time to return!!!!

Wow! A year has passed since the last entry in this blog, since I left Argentina and returned to Columbia. What a year it has been! Lots of working, finishing school, growing gardens, starting friendships, and now enjoying the harvest and saying goodbye. Tommorrow afternoon I climb aboard a flight and wake up in Santiago, Chile where I will have lots of fun carrying my stuff from the airport to a shuttle to the bus terminal on the other side of the enormous city. Then it's time to cross the Andes and return to Mendoza, to my beloved Carito and 100 degree desert heat. Today I said goodbyes and walked the streets of Columbia in the freezing cold already feeling like I was an outsider visiting old haunts, a feeling I'll have to get used to.

Anyway, I will be updating soon when the action begins again- stay tuned lovelies!!!

en la patagonia!!!!

Hello all!!
Much has transpired since my last entry. I´ve spent my first week working at the farm in Epuyen, been up many mountains, down many rivers. The work is good; lots of gardening, odd jobs, building, etc. It is a very relaxed place. The owner Gabriel is very quiet and a little distant, but his wife and son and lovely, and my three mates on the farm (mom and daughter from New York, and Noemie from Quebec) are great. We´re in a valley surrounded by mountains and pine forest. It´s much prettier even than this little picture I send you. Anyway, much to say, but I´d rather tell you all later in person than sit in front of a computer now, so be well and be seeing you in two short weeks!

desde Córdoba!!

I´m writing from my hostel in downtown Córdoba. Have a little time to kill so I figured I might as well write.
So, what a day yesterday! Woke up at 4:30 am to catch my bus from Mendoza to here. Spent a seemingly endless ride in and out of sleep, arrive here at 5:30 and immediately rushed from the terminal dowtown to the place where tickets for Manu Chao were supposedly sold. I get there and despite the fact that I called the day before and specifically asked if there would be tickets if I came by at 6 pm, they were sold out. Ok, no panicking, I still have a chance if I haul ass 20 blocks down to the stadium itself. I rush there full of nerves, arrive, and thankfully they´ve just brought the last batch of tickets. Now I rush back downtown to find a bed to crash in later, eat a bit, do a 180, and join the parade of hippies and punks and anarquist and rastas marching across the bridge to the show.
What a show!! It was completely absurd. Thousands of people packed in losing their minds. The opening act was a huge drum troupe dressed up for carnaval, who played and danced themes against police violence. Then on came Radio Bemba Sound System and Manu front and center. By the second song my clothes were completely soaked through with sweat, mostly not mine. For most of the show I was right up front and center, 3 meters from the stage, and that meant being smashed up against everyone around me, lifting crowd surfers over my head, planting myself against the waves of people pushing back and forth and writhing up and down every time a ska beat came around. It was raging fun. My only complaint is that it was hard to breath with so much humidity and smoke, and dehydration was endemic. I was fortunate to be generally bigger than the average argentine, so I could hold my ground and not get smashed, and still be able to see the stage and jump up for some fresh air now and then.
They played 3 hours straight, weaving all the themes into each other, and pausing only toward the end (during one of 3 encores) to let anti-mining activists talk to the audience. It was amazing- I´ve never been to a concert where the artist let activists talk right in the middle of the show, but then Manu Chao is just down like that (background: in the south of Mendoza, new gold deposits have been discovered, but extracting them would threaten to contaminate a huge portion of the regio`n´s drinking water, thus the slogan of the resistence is ¨Sí a la vida, no a la minería!¨).
So anyway, after waking up and eating a hearty breakfast at 2 pm, to day was spent wandering around this pleasant, if balmy city. Saw lots of huge cathedrals, art museums, parks, talk to a lot of interesting people here and there. Climbed up a huge cypress tree on a hill above the zoo and watched a great sunset. Now I´m waiting for my aunt`s friend who lives here to come by so we can visit, and then hopefully I can get some sleep before my bus back to Mendoza bright and early tomorrow.

despedidas y renacimiento

Hello all!
What a whirlwind month November has been! Many things to tell, little time. Last week was the end of classes at UN Cuyo. The weekend before I did my first fruit fast to help me concentrate on the 300 page book I had to read about political violence and ethnicity in andean countries. I just drank orange juice the whole day. It had mixed results concentration-wise, but it was definitely cleansing. So then I turned in my huge final report and now I just have an oral exam next week for my prehispanic culture class and my final for folclore dance. We´ve really stepped it up in the latter class, and we´re working toward completing a Malambo, which is basically a long improvised series of zapateo (see these links for examples that will raise your expectations entirely too much: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl5VQb3FOG0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvlVO9Tmy30&feature=related)
But, yeah, things are really winding down here. I have a little over a week left in Mendoza; next Saturday morning I leave early for Patagonia, land of mountains, lakes, and forests, and the farm I´ll be on until a little before Christmas. It´s getting time for many goodbyes. Monday and Tuesday I spent on the farm in Tunuyan for the last time. The last day we got up really early in the morning to go out into the desert and collect medicinal herbs. It´s amazing how many types of little trees and flowering shrubs are out in a landscape that seems barren from the highway. Later in the day we reinforced a tower we built and figured out how to lift three giant drums of water up onto it for a gravity-powered drip irrigation system. That night Azucena made mulberry pie, which was amazing, and then I said goodbye to everyone and rushed to barely catch the last bus back to town and rode back in a daze.
Last weekend our program went on a trip to San Rafael, a region a few hours south of here with canyons and rivers, along which the only vegetation grows. We went to a huge man-made lake with super green water and swam and slid down huge sandy cliffs on our butts. Our argentine guide taught us to play truco, an argentine card game similar to pocker, but much more complicated deceitful and fun. A few of us got pretty addicted. The last day we found a cave near our cabin and played truco in there and felt very guachesco.
Goodness gracious, now I rushing to spend time with friends in the little time that´s left. Tomorrow I´m off to Cordoba because MANU CHAO is playing in estadio juniors, which will be a completely insane show (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0Vqd4rGcjg&feature=related). Trying to check things off my lists of things to do before I leave Mendoza, but a lot of things just necessarily fall by the wayside. It´s frustrating because there´s a lot of great things going on that I´ve just discovered in the last few weeks. Like, I ran across a community center in my neighborhood of african music where they have drum circles and dance lessons and the people are really great and chill. Still, I must say I´ll be very ready to leave Mendoza when the time comes. I need to get the hell out into the countryside, work, hike, get more sleep, and listen to more silence.
So this may well be my last post from Mendoza, if not from Argentina. Hope it finds everyone well, and before you know it I´ll be headed back to the northern hemisphere.

desde Valparaíso!

My, what a bustling last couple of weeks. What can I tell you? I´m writing from Hostal Polaco in downtown Valparaíso, where I been since Friday and will be leaving very early tomorrow morning, sadly. I just finished putting avocado on my poor sunburned nose and cheeks and ate a dinner of bread, many avocados (abundant and delicious here) and Chirimoya, one of the many fruits that exists only in the alternate universe of agriculture that is Chile. Chirmoya has grayish green skin with lumps like an artichoke, and full of delicious white flesh that is best described as tasting like mango and coconut combined. So delicious! Obviously. The hostel has been full of other travelers: frenchies, austrians, aussies, kiwis, all good folk.

Yesterday I met up with friends from the farm in Tunuyan who are en route to another farm in south Chile and we explored the city. And, what a place! Very much like San Francisco, but smaller and more working class. It´s basically an industrial port giving way to steep hills covered with pastel houses and churches and cable cars (just for touist use nowadays) and big globs of mist rolling in from the sea. The neighborhood I´m in is downtown and just soo artsy, yet somehow not that pretentious. There are murals lining every street- fantastic murals! Really strong colors and from all different artists, some trippy (bears in a mushroom castle), some channeling indigenous mapuche designs, many political- one showed a skeleton in a helmet with a US flag scything a field of flowers (subtle, eh?)and bore the message "They can cut down all the flowers, but they can`t steop spring from coming." On the street climbing up the the hostel- and I mean climbing, we´re talking a 60 degree angle- you pass Biblioteca Popular (People´s Library) Salvador Allende, where a guy in a red beret lets people hang out, read his lefty books and play instruments. He explained to me that Hugo Chavez has been key in his financing of most of the other left wing folks elected down here is the past few years, from Evo to Correa to Lugo. Needless to say, if I had to live in a city, Valpo would make the A list.

Then this morning I took a bus an half hour south to Quintay, a little beach town in the middle of a huge rolling landscape of hills and pine forest. Jesus, what a place. I spent the day hopping from rock to rock along the jagged coastline and watching the waves come and crash against the rocks and mist float up into the hills. I was still in a trance on bus back, blaring cumbia and all. Tomorrow it´s back through the mountains to my little corner of Mendoza, and to study my arse off for the two big exams this coming week. But then, besides finals, classes are basically over. But I had to come back to Chile one more time while I could.

What else is new? I don´t rightly remember. Last week was bustling; lots of asados (cook out), merriment, and intense classes. A highlight was last Saturday when we got back to Mendoza and walked into a Celtic music fest in progress. There was an Irish band from Buenos Irish Aires with an uillean piper! Unbelievable. Then the best part was we were dancing off to the side and a woman from one of the groups asked us if we could come and dance up in front of the stage to try and get people engaged, so up we went and did our best to step dance in front of thousands of people in the plaza. It was amazing, and I must say, having had some instruction in zapateo, I can apply a lot of my moves to step dancing. Needless to say, we stole the show, or at least borrowed it for a minute. After one set we were completely exhausted, and coughing from the smog from all the buses that pass the plaza, but well worth it.
Well, as always, much more to tell, but I must awaken painfully early toworrow, and my brain is pretty cloudy anyway. Last week already seems like a long time ago. So, wish me bon voyage and sweet dreams.

It´s evening and I´m sitting in a locutorio writing this post and periodically leaning back in my chair to check out the sunset through the window. It´s an intense blend or orange and pink against the chalky blue lumps of mountain. I´m feeling pretty mangy because I had to get up at 6:45 to catch a ride with Azucena back to the city from the farm. That means not much sleep because I was up late tending the fire in outside the cabin while the others baked the round of bread for the week. My rewards for this violence to my body (lack of sleep): watching the sun rise over the desert, not paying bus fair, and being at the market to buy organic apples and carrots (rare specimens down here). The carrots are stubby, thumb sized, and reddish orange and have a fantastic sweet woody taste.
The last couple of weeks have treated me well. Besides farm life on weekends, I´ve caught some great reggae shows (said genre is BIG down here; I´ve seen more dreads here in the last months than I´ve seen in my whole life in the Midwest), discovered a pretty good micro-brew, read piles of extremely interesting, if exhausting works about Incan society and agriculture, about Mexican and Peruvian socialist leaders, and other good stuff. And I´m halfway through the Humanure Handbook- which is fantAstic! An American ex-pat who lives on a neighboring farm in Tunuyan loaned me the book, and she has a whole compost system set up based on it. Wow, I can´t believe I´ve been pooping in drinking water and filling landfills my whole life while I could have been creating rich soil. Well, always room for self improvement.
I´ve really gone overboard dipping my toes in different books at once. Here´s a list of books I´m in various stages of starting and completing:
1. Humanure Handbook
2. writings of Subcomandante Marcos
3. The Cosmic Race- by Jose Vasconcelos
4. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather
5. Harvest of Empire- by Juan Gonzalez
Am I forgetting something? Pretty absurd, but better to have fingers in too many pies than to have already eaten all of them, right?
Well, many other things worth telling, but for now I think I´ll leave you with a typical day on the farm in Tunuyan, a Friday, let´s say . . .
I wake up gradually to the sound of the other volunteers creaking on the wood floor and clinking dishes in the kitchen. I lift the pile of cats off my sleeping bag, and eat a breakfast of bread, dulce de batata (sweet potato jam), tea, and a some oats if we´re lucky. We head out and starting the mornings projects like repairing fences for the hens or horses, collecting firewood, mud building, or hoeing and prepating beds in the garden. The air is dry and brisk, but things heat up quickly once the sun is high. The mountains across the way are the same chalky blue as the sky, with white caps. We work and hum and talk until midday. Then we gather tools and head back to the cabin, where Jorge conducts the daily yoga session on the grass outside. We stretch and do breathing excercises following his slow, treebeard-voiced instructions. Then we´re called to lunch by the smell of lunch boiling in a pot across the way- usually some blend of lentils or chick peas with squash and various greens from the garden. We eat and slowly descend into the after-lunch coma and spend the next hour inside away from the hot midday sun talking or reading. Nacho appears at various points, asking for help with a new project like his ¨house¨or repairing his ¨car.¨Eventually, we head back out to work, if we´re lucky, there´s work to do in the shade of the woods where they´re constructing new cabins for a planned retreat for artists, with the financial support of Marcos, an LA native and former NASA employee with an anger problem who was so fed up with US politics the last 10 years that he abandoned the country. He sleeps in one of the cabins and takes care of feeding the herd of the resident abandoned dogs that are always in train when he comes by. We work the rest of the afternoon. On really hot days (read, always from now on) we strip down and dive into the icey water of the irrigation ditch. It comes straight down from the mountains, and you can only stay in, gasping and shreiking, for about 20 seconds at a time, but man you aren´t hot for the rest of the day afterwards. As the day get on, we start to watch the spectacle that is the sunset over the mountains. Especially if there are some whisps of clouds, it is pretty amazing. Basically, it looks like a volcanic explosion over the line of peaks until it finally fades, and we gather tools and head back to the cabin. There, we put on the radio and a kettle and help make dinner, which is usually similar to lunch, but often Azucena makes pizza or noodles. We stuff ourselves again, wash dishes, play music (the banjo is now resident at the farm), maybe make a bonfire, maybe read and write in our journals, play with cats, make a fire for hot water to shower (only one Fridays), and eventually climb back into sleeping bags and sleep like logs.

So there you have it. Country life is good, city life aint bad either. And the weeks sure fly by. Tomorrow we´re going to a huge open air market that the bolivian immigrants put on- the only place to find piles of used stuff, anything from old instruments to clothes and tools. Then there´s a monthly folklore dance fest in a plaza east of my neighborhood and Evan and I are going to get some experience and brush up on our steps.
I´ve got two weeks of class until my second midterm, and then school is more or less over, and we wait for finals in late November. I´m off to Chile in two weeks to spend time with the ocean once more before I leave. Stay tuned for further adventures, and if you can, start pooping in a bucket. Sawdust is the key.

It´s the absurd little details about Argentina that make this country so poetic. Walking back from the bike repair shop, I´m passed by a dump truck with dozens of people (looks like a couple families with kids, moms, teens, elderly people) seated on the rim of the bed. On the other side of the street a father holds up his young daughter without pants so she can pee in the sand by the sidewalk. I cross the old railroad tracks that divide my neighborhood from another section of the city. They were abandoned during Neo-Liberal reforms in the 90´s that determined that trains were no longer profitable enough, and now they form a belt of desert and rusting steel cars with grafitti in the middle of upscale neighborhoods; a welcome open space that serves as a de facto park during the day and a mugger´s paradise during the night.
It´s getting dark now, and my lack of sleep is catching up to me. Had to get up at sunrise on the farm to catcha ride back to Mendoza with Azucena in their noble jalopy loaded down with shelves and tables and baked goods for the Bioferia (farmer´s market). The poor engine was convulsing by the time we got into town, but we gave it words of comfort and gentle pats. The night before was break baking night, and I set outside the cabin and tended the fire in the mud oven while the others kneaded huge wads of dough into various forms. In the end there were bearclaws, baguettes, loaves with onion and rosemary, dried figs. Yesterday day we collected old scraps of trellises for firewood and prepared beds for tomatoes. It was hot enough in the midday sun that me and Federico took a dip in the icey water of the irrigation ditches. You just submerge yourself a few seconds, emerge squealing, then climb out feeling great and wanting to do it again. Jorge has been having more energy lately, and that means yoga classes every day after lunch. More wwoofers are starting to show up. Right now, there´s a girl from Connecticut, one from France, and one from New York. Two girls from Seattle were also there, but they were a little too Yanqui, and decided to leave after a week.
Speaking of Yanquiness, I caved to the urge and bought a poncho last week. Besides the obvious dashigness it imparts on me (think Clint Eastwood in Fistful of Dollars), it´s very comfortable for farmwork. I hoed a bed in just poncho and boxers (enjoy the double meaning).
Oh, and my poor bicycle, Rocia. The tires had a pretty worn tread when I bought them, but last Thursday they went entirely flat on me when I was deep in the south of town doing volenteer work, and I had to ride them flat way the hell back to the university and they´re pretty well shot, along with some other little pieces coming apart. Oh well, she´s in the shop until monday, and hopefully she´ll be healthy by then.
So the interesting thing about living near the mountains is that you can see a different climate in the distance- that is, it can be baking hot in the streets up Mendoza and you glance off into the distance where there´s two feet of snow. This can be tricky at times. Observe last Sunday: I was needig a day in the mountains, so I got up to catch the 8 am bus to Salto. It was chilly and spitting a little rain outside, but I bundled up. No problem. On the bus, half an hour later as we head west I realize that it has begun to snow. First a few flakes. Then more. Then so thick I can´t see the mountains through the white haze that has enclosed the highway. I arrive at my destination and climb off the bus. Snow up to may ancles and despite being in the mountains, I can´t see the peaks. The only return bus arrives at 7 pm, and I´m already shivering and soggy. Ok, so I stop into a roadside restaurant, pay too much for a bown of thin soup, and relish the woodstove before bundling up and heading for the path that leads up into the Sierra.
The rest of the day treated me pretty well. My body kicked into to high gear for heat production and I found a dry crevice under an outcrop of rock to eat lunch. It was amazing to peel an tangerine- an explosive orange against a landscape of solid white. By late afternoon I had gotten way up high using vegetation to shimmy up the mountainside, and the sky cleared enough to have a fanstastic view of the valley and other peaks. But, not being very smart, I did what I always do: kept climbing higher and higher saying, ¨Oh, I´ve got plenty of time.¨Along comes 6 o clock and I realize I´ve really got to turn back. But going down it much harder. Basically, it comes down to me having to pick my way clinging to thorny vegetation, slipping and landing on my tailbone innumerable times, and just sometimes just sliding down on my butt to go faster. Somehow I got back to the stop in time and sat dumbfounded feeling circulation return to my face and extremities and making a huge puddle all over the aisle. What a great day.