(As always, click on the pics for larger images, and click on the links for the full photo galleries.)

On February 22, we sailed from Port Lockroy through the positively stunning, picturesque Lemaire Channel and eventually onto the Vernardsky Research station for a tour of their facility (the same facility that was used to discover the ozone hole) and shots of vodka (and a quick scramble up their homemade rock climbing wall) with the base staff.

I saw nine leopard seals that day.

For those of you who have never seen a leopard seal, they are, aside from the killer whales that inhabit those cold waters, the top predator in the Antarctic. Imagine a huge, six hundred kilo seal, at least twelve feet long, with a long serpentine body and broad shoulders, a massive head and a huge, HUGE mouth full of teeth. His hide perfectly camouflaged for the dark, arctic waters. A seal with an enigmatic smile, simultaneously endearing and terrifying, who moves like a snake. Looks like a snake. Swims like a snake.

Now imagine you are in an inflatable boat just inches from one of these predators, curious, intelligent predators, a predator who just happens, in the dark evening light, to be swimming with stunning grace and speed under and around your boat, popping up from side to side to side just to check you out.

A predator, who, if so inclined, could easily leap onto said boat, take your whole head in his jaws, and carry you off into the water.

They are really, really cool.

They lounge around on the hundreds, maybe thousands of flat icebergs in the area, napping in the sunshine and saving those important calories before making a meal of another unlucky penguin.

The leopard seals were without a doubt, the most amazing animal I saw on my trip. More than the playful fur seals and the endearing weddell seals. More than the penguins and skuas and albatross. More than even the minke whales, the sei whales, and even the killer whales I saw off in the distance. But admittedly, I only saw the Killer Whales from an extreme distance.

Well. They WERE the most amazing animals I saw on my trip. They were until our zodiac cruise off the coast of Peterman Island the following day, our final day or touring the Antarctic. The day we motored around, looking at more immaculate icebergs with colors stolen from Caribbean, and more sinister yet elegant leopards, and the charming, mustached fur seal who barked at us from his icy post and then dove into the water and followed us around for fifteen minutes, darting playfully around our boat.

The leopard seals were the most amazing animals I saw until we heard a whale blow nearby on that calm, cloudy afternoon and motored out to what we expected would be another group of minkes.

What we found were two humpbacks. Two humpback whales, floating effortlessly on the surface, their crusted dorsal fins occasionally protruding from the water, their black, scarred backs creating black, rubbery islands among the white ice around them.

We killed the engine and floated up to them, listening to their massive lungs push incredible amounts of air from their blowholes. We were ecstatic, barely able to control our own lungs that went from stealing our breath to making us hyperventilate in excitement. We were twenty feet from two humpback whales, maybe fifty-feet long, their huge white flukes clearly visible under the water.

They floated undisturbed next to us, and I swear it was all I could do to keep from jumping up and down in the boat.

While we were busy snapping pictures and forcing ourselves to put down the cameras in order to absorb every bit of the moment (a whale is not nearly as large through a tiny digital window), our friend the fur seal was busy leaping and spiraling back and forth around our bow, turning onto his back and looking up at us, seemingly desperate for the attention now almost exclusively turned to the two quiet giants before us.

Suddenly the whales turned, raised their massive backs to dive, and disappeared into the dark water. It is at this moment when the size of the whale is truly apparent. This was no minke. This was a huge animal whose exposed back alone seemed larger than even the biggest elephant I saw in Africa. Hell, they were probably close to fifty tons each.

Ten minutes later they surfaced again next to us, spent another five minutes captivating us with their overwhelming presence, and then again, disappeared into the water of the Penola Strait.

I swear I almost dove in after them.

It was our last day in the Antarctic. Our last landing. Our last cruise. And our finest. It was, without any doubt, one of the most captivating, emotional, and, simply, most overwhelming moments of my life.

At that point, all the rocky, miserable hours of nausea and frustration in the Bransfield Strait and Drake Passage, the expense, the cold, my discarded career, everything, everything became a worthwhile endurance for just those few minutes in the Penola with two humpback whales.

I was in calm waters, in an impossible place of impossible beauty, and I saw an impossible life. Majestic. Alive. Breathing. Breathing in deep, calm, icy water.

(With luck I’ll have this MPEG from Suresh’s video camera in a few days. Don’t think for a minute I’m letting him off the hook on this one.)

Posted by themightyjimbo at 05:43 AM | Permalink

(Again, click on the links for the pics. I was a little camera happy in the Great White South.)

February 21, 2005. An amazing day. Incredible. Stupendous. Near miraculous.

Perfect.

Under blue skies, in a snowy harbor filled with tiny icebergs in clear, blue water, surrounded by crashing glaciers and brilliant, white peaks, I saw a beautiful gentoo penguin walk over to me, bend over, and shit loudly and violently onto another penguin’s head. The offended penguin that until that moment had been napping peacefully, jumped up, shook its sullied noggin and looked around confused as to just how and why he was suddenly covered in penguin crap.

Lord, It was beautiful.

On a side note, I watched the sun rise yellow over the snow-covered peaks surrounding us that morning, and watched as bright blue icebergs bobbed in the gray water. I rode out in the zodiac on a cold and snowy morning to see the incredible morning light play off a icy beach of Cuverville Island filled with flocks of cackling gentoo penguins and still more barking fur seals. As the wind died down, I motored through spectacularly sculpted icebergs underneath dramatic gray skies while a leopard seal slipped serpentine through the blue-green waters, skulking around the boat from berg to berg to berg. I saw an immaculately textured iceberg, ribbed and etched through generations, with four towers reaching thirty, forty feet overhead, and a protected, icy blue lagoon of melted water at it’s center. I hiked to the top of a snow-covered hillside and watched glaciers calving into crystal clear water while penguins and seals slept in the warm summer sunshine. I saw five rare beak-nose whales surface in the harbor and heard them breathe while I sat atop a snowy mountaintop in the bright, warm afternoon sunshine of a near windless day. I watched a positively giant, fifteen-foot leopard seal nap in the sun on a floating iceberg in Neko Harbor , occasionally glancing over at our zodiac with his frightening, Cheshire cat smile. I had a barbeque in a glassy harbor mirroring the surrounding mountains, it’s cold, calm water filled with tiny icebergs, while seals and penguins porpoised through the blue water around us. I sat in a zodiac while a curious, thirty-foot minke whale followed us around a harbor, popping up all around us for thirty minutes, including spyhopping up to check us out just six feet away from our bow. I watched the sun set from our observation deck painting all the mountains around us in pastel. I took more than five hundred photos today and fell into a rare, comfortable sleep while we remained anchored in calm water in the aptly named Paradise Harbor . It was, by any standard, a perfect Antarctic day.

Perfect.

But goddamn it, if I didn’t see a penguin shit on another penguin’s head.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 07:24 AM | Permalink

(Click on the links for the photo galleries)

On Feb 19, 2005, I stepped off the boat and stepped onto Antarctica. We landed at Brown Bluff on the very tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, a volcanic cliff side beach with waves crackling over a shoreline of smooth, black rocks and noisy with the thousands of gentoo and adelei penguins running around.

Well, not running. Waddling. Wandering. Hopping. Stumbling. But certainly not running.

I touched Antarctica. It was a cold and blustery morning, and we were all glad we sprung the extra few dollars for the Gore-Tex as the near frozen ocean spray stung our faces and splattered against our parkas when we motored our zodiacs over the bumpy, black surface of the water.

We landed amongst a family (Group? Pod? Herd?) of barking fur seals who would growl menacingly if you walked too close and disturbed their morning nap. The fur seals reminded me a lot of neighborhood dogs. They just wanted to make sure you knew exactly whose beach this was. And then after announcing their supposed authority would go back to scratching themselves with a flipper, chasing penguins, swimming around incoming zodiacs or just snoozing on the shore.

The beach was decorated with both the decaying remains icebergs glistening in the morning sun, and the decaying remains of countless penguin corpses, certainly not glistening at all. Seems many chicks just don’t make it very long what with the cold and the severity of the land and the brown skuas and leopard seals everywhere.

There is no sense of tragedy in this. The beaches are teeming with the tuxedo crowd, and from what I can tell, they are the primary food source for more than a few species. Really, the chickens of their sea.

Anyhow, I touched Antarctica.

After ten years or so of saying I was going to make it to the seventh continent, I finally found myself there. Wet. Cold. And a bit dumbfounded by the whole experience.

I would like to say that touching Antarctica made me grow as a person or inspired some new feeling of enlightenment, but the most profound realization I had upon finally touching ground was this: penguins smell bad.

Like really, really bad.

I wish I had some way to describe just how bad, but on a good day when the wind is blowing just so, you can smell a penguin rookery miles away. It’s like bird shit and regurgitated fish and the smell of the ocean all rolled into one. And yet despite the noxious environment, I also have to admit, they really are endearing little bastards. They exhibit almost no fear of man and unless you walk too fast or too close they spend a lot of their time just checking you out. They waddle around and squawk and cackle and chase each other around the beaches, stumbling all over themselves. They manage to hop and scramble and climb up onto some seemingly impossible perches, and if you are patient and quiet and lucky and happen to sit down in the right spot at the right time, a few curious gentoo chicks will frequently waddle on up to you to peck at your shoes or climb onto your lap or nestle down under an arm or on your legs.

While I was leaving Brown Bluff a gentoo chick hustled on up directly to me, stood underneath me, maybe ten inches from my toes and just looked up at me curiously.

I swear it almost made me want to take the puffball home.

At least until I remembered all the foot-long streaks of green and red that painted near every square foot of the beach.

Let’s just say a penguin isn’t too discriminatory in just where and how it relieves itself, and from what I have observed, they do it both frequently and with impressive force.

And I don’t need to go further into the olfactory results of said business.

All this is made worse by how adorable they are and how badly you want to get photographs of them. And subsequently you will do something that at first seems logical. Like kneeling or sitting or laying down to get closer for the prize National Geopgraphic photograph. What you don’t realize at the time is that any part of you that touches any part of a penguin rookery is destined to smell exactly like a penguin. Maybe forever. In my bag right now I have near a thousand dollars worth of Gore-Tex paraphernalia that I am seriously considering incinerating if only for the common good. I have already washed much of it in Woolite and warm water and am wondering if perhaps kerosene might be a better alternative.

Worst yet is that underneath my brand new, Gore-Tex, Marmot ski gloves, the wonderfully warm and comfy and dry and probably very expensive gloves my sister bought me at Christmas, I wore my new polypro glove liners. And when taking photos I would remove said warm and dry and comfy ski gloves so I could manipulate my camera with ease. Of course, I would also get down on the ground, put my hands protected with the glove liners in the snow or in the dirt and later, would put them, stinky from rotting penguin goo, back into the new gloves. So now, despite the relatively successful washings that have removed most of the odor from the outer shell, every time I stuff my mitts into the warm fleece liner, they come out smelling like penguin guts.

Trust me. You never want to wipe a cold, runny nose with a hand that has been around penguin poo.

From Brown Bluff we sailed off across the Antarctic Sound on a bright and reasonably warm afternoon through the Antarctic Sound, through the iceberg alley, and past hundreds of floating, tabular islands, many larger than you average, suburban subdivision. We landed again on Paulet Island for another round of penguin molestation, harassment from the fur seals, and the ambivalence of the portly Weddell seals. Really. As adorable as they are, they have the general shape and mobility of your average garden slug. They look like big, spotted bratwursts. With flippers. Iceberg sausage. But like most all the life in Antarctica, their lack of grace on land is far, far surpassed by their artistry and almost unbelievable athleticism in the water. The speed and ease with which the penguins and seals can move and manipulate through the water is really something to see.

We spent most of our evenings sailing across various bodies of water in the Antarctic, and inevitably these crossings were spent uncomfortable and unbalanced in the rocky waters I grew to expect and eventually, to loathe. There was some sick, perverse irony in the fact that we would begin sailing just as soon as it was time for dinner. The ocean would be worst right as soon as I had to do something seemingly effortless and mundane. Simple things you take for granted when on land. Putting on your pants. Taking a leak. Opening a door. Try these things when the room is moving violently back and forth and after a while all you really want to do is just lay in bed until the moving stops.

On February 20, we landed first at Half Moon Island , where the morning light erupted through the clouds to shine on a rocky shore of orange cliffs and glistening glaciers and thousands of chinstrap penguins.

From Half Moon we motored out to the Norwegian whaling ruins of Deception Island , located on the shore of a sunken caldera of a still active volcano. The sands here alternated from red to black, as orange cliffs rose from the submerged crater and fur seals lounged on the warm sands and in the rusted, decaying ruin of the whaling station.

With every corner and every landing and every berg I found something beautiful and dramatic. The sky in Antarctica, at least in the tiny corners of it I managed to visit created impossible light. Grays and blues and greens and yellows that I have truly never seen anywhere else in the world. And every time I thought I saw something impressive or miraculous or spectacular, it was almost as always surpassed by whatever lay around the corner or on the next landing.

Antarctica it seemed to me a place of stark contrast between light and dark and hot and cold and land and sea. Aside from the occasional lichen or moss, plant life was near nonexistent, and perhaps most surprising was the complete lack of insects. Seriously. Never once saw or heard a bug. Of any kind. Anywhere. Think about that for a minute. It’s actually a little spooky.

In many ways it reminded me of life in the desert. A place where life seems abundant only because of its relative absence. The light. The rock. Everything seemed raw and severe. And yet simultaneously refined and sculpted and beautiful.

Really. I’ve never been anyplace quite like it.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 06:49 AM | Permalink

Originally written Feb 18 on the Shokalskiy.

I finally felt vaguely human today. The constant sense of drunkenness has finally passed. Perhaps due to the strengthening of my sea legs. Perhaps due to the calmer water outside the Shetland Islands. Perhaps due to the lack of medicine in my body which seemed to make me just as queasy as the ocean I’m floating upon. Regardless, today I’ve spent a lot more time out and about. Again, maybe that’s just because today there has been a lot more reason to be out and about than just the endless expanse of a dark and rolling sea.

As we have passed the Antarctic Convergence, there has been a marked drop in temperature, and deck time now has not been attempted without two layers of fleece and a parka. Sure, none of what I have experienced so far has been as cold as even a mild winter morning in Flagstaff, let alone as cold as someplace like Minneapolis, but as the winds have been blowing at near forty knots all day, just a few minutes outside turns your hands and face raw and numb.

Despite the bluster and subsequently boiling waters that kept us from making our first landfall today, I did see a humpback whale and her calf cruising alongside our starboard bow this morning. I hadn’t seen a whale since 1995, and the experience is still just as rewarding.

I’ve also seen hourglass dolphins cruising gracefully alongside the ship and watched them leaping through the crashing waves just outside the porthole from my cabin. I’ve seen penguins hopping through the water just off to port and seals spy-hopping us just to get a look at the new crop of Gore-Texed wanderers bobbing along in their ocean.

I’m not sure what I’m feeling thus far. Too much of my trip has just been seeking the relative comfort of unconsciousness. But sometimes when I’m out on deck or up on the observatory and the cold wind is stinging my face and my hands and I’m looking out on glacier enshrouded islands or onto the seemingly endless expanse of the water tossing us around I wonder just why in the hell I have brought myself to this most inhospitable and uncomfortable of places. But then there are the times when the sun is shining and the ocean is a deep, rich blue, and the only thing I can see on the horizon is my own sense of wonder.

And then there are the times like this evening, when the wind had died down for at least a moment or two, and as I was standing on the bow and looking down as we knifed through the waves, a penguin leapt up and out from the water just a few meters below me and gracefully sailed over our bow wave. And then I remember just why I am here. I’m here because all of this is here. A kid from Arizona just saw a penguin. Not in a zoo. Not in a book. And not on the television. I saw a penguin, doing whatever penguins do, and I saw it just a few feet from my own face. It’s Antarctica. And really, that’s all the reason I need.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 02:13 PM | Permalink

Originally written Feb 17 aboard the Shokalskiy.

This may well prove to be a vomitous lesson in futility, but I am going to try to write while rolling across these blue, frigid seas aboard the Akademik Shokalskiy . I am lucky enough to find myself in my own cabin, a relatively large room amidships on deck three with a porthole looking out to starboard (in case you skipped that sailing lesson in Boy Scouts, starboard is to the right if you are standing on deck and facing the bow). Our boat of 26 primarily well-to-do international tourists representing at least seven countries is getting rocked – rather gently for the area I might add -- from starboard to port by the five-meter swells rolling across the Drake Passage. It’s an interesting experience, getting your sea legs. I’m lying here in my bunk watching the green curtains sway back and forth from my paneled walls at twenty-five degree angles. It’s a lot like being drunk only without the whole fun part.

I have learned they aren’t kidding when they tell you “one hand for the boat.” When the big swells surprise us, even the most acrobatic passenger can be sent wildly into the lap of his neighbor. The most impressive display of agility I think I have ever seen has been the ability of Olga, our tiny, young Russian hostess to pour hot coffee into a cup while the boat is being tossed around like this. That girl hasn’t spilled so much as a drop. It’s damn near miraculous, really. It takes thought just to get a cup to your lips sometimes.

As it stands, we’ve been lucky so far. By Drake standards, I’m told this swell rates as a four on a scale from one to ten. On the last trip from Antarctica, the boat was crashing up and over swells taller than the bridge. Just making a rough guess, but I would put those waves at above twelve, maybe fifteen meters. Maybe more.

Before boarding I was put into a hotel with two other guests. I came halfway around the world only to be put into a room with a fellow yuppie from Ladera Ranch. D. is very nice guy, a workaholic M and A consultant with an alphabet soup of acronyms after his name. But he is totally wrapped tightly around the life I have been trying to leave behind. Money and toys and work and money and work and money. I dig him, but he’s a strong reminder of the life waiting for me so many miles away.

I haven’t been much of myself on this trip. Although our long motor out of the Beagle Channel was so calm I could have been skipping stones over the surface of the water, the Drake proved to be as difficult for my head as I anticipated. Although I haven’t been doubled over the sink, the combination of rolling waves and the sedative effect of my meds have left me generally miserable and subsequently not very social. The crew is indeed quite Russian and generally friendly from what I can tell. They are virtually hidden. Occasionally popping out of some corridor or doorway to adjust or collect or clean something or another. Hard looking men with thick necks and heavy brows, frequently bearded as sailors tend to be, and serious in their duties. I’ve chatted a bit with some of the men on the bridge, but the language barrier is proving to be just exactly that. A barrier. And again, in general, I haven’t felt too much like talking.

Basically, for the Drake, I like it best right here. Horizontal. In bed. Frankly, the next time I spend this much time between sheets, I should hope that’s it’s me rocking the boat and not the South Atlantic.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 02:11 PM | Permalink

(Click on the pics for larger images if you haven´t figured that out yet.)

So how was Antarctica?

Did you take any good pictures?

Was it cold?

Did you see any wildlife?

Did you get seasick?

Was is beautiful?

Are you glad to be back?

YES.

More pictures (you have NO idea how many more) and maybe some stories later.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 05:11 AM | Permalink

It is 10 AM in Ushuaia. In one hour I board the Akademik Shokalskiy to chum the cold, rough waters of the Drake Passage with the contents of my stomach until arriving on the Antarctica Penninsula.

I´m off to go fondle some penguins.

Keep the rest of the world warm for me. Unless eaten by an angry sea lion or something, I´ll see you in ten days.

Hasta.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 05:04 AM | Permalink

If there is one thing I have noticed in my travels it’s that, for the most part, the rest of the world makes really shitty toilet paper. So to speak. But it’s not just restricted to the bathroom. Virtually all the paper products I find around globe leave a lot to be desired. Like the food on your face or the shit on…you get the idea.

Argentina is no different. Napkins, towels, and for crissake, the toilet paper. No worries about squeezing the Charmin. Nobody is interested in squeezing a roll of butcher paper. And that old “Bounty” lady would have a field day here. Most of the napkins are roughly the size of a postage stamp with just about the same texture as tracing paper.

Yes, I recognize that this is just the most obvious illustration of our wasteful, disposable culture, but I gotta say, when we throw something away, we throw away the good stuff.

Of course, most homes in Argentina have metal garbage bins cemented into the sidewalk outside their homes that look roughly like a shopping basket welded onto a pole. Last I checked, the average, suburban American had a rolling green Rubbermaid monstrosity the size of a Volkswagen. That usually doesn’t include the other bin the size of shoebox for the “recyclables.”

Sigh. We may do things better, be we don’t necessarily do things right.

All too frequently, traveling is one of them. Ushuaia is a popular tourist destination for the wealthier set, what with it being the port of call for most all of the exotic cruises around the Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica, so subsequently the place is chock full of old, obnoxious American tourists. The people who are basically the reason why Canadians sew flags onto their backpacks so as not to be confused with them. I watched today as no less than a half dozen cruise-bound Americans walked into various shops and restaurants and immediately began barking at the staff in English. Not even a “hola.” I admit, I am far, far, FAR away from being labeled as the epitome of cultural sensitivity, but I at least try to be considerate. And when wandering around in a foreign country, especially as an American in a time of war, do everyone a favor and at least TRY the language. Make an attempt. How about a greeting or a “muchas gracias.” Really now. I’m sure you picked up some of those words from your gardener.

And if you can’t manage that, at least ask them FIRST if they speak English instead of looking like a jackass and assuming.

Anyhow. I digress.

I’m still in Ushuaia, still wandering around pretty much doing a whole lotta nada. My knees aren’t so achy, so I will probably scoot out to the Parque Nacional Tierra del Fuego tomorrow for a quick little hike. Ushuaia is surrounded by parklands and mountains and various bodies of water. The flight in to this tip of our world was spectacular (at least the part of it when I was conscious) if a little unnerving for anyone unaccustomed to low approaches over miles of jagged, craggy peaks. I admit I was surprised how close we were to the mountains, but it takes a lot to rattle me while in the air. I’m usually sound asleep before the plane takes off, a fact that can be confirmed by my recent travel partner who didn’t believe me until she looked over en route to Iguazu to see me slumped over and drooling like a toddler before the beverage cart even got rolling. And although I’ll do a lot of things just to win an argument, intentionally drooling over myself isn’t one of them.

You do 150 flights a year and see how long it takes you either succumb to the monotony or freak out and start bawling when they run out of your honey roast peanuts.

Ok. So that’s a lie. Most airlines don’t serve peanuts anymore. The twelve of you with allergies and law degrees ruined it for the rest of us. Fuckers.

Anyhow. Like I said, I’m still in Ushuaia. I found a gymnasium a block from my hostel, a cramped and noisy but generally quality joint with nice beds and a big kitchen, so I spent an hour this afternoon in a decent attempt to get some blood flowing into my upper body. They had a room full of twenty-year-old Argentine exercise machines and some rattling free weights, but a day pass cost me a grand total of $1.75, so I wasn’t about to bitch. The owner was a friendly Argentine with the same cocky swagger and over-zealous need to offer help with your technique as most of the gym rats in America. No matter. I’ll never turn down a spot. I was just happy to move some weights around. As it was my first time doing anything more than a pushup in better than a month, my temperamental tendons are currently reminding me just why they like to have regular exercise.

Insert more Advil here.

I swear the connective tissue in my body has the elasticity of decade old rubber bands.

It’s funny, I had been wondering if I could find some surgical rubber training bands to bring on this trek to keep those muscles in good working order and lamenting that I didn’t have anything heavy to lift, when the whole time I was lugging around a fifty pound pack complete with handy, well, uh, handles.

The things we overlook.

I didn’t do much off anything yesterday as I was feeling a bit under the weather and didn’t want to get sick just days before boarding the vomit vessel. I basically just wandered around town and napped a lot. On the upside, backpacker life is still providing plenty of interesting characters to keep me entertained in these downtimes. I met a cool British backpacker who, like me, after being sent to one too airports decided one day just not to come back. He had a great story about getting arrested in Zanzibar and tossed into a jail for a day because he unknowingly refused to yield his rental car to the oncoming motorcade of the president. Note to self: Always yield to the limo in Africa. I also was introduced to what may be the first Republican backpacker – at least the first I have met - and a potentially half-crazy Canadian dude who became the first person I have met in a hostel that made me reconsider that whole “shared bathroom” concept. I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice guy and I’m probably just misreading things and all, but my “Danger Will Robinson!” warning immediately started sounding when I met him. He didn’t appear to be an escaped psychopath or anything; it’s just that he seemed totally to be the kind of person who would open the curtain to your shower to rap if he knew you were in there.

There’s also Caro, the young Brit and current bunkmate with an accent so overwhelmingly thick it sounds like a bad impersonation of an overwhelmingly thick English accent. She is in Ushuaia to work aboard a massive windjammer that is bound first for Antarctica and then for Cape Town. There are the two French backpackers I am convinced are lesbians, not that there is anything wrong with that, and finally there’s the blonde guy from some random European country who I saw outside yesterday playing with those silly-ass hippy juggling sticks. He has a broken microchip glued to the center of his forehead. A microchip. Glued. To the center of his forehead. I swear, I would not, could not have made that up, and I swear that before I leave this place, I must, MUST get his story.

And I also swear that I’m not so secretly thrilled that he is not my bunkmate.

You know. Just in case his chip is programmed to kill all bald Americans while they sleep.

If any of you have anything dramatically important to say to me, best do it right quick. Once I get on that boat I won’t have email access for at least ten days. I’m not sure that I can handle that much time unwired, but I figure if enough of you send me porn tonight, I might just survive.

I have also learned that I can mail postcards from Antarctica. Yes, the card will have an Antarctica postmark, but it will probably take about two months to be delivered, as they really do leave via the slow boat from that icebox of a continent. I think carrier pigeon might make better time. I have no idea what that postage is going to set me back, but despite my current status as unemployed dirt bag, I may be motivated to send a few.

If any of you nutters have an overwhelming urge to receive a postcard from the great white south, best email me your address now. You never can tell. Maybe I’ll be feeling generous. Maybe I’ll be desperate to write just to thaw my fingers. Maybe. Though emails that include naked pictures, Adriana Lima’s home phone number, or donations to my paypal account (themightyjimbo@yahoo.com) have a way, way better chance of getting acknowledged.

Penguins look out.

Hasta.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 07:08 PM | Permalink

I think my body is writing checks my knees can’t cash, and this is becoming increasingly frustrating. Despite frequent lamentations about the lean muscle mass just melting off of my body like the cheese from the pizzas I am eating near daily, I am still in better physical condition than most urban people. I recognize this. I know that when compared with even the frequent exerciser, because of a good set of SNPs donated from my pop (for those of you who skipped that day in biology or didn´t work in life sciences for three presidential administrations, SNPs are single nucleotide polymorphisms, the genetic variations in our DNA that make us all different) and about twenty years of consistent exercise, that I am quite fit. Basically, for such a runt, I’m a strong little fucker.

My joints, I suspect as a result of all this activity, are not.

Because I usually refuse to do things the easy way, I spent two days in Chalten sprinting up trails, shaving hours off the park’s recommended times for the hikes. All that mountain goating left my knees swollen and creaky as a barn door in the summertime. Subsequently, I spent an extra, unproductive day wandering around town when I should have been en route to Chile and therefore did not have enough time to complete the famous “W” trek through the park.

However, after looking at the topo for the trek, I deduced that I could complete two of the three sections in just under two days by bolting first up the trail to the Towers del Paine, and then making quick work of the 11K trail out to the refugio below the French camp. As water is abundant on the trail and both tents and food can be purchased at each campsite, I would have been able to travel light. By dumping my pack at the base of each ascent, I could make short work of the difficult sections and would only be burdened for the easier, relatively flat stretches between climbs. Looking at the elevation, elevation gain, and distances between sites, I concluded that I could, arriving in the park at 11 AM, make the towers by 3:00, and the camp by nine. By waking early the following day, I could boogie the 5K to the next trail head, drop my pack again, up and back the steep trail to the French camp inside of four hours, and then saddle up for the long walk to ride the ferry across the river in order to catch my bus and get the hell out of the park. All in time to make my bus back to Chalten, my flight to Ushuaia, and my boat to Antarctica.

I would have had to endure two long days of walking in my lead heavy trekking boots (I prefer light approach shoes or sandals for anything other than but the most brutal trails of rock and scree and mud), but at under 20K a day, it was nothing impossible. Hell, as I was under seven thousand feet the whole time, it didn’t even seem difficult. Tiring. But not difficult. I have bagged Kili via the Arrow Glacier, fast-packed the twenty-two mile up and back Whitney trail in under eleven hours, and have been hauling thirty pounds of climbing gear up and down various trails, including the infamous 45 minute slog up to Tahquitz from Idyllwild for near a decade.

But every guide, ranger, and most of the hikers I met all said it couldn’t be done. No way. Not a chance. You will never make the bus out that night by six.

No way. No how.

As I had a lot more to lose than just my pride (oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of five thousand dollars in various lost tickets), I figured I should take their advice. But just in case I did the first leg and was convinced they were wrong, I decided I should pack for it anyhow, bringing my sleeping bag, my pad and enough money for food and shelter. Hell, if the weather in Patagonia held, I wouldn’t even need shelter.

Of course, I forgot to activate my watch alarm that night, and woke confused and groggy that morning to the sound of someone pounding away on the door to my hosteria. I leaped out of bed, threw whatever I thought I might need in a bag (oddly enough I didn’t need a laptop power supply, an iPod sans headphones, and the rest of the crap I forgot to remove), and just BARELY made my bus. Subsequently, however, I had no time to eat breakfast, buy food and replace the precious few Chilean pesos left in my wallet after dinner with Paddy and Amy. Although I had enough cash for tents, food may have been an issue. Let’s just say I would have been eating light. And stalking, catching, and killing a guanaco with nothing but my pocketknife is both exceedingly difficult and strictly prohibited by the park. Not that I would mind, of course.

I hate llamas. Ornery, spitting, bucktoothed bastards that they are.

Regardless, I asked again at the station before I began if it was possible to do two legs in less than two days.

No way. These times are established by the Chilean army. They are intended for the best, strongest walkers. You should budget MORE time they told me.

I have come to the conclusion that the Chilean army is staffed largely with asthmatic octogenarians and double amputees.

Shit. I´m so gonna meet a death squad when I cross that border again. I would like to apologize in advance to the noble Chilean soldier with the machine gun.

I hammered that trail, with pack, in well under their two hours, even though I thought I was walking slowly. I made the Towers del Paine in another ninety minutes and was back at the base by six. This includes two stops at the refugio to rest and eat. As they claim the final eleven kilometers to camp takes four hours, I was left with more than enough time to finish before dark, walking even at their glacial pace.

Unfortunately, despite the relative strength of my legs and my lungs, my knees began to throb like a techno club on the descent. And pushing for those extra four hours may have pushed me over the limit. I am beginning to think that my trekking days are coming to an end, as no matter how willing I am break a personal record by sprinting to the top, I’m not willing to break an ankle or an ACL when I hobble my way down. Trekking poles (like my cushy North Face tent and approach shoes and climbing gear and summit pack, left in the garage) would help, but really, not much. As I have absolutely zero interest in a sedentary life, I think my thirties are ushering in a new period for me. A period that inevitably will involve freebasing ibuprofen and back alley BJs for another hit of glucosemine.

So I found myself at the base of the mountain facing a dilemma. Do I head out or head home? I looked at the reward to risk ratio. Proving those bastards wrong, on the upside, or losing an ACL and/or a trip to Antarctica in the process.

I opted out.

I’m still pissed at myself for taking the easy road.

But I’m in Ushuaia, just four hundred miles and a few days from projectile vomiting myself all the way to Antarctica.

And for the record, it’s really goddam cold here.

I figure that after two weeks of cabin fever and emptying the contents of my stomach into the South Atlantic, I may be ready for another go at the Towers del Paine. Only this time I may buy a pair of Gore-Tex trail shoes to see if I can walk the whole W in two days.

Of course after I hobble up to the ranger station with knees the size of cantaloupes just to call them a bunch of weak-lunged sissies, I won’t have the knees to out run the inevitable ass kicking. So maybe I should just shoulder the pack, swallow the pride, take it slow and enjoy the scenery.

Nah. I’m a masochist.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 12:43 PM | Permalink

I´m exhausted. I´d write something of substance, but the last two days have involved about six hours of strenuous hiking, a half dozen or so pisco sours, a couple of hot, Swiss backpackers, ten hours of bumpy bus rides, and about three hours of uninterupted sleep.

I leave you with pictures as I leave Calafate (again), this time for Ushuaia.

Hasta.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 11:58 AM | Permalink

Puerto Natales is a small and colorful riverside town in Southern Chile. It is surrounded, like most of Patagonia, with cloud enshrouded mountains of blue and purple all dressed with glaciers. The river is quiet, sparkling in the afternoon sunshine, and its color mirrors the color of the day. Gunmetal in the morning, denim in the afternoon, and sometimes indigo, maybe even burgundy during the sunset.

I arrived in Chile two days ago; I’m in town for the famous Parque Nacional Torres del Paine just two hours away.

I wandered around this town, and walked into a riverside hostel and café, Concepto Indigo, that had an artificial climbing wall built onto the dull, gray shingles outside. Inside I found a quirky, comfortable décor with large windows looking out onto the river, walls paneled with saw cut logs, Asian paper lanterns hanging from the mustard ceiling, and lots of bright, local artwork. They had a Jenga game on the counter. They had candles and plants and antiques. Dave Matthews’ first album was on the stereo, the menu was full of vegetarian food, two computers were stuck in the corner, banana bread was in the pantry, and they had a wall-mounted magazine rack literally full of old back issues from Rock and Ice and Climbing - and even a couple new motorcycle mags floating around.

Short of Adriana Lima tending bar, the place was perfect.

I think they are either going to file a restraining order to evict me or I’ll have to buy the place outright.

As Chile isn’t blessed (cursed?) with the same phenomenal exchange rate as Argentina, I’m not sure I can afford too many more of those veggies sandwiches – the sandwiches that come complete with heart of palm, avocado, and a fresh, tangy mayo. Dammit, now I need another.

Puerto Natales reminds me a little of the Pacific Northwest. The town is filled with rusty tin and battered aluminum structures, the buildings are decorated brightly with shades of red and blue, and the air has that salty, pungent taste of both life and death from the water. It’s loaded with fun and funky little taverns and cafes. Puerto Natales definitely seems more artistic and stylish than the dusty tourist towns of their Argentine neighbors, but it also seems less fashionable. And I mean this in a good way. In much the same way that LA is more fashionable than San Francisco, but San Fran just has way more style. If this makes any sense to you at all.

I am still traveling alone, but alone is rarely as lonely as it sounds.

In virtually every stop I have met someone. Although I still eat a few too many meals alone, I’m not drinking alone, and conversation isn’t hard to find.

I have met two medical students from San Antonio, a honeymooning couple from Kentucky, and one fellow backpacker from DC. I also met a snowboard instructor and climber expat living in Chile. Note to self. Keep Ryan in your Rolodex. I have met no less than a dozen Israelis, at least five Dutch, and a whole slew of Aussies, Canadians, Germans and Brits. What doesn’t make sense to me is why I have only run into six Americans on this trip. Well, it makes sense, but it disappoints me. Despite our famously vagabond history, and all our perceived mobility and bravado about exploration and freedom and the call of the open road, Americans, for the most part, have become lousy travelers. Too many of us too content with a beige life in a beige house in a beige neighborhood with beige neighbors. Unless it comes complete with a concession stand and corporate sponsorship, we don’t seem willing to venture out beyond our collective comfort zones. We went from frontiersmen to Frontier Land. Disney even added an extension to their suburban SoCal monstrosity, called California Adventure. A theme park based on California for people already in California. I can’t wait for New York, the ride. Complete with simulated muggings in Central Park.

Sorry. I digress. Again.

It disappoints me because Patagonia is possibly the most diverse and rewarding countryside I have ever seen. It’s wide and uncluttered and despite all the usual conveniences of society that make living and traveling here relatively simple, it still retains a frontier flavor. The land doesn’t feel tamed and divided under grid of roads and fences and power lines. It is virtually impossible to go anywhere, even across the endless, yellow expanse of the steppe without seeing something beautiful. And when the light is right, usually just before dusk, Patagonia glows. The grass becomes gold, the mountains glisten from the glaciers catching the light and tossing it back toward the valleys and shimmering lakes and rivers. It turns the mountain into a lantern illuminating the land high above the dusty road you are rolling down. And with the winds that roar across the continent from every direction, the clouds form in complex layers, swirling and billowing up around and into each other. I’ve never seen skies like this.

In short, I’ve never visited anywhere better.

I was walking back to the Hosteria Oasis, a basic, relatively quiet guesthouse filled with tacky furniture and figurines and such when I saw a familiar lip ring flash from a diner in a restaurant window. For the third time in the third town in the second country I ran into Paddy and Amy. I surprised them at dinner, they invited me to sit down, and we ate and finished off a bottle of wine that I still owed them from El Bolson.

It seems, however, that this will be the last chance encounter for us, as they had just finished three days in the park, and I was just arriving. They were heading north again, and I was just days away from heading south. So unless I extend this trip of just happen to bounce into them again in Buenos Aires or Uruguay, my good friends from across the pond are finally free of that bald annoyance who keeps drinking their wine and interrupting romantic dinners.

But this is how it goes. Travelers travel. It’s expected, and the relationships and friendships made on the road are, much like the places you are visiting, frequently fascinating but tragically temporary. But like most journeys, you can never be sure where those paths are really going and just when they might cross again. I have seen Hans from Sweden twice now. Russell and Lisa from Canada all across Patagonia now. Walter from Denmark three times in three cities. Maya, the nurse from Switzerland was my roommate in Calafate. We saw each other first in Chalten, then on the trail in Paine, and just shared a drink in Concepto Indigo when she walked in for a coffee. Doris from Munich and her father Ernesto saw me countless times in Chalten, Calafate, and we are supposedly to be in Ushuaia on the same day. There’s Rob the Chemical Engineer from Alberta, Melisa the tour agent in Chalten. Martin in Bariloche. Mailen and Maribel in El Bolson. Ivan from Buenos Aires, Amil from Israel, Paula, the manager of Concepto Indigo, Victor from Mochilero, and the dozens of others whose names I never learned or won’t ever remember. They are the faces and stories that have shared this adventure, even if only briefly. The people I have met and met again along my way in just this first, short month of a trip so far from home – a trip that sometimes feels more familiar than home ever did.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 11:35 AM | Permalink

I woke early to board the 7:30 bus from Calafate to Chalten. Well. That’s not totally true. I boarded the 7:30 shuttle to catch the 8:00 bus to Chalten. Which didn’t leave for much later still. But regardless. I was up early. On my bus I saw Russell and Lisa again, a Canadian couple we first met in Bariloche. Like I said, small, small world.

The bus took us bouncing along the rocky, dirt road through the dusty, windy, barren landscape of the Patagonian steppe, where herds (or is it flocks?) of strange, flightless birds sprinted from our rumbling wheels.

That afternoon I arrived in Chalten, a frontier-like town with ramshackle houses and restaurants and a population of just about four hundred. The roads are dusty and brutal and aside from the dirt consist largely of river rocks that make walking them as uncomfortable as driving them. The town is located in a pleasant albeit windy valley and is surrounded by miles of rock bands and steep cliffs carved into the hillsides. These rugged brown and red cliffs of granite climb from the grassy valley of Chalten, while the river winds its way off to the glaciated mountains far in the distance.

I am staying in a little hotel on the east side of town, and as I noticed just yesterday morning, if the weather remains as agreeable as it has been - we have had seven days of near cloud-free skies, an event virtually unheard of in Patagonia - then I have an uninterrupted view of Fitz Roy right from my bedroom window.

Chalten is only twenty years old. It’s the result of a border dispute with Chile. As a result, it’s rugged and random. There’s no pavement. There is no ATM. No cambio. Bring pesos or good luck getting home. But this frontier feel is also part of its charm. Chickens and horses and dogs roam around with the trekkers and travelers.

I arrived in town exhausted from another late night at the pub in Calafate, but with weather like this, I knew I had to take advantage of the sunshine. I packed a light bag of essentials and made short work of the trail out to Laguna Torre for the views of Cerro Torre. I arrived at the lake in just over two hours. I sat out in the sunshine and looked out at the lake and the clouds blowing around the imposing granite peaks. The following day I made the longer trek out to see Fitz Roy and the shimmering blue Laguna de Los Tres. I waded around in the pure, blue, glacial water, resting my feet from probably twelve hours of tromping over these hills over the last two days. The water was clear and clean and completely potable. When you buy that expensive bottled water and it says it’s bottled at the source of some random glacier, you know in reality it’s all probably right from some laughing guy’s garden hose in France. I promise you this: when you are standing in a frigid, blue lake and filling your water bottle, staring out at the white glacier cascading down from the slopes of Fitz Roy, you can be absolutely, positively, one-hundred-percent sure that you are getting the water right from the source.

Patagonia is both a climber’s dream and utter nightmare. Just driving in from the steppe, you can see the glacier-encrusted peaks of the Patagonian Andes looming blue and white in the distance, ominous and imposing. And then you see Fitz Roy and the other jagged, granite spires around it, a toothy, fearsome grin. A three-thousand-foot stone incisor biting right into the sky. All the walls climbing up out of the glaciers that surround them and beset by the howling Patagonian winds while the clouds and storms envelop and enshroud them. I have known climbers who have come to Patagonia and spent a month never to have even seen those walls.

I guess I got lucky.

Chalten is also surrounded by miles of amazing granite cliffs. Most of it an easy walk right from anywhere in town. At first I was devastated that I didn’t bring my gear. Then I learned that amongst all that wonderful rock, only a handful of climbs have been developed. It’s virgin territory, and as I have virtually zero experience with finding, bolting, and cleaning routes, I suddenly don’t feel so bad that I’m leaving tomorrow. However, I may have to send my climbing partner down here on a mission for a year or so with his drill and a bag full of bolts. Just one sight of this place and he might relocate, and Lord knows, it wouldn’t take much to keep me in Argentina.

The rest of Chalten and some really goddam big rocks are right here .

Posted by themightyjimbo at 10:51 AM | Permalink

For the second time on this trip I had to sprint, bags in hand, to make a connection. Only this time it was for the last bus of the day to the Moreno Glacier. It was leaving at three, and the superbly reliable staff at my hostel, the same people who informed us that they were open for all hours of the night, neglected to tell us that although we could buy a ticket for the bus at the desk and that the bus leaves at three and we can be picked up at the hostel, the CONNECTION to the bus terminal left at 2:30. Hans and I with no more than one minute to spare ran all the way through town and up the hill to dive onto the bus Hollywood style just as it was about to pull away from the station.

I collapsed, sweaty and exhausted into my seat, pulled out my iPod, and tried to nap as we got moving and the Patagonian steppe rolled out before us.

It’s a two-hour trip to the glacier, and just shy of the park as I leaned over to talk to Hans, someone shouted my name from the front of the bus. I guess my incessant blabbering carried all the way to the front where Amy and Paddy (from Bolson) were sitting. As any backpacker can tell you, it really is a very, very small world.

So what can I say about the Moreno Glacier that I haven’t already? It’s a massive chunk of ice nearly two-hundred-feet tall. It’s staggeringly beautiful, and it catches the evening light and turns it to bright blue. And despite all the amazing and beautiful sights I have seen in the world, this probably captivated me the most. It dawned on me later why. It’s not that the glacier is more beautiful than a canyon or a sunset or a mountaintop. It’s just that it was the only natural wonder I have ever seen that actually DOES something. It’s moving. And because of that the ice is constantly popping and cracking and crashing. We watched rapt as explosions like bomb blasts roared from within its endless canyons and crevasses and waited anxiously for more blocks of it to go roaring into the lake below. From a distance, the blocks dropping into the water don’t seem that large. Then you scale them with the boat motoring out to cart bug-eyed tourists to see the glacier and see that the blocks were significantly larger than the ferry. We saw three blocks literally the size of apartment buildings peel off to crash spectacularly into the lake. We saw chunks the size of tractor trailers break right in front of us, and watched as an entire tower of ice dropped into a crevasse with a noise that can only be described as terrifying. Where the glacier came to rest (if you can call that “resting”) on the shore there was a tunnel that formed between the ice and the lake, and frozen boulders would regularly collapse off of it. Now that’s what I call extreme kayaking. Faster, dammit! Faster! Someone alert ESPN.

We spent three hours at the glacier, totally captivated by what amounts to nothing but a really big ice cube. But every time we turned around to leave the glacier would creak or groan or pop, and we would bolt back to the railing to see what it was going to do next. The Moreno Glacier was a visible and audible example of both the destructive and creative forces of nature, and those forces when viewed first hand are awesome indeed.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 09:53 AM | Permalink

I arrived in Calafate on a bright, breezy, almost hot afternoon. I took a cab into town from the remote, modern and subsequently shockingly out-of-place airport and drove through the barren, windswept landscape - a land seemingly devoid of any plant life taller than my kneecaps. The hillsides barren of most everything but little tufts of grasses and tiny green shrubs. It reminded me of a staring too closely at an impressionist painting, just little dots and splotches of color. I half expected the land to appear vibrant and alive if just viewed from space.

Calafate is a generally uninspired and uninspiring town of tourist shops and hotels; it’s existence, it appears, solely to cater to the thousands upon thousands of tourists who pass through en route to see the Moreno Glacier, Fitz Roy or the Towers del Paine. Basically, people like me.

I was staying in a bland, yellow box of a hosteria, it still under construction, just past the pavement and four blocks from the heart of town and, as I would later learn, one block from the local whorehouse. The bathrooms were new and clean, although the stalls were apparently designed for anorexic hobbits as anyone larger than your average jockey would be unable to bed over to pull up his pants once locked inside a stall. Still, they had hot water, and in the grand, global pantheon of hostels and guesthouses, that’s pretty much the gold standard for me.

My room was tiny and cramped but with a comfortable bunk bed that soon saw me sacked out for another post flight siesta.

That’s when I met Hans. Hans was my roommate, a roofer from Sweden, my age, with sandy blonde hair (go figure) and a tightly cropped beard, a la Miami Vice. He is on his second tour of South America in as many years, and, like me, he just didn’t see enough on his first go.

I left for my usual new town ritual of walking around to find an Internet café in which to waste still more of my life by posting inane stories about walking around looking for internet cafes. Calafate’s streets were teeming with tourists, and the prices were adjusted accordingly. I know I shouldn’t complain about having to spend an extra two dollars for dinner, but after three weeks in Argentina, I have already reset my baseline. And frankly I just don’t think an entire three course Italian dinner with wine should cost me twelve bucks when I can get that same meal for eight in Buenos Aires. It’s not right I tell you. It’s not right at all. When I get back to the sates I’m gonna have a helluva time eating anywhere other than off the value menu at Taco Bell. Thirty-nine cents for a taco? I shouldn’t pay more than twenty-nine for that.

After a couple hours clawing at my eyeballs and lamenting the lack of broadband at the only internet café in Argentina with an actual laptop connection and a generally unfulfilling (albeit very filling) dinner at buffet a couple blocks away, Hans and I met for drinks at one of Calafate’s two local bars. Honestly, despite its immense popularity and my visiting it no less than three times, I can’t remember its name. Not because of the amount of alcohol I consumed, but really, when it’s the only place to go, who the hell cares what it’s called?

We shared some drinks and watched as the strange brew of local Argentines and random backpackers began to fill the place late into the night. Hell, as we didn’t arrive until midnight, it must have been after two before the place began to hop. I stopped with the alcohol somewhere around drink three, but Hans kept them coming. It was three or four in the morning I suppose when the alcohol-bloodied eyes of Hans first spied Juliet. Juliet was a young and striking Argentine with dark hair, a big smile, a green shirt and tight jeans. I will say if the sight of her was the result of beer goggles, then I am starting work on my beer belly today (actually drinking a Quilnes as I type this, Sean, you would be proud). Hans couldn’t take his eyes off her, and despite my constant encouragement, he wouldn’t make the first move. Me, I figured that as he needed a wingman, and since I didn’t speak Spanish, nor was I interested in hooking up with her, couldn’t understand if I was getting rejected anyhow and generally couldn’t hear anything over the pounding music, I would just go open the door for him. So I walked up, said the only words I knew in Spanish, and as expected, she couldn’t hear me, didn’t speak English, and the conversation pretty much died right there. Which, come to think of it, isn’t all that much different than most of the conversations I have had with pretty girls in night clubs in the United States.

However, I did, as I had hoped, open the door for Hans who was soon deeply engaged in that drunken shouting match that qualifies for conversation on a noisy dance floor and shortly there after was dancing with her until the placed closed sometime around five.

Despite his most valiant efforts, Juliet left Hans with only a hug and a wave, and I was left with a seriously intoxicated Swede just shy of dawn in deep Patagonia. Having just endured my third late, alcohol fueled night, I was positively desperate for a bed and as many uninterrupted hours of sleep as possible. As Hans stumbled down the streets of Calafate shouting “las chicas!” and looking for another bar, I made my way back to the hostel and sweet, blessed unconsciousness.

I arrived, however, to a dark lobby and a securely locked door. A door the desk manager had promised us was open all night.

And this, boys and girls, was when Jimbo lost his patience. Insert your choice of properly offensive four letter words shouted to nobody in particular. It really doesn’t matter which you prefer. I’m fairly certain I used them all.

As I was pounding on the door, just hoping to wake someone, and giving very serious thought to waking someone with a nice, hefty rock through the window of my room, Hans wandered back up, having been unable to find another pub in Calafate. It was now six in the morning. I was cold. Exhausted. And homeless. I had absolutely zero interest in walking around Calafate aimlessly for an hour with the Swedish meatball who keeps shouting for the chicas, but that’s what we did. I figured if I couldn’t sleep, I’d go back to drinking with Hans. To our dismay, no other bars were found, so I went back to our street and walked into the hostel next door to see if they had room. They were sold out. I noticed they had an Internet connection and asked if I could use it for an hour, just so I didn’t have to be standing around in the cold outside or wandering around on my tired, booted feet. He told me the computers were for guests of the hotel only – the guests who were all currently and properly sound asleep. So I pulled out my wallet and offered him the price of a room rental (twenty-five pesos), just to sit in front of one of his (empty) computers for just one hour. He still declined.

It was at this point I realized again that Americans are just way, way better at capitalism.

Hans then asks him the same question he has been asking me, the police officers walking their morning beat, and about seven or eight dogs along the way. “Donde esta las chicas?”

“Across the street. La Cabaret.” For seventy pesos (about $25) we can each have our very own chica – for twenty minutes. My mood instantly changed, and I started laughing at the fact that my hostel was right next to the whorehouse, and that the one other person awake at this hour seemed to have a working knowledge of their price schedule.

By this time it was just shy of seven, the morning was already bright, and our hostel should have been opening momentarily. We walked back for another round of pounding on the door, and this time, a groggy, stumbling guy in a t-shirt wandered out to let us in.

I climbed into my bunk, didn’t bother taking off any of my clothes, and didn’t wake up until one.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 09:50 AM | Permalink

The best part about backpacking is sitting down at a cafe for one dollar beers with six people who all carry different passports. A Brit, a Yank, a Swede, an Aussie, a Dutch, and an Irishman. The worst part about backpacking is having to explain for the fifth time in four weeks how we have an Austrian as governor.

Yeah, we may have a moron for a president, but my governor can totally kick your governor´s ass.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 09:19 AM | Permalink

I wish I could say that I wasted my time visiting the famous Moreno Glacier, one of the few advancing glaciers in the world. I wish I could say that it´s just a big ice cube and nothing much really happens there. I say this because she really wanted to see the glacier, but we didn´t think we had the time to pack that into our first two weeks. I wish I could say that for her.

I wish I could say the glacier wasn´t the single most spectacular and possibly most beautiful thing I have ever seen in nature. I wish I could say we all didn´t just stand there, mouths agape upon seeing it, and I wish I could say that we were not totally transfixed as blocks of ice the size of apartment buildings peeled off of the glacier to crash spectacularly into the lake below. I wish I could say that a two-hundred-foot tall chunk of ice that stretched off all the way to the horizon was not something both awesome and beautiful to behold, and I wish I could say that the creaks and cracks and explosions coming from the ice weren´t sounds I will remember forever.

But I can´t.

If you ever feel compelled to visit Argentina, and really, you all SHOULD, you must, MUST visit the glacier.

I´ll write more about it later. But as I may not have time to post for a while, I wanted to put the pictures up today.

Enjoy. The rest of the hundred or so pictures I took at the glacier are here . If you want more, I´ll upload them when I get the chance.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 03:14 PM | Permalink

I’m in Calafate, it’s another ridiculously sunny day for a place that supposedly has some of the worst weather in the world, and I am beginning to feel the effects of four days without much sleep and with plenty of alcohol. Things have become surprising social as of late and definitely very international around these southern parts.

I met Ivan in the plaza of El Bolson. Ivan is a PE teacher in Buenos Aires. He is tan, a bit bigger than me, and clearly goes to the same barber. He was lounging in the park with his pack, waiting for his friend to arrive at the same time I was there contemplating the mystery of Maroon Five’s popularity in South America and just what I would look like with dread locks. Probably like a metrosexual version of the Predator, only with a bigger nose and without those cool tusked outer lips.

Ivan and I were just chilling in the park next to each other when he was trampled by a couple of runaway dogs, a little boxer named Dala and one of those yappy lap dogs I can’t identify but all look like dust mops with eyes. The dogs belonged to two 18-year-old girls, Maribel and Mailen. Ivan, clearly infatuated with Mailen, moved over to where they were sitting and began to talk. Tired of sitting alone silently, I got up, went to the bar and returned with some drinks.

Can’t speak the language? Try beer.

For the next few hours I sat in the park with my three new friends and with the help of a few bottles of El Bolson Rubia and a handy Spanish-English dictionary I happened to have in my bag we managed to communicate. Despite our limited vocabulary, the girls seemed to know at least the important words to keep my attention. Like fuck. And lesbian. Marijuana. Beer.

They even asked me if I was gay. I swear to God I need to stop wearing this breezy little cotton skirt around, no matter how much I like the way it makes me feel pretty.

They invited us to go dancing with them at El Sol, a pizzeria and pub in El Bolson. They gave us their number and told us to meet them at one. I swear this nocturnal lifestyle in South America is destined to kill me.

I wandered back to the Hosteria Steiner where I ran into Amy and Paddy at dinner. They had apparently taken my advice and braved the walk to the hostel and were now staying just a few doors away from me. I sat down and joined them for dinner and one, two, maybe four bottles of local wine. We talked drunkenly about politics and travels and the history of Ireland. Paddy is a break dancing, professional graffiti artist who grew up listening to bombs shake his house in Belfast (I swear I couldn’t have made that up if I tried), and Amy, his girlfriend from Newcastle, a social worker and occasional actress with an easy smile and a ring through her lower lip.

We sat and talked until our nice host closed the kitchen and took a cab to meet Ivan at El Sol. Our new lady friends didn´t show. Argentine girls, apparently, are just as reliable and punctual as their American compatriots.

Amy and Paddy had been traveling through South America for months, and with Amy’s lessons in Spanish she was quite comfortable communicating with Ivan. Ivan and I were still limited to single word conversations until I heard him use the right word with Amy.

Escalada.

“Escalada?”

“Si. Es mi vida.”

“Escalar! La roca!”

Its seems Ivan is a climber. Within seconds Ivan and I were digging through the dictionary and developing a vocabulary that allowed us to talk all night about rocks and routes and experiences in the vertical. By the end of the night and three more bottles of Quilnes Ivan and I were fast friends. By the end of the night and three more bottles of Quilnes, Paddy was regaling us with drunken Irish marching songs before passing out for a fast siesta in his chair, and Amy had convinced Ivan to visit the UK after explaining that British girls are crazy for the Latin boys.

Everyone exchanged email addresses, and just shy of five, I made it back to the hotel, fell into bed and didn’t wake up until noon.

I wandered down to the plaza again for lunch and again ran into Ivan. He told me he was meeting Mailen and Maribel at two to go to Lake Puelo. We turned around, went to his friend’s house, packed a bag and met the girls several blocks away to begin our potentially long walk toward the lake. We had already missed the bus so we hitched a series of three rides. Twice in the back up random pick-up trucks and finally with the four of us stuffed into the back of a rickety Suzuki Samurai as we bounced the final five kilometers down the dusty dirt road to the shore of the placid mountain lake.

We spent a lazy summer afternoon cooking ourselves in the sunshine, swimming in the cold, clear water of the lake, listening to my iPod, and as is customary in Argentina, drinking hot maté out of a single cup. We hitched a ride with the bus back sometime around eight and spent the evening at Mailen’s house for coffee and pastries with dulce de leche, before finally heading back to my hostel to look at climbing pictures on the computer and to drink another bottle or two of cheap, red wine.

Over the course of two days with the help of my dictionary and a bit of patience we had generated a vocabulary of random Spanish and English and were able to communicate quite comfortably about virtually any subject. Ivan had grown confident in his English and has promised to learn before visiting the states. I have promised that anytime they do visit Los Estados Unidos, mi casa, su casa, and at least for Ivan, any rocks he wants to climb, he has a guaranteed belayer with me.

I woke slowly, far to early at about six in the morning, my head still pounding from two days of sunshine and alcohol, and left to catch my bus back to Bariloche in order to make my flight to Calafate. Ivan even woke up early and met me at the station to see me off. I didn’t figure the girls would have made that trek, but as both Ivan and Maribel live in Buenos Aires, we have agreed to meet in four weeks there for my finally two weeks in South America.

I arrived in El Bolson frustrated and anxious to leave. I left wishing I could have stayed longer.

After one bus, one plane, two cabs, and a desperate need for a case of Red Bull, I found myself here, deep in Patagonia amongst throngs of tourists, and the dry stubble like a five o-clock shadow of short tufts of grass and shrubbery covering the treeless hillsides of Calafate, buffeted by winds that don’t seem to stop, and next to the largest lake in Argentina.

PS: More stories later. Drunken Swedes, homeless at dawn, breakdancing at midnight, and really, really big ice cubes. It's a balance here. When I'm writing I'm not out doing. And most of the time, I'd rather be doing.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 10:41 AM | Permalink

On my second day in El Bolson I decided to hike to the top of that 2200 meter Cerro Piltriquitrion to see if I could feel any sparks from one of our so-called “energy centers”. I’m not sure if I felt any different, but I did the hike, normally requiring three to four hours, in just over two. I think this is more testament to my willingness just to suffer solely for bragging rights than to any cosmic caffeine or my physical fitness. A fitness that has already been seriously compromised by three relatively sedentary weeks of red wine, white bread and cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.

I know this sounds crazy, but sometimes I would kill for tofu. Well, maybe not kill. Tofu eaters don’t kill. But maybe I would maim. Or at least use some really strong language.

I digress. The hike itself was spectacular, climbing through thick forests covered in wispy green old man’s beard, past meadows with views of the El Bolson valley, and then up through a rocky, rolling tundra of orange and yellow, along a bubbling little mountain stream lined with green grass and tiny little yellow flowers, all while more of the Patagonian peaks stretched out to the horizon. The hike concluded with a difficult scramble up past the tundra along steep and slippery trails of loose scree and sand. After ten minutes of sliding around and feeling my knees stretch and creak in protest, I opted to rely on the strength of my boots and the balance that comes from nearly ten years of scary Joshua Tree descents and scrambling along the rocky trails of climbing crags and picked my way up through the larger rocks along the trail. Twenty minutes later I was sitting on the windy summit, rewarded with a view that stretched all the way to Chile. To my left I could see the gorgeous Lago Puelo and to my right the summit of Perrito Moreno. Behind me, a dramatic drop of nearly a thousand feet into a green valley between more craggy, granitic peaks punctuated by little alpine lakes of emerald water.

I’ve been running up various mountains on various occasions for a while now. Despite all the obvious metaphors for living one can derive from a climber’s life, I admit I have never found any real zen upon mountain tops. I have, however, found panoramas that have left me speechless, and rewards so fulfilling that once I actually wept. I have found that everything generally looks better from the top of a mountain, and that maybe life is best spent looking outward than inward.

I have also found it’s best not to attempt a mountaintop without a big jar of Advil and a willingness to wobble around for a day or two afterwards.

So that’s what I did. I slept late, hobbled my abused legs down to the park, sat in the sunshine after a pizza and a beer, took of my shirt and shoes, turned on my iPod and just watched the day slide by.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 10:31 AM | Permalink

Calafate. Gonna go check out a really, really big block of ice later. I wonder if Argentines will get offended if I chisel off a chunk of their national park to use with vodka.

What are the odds that the only internet cafe I would find with a laptop connection would be almost at the end of the world?

You can only imagine the speed of this connection.

Did you know that Argentine men frequently kiss when they say hello? I wasn't freaked out by this until someone tried to slip me the tongue.

That's a joke. Tassy and Brent, you can stop your request for pictures.

I have fixed the busted link to the pictures from El Bolson . My bad. I had the file labeled as "private." El Bolson was exciting, but really, it wasn't THAT exciting.

More stories from El Bolson and I'm sure Calafate when I get a chance to type.

Until then, I'll give all you gossip hounds a chance to vent. I'm going to turn off comments again within a day or so, but if you feel compelled to comment on anything, now's your (possibly last) chance.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

El Bolson. It’s kind of like the land that shampoo forgot. When people speak of the unwashed masses, I’m fairly certain they had El Bolson in mind. The place is crawling with dusty, pack-laden, hippy types. Note to self: Don’t start a Fantastic Sams franchise in El Bolson. It’s one big Phish concert, minus the band and the hacky sacks. Good Lord, I could make a killing selling those things down here. Note to self: Look into hack sack importation laws. Regardless, the fashionable elite in El Bolson aren’t concerned with where you bought your clothing, but rather where you made your clothing.

In many ways it’s a lot like Flagstaff used to be back in my GenX glory days. Back when Earth Day wasn’t something people now vaguely recall was a second rate punk band and a big ass pair of boots was an acceptable way to accessorize a pair of cut-offs. El Bolson looks like what would happen if someone got it into their head to clone the Spin Doctors and set them all free in South America. Except of course for the teenagers. They are parading around with low-slung pants, various metal barbs and hoops and such stuck randomly into their faces, studded belts and shoes reminiscent of tugboats. Teenagers, as far as I can tell, are the same here. This phenomenon, I can’t quite figure out. Must be something in the hormones that makes us all want to one day be embarrassed by our hair.

The biggest difference between El Bolson and Bariloche it seems isn’t the number of heads sporting dreadlocks, but the beer. They must sell two liter bottles of Quillnes by the truckload – at least based on the number of people I see walking around the town carrying them. Add to this a seemingly vast array of local brews and you’ve got a mini Milwaukee only with way better weather (at least for right now). This of course made a lot more sense to me once I learned that El Bolson is the hops capitol of South America.

Cerveza por favor. At least I had that Spanish memorized decades ago.

I arrived in El Bolson early on a Saturday afternoon, right as they were having their biweekly artist’s fair in the central plaza of the small, tree lined town, My bladder was bloated and desperate after I sat on a bus for two hours immediately following a breakfast solely of coffee and bottled water.

Upon arriving at El Bolson I was positively desperate for a bathroom. Any longer and I was prepared to begin devising methods of relieving myself en route, using a jacket and an empty bottle of water for privacy. I grabbed my gear and hustled (as much as a person carrying three packs can “hustle”) into the nearest parilla not for the food so much but so I could find a convenient place to relieve myself without having to explain in broken Spanish to the local policia just why I was exposing myself behind the bus station.

Just one more difference between the US and Argentina. Exposing yourself behind a bus station in America is pretty much a tolerated - if not expected - behavior.

My tortured bladder aside, all in all it was a nice trip made easier by a fresh charge on my iPod. The bus was largely full. I didn’t get much of a chance to meet anyone on the trip; even the guy next to me was sleeping. He was a weathered old man in a black wool cap whose hands folded in his lap looked like the leather of an old pair of cowboy boots.

In a not atypical stroke of genius, I managed to reserve a room at the hosteria the furthest away from town. And also not atypical of my masochistic tendencies, I decided not to spend a whole dollar on a cab or a bus but rather to walk the length of El Bolson. At 2 PM. In the sun. With roughly sixty-five pounds of gear spread between my giant, red North Face pack on my back, my computer daypack on my chest, and camera case clipped to my waist. I figured I had a full stomach and an empty bladder; I could use the exercise. I’m not sure just what time I arrived at Hosteria Steiner, but I’m pretty sure I left my right ACL and about two inches of spinal cartilage along the way there.

My room is in a corner above the main house, and I’m pretty sure it hasn’t changed much since they opened in 1933. For certain the sag in the center of my mattress would indicate that much. Not that I cared. I dropped the packs fell into bed and didn’t wake up for a good two hours. I’m all about the siesta.

Despite the prehistoric (although surprisingly comfortable) bed and the thirty minute walk (read trudge punctuated by frequent outbursts of self-directed profanity) from town, the place does appear to have hot water, the staff is just as friendly as I have come to expect of this country, and the wooded property with spectacular mountain views has at least four dogs roaming around on the grounds. I may not smell so good anymore, but I’ve been getting a ton of sloppy, wet-nosed, tongue-action. I promised her that I wouldn’t get smoochy with anyone while I was away, but there’s only so much a man can do to resist. My current crush is a young Sheppard puppy chained up just east of the house under a cherry tree. Every time I visit it’s all I can do to keep this near certifiable case of canine ADHD from leaping atop my head.

El Bolson is virtually overrun with dogs. Strays wander all the streets, and like Bariloche, there appears to be a dog in every home policy in town. One pooch in particular that managed to find me several times on Saturday was a fluffy, long-haired lapdog with a mangled left paw turned drastically askew from a past break. She would walk up to complete strangers in the park, look at them expectantly and bark for a treat. Total diva. Look how cute I am with my busted paw. Now gimme some of that churro and maybe I’ll let you pet me.

I have so dated women like that.

And I totally gave her some of my churro.

The fair was teeming with booths from countless local vendors selling all the usual hippy paraphernalia, caps and bags and scarves, woven and leather goods, stone jewelry, and lots of hand carved tourist crap that looks really cool when you are in Argentina but inevitably will look ridiculous on your coffee table later. Unless you buy one of those hand-made pipes and use it a lot. Then I’m sure most of the stuff will look, like, totally rad.

Best of all, the fair has an amazing amount of locally grown food, boxes of raspberries and blackberries and cherries, milanesa sandwiches, papas fritas, and locally brewed beers – all which could be purchased for under a dollar. I have decided to eat at the park whenever I have the chance. Inevitably the food is better and far less expensive than at any restaurant. Throw in a bottle of water from the supermercado across the street, and I could conceivably eat three meals a day for about five bucks.

The fair was overrun with the local counter culture, and bad jugglers, trapeze artists in the trees, and musicians all performed in the park. I bought a CD from a surprisingly good rock act that just played its heart out that afternoon to a small crowd of cheering locals. The CD coast me a buck and a half, I figured it was the least I could do to show my support for the arts and help replace the two strings and untold number of sticks those guys broke during their gig. I haven’t the foggiest as to what they were singing about, but I caught the words corazon a lot so I’m pretty sure they weren’t calling for the scalps of bald American backpackers or anything.

I watched the band with a couple from England, Patrick and Amy. They have been making their way around South America for several months and borrowed my Lonely Planet to get an idea of where they might find some additional hostels. After a week of camping in the rain, these two were just desperate for some pampering and the luxury of things like running water and a roof. It was the first conversation in English I have had since she left. I somehow managed to contain my delight at having someone to talk to and actually let them do most of the talking. I did collapse upon them and weep openly once I heard English, albeit a tormented English under a Patrick’s heavy Irish accent, but I’m sure that didn’t seem creepy at all.

In all honesty, the language gap wouldn’t be so wide if I didn’t have the memory of a retarded goldfish. I know I have heard the words before and know I have used them before but when suddenly required to recall them, I’m left stuttering and stammering and barely able to speak my own native tongue. I know it would do me well to take a Spanish class while I am in South America, but I’m not sure I have time at least until after I return from Antarctica, and by that point, really, does it matter? Perhaps that’s how I’ll use those final two weeks. Find me a town on a coast somewhere, someplace where shoes and socks are considered formalwear, and hire a patient local to sit with me and teach me how to do more than order another round of margaritas. Then again, after another round of margaritas, comprehension is both unnecessary and unlikely anyhow.

It’s a beautiful day here in El Bolson, and frankly I’m tired of sitting in this pizza place and typing away when I can be outside killing skin cells in the park. Until sufficiently inspired, hasta. Keep America warm for me.

Posted by themightyjimbo at 09:16 AM | Permalink