Ahora, mas sabor!

Valle Chacabucco, Aysen, Chile

Wow. so one week down. Justin and I arrived at around 5pm last Saturday and left Sunday afternoon to head out to our work site. Two Brits arrived the day before us (Jey and Amy from Bristol) and a Kiwi (Femke from Wellington) arrived a little after us. The five of us hastily threw our gear into the backs of two pickup trucks and drove for 50 minutes into the Patagonian backcountry. 8 other volunteers had been at this site for the last 6 days. A couple of employees set up an Asada. It was amazing -- basically a giant rack of lamb skewered and stuck into the ground beside a large fire inside a shack. Two hours on one side, an hour on the others. The fatty meat fell off the bone and was simply a fantastic mess of a meal.

After the meal the employees loaded up the trucks with gear and the extra family members who had come to partake, and left 6 of the week-old volunteers to train us the following day. Turns out the other volunteers had all thought they were leaving that day, but Conservacion Patagonica had just changed their minds and decided to leave them for another two days. So yeah they can be a little flaky - but they were good about dropping off enough food to keep us happy.

Oh so the site! We pitched our tents in the middle of a grassy field near an old Gaucho shack. The shack was an amazingly tacked together bunch of sheet metal and hand hewn logs, buuut it had an amazing wood fired, cast iron stove. The view from the meadow was some nice tree-covered and rocky mountains.
The most amazing thing about it was how underwhelming our location was. It was New Hampshire, or maybe Montana, but really nothing too different than something you could find down a dirt road somewhere back in the States. Justin and I both agreed on this and were perplexed by it. After 5 days of pulling fences from 9-5 we took a full day off out at the site. I woke up early to go try to get some sunrise shots over the lake that was supposed just down the valley. Thick, deadly-spiky, scrub barred me from reaching anythign but the closest small hill, but the view from the top of there was enough to correct any misgivings about our location. massive snowy ranges loomed on most sides, but were obscurred from our base camp by the lower hills. Downing some of the ubiquitous stale, white, biscuits for breakfast on the top of the hill, I plotted a more ambitous route for further exploration later in the day. I got back down to camp before any of the others had awoken, stoked the stove, and prepared a second breakfast. Justin and I set off on the hike around 12pm.
The really amazing thing about hiking out here is that the only trails that exist were formed by sheep or cattle and are only still viable if they have be utilized by the massive population of wild Guanaco, and most of the hiking is forced off trail bushwhacking. My two favorite national parks in the US are Capitol Reef and Teddy Rooselvelt -- you probably haven´t heard of them, but that´s why their my favorite. You can set off and not see another soul for hours or days and the parks are so under utilized that you don´t necessarily need to stick to trails. Here, there aren´t even trails to stick to in the first place. And actually, there aren´t even maps -- navigation is easily performed though by simply pulling your barings from one of the many giant mountain ranges nearby. Needless to say it was a great hike.

The work was pulling fences. It was nice and mindless. The kind of thing that you master within about 30 minutes. The large group was a bit much to handle, but once they left the remaining group of 5 (Jey, Amy, Femke, Susan (super nice Chilean from Puerto Montt), Justin and I) was fantastic. We averaged about 3 hours of cooking time per dinner. Highlights include the night we made pizza from scratch without an recipe (or ever having made bread before) in a cast iron wood fired oven. Con Pat drops off bread, butter, jam, cereal, fuit and veggies, yogurt, etc. every couple of days and leave us to cook it up how we see fit.

We´ll definitely all be in great shape after 6 weeks here. Forearms get major workouts trying to role wire fencing, and lower backs will either be ripped or, well, ripped to pieces.

Okay well that was a senseless brain dump. I get about 30 minutes of internet once a week apparently, so I´ll do my best to keep in touch.