Wow...I have not had nearly enough time to catch you all up on the trip thus far. Last time you caught up with me, I was sitting in an internet cafe in rainy Coyhaique. Quite a bit has happened since then, so I´ll try to fill you in on all the highlights.
Coyhaique to Entrada Baker
The bus trip from Coyhaique to the park didn´t look too far on the map, but the whole trip followed the Carretera Austral--a tiny little highway running through Patagonia. I use the term highway pretty loosely, because about an hour into the trip, the pavement disappeared and the road got sketchy. Think narrow dirt road twisting and turning through the mountains, often with precipitous drop offs on one side or the other. It took us 7 hours to arrive.The Park
The bus dropped us off at a road junction in the absolute middle of nowhere. When you don´t speak Spanish and haven´t ever been to a place before, this can be a little disconcerting. Particularly when the nearest town is at least 18km away. Thankfully, shortly after we arrived someone from the park came to pick us up. On the ride in, we saw our first herd of guanacos and a baby skunk waddling alongside the road. He was pretty adorable, and probably smelled better than I do now.
Work
You can barely make out our camp in this picture.
Shortly after arriving, the park staff drove us further into the middle of nowhere to our first work camp. It was a quick turnaround, and I wish I had had more time to relax and decompress after arriving. The lack of decompression time was made up for by the fact that, as soon as we arrived at camp, the staff put on the first of what I hope will be many asados. For those of you that don´t know, an asado is a traditional Patagonia BBQ. In short, they build a big, smokey fire, and skewer a whole lamb carcass in front of it. The lamb slow cooks over several hours, and the result is absolutely DELICIOUS. You can see a picture on facebook.
Our camp was a grassy clearing in the middle of an open hardwood forest with an outhouse, the smokehouse, and a roughly 10´x30´shack, furnished with a cast iron stove. We carried water from the stream a few hundred yards away and cooked all of our food over the wood-fired stove. In short, it was Life, Little House on the Prairie style.
Work each day consisted of taking down and rolling up miles of fences. Taking them down isn´t the hard part; it´s rolling them up that kills you. Try rolling something, made out of heavy wire that doesn´t want to be rolled, over difficult terrain. I am going to have massive forearms by the end of this.
Highlights
First of all, it´s amazing to be in a place that is so far removed from humanity that you can´t hear cars or even airplanes. I struggled with the fact that I was in Patagonia at times, just because there were so few indicators to clue me in to that fact. The forest we were in looked remarkably like the northeast, the folks we were working with were mainly english speakers, and Mack was there (and Jon is here now). But then Mack and I went on an awesome day-long hike, and it became pretty clear that we were in Patagonia.
Other highlights: they have parrots here! Crazy green parrots that flew around our camp every morning, and foxes, skunks, and guanacos. And apparently that only scratches the surface of the area´s fauna. The group of 4 others that I worked with for the past week have been fantastic, and the food (albeit cooked over a cast iron stove) has been delicious.
Life is pretty darn good. I´m trying to figure out how to share the photos that I´ve posted on facebook--hopefully those will be up soon.
And thanks for leaving comments! It´s really great to hear from you all.
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