daylight savings time comes to argentina

Well, one of the new president's first orders has been to institute daylight saving time down here for the first time ever. Why she's instituting it after the amount of daylight starts to shrink I don't know, but here's the timeline of this event:

December 22nd: The president announces to the country that daylight saving time will be starting at the end of the month to save energy (a problem each summer from air conditioners).

December 26th: The bill is passed through Congress to change the time at midnight on Dec. 29th.

December 27th: The bill is signed into law.

December 28th: People line up at their butchers to buy extra beef, apparently preparing for the Apocalypse. Or at least the end of reliable meat, which to some may seem like the Apocalypse.

December 29th, midnight: The time changes. The nation falls into chaos (OK, not really, but only because it was a Sunday followed by two days of holiday or at least quasi-holiday).

By now, things seem to have worked themselves out. The big snags, anyway. I'm curious to see what happens when things jump back an hour in three months.

This change is only a temporary measure, though. After this year's test run, the Congress will again have to debate whether to put the measure through again next year.

Oh Argentina, you're trying so hard to be wacko. Good on ya.

the traveler's disease

Having a beer or two with some friends the other night, the topic turned to traveling. Specifically, the traveler's disease. That need to stretch every dollar, every peso, every baht as far as you can. Every backpacker suffers from it, as you want to stay on the road as long as you can. Even if you have a time limit, you may desire some cash in your account upon your return home, or try and get an extra activity in in a special place (skydiving anyone?). People will do some strange things to save money, things that would seem downright weird to anyone living a 'normal' life with a 'job'.

For example:

• I read once about a guy who traveled around South America and would simply pitch his tent in town squares to avoid having to pay for hostels. When the police would come along and tell him to leave, he'd pack up and move to the next town.
• The traveler's meal - pasta and tomato sauce. I'm sure many a backpacker has sworn off of pasta after traveling. It's an easy thing to make, as it is so ubiquitous and can be bought almost entirely prepared these days, what with pre-made sauces and the like. Can't say I haven't had my fair share, though I do prefer and nice simple rice and beans mix.
• Passing on nutrition. This kind of relates to the previous point. Meals cooked in hostels aren't always the most nutritious things you can eat. There's a lot of beer and pizza, cookies for breakfast, and the aforementioned pasta meal (nice if there are veggies in it, but pasta sauce only counts as one veggie serving. Maybe.) You find what is the cheapest and eat it, though this can get out of hand if you're doing any intense activities like hiking or biking.
• Your own personal travel comfort level drops. Planes cost money, taxis are more expensive than buses, and walking is the cheapest of all. We plan on doing LOTS of bus riding and plenty of walking around cities in the coming months. There are definite upsides to this, though. Buses offer the truest cross-section of a country one can find. Maybe you'll have a friendly chap next to you, or maybe you'll just absorb the environment as the bus bounces along a mountain road, a baby crying next to you and a dog whining somewhere on the floor. In addition, walking is the best way to discover magical nooks and crannies in a city and also a great way to shed pounds (when you're doing it for six or eight hours a day, it's great exercise!)
• Seeing more of the small towns. Small towns can go one way or another - they can be incredibly cheap, giving you a quiet place to stop and organize and calm down, or they can be unbelievably expensive, as there is only one place in town and he knows that he has no competition. Big cities may have competition that drives down price, but life is generally more expensive. I like chillin' in a little pueblo every now and then, taking time to collect myself after a mad rush across the country.
• Deal-hunting. A good traveler looks for the best deal, rather than handing money over to the first person who has what they want. Chris has been invaluable for this, being able to call ahead and find out prices for lodging, tours, etc. Heading up into Bolivia and Paraguay, however, we're going to have to sharpen our bargaining skills fast or we're going to be brow-beaten into buying so fast. Related to this is the search for free stuff. Who doesn't love free stuff? Certainly not backpackers - buffets, free drink nights, chances to win, backpackers will take everything they can get. Want not waste not!
• Working on vacation. Just as we went WWOOFing, people will work short periods of time to help extend their time away - teaching English, working on a farm, volunteering, working in a bar or hostel, pretty much anything that will help them pay for room and board.

These are just a few ways to placate this terrible, wonderful illness. I'm not embarrassed to say I have it - I was raised to know the value of a dollar and make it go far - but I do notice it in the presence of others. Everyone has their own level of comfort and that directly affects how deeply in the throes of this illness you can find someone. Here's hoping you catch this and the travel bug together soon!

now that's a collection

Tooling around on the flickrblog today, I found out that the Library of Congress has decided to share some of its photos with everyone through flickr. How cool is that? Now you can see photos normally locked off, or at least generally inaccessible to most people. Of course, it's not the entire collection, but there is still a lot to see. I know what I'm doing next time I'm looking for time to kill on the net.

andean patagonia

If coastal Patagonia drove some to depression and suicide with its unending flatness and never-changing scrub, Andean Patagonia threatens to overwhelm one with its thousands of feet of rocky mountains towering above wherever you are. Even if you're not looking up at them, you can feel the presence of the mountains around you, above you, watching you, though you know that you are the size of an ant to them. Trees abound, hardy plants populate the south, flowers cover the north, and trees grow sideways from the winds. The difference is pretty stark - the south can be an incredibly harsh climate, with horrid winds in the summer and temperatures plunging in the winter, making it a virtually uninhabitable environment in places. As you get into the north, however, it becomes a temperate paradise in the summer, a rich, fruitful mountain getaway. There are some features that match that of the Patagonian coast - Welsh villages, large expanses of quiet, unsettled land - but being so close to the Andes, lakes and forests and flowers are rather plentiful, giving this part of Patagonia a much different feel.

The last post found us finishing up along the Patagonian coast, drawing close to the end of the world (Ushuaia, though we never made it quite that far down). Instead, we made our way - via another 20 hour bus ride, one might think we're starting to like these things - to El Calafate, the home of the Perito Moreno glacier. This gargantuan piece of ice is one of the only advancing - or at least, not receding - glaciers left in the world. Actually, one of two, the other being in Chile on the other side of the Andes. While it was a bit more expensive than the rest of the country, we couldn't pass up an opportunity to visit glaciers right as spring was hitting and the ice was breaking. We visited the most famous - Perito Moreno, due to how easy it is to access and how close you can get to it - and often heard the giant-bone-cracking sound of ice breaking off into the turquoise glacial lakes. I spent a lot of time just looking at all of the ice, the blues and greys and whites, as it minutely advanced towards or receded from me, preparing itself for the expected colossal break-up in March. We also took a short tour of other glaciers and a silent, slightly spooky ice-filled lake. Natural ice sculptures waited out their life in this quiet basin. The entire trip was frost-tinged and awe-inspiring.

From glaciers we headed across the border into Chilean Patagonia in order to tackle what might be the hardest part of our trip - a four-day hike through the massive and gorgeous Torres del Paine national park. We'd heard about the breathtaking views, icebergs, forests, and hard climbing and decided to take them on. Renting equipment and stocking up on food in nearby Puerto Natales, we headed off, choosing to do the path in the opposite direction than it is commonly done. It turned out that we had chosen the much cheaper option - sleeping in hostels and eating in restaurants is very expensive in the park. Compared to a meal in town, a dinner at the park is about five times as much, and there's even a luxury hotel with Internet for the low, low price of $400US a night! Every day was a magical day full of nature's amazing beauty and power. We drank fresh glacial water whenever we wanted, camped under the stars (to the sound of glaciers breaking one night), saw rainbows, mountain flowers, mountain peaks, rainbows, sunrises, glacial lakes... the list could go on for paragraphs. Too long, anyway. There weren't enough adjectives. Chris, however, suffered from the start from a terrible case of evil boots, giving her a grand total of 15 blisters by the end of the hike, stopping her from seeing the namesakes of the park on the last day, and making each step a practice in self-control of pain. I think she deserves a medal for making it through the entire thing - I think I would've been insisting on her carrying me. Regardless, we made it through and had great weather, actually getting to see the Torres del Paine themselves, giant towers of granite lording it over the rest of the mountains. It is often too cloudy to see them clearly, but I couldn't have asked for clearer weather. There were constant fantabulous displays of Mother Nature's grandeur. I highly suggest checking out the pictures, otherwise you will have to read millions of words. Needless to say, if you ever find yourself down on this continent, this is an experience not to be missed - it will stay with you as long as you can dream.

A couple of days (well, nights and days, really) spent hanging around parks and drinking cheap wine in towns between said bus trips got us back into Argentina and on to our next destination - Esquel. We had been hoping to see some 3000-year-old trees, but were disappointed to find out that they were virtually inaccessible as it was not tourist season yet. That said, we did head down to another tiny Welsh village an hour away to catch their annual celebration of the settling of the city and enjoy another delectable Welsh tea. This year, the celebration had a special treat - a choir from Wales was making its way to three most Welsh towns in the country and giving free concerts. It was a fabulous concert and I got to hear the gorgeous cacaphony that is Welsh for the first time in my life. Back in Esquel, though disappointed by our lack of tree-seeing, we did get to see one of the last running steam lines in existence these days head off for its weekly trip out. La Tronchita used to run the longest steam line in the world before it was privatized 15 years ago, but it still runs mainly for the tourists. I can see why the sounds and sights of these massive beasts inspired writers and dreamers in the past.

Our last stop in this email was at Argentine hippie central, El Bolsón (this is what The Shire is translated as in Spanish in the Lord of the Rings movies). With handmade crafts, jams, beers, waffles, instruments, jewelery, and clothing in its unmatched market, this place attracts backpackers like flies to delicious jams, waffles, beers...well, you get my drift. We met a lot of friendly people here, relaxed a bit, did some hikes up into the mountains, drank some great beer, ate a tonne of delicious food (including the best ice cream Christine or I have ever had in my life with some of the most unique flavours - cardamom, dulce de leche with mulberries, lemon and elderberry flowers), and just enjoyed our last stop before we headed off to the farm to begin our WWOOFing work. It was the perfect time to be at this latitude - warm, not hot at all but not cold at all, either. I was really quite sad to be leaving this beautiful forested-and-laked region so soon. It's no surprise that this place goes insane in the summer with Argentines wanting to have a nice relaxing vacation amongst all this green.

And with another 20-hour bus ride, we headed up to Mendoza, on to the last leg of this trip for 2007.

hey, here are some photos

With the summary I just posted, I forgot to include a link to the photos here! There are three sets that go with that letter: Perito Moreno glacier and the surrounding ice fields, Four Days of Paine, a hike around the Torres del Paine national park, and Andean Patagonia, our stops along the mountains. Enjoy!

visitors

I love having people come visit me. It can be a bit of stress, especially in a in a place where I can speak the language (or at least know how to get around it) and they don't, but it's great showing people a new side of a ginormous world that they haven't seen before. It also opens my eyes when I do things with them, things I may have done a thousand times before. There's also the always-welcome bonus of getting to spend holiday time with my friends. Quite literally, there are dozens of reasons people should visit me.

I just finished a great month with some close friend from Ottawa, J & R. This was their first time off the continent in a looong time and first time in a really foreign environment. They did awesome here, picking up language, customs, and lots of cheap, beautiful souvenirs. We played cards, took pictures (so many pictures), and did a lot of walking.

These are magical times for me. When I can share, not just through photos and words, but through experiences themselves, what I have been seeing for however long I've been in a place...well, there's not much better. It was fabulous having my family visit last year and seeing them engage in the environment. When my brother and my best friend visited me in Taiwan (at the same time, for a while), we all had a holiday together that really was just a lot of chillin'. They got to explore Taiwan independently and with me, finding what they want and showing me things I passed by every day.

I've seen a lot of photos in the past months from people who went and stayed on a resort for two weeks in Cuba or the Dominican Republic. I guess I can understand that being waited on hand and foot for a couple of weeks on a tropical beach is pretty endearing to a lot of people, especially in the middle of winter. Where's the interaction, though? How much do you know about the places you've visited? Don't get me wrong - I love beaches and alcohol as well. Traveling has just made me want to know a place, every place I go. To me, it's like walking into someone's house, eating their food, leaving a few bucks, and walking out. How do you build relationships from that?

Anyway, this offer isn't going to last much longer, folks. These are the golden days - a place to stay, a guide, a launching pad - I won't be abroad forever. A home is in the future, somewhere - a garden, an art supply, even (gasp!) a steady job that may last for more than a year. Take advantage of me! Please!

Hope to see you soon!