photo. Photo credit: Geoff Hill.)

Despite the above written and photographic paean to Valparaíso's charm and character, I was not living in the city. Instead, I was residing in Viña del Mar, its glitzier, ritzier, more superficial sister city (they are connected by a convenient new light-rail line). I had met one Valentina Contreras (pictured), a PhD psychology candidate at a Valparaíso university, while in Mendoza, Argentina. We kept in touch through the intervening months and were now sharing evening meals of avocado, goat cheese, and fresh bread over games of cards in her Viña del Mar flat, which provided a wonderful launching and receiving point for each day's exploration.

If Valparaíso is Little San Francisco, Viña del Mar is Little Monaco. White sand beaches greet incoming ocean swells and wealthy, retired couples stroll the beachside esplanade as they take a break from rolling the dice at the city's posh casino. Wealth and Viña go hand in hand, but there is also a lot of middle-class and student housing — overflow for Valparaíso. As an element of "Valparaíso overflow" I can fully attest that Viña del Mar did a swell job of taking me in and ensured that my experience Chile's premier set of sister cities was a good one.

Some closing shots of the Valparaíso/Viña experience:

(Pictured: This castle gracing Viña's coast has historical significance, but I neglected to scribble in my notes what.)

(Pictured: I made acquaintance with this globetrotting Québécois family at the hostel in Buenos Aires. So imagine my surprise when, two months later, we stumbled upon each other in the Valparaíso bus terminal! Photo credit: The Rousseau family.)

Isla Robinson Crusoe

2009-07-06T18:21:00.000-07:00

Part three of a three-part series about the islands and my time there, if a bit belated.

This blog has frequently noted how the pace of life is different in South America. Sneaking peeks at one's watch is less frequent and to-do lists are less likely to be found among the detritus of a cluttered desk — indeed, the per capita occurrence of cluttered desks is probably markedly less in South America than in the U.S.

At this point I will not venture to valorize, but just point out that this is different and there are undeniable benefits and drawbacks to the South American style. The morning of my last day on Isla Robinson Crusoe brought with it a perfect example, at least to the productivity-paradigmed American mind, of a drawback of the cavalier approach to life down here.

I had spent my time on the island based out of a wonderfully quaint hostería/B&B just off Juan Fernández's central plaza with my newfound companions from the Rancagua. Over our penultimate dinner, we plotted to embark on a hike to the wild reaches of the ecologically diverse, topographically spectacular island that we had the good fortune to be on. Constituent to our plan was hiring a lobster fisherman to take us to the far western extreme of island (see map) — an hour-long boat ride for us and a pit stop en route to the lobster grounds for him — thus allowing us to take our merry time hiking the 14 kilometers back to town. We made the necessary arrangements: a 6 a.m. departure, US$80 to be split among us. The only apparent obstacle remaining, formidable as it might be, was waking up the next morning.

(Photo credit: Moon travel guides.)

We largely triumphed. One by one, with disheveled hair, rime-rimmed eyes, and sleep-impaired mental faculties, we stumbled out of our respective rooms and down to the municipal dock. Despite our appearance, though, we were ready. As you may have surmised from the lede of this entry, however, our lobsterman friend was not.

(Photo: Felipe contending with early o'clock. Photo credit: Andrea Pescosolido.)

We waited. Occasionally one of us would run back to the B&B to trade an item out of his backpack, or we'd alternate between restlessly paging through a book, inattentively gazing out to sea, and strolling back and forth (pictured), but generally a feeling of annoyance predominated — annoyance seasoned with impatient fidgeting. We had become very excited talking about this hike the previous night, and just like that, with a variable we had not counted on variating, all was undone. As minutes wore by and lingering hope beget full-bore frustration, we began to acknowledge our lobsterman's truancy as a matter of fact.

(Photo credit: Andrea Pescosolido.)

What a let-down. We started to consider alternative agendas for our day, but they all felt lacking and anticlimactic. As Ambrose Bierce said, happiness is the "agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." Sage words from a sagacious satirist, but in this instance the perverse pleasure of schadenfreude had been inverted. We were experiencing the "disagreeable sensation arising from contemplating the gratification of another" activity — an activity that had been all too close, at least in our minds, to reality.

Then, at 7:30 a.m., an hour and a half tardy, our lobsterman showed. The excitement lasted only a few minutes, unfortunately. Instead of strolling onto the dock with a sea-faring bluster and fuel for the day's journey, he came to negotiate: the price had doubled; US$160 to be split amongst us. Needless to say we were outraged.

In retrospect this is interesting for two reasons. First, paying US$160 for a water taxi in Sitka would barely get you out of the harbor. It's still an incredibly cheap fare. But all of us standing on that dock had switched to the inevitable, perhaps parsimonious, mentality of South America, one where we'd scoff at someone trying to sell us a US$0.35 empanada because we knew if we'd nose around enough one could be had for US$0.25.

Second, it's amazing, even writing this over a year from the fact, that he made nary a mention of his tardiness; the thought simply did not occur to him. We had hauled our bodies out of bed to greet the lovely smile of dawn as it peered over the horizon, my friends even accomplishing the feat at the tail end of an alcoholic daze from the previous night, and the man who had insisted on such an early time of departure was not only AWOL for an hour and half, but so were his excuses.

I suspect that the real explanation lies in the pockets of chronological blurriness that seem to encompass every small town in the world. In Haines, Alaska, a town quite close to my heart, there is "time time" and there is "Haines time." Haines time is "time time" minus 15 minutes to a half hour, depending on the day of the week. When trying to organize ultimate games there, I'd always fret when no one would show on a Sunday afternoon five or ten minutes after the theoretical start of a pick-up game, yet 45 minutes later we'd have a rollicking game of five-on-five complete with subs and spectators. Juan Fernández is fivefold smaller than Haines, ergo 15-30 minutes multiplied by five is — voilà! — 75-150 minutes. Our guy was right on time. It's just that we had not set our watches for IRCST — Isla Robinson Crusoe Standard Time.

Now that our water taxi had anted past what our collective inner miser was willing to pay, our hand was forced. We needed to find an alternate pursuit for the day. We were crestfallen but nonetheless decided to venture out on the trail anyway, even if we likely would not have time to reach the airfield and the far end of the island. By 9:30 we were hiking.

I have only seen snippets of the BBC's Planet Earth, but the parts I have seen lived up to the hype in every way. The cinematography captured the magic of nature in way you just cannot believe, and David Attenborough's engaging, congenial narration adds much to the images (for some reason a British accent adds a wonderful little something to nature documentaries that no degree of celebrity narration or gravely-voiced gravitas can touch). But I cannot help but think that the documentary series is incomplete without a mention of Isla Robinson Crusoe. The island is really one of the most remarkable places I have ever seen.

(Photo: Sir David and a friend. Photo credit: The Guardian.)

It is as if Gaia came down and painted swaths of the island as different habitats, each zone of ecosystem emanating in concentric rings from the town, and each zone of ecosystem becoming increasingly desiccated and desertified. Divine intervention or not, in a matter of 15 kilometers the island transforms from a temperate rainforest that, in all honesty, might have my beloved Tongass outdone for moisture per square meter, to a barren skeleton of volcanic terrain in which not even the most hardy plant can interrupt the bleak yellow of sun-scorched earth.

In the stead of Mr. Attenborough, allow me to narrate the journey.

We begin with the rugged, wind-worn coast, houses pixelated along the rocky beach like a Georges Seurat painting. So often the clouds that accompany the wind make for a ceiling of visibility that cloaks and conceals the mysterious, mountainous interior of the island. These clouds create island's next ecosystem, a cloud forest. As if straight from China, a continuum of moisture spans the sky to earth, from water-laden wisps of mist to a multitude of droplets suspended by the green grace of ferns. Just about the only actor missing from the scene would have been a bamboo-chomping panda.

(Photo: Isla Robinson Crusoe cloud forest, minus panda. Photo credit: leonardo71.)

It comes as no surprise, then, that the thick, multi-layered canopy of the forest affords no vista for the humble hiker. The same was true for Alexander Selkirk, the real-life castaway who spent four years marooned on Isla Robinson Crusoe and who served as the basis for Daniel Defoe's famous novel. As legend has it, he made a daily trek from his cave at sea level through the cloud forests to ridgeline, a 540 meter/1,770 foot climb, to gain vantage of the surrounding seas and perhaps — hopefully — a topsail or mast to which he could signal with the smoke from a ready-made bonfire. It is no wonder Selkirk chose the col he did (now named Mirador Selkirk, or the Selkirk Lookout). The view from the ridge was breathtaking.

(Photo: The ridge that leads to Cerro El Yunque, the island's highest point, as seen from Mirador Selkirk. As you can see, when not socked in, the view is incredible. Photo credit: Gerhard Hüdepohl.)

After Mirador Selkirk, vegetation thinned and the landscape gradually turned from a rich green to a flaxen yellow. Mirroring this botanic transformation was a meteorological transformation: As the vegetation disappeared on the ground, so did the clouds in the sky above. I cannot for the life me figure out why this is. The entire island looks a great white shark's lower jaw, with mountains roaring right out of the ocean. And it's not as if certain mountains have cloud- and moisture-magnetizing properties and certain mountains do not. So, a topographical explanation seems unlikely given that the whole island is more or less topographically constant.

(Photo: Looking down the peninsula of the island as the land turns from a dynamic green to a lonely beige.)

I suppose it's just one of the island's many mysteries. As our party descended down switchbacks from the rainforest and moved farther out the peninsula along steep slopes covered in long grazing grasses, each of us began to fatigue a little and regressed to our most comfortable pace. Eventually we lost sight of one another as the gnarly topography prevented most any direct viewline up and down the peninsula. After a few more hours of walking, despite not being able to see my progress towards the tip of the peninsula, I developed a hunch that I was almost there. I abandoned my backpack, took a water bottle in one hand and my camera in the other, switched from sandals to tennis shoes, and ran with a weird dogged determination to make it to the tip of the island. Finally, after a few more kilometers I came over one last bluff and the black asphalt of the airstrip spread out below me with its coterie of shacks and buildings (pictured). At this point, the ground was cracked open by the heat and entirely bereft of any plants. It could've doubled for the Puna if not for the tarmac and the soothing oceanic indigo surrounding me on three sides.

I made a quick turnaround. Having walked and jogged to the tip of the island for purposes more of personal satisfaction than sightseeing, time was too far into the afternoon for my liking. (The ship was departing that evening and I wanted to return to town to get on board.) As I started back, despite my intentions for a swift return trip, my curiosity was piqued by a low, subwoofer-esque rumble coming from below the cliffs on the side of the trail. Well, I thought, I wasn't in that much of a hurry.

A little farther back the trail the cliffs yielded to a steep scree slope and I skied down towards the provenance of these odd sounds, cutting haphazard turns in the drifts of pumice. Once at the bottom the origin of the sounds was revealed: hundreds and hundreds of fur seals sprawled across the rocks sounding like an a capella concert gone dreadfully wrong. There was rusted, chain-link fence with signs warning against intrusive approach, so I stopped at the perimeter and snapped a quick video.

Seals are grouchy, awkward creatures to watch out of water and showed little regard for my presence. This is a good sign considering this species' history. The Juan Fernández Fur Seal, now endemic to the islands, was nearly hunted to extinction in the early twentieth century and for a time the species was thought to be extinct until a small population was rediscovered in the Islas Juan Fernández. Now protected, their population has rebounded to over 10,000 but the seals are still considered vulnerable due to their small range and consequent genetic bottleneck.

I was very much glad I took the unplanned detour, and reinvigorated by the fur seal snorts and guffaws I made good time back the trail until coming across my cached backpack. With a few extra pounds on my back, I again slowed down to a trot and pushed up and over Mirador Selkirk and back to the town before 8 in the evening, catching up with other members of the group along the way.

(Photo: Feral goats, an environmental menace to the islands since the days of Alexander Selkirk, ravage native vegetation and contribute to soil erosion problems. In an effort to extirpate the population on the islands, Chilean park officials have constructed several goat-proof fences across the island's harsh contours, splitting the goats into distinct populations, which then allows for hunters to eliminate them quadrant by quadrant. So far, however, the scheme has not worked.)

(Photo: While I took in the view at Mirador Selkirk, 540 meters above sea level, the most curious thing happened: this intrepid little canine companion emerged from the dense foliage and followed me all the way to the tip of the island and back, disappearing just as abruptly once we got within a kilometer of Juan Fernández. I had no food to offer as incentive, he apparently was just in the mood for some 28 kilometers of exercise. I definitely enjoyed his faithful company.)

After a quick shower and food I decided to burn a few hours at the island's only Internet café before the Rancagua's departure, now delayed until midnight. En route I encountered two suited, carefully coiffed, name-tagged young men: Mormon missionaries, or Elders as they're called within the church. I can't say I was surprised. It seems that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, when deciding where to allocate their agents of spiritual persuasion, disproportionately target isolated lands and islands. The 10 countries with the highest per capita prevalence of Latter-Day Saints are Tonga, Samoa, American Samoa, Niue, Kiribati, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Chile, and Palau, in that order. It is as if church leaders want to see quantifiable success from their religious outreach efforts, and remote lands and islands are the perfect laboratories in which to operate. They're small and largely removed from outside influence, and if you add an extra ingredient to such a country's religious composition you can quickly and clearly see the results.

Isla Robinson Crusoe was no exception. According to locals I spoke with, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of islanders were members of the church. In this instance it was obvious why: the two missionaries were charismatic and fun to talk with. But missionaries are missionaries and they’re dedicating two years of their life to a mission for a reason. So as pleasant as it was to speak with two fellow Americans in English, there was a slight uneasiness to the conversation as all three of us knew where it must inevitably turn. And turn the conversation did. After exhausting the standard biographical questions there was a slight yet conspicuous pause and then one of the missionaries made the ask.

“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?”

Or something to that effect (it’s been a while). With just a few hours left on the island I certainly was not ready to get mired in a religious discussion, so after a platitude-laden explanation of my religious beliefs I made an escape to the Internet café and ultimately the B&B.

We boarded the Rancagua that night, shuttled to the boat by a fleet of dories and zodiacs, then climbing a collapsible staircase hung over the side of the vessel (pictured). There was much commotion on the docks — it seemed as if half the town was getting on the boat. In the case of locals between the ages of 14 and 18, the entire town was sailing away. Education is only provided through eighth grade on the island, so it becomes an annual rite for the town's teenagers to be shipped off, literally, to Valparaíso or Santiago for secondary school. After the controlled pandemonium ran its course the Rancagua set course for the mainland and steamed away from the amazing little island that seemingly had it all: Isla Robinson Crusoe.

Some closing shots of Isla Robinson Crusoe and the voyage back to Valparaíso:

(Photo: Isla Robinson Crusoe’s library is quite extraordinary for a little island of 500 people in the Pacific. The library appears to be a labor of love for the kindly old man who holds court over the circulation desk and assists the occasional visitor, as he did me, noting my accent and directing me to the English-language section of books and periodicals. I checked out an Andy Warhol biography and three English-language National Geographics from the 1970s, one of which featured a cover story on Southeast Alaska and quoted several individuals I knew! Photo credit: Chilean Library Network.)

(Photo: These three crew members agreed to a photo just before digging into a hot plate of rice and ham...generously drizzled with mayonnaise. Although unpalatable to me, imagination is the limit for mayonnaise as a condiment in Chile and Argentina, as evidenced in this photo.)

(Photo: Look like a familiar scene, Southeast Alaskans? This scene on the aft deck was kindly made possible by peaceable, majestic seas and a smiling blue sky. Neptune and his nausea-inducing oceanic fury had apparently taken a chill pill in the intervening two days after the first leg of our voyage.)

(Photo: In spite of calm seas, the return trip was not necessarily comfortable for all — there was an unfortunate dearth of bunks in the cargo hold [the men's assigned quarters] thus necessitating improvised sleeping arrangements.)

(Photo: Sunset at sea.)

Status message

2008-05-24T04:44:00.001-07:00

I have returned home to lovely, beautiful Sitka, Alaska. As I wade through a mountain of mail, solidify my job commitments, catch up with friends, and chow down on Backdoor burritos, I have taken a brief break from posting. I should return early next week with the final salvo of entries.

(Pictured: It's good to be home. Photo credit: Justin Burns.)

Homecoming

2008-05-19T11:16:00.000-07:00

Part two of a three-part series about the islands and my time there.

There is a wonderful Rie Muñoz painting of all the children in Tenakee Springs, Alaska running down the boardwalk to greet the ferry as it noses in to dock. It's a big deal in Tenakee — food, visitors, people returning home — but in the municipality of Juan Fernández on Isla Robinson Crusoe, it's even bigger.

After waking from my second night on the Rancagua, I stumbled my way out on deck to find the craggy shadow of Isla Robinson Crusoe looming into view through the rain clouds (pictured). As we made for the modest bight in island's shore where the 600 citizens of Juan Fernández make their home, the town transformed from a blurry collage of colors to a string of small houses hugging the sea centered on a lone dock bravely jutting into the Pacific. Finally, at 10 a.m., we dropped anchor in front of the town and it became apparent that the dock was teeming with people, dogs, vehicles, anticipation, and excitement.

In Alaska we like to think we are remote and enjoy — or suffer from — isolation. Heck, even one of Sitka's radio stations is named "The Rock." But we can grab a jet, assuming cooperative weather, to Seattle or Anchorage any day of the week; take a ferry to Juneau, Ketchikan, or to the road system at Haines, Skagway, or Prince Rupert; or navigate our own boat to another village or town. Living on an island in the Pacific 700 kilometers away from everything is an entirely different matter.

Depending on the season there are a few flights from Isla Robinson Crusoe to Santiago, but if making half-hour or one-hour hops in a float plane or a Cherokee in Southeast Alaska is considered chancy, imagine taking a Piper Navajo or Beechcraft King Air (pictured) two hours over nothing but the depthless waters of the Pacific. Most islanders prefer to leave the flying to just that, their imaginations, and never leave the ground. As you can surmise, safety is the principle concern; after all, these are people whose livelihoods and culture center around the sea, not the sky. But a round trip flight also runs US$400, a price most humble fishing families on the island (and this author) cannot afford.

That leaves the ocean and the boats that ply it. With one incoming boat per month, there was no denying it: Our arrival was kinda a big deal.

A swarm of wooden dories soon surrounded the Rancagua and eager islanders started hucking luggage overboard to their family members below. A half hour later a collapsible stairway was lowered over the side of the ship and we were shuttled by zodiacs and dories to the dock. Isla Robinson Crusoe, at long, long last, we meet.

(Pictured: It's hard to pick out the airborne package, but you can click to enlarge.)

I checked into a family hostería run by a nice middle-aged woman for CH$12,000 a night (whoa there — the exchange rate is CH$450:US$1), breakfast and dinner included, but the boat was leaving again in just two nights, so I busied myself learning about the town. Below are photos of the Juan Fernández culture and history:

(Pictured: Another example of the islanders' unique method of transferring luggage.)

(Pictured: The dock looked like this the entire first day; an endless stream of cargo originating from the Rancagua arriving via the flotilla of dories and zodiacs.)

(Pictured: Eventually the Rancagua beached herself to unload larger cargo items: a few 4x4s, drums of oil, construction commodities, etc.)

(Pictured: A lobster fisherman with dinner, Jasus frontalis. The Juan Fernández rock lobster is an endemic species and considered a delicacy on the international market; that potent combination of characteristics propels the island's economy.

Unfortunately — some would say inevitably — it has also led to overfishing. The lobsters grow up to a meter long and can live for 25 years, meaning sexual maturity takes a lengthy six years to occur and overharvest of younger lobsters condemns stocks to endangerment. Fortunately, regulation and a progressive management scheme are presently underway.)

(Pictured: No homeland security here. I was able to walk right into the municipal electricity building and its four diesel generators. While no one I spoke with knew the kW/hour rate, with the price of diesel and the transportation costs to the island, although I'd imagine the island's elected officials, like bush Alaskans, probably regard the prices that Juneau is paying through its electricity crisis as a bargain. However, like bush Alaska, those prices are probably heavily subsidized as well.)

(Pictured: Our stay on the island coincided with a celebration of the end of the fishing season. In addition to partying there was also a fireworks show. This is the municipal barge being loaded to the brink with a panoply of pyrotechnic devices. The show was preceded by a choreographed serenade of the fog horns from the Rancagua and the Blanca Luz, the municipal boat. A lot of melodies can be composed with just three notes! And the fireworks? Very impressive. All power on the island was even temporarily shut down for an optimum viewing experience.)

(Pictured: This 92-year-old shell, embedded in a cliff adjacent to Juan Fernández, was blasted out of the 6-inch guns of either the HMS Kent or Glasgow in the First World War. The German light cruiser SMS Dresden, which spent the first year of the war raiding British commerce and matériel on the high seas, narrowly escaped the Battle of the Falkland Islands and spent a few additional months preying on British shipping before finally dropping anchor at Isla Robinson Crusoe, mechanically exhausted. The British cruisers discovered her shortly thereafter and after a brief, one-sided barrage, the Dresden ran up a white flag and sent an envoy to negotiate surrender. Little did the British realize the wily German captain was merely buying time to blow the Dresden's central munitions magazine, scuttling her.)

(Pictured: The Dresden at Isla Robinson Crusoe with the white flag flying. Moments later she was at the bottom of the sea. Today the Dresden is a popular diving site. Photo credit: Wikipedia.)

(Pictured: Undetonated ordnance that missed its target, the Dresden, pocked this cliff just adjacent to town.)

(Pictured: The only street in town that doesn't hug the coastline. As such, the sign in the photo proclaims it the "Tsunami Evacuation Route.")

(Pictured: Any and all 4x4s, including the town's ambulance [although an "ambulance" on Isla Robinson Crusoe appears to me to be a clever angling of funds for an ulterior motive], head to the dock to pick up cargo. The remarkably manicured, quaint central plaza is in the background.)

(Pictured: The island's airport is located 16 kilometers away at the extreme tip of the island, the only swath of land with topography to accommodate an airstrip. The Blanca Luz, pictured, carries passengers for the hour and a half voyage to the airport. [Because of the island's volcanic peninsulas, the trip to the airport is over 30 kilometers by sea.])

Sailing the Ocean Blue

2008-05-17T02:48:00.000-07:00

Part one of a three-part series about the islands and my time there.

Chilean naval bureaucracy is the pits, the absolute worst. Worse than the Bolivian foreign service, worse than the Argentine Gendarmería (I was required to obtain a permit from them, i.e., wait an hour and a half, to go climbing in the Puna), and worse than Chile's Corporación Nacional Forestal (to be discussed in a later post).

I had cultivated a relationship with this muddled organization since March; that is when Islas Juan Fernández (pictured), an isolated archipelago 700 kilometers out in the Pacific with only itself for company, captured my fascination and intentions. I was advised by Rough Guide's Chile that the navy makes the 36-hour voyage to the island once a month in the austral winter, roughly when I was planning to depart. So I started placing calls — calls to islanders, to the municipality, and to the navy.

(Photo credit: GreenwichMeanTime.com.)

Over the subsequent two months, about half the individuals I spoke with knew nothing while the other half would confidently and helpfully pronounce me the date of the next sailing...the only problem being each given date was different from the other. So instead, once in Santiago, I placed a final, desperate call to the navy and was directed to a more competent sounding than usual naval official who advised me the next departure for the islands was set for April 27, but also that the boat was full and it would be extremely difficult to secure passage. Rather than deflate, I was ecstatic to finally receive firm and apparently credible information and bought myself a bus ticket to Valparaíso, one of Chile's largest ports and surely its most interesting city, to make trouble in person.

(Pictured: Valparaíso is a unique mix of bohemia and a hard-nosed blue-collar vibe. More in a later post. Photo credit: Consejo Regional de Valparaíso.)

Obstacles tend to melt away if you show up in person and state your case. With that intention in mind, I arrived in Valparaíso the afternoon of April 27 and beelined for the naval base. Once on the premises, I approached the closest military policeman. He informed me that indeed a vessel, the Rancagua, was bound for the islands and that the boarding process would begin at 7 p.m. that evening. Very nice!

After victualing for the (hopeful) trip and snagging a meal at a wonderful little Italian hole-in-the-wall, I caught a municipal bus back out to the navy base and, hopefully, presumably, the Islas Juan Fernández. Darn it, if it meant paying double fare, washing dishes, scrubbing toilets, and sleeping in the engine room to get on that boat, so be it.

I hopped off the bus into a light drizzle and a large throng of people, probably 125 strong, surrounding a barrier to a naval quay manned by military police. Everybody seemed to be waiting for something so I soon set myself to canvassing the crowd for information and happened upon the only other foreign tourists aspiring to somehow board the ship, four 20 to 25 year olds from Spain, Italy, Catalonia, and San Francisco, respectively. After commiserating about the infuriating disorganization of the Chilean Navy (they had been trying since January), four became five and the Spaniard, Felipe (pictured), became our spokesman.

(Photo credit: Felipe.)

As we found out, there was "a list" — 70 names — of passengers guaranteed passage. But there were also 10 additional at-large spots. Typical of the navy, however, the method by which the at-large spots were to be filled was a mystery to everyone, boarding officials included. At 8 p.m. the military police began calling names from their manifest and individuals one or two at a time would slip through the wall of MPs with their retinue of boxes, suitcases, and cargo in tow. The MPs' monotonous roll call thinned the crowd and heightened our discouragement, but because seemingly no one knew anything or had a position of significance we were hapless. Then, our big break: Felipe cornered the captain, who had came out to monitor the boarding process, and explained our predicament (no doubt quite persuasively, the blur of words and Spanish "th" lisp was too much for my comprehension). He reacted positively.

Finally, with the names from the manifest had been exhausted, the MPs, presumably acting upon the captain's orders, allowed us through. We paid the fare and shuffled out the quay to the Rancagua (pictured) and the small crowd of islanders frantically ferrying their supplies over the gangway onto the boat. There was a sense of anticipation and excitement in the air; residents were happy to be going home, tourists happy to be away from it.

(Photo credit: Armada de Chile.)

The Rancagua is a big ship. A length of 80 meters and a beam of 16 meters imply stability in rough South Pacific seas, but trumping these reassuring dimensions is its hull design: The Rancagua is a troop transport ship designed to unload on beaches, consequently it is flat-hulled with a draft of 2.5 measly meters. So take your Dramamine because the roller-coaster ride starts here.

Once out on the ocean it became apparent that the drizzle in Valparaíso was an omen of a far more severe low-pressure system (pictured) that we were soon crashing and rolling our way through. Huge six- or seven-meter swells from the south, their crests precariously breaking in the wind, turned our boat into an upside-down pendulum. Up on deck I would be adrenalanized every time the boat would list precariously at the behest of a swell — I couldn't figure out what mystery force was preventing our God-forsaken ship from capsizing.

Physics, of course. Obviously I was aware of this from the beginning, or at least the analytic portion of my brain was. But it takes time for logic to allay one's emotions. After an hour at sea that realization occurred and then it all seemed like a game, like we were a cork at sea.

(Video: I took this from the deck trying to hold the camera on a steady plane with that canvassed brown thing [it's a gun] so you can see the boat's rotation. It doesn't look quite as terrifying as it felt! When your body is hurtled against the railing and the boat tilts to such a degree that all you can see below is the frothing, inflamed waters of the ocean while gravity and inertia push you dispassionately towards it, you can only assume the boat will react the same way. Moving beyond assumption is your "mental sea legs," I suppose.)

What felt like a game out on deck could have been one of Dante's circles of hell inside. When we boarded, women and children were sent to cabins with rudimentary bunk beds while men were sent to the cargo hold. I can't speak for the bunk rooms, but the cargo hold boasted of all the misery of a refugee evacuation.

(Pictured: The cargo hold and our beds, metal frames with a canvas stretched taught, stacked four high. Each passenger received a drab military-issue pillow and blanket. This is a "pre-misery" shot.)

First of all, it was wet. With each swell that broke over the bow, torrents of water would gush from myriad dark orifices onto the cargo-hold floor where it would slowly yet ominously accumulate in depth as the hours mercilessly creaked by.

The sounds, however, were the worst. The water on the floor became a tide, slooshing from one side of the hold to the other with each to-and-fro of the boat. As you can imagine, nausea was a nearly universal ailment. One usually thinks of vomiting as an independent misery, but when surrounded by moaning and retching, let me assure you, your bubble of emotion is violated too. Sadly, many couldn't quite make it to the bathroom (and some simply would not try), so the rhythmic tide of water on the floor slowly and repulsively assumed a chunky yellow consistency.

Finally, like paratroopers besieging an already psychologically-defeated enemy, there was a steady drip-drip, drip-drip from the ceiling. These inescapable little sounds, inescapable even through the shudders and creaks of the bow crashing into cavernous troughs and the cargo booming back and forth against the metal walls of the hold, were just as lethal to any remaining vestige of fortitude or coziness among the passengers as it was to the dryness of any of us on the top and in the direct line of fire.

(Pictured: Cargo hold, "post-misery." For the sake of your appetite I will not even attempt to describe the bathrooms. I will say, however, that my disgust was so great that even in the pitch darkness of night I would stumble up six ladders and into the rain and wind to go pee off the back deck of the ship rather than set foot inside them.)

When I was in elementary school I went through a stage of intense interest regarding World War II. I read just about anything I could get my hands on. There were many, many things that I read that I was far too young to relate to, but I distinctly remember reading — and being perplexed by — veterans recalling their desperation to get off transport ships and onto dry land, even if that meant being greeted by the business end of a Japanese machine gun. Though the conditions of our voyage were probably luxurious to what GIs endured, I think I can now appreciate their sense of desperation.

(Pictured: The magnitude of the swells was difficult to capture photographically, but here's my best shot.)

Naturally, I avoided the misery; I stayed out on deck. Fresh air combats nausea and the worst weather of the trip conveniently reserved itself for the nights, so during the day the rain often relented and we'd be treated with a spotty overcast and even sun.

Surprisingly, there was only a handful of other passengers who did the same. I think it's akin to hiking or backpacking: When you get soaked and cold, for some reason the mind's reflex is to remain stationary and cling to and savor every last calorie of warmth, even as your body becomes progressively colder and colder. It's an instinctual sophistry that only is broken through experience and bursts of motivation. In that cargo hold, even though the conditions were appalling, I think many of the passengers were just trying to concentrate on their blessings, few as they might be, instead of searching for a way to change and improve the parameters of their situation.

Of that small group out on deck, many were professors from various Chilean universities on a research trip to improve the islands' sustainability, principally harness various forms of renewable energy. Their thoughts and plans were interesting to hear. But outside of those few conversations, life at sea was a blur of eating powdered mashed potatoes and doughy biscuits, reading, and trying to fall asleep amongst the horrors of the cargo hold. I could only hope the islands would be worth this purgatory.

A Cinematic Golden Age

2008-05-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

In Curitiba I was warned against visiting São Paulo because of its crime. In São Paulo I was warned against visiting Rio because of its dengue epidemic (and crime). In Rio I was warned against moving from the Wave Hostel to the favela for obvious reasons. And finally, Luiz's sister and mom were both fretting my potential departure for Corumbá, the Brazilian gateway to Bolivia, and the Bolivian narcotics gateway to Brazil. Considering how spot-on the progressive anteing up of warnings had been, I had reason to be a little jumpy about making for Brazil's wild west.

(Pictured: Mosquitoes look downright insidious up close! Contrary to my initial reaction, the dengue epidemic in Rio is not overstated. Will, whose photographs are featured in the previous post, had two friends in the hospital with it. Photo credit: Televisa.)

Where there are drugs, there is crime, or so it seems. Corumbá is infamous for its quicknapping and use of, as Luiz's relatives call it, boa noite Cinderella (translation: good night Cinderella, aka Rohypnol, a date-rape drug). So when Bolivia scratched itself out of my itinerary, my twinges of regret from missing the country where sufficiently salved by my relief from avoiding the notorious border city. Instead I bought a bus ticket from Rio to Santiago — direct.

For those not intimately familiar with South American geography, Rio de Janeiro and Santiago are a mighty long ways apart. Sixty-five hours by bus, actually. Most people have reacted with horror upon hearing this number, but the trip was really quite pleasant.

For the first day and a half there was only one other passenger on the behemoth double-decker bus. We did split it like a bunk bed: I got the bottom, he got the top. But beyond the obvious advantages, abundant personal space and double servings of the shrink-wrapped "meals," we were also able to create a formidable lobby advocating for better quality movies.

Buses are notorious for taking advantage of a captive and docile audience and essentially functioning as a mobile screening unit for the Razzie Awards. Well, as 100 percent of the passenger body on a tremendously long bus ride, we were not meek about our discontent and, on the whole, our efforts towards cinematic quality were successful.

For example, we effectively killed Flood: A River's Rampage which revealed itself for what it was — made-for-TV junk — from its opening monologue. Conversely, playing time was secured for both 3:10 to Yuma and The Guardian, saving me a hefty US$6 in rental fees as I was planning to rent both from Videl upon my return home.

(Pictured: Que basura. Photo credit: Amazon.com.)

The latter, The Guardian, is an honest movie, the kind I like. It never was going to win any Academy Awards, but more importantly it never postures as if it was, an example a great many directors and producers would do well to heed. This is because, of course, winning little golden statues isn't the only metric of movie goodness.

The Guardian follows the life of storied U.S. Coast Guard rescue swimmer Ben Randall, played by Kevin Costner. After a rescue mission goes awry he is forced into an active-duty sabbatical and passes the time as an instructor at rescue-swimmer school teaching the next generation. It is here where Randall encounters high school swimming standout and freshly minted cadet Jake Fischer, played by Ashton Kutcher in a pleasantly surprising performance. Fischer's "eat my bubbles" attitude soon generates friction between legendary teacher and talented student. By now you can probably guess that the rest of the plot does not strive for the profound, but that's ok because with a simple but solid script, decent special effects, and none of the leads blowing a raspberry on their part, you can still have a pretty good movie, which is exactly what The Guardian was. It also didn't hurt that Sitka, or rather Coast Guard Air Station Sitka, got a shout-out; appealing to hometown vanity always does the charm for this would-be critic!

(Pictured: Rescue swimmers training off the coast of Atlantic City. I thought this was a phenomenal picture. Photo credit: Department of Defense.)

The Guardian is a harbinger for Sitka's fast approaching cinematic golden age. Most Sitkans are aware that The Proposal, a Disney-produced, Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock romantic comedy slated for distribution in 2009, is set in Sitka, even if Sitka lost out to Rockport, Massachusetts as the primary filming location. But all has not been lost.

We Sitkans all puffed our chests out a little when The Yiddish Policeman's Union, a Michael Chabon revisionist-history novel set in Sitka, rocketed to number one on The New York Times Bestseller List. But suck in a little more air and stretch those alveoli, folks, because the Coen brothers, fresh from cleanup duty at the Academy Awards, have been brought in by mogul Scott Rudin to write and direct the film adaption of said book for a tentative 2010 release! If you haven't heard this already, well, you heard it here first.

The Coen brothers are not Disney, whose recidivism to ho-hum mediocrity after the occasional breakthrough is irksome to say the least, and I think it a reasonable expectation that, considering their track record, an excellent production is in the works. But in regards to Sitka, although technically the movie is set in a noir, Jewish doppelgänger of Sitka (remember, it's historical revisionism), we can probably count on second unit filming and perhaps a visit from the directors themselves as the Coen brothers don't seem like the type to cut corners. Or at least one can hope!

But back to the bus trip. After the seats began to fill from stops in Sante Fe and Córdoba, Argentina, the bus attendant marshaled the temerity to start showing garbage again so the previous paragraphs essentially became my activity: writing.

For the same reason I positively love ferry trips on the big blue tubs, I like bus trips, even if I don't always have the entire lower level to myself. Buses aren't as romantic as ferries, but their style is similar: long but relatively comfortable trips.

Longer the better, or so I say. With no phone, Internet, or other such distractions, you are literally powerless to carry on life as normal. What oppression! Instead such trips are a sentence of relaxation, a sentence to personal time for writing, reading, and active music listening, or all the other little things that seemed to fade into the periphery of regular life due our triage of time. Such triage is really quite a gruesome procedure, but we become anesthetized to it, I suppose that's indeed just another casualty of the triage. Whether it is good or whether it is bad is, of course, dependent upon person and personality, but awareness of the fact should be an incontrovertible priority, although elusive through the ever-increasing static of "harder, better, faster, stronger." And because of travel's soothing qualities (it definitely requires a certain state of mind, too; in fact, maybe that is what is elusive) pensiveness and awareness became friendly companions once again.

The only serious interruption to the bus trip occurred on the third day, crossing the border into Chile. Heralded by signs announcing the second Christ the Redeemer I have passed in as many weeks (pictured), our bus was emptied to receive exit stamps from Argentina border authorities and ferry all our luggage through Chilean x-ray machines and by the curious noses of drug-sniffing dogs. Conservatism and isolationism, two distinctly Chilean traits.

(Photo credit: Wikimedia.)

Chile is a country, even more so than the rest of South America, where adjectives hitched onto the word "church" are the exception, not the rule.

Only four years ago Chile left the thin ranks of Malta and the Phillipines as the only countries in the world without provision for legal divorce, although the move was bitterly fought by the church. However, Chile remains one of five countries in the world, along with Andorra, El Salvador, Malta, and Nicaragua, where all abortion remains illegal, including cases of rape, incest, or when the mother's health or life is in jeopardy. (Malta's nah-nah-nah, I can't hear you attitude towards reality can explained by the following articles inscribed into their Constitution: "The authorities of the Roman Catholic apostolic church have the duty and the right to teach which principles are right and which are wrong," and "Religious teaching of the Roman Catholic apostolic faith shall be provided in all state schools as part of compulsory education.")

I am in no way proclaiming abortion to be morally right — I still need a few more ferry trips before arriving to any conclusions — but sentencing a woman to death over an unborn baby, even if you are to endow the unborn baby with status of a human life (thus creating a remarkably lucid prioritization of life), is something I find completely indefensible.

Even with its tough-as-nails statutes, Chile has one of the highest abortion rates in the world (double that of the United States) and all are conducted illegally and too often in unsafe, unsterile conditions by untrained practitioners. This raises the utilitarian question, why illegalize abortion? It obviously has little effect in deterring pregnant women, but greatly affects the manner in which the abortion is carried out, entirely for the worse. In Chile, 20 percent of all abortions result in hospitalization of the would-be mother — 31,930 women per year — and inevitably some fraction of that sordid statistic die, presumably a low percentage but still inherently significant. It forces another prioritization of life, again viewed from a purely utilitarian perspective: Do the few abortions deterred — the few lives saved — by abortion's illegality outweigh the presumably greater number of women who die from the back-alley culture of abortion engendered by abortion's illegality? I would answer no.

Perhaps I am incorrect to postulate that more women die from unsafe abortions than there are abortions deterred by respect for the word of the law, it is merely a suspicion on my part. When I get home I'll try to find someone who's done the math or scrounge and crunch the numbers myself. Stay tuned.

Perhaps being fortressed by the Andes — a bunker mentality — cultivates such regressive social policies because its international identity is similar: Chile is arguably the least popular country on the continent amongst its peers. That is an impressive feat considering the colorful personalities entrenched in the executive branch in Bolivia and Venezuela, but poor neighborly relations seem to be a tradition in Chile.

In 1879, Chile, although really backed by British military and economic interests, invaded Bolivia's coastal and Atacaman territory for its vast, lucrative nitrate deposits but also to expand its regional hegemony. Peru, in a mutual defense treaty with Bolivia, united against Chile. Chile, however, with its superior military, subjugated Bolivian and Peruvian forces. Peru was humiliated in having its capital city, Lima, occupied and losing its southern territories, the area centered around modern day Arica (see map).

Bolivia had it worse. They lost their coastline — the port of Antofagastsa and surrounding area — and have been landlocked ever since. Neither Peru nor Bolivia has fully retired their grudge.

(Photo credit: Western Kentucky University.)

Argentina and Chile don't get along too well either. Both countries' quibbling over Tierra del Fuego, a pastime that originated in the 1800s, reached an apogee in 1978 when Argentina's military junta drew up plans for one Operation Soberaía, a military invasion of not just Tierra del Fuego but mainland Chile as well. Consequently, during the Falkland Islands War waged between Argentina and the United Kingdom in the '80s, Chile sided with the Brits. Ouch!

Relations have since thawed between Argentina and Chile and the Tierra del Fuego question has been somewhat resolved, but distrust lingers, or at least it seems to. Entering the country, no fruits, vegetables, or meats are allowed and all baggage is screened by two or three methods — measures comparable to the U.S. paranoia. And perhaps for good reason: Chile is surrounded.

More Photos from Rio de Janeiro

2008-05-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

All photos were taken by Will Benet, an English teacher who stayed with me at Luiz's. He's obviously pretty handy with the camera, too. For background on Rio and favelas see "The Most Beautiful City in the World" and "Brazil vs. Argentina."

(Pictured: These narrow passageways snake through the favela creating a maze-like network of paths. In many favelas the density is too high and the slopes too steep for traditional streets.

(Pictured: Police conducting a raid in Chapéu Mangueira. This is a pretty gutsy shot by Will; the police do not like being the subject of photography.)

(Pictured: Sunset from the favela.)

Day 11: The End

2008-05-07T08:31:00.000-07:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. This is the last post recreated from the notes I took during the expedition.

The modest ditch I slept in (pictured) the previous night had an additional advantage beyond the protection it afforded from the sand-laden winds that scour the Puna: Running at a north-northwest/south-southeast angle, the ditch provided an additional few minutes of shelter from the rising sun in the east. I needed every minute of it. I was hurting.

The sun's unforgiving rays finally reached me at 10:45 a.m., and like a rusty robot I creaked and moaned my way out of the sleeping bag in a series of maladroit movements that I'm sure would have prompted laughter for an onlooker.

I assembled and packed my gear, interspersed with impromptu strolls to loosen my leg muscles and tendons and evaluate the weather. Only a few insignificant clouds dotted the sky and even a hint of breeze was conspicuously absent from the air, two conditions that conspire for heat to pool and accumulate on the ground like a thick, heavy gas creating a thermal viscosity that one has no choice but to wade through. It is this kind of weather that imparts a lonely feeling, only having the sun, as unwavering and unyielding as it can be, as company. Clouds, precipitation, and even wind offer so much more, always evolving and permutating, always in conversation with the environment around you. Well, as luck would have it, this would be my last day the sun would monopolize my social circumstance. I was hiking out today!

I reckoned my "camp" to be only two or three kilometers from the road, although reckoning was the best I could do, the shimmers of heat sabotaged any clarity or contrast in the landscape in front of me. And so I began the final leg of my trip, ambling towards an invisible road at a plodding pace, a pace dictated more by consideration for my sore body than desire to seek shelter from the sun.

After about 35 minutes, a thin, translucent black band focused into view in front of me. Nothing more exciting than that really, and another 15 minutes of steady but slow walking brought me to the lonely highway (pictured), my transportation link back to Fiambalá and all its worldly comforts.

I had no car, obviously, nor had I arranged a pick-up (having no one else with whom to rideshare it would have proved an inordinate expense). Instead, my transportation link was hitchhiking.

In the Puna, stopping for hitchers ceases to be anomalous and becomes more a moral obligation, or so I had been told. But even with drivers supposedly stopping on sight, the number of cars coming through Paso de San Francisco, and ultimately from Copiapó, Chile, nearly 600 kilometers from where I was standing, barely registers in the double digits on a good day.

The time passed slowly. Supposedly there was a refugio (i.e., shade) a few kilometers down the road, but in a battle between two discomforts, soreness and sun, soreness triumphed and I elected to remain put (pictured). I read, I wrote, I listened to music, I baked in the sun, I admired the surrounding mountains, and every few seconds, like a nervous twitch, I would peer out of the corner of my eye to see if there was any movement wiggling its way out of the shimmery horizon. One hour passed and then two. Limping another few kilometers to the refugio was increasingly an attractive option.

(Pictured: An extensive refugio system was constructed in the Argentine Puna in the early 20th century to encourage gauchos, Argentine cowboys, to settle the area and exercise sovereignty over an otherwise uninhabited land. Impressively, many of the refugios have been faithfully maintained and are frequently used to this day. Photo credit: Ombian.)

About two and a half hours after arriving at the road, a Mitsubishi 4x4 quad-cab roared into view, its bed chock full of various appliances, boxes, and oil drums. It was the first vehicle to pass either way. I stuck out my thumb and, just like I was told, the Mitsubishi slammed on the brakes and pulled over.

My ride was captained by two jovial middle-aged men returning from a shopping spree in Chile. With a little rearranging of gear and inventive use of rope, my pack was fastened down (pictured) and I carved out a butt-print of calm in the perpetually-triggered avalanche of luggage in the back seat.

The two guys were very accommodating, and after explaining my situation the conversation regressed to a banter of sexual jokes and exploits. A small price to pay for a free ride.

The road to Fiambalá was spectacular. I hadn't appreciated the landscapes the road carves its way through going up into the Puna because of my excitement, but now with nary a worry and a stream of cool air in my face the passing scenery had my undivided attention. I was awestruck.

After leaving the alluvial plain we were funneled into a canyon, palms growing along the banks of a now much larger Río del Cazadero and Jurassic rock formations looming on both sides of us. I'm not sure if I would have even double-taked had we passed a stegosaurus munching on the herbage!

Here are some photos:

(Pictured: You can click on the photos to enlarge.)

(Pictured: Apologies for the blurriness.)

We arrived in Fiambalá nearly two and a half hours later, at 5 p.m., and I was courteously dropped me off at the hostería I had stayed at prior to my adventure in the Puna. After I checked in I took a shower of glorious length. There were a lot of to dos to be done, however.

By 6:30 I was suitable for civilization once again and meandered over to Fiambalá's central plaza. Foolish me! In Fiambalá, Argentina, civilization enters hibernation from noon to 8 p.m. It's siesta time.

I sat down on a bench and waited, far too sore to trudge back to my hostería. By and by, as the minutes ticked away into history and the sun waned, kids and adults emerged from houses and into the plaza and life resumed once again. Various businesses opened — the town pharmacy, several of the minimercados, the ice cream parlor, the town's restaurants readied for dinner — but by 8 p.m. Fiambalá's DirecTV salesman, Jonson Reynoso, had not yet arrived at his office.

Señor Reynoso took another half an hour to show up — just another testament to the easy-going way of life out here — and we immediately proceeded into the nitty-gritty of the trip.

(Pictured: Señor Reynoso, the man himself.)

A good conversation always manages to engross not just one's mind but one's other senses as well — seduction by fascination. But afterwards, in this case one and half hours later, I realized that I was very, very hungry.

A good hunger is a terrible thing to waste. In Fiambalá there are the usual milanesa joints and family-run pizza restaurants, and they're all often quite good, but Fiambalá, as with Sitka, also boasts an outpost of haute cuisine, which was just the sort of gastronomic antidote merited by my extraordinary hunger.

Oh-la-la is a restaurant run by an Argentine chef and a French woman who simultaneously serves as waitress, sommelier, and business manager. Normally the couple lives in Buenos Aires, but for a few months in the summer they migrate to Fiambalá to run their restaurant.

The restaurant is their house, creating a culinary experience I've never experienced before. The dining experience was classy — candles' lighting the tables, hand-crafted wooden tables and chairs, Impressionist paintings gracing the wall, expensive flavored olive oil and vinegar to accompanying the bread — but when the woman came to serve my food she was also juggling her baby in the other arm. Going to the bathroom entails walking right through the kitchen and its controlled chaos. And more than once the family cat rubbed up against my leg, purring, during the meal. It was a clash of atmospheres that combined for a charming if eccentric vibe.

But more importantly the food — potatoes, pasta, and pesto in my case — was delicious!

(Pictured: Mr. Reynoso's office. I am proud to say a replica of my "summit flag" now hangs on this very wall.)

Nearly 11 at night, I was now ready for my post-dinner activity: Internet.

Eleven days removed from Internet is an eternity for me, and the prodigious backlog of e-mail and RSS stories demonstrated that. Let us remember, however, that this was February, a time of political uncertainty for both the Democratic and Republican Presidential nominations, certainly much more uncertainty than now.

I think one reason I've always been attracted to politics is its forever changing, complex nature, similar to a sports. In fact, my interest in politics directly mirrored my declining participation in sports — I suppose it's not a coincidence.

Elections are like matches, and primary elections, with different types of elections in different states taking place over a long period of time, are most similar, I suppose, to an MLS season.

Was the match on artificial turf or grass? Was it a home game or were they playing in front of the Red Patch Boys? Caucus or primary? Or was it Texas's demented caucus-primary hybrid or Washington's ridiculous four-tiered system? The delegate system aligns with the point system of standings, too, in a rough sort of way. And just like the MLS playoffs, it looks like Hillary and Obama are going to playoffs as well, playoffs slated for Denver. It's called the Democratic National Convention.

(Pictured: Home field advantage. Photo credit: Wikimedia.)

Finally, like sport, anticipation is most of the fun: analyzing the polls; pundits arriving at absurd, sensationalist conclusions; the predictions racket; the anticipation game. And then there's the election. It can be bliss or it can be depression, but, with very few exceptions, it is closure.

(That said, a notable difference between sport and politic is sport, no matter how romanticized, lives a contrived existence. Yes, it can yo-yo your emotions in a most brutal, very real way, but at the end of the day, as the hackneyed phrase goes, it's just a game. It won't start a world war or deny you health insurance because of a pre-existing condition. Public policy, the more virtuous older brother of politics, can do that. Or it cannot. To interface with the profound potential of public policy is an entirely uncontrived, deeply rewarding pursuit.)

With 100+ stories waiting in my RSS reader from Taegan Goddard's Political Wire, I had the surreal ability to bypass the anticipation and, with each click of Elemento anterior, zoom forward to another day's polling and election results. It felt criminal to be feed gratification and curiosity with but one omnipotent touch of the mouse.

That Obama won every election and caucus while I was in the Puna contributed greatly to my already chipper mood. I walked out of the Internet café a smidgen past 2 in the morning and passed the central plaza, whistling "That's How You Know" from Enchanted. What a fantastic day.

But things just got better. Walking, or rather limping, back to the hostería I was picked up by a friend I had made at the minimercado. We "cruised" the central plaza in endless circles listening to Maroon 5. It was a little silly, but I guess that was part of the appeal. Eventually we migrated over to a concert that was underway in the local gym — Tru-La-La (pictured), a band from Córdoba.

(Photo credit: Solo Quarteto.)

Probably every Fiambalá-ian under 30 was at the concert, either inside or loitering out in front. We were among the loiterers and the milieu seemed just as good outside as inside — people dancing, drinking, laughing, talking, a raucous scene all around. Not bad for a little town of 6,000 in the middle of a desert.

At 4:30 a.m., after two hours of socializing, they dropped me off at the hostería and I fell asleep, thoroughly exhausted but thoroughly satisfied. It was a fitting conclusion to a wonderful 11 days, as those two feelings — exhaustion and satisfaction — well defined my entire 11-day experience.

Postscript: I have posted all the photos from my trip on Facebook. I couldn't have done this earlier because it would have ruined the suspense! The albums, for Facebook members and non-members alike, can be viewed here and here.

Visa Politics: Redux

2008-05-04T18:49:00.000-07:00

I have said it before and I'll say it again: I don't mind paying visa fees. They're fair and they serve a purpose. So walking up the solemn stone steps of the Bolivian Consulate of Rio de Janeiro, I was expecting to fill out a few basic forms and receive a bank account number for the requisite US$100 deposit.

Try again. Much to my surprise, Bolivia has the full-blown visa application process, meaning, like Brazil, you must provide bank records, a photocopy of your credit card, a hotel reservation or letter of invitation to the country, a ticket leaving the country, a photograph, etc.

For Brazil, a rapidly developing country and a principal actor in the theatre of international politics, I can somewhat understand the reasoning, although it still mostly strikes me as counterproductive and vainly symbolic. But riddle me this: why does Bolivia need detailed financial, travel, and biographical information on each American that crosses its borders? Well, I've spent a lot of time riddling and I think it's pointless.

(Pictured: Almost as pointless as this. Photo credit: Juegos Gratis.)

Bolivia's border officials are reputed to be the most venal in the Americas. Lonely Planet recommends bribing them if "problems" arise. After consulting with other travelers, there seems to be little doubt that discreetly passing off a small wad of cash, probably amounting to less than the US$100 fee, and assuming a no-nonsense attitude, could have secured all necessary documentation to the country.

But of course this was something I probably did not have the moxie to do. At first, I thought being "stuck" in Rio while my visa application was processed might not be too bad, but arguments quickly began tallying up against this course of action.

(Pictured: Visa politics in map form. Photo credit: La Razon.)

I realized that the chummy relationship I had enjoyed with the Brazilian Consulate of Mendoza was not going to be replicated as the stern, cold Bolivian consular official slowly and meticulously outlined the death knell of my itinerary. He insisted, as required by the application, I make a hotel or hostel reservation for my anticipated arrival in Bolivia and buy or reserve a ticket leaving Bolivia, despite my remonstrations. (The former was virtually impossible as I did not know if I would need to overnight anywhere en route to La Paz and, if so, where. And the latter, buying a train ticket out of Bolivia to Chile, my intended mode of transportation, two or three weeks before my actual date of departure, was literally impossible. The railroad has no website and, obviously, no ticket office in Rio.)

(Pictured: Jonathan expressing his frustration at Bolivia's infuriating visa bureaucracy! Photo credit: The Military and Aerospace Blog.)

I suppose the situation could have finagled itself out. A solution would have required a lot of enthusiasm and energy, but I think it could have been done. But then a final brick broke my itinerary's proverbial back.

Having visited the consulate on a Friday, I learned the consulate was going to be closed the following Monday and Wednesday for holiday. (With great pay, a four- or five-hour work day, loads of holidays [the Brazilians took some while I was waiting, too], and diplomatic immunity, what's not to like about working in the foreign service?) With the three- to five-day processing period, as my consular official indifferently explained, at this point oozing all the charisma of Severus Snape, I should not expect the application approved until the second Monday out, nine days away. So much for Bolivia.

I know, I know. You're thinking I should have taken care of the paperwork stateside. But that actually would have been impossible, too. The visa stipulates you enter the country within 90 days of issuance and had I theoretically acquired my visa the day before leaving Sitka, January 12, it would have expired while I was in São Paulo.

(Pictured: What Bolivia's new visa requirements will do to its tourism industry. Photo credit: AM Costa Rica Radio.)

Really, the entire process is designed for more cash-endowed but time-deprived travelers who fly in, spend a week seeing the sights, and fly out, thus leaving the system distressingly incompatible for those who pursue a slightly more shoestring travel style. But just as though I think things would have worked out had I persevered in Rio with the consulate, I think I also could have worked things out, with a lower stress level, back in the states. So, lesson learned: always, always take care of visas back at home.

The Most Beautiful City in the World

2008-04-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

Rio de Janeiro, A Cidade Maravilhosa, is the most beautiful city in the world. I have never visited San Francisco, Hong Kong, or any other city that claims such a desirous superlative, but it's beyond comprehension to me how any other city in the world could surpass Rio's grandeur and glamour. What an incredible place!

There was an old '80s, bush-league Brazilian guide book at my hostel in Rio that dedicated literally 1,300 gushy, sentimental words to describing Rio's splendor. Upon request I'd be happy to direct you to that publication, but I have a feeling a picture will do a far better job:

Boom! Ka-pow! Point made, poetic dithering not necessary.

(Photo credit: Wikimedia.)

I've been accruing a rather substantial hospitality deficit in my swing through Brazil, so many people being so very, very kind to me, and Rio was, lucky for me, no exception.

I met Stef Claus in my sophomore year of high school — my oboe-playing days — at Southeast Alaska Honor Band in Haines. I don't think our paths ever crossed again, but somehow we became Facebook friends. Fast forward four years — me delighting in a semester of South American adventure and Stef accomplishing great things at Georgetown University and, for this semester, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro — and courtesy of the miracles of social networking, we realize we are on the same continent and start trading e-mails.

(Pictured: Stef Claus. We formed a South American tag team of blond-haired, authentic Southeast Alaska-ness. Photo credit: Stef Claus.)

Stef was kind enough to babysit me from the bus terminal to the hostel. In São Paulo and Curitiba I might have been able to figure things out, but in Rio there was no chance, especially coming in at night as I was. Stef and I hung out a good bit over the next few days, catching up, trading classic Southeast memories. For example, how bad the weather was coming back home from Haines on that band trip: Angry weather gods made play of the Sitka delegation's Allen Marine catamaran in a tempest of north wind and monstrous waves in Lynn Canal. Stef and the Craig contingent had it worse: a Piper Cherokee flight on which everyone was crying in fear for their lives. Yikes! Alaska reminiscing just never gets old.

In Rio, I stayed at the Wave Hostel, a perfect base for exploring the city. Conveniently located two and a half blocks from Copacabana Beach and close to the subway and primary bus route through Copacabana, more importantly the Wave Hostel had two computers for Internet and Carolina Esperon Kauer (pictured) on staff, a friend I met in Buenos Aires, and a guide of Rio's dos and do-nots.

The next five days consisted of sleeping in, meandering around the city, running errands, body surfing and swimming at Copacabana, strolling the Portugese pavement of Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, and chatting with the ever-interesting guests at the hostel. It was paradise — a word that frequently finds itself describing Rio.

But after decompressing from the two-week Brazilian traveling blitz that preceded Rio, I was ready for something new.

I was introduced to Luiz Antonio De Assisbento by Stef. Luiz runs a small room-and-board operation out of his house, exclusively advertised by word of mouth. He lives in Chapéu Mangueira (translation: Hat of the Mango Tree), a small and relatively safe favela just above Leme and Copacabana Beach.

(Pictured: Luiz is a full-scholarship social work graduate from Stef's university, but currently is in life limbo, spending most of his time watching soccer and hanging out with friends.)

Favelas seem to defy all definitions; each is so different from the other. All favelas hark to the same humble origin, however: they began on squatted land.

In the 1890s, Brazilian soldiers disenchanted with the plutocratic economy and without a place to live made permanent camp in Rio's first favelas. Neither the plutocracy nor disenchantment has ended, and Rio's and Brazil's favelas continue to expand. By most recent estimates, 25 percent of cariocas, as Rio residents call themselves, live in favelas. Somewhat akin to the illegal immigration debate in the U.S., the Brazilian government has been forced, by statistic necessity, to integrate what are otherwise illegal, lawless, and autonomous communities into the governmental fabric.

Chapéu Mangueira is a beneficiary of such policy. Favelados enjoy (and pay for) sewage and water systems, electricity, and even broadband Internet. Still, property tax and building codes most certainly do not apply.

(Video: Favelas are often located on steep slopes overlooking the city, slopes undesirable for more traditional development because of their susceptibility to landslides after tropical rainstorms. That's just another risk in the life of a favelado. Conversely, though, their homes boast spectacular views. This is from Luiz's deck. Video credit: catatau2, a former visitante do Luiz.)

Favelas' other universal characteristic is, sadly, violence. A carioca friend of mine describes it well: "90 percent of the people who live in the favelas are not drug dealers [traficantes] or bad people, it's just the opposite, they are people who work hard [every day] and, as in every capitalist system, don't make enough money to live the good life in Rio, that's why they started to occupy the hills and all...The thing is that we live a very cruel reality here in Rio in terms of violence...You never really know when the police [are] going inside the favelas and when the 'war' between drug dealers and the police will start — and it occurs very often."

(Photo credit: Wikimedia.)

Consequently, in many favelas the police are feared more than the traficantes, in other favelas it's vice versa, but in all favelas violence results when the two clash.

(Pictured: Luiz's niece has a flair for the dramatic. And yes, that "cane" is a machete.)

Favelados are thus left in the treacherous position to pick sides between two warring elements that ultimately don't much care for their welfare: a largely corrupt police force that holds little regard for civilian casualties, or traficantes that wish only to further their influence in the drug trade and expand their turf.

Their plight reminds me of a Frank Costello quote from The Departed: "When I was your age they would say we can become cops or criminals. Today, what I'm saying to you is this: when you're facing a loaded gun, what's the difference?" In favelas the moral dichotomy of good and bad that we so often try to conform our world around is reduced to a hazy wash of fear-born self-interest and practicality.

Chapéu Mangueira is strongly in the hands of the police — automatic weapon-laden officers regularly patrol the streets and no favelados pay "protection tax" to traficantes, unlike many other favelas. But traficantes still operate, just not brazenly.

(Pictured: That "carioca friend of mine." Juliana Athayde is incredible — another word I find myself using frequently to describe the people I meet in South America. She's 19, a polyglot [English, French, Portuguese, Spanish], a social science major, and an all-around good person. Photo credit: Juliana Athayde.)

At night I could see traficantes lurking, clutching colossal rifles, stalking silently through the jungle behind Luiz's house. And in my first night in Chapéu Mangueira, just as Juliana had warned, "the 'war' between drug dealers and...police" manifested in a 40-minute firefight no more than 30 meters from Luiz's house. The electricity was knocked out for 10 hours, presumably by a stray bullet. At least by my latter definition — violence — Chapéu Mangueira is certainly a favela.

Things calmed down again in the favela and my remaining days in Rio were spent at the ballet, the movies, various bars, and enjoying the many other charms that make Rio Rio. I was sad to move on — A Cidade Maravilhosa Rio is indeed.

Some closing shots taken from Pão de Açúcar:

(Pictured: Move aside, Paris. Rio is the city of romance!)

(Pictured: That little light on the mountain is Christ the Redeemer, the statue featured in the first picture of this entry.)

Brazil vs. Argentina

2008-04-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

There are more to these two countries than their soccer rivalry or the interminable Pelé versus Maradona debate. I won't weigh in on soccer, but I will say that their cultures, and by extension the cultures of Brazil in comparison with the rest of South America, are notably different.

(Pictured: Argentines call him the Right Hand of God. Brazilians call him...well, there are decency standards on this site. Photo credit: Foro del Liverpool FC.)

Before making sweeping generalizations about Brazil, I should qualify myself by saying this: generalizing about Brazil is inherently paradoxical. Brazil is a big country, bigger than the Lower 48 in land area. Brazil also has a lot of people, about half the population of South America (which means, contrary to popular perception, 50 percent of South Americans speak Portuguese). And finally, that large population is arguably the most diverse population on the planet. Brazil has the largest population of Japanese in the world outside of Japan, the largest population of African descendants in the world outside of Nigeria, and — thanks to a large population of blond-haired German and Italian immigrants — southern Brazil was the first place in South America where I was not immediately assumed to be gringo.

Sexuality

Brazil is famous, or infamous, for its easy-going social scene and progressive (or libertarian?) views on sexuality. In the cities and in southeastern Brazil, the areas of the country I visited, I would say that such a reputation is valid, at least in comparison to other Latin American countries.

In bars, walking up and kissing someone and talking later, if at all, is considered flirting. For girls especially, the mean clothes:skin ratio is definitely lower than Argentina and Chile; Brazil is, after all, the progenitor of fio dental swimsuits. And Brazilians probably harbor the most liberal views of homosexuality in South America, all of this in spite of the largest Roman Catholic population on the planet.

(Pictured: Fio dental is Portuguese for "dental floss." You get the idea. Photo credit: SoloStocks.)

Disparity in Wealth

If you were to drive from Chicago to Milwaukee, after leaving Sears Tower, Millennium Park, and the Loop, you would pass by upper-middle class suburbs and Northwestern University, and finally you come to the awkward juxtaposition that seems to define so many of America's cultural differences. This is where fields of corn abut manicured lawns no more than four inches in height and 4-H clubs meet homeowners' associations.

In Brazil this awkward coupling exists, too, but the partners (pictured) are different. Alphaville, meet favela; favela, meet Alphaville.

(Photo credit: SkyscraperLife.)

Brazil's disparity in wealth is arguably the greatest in the world and Alphavilles and favelas exemplify it best.

Alphavilles are exaggerations of gated communities, private cities of up to 30,000 citizens secured by walls of cement and razor wire and battalions of private, armed security guards. Arguably they are a necessity, manifestations of the bunker mentality created by the climate of fear, violence, and kidnapping in Brazil's cities. The bitter irony is that the migration to these faux colonial homes and cul-de-sacs further fuels the fissuring between castes, between rich and poor, in Brazil's already too socially and economically splintered society. In kind, the psychological division created by this migration contributes to the desperation-fueled violence in the lower classes. And so the vicious cycle perpetuates itself.

(Photo credit: Vertigo magazine.)

This trend exists everywhere in the world, albeit not to the same degree. Despite Brown v. Board of Education, de jure segregation in U.S. school districts has merely prefaced the de facto segregation powered by white flight from downtown cores to suburbs or from the West Coast to the Rockies. But, in fairness to the U.S., we have yet to see helicopter commutes.

The one superlative São Paulo can unequivocally claim is the largest helicopter fleet in the world. Partly born of convenience in avoiding São Paulo's gnarly traffic jams and bloody-thirsty drivers, the helicopters, as explained by The Washington Post, are primarily an investment in safety. For a wealthy elite, the helicopters consummate a lifestyle of isolation and the safety it brings. From work at towering skyscrapers with metal detector-equipped entrances, to a commute that literally flies above the potential dangers lurking in the streets of the city below, to a home encircled in protection, the lives of the upper-class are fortressed through, and necessitated by, their tremendous wealth.

The concept isn't too mystifying: economic disparity engenders social disparity. The latter half of this social equation is best represented by Brazil's favelas.

Random House defines favela (pictured) as a "slum area" and "shantytown." Leave it to a dictionary for understatement; favelas are so much more, both their culture and quality of life.

(Photo credit: Alterdestiny.)

Coming to Brazil, my only impression of favelas was from the excellent Brazilian film Cidade de Deus (released in the U.S. as City of God). Little did I realize I would live in one. The experience was one of the highlights of my time in Brazil and I will explain in more detail in a following post about Rio de Janeiro.

Siesta

Generally, the siesta does not exist.

Ethanol

When I visited Campinas and Carlos Amos, a former exchange student from Sitka, I was surprised to learn that his car runs on pure ethanol. And Carlos isn't just a lone-wolf environmental warrior, he is one of the majority: over 50 percent of Brazil's cars are able to run on pure ethanol and the rest are flex-fuel friendly, meaning gas and gas-ethanol hybrids run in the engine too.

(Photo credit: Purdue University.)

Ethanol's success in Brazil is economically driven, which any viable environmental initiative must be for broad success. To fill 'er up with ethanol is nearly 50 percent cheaper than gas. Ethanol doesn't have the same efficiency, kilometers/liter as gas, but it is still cheaper per capita, cost/(kilometers/liter). Because of domestically-produced ethanol, and also its oil reserves, Brazil is an energy independent country, an impressive accomplishment for a country of 180 million.

Whether ethanol is environmentally friendly, however, is a matter of debate. Brazil's sugarcane-based ethanol is 30 percent more efficient than the the United States and its corn, but whether producing ethanol consumes more fossil fuel than it replaces, with corn or with sugarcane, still seems to be fuzzy math, with conflicting conclusions produced by different organizations. The social and environmental effects of diverting corn from the dinner table to the family car and dramatically expanding the sugarcane industry, however, are undeniable.

(Pictured: Carlos and his girlfriend, also a former exchange student. Carlos is doing really, really well. His English is still incredible, accent-less actually; he's acing his international relations classes at Universidade Estadual de Campinas, one of Brazil's top universities; and is serving as AFS's coordinator for his region of Brazil.)

A Beautiful Friendship

2008-04-21T16:18:00.000-07:00

Meet Luciano Cezar: international relations graduate, current communciations student (his second degree), sysadmin for the State of Paraná, part-time model, longboarder, and a 100 percent cool dude.

(Pictured: "It's time to make money by looking good!")

I met Luciano in Buenos Aires in the aftermath of Robbery Attempt #1. Despite my rattled and guilt-ridden mental state, the few days cruising around with Luciano were the best part of my BA experience and when he headed off for Mendoza and Chile, a hazy scheme to swoop through Brazil began to assemble itself in my mind.

The hazy scheme has become reality and I touched down in Curitiba's Afonso Pena International Airport, having come from Pelotas via Porto Alegre, to find a friendly face waiting outside the arrivals gate. (The budget airline revolution has hit Brazil, too — my airline ticket was only US$15 more than a bus.)

Luciano took me to his house and his family. In Brazil, unlike the United States, it is normal to live with your parents well into your twenties (Luciano is 28). According to Luciano, and he's the kind of guy that would know, the whole living-with-the-parents thing doesn't really become a liability on the dating circuit until you hit 30. I'll take his word for it.

(Pictured: Livin' with mom isn't much of a problem for this "funeral crasher," either. Photo credit: Hotflick.net.)

Luciano's family — his younger sister, mom, and dad — epitomized South American hospitality. Still, communication was difficult, and usually Luciano needed to serve as translator, although many of his dad's jokes, of which there were many, needed no translation.

That's not to say Luciano speaks English, however. Luciano knows a modest amount of English, a modest amount of Spanish, and Portuguese. I know English, a moderate amount of Spanish, and a few words of Portuguese. The resulting pidgin will heretofore be known as Lucianothanese, a language which became the household's lingua franca for the following three days.

(Pictured: Curitiba is located in the Brazilian state of Paraná, in red. Paraná is about the size of South Dakota, and Curitiba has about the population of Baltimore.)

That night Luciano and I "went out on the town." I use quotes because I'm a total country bumpkin when it comes to nightlife, it's still a rather foreign concept. The entire club district was hopping — throngs of fashionable girls and guys waiting to get inside clubs and bars, music coming from every which direction — Curitiba definitely seemed to be a city alive with a youthful verve.

After a few drive-bys of the strip, Luciano picked out a Japanese-themed place that he thought a few of his friends were at. The 10 minute queue to enter, R$10/US$6 cover charge, and "21 and over only" policy all seemed daunting, but, as Luciano argued, it was nothing that an American passport couldn't solve. Surprisingly, he was right. After the manager emerged from the club to examine my passport...wah-lah! I was whisked inside without waiting or paying.

(Pictured: To accompany our language, Luciano and I created a handshake, ¡Explosión de las manos! Watch out, it's dangerous.)

Staying at Luciano's house also entailed meeting his extended family. The following days, over meals of rice, beans, chicken hearts, beef, fish, manioc flour, chocolate milk, bananas, papaya, and cake, I met Luciano's grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Family is number one in Brazil, and sitting in on Sunday dinner was an experience not to be forgotten.

On my second day in Curitiba, the whole family headed downtown to watch go-cart racing at the behest of Luciano's semi-professional, race car-driving uncle. I've never understood the appeal of Forumla One or NASCAR and, granted, watching go-carts zip around in circles isn't the same thing, but I remain baffled.

(Video: Wiping out, go-cart style.)

Perhaps it's the commercially saturated environment that attracts spectators. Free beer and free snacks being handed out by scantily-clad, constantly-soliciting "spokesgirls" makes the advertising circus almost more interesting than the racing for the largely 20–50-year-old male middle-class demographic.

(Pictured: Free beer+girls+spandex+cute, little boy=advertising juggernaut.)

The following day was a little more interesting, for me at least. Luciano and I took the Serra Verde Express, a railroad that links the interior of Paraná and Curitiba to the Atlantic and the container port of Paranguá. Sadly, like most railroads these days, passenger service is an economic impracticality unless subsidized. In the case of the Serra Verde Express, that subsidy comes from wealthy tourists willing to pay threefold the cost of a bus fare for passage on a "tourist train."

The ride was worth every centavo. The canopy of Paraná's subtropical rainforests Paraná were spectacular to chug under and the views afforded by the route's 600 meter/2,000 ft. descent even more so.

Our train trip concluded not in Paranguá, but Morretes. Arriving at 11 in the morning, we stepped off the platform onto the cobblestone streets of supremely picturesque little colonial town centered along what could've served as a stunt double for the River Kwai. Life in Morretes was as slow as the river that flows through it and Luciano and I kicked it. Here are some photos of the trip and the town:

(Pictured: The line cutting across the slope are the train tracks. It's quite an amazing route.)

(Pictured: Somewhere in that white nebulous mass is the highest peak in the State of Paraná.)

(Pictured: On a hot day, resisting the call of the river's refreshingly cool waters is a near-impossible feat.)

The bus back to Curitiba was unspectacular, cheaper, and faster. As beautiful as Morretes looks, Curitiba is a darn impressive city itself. A darling of the world's urban planners, Curitiba is modern, clean, efficient, attractive, and features a remarkably high quality of life. If poverty exists — and I'm sure it does, although probably not to the same degree as São Paulo or Rio — the city does a very, very good job at concealing it.

(Pictured: Curitiba's bus system is a mirror of the city it serves: fast, clean, modern, frequent, wildly popular, and efficient. The system's fleet also includes bi-articulated buses, or, as I call 'em, centipedes with wheels. Photo credit: Wikimedia.)

I had a strict itinerary to stick to, and as much as I loved Curitiba and the Cezars, I had to move on. I might add, though, that Curitiba is one of the 18 finalists to host World Cup 2014 matches so, maybe, just maybe, my time in Curitiba was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Some closing shots:

(Pictured: Museu Oscar Niemeyer, Curitiba's contemporary art museum, was designed by and named for Brazil's most famous architect.)

(Pictured: The bus system includes space age-style bus stops, buses with gangways, and fare payment prior to boarding.)

(Pictured: Until later, Cezars.)

Day 10: Light Pollution

2008-04-19T15:33:00.000-07:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. I will draft posts for each day based on notes I took during the expedition.

Also, a video has been added to "Day 7."

I attempt to maintain a personal policy of waiting 24 hours after witnessing something that awakens my enmity before taking any action. Time acts as a solvent of excess emotion and usually 24 hours provides for a more circumspect view of the problem which thus results in a less zealous, more practical solution. The same concept applies after a decision has been made. It's common sense: you can't have hindsight until you have a perspective from "the hind."

Waking up on Day 10, nearly 24 hours removed from my decision to turn around, afforded me the first hints of hindsight. It was good. No twinges of regret, lots of energy, and despite the soreness in my legs, back, and arms, I was eagerly looking towards completing the final leg of my journey.

(Pictured: Rest break.)

Fittingly, the final leg was also to be the hardest, nearly 35 kilometers of twisting river valley and canon.

I was on the trail by 11:50 a.m. For the first 10 kilometers, like Cerro Medusa, the terrain was mindless, I needed just follow the river and keep walking. Really, my only real concern was capturing enough photos of the incredible landscape passing by. I think I was somewhat successful in this endeavor so I will use photos, not words, to describe the following terrain.

(Pictured: The Puna claims a guanaco as its own.)

(Pictured: A dust bath's remnants from one of our even-toed ungulate friends — the wild ones, not the domesticated ones.)

(Pictured: The mules' trail.)

(Pictured: A 5 p.m. lunch of pasta and Parmesan.)

(Pictured: Río del Cazadero may be narrow but the water runs deep and fast.)

By 7 p.m. I had reached both the trailhead and complete physical exhaustion. I had covered 25 kilometers, but that number is deceiving. For the final 10 kilometers, as the river had cut steep angles into the surrounding scree slopes in zig-zag formation; following the river proper was upwards of 30 or 40 percent longer than an A-to-B vector on the map. To cut such a vector, however, required ascending and descending innumerable 20-50 meter energy-sucking sand slopes where each step was like the classic "If the snail climbs one and half meters up the well wall during the day and slides down half a meter while sleeping during the night, how many days will the snail take to reach the top of the nine-meter well?" fourth-grade math problem.

Reaching the limits of one's physical capacity is a surprisingly cathartic experience. The culmination was once and for all ascending up of 150-meter valley walls to the beginning of the alluvial plain.

By nearly 7 in the evening, the sun's rays were courting the peaks of the surrounding mountains, and the sky assuming the ethereal blue hue that only appears in the chromatic void between day and night.

I mentioned earlier that I strategically had saved my Tchaikovsky CD, specifically the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, for summit day on Ojos del Salado. Since that day would never arrive (at least on this trip to South America), I had loaded the treasured CD into my discman that evening.

Trudging up the final meters of the river valley's slopes, my hamstrings were tweaking with every step and my thighs were burning as if someone had injected hydrochloric acid into them, the climactic refrains of the Romeo and Juliet blaring, the sky filled with a depthless blue penetrated by beams of crimson and violet shooting out from the horizon (pictured), and I finally reached the top, the alluvial plain spread out in front of me.

It was surreal, almost like an out-of-body experience. The feeling was indescribably pure and fulfilling.

This sounds like a cheesy closing scene from a corny movie, but I do not exaggerate. It was the most incredible feeling, the kind of moment that makes being stinky and tired and discouraged seem like trivialities hardly meriting a second's attention. The strangest part is that I wasn't finished for the day. I was at the "trailhead," yes, but not having arranged a 4x4 to pick me up I was still 10 kilometers from the road.

Even though I felt like the heavens above had just opened to bestow bliss upon me, I didn't stop. The heavens had sadly not arranged to remedy my tighter-than-a-violin's-E-string hammies. I knew that with anything more than a few minutes of inactivity they'd freeze up just the way a white sauce or tapioca thickens when removed from heat.

So on I trudged across the alluvial plain. By 8:20 the trudging had turned into the shuffling of feet, and by 8:40 I simply could not trudge or shuffle any farther. I had achieved absolute muscle fatigue.

For weightlifters, with low repetitions and high quantities of weight, muscle fatigue is an easily defined state: you simply cannot manage another pull-up, another squat, or another bicep curl. For endurance athletes, it's a mythical state that is rarely, if at all, visited. The repetitions are extraordinarily high, tens of kilometers, tens of thousands of steps or strides, while the weight is negligible: you, and if you're backpacking, your pack.

I've only encountered muscle fatigue once before in my life from an endurance activity. In sixth grade my dad and I set out on what was supposedly a twenty-mile hike, as required for the the Boy Scout hiking merit badge. Sadly, my merit badge counselor had erred in the assigned route which turned out to be closer to 22 miles, and my 11-year-old legs simply could not manage. Around mile 21 my dad had to rescue me with the pick-up truck and once back at the house I had to be carried from the vehicle inside into a bath of hot water because my legs literally could not function. I remember begging the following day to stay home from school because my legs felt as though they had been crushed by a steamroller.

But despite the physical fatigue, I still felt incredibly happy and upbeat, and had a voracious appetite to match. I polished off the remaining pasta and Parmesan and then hydrated, hydrated, hydrated.

(After excessive exertion I tend to regard myself almost in the third person, thinking strategically what is best with no heed given to aversions or dislikes. Not thirsty? Tough. Here's one and a half liters of water. Not hungry? Tough. Here's a pound of pasta. Cold? Tough. Go in the stream and soak your legs in the icy water.)

I was far too physically tired to set up the tent so I rolled out my bag to bivy under the stars. What a way great way to spend the last night of a great trip!

(Pictured: Kitchen and camp illuminated by alpenglow.)

All bivouacking is not equal. Besides reducing pack weight, the reason most folks I know prefer bivies is the spectacular view they afford. I must agree — but only if you can see the stars.

Light pollution or photopollution is a subject you're not likely to be familiar with unless astronomy happens to be a hobby. Essentially the night sky is becoming obscured by the glut of artificial light that emanates from our houses, streets, towns, and cities.

One of my all-time favorite activities is to kayak at night out beyond the last string of islands in Sitka Sound and drift the incoming swells from the Pacific while reading, or writing, or listening to music. Sitting out there looking back, it's remarkable how much light Sitka, population ~8,800, produces. It's like a Star Wars-style force field protecting us earthlings from the stars and constellations.

Security lighting, street lighting, and the rest are a necessities of life, of course, but safety and a night sky are not mutually exclusive ideals. It comes down to efficiency, and with 30 to 60 percent of our artificial lighting not needed, we aren't doing a good job of it. Sadly, like so many other things in life, only one offender is needed to ruin things for others; one gratuitous source of light, usually an urban conglomeration, can disrupt and dilute the majesty of the night sky upwards of a 100 kilometers away.

(Pictured: New York City at night. Definitely not an International Dark Sky Community. Photo credit: Wikimedia.)

No problems with that out here. It was a spectacular show from my sleeping bag. First of all, sunsets seem to get caught in a time warp out here, leaving a spectacular, evolving vespertine sky that can be ablaze in crepuscular color for hours. But after the last glimmers of yellow and red disappeared over the horizon, a gibbous moon and night sky emerged, stars appearing like fireflies above me.

With no artificial light for hundreds of kilometers and already being closer to outer space than 99 percent of other humans, I dare say my view that night was one of the best in the world, a definite 8.0 on the Bortle Dark-Sky Scale. Actually, that's no hyperbole, this really is one of the best places for viewing the night sky in the world. Across the Andes from me, in northern Chile, lies one of the highest concentrations of telescopes in the world, including both the largest in the world, the European Southern Observatory's aptly named Very Large Telescope, and the soon-to-be largest in the world, an even larger, even more aptly named Overwhelmingly Large Telescope, scheduled for completion in 2012.

With such unparalleled clarity, I could see the Milky Way — a luminous substance that can be best described as "Dust" from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy — and even the celestial mote and matter of Andromeda. That view from the sleeping bag, doubly framed by both the opening of my sleeping bag and periphery of the austere Andean peaks rising up on all sides of me, made for a wonderful night.

(Pictured: "Dust." A view from the European Southern Observatory, across the mountains from me. However, we shared the same spectacular view. Photo credit: European Southern Observatory.)

Postscript: Seeing as I've nearly completed this series of posts (only one more remains), I have posted all the photos from my trip on Facebook. I couldn't have done it earlier because it would have ruined the suspense! The albums, for Facebook members and non-members alike, can be viewed here and here.

A Night at the Symphony

2008-04-13T17:55:00.000-07:00

A photo has been added to "Brazil Ho!" (as promised).

São Paulo is an unexceptional city. An amalgam of Baghdad's crime and danger, New York's pretentiousness, Dhaka's poverty, Mumbai's erratic weather, San Francisco's tumultuous topography, Houston's sprawl and absence of urban planning, Tokyo-Yokohama's population, and Los Angeles's traffic congestion, you might think that Sampa, as São Paulo is known, would have individuality of world renown.

(Pictured: A photo of São Paulo traffic. Photo credit: Glommer's Mind.)

Yet, for the world's seventh largest urban conglomeration and fifth largest city proper, I would conjecture only two or three Americans out of ten could tell you which country São Paulo belongs to. Not being able to boast of a superlative, for worse and for better, does that.

I came to São Paulo for one reason: to visit Gabriel Catalina, a friend I had met in Buenos Aires. Gabriel is an account manager at Banco do Real by day and business student at Universidade de São Paulo by night. Gabriel, his brother, twin sister, and parents were all a blast to visit with, but I figured if I was going to be in one of the world's alpha cities, why not spend a night at the symphony, too?

After 15 minutes by bus, 45 minutes by metro, and 10 minutes by foot through one of the sketchiest neighborhoods I've ever had the misfortune of passing through, I arrived at Sala São Paulo, the home of Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo (OSESP).

(Pictured: Sala São Paulo is 124 years old, but 115 of them were as Estação Júlio Prestes, a train station. An incredible renovation took place, however, surely leaving it as one of the world's most beautiful concert halls. Maybe São Paulo does lay claim to a superlative... Photo credit: State of São Paulo.)

I skipped into the concert hall with bubbly anticipation and a grin — it had been three months since I'd even seen a stringed instrument. According to OSESP's website, there were tickets going for as little as R$28/US$17 so the cultural moonlighting should be a budget-buster either. When my "Você fala espanhol?" was met with a "Sí" from one of the three girls working on the ticket office, I knew I was in luck.

Then things went south. They were sold out!

I had no recourse — they were sold out the following night too. Walking through shadowy streets back to the metro station, streets where even shadowier pairs of restless, 20-year-old male eyes followed me like glue, was not a stroll I relished repeating. So I sat, pensive and not exceptionally surprised at my conundrum (I had acted on a whim after all), and pulled out Jane Austen's Emma to mollify my disappointment. Perhaps Emma could loan me some of her bounteous cleverness to alleviate my predicament?

Fifteen minutes later the same Spanish-speaking ticket agent who had passed on the grave news about the tickets bustled past me. She saw me, though, and for reasons that still mostly escape me, she abruptly sat down next to me and asked me where I was from. As I soon learned, she actually didn't really speak Spanish, she spoke Portuñol. But so did I. Sort of.

Under the age of 35, blond, white, and not dressed in concert attire, I was obviously a curiosity; I could tell this the moment I walked into Sala São Paulo. This is the only explanation I can offer for the incredible kindness that was to follow.

We made a bit of small talk (her name was Sol, like the sun) and talked a little about classical music, and then she abruptly stood up and, with a dangerously coy smile, motioned for me to follow. I was only too happy to oblige.

She strode past the box office, me scurrying in her wake, and came to the ticket turnstyles where two burly, steely-faced security guards, complete with earpieces, were standing guard. Sol motioned her head in my direction, whispered something into one of the guard's ears, and with a wink (and two subtle nods of approval from the otherwise stoic guards) gestured for me to slip through the wheelchair-accessible gate.

Off we went again into the lobby, weaving and wending through the pillars of São Paulo high society as they sipped R$30/US$18 cups of wine. We had far more important things to do, however. If only they knew what they were missing out on!

(Pictured: The interior of Sala São Paulo. Photo credit: Hostelier News.)

We whisked into restricted areas, peeked on the stage — I felt like Lyra Belacqua sneaking into the discrete nooks and forbidden passageways of Jordan College. Actually, I felt like Lyra Belacqua but with a "handsome and clever" incarnation of Emma Woodhouse to guide in the mischievousness. From somewhere in the heavens above, Ms. Austen had answered my prayers in extraordinary and expeditious fashion.

Finally, with a handful of minutes before the concert, Sol pointed out seats held by season-ticket patrons with a propensity for truancy. Then, after trading e-mail addresses, she vanished as mysteriously as she had appeared.

Just adjacent to the ushers, I loitered and loitered until finally, just when the concertmaster was striding out to applause at center stage, I scampered to a nearby seat on the terrace level. Needless to say, I was giddy with excitement and could hardly believe what had transpired over the previous hour. I had a seat in an spectacular concert hall, about to listen the Brahms's Academic Festival Overture, Alberto Nepomuceno's Symphony in G (he's a Brazilian composer), and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor.

(Pictured: The stage. Photo credit: Artec Consultants, the folks who designed Sala São Paulo.)

At intermission I felt out of place...which I was. Grandes dames would eye me like a wild animal. First they'd see my wrinkly dress shirt, then — their physiognomies tensing — their eyes would flit down to my beltless waist, then my khakis, and finally my flip-flops and the sockless and smudgy feet inside them. At this point these women appeared as though they had just eaten something sinfully foul at a dinner party and were trying to coax down the offending substance without betraying their misery to the host. With a dismissive swing of their head, they would refocus their attention back to their conversations, no doubt sincerely regretting they had ever hazarded a glance at my sorry self.

I wish I could have dressed more appropriately, but despite being raked by dozens of eyes, I harbored no regrets. The opportunity to listen to a live symphony orchestra comes only once or twice a year, if that, and never have I listened to an orchestra of OSESP's caliber.

I think George Szell once said a good orchestra (by which he was referring to the Cleveland Orchestra, probably exclusively) is the best instrument on Earth. Well even if he didn't say it, I'm saying it now because it's darn true. A glittering, visually synchronized symphony orchestra flanked by the concerts hall's austere Ionic-style marble columns, all with the virtuosic notes of a Rachmaninoff piano concerto shimmering in the air? Thank you, Sol, for the exceptional experience.

Some More Observations...

2008-04-13T17:27:00.000-07:00

...regarding this blog.

I realize this site is making or has made the transition from public blog to personal journal based on the lengths of posts and loquaciousness. For that I apologize. But not enough to slap parameters of brevity on my posts! I am writing for selfish reasons, because I am discovering that I enjoy writing more than I previously believed and because I think this will be a good Journal of Record, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins Ages 18-19, for myself one year, five years, and seventy years down the road. Personal retrospection is vastly underrated.

I still transcribe from private notebook and commonplace book to public blog because the awareness that the writing is being broadcast to anyone, even if it's just a handful of folks, keeps me from getting too lazy.

...regarding texting abbreviations.

Spanish is a phonetic language. South America is a continent full of cell phones. So why is it not also a continent full of teenagers with tendinitis and Blackberry thumbs? After all, they are not at liberty to squish "See you later" into "cu l8r." But (non-phonetic) abbreviations persevere, relying on memory rather than intuition. A few examples: "Dónde" (where) becomes "Do" and "Qué" (what) becomes simply "Q."

...regarding sex.

Hoteles por hora, hotels by the hour, are exactly for what they sound like. Quite common in Argentina, they look just like any other hotel if you were to walk by on the street. No neon flashing lights, just an unassuming brick façade and one-way glass windows.

I intended to visit one, but the high cost (ARG$70/USD$22) persuaded me otherwise. Also, the receptionists who I have gotten to know fairly well over the previous two months at Hostel Recoleta found my proposed cultural experience to be hilarity of the highest order. Regardless, I find it fascinating that an industry solely dedicated to the accommodation of trysting exists.

Here's how it works: You walk into the reception where a pane of frosted glass and two-way intercom separates clients and receptionist so to ensure anonymity. You are then assigned to a room where hors d'œuvres, a television exclusively programmed with porn channels, a radio exclusively broadcasting RnB and smooth jazz, and wall-to-wall mirrors await. Room service comes and, through the type of little door you'd find in a solitary-confinement cell at a prison, takes an order of drinks and slides them in. And finally, when only five minutes are left, the same receptionist gives a heads up of the impending expiration of your reservation. You then leave, anonymity maintained.

(Pictured: It looks innocent enough.)

A surprisingly high percentage of my Argentine friends have been to one. Even though politically the country has a comparative dearth of morality statutes when juxtaposed with the U.S. (e.g., prostitution is legal and regulated), socially — being a Roman Catholic country — there are enduring taboos which create conflicts...and a solution in the form of hoteles por hora.

...time.

Argentina and South America use 24-hour time, e.g., it's 17:00, not 5 p.m. It makes sense and eliminates confusion, too, except for American tourists who aren't used to it.

...regarding soccer advertising.

I have always been perplexed why soccer jerseys feature sponsor names. If my beloved Boston Red Sox where to auction a shoulder-patch advertisement to Dunkin' Donuts the Red Sox Nation would erupt in outrage. But I think I may have finally figured out why.

On television, how can you advertise during a game with a clock that runs continuously, spare halftime, for 90 minutes? Even with injuries on the field of play the seconds inexorably tick away. The answer is...you can't. Networks sometimes run five-second, 1/8-screen animation ads at the bottom of the screen during play, but the 30-second spot becomes obsolete. This means that the networks, and consequently the teams, cannot reap the financially windfall of broadcast. Enter: jerseys. Players wear them on the field, fans wear them off the field — they're an omnipresent advertising medium. In short, they're a gold mine.

(Pictured: River Plate football club and Petrobras oil company: advertising bedfellows.)

I suppose that for the same reason NASCAR and Formula 1 race suits look like the fantasy of some Madison Avenue adman.

...regarding dogs.

Argentines joke that there is a "5:1 person:dog ratio, but we're struggling to keep it that way." Canines are everywhere in cities and especially everywhere in towns and pueblitos. And their presence seems to be accepted by people; they lounge around in bus terminals and, especially in rural areas, even meander through restaurants without raising anyone's ire. They seem to accept their place, too. While they ultimately are in search of food and/or affection, they don't ever make their intentions too obvious. No whining, no begging, but if you have food they think you're going to throw away, they'll only casually shadow you.

...regarding alfajores.

Alfajores are chocolate-covered, dulce de leche-filled packaged pastries endemic to Argentina. (Dulce de leche is a somewhat carmely tasting desert filling wildly popular in Argentina.) A less flattering analogue would be relate alfajores as the Twinkies of Argentina. Regardless, with their exotic fillings they're positively delicious. It's always great when you can pass off sweet tooth indulgence as a cultural experience.

(Pictured: Yumminess.)

Brazil Ho!

2008-04-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

More photos will be added at a later date.

Update: The photo (singular, sorry!) has been added.

My tiger friend has got sun screen,
And I have the pack.
We're all set for the scene.
We're never coming back!

We're abandoning this life we've led!
So long, Mom and Pop!
We're sick of doing what you've said,
And now it's going to stop!

We're going where it shines all year,
Where life can have real meaning.
A place where we won't have to hear,
"Your room could stand some cleaning."

Ah, Brazil. The country of white sand and samba, of Ipanema and Amazon. I'm leaving Argentina. Brazil Ho!

Despite the white sand and samba, I didn't come to Brazil for the sights, I'm here for the people. That includes (for you Sitkans) Leonardo Peres and Carlos Amos as well as a few of my fellow incoming classmates at college and friends I met traveling in Argentina. I'm excited!

My visa application was approved in Mendoza, Argentina last Tuesday and I skedaddled that very night. Nearly a month working on a farm and then a big chunk of time loitering in Mendoza waiting for my visa had given me a fever, and the only prescription was...more traveling!

What a cure Brazil has been. New sights, new customs, and — most striking — a new language that has overwhelmed me since crossing the Río Uruguay into the land of Portuguese.

(Pictured: He's got a fever, too.)

I was eventually bound for Pelotas, the hometown of Leonardo Peres, a friend who spent last year as an exchange student in Sitka. Leo, of course, commands a great fluency of English so my arrival in Pelotas would also be my arrival into a Portuguese-not-necessary zone, thanks to Leo’s patience and alacrity.

However, my Buenos Aires-originated bus was bound for the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, not Pelotas. It was time to unearth my miming talents.

Actually the gulf of communication wasn’t quite that broad. Everyone says, “Well golly, Portuguese and Spanish, they’re just so similar.” Before entering Brazil I put a lot of stock in this notion hoping that, having achieved a passable level of Spanish, I was going to score on a "learn one language, get the second free" deal. Alas, that was not entirely the case.

(Pictured: Pelotas and Porto Alegre are located in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in red, birthplace of, among other luminaries, Giselle Bündchen and Ronaldinho.)

At first Portuguese was promising. When filling out my Brazilian visa application, it was not until the second page that I realized the instructions were in Portuguese, not Spanish.

Then I heard it.

The good news is when I speak in Spanish, Brazilians can understand me. The bad news is when Brazilians speak in Portuguese, I can’t understand them. It’s a one-way communication valve.

This communication-stymieing valve is caused by the baffling pronunciation of Portuguese. It’s nasally and dipthongy while lacking all the clarity and crispness that defines Spanish. This take on Portuguese is all rather partisan, however. I'm still miffed I didn't get my "second language free."

So back to buying my ticket from Porto Alegre to Pelotas. I could state my intentions (in Spanish) just fine, but when monologue transitioned to dialogue — e.g., being asked “What seat do you want?” or “What time do you want to leave?” — I quickly became helpless.

After . Off to Pelotas.

Leo was at the bus station and we headed off to his house. It was like whisking back to Alaska for a few days, in spite of the climate.

Leo’s room, which he graciously allowed me to sleep in, was dressed in Alaska memorabilia. Photos of last year’s prom, Dan Evans photos, Rebecca Poulson's The Outer Coast calendar, photos of Helen — the Alaskan end of an intercontinental romance, and the ever-friendly Alaska flag of blue and gold, the Big Dipper and North Star, adorned the walls and covered his nightstand. He even had a Barack Obama button sitting idly on his desk — a true home away from home.

(Pictured: Leo and family.)

Leo is enrolled in two universities: a law school in the city of Rio Grande, an hour and a half by bus from Pelotas, and a Portuguese and English linguistics program at the Catholic university in Pelotas.

My second night in Pelotas, Leo's English and Portuguese linguistics program brought in a guest lecturer, Malcolm Coulthard, from Aston University in Birmingham, England, and, lucky for me, the material was being presented in English.

The subject was forensic idiolectology. (Idiolect: Think a portmanteau of idiosyncrasy and dialect.) Professor Coulthard lectured on how to identify and compare each person's unique style of speech and prose — a fingerprint of words — to solve crimes ranging from homicide to petty plagiarism.

The most notable case of forensic idiolectology is Ted Kaczynski's a 232-point screed published in the The Washington Post and The New York Times berating the industrial-technological system and its effects on civilization. Unfortunately for Kaczynski, the quid, national press exposure, of his quo, a mailbomb ceasefire, also proved to be his undoing. Kaczyinski's national audience included his brother who found the writing style to be disquietingly familiar and ultimately led to the Kaczynski's apprehension.

(Pictured: Yet another criminal foiled by forensic idiolectology.)

Despite the lecture's flashy subject, it seemed to lack substance. The field of forensic idiolectology apparently doesn't involve much more than common sense, Google search queries, and "that sounds familiar"-type intuition, or at least those were the methods used to describe the four examples in Professor Couthard's lecture.

The highlight of my stay in Pelotas and the reason I had come to Pelotas, however, was chatting with Leo. While he wasn’t at class we would reminisce about Sitka, leaf through the yearbook, stroll about town, and go out for food. The visit made for a lovely few days and was a fitting beginning for my swing through Brazil.

Updated Itinerary

2008-04-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

My previous itinerary has been ditched in favor of a more time sensitive version. Assuming I don't get robbed, my shoestring budget holds up, and I don't get stricken with dengue fever, here's what's going to happen:

Now-April 14: Brazil. Specifically, Pelotas, Curitiba, São Paulo, Campinas, and Rio de Janeiro.
April 14-April 25: Bolivia.
April 26-29: Northern Chile (i.e., north of Santiago).
April 30-May 4: Isla Robinson Crusoe (see map).
May 5-May 17: Patagonia and the Lake District of Argentina and Chile.
May 18-19: Buenos Aires.
May 19: Leave Buenos Aires.
May 20: Arrive in Sitka.

Approximately 12,300 kilometers in 44 days by jet, turboprop, Chilean Navy, ferry, train, bus, hitchiking, bike, and by foot. Let the adventures begin!

(Photo credit: GreenwichMeanTime.com.)

Some More Observations...

2008-04-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

...regarding public bathroooms.

Public bathrooms are endangered entities to begin with, but in a few places, namely bus terminals, they are a necessity, ergo exist. The government administers such facilties with an informal user fee approach: a bathroom attendant, stationed in a modest alcove near the entrance, collects obligatory tips in exchange for maintaining the cleanliness of the facility.

I won't be one to complain about such de facto user fees, either. Without an attendant the typical bathroom would become the South American version of a Superfund site. You see, many bathrooms in Argentina, especially in rural areas like Catamarca or La Rioja, have sewage systems of such sensitivity that you must dispose of your toilet paper in a small wastebasket adjacent to the toilet. If a bathroom is overseen by an underpaid, undermotivated janitor, as some are, these wastebaskets become volcanoes with floes of brown, yellow, and white spilling over the sides. In bathrooms with attendants, however, as their tips are dependent upon the quality of the "experience," these volcanoes are pampered into perpetual dormancy.

Finally, there are occasions when, out of either ignorance or laziness, someone commits the cardinal crime of disposing their toilet paper in the toilet. Invariably this transforms the toilet into yet another volcano, a more potent Strombolian type. But do not fear, the bathroom attendant is here! Really, these guys are incredible.

(Pictured: Would you tip US$0.15 to avoid this?)

...regarding Google.

For you Googlers, especially who can get lost in Google Earth for hours at a time, behold...Google Sky!

Google has produced yet another well designed, Web 2.0 rich Internet application. Google seems to be putting much stock in such rich Internet applications — Internet-based applications of such functionality that they replace traditional computer-based software. In essence, the Internet is emerging as a alternative application platform to the operating system.

For example, Google Documents. I, for one, have begun the process of transferring my Word and Excel documents to Google Docs, whose basic utility matches Microsoft Word and Excel but surpasses them in convenience. The possibility of a Web 2.0 revolution would turn the computer into primarily a vehicle for the Internet and little else, at least comparatively, as application after application is replicated for an Internet platform.

What separates Google from the vast majority of other corporations is not that they release products frequently but that they release products of outrageous quality. Really, do you know any word processing application that not only provides word and character counts, but also Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, and Automated Readability Index scores?

Those way nifty features were likely not the product of supervisor's directive, but rather from a curious imagination and nimble mind very happy with its job. Google's free on-site gourmet chefs, car washes, oil changes, gym, barber, and "20-percent time" have become nearly as legendary as their products and the correlation is not coincidental. I have a friend who works for Google and it was unsurprising to hear that Google has even solved its employees' commuting conundrums in ingenious fashion.

(Pictured: The Googleplex. Do No Evil indeed; those are solar panels on the roof.)

But the question remains, how does Apple get its employees to engineer such sexy products?

...regarding guide books.

I promised a review on the Rough Guide's Chile after purchasing a second-hand copy over month ago. There verdict is in: it's terrific.

Granted, I have not yet visited Chile, but I have outlined a rough rough itinerary for when I do arrive, which required extensive time pouring over the Rough Guide.

There are two differences between Rough Guide and Lonely Planet:

Quantity. There is more information in the Rough Guide. The font is smaller and there are more pages.

Inherently, going "off the beaten track" becomes compromised once solely relying on a guide book for travel information. (Although this is an inadvisable travel tactic. Instead, diversify! Ask locals, fellow travelers, and — pardon the oxymoron — take your imagination seriously!) But with a bounty of information, such as Rough Guide's Chile, you can truly find a road less traveled.

Quality. There is an edge to the writing. For those who are familiar with the editorial edge and sharpness present in British media like the The Economist, BBC, or The Guardian that does not exist in American media, say, Newsweek, NPR, or The Washington Post, and like that edge and sharpness, you'll love the Rough Guide. Mind you, it's not overly cynical or slapstick, just occasional wit sprinkled throughout the paragraphs making the reading enjoyable.

(Pictured: Edge and sharpness.)

It remains to be seen whether this "edge and sharpness" adequately represents reality, however. I will follow-up with a report when on the front lines.

...regarding the art of scheduling bus tickets.

I have distilled from experience several important guidelines when scheduling bus tickets:

Always schedule arrivals in the morning. Arriving in a new and foreign city at the bus terminal, usually one of the less safe parts of town, at dusk without a clue how to get wherever is to be avoided. You can just feel larcenous eyes following you, calculating your actions, if you end up in this situation. I imagine the outline of my money belt poking out of my stomach looks like a juicy, gringo-ey bullseye to the hoodlums.

Therefore I figure thieves and pickpockets, people who make their living leeching off productive society, likely don't have the discipline to ply their trade at 6 a.m., making morning the ideal time to slip into town at my most vulnerable. But also, morning arrivals provide a free breakfast at the hostel you check in to!

Maximize nights on the bus. Every night on the bus is a night you need not pay for lodging. Beyond frugality, though, buses, especially buses without air conditioning, turn into greenhouses during the day. And I've spent enough time in greenhouses, thank you very much.

Always schedule departures in the evening. Walking to the terminal with two hulking backpacks gets you sweaty, but more so during the day than at night.

Visa Politics

2008-03-31T17:28:00.000-07:00

I write this in Mendoza, Argentina, having concluded my stay on the organic farm, and just received my visa for Brazil.

United States citizens must pay US$100 to enter Perú, Chile (only if entering by plane), and Bolivia, and US$135 for a visa to Brazil. (I assume northern South America has such taxes as well, but having no designs on traveling there I haven't looked into it.) Most of these taxes apply only to Americans, but occasionally to Canadians, Australians, and Kiwis as well.

What's that? Reactionary anti-Americanism? That's likely part of the equation, but as all the consular officials I have met with have eagerly pointed out, these brash gestures towards the U.S. are nothing more than reciprocity.

If that. The United States one-ups South America with a US$133 "non-refundable visa processing application fee" which every international visitor (except for Canadians and Bermudians) must pay because every international visitor (except for Canadians and Bermudians) needs a visa to enter our country.

(Pictured: ¡Que bonita!)

But wait! If a country has the sheer audacity to charge Americans an entrance tax or visa fee, America retaliates with a separate "visa issuance fee." The U.S. State Department describes it best: "The United States strives to eliminate visa issuance fees whenever possible; however, when a foreign government imposes such fees on U.S. citizens for certain types of visas, the United States will impose a 'reciprocal' fee to nationals of that country for similar-type of visas." Even if all this seems predatory — hitting foreigners with a "visa processing fee" and then a "visa issuance fee" — the meaning is incomplete without context.

Chile, the most developed of the countries that charge Americans an entrance tax, has a per capita income of US$9,968, which would make our visa application fee 1.3 percent of a Chilean's average income. Bolivia, the poorest of the listed countries, has a per capita income of US$1,293, meaning our visa fee amounts to over one-tenth of an average Bolivian's earnings. This doesn't take into account additional "visa issuance fees" for citizens of these countries.

For America's John Q. Smith and his average income of $45,594, these taxes amount to 0.2 percent of his income. That's not reciprocity. True reciprocity would be a Chilean entrance tax of US$600 or, for Bolivia, US$4,550.

The fees are only half of what infuriates the rest of the world. Also required: an in-person interview at the nearest U.S. consulate or embassy at least six months before intended departure date, a digital fingerprint scan, "evidence of funds to cover expenses in the United States" (talking to some Argentines, this is a euphemism for tax returns), "evidence of compelling social and economic ties abroad," and the "Nonimmigrant Visa Application Form DS-156," which makes college applications look like a "My name is ____" sticker. Finally, if you're a male age 16–45 (read: potential terrorist), you must provide a specific itinerary and additional screening information. In other words, it's a jungle of red tape and because of the American hegemony, there are no scissors in sight.

The only South American country with the cojones to tit-for-tat America's bureaucracy is Brazil. You must apply for a visa at a consulate or embassy before entering the country, provide three months of bank records, a photocopy of your credit card(s), a photocopy of your ticket to Brazil, and contact information of a Brazilian citizen for reference.

Because of this tit-for-tatting I have spent nearly a week in Mendoza shepherding materials for my application and waiting for it to be processed. With days ticking away before my return ticket to Alaska, I was not thrilled about this roadblock in my itinerary, even if Brazil is just returning the middle finger.

Despite their persnickety rules, the staff at the Brazilian consulate here in Mendoza has been nothing but courteous, helpful, and fun to talk with. Brazil advises allowing five days for processing time but I received my visa only 26 hours after submitting my paperwork, along with convincing sales pitches from each staffer on the virtues of their hometown (and why I should visit). My daily trip to the consulate has been, surprisingly, the highlight of my days in Mendoza, and as a token of thanks I left the staff a Theobroma chocolate bar. Why wait until January 2009 to start repairing America's international reputation?

(Pictured: Diplomatic panaceas.)

From a non-emotive, non-nationalistic perspective, the fees are quite fair. Wealthy Western tourists paying to visit comparatively poor or developing countries is simply a progressive tax scheme on a worldwide level. Furthermore, I have no qualms forking over money to governments helmed by Michelle Bachelet, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or Evo Morales; these are administrations I can trust to develop and improve their countries in a politically and socially responsible manner. Sadly, I can not say the same of Hugo Chávez, Álvaro Uribe, or Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

(Pictured: Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president.)

Finally, a bit of empathy for the country of my citizenship. The reason for the rules, regulations, and fees is, of course, for our own security and to ensure that tourists who visit are not in fact deadbeats looking to become de facto immigrants. The visa requirements for many other Western countries, France for example, are as or more stringent than that of the U.S. Yet the French don't get singled out for these entrance taxes and visa fees in South America. Why not?

Because, as one Argentine I met aptly put it, the U.S. "makes you feel like shit" applying for your visa, receiving your visa, and entering the country. Most foreigners I have met in describing their experience to the U.S. has used some combination of the words "arrogant," "unwelcoming," and "skeptical," or a synonym thereof. It is a pity that our country's reputation suffers from such an attitude problem. Maybe President Obama should invest in a bulk order of Theobroma bars to make amends when he takes office?

Disclaimer: I do not purport to be an expert on the quagmire of fees and paperwork involved in international travel. All the figures and facts I assembled are hearsay from consular officials and fellow travelers or gathered from a passing glance of the State Department website. I am positive that some of the above is incorrect and/or a misrepresentation of reality because of my limited understanding of what is an extremely complex subject. However, the gist of this post, I think, does represent an accurate portrayal of international opinion of U.S. visa policy.

Day 9: The Dead Zone

2008-03-26T10:59:00.000-07:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. I will draft posts for each day based on notes I took during the expedition.

They call the area above 7,600 meters/25,000 ft. on Mount Everest the "Dead Zone" for its propensity to kill off hypoxiated and hypothermic climbers. I think the macabre label could be extended to the volcanic plateau that El Arenal is nestled into as well.

I say this not because I feel my life is in danger, but because there is a jarring absence of other life. There are no vicuñas or guanacos; no birds in the sky, even if just migrating; no vermin; no shrubs, lichens, or mosses; no insects, not even ones blown astray by the terrain-scouring winds; not even the wee little ice worms eke out a humbled existence here. Everything is dead, and the zone of deadness expands for kilometer upon profound kilometer. This is obviously not intended habitat for humans, physically or psychologically.

We normally think of isolation as measured by deprivation of external stimulation and opportunities to think vicariously. Conversation, movies, newspapers all duly qualify as such stimulus, but, surprisingly, so do mosquitoes, flowers, and hummingbirds, at times to an even greater degree.

After spending 48 hours at El Arenal I have come to the firm conclusion that "external stimulus" is not exclusively anthropogenic, but extends to our fellow organisms as well, no matter how much our culture tries to make us forget that we are a species first and a civilization second.

(Pictured: "I'm external stimulus, too!")

This can be attributed to an oft-unrecognized affinity with other life — bed-ridden grandmas and their cats or green thumbs and their rhododendrons, for instance. But rarely do we learn the extent of this relationship until it ceases to be a relationship, until you enter a dead zone all by your lonesome.

For me, at least. I was acclimatized by the slow ascent into altitude in more ways than one: physically, and also mentally. But even having watched the flora and fauna disappear, species by species, with each rung of altitude, I still found crossing over Portazuelo Negro into the consuming biological vacuum of the volcanic plateau to be quite startling.

Startled enough that, on the morning of Day 9, I decided to end the trip and descend.

When I woke up at 9 a.m. on Day 9 I had fully recovered from the ordeal of the previous day. No soreness, no lingering symptoms of AMS, in fact, consistent with the "climb high, sleep low" acclimatization methodology, the previous day probably toughened me to the thin air just the way a grueling interval workout on the track knocks a few seconds of your mile time even if you feel queasy after its conclusion. But only my body had recovered. I have been doing my best to foreshadow the mental uneasiness I had experienced through this entire trip, but this was its culmination. Something just did not feel right and I wanted to turn around. So I did.

Turning my back on the tremendous investment of money (renting equipment, paying the arrieros), time, and sweat certainly dogged me for explanation beyond just "isolation." After much pondering, below is an approximation of what caused my failure in motivation and confidence:

Isolation. See above. This place would be heaven on earth for Narcissus.
Lack of climbing partner. I am lucky enough to be in cahoots with quite possibly the best backpacking partner in the world, Chandler Kemp. With that as a baseline, maybe everything else pales in comparison.

(Pictured: The world's best backpacking partner.)

I am quite serious. I've always enjoyed escaping for little kayaking or backpacking trips ranging from a few hours to a few days, but by my new definition of "isolation," going into the Tongass or out on the Pacific by oneself is nothing more than a change in social scenery, meaning I had never experienced true isolation or entered a true dead zone in my life. Entering such a place without a climbing partner amplified the effects of isolation on my fragile psyche.
Food. A huge problem. I could not buy my usual oatmeal because it wasn't available in Fiambalá, nor were any other hot or cold cereals except for a very stale version of frosted flakes. So I bought the flakes along with powdered milk. Oy vey! The flakes had about as much nutritional sustenance as sun-dried iceberg lettuce and tasted worse. And that was just breakfast.

No energy bars were available in Fiambalá, which did not come as a surprise. But there weren't wholesale ingredients to mix together a hearty gorp or make homemade energy bars either, which did come as a surprise. There were no peanuts, dried fruit (other than raisins), or bulk chocolate, much less flax seeds or other wholesome goodies, so I was stuck with "cereal bars." These "cereal bars" are packaged like potato chips — you know, the plastic wrapper is so engorged with air that it looks like a balloon and you are left clueless as to what is inside.

It is always a portent when a company finds it necessary to conceal its product behind packaging. In this case, for good reason. These "cereal bars" tasted like stale rice crispy treats with probably as much nutritional value as the stale frosted flakes.

Finally, dinner. I invested heavily in soup mixes, but, as I mentioned earlier, they taste like salt water. I tried diluting them, but that just tasted as if Propel had released a new Cream of Asparagus flavor. I could do nothing other than pack them out.

Such was the diet. By default, 70 percent pasta, tomato sauce, and Parmesan, with a smattering of raisins, whole grain crackers, powdered milk, and ill-fated taste tests of the aforementioned "food" composing the other 30 percent.

This was a nutritional house of cards, and I knew it. A little poking here and a little prodding there and I would be left in an undesirable situation. I also did not have a sufficient quantity of pasta to sustain a full 20-day trip at the current pace of consumption.

Before anyone charges me with carelessness, however, I would like to pre-emptively defend myself! I tried all of these "foods" (ok, all but the soup mixes) while in Fiambalá and thought, "Well, these will probably do." This thinking was based upon the adage, "Everything tastes good when you're camping," which, until this trip that had been entirely true for me. No more. Altitude not only diminishes appetite but makes it more fussy to boot.
Health. I really did feel great that morning. But I had a few nagging concerns. My hands and fingers were beginning to swell to the point that making a fist was difficult (although the swelling did not hinder basic tasks or dexterity). Additionally, the skin on my forearms and hands that had been exposed to sunlight was turning a blotchy blackish-blue. (Pictured: Hands one day removed from El Arenal with watch tan for comparison.) An autoimmune reaction? At this point every possibility, however ridiculous, was racing through my mind. I had not encountered either of these symptoms in the modest amount of Acute Mountain Sickness or pulmonary/cerebral edema literature I had skimmed through, so even though these symptoms were at the time nothing more than annoying, it was just another reason to turn around. (Postscript: These were symptoms of peripheral edema, a condition at altitude which, although usually harmless in isolation, can be a symptom of severe AMS or a more serious form of edema.)

I might add that the pond of meltwater, my water source, was pretty gross, too. Being the last climber of the season, and the pond being endorheic, there were seventy or eighty meals worth of food debris bobbing around from dish washing, probably along with trace elements of other undesirable substances that shall remained unnamed. This wasn't enough to (consciously) factor into my decision, however.

(Pictured: Propel's "Pond Floaties" flavor prototype.)

This is all to say I did not have motivation to continue. Regardless of the cause, if you don't have the leg-powering, fire-in-the-belly energy, if it isn't fun and challenging, then there is no reason to continue. Endeavoring a task out of guilt or other forms of external motivation seems to nearly always indicate a fallacious presupposition and generally qualify as a bad idea.

My decision was confirmed once I had packed and started towards Portazuelo Negro. I felt great physically, I was bubbling with energy, and I knew I had made the right choice.

The only negative aspect of the day was my pack's weight. A few summers ago Chandler and I registered 25 kilo/52 lb. packs for a week long trip, and that was the heaviest I'd ever carried. In comparison, that 25 kilo/52 lb. pack was hobbit-sized.

First, I had no one to share the communal equipment's weight (tent, stove, GPS, etc.). Second, I had brought food for 20 days on a 3,500 calorie diet. I had only consumed eight days of food on a 1,500 calorie diet. Third, I had brought 10 canisters of gas. (I was unsure if I would have to melt snow and ice for water, which more the doubles gas consumption.) I had only used two canisters. Fourth, today was a "holding my breath" day, so I needed to carry four liters of water.

After returning to Fiambalá I weighed my pack (with four liters of water to simulate what I had been carrying) and it came in at — I kid you not — 33 kilos/72 lbs. If you are ever carrying a pack this large, above 30 or 35 percent of your body weight, you did something really, really dumb; in my case, neurotic overpacking.

(Pictured: One 5,400-cubic-inch, expedition-sized backpack bursting at the seams, and then some.)

But somehow, even with the weight of fifth-grader on my back, I was still enjoying myself. It was a pleasant overcast (which meant no sun) and the views were spectacular. At Portazuelo Negro I took a lengthy break to take in this incredibly unique landscape for one last time.

And just how unique is this place? I've done some research and I believe this volcanic plateau to be, Himalaya/Central Asia not withstanding, the highest continuous stretch of land in the world. Aconcagua, Volcán Tupungato, Cerro Mercedario, the Bolivian Andes, etc. — all these peaks are anomalies in the landscape, jutting into the sky with vast prominence over the land around them. Ojos del Salado and company do a good deal of jutting into the sky themselves, of course, but their prominence is not comparable to Aconcagua, et al. because the landscape from which they rise is already at such an uninhabitable altitude. This altitude is what makes the volcanic plateau one of the few naturally-created dead zones in the world. That is a unique, although in a eerie sort of way.

(Pictured: Laguna Negra and beyond.)

After Portazuelo Negro I set off at a sometimes speed-walking, sometimes shuffle-jogging pace. I was acclimatized, moving into richer air, and — most importantly — going downhill, so I was hauling. It felt good to go fast.

After moving out of the valley that leading to Portazuelo Negro I was in the no man's land of dunes again. This time, however, it was no problem.

Going uphill through this ~20 kilometer span of shallow, seasonal arroyos was like a maddening, sandy maze, but going downhill was like a convenient funnel. All the valleys lead to the same place: Río del Cazadero, my destination.

(Pictured: Johnny doesn't like mazes.)

I left El Arenal a tad before noon and by 6:30 p.m. I had arrived at the oasis of Aguas Calientes. Water is wonderful. Not just for drinking, but for cleaning as well.

After two to three days of monkeying around in the mountains, you smell like two olfactory nuclear bombs detonated under your armpits, with the malodorous fallout contaminating the rest of your body. For kayaking, backpacking, or canoeing, it's no big deal, just go jump in the ocean, lake, or stream. In the mountains, however, lakes, streams, ponds, and pools are rarities and the ones that do exist are all too often frozen over or mucky, making stinkiness an unwanted reality.

Contributing to the stew of stink was my rented sleeping bag. Any object of this nature is already suspect by virtue of its job description, but my rental bag was especially egregious as it was at the end of its lifespan. In fact, I had difficulty falling asleep at night and putting my mind beyond the bag's "unique" scent.

(Pictured: "Well hello there, little guy!" The lizards had surprisingly little fear of me and of the tent-eating moss under which they make their homes. It was nice to see things with a pulse again.)

I was six days removed from my previous bath and I smelled like some olfactory hydrogen bombs had gone off! The first thing I did after arriving was to run down to the river, stripping off my clothes en route.

Despite the springs' name, the water was lukewarm at best, which was almost a good thing. Washing yourself in a cold lake or stream gives you the best sense skin-tingling, soul-scrubbing cleanness that you can get. Additionally, I was sore from the hiking, so the cold water was a soothing for the muscles and tendons. But the soreness had me a bit worried, considering the facts.

(Pictured: Rest break.)

Fact #1) The pack was the heaviest I'd ever carried.
Fact #2) At about 30 kilometers, it was a long day to carry such a heavy pack.
Fact #3) I was older than I ever had before. (Duh!)
Fact #4) For the first time, I was seriously sore after a day's worth of hiking.

I'm hoping that it was a 1+2=4 cause-cause-and-effect, not a 3=4 cause-and-effect. Even my triceps were sore from the process of putting the pack on. I dreaded to think that at age 19 I might be losing the physical infallibility of youth.

But all the soreness made it that much more wonderful to relax in bed. So, after taking my pulse (graphed), and filling my lungs with air 10 percent richer than what I was breathing just six hours earlier, I fell asleep.

Day 8: Success

2008-03-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

Today was a summit day and the target was Cerro Medusa, a 6,120 meter/20,073 ft. volcano towering just five kilometers from my tent.

This would be an acclimatization excursion — I would be climbing high and sleeping low, all in preparation for the three mountains that, by all accounts, were the real challenges: the glaciated southern route of El Muerto, a marginally technical ice climb, something I was very excited about attempting even with slim prospects of success considering my experience; Ojos del Salado, normal route; and Cerro Walter Penck, normal route.

Despite this being a supposed cut-and-dry strategic measure, as I laid in the tent the night before I couldn’t help but get caught in a little excitement. Finally a peak in the Andes, a 6,000 meter monster, the first genuine big mountain experience of my life was just one closing of the eyes away!

It was a little more difficult to fall asleep after those thoughts, though. The adrenaline kept me awake, so then I read, and then the riveting account of POW-on-the-lam Maj. Joe Mack, "the last of his breed," eluding the grasp of what seemed to be nearly the entire Soviet armed forces, would further prevent sleep. The cycle did not break itself until nearly 1 a.m. By consequence I was not awakened until 10:30 a.m. (by the greenhouse effect alarm clock, of course), a ludicrous hour for a summit day.

With the opening of my eyes that morning came a dissipation of energy. Why, I can only conjecture, which I will indulge in in a later post. Despite my apathy, however, I could not recant my intentions; I had already mentally committed to climbing the mountain and it was strategically the best use of my time.

By 12:15 p.m. I had rigged the cerebrum of my pack as a satchel, like Day 1, and stuffed it with the necessary implements: water, map, notebook and pencil, lots of extra clothing in event of a freak bivouac, sun screen, GPS, camera, and CD player.

The CD player had been the secret weapon of the trip. A luxury in weight, yes, but the psychological comfort and energy it provided was immeasurable. As a gesture of temperance, I brought only three CDs: Dvořák Piano Trio No. 4 and the Smetana Piano Trio, a collection of Rimsky-Korsakov orchestral suites, and a Tchaikovsky orchestral compilation featuring, most importantly, the Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, quite possibly the most beautiful orchestral piece ever written!

I was rationing the CDs so they would not lose their zest over the trip. The only album listened to prior to today was Dvořák/Smetana, leaving Rimsky-Korsakov fresh to my ears.

Once packed, I trekked across the three- or four-kilometer approach, skirting meltwater lakes and the occasional snowfield. As I approached the mountain’s true character was forced to reveal itself. Often it is difficult to appraise the grade or difficulty of route or mountain from afar. The distance distorts reality and scale in one's mind like a mirage, making underestimations easy and ill-advised routes appear practical.

It became apparent, however, that Cerro Medusa was not a mountain of ill-advised routes or crippling underestimations. Like a theoretical volcano, viz. Mount Edgecumbe or Mount Fiji, all routes and “ridges” are of nearly equal difficulty, a specimen of symmetry. It is a scree climb (one can weave around the few snowfields on its slopes) with no technical hurdles at a consistent grade of 35 to 40 degrees. It is just a matter of keep on keepin’ on, as Joe Dirt might say.

I often debate what the definition of mountaineering is. It conjures up so many romantic images, of rope teams bound together — a pact in trust for better and worse; foreboding rock faces framed by snow and ice; and carabiners, ice screws, ascenders, and the other enigmatic contraptions that marry climber and mountain. In other words, the notion of mountaineering has merged with the discipline of technical climbing — climbing that based on a skill set and equipment that requires time to learn, improve, and master. I would argue this is indeed the word’s correct application and should be the word’s exclusive application.

As such, it would be self-aggrandizing to describe this as mountaineering, as much as I might wish I had the experience to undertake such truly technical climbs. Summiting Cerro Medusa and surrounding peaks, excluding El Muerto, are essentially glorified backpacking. No technical knowledge required, just the ability to erect a tent (although in this climate even a tent isn’t an absolute necessity) along with a few other basic camping skills.

So as the grade increased all I focused on was keep on keepin’ on. Even so, I was moving about as fast as a snail with muscle sprain — I’m not sure it was possible to go any slower! About 65 percent of the ascent was spent stationary, huffing and puffing. I was determined to progress (although not terribly excited), but even then resting was a sad necessity, not a product of corrupted will.

Urged on by the brassy, bombastic melodies of Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or, by 3:00 p.m. I rounded the first false summit and deposited my satchel before tackling what I assumed to be the final summit pyramid. I felt oddly hollow, anticipation and drive somehow absent from my emotional composition. A strange feeling, I thought, for my first high-altitude summit being but minutes away, a moment I had dreamed about for years.

Diligently I monkeyed my way up the maze of rock (this part was a little steeper) and that was it. The top of Cerro Medusa, my first 6,000 meter peak, my first 20,000 foot peak, and my first high-altitude peak.

(Pictured: Views from the top: Incahuasi [House of the Inca], 6,621 meters/21,772 feet.)

I don’t punctuate the previous sentence with an exclamation mark because I felt very unexclamatory at the time, very unfulfilled. In fact, it is telling that right now, while writing this post, I feel more adrenaline thinking about being on the summit than I did then. A cursory diagnosis of these odd emotional symptoms' origin is as follows:

The astute reader may have noticed on my list of summit-day provisions food is missing. This is not a typo. I had forgotten to bring food on a 10 kilometer, 600+ meter ascent at an unforgiving altitude — an error with colossal ramifications.

(Pictured: Views from the top: El Muerto [The Dead One], 6,488 meters/21,286 feet.)

Perhaps a greater error, an error of judgment, occurred when, after discovering I was without food, nearly halfway up the mountain, I continued onwards in a calculated gamble. It paid off, as I thought it would (the summit attempt was successful), but my body paid the consequences.

As I strolled around the snowless, circular summit, a ridge that makes a near-perfect orbit around the humble crater lake at the volcano’s core (pictured), I began to feel the unmistakable sensation of nausea stalking me like déjà vu all over again.

I did my best to admire the impressive views. Incahuasi, El Muerto, Cerro Walter Penck, Ojos del Salado, El Fraile, Cerro San Francisco — some of the tallest and most majestic volcanoes in the world — and the hundreds of kilometers of altiplano expanding like eternity in all directions made for an impressive vista, but my dazed spectating felt more like obligation rather than opportunity.

Conspiring with my empty stomach in torpedoing any motivation or jubilation was, as always, the altitude. I had ascended over 1,200 meters in no more than 29 hours and at 6,120 meters and 442 millibars of atmospheric pressure, each breath of air yielded 43 percent of the oxygen that the same lungful at sea level would.

I took the summit photos, this also feeling more like an assignment, and after spending no more than 15 minutes on the summit, descended to my satchel.

(Pictured: "Smile, Jonathan!" My summit flag is a piece of paper ripped out of my notebook with a penciled in Alaska flag, which is barely visible if you click to enlarge.)

So great was my exhaustion that at 5,940 meters/19,500 ft., on the unprotected southern slope of the volcano, with a blustery wind and a temperature of perhaps 3 or 4 °C, I curled up for a 30 minute nap, trying to flush away my symptoms. And then I took another nap at 5,700 meters/18,700 ft., and then another at the base of the volcano, three or four kilometers from El Arenal.

(Pictured: Views from the top: Ojos del Salado, 6,893 meters/22,615 feet.)

This sounds worse now than it felt then. I never once felt like I had lost control of my own destiny. In hindsight, however, it is easy to conclude that my error in judgment, not turning around upon discovering my lack of food, was just that, an error. (The scenarios from the slight, a tweak of the ankle, to the serious are simply too numerous to be compensated by a successful ascent.)

After the final nap, symptoms having slightly subsided, but still riddled with vestiges of nausea and a pounding headache, I staggered across the plateau towards the tent. Only by 6:15 p.m. had I returned to El Arenal, utterly spent. It had taken only 15 minutes longer to ascend than to descend, a telling statistic.

Despite my strong desire to crawl into my bag, I was aware that I needed food first, even though my appetite had long since dissipated. I cooked spaghetti with a thick paste of tomato sauce and Parmesan cheese mixed in, but could only manage four spoonfuls, and brought the remnants into the tent. Every few hours throughout that night I would wake up, appetite gradually rebounding, and manage a few additional mouthfuls until, by the morning, the pot was empty.

Finally, you'll be thrilled to learn that I did remember to take my pulse (graphed) both in the morning and evening.

On Language

2008-03-22T13:21:00.001-07:00

This isn’t a William Safire column, but the subject is similar. This is a post on (learning a) language.

First, some numbers for reference:

The average American college graduate has a 60,000 word active (English) vocabulary, with an additional 75,000 word passive (English) vocabulary.
For most languages, certainly the romance languages, only 100 words account for approximately 50 percent of everyday speech.
For most languages, a 1,500-2,500 vocabulary is required for basic fluency.

I am focusing on the quantity of learning a language, the vocabulary, not the quality, the grammar, idioms, and stuff not easily translatable into numbers. That is because, as mentioned earlier, the four and a half years of Spanish courses generally prepared me for the grammar. I’m still no whiz at grammar, conjugation, etc., but it isn’t my limiting reagent.

My limiting reagent was and still is, although less so now, vocabulary. I reckon I stepped off the plane with, to be generous, a 200-300 word vocabulary. Enough for high-endurance “conversations” supplemented with emphatic miming. I felt like, sounded like, and — with the miming — looked like the quintessential clueless tourist.

(Pictured: A tired Spanish-English dictionary.)

A big chunk of vocabulary came whizzing back to me in the first week, though — all those words memorized for high school Spanish vocab tests and subsequently forgotten. But soon I was encountering and memorizing truly new words.

For 20 days I have been recording the number of words I learn per day. This is, of course, a statistic very variable on one’s social environment and activities. However, my social environment and activities the past 20 days have been constant: Working on an farm, eating, and talking with an Argentinian family. I’m averaging 20.5 new words a day. (There’s actually a surprising correlation between words learned and the day of the week.) This is probably somewhat close to what an average foreigner could expect in word retention (retention obviously being very different from the raw number of unknown words one sees) after their initial week.

There is an additional snowball effect after being exposed to the language. Sure, you have the vocabulary you’ve worked ever-so-hard to memorize, but soon you can start pulling new words out of thin air. The cognate effect, I call it; the language learner’s parlor trick.

A three-page, 260-word unscientific sample of my Spanish-English dictionary revealed that about 15 percent of all entries are direct cognates. For example, “plume” is pluma or “plutocracy” is plutocracia. An additional 17 percent are indirect cognates, words whose meaning you can comprehend if hearing for the first time with the benefit of context. For example, “to research” is investigar, “plebeian” is plebeyo, and “playwright” is dramaturgo. In total, about one-third of the Spanish language parallels in some readily comprehensible form with the English language.

You can really raise eyebrows in a conversation this way! Throw a yuxtaposicisión here and a efervescente there, and the people you’re talking with, who just a few minutes ago were helping you conjugate convenir (“to agree upon”), aren’t quite sure they’re hearing you correctly. The best part? Because of Spanish’s phonetic pronunciation, the syllable count often increases through translation, and with it, your bilingual confidence. Or rather, confidencia bilingüe.

Ok, ok, I’m just joking. I’ve never used “juxtaposition” or “effervescent” in a conversation and don’t plan to, and really do need to master convenir which annihilates me in conjugation. But you can dramatically increase the practical (and impractical) components of your vocabulary through simple “Hispanicization” of words.

English words that terminate “-ly” become -mente, words that terminate in “-ity” become -dad. (For example, “probably” and probablemente and “quantity” and cantidad.) Put the words through the Spanish pronunciation wringer (i.e., vowels and a few important consonants such as “Rr,” “Ll,” “G,” and “J”) and they’re conversation ready. But blah, blah, blah, it’s not the specifics that are important or interesting.

(Pictured: "...and out comes the cognate.")

Those percentages from that “unscientific study” I cited? Part of the reason it’s so unscientific — and there are many reasons — is because my Spanish-English dictionary has 20,000 entries. If I were to look in the glossary of a Spanish I textbook, those percentages would likely probably plummet into the single digits, and if I took the sample from the Larousse's 174,00-entry English-Spanish Dictionary the proportion of cognates might flirt with 40 or 50 percent. Why?

As you might have deduced, the more bookish or technical the word, which would be more prevalent in the Larousse than a Spanish I textbook, the greater the likelihood it is a cognate. I would suppose, and I’m no philologist nor am I William Safire, that infrequent use presented less opportunity over the centuries for such a word to evolve away from its Latin or Greek root.

It also raises the question, what is, exactly, vocabulary? Most English dictionaries list notable personalities and place names among more traditional words. If we equate the dictionary as the database of vocabulary, would one’s geographical knowledge, for example, translate into vocabulary prowess as well? I would suspect that the first vocabulary statistic I listed, the college graduate having a collective English vocabulary of 135,000 words, would assume this expansive definition of “vocabulary.”

I just finished reading The Autobiography of Malcom X and he mentions that while in prison and re-learning how to read, he copied, word-for-word, an entire collegiate English dictionary. He made the observation that the dictionary didn’t just teach him vocabulary, it taught him — at a very basic level — about history, culture, medicine, and life at-large. That is because dictionaries are really very concise encyclopedias. At some point it becomes impossible to distinguish knowledge and the words used to describe it.

(Pictured: He transcribes dictionaries, too…"By any means necessary.")

Finally, one other aspect about learning a language that I have found very important: The people you’re talking with. Sometimes it seems like the darn locals talk the way Chuck Yeager drives and don’t think twice of it! “S”s disappear — más o menos (“more or less” or “about”) becomes ma o meno, words meld together, consonants lose their distinction (“V” and “B” or “G” and “Ll,” for example), and past participles — -ido and -ado — lose their “D”s making them nearly indistinguishable in the blur of conversation. Comprehension in conversation is difficult for me, but extraordinarily variable on my interlocutor.

Someone who can speak “third grade-ese” Spanish — consciously over-enunciating — but doesn’t know a lick of English is just as easy to communicate with as someone who’s Spanish enunciation is slurred by speed but semi-fluent in English.

Linguistic laziness cuts both ways, of course. I have realized that, with my tendency to mumble and slur words, I must be a veritable nightmare for all the exchange students that come over to our house for dinner. When I return home I vow to be a truly reformed conversational partner.

(Pictured: Linguistic penance for past conversations of undue sloppiness.)

Day 7: Last of the Season

2008-03-22T13:11:00.000-07:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. So, as I perfect my apple-picking and weeding technique, I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

Update: A video has been added.

The arrieros were adamant about waking up at 7 a.m. “To beat the sun,” they said. I couldn’t help but agree, even if it meant sacrificing one of my most dear activities, sleeping in.

At 7 a.m., when my watch alarm most inconsiderately jerked me out of my dreams, I poked my head out of the tent trying to make out any movement through my rheum-blurred eyes. All I could hear was snoring. I felt like I had found money on the street — I was in no position to wake the arrieros, they were the ones in charge after all, and with no other reasonable course of action I was forced to nestle myself once again in my warm bag.

Not until 8:15 were we all awake and coherent enough to begin breaking camp. By 10:00 we were ready to go.

The previous night the arrieros had mentioned that since they’ll have a free mule on the way to El Arenal I’d be welcome to ride it. Another dilemma in a trip full of dilemmas: To go or not to go?

I rationalized that riding the mule would avoid expending energy, theoretically making the 600-meter increase in altitude, my biggest thus far, easier on the body. Conversely, I would be violating my climbing philosophy of self-sufficiency and would of course have to pay a pretty penny for the service.

I gave in. But even then I could feel pangs of guilt starting to claw at my gut.

If I felt guilty making the decision, I really felt guilty once I actually was on the mule. What incredible creatures! Strong, sure-footed, patient, good route-finders — even someone like me who had never previously been on any equine thought it was easy. Actually, too easy. Just sit back and watch the landscape go by.

After two hours of climbing out of the valley we were making the final ascent to Portazuelo Negro and the volcanic origins of the landscape were becoming more and more apparent. Thin, uniform volcanic rocks layered themselves like tile with chunks of obsidian scattered as though they had, well, rained right out of the sky (pictured).

We finally reached Portazuelo Negro, 5,523 meters/18,115 ft. above mean average sea level. It was breathtaking! Expanding out in front of us were deep azul blue meltwater lakes half-filled with snow, traditional snowfields and penitentes alike, lava flows, and the long anticipated, snow-capped volcanoes with even a few glaciers clinging to their upper slopes.

It was noticeably colder and the wind was really whipping through the pass, even though the funnel effect was diluted by the pass’s broad proportions. We moved on another 200 meters and then stopped for a break.

(Video: 360 degrees at Portazuelo Negro.)

By now the sun was in full force. The temperature was only a few degrees above 0 °C, but the sun! Agh!

I was all bundled: rain jacket, wide-brim hat, long johns, but even though my skin was ostensibly covered and doped up with sun screen, the sun seemed to go right through like osmosis. I could just feel myself getting zapped.

We had stopped at Laguna Negra, the first meltwater lake after the pass, to refill water bottles and, for me, to take a few photos. The principal source for Laguna Negra is a mass of snow and ice that blurs the line between exceptionally thick perennial snowfield and exceptionally thin glacier. Technically, there must be 10 meters meters of snow accumulation (don't quote me on that number) for pressure to reach critical mass for glaciation, exhausting air out of the snow and effecting a reaction to gravity like a thick, blue, icy molasses. It was a welcome sight to see what appeared to be glacial ice, for that meant all the money I was spending on crampon rental would likely not be for nil.

The older arriero (pictured, in front of quasi-glacier terminus) still looked and sounded pretty bad and both of the arrieros were chewing coca leaves like their lives depended on it. The leaf that is the origin of cocaine, one of North America’s and Europe’s more popular “habits,” is also one of South America’s most popular, but far more innocuous, “habits.”

The leaf and its effects were revered by the Inca and today, especially in the areas with indigenous precedent, Bolivia and northwestern Argentina, it is just as popular. Chewers purchase leaves (pictured) by the kilo in street markets along with a legía, the arrieros were using sodium bicarbonate, for example. The legía, usually an alkaloid, extracts the qualities of the leaf leaving the user, as Lonely Planet’s Bolivia describes it, “a little detached, reflective, melancholy, and contented.” Additionally, the coca “numbs the mouth and throat (in fact Novocain and related anesthetics are coca derivatives),” and supposedly mitigates the effect of altitude and AMS, the reason the arrieros were chewing.

I don’t know if coca leaves are illegal in the U.S. but considering our other naïve drug statutes, they likely are. In Argentina the leaf is a contentious topic. The eastern coast, Buenos Aires, and areas with more European influence and immigrants consider the leaf a drug and contraband, similar to marijuana. The rural west and north of the country, areas with more Ayamará, Quechua, and other indigenous blood, think the city slickers are crazy. The federal government and the many politicians that I’m sure were seeking a way to extinguish a controversial issue that might endanger re-election, shirked determination of legality to the provinces. States, err, provincial rights! Chris would be proud.

After another 30 minutes, a bit after 1 p.m., we arrived at El Arenal. Chris (pictured) was there waiting, obviously a bit steamed, for the pick-up time had been scheduled for noon. I did not mention we had overslept by an hour that morning.

I realize I have been portraying Chris in a negative light on this blog, poking fun at his politics (even though quite honestly I think libertarianism has a lot of merit) and pigeonholing him into the inconsiderate American stereotype that everyone else in the world loves to hate.

But it is never right to tear someone down unfairly or without reason (and rarely is there one), especially behind their back, and that is what I’m doing. So allow me to set the record straight: Chris is a real nice guy.

Chris has, not surprisingly, a fervent belief in personal responsibility and the entire trip the arrieros had been arriving one to three hours later than promised. That is one to three hours where Chris must sit around in the sun, one to three hours that Chris could have slept in in the morning, and one to three hours that he cannot really unpack anything (e.g., a stove to cook food) because when the arrieros show, or rather, for all Chris knows, if they show, they want to turn around pronto.

Who wouldn’t grumble a little about that?

To boot, Chris passed on extra matches and two lighters (I have so far neglected to mention that I forgot to pack any sort of fire-creating implement and had been bumming matches off others the entire trip), and two books, Last of the Breed by Louis L’Amour and Couples by John Updike. All was appreciated and needed.

(Pictured: The cover says it all.)

I look towards camping and the wilderness as a way to “force” me through books that require concentration and thought to fully appreciate, figuring that I’d otherwise be bored out of my mind and ecstatic to wrap the brain around something. After this trip, I think I will cease this particular method of book selection.

First of all, you should never have to “force” yourself through a book. If the motivation isn’t internal, if it doesn’t excite you, then you are likely not getting much out of it anyway. And second, yes, while sitting around acclimatizing it is nice to wrap the brain around something, but it’s even nicer if that something is cushy, fuzzy, and mentally undemanding. After all, it’s not like I’m experimenting with escargot or hákarl on these trips, I just want food to be easy and yummy.

(Pictured: No thank you.)

Chris passed off a few tips on the mountains, too. Bad rockfall here, postholing there — it was very helpful. He had been successful on Ojos del Salado on his second attempt and didn’t have time for Cerro Walter Penck. However, our English language fraternization, refreshing for both of us, was cut off by, sure enough, the arrieros wanting to get out and get down sooner rather than later.

We traded goodbyes and I watched the string of mules and donkeys turn into specks and disappear over Portazuelo Negro, leaving me in the sun and cold wind and my mind dwelling on the arrieros’s closing remark that I was the last climber of the season.

I felt tiny and insignificant and wondered if this was how it was supposed to feel finally reaching base camp for some of the most impressive mountains in the Andes. I guessed it probably was not.

El Arenal is a well situated camp. Altitudinally equivalent with Portazuelo Negro, 5,500 meters, it allows for acclimatization and is nestled in a wrinkle in the landscape that largely escapes the scouring wind that plagues the rest of the plateau. The camp itself features one modest wind wall, even smaller than Agua de las Vicuñas, but compensates in its proximity to a small pool of meltoff, water in the afternoon, ice the rest of the day.

(Pictured: Camp at El Arenal.)

Once I pitched the tent it soon became uninhabitable because of solar heating. Opening the flaps had no effect because the tent’s bombproof design very effectively rebuffed much cooler breeze outside.

However, I smote my phengophobia with a little bit of thinking (thinking that I wish I had done earlier). Hitching the tent rainfly to my ice ax and anchoring it in the wind walls, I jury-rigged a tarp of sorts. The filtering breeze would prevent any heat entrapment and the rainfly would absorb most of the UV. Finally, finally, I could rest in peace!

Rest being the operative word. Having already ascended 600 meters, even if it cost nary a calorie, resting, i.e., reading, would be my only activity for the day. Frankly, I had tired of Pirsig’s relentless intelligence and my fruitless efforts to relate to it, so I abandoned Motorcycle Maintenance for pasture more fair. Enter Louis L’Amour.

His books are entertainment and everyone, including Mr. L’Amour, knows it. It was definitely entertaining; Last of the Breed kept me occupied for the rest of the afternoon and evening. My only complaint was Mr. L’Amour’s tendency to plant paragraphs brimming with question marks in the middle of an otherwise perfectly decent plot.

(Pictured: Meltwater.)

Sadly, Last of the Breed is sitting somewhere on the shelves of Walrus Books, Buenos Aires’ second-hand English language bookstore, so I cannot provide an excerpt. The owner of the bookstore wouldn’t buy it off me. We both knew his intellectual-expat and hippy-traveler clientele would sooner be seen with an “AMERICAN: And Proud of It” t-shirt, the kind with an angry eagle looking as if it’s about to rip your head off, than with a L’Amour book. So I gave it to him. Luckily, for the same reason, when I return to Bunoes Aires and Walrus Books to rotate and refresh my reading material, the book will undoubtedly still be there gathering dust, so I’ll transcribe an excerpt to illustrate the point.

Only a light dinner of pasta and tomato sauce interrupted my cushy, fuzzy, and mentally undemanding book. My appetite wasn’t terribly strong but I was also not feeling symptoms of AMS, a promising sign, I thought, for the rest of the week. I resolved I would make my first peak attempt the following day, took my pulse (graphed), and fell asleep.

Day 6: Phengophobia

2008-03-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. So, as I perfect my apple-picking and weeding technique, I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

My previous guarantee on updates was hollow. I can no longer be day specific, just that there will one post during a weekday and one during the weekend.

Despite the hibernation-quality sleep I had accrued over the previous nights, at 10 a.m. on the morning of Day 6 I did not wake up, I was awakened. Awakened by the sun turning my tent into a greenhouse, a harbinger of the day to come.

Today was a pre-determined acclimatization day, and my bout of nausea the previous evening only reinforced that designation. This meant two things: mini-excursions and melting water.

The latter was the first priority. Because I had an excess of time, a scalding tent, and saw no reason to burn gas if not absolutely necessary, it seemed best to melt water the old-fashioned way. I hiked 20-30 meters up to the penitentes field with my ice ax, three water bottles, an empty peach can, and began hacking away, feeling like a prospector testing some white, exotic, curiously-formed mineral deposit.

(Pictured: Penitentes up close.)

As though some exotic, curiously-formed mineral, the stuff was hard, maybe even registering on the Mohs scale, or at least it seemed like it when trying to break away chunks.

The penitentes were so uncooperative because they endure a daily freeze-thaw cycle of fairly extreme proportions. And just how do these things form anyway? I was under the impression that stalagmites and avant-garde sculpture had a monopoly on these kinds of shapes.

When snow is exposed to +0 °C temperatures and melts, little dimples form randomly on the surface of the snow. Once these concave indentations appear the "sides" of the dimple reflect sunlight to the center of the dimple like a satellite dish, making it deeper. And so the cycle continues until the dimples, dips, and indentations are visible to the human eye. You've probably seen something this before: the snow looks like the ripples on a lake from a gentle breeze.

(Pictured: Meltwater run-off from the penitente field. The water runs off across the tongue of saturated sand until fresh, thirsty sand soaks it up. This creates the cool lava flow-type formations.)

The cycle is then kicked into hyperdrive by dirt, pollutants, soot, sand, and all the little particles that are emitted or absorbed into the atmosphere. They land on snow and accumulate on the "crests" of the snow's wavy surface, acting as sunblock, leaving the "troughs" naked to the sun and increasing the discrepancy of melt rates. Ultimately, the discrepancy leads to a whacked-out snowfield. That's as best I can explain (i.e., paraphrase) and leaves many unanswered questions.

For example, why don't penitentes form in snowfields everywhere, not just snowfields at high-altitude and in a dry climate? I'm stumped. But not to worry, thanks to WikiProject Glaciers, I have sent out inquiring e-mails on the matter.

It took over half an hour and a variety of techniques to satisfactorily fill eight liters of water bottles and a peach can full of penitente. I deposited them in the tent, zipped the flaps shut, and left the ice to a one-sided thermal battle. It was only 11 a.m. — eight hours of high-intensity sunlight left — good news for my melting endeavor, but bad news for me.

The UV had already extracted a good deal of vengeance on my skin. By now I was looking pretty startling (the LCD screen on the camera was reflective enough to act as a mirror): chapped and cracked lips; blotchy hands and forearms; scabs below my eyes; peeling skin on my eyelids, nose, forehead; and entire face of a blushy red hue that probably looked similar to when, in third grade, I performed a few little Suzuki songs memorized at the Monthly Grind, forgot the notes halfway through, and had to walk off-stage in embarrassment.

All the sun damage made for a pitful look, but the hair made me look downright alarming. By virtue of genetics, I will never be a prolifically hirsute individual, but I still need to shave, even if its only once every three or four days. By Day 6, and probably eight or nine days removed from my last shave, I had a bumper crop of translucent blond peach fuzz growing out of face. It looked a lot like the "hair" of a naked mole rat.

(Pictured: Imagination can transfer this to a human face.)

Luckily no one was out there to double- or triple-take at my countenance, although I imagine a minor degree of emotional scarring might have occurred if someone did. For this reason — for the public welfare! — I didn't take any pictures.

But the sun did more than make me look as ugly as sin. It hurt, too.

While infirmed with AMS I maintained a flippant attitude towards sunscreen. That's how most of my burning originated. But even if you smother your skin with a UVA-, UVB-absorbing; Parsol-based; zinc oxide-enriched; SPF 500 super sunscreen, after a day in the sun you might not burn but the sun will still leave its mark on your body and morale. You know the feeling when paint is drying on your skin? For me, sunlight inflicts that feeling of faint uncomfortableness to all exposed skin, not to mention the drowsiness and mopy-ness. But then again, I'm pretty white.

Because I was not terribly fond of looking like a sunburned naked rat mole or feeling like a skin-graft patient, a tepid fear of sunlight began to plant roots inside me. I had contracted phengophobia.

Unlike at Aguas Calientes, with its cool, calm refuge of a cave, there was nowhere to hide from the relentless rays of the sun. The tent multiplied the effects of the sunlight, no clouds in the sky were courageous enough to confront the sun, and no boulders cast a sufficiently sized shadow in which to hide. I figured the best available remedy was to keep my mind off it.

This meant mini-excursions. The valley at Agua de las Vicuñas splits into a Y. Now imagine the Y as a martini glass. Where you would pour the martini is the first of the ridges I climbed.

The ridge was only 150 meters above camp, if that, although very steep. Of course it required a good deal of effort and time to ascend and, instead of being rewarded with a view, the far taller valley walls that sandwiched my ridge — the sides of the martini glass — prevented any sightseeing, and instilled a rather carceral feeling.

So instead I read for an hour or so, descended, refilled the water bottles and peach can with penitente, and started for the taller southern valley wall, its height promising some sort of view at the top.

This ridge was 250 to 350 meters above Agua de las Vicuñas and part of a long, meandering ridge leading to an unnamed 5,900 meter/19,400 ft. peak. It was this peak and ridge that separated the valley of Agua de las Vicuñas from the volcanic plateau of the peaks I was ultimately trying to ascend.

Throughout the entire day I had been wearing my rain jacket. It neutralizes the sun, but also, unfortunately, functions as a greenhouse. An equilibrium between ventilation and protection was elusive and by the top of the ridge I was quite sweaty. Not important though, because waiting at the top was a tremendous view of Cerro Nacimiento and Cerro Walter Penck (pictured), two 6,400+ meter behemoths, sparkling and shimmering in the crisp Puna air. The rest of the cordillera was cut off from view by the unnamed 5,900 meter peak, but I had seen enough to get excited once again.

Another good hunk of time was spent reading and I descended down to camp once again. By now, 5 p.m., the sun's strength was beginning to wane and the arrieros were set to arrive.

The arrieros were to take my cache to El Arenal, collect the remnants of Alex's and Herman's cache (and return it to Fiambalá), and shuttle Chris and his gear all the way back to the trailhead where he would meet a Fiambalá-bound 4x4. And sure enough, I could make out the little specks of mules and donkeys just beginning to work their way up the valley.

When the arrieros arrived they first wanted hot water. Mate time. (The previous sentence will become much less alarming having read this or this.) I was happy to oblige having melted nearly five liters of penitente through the duration of the day.

Luckily the arrieros weren't perturbed by my appearance having endured the sight of many furry and sunburned climbers over the years, so I turned attention towards the dead mule adjacent to camp. The mule, after a day to accustom myself to its presence, had become a morbid fascination. Since December 2006?!

(Pictured: I asked the arrieros how long the mule had been dead. Answer: December, '06. Fourteen months ago.)

But soon the conversation took a turn to the mundane (at least for me): "How cold does it gets in Alaska?," "Grizzly bears?," and "Alaska: Canada or United States?" By now, I had fully developed the Spanish vocabulary related to these topics to answer the questions somewhat fluently.

The arrieros then produced dinner: llama meat, pilot bread, homemade cow cheese, and salt. You think I might have learned my lesson at Aguas Calientes with the vicuña meat, but no, I willingly accepted and ate the llama meat. It was gristly, similar to the vicuña and not particularly filling, but the cheese was zesty and tasty, although quite unlike any other cheese I have eaten before. Pilot bread is pilot bread.

(Pictured: The arrieros with my double plastic mountaineering boots.)

The only disturbing aspect of the meal were the terrific blasts of anabatic wind that would hit us.

It had been happening all day. While reading or trying to forget about the sun, a low, waterfall-like rumble would come from the bottom of the valley. The first time this happened I was startled to see what appeared to be a shock wave slowly coming my direction, an invisible line moving across the landscape kicking up dervishes of sand and reshuffling the rocky valley floor.

"Uh oh."

I scampered about and secured all the loose items laying around and then waited for it to hit me.

Whoomph! It must have been like walking from the pillar of calm at the eye of a tornado into the surrounding walls of wind. Normally there's a baseline breeze in the Puna varying from 10 to 40 kph with gusts occasionally exceeding that, but this was 15 kph to 90 kph in a matter of seconds — and after 15 or 20 seconds, calm again. The wind was not strong enough to damage the tent and eventually turned into an annoyance, my needing to be accountable for all items all the time, but was unlike anything I'd experienced before.

After dinner the arrieros fed their animals and erected their large dome tent. There were two of them, one in his 40s, the leader, and one younger, maybe 25.

(Pictured: Agua de las Vicuñas from above.)

The older of the two was hacking up a phlegm or sputum-type substance — something unpleasant — and looked out of it in general, slow to move and to react, that sort of thing. The arrieros don't acclimatize, they ascend, pick up the gear or people, descend, and endure the symptoms of AMS. There is a lot of pride, I suppose it's part of South America's machismo culture, and he brushed off the symptoms as "nada." He did accept three-quarters of my Migral pills, however, and popped a few right away.

By 8 p.m. the long, elegant shadows of the valley's steep walls engulfed our camp and announced dusk's arrival. Tomorrow we were to be up at 7 a.m. and off by 8. I wanted to be ready. I took my pulse (graphed, although again I forgot to take an a.m. pulse) and fell asleep looking forward to, at long last, reaching El Arenal and the heart of the Andes.

Day 5: Tent-eating Moss

2008-03-09T13:26:00.000-07:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. So, as I perfect my apple-picking and weeding technique, I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

My previous guarantee on updates was hollow. I can no longer be day specific, just that about one post during a weekday and one during the weekend. Finally, the computer I'm on doesn't have a functional USB port so pictures will be added this weekend.

Update: Pictures added.

Waking up at 9 a.m. I opened the door of the tent to a true surprise: the landscape had been transformed, a blanket of white had been gently laid across Puna. The view was breathtaking and (I think) a somewhat rare sight in the summer.

I was in no hurry. I needed only to hike six kilometers and gain 300 meters today, just enough to reach (the perennial) snow line. After boiling water and concocting my aforementioned sugary potion of energy, I watched the sun poke above the mountains and bathed in its fledgling rays. The air was not especially warm this early in the morning although I did have a refreshing partner in heat with the mocha-sugar-milk-water sitting in my stomach.

The sun also nudged the temperature above 0 °C, marking the beginning of the end for the fresh snow. I regret to say I did not think to take a picture, but watching the interaction between sun and snow was like time-lapse photography in first person. It made for a visually invigorating waking hour.

An additional advantage of the sun was its complimentary melting, evaporating, and sublimating of the accumulated snow and ice on my tent without my moving an inch. What convenience!

But even with solar de-icing, taking the tent down wasn't easy.

As mentioned earlier, the harshness of the Puna extends to the flora. While the prickly grass that painted the desert golden at Agua Calientes disappeared around 4,400 meters/14,400 feet, taking its place in commensurate quantity was an even pricklier moss. I also mentioned earlier, not entirely in jest, that these plants "make a strong bid at being considered predators." Their prey? My tent.

(Pictured: Tent-eating moss in the stages of its life cycle: dead [first two from left], partly dead-partly alive, and all too alive. The only redeeming quality of this stuff is when it's dead, its consistency is so similar to wood that you can burn it.)

Finding a footprint for my tent was a difficult task the previous night because the mosses seemingly populated a portion of every square meter of Puna. The problem is these mosses are armed with thorns of rock-like toughness and saber-like sharpness. So, avoiding them being impossible and "de-arming" them being futile, I capitulated. I planted my tent down on top of them. I had no choice.

Courtesy to my sleeping pad, the tent-eating moss didn't infringe upon the comfort of my sleep (as evidenced by 12 hours of sleep!), but I feared for the tent's well being. And that morning, sure enough, the thorns had poked a charming pattern of holes into the fabric of the floor. The holes were not damaging enough to start any tent-compromising rips, but I would have explaining to do when I returned the rental to the gear shop.

By 11 a.m. I had rolled up the tent, packed up, and set off. It took a mere 30 minutes of relatively flat terrain to get to the base of the valley that would lead me through the wall of mountains and, ultimately, to Portazuelo Negro (approximate translation: black pass) and the volcanic plateau of Ojos del Salado, Cerro Cazadero, Cerro Medusa, et al.

The valley was unspectacular at first, both sides gently sloping upwards towards surrounding mountains at a moderate incline. I was still struggling to find an aerobic foundation, though, and it took over an hour and a half of low-gearing it to reach where the valley branched into a Y — approximately a third the way to the 5,500 meter/18,000 foot Portazuelo Negro. At this confluence, at 4,900 meters/16,100 feet, was Agua de las Vicuñas ("Water of the Vicuñas") — the last camp before El Arenal base camp and the first camp within reach of snow line.

Actually, it's not really snow, but rather penitentes, a unique snow phenomenon largely local to the Andes. Reaching upwards of two meters tall, penitentes are like a forest of very long, very big icicles that have lost their sense of gravity.

(Pictured: Penitentes from camp. More on penitentes in the next post.)

Besides the penitentes, the most immediately apparent feature of the camp, if it could be called a camp (it consisted of two modest wind walls), was a dead mule carcass 10 meters adjacent to the tent sites. Not mummified, but hide and carrion preserved to a startling degree, ominously so. The arrieros use Agua de las Vicuñas as their high camp when running climbers and gear over Portazuelo Negro to El Arenal. It looked as though one of the mules just couldn't make it through the night.

(Pictured: Pobre mula.)

The second thing I noticed was the large amount of trash lying around. This is not exclusive to Agua de las Vicuñas, but also Aguas Calientes, the "trailhead," and all the improvised camps in between. The Leave No Trace ethic is obviously not observed by a sizable minority of climbers. The blame doesn't lie entirely with the Argentines, of course, as a majority of the climbers who frequent the Puna are foreigners. No matter culpability, the litter marred the experience and was a disappointment to see such a beautiful region disrespected.

Agua de las Vicuñas wasn't all that bad, though. My anticipation in arriving was largely based upon reuniting with my cache, and the many kilos and types of food within. Food is definitely a good thing!

(Pictured: "Camp" at Agua de las Vicuñas.)

For example, canned peaches. "Canned peaches on a mountaineering trip?!" That was my reaction when I saw Alex, the math teacher/mountaineering guide from Córdoba, packing them. But after talking with him, I realized he was spot on. After all, if I wasn't going to be carrying their water weight, why not be selfish about diet?

And, oh boy, were they ever delicious. More like canned bliss in a sweet syrup of rapture!

That's an example of the good food that had been waiting in the cache. For dinner, I tried some powdered soup. That's an example of the bad. I might as well have just downed salt straight from the shaker and cut out the intermediary.

Perhaps because of the soup, but more likely because of two consecutive days of altitude gain, and most likely because of both, I developed a faint case of nausea and headache after dinner.

About a year ago I read an article on the fitness spa craze. Essentially, well-to-do persons dissatisfied with their self-image pay extravagant sums to be alternatively driven to physical exhaustion — calisthenics, running, pilates, aerobics, mountains biking — and pampered — massages, posh quarters — all on a 1,500 (kilo)calorie diet or similarly scant sum. The draw is all customers who complete the program are guaranteed a loss of weight.

Well, having been in altitude for five days and in all likelihood having lost a good deal of weight myself (postscript: I lost over 10 pounds on this trip, making me as light as my sophomore year in high school), a rather novel entrepreneurial scheme crossed my mind. Catamarca, the province in which these mountains reside, is generally regarded as the economic armpit of Argentina. Slap together a few of these fitness spas at 4,600 meters/15,000 feet, import a few plane loads of Americans, and wah-lah! — a new and lucrative industry.

As a silver lining, operational costs would be nearly nil. No need for "group activities," unless clientele collectively retching their excess pounds away would be considered such, and food would be an almost unnecessary commodity. Just ensure a 1:1 customer:toilet ratio, have liability waived for the inevitable case of edema, and it's a finely-tuned, weight-losing profit machine fulfilling every promise to the customer.

(Pictured: Looking down the valley of Agua de las Vicuñas with a little shadow play.)

I wasn't what you'd call a willing customer of nausea, however. I did not feel nearly as bad as at Agua Calientes and the nausea faded with the evening, but it was still an unfortunate way to end the day. After retreating to the tent (no tent-eating mosses to contend with, it disappeared around 4,800 meters/15,800 ft.), I took my pulse (graphed, although I forgot to take my pulse in the a.m.), and attempted to fall asleep as quickly as possible.

Day 4: Holding my Breath

2008-03-08T09:08:00.000-08:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. So, as I perfect my apple-picking and weeding technique, I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

I have also now figured out when I am able to come into town from the farm and access the Internet: Tuesday, Saturday, and occasionally Sunday. That is when this blog will be updated for the indefinite future. Also, pictures have been added to the previous post.

I call them adrenaline jiggles. When I get really excited they bubble up through the nervous system. When researching something that I'm amped about doing, reading an e-mail from a long lost friend, watching a great movie, my legs and body get supersaturated with energy and everything seems possible — it's difficult to stay still!

I haven't been "adrenalized" since Day 1. AMS saw well enough to that. But waking to sunbursts exploding through the cracks of my grotto's rock wall and considering the prospect of moving into the snow-capped mountains that, for the past three days, had been taunting me from afar, well, it was hard not to become energized.

Waking up at 10:30 a.m. probably helped matters. I had been reading pretty late into the night before, but, yes, I indulged in seriously hearty sleeping as well. I was fully rested and fully charged, ready for a big day; specifically, 17 kilometers horizontal and 400 meters vertical.

I munched on cereal with powdered milk and boiled water for a powdered mocha mix/powdered milk/sugar beverage. I'm not a coffee person — the taste doesn't appeal and I try to avoid habitually consuming anything with caffeine — but the absence of hot chocolate in Fiambalá's minimercados necessitated a solution, however awkward. With no tent, packing was a cinch and by 11:45 I was hopping down the scree slope from the bluff down to Río del Cazadero for the last time.

After the springs of Aguas Calientes and Río del Cazadero there is no water until snow line, about 5,000 meters/16,400 ft. and 23 kms/14 miles away. I also had to consider the acclimatization guideline of trying to avoid sleeping more than 500 meters/1,600 ft. higher than my previous night. Agua Calientes is at 4,200 meters.

These dueling facts constituted a dilemma.

I could:
1) Carry a day's worth of water, hike until reaching the 500-meter acclimatization threshold, make camp, climb to snow line, melt water, and descend back to camp.
2) Carry enough water to sustain two, but more preferably three, days of hiking and drinking.

Last summer I "culverted" with friends — a branch of the equally eccentric and enigmatic-sounding hobby of "urban exploration." One of our targets' outlet was submerged by the ocean. Initially, we racked our collective brains for a means to store enough air to work our way up the culvert until beyond the ocean's reach. Ultimately, the only reliable solution we could conceive was holding our breath. Unsatisfactorily difficult, unsatisfactorily safe, and certainly unsatisfactorily cool!

This stretch of Puna is just like that culvert, except 22.995 kilometers longer and that, fortunately, in terms of quantity and time, the body demands far less water than oxygen. There's also the clever little invention that is the water bottle. But that did not extinguish my concerns about these 23 kilometers because anything — a sprained ankle, freak muscle strain — could immobilize and, ultimately, reduce one to "holding one's liquids." (Oh, about that culvert: we ended up waiting for the tide to go down. Adolescence, right?)

So, standing on the bank of Río del Cazadero not only was I sporting a trusty, sturdy Nalgene of the one-liter variety, but a slightly less fashionable and and far more gargantuan five-liter water jug. What'cha gonna do now, desert?

Once tanked up, and backpack a good deal more gargantuan itself, I started trekking off in the direction of the beckoning mountains. The first few kilometers were simple: follow the river. But once the water slipped beneath the surface of the desert, route finding became considerably more complicated.

In Fiambalá I rented a GPS from Señor Reynoso but, not owning one myself and relatively unaccustomed to their use, certainly not enough to place unquestioning trust at risk of some blundering user error, I needed to diversify my orienteering aids. Of course dead reckoning was an option, but in a sandy ocean of dunes and dips which appeared to have about as much correlation to the 50 meter/160 ft. contours on my otherwise top-notch map as the squiggles on a Jackson Pollock painting, I was feeling pretty unsure of myself.

(Pictured: Not a lot to work with topographically.)

Normally this would have qualified as yet another dilemma:

1) Test route finding skills and understanding of unfamiliar technology against the the desert.
2) Turn around.

Luckily, this was a choice I needed not make. There was a third, although not entirely reliable, orienteering aid: mule tracks.

With the three mules and two donkeys having just completed a round trip up to El Arenal, a fresh and discernible trail of hoofprints and overturned rocks led confidently off in approximately the same direction that my GPS and map indicated. My new triumvirate of orienteering aids was a route-finding solution I could tentatively trust. And so I went.

(Pictured: Which way?)

This route-finding solution certainly proved time-consuming. A bit like a bad deer trail, the mule tracks were distinguishable only perhaps 30 percent of the time. And even when visible, I needed to constantly corroborate with GPS and map in case what I thought to be mules were actually a herd of morbidly obese vicuñas.

Following mules and donkeys also offered an unanticipated benefit: they poop a lot! And they tend to poop while in transit. The result is a long string of donkey turds, sometimes stretching up to two meters long, which betray their direction of movement — i.e., the direction I wanted to go. It was as good as a friendly, if fecal, arrow pointing me in the right direction.

(Pictured: Mules' helpful hints.)

It all actually worked quite well. I made 14 kilometers in a very slow five hours but finally broke clear of the dunes and could identify the valley in the mountains leading to El Arenal beyond reasonable doubt. As I approached the mountains proper, and as the grade increased, my pace downshifted from slow to sloth-like. Although acclimatized to the point that I wasn't sick, certainly I was no specimen of high-altitude human fitness. I would take 100 steps and, in the same cadence of my pace, count off fifty steps worth of rest and listen to my pounding heart slowly subside.

By 6 p.m., after another hour and a half, I had managed the final three kilometers which included about two thirds of the day's altitude gain. As my Dad says, I was pooped.

I normally might have tempted procrastination in pitching the tent and lofting my sleeping bag to instead enjoy the increasingly cool but still refreshing breeze, take in the expansive view, and eat dinner. But unfortunately winds were picking up and a dark front of clouds were rolling in from the north.

I put up my tent for the first time in the trip. It was difficult. The flapping and agitating manner of the wind was like having someone else actively sabotage my efforts. Mathematically, my two hands minus the "two hands" of the wind would make it impossible to put up the tent. Luckily, I grew a "third hand" in the form of rigging my ice ax as an anchor to hold poles in their sockets and the tent to the ground. It is difficult to pitch a tent with "one hand," but it eventually worked out.

Within ten minutes of the tent becoming functional snow started to float down from the clouds. Good timing! I crawled inside and threw myself at Motorcycle Maintenance. But after an hour it became apparent that the weather was not going to relent so I threw on a fleece, boiled spaghetti in speedy fashion, and then tucked back inside to the warmth and security of my sleeping bag.

I actually enjoy bad weather, provided I have refuge from it. To be tucked away, warm, hydrated, satiated — an isolated oasis of coziness — while listening to the elements' vain lamentations is a wonderful feeling and only adds to the sensation of being ensconced away in a cocoon of contentment.

After a few more labored pages of my book, I took my pulse (graphed), and — as the wind died off — fell asleep to the soft, feathery sounds of fresh snow on the tent.

Day 3: Recovery

2008-03-01T11:32:00.000-08:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. So, as I perfect my apple-picking and weeding technique, I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

I have also now figured out when I am able to come into town from the farm and access the Internet: Tuesday, Saturday, and occasionally Sunday. That is when this blog will be updated for the indefinite future. Also, for this post, I accidentally left my camera at the farm so pictures will be added Saturday.

Sleep seems to have a monopoly on miracle-caliber recoveries from illness. To wake up fully convalesced, as the result of having only closed one's eyes the previous night, is a wonderful feeling. This is how I felt in the morning Day 3 — not even the faintest hint of a headache. For those keeping track, that's a Lake Louise score of 0.

Despite my newfound impunity to thin air, I had resolved on Day 1 that, after getting so utterly walloped by AMS, I would spend three nights at 4,200 meters. I was not in the business of punishing myself, I was in the business of trying to climb mountains, and to best accomplish that I thought it best to get ahead of the "acclimatization curve," not hug it and re-familiarize myself with the symptoms of AMS.

And thanks to AMS and my physically comatose status the previous two days, cobwebs were practically growing on my legs. Consequently, I opted for two modest excursions on the day.

First, I followed the river to its source. I have been referring to Río del Cazadero as a river because that is its title on the map. Perhaps "river" is an appropriate several hundred kilometers downstream, but here, in the desert and near the source, "river" is a charitable appellation at best.

The source is a 100-meter-long stretch of muck you'd half expect some clone to emerge hellbent on destroying the world from a kitschy sci-fi movie. (I mentioned earlier that this is an "unsavory" drinking water source!) But more important, this muck bleeds rivulets of water that sustain all mammalian life within twenty kilometers.

(Pictured: Water meets desert.)

After the multi-kilometer jaunt upstream I returned to camp. Around noon the arrieros, returning from having deposited Chris and all our gear at El Arenal, joined me. We talked about the conditions at the higher camps while I boiled water for mate (pronounced: mah-tay).

I have neglected thus far to mention this cornerstone of Argentine culture. Mate is a tea-like drink derived from pouring hot water into a gourd of crushed yerba mate leaves, a plant native to South America. The ritual consists simply of filling the gourd (pictured, right) with leaves, pouring water in, and drinking through a special straw known as a bombilla (pronounced: bom-BEE-ah). As one can see, the bombilla (pictured, left) serves as not just a straw but also a sieve. The whole process essentially inverts the concept of the teabag.

As refreshing as mate might be, it is as much a social phenomenon. Since the yerba mate leaves don't lose their potent flavor until ten or twenty fills of the gourd, mate is frequently consumed in groups, passing around the gourd, chatting, enjoying one another's company, I suppose all somewhat similar to the social function of cigarettes.

Mate has addictive properties, too. Caffeine, principally. Because of its stimulating, caffeinating effect, or because of its social function, or because of its taste, or because of all of the above, 93 percent of Argentines drink mate daily, according to my Lonely Planet.

And of course drinking from a mysterious gourd of greens through an exotic metal straw has all the connotation of sage and wisdom, Gandalf or Dumbledore. That's never a bad thing.

(Also, a story: My family visited Argentina in my eighth grade year to visit my exchange sister and the exchange family of my brother from when he spent a year in Paraguay. Upon return to Sitka I was required to make the obligatory South America presentation to social studies class. I mentioned mate and its high caffeine content [probably hyperbolicly], complete with cow-horn gourd and yerba mate leaves as visual aids. The cohort of classmates who at this stage of their lives might be best labeled as "discontented" were immediately enthralled. I imagine the thought of consuming the crushed leaves of a certain South American plant not available on the shelves of a supermarket appealed, or maybe they thought they could get a "high" from a surfeit of caffeine. But for whatever reason, after the presentation I received several solicitations for the yerba mate. More important, the solicitations were backed by cash.

The next day I dutifully tucked away five sandwich baggies of yerba mate in my backpack. For my first-period class, band, there was a substitute teacher. Movie time. So, in the shadows of the back of the room baggies were traded and cash exchanged hands. But with final exchange, the sub, who in any normal middle-school classroom would have been praying for the day to be over, eyed the suspicious activity.

As I alluded, mate bears an uncanny resemblance to marijuana. That was wholly apparent to the sub despite my protests otherwise. Only after my dad corroborated my story and vouched for my innocence was I released from the principal's office and fully exonerated of drug-hustling charges. The incident ended my short, albeit financially successful, career of peddling South American plant matter.)

But I digress. After the arrieros left and invigorated from the mate, I headed off for the second excursion.

The camp at Aguas Calientes is located on a bluff overlooking the river. I climbed up it, perhaps 50 or 60 meters vertical. At the top is a plateau, or, to use a loanword from a more appropriate language (and also more technically correct), a mesa. The mesa also boasted of a terrific view (pictured). For the first time on the trip, I could enjoy a true vista.

The vastness of the Puna is breathtaking. With the scarcity of water and disagreeable qualities of the terrain, a yellow colored grass is the only plant that manages to persevere. From afar, the grass glows the sandy abyss golden.

Then there is Río del Cazadero. With its two-meter riparian zone supporting the only plants in the Puna with any semblance of verdancy, from above the river looked like a great green snake slithering through a flaxen field (pictured).

I mentioned while watching the Superclásico that "because ... 10,000 individual and somewhat synchronized jumping motions are too much for the eye to isolate it scales back to the macro." Here the opposite is true. Any aberration or anomaly that departs from the awesome uniformity of the sea of golden sand or the wail of the wind draws the eye or ear like a bulls eye. Senses become heightened.

In this way the Puna is the antithesis of the Tongass and the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest. Not just in appearance, as I just described, but existence is jarringly different. To be in the Puna is to be alone — visually, acoustically, biologically. In the Tongass we have a staggering degree of life per square meter: lush vegetation, animals, insects, birds, and of course the gurgling or the dripping or the pitter-pattering sound of water, water everywhere, which almost seems as alive as the life it sustains. We often take it for granted, there is far more stimulation to the senses than we can ever hope to absorb when bushwhacking through rainforest. Our senses, ourselves, we scale back to the macro, just as with watching the crowd at Estadio Islas Malvinas. Coming from such a cacophonous ecological atmosphere, to simply sit down and gaze across a vast plain of nothingness is like examining a foreign planet. In fact, so often it is these landscapes that are compared to the moon and I think I now truly know why.

If it weren't for my good spirits from having recovered from AMS the view, the loneliness, would have been almost depressing — it certainly was humbling. I skied down the crumbly scree slope to camp and made dinner. I enjoyed being able to eat again and really stuffed myself.

Lying in my sleeping bag at night, I took my p.m. pulse (graphed). It confirmed that my recovery was complete. Now, onwards and upwards!

Some More Observations...

2008-02-28T20:36:00.000-08:00

...regarding this blog.

I realize this site is making or has made the transition from public blog to personal journal, based on the lengths of posts and loquaciousness. For that I apologize. But not enough to slap parameters of brevity on my posts! I am writing for selfish reasons, because I have discovered that I enjoy writing a good deal more than I previously believed and because I think this will be an enjoyable Journal of Record, Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins Ages 18-19, for myself one year, five years, or seventy years down the road. Retrospection is vastly underrated as both a personal exercise and as entertainment.

I still transcribe from private notebook and commonplace book to public blog is because the awareness that the writing is being broadcast to anyone, even if it's just a handful of folks, keeps me honest with regular updates.

...regarding texting abbreviations.

Spanish is a phonetic language. South America is a continent full of cell phones. So why is it not also a continent full of teenagers with tendinitis and Blackberry thumbs? After all, they don't have the liberty of squishing "see you later" to "cu l8r." But (non-phonetic) abbreviations persist, relying on memory rather than intuition. A few examples: "Dónde" (where) becomes "Do" and "Qué" (what) becomes simply "Q."

...regarding sex.

Hoteles por hora, hotels by the hour, are exactly for what they sound like they're for. They are also quite common in Argentina and look just like any other hotel — no neon flashing lights, just an unassuming brick façade and one-way glass windows.

I originally intended to scope one out (solo), but the high cost (ARG$70/USD$22) persuaded me otherwise. Also, the receptionists who I have gotten to know fairly well over the previous two months at Hostel Recoleta found my proposed cultural experience to be hilarity of the highest order. Regardless, it seems fascinating that such a public industry dedicates itself to accommodate trysting.

Here's how it works: You walk into the reception where frosted glass and a two-way intercom separate clients and receptionist — a barrier of anonymity. You are then assigned to a room where hors d'œuvres, a television programmed exclusively with porn channels, a radio broadcasting RnB and smooth jazz, and wall-to-wall mirrors await. Then, through the type of hatch one might find in a prison solitary-confinement cell, room service takes an order of drinks and slides them in. Finally, when only five minutes are left, the same receptionist gives notification of the impending expiration of your reservation.

(Pictured: It looks innocent enough.)

A surprisingly high percentage of my Argentine friends have visited these hotels. Even though politically the country is far more lax on sex than the U.S. (e.g., prostitution is legal and regulated), socially — being a Roman Catholic country — there are enduring taboos which create conflict...and a solution in the form of hoteles por hora.

...time.

Argentina and South America use 24-hour time, e.g., 17:00, not 5 p.m. It makes sense and eliminates confusion, too, except for American tourists like me who aren't used to it!

...regarding football advertising.

I have always been perplexed why soccer jerseys have sponsors emblazoned across the chest. If my beloved Boston Red Sex where to auction off such sartorial real estate to Dunkin' Donuts, the Red Sox Nation would erupt in outrage. But I think I may have figured out why soccer teams get away with it.

Consider: How can a network advertise during a game with a clock that runs continuously, spare halftime, for 90 minutes? Even for injuries on the field of play the seconds tick away. The answer is, well...you can't. Networks sometimes run little five-second, one-eighth screen animation ads at the bottom of the TV during play, but the 30-second spot becomes obsolete. This means that the networks, and consequently the teams, cannot reap the full financially windfall of broadcast. Enter: jerseys. Cha-ching! The players wear them on the field and fans wear them off the field — an omnipresent advertising medium.

(Pictured: River Plate football club and Petrobras oil company: advertising bedfellows.)

I suppose that for the same reason NASCAR and Formula 1 race suits look like the fantasy of some Madison Avenue adman.

...regarding dogs.

Dogs are common in cities and seem to outnumber humans in towns. Their presence seems to be accepted by people; they lounge around in bus terminals and, especially in rural areas, even wander through restaurants without raising anyone's ire. But they seem to accept their place. While ultimately in search of food and/or affection, the dogs don't ever make their intentions too explicit. There is no whining or no begging. But if a dog senses food that will be thrown away, it will casually attempt to intervene.

...regarding alfajores.Alfajores are chocolate-covered, dulce de leche-filled packaged pastries endemic to Argentina. (Dulce de leche is a somewhat carmel-y tasting desert filling wildly popular in Argentina.) A less flattering analogue would be to say that alfajores are the Twinkies of Argentina. Regardless, with their exotic fillings I find them positively delicious and dreadfully addicting. But fortunately I can pass off this sweet-tooth indulgence as a cultural experience.

(Pictured: Yumminess!)

Day 2: Mooommm!

2008-02-26T16:01:00.000-08:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. So, as I perfect my apple-picking and weeding technique, I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

Calvin and Hobbes were a formative influence in my life. This extends to the relationship with my parents: just as Calvin hails his mom with a full-throated "MOM!" I'm afraid I have somewhat taken after him. When I do this, however, it's a little less comical, at least from my parent's perspective.

Unfortunately, here at Aguas Calientes neither my mom nor her compassion were available.

Today, technically, from 00:00:01 onwards, I woke many times. Supine, prostrate, on my side — no amount of body-position engineering was able to vanquish my sleeplessness. Then, when my bladder prompted a trip out of my sleeping bag at 7 a.m. I was nearly felled by vertigo.

Insomnia and dizziness. Bump the Lake Louise score up to 5.

I emerged from my sleeping bag for good at 8 a.m. to see off Alex and Herman, both of whom had acclimatized prior to the trip and had spent the morning coherent and productive, as they embarked on their 20+ km trek and 1,300 meter ascent to El Arenal, the 5,500 meter/18,000 ft. base camp.

At this point I was seriously considering descending not just because the Lake Louise score advised such action, but because it was just no fun being this sick. But after a breakfast of tea, and throwing up twice more, my nausea and dizziness faded away and my headache relented from "pulsating" to "disagreeable." Knock the Lake Louise score down to 2.

Chris, also already acclimated from climbing Monte Pissis, the third highest mountain in the Western Hemisphere, remained at Aguas Calientes. He, too, was bound for El Arenal, but by mule, not by foot.

Ultimately, you cannot standardize the challenge of a mountain. Supplemental oxygen, bush planes, mules, porters, Sherpas, guides, and all other the cogs and flywheels of the supported expedition have long since changed mountaineering. Of course the variables of Mother Nature must be considered as well: time of year and its associated weather, and the ridge, face, or route by which you choose to ascend. So you are left with a decision, able to approximately customize the degree of difficulty and challenge to what satisfies you. If I had adopted Chris' mountaineering modus operandi, and if successful in ascent, I imagine I would have felt somewhat hollow standing atop the summit. However, if he finds the experience fulfilling, which seems to genuinely be the case, then that is all that matters, despite the moralizing of those of a more idealistic persuasion.

The arrieros have a small encampment about five kilometers downriver from Agua Calientes so it takes a few hours to feed their mules and make their way up to our camp in the morning. While Chris was waiting for and grumbling about the arrieros, I went to climb a little 15-meter sand dune across the river in an effort to do something physical — something other than sleeping and reading.

It turned out to be a more than adequate challenge. I had to stop, sit down, and rest five or six times, and it was out of necessity, not leisure. This pretty accurately relates the incredibly diminished state of my aerobic and physical capability.

At the top I recovered and then made the 200-meter slog back to camp, where Chris was still waiting and still grumbling. We chatted awhile and then the two arrieros arrived. They packed up the mules with Alex's, Herman's, Chris', and my gear (I was sending my cache bag with extra food and fuel while keeping my backpack), and then trotted off into the halcyon desert horizon.

I crawled into one of the small caves in the bluff and into my sleeping bag. My reading material, Dante's Inferno and Pirsig's Motorcycle Maintenance, was far too cerebral for my weakened mental faculties. The only literature my mind would have been able to handle was Tom Clancy or The Boxcar Children, neither of which I had foresight to pack. I very much would have liked to fall asleep, and even though I felt exhausted the decreased oxygen in the air seemed to make sleep impossible.

(Pictured: Spelunking and camping simultaneously: my home at Agua Calientes.)

For the duration of the afternoon I sat in my bag and twiddled my thumbs...and tried to read and tried to fall asleep, but mostly just twiddled my thumbs and felt like the subject of a George Cruikshank caricature. It was a truly pathetic state of affairs.

The only productive action item resulting from the afternoon was recording my pulse. I decided on Day 1 that documenting the effects of altitude and my aerobic reaction would make for an interesting experiment, with the French benefit of informing my acclimatization decisions. From this post onwards I will post a graph of my heartbeat's history through the expedition. Its simplicity leaves data to be desired, but Google Document's spreadsheet application is still in its infancy and doesn't yet have much capability. Each data point, as described on the horizontal axis, is taken at a 12-hour interval, give or take a few hours. For example, the first data point was taken in the a.m. of Day 1 in Fiambalá at 1,800 meters. The second point in the p.m. of Day 1 at Agua Calientes at 4,200 meters. While it would be quite informative to include a third dimension of statistics — the elevation or atmospheric pressure at which the pulse was taken, for instance — I do not believe there is a way to assimilate such information using Google Docs. Sorry!

Dinner consisted of four spoonfuls of pasta. On the liquid side of things, I was valiantly trying to hydrate as much as I could. Besides quantity, I was improving the quality of my liquids too.

Since my body was stressed to the point of sickness by altitude, I figured it would behoove me to eliminate any additional biological stressors. Since Day 1, mostly out of laziness, I had been drinking straight from the river, equivocating with myself that since our camp was so near the source there was little opportunity for contamination.

This, however, is not true. This river is a literal oasis in the desert and, as such, you could have farmed the rich nitrogen deposits in the meter of turf buffering the river — the fertilizer produced by scatologically prolific vicuña and guanaco populations. So I started supplementing my water with iodine. At the very least, I figured, I would enjoy the benefits of the placebo effect.

After brewing another pot of tea I went to bed. While exhaustion, headaches, and insomnia were all facts of existence, vomiting, nausea, and dizness were not. All in all — relatively — a good day.

Day 1: Into the Puna!

2008-02-25T06:35:00.000-08:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. So, as I perfect my apple-picking and weeding technique, I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

Brrrrng, brrrng, brrrng! Chris's alarm clock shattered my stupor. But instead of praying that he'd give the snooze button a tap, I jumped out of bed. This was it! We were going into the Puna today.

Outside, Señor Reynoso, one of Señor Reynoso's drivers, and a burly 4x4, engine idling and creating one of those viscera-tickling diesel-engine rumbles, were waiting. Also waiting was Joaquin, a self-proclaimed "vagabond anarchist," hailing from Bakersfield, California (presumably before he became a vagabond). He was going to join Chris, Alex, and me on the ride to Cazadero Grande for sightseeing. Fine by me. To hire the driver and 4x4 for the 150 km drive from Fiambalá to Cazadero Grande, the jumping off point for all Puna expeditions; the 10 km off-road drive from the highway across an alluvial plain to the mountains; and then back to Fiambalá (sans us) — five hours total for the truck and driver — was going to cost ARG$200/USD$64. Not bad. But instead of dividing that by three, with Joaquin, it was only going to cost ARG$50/USD$16 per.

The ride into the Andes was spectacular visually, but I was preoccupied, excited, restless, and somewhere — deep down, very deep down — also very sleepy from waking up at the criminally early hour of 6:30 a.m.

After cruising up the highway and enduring 10 km of off-road vehicular turbulence, the 4x4 could go no farther. We unloaded our gear and the arrieros, or muleteers, were already there. After mingling, thank yous, and goodbyes, we gave our gear to the arrieros and Alex, the math teacher from Córdoba, and I began to trek up the watershed.

The mules were to haul our gear — backpacks and an extra bag of supplies — to our first camp. This made for easy walking. I detached the "cerebrum," the top of the pack that ratchets down via four straps the rest of the pack, and by connecting two of the straps turned it into a satchel, straps across my upper body and opposite shoulder, a sort of bike-messenger look.

Chris, however, forever the iconoclast, had opted to ride a mule (and pay a substantially larger sum of money) to Aguas Calientes, our first camp.

It was 24 kms/15 miles to Aguas Calientes and the first portion was a beautiful mixture of canyon and steep-sided river valley.

This being the Puna, a semi-desert, flora, and consequently fauna, is scant. While technically there are no cacti, all the plants that do exist leave a similar impression on the skin. These are some of the toughest, meanest, "plants" I have seen; they make a strong bid at being considered predators.

And somehow, animals manage to eat, digest, and derive enough nutritional sustenance from the menagerie of needle-tipped "grasses" and thorn-adorned "shrubs." Guanacos and vicuñas, specifically.

(Pictured: A vicuña, as close as I could get. Apologies about the timestamps. You may click to enlarge, but for a far better picture, click here.)

These two creatures look mostly the same, except for size. They are the deer of Puna and slightly resemble deer, too, except for slightly longer necks, an indicator of their relation to the llama and alpaca. The steep valley walls which we hiked by were striated with their tracks. This, I suppose, is also similar to deer. If you Agent Oranged the slopes of the Tongass, the deer trails previously concealed by the dense foliage would, I'm sure, look similar.

(Pictured: The vicuña and guanaco tracks that make the valley walls look like a cheese grater.)

Actually, there is a difference: When you stumble across a vicuña and guanaco, understandably, they gallop off and up the valley walls away from you. But what's peculiar (and different) is that they then unleash a shrill chorus of scolding from their airy perch that sounds like a monologue from a Gossip Girl episode. Or one might say they sound like a 100 lb./50 kilo squirrel.

Alex and I, thanks to not having to lug our packs, made quick progress up the twisting "U"s of the river valley and after six hours, at 5:30 p.m., arrived at our first camp, Aguas Calientes.

Aguas Calientes is the source of the river which we had spent all day paralleling, both by truck and by foot. As its name suggests, it is a hot spring, percolating and oozing out of the muck in a most unsavory manner. But once the water congregates in the riverbed and its flow becomes guided by gravity, it appeared and tasted most refreshing for our sun-inspired thirst.

The actual camp of Aguas Calientes is a Petra-like structure carved into the eroded bluff that overlooks the river. Impressive infrastructure for a region that sees no more than 30-40 climbers a year. (My previous estimate of climbers per year was wrong. This number, 30-40, is from Señor Reynoso, as an impeccable source there is.) There was a cave completely shielded by a rock wall to keep out the incessant, howling wind and a wind wall-enclosed fire pit with benches crafted out of rocks — enough room to comfortably seat five or six people.

(Pictured: The wind walls of Aguas Calientes built into and around the overlooking bluff.)

After meeting up with Herman, Alex's climbing partner who was already at Aguas Calientes acclimatizing, we started a fire and Herman began to grill vicuña meat over the flames. Apparently the arrieros had come across a vicuña with a broken leg and inflicted a coup de grâce and passed on the extra meat to Herman. I tried some, only to regret it later.

You know that feeling when you brush against some poison ivy or eat bad bacteria-laced food? You are aware of the fact the very moment you touch the ivy or eat the food but there's a period of delay before your immune system and body get thoroughly throttled...and all you can do is wait for it to hit you. And this "it" I speak of is not the vicuña meat, although I suspect eating something so foreign to my immune system did not help matters, but rather the altitude.

The morning began at Fiambalá, 1,800 meters/5,900 ft. The 4x4 dropped us off at 3,500 meters/11,500 ft. And from there I had climbed to Aguas Calientes at 4,200 meters/13,800 ft.

I had but a small headache when climbing from 3,500 to 4,200 meters and that small headache persisted once at Aguas Calientes. Then, boom! The altitude landed a left hook and a right cut to several vital organs and I was left on my knees.

Literally. Vomiting.

This was my first-ever bout of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS). Altitude and AMS manhandle unchecked ambition with depressing efficiency, something I had a lot of today. This is Mother Nature at Her most powerful: You cannot escape atmosphere (or, if you bring canistered oxygen, it's only a temporary escape) and She makes you show respect, plain and simple. Nausea, vomiting, a pulsating headache, motivation-crippling malaise — AMS is like the flu minus the sinusoidal body temperature. If you originally had designs on further ascent before being stricken with AMS, you'd have to be a masochist to continue.

I'm no masochist. I knew I would push my lungs and body to the max in ascending 2,200 meters/8,000 ft. in 12 hours. And I knew I would pay a price. I just didn't know the price would be this painful. I now know.

So after regurgitating my stomach's contents I then laid out my sleeping bag and did my best to rest, palpitations allowing. My heart was pounding out 126 beats a minute, and that was my "resting" heart rate.

But AMS is actually just a warning siren to the body, a precursor to two far more serious conditions: HAPE and HACE, High Altitude Pulmonary Edema and High Altitude Cerebral Edema. The former fills lungs with fluid, the latter compresses brain tissue within the skull with excess fluid, and both are fatal without immediate descent. As Señor Reynoso aptly describes these edemas, "Your body drowns in itself."

To avoid such drowning another general guideline has been developed among climbers: the Lake Louise Test, a self-diagnostic exam. Essentially you tally points based on the quantity and severity of your symptoms: Headache, nausea, vomiting, lack of appetite, insomnia, gasping for breath at night, lassitude, ataxia (lack of coordination), and dizziness round out the list. Zero to one points means you're okay, 2-4 means stay put and don't ascend, 5-7 means descend 400 meters (minimum), and 8 or more means you're life is in danger and you must descend by any means possible, as fast as possible. I scored 4 and was more than happy to acquiesce with the suggested treatment and stay put.

(Pictured: A graph demonstrating the relationship between altitude, in feet, and atmospheric pressure, in millibars, thus oxygen. The same graph but with metric units.)

As with all physiological problems it seems, there are pharmaceutical solutions. Diamox (generic: acetazolamide), a drug that artificially increases respiration, mitigates the symptoms of altitude. Decadron (generic: dexamethasone) reduces swelling in the brain. Regular old aspirin (Señor Reynoso gave me a drug called Migral, which I think is the same thing) helps with headache and other unpleasant symptoms of altitude. However, while these drugs minimize symptoms they also mask them.

For my first time in altitude, for my first time witnessing my body's reaction to altitude, I decided before embarking that I would listen to my body, every murmur and every exclamation. Drugs hinder, not enhance, such observation. But in the case that my body might make such an exclamation (i.e., 5 or more points on the Lake Louise Test), I had drugs to repress the symptoms and lengthen my window of time for safe descent.

I spent the duration of the evening wondering if maybe I had pushed my body a little too far, too high, too fast. Throughout the night, sleep was an elusive state as I listened to my overworked heart beat as though I was a hummingbird and pump blood with such force to audibly (and rhythmically) move my head against the fabric of the sleeping bag.

Day 0: Preparations

2008-02-21T17:30:00.001-08:00

My climbing lasted for 11 days, each one interesting and post-worthy. So, as I perfect my apple-picking and weeding technique, I will draft posts for each day based on the notes I took during the expedition.

My first five minutes in Fiambalá, Argentina gives this pueblo its most fitting definition.

Stepping out of the Terminal de Omnibus and onto a parking lot surrounded by barren, wind-swept vacant lots, two vehicles were in the parking lot: a police pickup and a taxi. I walked up to the policeman and inquired how long the walk to the central plaza is. "Hop in back and I'll give you a lift," was his response.

Fiambalá may be desolate and remote, but it is a town of incredible kindness and warmth.

As it turns out, after finding out I was a climber, the policeman took me not to the office of Jonson Reynoso, but the house of Jonson Reynoso. For a town of 6,000 encircled by badlands, Fiambalá boasts of two attractions: A hot springs and Jonson Reynoso.

Jonson Reynoso is ostensibly the 60-something-year-old DirecTV salesman for this rural Andean region of Argentina. But once you step past the bold-face DirecTV promotional posters plastered across the windows of his office and poke your head through the door, his true passion is betrayed. Filling every inch of available wall space are rusty ice axes from expeditions past; posters of the Matterhorn, Cerro Fitz-Roy, Patagonia, and — of course — the colossal peaks of the Puna; and expedition flags from countless European, Asian, and North American mountaineering sorties into the Puna, all with messages of appreciation and thanks Sharpied into their lower corners.

You see, Jonson Reynoso is the guidebook for these mountains. He is the guy National Geographic contacted when doing a spread on these mountains and led their expedition. He is the guy that John Biggar, author of the canonical climbing guidebook The Andes, contacted for guidance and advice while researching the Puna for his book (and subsequently sent him an autographed first edition with an inscription of thanks). And he is the guy I am here to see before commencing my own journey into the Puna de Atacama.

After trading introductions in his front yard amid old tires and propane canisters, Jonson and I hopped in his 4x4 and drove to his office and his computer. We discussed the micro — the route, camps, snowline, boiling time at altitude, acclimatization schedules, GPS waypoints, aerial photography, gear — for hours. While all this information sets a vital foundation for any successful peak attempts, it became abundantly clear through our conversation that Jonson is really nice.

In fact, if I were to give one common, transcending quality of Argentina it would be just that: people are nice. It is a diverse country politically, culturally, linguistically, geographically, but it is glued together by an adhesive of altruism. Everyone (well, minus the five people who have tried to rob me!) seems modest and thoughtful and seems to make every effort to help if asked. It is simply a different culture and a different cultural expectation than other countries. Jonson exemplified this quality in calling the Municipal Hostería and booking me a bed in the hostel room, driving all my gear there, and giving me his cell number for any questions all within hours of my unannounced arrival.

I had arrived in Fiambalá at 6 p.m. utterly clueless. Three hours later not only had I received an excellent brief on the Puna, but had been chauffeured to two different locations by the police and a mountaineering legend, respectively!

While the people of Fiambalá are kind, the weather is not. You know that howling, whistling sound effect of wind from, say, some cheesy late '40s Technicolor film featuring a band of frontier-destined settlers struggling through some snowbound pass? Well if Hollywood knew what was easy for itself, they would have recorded that in Fiambalá. The mean wind speed here is probably, oh, 20-25 mph/30-40 kph reaching blustery daily highs of 50 mph/80 kph. That the town is set in a treeless, semi-desert scrubland means the gusts of wind are often sand-laden, blistering your face and eyes. A bleakness endures in this town in which you would half-expect tumbleweeds to somersault down main street.

And if my first conversation with Jonson was about the micro, the next two days of preparation were about the kilo.

Food

How many kilocalories per day? It is difficult to extrapolate. In the Tongass, on a backpacking trip two summers ago with Chandler Kemp, we planned around a 4,500 kilocalorie per day diet and it worked out swimmingly. (In the U.S. "calories" on our nutritional labels are actually kilocalories. In South America they are listed, unclipped, as kilocalories.) Furthermore, altitude profoundly depresses appetite and I'll be sitting around acclimatizing, with little physical activity, for several days. It's a conundrum to be sure.

To complicate matters, it's difficult to buy food. In a town of 6,000 there are eight minimercados and zero supermarkets. That wouldn't be a problem except that all eight of these minimercados seem to have the same wholesale distributor. You walk in one and there are 40-50 food items. The next one has maybe 35-45 items, with only one or two different from the previous store. Et cetera. It certainly has restricted my envisioned diet in the mountains.

That's when I'm even able to get inside the stores. I have noticed, beginning in Buenos Aires, an alpha world city, continuing onto Mendoza, a medium-sized city, and ending in Fiambalá, a pueblo, an evolution of the siesta. Argentines take their siesta more and more seriously the farther you stray from the bustle and hustle of urbanity. The average hours of operation for any store in Fiambalá are approximately 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.-12 a.m., and the rest of the time they're shackled. It is like the day gets subdivided into two and, for many, the siesta portion of that subdivision might even entail more time in bed than the night part. It certainly takes some adjusting to the cycle of the day when the only movement in center plaza swings at 2 p.m. is from angry gusts of wind, while at 2 a.m. the sets of swings sound like a flock of angry birds from all the kids getting their playtime.

I concluded that 3,500 kilocalories a day would be optimal, erring caution. Still, for 20 days, 70,000 kilocalories is a tremendous quantity of food — ARG$280 worth of food in fact. In other words, enough food so to attract a small crowd of curious children wondering why the gringo was buying so much food that the minimercado clerk needed to go out back and get boxes instead of bags for it all!

Expedition logistics

My original intention was to hitchhike from Fiambalá to the Río Cazadero watershed, hike into the mountains unsupported, and climb. However, that plan soon changed after talking to Jonson. Apparently three other climbers were soon to arrive in Fiambalá and were planning a coordinated hire of a 4x4 and driver to take them up the watershed as far as possible and then of mules and arrieros, or muleteers, to haul their gear all the way to 5,500 meters/18,000 ft. If I joined their league I could enjoy the benefits of a supported expedition at a fraction of the normal cost. Considering it was my first high altitude experience I decided to play it safe and ponied up. The other climbers:

Chris, an iconoclastic libertarian rancher from Montana. (Although what libertarian isn't iconoclastic?) He, like his political philosophy, climbs solo.

Herman, a mountaineering guide from Córdoba, Argentina.

And Alex, a secondary school math teacher and part-time guide from Córdoba. Also, Herman's climbing partner.

Through all these preparations, there has been one common thread: My need to use Spanish. Going from Buenos Aires, to Mendoza, to Fiambalá has highlighted another evolution, or rather devolution: The disappearance of anglophones.

This progression has actually worked out quite well, like taking off linguistic training wheels. In Fiambalá I have yet to encounter anyone who can even haphazardly manage English, but thanks to practice logged in Buenos Aires and Mendoza I am surviving and my Spanish is rapidly improving.

For this, credit goes to the Spanish teachers of the Sitka School District, past and present. My four and a half years of Spanish courses didn't impart a fluency that I could enjoy the moment I landed in South America, but it gave me the tools to get by and — most importantly — improve. A hearty gracias goes out to Profesores Friedman, Cooley, Riggs, and Coleman who, despite their disparate teaching styles, managed to make my experience, and that of others, possible and practical. Thank you!

And finally, expedition eve. Gadzooks! The hostel room I was now sharing with Alex and Chris (Herman was already in the mountains acclimatizing) looked like several different types of natural disaster had steamrolled through! Food everywhere, ice axes hanging from lamp shades, and three people furiously preparing for a very, very anticipated trip.

Another problem encountered in Fiambalá was that there are no ziplock bags: no brand-name ones and no generic ones. As anyone familiar with the outdoors knows, ziplocks are mighty useful. But I had no choice, plan B it was. Off to the minimercado I went to further bamboozle an already quite bamboozled clerk: I bought a role of those bags that one would normally fill with produce or bulk foods. (They weren't for sale but we haggled.) While flimsy and inefficient they ultimately worked.

With my bag conundrum resolved, at 1 a.m. that night, as Fiambalá was socializing the night away, I went to sleep getting ready for the trip of a lifetime.

Recipe Sweepstakes

2008-02-08T19:49:00.001-08:00

Final post before I go silent for two-three weeks.

My diet thus far has consisted mostly of bananas, pasta, apples, corn, chocolate pudding, ice cream, curry, and cheese. Since hostels have kitchens, I am able to cook but my repertoire of recipes is minimal and I need ideas! Since I don't like to carry around suitcases of miscellaneous ingredients when I travel, gold stars and a pat of the back for recipes that require minimal number of ingredients. (That would disqualify buttermilk pancakes, for example, as buttermilk counts as an "exotic" ingredient, needs to be refrigerated, and cannot be taken with me traveling.)

Please send me your ideas. Leave a comment or e-mail me.

Synopsis

2008-02-08T19:12:00.000-08:00

If you think organized sports are the bane of the world but have an insatiable curiosity for all things Bolivian, this post is for you. This is my very rough, very tentative (but still a) plan for the duration of my stay in the Southern Hemisphere.

Now-March 1st: Climbing in the Puna de Atacama.
March 1st-March 6th: Visiting my exchange sister, María, in Córdoba, Argentina and flitting over to Buenos Aires to pick up new ATM card.
March 6th-April 6th: Working on a WWOOF farm (World Wide Opportunities in Organic Farming) in the province of Mendoza near the small city of Tunuyán. I'm hoping to pick lots of cherries and apples, pull weeds, improve my Castillano (as South Americans call their dialect of Spanish), and spend no money (I work for free, they provide a bed and food for free).
April 6th-April 15th: Traveling to Bolivia and (possibly) Perú either via the northern Argentine province of Salta or through Chile, possibly stopping in Valaparaíso to visit a friend. I need to leave Argentina because my tourist visa expires on the 15th of April.
April 15th-April 27th: Traveling to Brasil, specifically Río de Janeiro, Säo Paulo, Curitiba, and Puerto Alegre.
April 27th-May 1st: Traveling back to Buenos Aires via Uruguay's Punta del Este and Montevideo.
May 1st-May 15th: Traveling south to the Lake District and Patagonia. Possible destinations include Bariloche, Bolsón, Calafate, Fitz-Roy, Torres del Paine, and perhaps even Ushuaia.
May 15th-17th: Return to Buenos Aires and recuperate.
May 18th: Depart Buenos Aires.
May 20th: Arrive in Sitka.

If you have experiences and/or strong opinions about what's an overrated tourist trap and what's an epiphany catalyzing experience waiting to happen, I'm all ears. Either leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Fiambalá, Argentina: Outpost in the Puna

2008-02-08T18:30:00.000-08:00

I have arrived in the small Andean outpost of Fiambalá, the last Argentine pueblo before the border and 600 kilometers away from the first town in Chile, after a series of progressively smaller and more rickety buses. The plan is to leave tomorrow for 15-20 days of climbing in the Puna de Atacama, the Andean high plain on the southern fringes of the Atacama Desert. It is one of the most remote and beautiful areas in the world.

I plan to spend a week acclimatizing, beginning at 3,500 meters/11,500 ft. and working my sleeping altitude up to 5,500 meters/18,000 ft., or as my body allows. This 5,500 meter base camp/cache is tucked at the head of valley bordered on all three sides by volcanic cordillera, a perfect location for summit attempts on Volcán del Viento, Cerro Medusa, Ojos del Salado, El Muerto, Cerro Walter Penck, and Cerro Nacimiento, in that order.

The area offers the rare opportunity for high-altitude climbing (all the above peaks are 6,000 meters/19,600 feet plus, with Ojos at 6,891 meters/22,608 ft.) without the complications of glaciers and unreasonably cold weather. Because of the climatic influence of the Atacama, precipitation (thus snow, ice, and ultimately glaciers) is minimal and of the few glaciers in the area, none are of critical mass to have crevasses and their associated dangers. In terms of temperatures, again because of Atacaman influence, -20 Celsius/-4 Farenheit are expected lows with the mercury even venturing above 0 Celsius/32 Farenheit during the day, even as high as 6,000 meters. Compare those temperatures to Denali and the Puna is like a vacation on the beach.

Only comparatively, though. The incessant wind can warp these already somewhat cold temperatures into extremes, not to mention that the constant attrition of altitude significantly reduces the body's capacity to produce and retain heat. And finally, because of minimal precipitation, water is scarce.

Both a positive and negative aspect of the Puna is it sees nearly no climbers. Ojos del Salado is the second highest peak in the Americas and only 80-odd meters lower than Aconcagua but receives maybe 20 climbers a year. Compare that to Aconcagua's 4,000. One can (attempt to) climb great peaks at great altitude in solitude and tranquility with none of Aconcagua's circus antics and burger shacks (at its base camp — I'm not kidding). Conversely, rescue infrastructure is non-existent thus safety and self-reliance are at a premium.

I harbor no illusions about the difficulty. I fully expect something to go wrong, be it my body acclimatizing, equipment malfunction, or some other obstacle, and figure only a 30-40 percent chance of making the 55 kilometer/33 mile trek to Arenales much less summiting any peaks. But regardless what happens, the challenge and experience of this little endeavor should be most worthwhile.

Robbery Attempt #2

2008-02-08T11:49:00.000-08:00

This robbery attempt was a little less so-sneaky-that-I-wouldn't-have-noticed- if-they-stole-my-underwear and a little more thuggish/whatcha gonna do about it, gringo?

Luckily, I managed to do just enough not to lose my backpack. Here's what happened:

On February 6, I was waiting at the Mendoza bus terminal for a 10 p.m. northbound bus to the city of La Rioja with my two pieces of luggage. I have an expedition-size backpack full of climbing gear that I rented in Mendoza, gas for my stove, and climbing and non-climbing clothes; and then I have a much smaller daypack full of my more valuable items: CD player, CDs, camera (I bought a new one in Mendoza), notebook (sentimental value only), Spanish-English dictionary (arguably the object with most practical value), lithium batteries, power adaptor, etc. All my über-important stuff was, thanks to (successful) Robbery Attempt #1 and subsequent learning curve, in my money belt tucked inside my shirt: Passport, money, vaccination records, various receipts, visas, etc.

So here I am, sitting on top of my climbing pack, back to the bus terminal wall, fingers drumming slightly impatiently on the daypack that is lodged between my legs.

However, the wall of the bus terminal behind me has windows and a 20-something guy starts banging on them as though Armageddon had just arrived. As I turn around, "Mr. The Sky if Falling!" points wildly at something indistinguishable inside the terminal. I turn back around to keep an eye out for my bus.

That's when the thuggish "Would-be Thief" walks by, grabs my daypack by its strap, and speed-walks away.

It was Ethan Hunt/James Bond/Hollywood style all the way. You know when the archetypal superstar spy picks up that oh-so-critically-important object in a crowd, or a park bench, or something like that? While making the pick-up he always seems reach out while looking straight ahead, as though he himself has no idea his arm has independently latched on to something. That's just what "Would-be Thief" did, except he dropped my backpack after about two meters and kept walking.

Here's why he couldn't hold on:
1) My daypack, despite its innocent exterior appearance, had a density that gives lead a run for its money. Everything inside was heavy: the books, the electronics, and the monstrous 2.25 liter/.6 gallon "bottle" of grapefruit juice I purchased that evening. (I make an exception for my no-beverages-that-you-have-to-pay-for policy when on the bus and no water is available.) The daypack probably weighed 25 lbs./12 kilos, which was probably 15 lbs./7 kilos heaver than "Would-be Thief" was expecting.
2) I had my foot firmly planted atop one of the daypack's auxiliary straps which slowed down his escape. This, I am proud to report, was not a coincidence. Perhaps my increased awareness of personal space and objects should be also credited to the learning curve subsequent to Robbery Attempt #1.
3) The split-second delay required to pry the strap from under my foot gave me time to lunge for my daypack and grab on. "Would-be Thief" then dropped it and walked away without looking back.

I also think this tag-team of villainy was hoping that "Mr. The Sky is Falling!" would have drawn my full, not partial, attention for just a few seconds longer than he managed so that "Would-be Thief" could have made a clean and unnoticed swipe of my daypack.

Adrenaline was coursing through my veins after reclaiming my daypack. I was wired. And paranoid. The most disconcerting part of the experience was that not any one of the fifteen or so people milling around the scene of the attempted crime did anything. They just watched. I would think, harboring some faith in some sort of generic benevolence of humanity, that people would act upon witnessing someone or something be wronged. I would think, of course, that attempted theft qualifies as an acting of wronging.

But there wasn't any kind of United Airlines Flight 93 or "citizens chase down robbery suspect" response. So, from here on out, at least in South America, I am forced to shift my default assumption of anyone I see or meet, at least when carrying valuables, substantially further into the realm of malignance.

That, for me, means a new rule: Always have at least one limb through each piece of luggage at all times. Lesson learned.

El Superclásico

2008-02-05T21:38:00.000-08:00

I have never, ever seen such raw passion and fervor in my life as I saw at El Superclásico. The Superclásico is the Super Bowl of Argentine soccer. No, let me rephrase that: The Super Bowl is the Superclásico of American rules football. It pits the Boca Juniors and River Plate, Argentina's two most popular and historically successful soccer clubs, against each other and occurs, on average, only three times a year. And two nights ago, I was lucky enough to attend one of these matches.

In Argentina, life stops when the Superclásico is played. The intensity of the rivalry dwarfs that of OSU–Michigan football, Duke–UNC basketball, or the Yankees–Red Sox, and even that of the hooliganized rivalries of European soccer, the Old Firm — Celtic and Rangers F.C. — or Barcelona and Real Madrid. In fact, The Guardian ranks the Superclásico as the number one sporting event in the world to attend before you die. And were I to have been trampled by a stampede of disgruntled fans subsequent to the match, the Superclásico would have ranked as my life's number one sports spectating event, indeed one of the most vivid and exciting experiences of my life in general.

To say soccer fans in Argentina take their fandom seriously would be to commit an understatement of monumental and somewhat insulting proportions. It is more like a religion, or an ideology, or a science, or an art, or some amalgamation of the above. In fact, we Americans don't have a word to describe it because, quite simply, nothing remotely similar to it exists in our country (which may very well be a good thing). But in Europe they call their fanatics "hooligans" and in South America they are the barra brava.

I first began to notice the effects of the game when I went running in Parque San Martín when I was was surprised to stumble across a 40,000 seat soccer stadium hidden in the sylvan recesses of the park. At that moment I was entirely ignorant that the Superclásico was even scheduled that evening so I was befuddled to find hundreds of vendors staking out turf on an otherwise deserted sidewalk leading to the stadium hawking Boca Junior jerseys, flags, and shirts, while food vendors collected wood to fire up their barbecues. "How odd," I thought. "There must be some sort of city-wide youth soccer championship today. They really do take their soccer seriously here if they immortalize local teenage players with jerseys." (I thought that they might name might name their youth soccer teams after professional teams, a la Little League in the U.S.)

Only that evening did I discover that the Superclásico was actually on tap when an Aussie at the hostel was raving about it. I couldn't believe my good luck. In late January, the first Superclásico of the year took place in Mar del Plata, a suburb of the Buenos Aires. The only tickets available, however, were going for ARG$350, and out of financial timidity I ruefully remained in my Buenos Aires hostel and spectated via TV.

However, the prices for this game were supposedly cheaper so I grabbed a few denominations of currency out of my locker and hopped on a Parque San Martín- and Estadio Islas Malvinas-bound bus. (The Argentines are still sore after losing the Falkland Islands War to England.) I arrived on the premises two and half hours before the 10 p.m. kickoff, but the place was buzzing.

One must purchase tickets at one of two ticket booths. One is for Boca, one is for River, and they're about three kilometers apart. This isn't a revenue-sharing measure cooked up by the two teams, it's part of a government-mandated safety and security program to keep each team's fans and barra brava quarantined from each other for as long as logistically possible. The entrances to the stadium are segregated too, the beginning of the long funnel of concessionaires and police for Boca's entrance to the stadium is over two kilometers away from River's. If you're a Boca fan trying to enter through the River entrance you will literally be apprehended by police.

In addition to weeding out infiltrators, the police set up three different frisking checkpoints to which each fan must submit in order to gain entrance. Goodness knows what the police are looking for. And calling them police is a stretch; "peacekeepers" might be more appropriate. With shotguns that looked as if they could bring down a woolly mammoth and Kevlar flak jackets, I felt more like I was in Baghdad than at a sporting event.

For me, I bought a Boca ticket, and once past the Boca checkpoints I was home free...to sit in the Boca section of the stadium. Argentine stadiums are bifurcated into two sections of seating (besides the two opposing groups of fans): platea and populares. The former has a better view and the latter is more "energetic." At the boletería I was initially preferential towards populares (ARG$15) thinking it would be a more "genuine" experience, but was dissuaded by the concerned ticket lady and instead invested in a platea ticket (ARG$50).

It turns out populares would have been more a "genuinely" suicidal experience. When I stepped into the platea section of the stadium a full hour and a half before kickoff the entire populares sections for both Boca and River were chanting about the supreme glory of their respective side, all the barra brava standing while doing so of course. After the match I talked to an Argentine at the hostel who said that when he attended a ho-hum regular season River Plate game he had sat down in the first half of the game because he had fatigued from hours of singing, jumping, and standing. The barra brava next to him tapped him on the shoulder and, with pursed lips and squinted eyes, wagged his finger twice and motioned him up with his index finger. Then the barra brava started massaging his knuckles. It is not urban legend: You can be assaulted for not cheering enough at soccer games. And if that incident occurred during a "regular" game, I can't imagine what the cheering expectations required for safe passage at the Superclásico might be.

Over the next hour and a half the populares did not stop singing and jumping. It's incredible to watch 10,000 shirtless young (mostly) men — one quarter of the stadium — jump. Since the barra brava bring their own drums to the match, the rhythmic glue the percussion provides even ensures that all their songs and jumping are somewhat in unison. And because the 10,000 individual and somewhat synchronized jumping motions are too much for the human eye to isolate it scales back to the macro giving the appearance that 200 meters of bleacher have temporarily turned into a giant pulsating heart.

The barra brava also bring their own balloons, in the colors of their team. I think they must bring in several 500 packs and have each person take a balloon and pass it on to the next person. From the other side of the stadium it's like watching a blue and gold colored disease contagiously spread through the stadium. And after one and a half hours of this madness, the clock ticked 10 o´clock. The moment of truth had arrived.

(Pictured: River barra brava for a Superclásico on home turf.)

Onto the field filed River and Boca and the stadium went nuts. By this point I had realized that this was going to be nothing like any other sporting experience in my life.

In the U.S., the seeming need to enhance the excitement of sporting events, to augment the sports' inherent entertainment value has contaminated just about every league, team, and venue — giant video monitors featuring cartoonish animations, game announcers, cheerleaders, and mascots are but a few of the culprits. Attending an Argentine soccer match is a far more pure experience; there is no need for such "excitement augmentation" or "enhancement" because the nation-wide passion for the game manifests itself at each and every match in a way that makes the manufactured attractions of U.S. sport appear for what they are: distractions from the game. That's not to say U.S. doesn't have sporting passion, just that the experience of attending a game in person gets diluted by the periphery. In Estadio Islas Mavlinas, for example, the sole scoreboard merely displayed the score and game clock.

South American matches have their snap, crackle, and pop, too, of course, but it's the fans who are instigating the victory songs, it's the fans who are cheerleading themselves into a tizzy, and it's the fans who are launching the fireworks into the sky (or the bleachers, in which case it's like watching a human shockwave as people scatter for their safety). And for some reason when these things originate from the fans it makes the entire experience more organic and adrenaline filled.

(Pictured: Getting sprayed by the fire hoses serves as an aphrodisiac of insanity for the barra brava.)

When introductions came around the stadium reached fever pitch. For each player's introduction the opposing fans would let loose a personalized and profanity-laced taunt in unison. I can't imagine as a player what it would feel like to have 15,000 people simultaneously yelling that yo' mama's a hor.

As you may have inferred, the notion of sportsmanship — at least amongst fans — does not exist.

That doesn't mean it's not family friendly. Grandmas, moms with newly-borns, fathers and sons (all mostly in platea) not only turn out in force, but are fully complicit in the name calling, taunting, and cussing. It's a family bonding, Argentina style.

After the introductions and associated chaos concluded, the game commenced and the crowd became concentrated, thus subdued. As possessions changed the audience would occasionally break into applause in appreciation of seemingly mundane plays, good off-the-ball motion, for example. And when Boca scored a goal twenty minutes into the game my half the stadium erupted. Everyone spontaneously embraced each other, including me, kisses were thrown about willy-nilly, and after 15-or-so seconds of raucous celebration we promptly moved on to the most important post-goal activity: taunting the River fans in unison.

The Boca platea — where I was sitting — is adjacent to the River platea and, unfortunately, the River faithful didn't take well to our derision. Volleys of half-full water bottles, sans caps, spiked with saliva, phlegm, sputum, or whatever other bodily fluid they could haphazardly produce came raining upon us over the black demarcation line of riot police separating the two sections. I should have brought my raincoat. Our Boca "artillery," of course, returned fire. And so on.

Then River scored three consecutive goals before the half. Now their crowd erupted into song:

Boca has no money,
Boca has no women,
But Boca has an ass,
And the foot of River Plate. (Repeat)

And:

Boca will burn in the flames. (Repeat)

Perhaps the Oompa-Loompas are contracting out their lyric-composition acumen to River? It was even complete with dance moves as thousands of River barra brava swayed in rhythm.

In the second half Boca struck back to bring the game within 2–3 but as regulation expired, Boca couldn't find an equalizer.

The River fans remained in the stadium singing victory songs as the Boca dejectedly filed out, their espirit de corps similar to what you'd expect at a funeral. But by the time the thousands of Boca fans and I finally made our way to the two kilometer thoroughfare the leads from the depths of the park to the city, River Plate had finished their victory celebration and were beginning to walk back too. It was eerie.

Two pedestrian paths, one on each side of the road, were filled with the two factions of fans glowering at each but otherwise under a veil of relative silence. And despite the constant patrol of police pickup trucks with mounted tear gas mortars in the bed, everyone was just tense waiting for something to happen, waiting for provocation. Luckily nothing happened. But even once back in the city and making my way to the hostel I was surprised to find that I couldn't walk down certain streets because of police blockades.

It turns out police completely close off pedestrian and vehicle access to a full block radius from the hotel each team is staying at.

Even when I was stepping through the gate of the hostel I was reminded of what had transpired by the two police helicopters overhead. Really, the Superclásico experience only ended after closing the gate of the hostel behind me, but it is an experience I will assuredly not forget.

Onward Mendoza

2008-02-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

Onward to Mendoza, the Argentine gateway to the Andes! Mendoza is Argentina's fourth largest city per metropolitan population, and has a reputation for fine wine, an international nightlife, and as ground zero for Andean mountain climbing. As you might surmise, the latter of those qualities was drawing me westbound. But first, getting there.

Argentina's transportation system is centered around buses. For those of you who conjure up an image of a mechanically troubled Greyhound pulled over on some hinterland state highway, beleaguered passengers awaiting rescue, please give this form of transportation a carte blanche. Argentina and South America make buses work and they make buses work in style.

Scene: Terminal de Omnibus de Retíro, a sprawling, three story transportation complex that spews out a passenger- and freight-laden bus about every 120 buses an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to all corners of Argentina and South America. It is also the point of embarkation for my 14-hour journey to Mendoza.

I bought my ticket earlier in the week at a downtown ticket agency because, it being summer in the Southern Hemisphere and correspondingly peak travel season, buses sell out. And arriving at the terminal the suggested 30 minutes before my departure and witnessing the tremendous volume of passengers, I was instantly grateful for heeding Lonely Planet's advice and being liberated from wading through ticket-counter lines whose wait time often is more appropriately approximated in hours, not minutes.

Retíro has nearly 100 boarding platforms for buses and, unlike the system in airports, bus companies do not monopolize operations for individual boarding platforms. So for catching a bus, the most specific information a bus company can honestly offer to a customer is what gates their bus might arrive and depart from. For my Mendoza-bound bus, the magic platform was somewhere between platform 4 and 14. So I plopped my bags and myself down at platform 9 3/4 watching and waiting for an Andesmar bus sporting a Mendoza placard in the driver's window.

After 15 minutes, a massive, blue, two-story marvel of Mercedes-Benz engineering rumbled up to platform 8. It is initially difficult for me to comprehend the size and comfort of these buses, having been conditioned to define "bus" as puny and pathetic Greyhound coaches, but the buses of South America are different in every imaginable aspect, invariably for the better.

Stepping onboard I was greeted by the "bus attendant" (think flight attendant) and, after a longing glance at clase ejectivo on the first level, ascended the 747-esque spiral staircase to the second level and the cheapest class available on long-haul Argentine buses: clase semi-cama, translation: semi-bed.

Clase ejectivo, at least on Andesmar, defines South American luxury travel. An executive class ticket entitles a passenger to a full bed (complete with sheets), privacy curtain, flat-screen digital entertainment console, steaming hot meals, and complimentary wine, champagne, or soda all delivered by a smiling, bilingual attendant.

However, us peons in semi-bed class are forced to rough it out. As soon as our bus rolled away from the chaotic expanse of Retíro, out from the speakers comes, of all things, Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean." Dance party! Actually only the little kids were claiming the aisle as their own trans-Argentina discotheque, but based on the smiles and tapping toes of nearly everyone else on the bus, we were with them in spirit. And after a canon of legitimately classic dance tunes, ending with The Cardigans' "Lovefool," it was bingo time.

Bingo, however, merely served as a vehicle for our comedically gifted game host and bus attendant, Diego, to playfully poke fun of the handful passengers that were near him. By the time Diego, Diego's jokes, and the game were finished, three relatively jovial hours had already passed.

That's when the lights dimmed and the overhead TVs flickered for a showing of an Argentine movie. Meanwhile Diego handed out "dinners" that I'm sure represent the crowning achievement of South American food engineers. But really, the only bad thing about this bus ride was the food.

After a good seven hours of sleep in my reclining chair/semi-bed I opened my eyes to the outskirts of Mendoza. Phase two of my Argentine travels was about to begin.

Some Observations...

2008-01-30T13:23:00.000-08:00

...regarding transportation.

Buenos Aires is a unique city, probably most akin to New York City if a North American comparison were to be drawn. Private cars are rare because of the expensive price of parking and a city infrastructure that predates the hegemony of the automobile. Of the vehicles on the road, approximately 45 percent are taxis, 40 percent private vehicles (mostly sedans), and 15 percent buses, depending on the neighborhood. And of these three groups of vehicles a clear hierarchy exists, although vehicular Darwinism might be a more appropriate title; the only universally obeyed traffic law seems to be that you are responsible for getting out of the way of anything bigger than you.

It all makes for interesting traffic patterns. At every red light vehicles stratify like oil and vinegar: buses scoot up to the front of the queue, taxis and sedans shy to the side of the street and behind the buses, getting out of their way for when the light turns green. And when the light does turn green it reminds me of World War II-era infantry offensive stock footage, tanks leading the attack across the open field with the troops crouching for cover behind them. The bus drivers act as if they're driving tanks, too, or rather tanks with jet engine auxiliary power, as they barrel down streets at breakneck speeds leaving acoustic residue careening of the five-story canyon-esque walls of apartment buildings. The so-called "stops" often involve the driver slowing down to — if you're lucky — 5 mph/8 kph, and a haphazard bus-to-sidewalk evacuation, trying not to let inertia get the best of you upon landing.

But with questionable safety comes great efficiency, and for this reason buses are the lifeblood of the city. All routes run 24 hours a day and frequent headways render timetables a pedantic triviality.

The routes are incredibly lengthy as well. When I arrived at Ezeiza International Airport, 21 miles/35 kms outside of the city center, I paid a USD$0.40 fare for a circuitous two-hour ride to downtown, all on the same route, No. 86. (Besides being miserly, as shuttle services run for as little as 45 minutes/USD$7.50, it was also a great way to see the evolution of countryside, exurbs, suburbs, and city center. It is the most thorough, and certainly the cheapest, tour one can get of the city.)

Amongst all these four-wheeled monsters are a few intrepid souls who brave it out on two-wheeled (non-motorized) vehicles. Buenos Aires is not a bicycle-friendly city. Mostly for their own safety, cyclists are relegated to that foot-wide strip of concrete bound by the sidewalk curb on one side and asphalt (with its bandsaw of traffic) on the other. Sadly, "city oil," the turbid, greasy cocktail of liquids that seem to keep the cogs of urbanism turning — air conditioner rain, spilled drinks on the sidewalk, bypassers' saliva, motor oil, soap suds, and goodness knows what else — also accumulates in that same godforsaken strip of concrete. It's depressing to watch bikers try and wobble along.

For hierarchical purposes, you could technically place pedestrians on the bottom rung. If you want to jaywalk, no one will stop you, but conversely no one will stop for you either. For more traditional perambulation, the sidewalks are narrow and rickety, relics from a city of another size and era, and in no way reflect demand. If running errands downtown, waiting for rush hour to pass is often advisable.

Finally, Buenos Aires' subway, the first to be constructed in Latin America (Santiago, Säo Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Caracas have followed), offers a modal alternative. Boasting five lines with a sixth under construction, its primary function is to funnel commuters to the light rail stations which in turn shuttle passengers to the suburbs. As with sidewalks, these trains get packed during rush hours quite unlike anything I've ever seen. They make a sardine's tin abode look like a roomy country manor. It rigorously tests public transit's axiom of anonymity — never make eye contact, maintain unassuming posture, ignore anyone and anything — when Felipe's armpit is six inches from your face and Juanita and Enrique's toddler is in full embrace with your leg.

...regarding food.

A strong distrust of one's hands pervades cultural in South America (or more specifically, a distrust exists as to where your hands have been and what else has been where your hands have been). My friends ate their pizza with a fork and knife and avoid finger-to-food contact. French fries? A fork again. Hamburgers? A napkin.

That distrust extends to tap water as well. While many seem to trust their immune system to their hometown public water system, when traveling people are suspicious no matter how much locals protest their water to be safe. Some Brazilians I met gave me the nickname grifo for my propensity to drink agua de grifo, tap water, without hesitation. (I take porteños, and my brother, who lived here eight years ago, at their word when they say the water's safe and have yet to regret it.)

...regarding prices.

The reason I drink tap water is because it is far less expensive than the alternative. Argentina is a vastly cheaper country to travel in than the U.S., Canada, or Europe...for the most part. While a five-star hotel room runs for USD$50-60, an entire pizza for USD$5, a bed at a hostel for as little as USD$4-5, 2.2lbs./1 kilo of hamburger meat for USD$1, and a liter of milk for USD$0.80, some things are as or more expensive than back at home, including bottled water and soda, especially at restaurants. A petite 350 mL bottle of mineral water can cost as much as USD$2.50 in restaurants. After a curried such-and-such at a restaurant, your beverage tab can easily exceed that of your entrée! Even in grocery stores, prices for water and soda mirror that of the U.S.

Other items that match or exceed U.S. prices include batteries (although possibly explained by rechargeable batteries' popularity here), candy, ice cream, climbing gear, and classical or jazz genre albums.

...regarding guide books.

Guide books in part exist to offer price estimates for restaurants, hotels, hostels, and bars which you might patronize. Lonely Planet's Argentina fails miserably, serving up underquoted prices at an alarming rate with an even more alarming margin of error. The magnitude of discrepancy cannot be rationalized by inflation alone in the two years since my guide book was published. (I had a detailed discussion with an equally dismayed UC Berkeley economics major about the whacked out price estimates.) While Lonely Planet does a good job providing cultural information and describing relevant attractions, upon talking with other travelers it seems the Rough Guide series has become the new Lonely Planet of guide books. I subsequently bought a second-hand copy of the Rough Guide's Chile and look forward to evaluating its helpfulness when I visit.

...regarding alcohol.

Alcohol is ubiquitous. Quilmes, the de facto national beer, can be found at every corner store and kiosk. It seems questionable whether a liquor license is even necessary to sell. And in grocery stores, not only is there the requisite wine aisle, but there is wine everywhere else, abutting the meat section, next to the cereals, by the breads, etc.

Drinking age is 18, but, as in most countries outside of the U.S., the law is not vigorously enforced. In fact, it's not unusual to see a prepubescent-looking boy toting a liter of Quilmes out of a corner store.

Alcohol content is also fairly low, compared to Europe at least. Four to five percent beers are common (Quilmes is 4.9 percent) and hard liquor seems less popular.

...regarding tobacco.

I intend to outline a corollary to the fourth tenet of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Four Freedoms: Freedom from fear of tobacco smoke. Billions of blistering blue barnacles! The countless tumors that will have colonized my lungs will doubtlessly be getting ready to metastasize by the time I head back to Alaska! If alcohol is ubiquitous here then tobacco smoke is omnipresent.

The CDC estimates that 20 percent of Americans are smokers. In Argentina that figure is 40 percent (even 30 percent of physicians smoke) according to UC San Francisco. But numbers don't even begin to tell the entire story. In the U.S. and Canada, where smoking has begun to enter the realm of social taboo, people respectfully tend to smoke in more secluded spots. But in Argentina smokers don't think twice about lighting up anywhere.

I spare no sympathy for cigarette smokers. Fine by me if they choose to begin a habit that will cost a mind-boggling sum to sustain and ultimately hasten their death, just don't do it near me or any other innocent pair of lungs. As far as I'm concerned, "health coalitions," or whatever other euphemisms anti-smoking groups can cook up, should extend their smoking ban crusade to just about any frequently-trafficked public place, including outside the darn doors of airports.

...regarding currency.

I'm unsure what the theoretical exchange rate is, but if nose around enough you can usually get 3.15 Argentine pesos against the U.S. dollar.

One odd aspect of currency is that few banks and no casas de cambio will exchange money with an 18 year old. It seems to be against policy for whatever reason. With the few banks I have managed to exchange money, I'm not sure if it is because they have more lenient policy or my particular teller didn't bother to calculate my age from the date of birth on my passport, which is necessary for any money exchange. What I do know is that when I do find an institution (or fatigued employee) that will exchange, I convert all the US$ I have and take advantage of the opportunity.

Buenos Aires, tenemos un problema

2008-01-29T21:18:00.000-08:00

Repeat, we have a problem. A big problem. My wallet and camera have been stolen.

Here is an account of the fateful afternoon:
On a blisteringly hot day I was strolling down a park strip at the edge of the city center with the intention of visiting the national art museum. As I stopped to cross the rather large thoroughfare that encircles the downtown, middle-aged gentleman approached me and asked where the Retíro bus station is. Like the tourist I was I dutifully grabbed a readily accessible map from my shorts pocket and pointed him in the right direction. And then out of the sky came a brown, putrid blizzard: bird guano.

What luck. The would-be bus passenger, after a stanza of cussing, hair freshly fertilized with nitrogen, angrily wandered off in the direction of Retíro while a young couple walking down the promenade took me aside and, with the assistance of napkins and water, helped me clean off. I then bee-lined to the hostel and its showers. I smelled nauseatingly bad. My hair, my backpack, and my shirt all were contaminated and I wasted no time in dumping the contents of my backpack on to my bed (sticking the valuable items, including, as best I remember, my wallet and camera under the sheets and out of sight) and subsequently sprinted into the shower. Upon coming out of the shower, my wallet and camera were gone while everything else remained undisturbed on the bed.

That's it. No knives, no extortion, nothing exciting, just "gone." And by "gone," I mean ARG$150 (the equivalent of USD$45), my Hostelling International membership card, assorted other membership cards of no consequence, a copy of my birth certificate, my driver's license, a military ID, a student ID (which, although technically expired, still managed to secure me student rates at theatres), insurance information, a credit card, and a check card. Luckily, my ineptitude in safeguarding items did not extend to my passport, Argentine visa, immunization records, and the USD$120 which I had stashed in the hostel's lockers.

Regardless, I was incredulous. I immediately reported the missing items to the equally incredulous hostel owner. As word quickly spread through the hostel of a theft, it triggered an atmosphere of suspicion that could have come out of an Agatha Christie novel. Even though hostelers usually lock up their most valuable items, the concept of hosteling is based upon a premise of trust and a brand of traveler's fraternity. My report of theft shattered that. It was the hosteling equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theatre. And as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. so opined in the unanimous 1919 Supreme Court decision, one better have strong basis for inciting such paranoia. As it turned out I did not.

It had crossed my mind upon finding my items missing that, as I was not entirely positive I had for sure emptied my wallet and camera out of my backpack onto my bed, they may have been stolen or I may have lost them prior to returning to the hostel. But retracing my actions that day, no such scenario seemed plausible. I had made sure my backpack's zippers were secure so my camera and wallet, in a pocket inside another pocket inside my backpack, could not have possibly fallen out; there was no way the folks who helped de-guano my hair and shirt could have possibly lifted them without my noticing; and right before I had gotten pooped on I had taken a picture of a giant floral sculpture (pictured) and distinctly remember my wallet was securely tucked away. But after calling my parents to let them know what had happened and to have them cancel my credit card, my dad offered that the poop might not have actually been poop and that the friendly bystanders might not have actually been friendly bystanders.

I too had heard something similar to this: New York City con artists spraying hapless tourists with mustard and then, after helping the flustered visitors "clean" themselves, leaving them several pieces of jewelry, a wallet, or camera lighter. The more I thought about what had happened, and the more I talked to others about what had happened, the more I believed that while the "Paris of South America" may have plenty of European class and culture it was not immune to the crass cons that populate seemingly every city of world stature. The two days it took to fully realize that I was robbed not in the hostel but on the streets is — despite my best intentions — primarily a testament to my naïveté, but also to the depressingly impressive theatrical performance of the two (but most likely three) individuals that had me entirely fooled for two days. Here are the arguments that, after much belabored ratiocination, leave me 95 percent confident that I was heisted on the street:

1) Why would any hosteler want my camera? Most hostelers already have a camera and I dread to think of the pathetic retail value that my most-cell-phones-now-have-higher-photo-resolution excuse for photographic technology might bring. Not enough to be worth stealing, that's for sure.

2) Why would a local (I assume this based on skin color — he appeared indigenous) approach me and ask where the Retíro bus station is? I looked like a bona fide tourist: A shirt with English words on it, my blindingly white skin, blond hair, honkin' backpack, and body language that was screaming ignorance. Plus, there were tons of other non-ignoramuses walking around. Why not them? Because, of course, this "would-be bus passenger" wasn't. He was the distraction so as to make me unaware of my surroundings and not see two rapscallions spray me with a mysterious, but thoroughly vile smelling, substance.

3) The "bird poop" didn't really seem like bird poop. I'm afraid I'm somewhat of an expert on this subject, having had the dubious distinction of being dive bombed by my avian friends before. I have rarely seen bird poop that was as homogeneous as the mystery brown substance that I got covered in. And, since I was occupied pointing out the location of Retíro to the "would-be bus passenger," not even my peripheral vision could steal a glance at the sky which made the bird poop caper all the more believable.

4) Once the "friendly bystanders" got around to "cleaning" me, the woman immediately immersed me in a fast-paced Spanish conversation that required my full concentration to linguistically limp through. Enough concentration that the male side of the hornswaggling tag team would have easily been able to peruse my backpack without attracting my attention. "Where are you from?"; "Ohhhh...blue eyes!"; and "Why don't you take off your shirt so we can clean it better" are some choice excerpts (no exaggeration). It was so bizarre I had to confirm what she was saying and thus my general Spanish insecurity led to a less assertive than normal persona for those five minutes (and thinking you have feces on your face, arms, shirt, and hair doesn't engender tremendous self-assurance or poise either). Consequently, I was also much less assertive about my personal space and personal objects as well.

5) This is the most damning of them all. A few days after the fact, a Chilean fishing guide asked me what time it was at a downtown intersection and we struck up a conversation and eventually sat down for coffee in a nearby café. After describing the circumstances of the incident he confirmed my suspicions with two words of perfect English: "Fucking Peruvians." Apparently this was a pretty common occurrence in Buenos Aires — mostly for tourists, but, apparently, for porteños too — and, fairly or unfairly, the onus was getting placed on Peruvian immigrants.

Finally, you might ask, "But Jonathan, why did you keep your wallet and/or camera in your backpack?" This is a good question.

The reason is, wearing shorts that day, I didn't trust my shorts' pockets to hold such important contents. Back in Sitka, I had lost my wallet by it simply falling out of my pocket of the same pair of shorts while walking down the street. (Fortunately, a beneficent citizen turned it in.) I wanted to ensure such an event would not repeat itself. I also had a money belt-type thing (it's not a belt, it goes around the neck, I just don't know the word for it!), but left it back at the hostel. Why wasn't I using that for my money and leaving my wallet at the hostel? That is also a good question, however, one without an answer.

At the time I was harboring an illogical and naïve assortment of suspicions regarding the money belt (e.g., it would be obvious I'm wearing one since it sticks out underneath my shirt and if someone tries to steal it will pull on my neck and possibly injure me) and elected to use it only when carrying something truly important, my passport. Sadly, as hindsight confirmed, this was a misguided policy and I now use my money belt when carrying any domination greater than ARG$20. Lesson learned.

Postscript: Five days after the robbery I paid the tourism police a visit to report the robbery. I had two motivations: First, in case the wallet had turned up sans credit card and cash, I still wanted it back. And second, in case the police were pursuing a case against similar petty pickpockets and required corroborating accounts (I admit, this is a stretch). When I came in, they set aside just enough time away from their telenovela to listen to my story, laugh, and inform me it would cost ARG$10 to make a such a report. I left.