Good Game Meat!

Where to begin -- these last few days have been amazing. 2 days with the Perito Moreno glacier, then yesterday crossing into Chile, and here I am in Torres Del Paine. I had wanted to go on all day hike today, but my stomach is not itself (too much CARNE?) so I am spending the morning with a cup of tea, looking out the window at the crazy Patagonian winds whipping the lake into white caps.

Apparently, this is "normal" weather here, but I have never (obviously) seen wind like this. Yesterday, crossing into Chile, I was in a van with 6 people and their luggage, and when we stopped at the border, the van was actually rocking in the wind! I did a short hike yesterday afternoon just to shake off the 7 hour van ride, and was kind of surprised when the guy at the hotel suggested I take hiking poles (they have an umbrella stand full of them in the lobby!) I tried to explain to him that I was just popping up to a nearby lookout point -- not planning a summit of los Torres or anything, but he firmly put the poles in my hand as I went out the door. I felt a bit silly (not there was anyone to see me), scrambling up this hill -- not mountain -- side with 2 hiking poles, but then the trail came out of the forest and the full force of the wind hit me. My jacket (I'm not going to call it a "windbreaker" under these circumstances) instantly became a parasail and I was literally blown off my feet, into a prickly "mother in law cushion" (a particularly dense and nasty thorny bush). The hiking poles became much clearer to me at that point -- you really need them to anchor you into the trail, and even with them, sometimes you have to stop and hunker down. When I got to the top of the crest, a lookout point called Miradores del Condor (a condor politely showed up and glided around for me just as I "summited"), the wind was so forceful that I had enjoy the view, and the condor, scooting around on my butt. The wind is exhilarating though, once you stop being afraid of it, which I (mostly) have.

Aside from the condor, I saw several dozen guanaco and a few hares, but I have not yet seen a Patagonian silver fox, which looks so damn cute in its picture -- it is a about the size of a house cat and quite fluffy. There are signs all over the park saying "Don't feed the foxes!" because I guess they are quite pesky to campers and become dependent on human food, but if I thought it would get me some time with one, I might not be above bribing it with a sandwich.

Crossing over from Argentina yesterday, it took about 7 hours to go what is about 100 miles as the crow flies, because there is no direct road from El Calafate to Torres Del Paine. I had no idea before I came here that there was such a long history of border squabbling between Argentina and Chile, and that, even now that the borders are fixed, there is a reluctance to make it easy for visitors to go from one country to the other. Apparently, after long negotiations, it was agreed a few years ago to build a road from El Calafate to Torres Del Paine, but even though the Chileans built their half, the Argentinians thought they would lose all their tourists to Chile if they built their half, and that road now peters out at the border. (This squabbling has had some incredibly positive consequences -- the string of enormous national parks along the Argentine side of the border were established back in the beginning of the 20th century before anyone had even thought of preserving the environment as a land grab by the Argentine government, since there was no population in the area to help it stake its claim. It also has some odd consequences in that the maps of each country don't show any features of the other - so a lake that looks small on the Argentine side is actually huge, but you can only find out about the large chunk on the Chilean side by taking a map of each country and lining them up side by side).

So anyway, you have go on a roundabout 7 hour journey, which gives you a chance to take in the vastness and emptiness of the landscape. I got to see so many guanaco, which was wonderful, and also lesser rheas (known as chaike here), which are a fun ostrichy flightless bird. I spotted my first group of chaike about 2 hours out from El Calafate and couldn't help exclaiming. "They're beautiful! Oh look, there's a baby!"

Martin, the van driver, a stocky fellow who looked like he might be part Chinese, had been driving stoically in silence to that point, ignoring the gringos in the van and listening to his (execrable) Argentine pop music. Suddenly he burst into a flood of excited Spanish.

I asked him to slow down, but he couldn't help himself. The subject obviously touched his heart. I managed to pick up the word, "condimento", and it dawned on he that he was giving me a recipe for chaike. Out of a 20 minute disquisition, I gathered that they have red, gamy meat, with a rich flavor, that the thigh is the best part, that they have to be simmered for a long time, and that, if I felt like postponing my trip to Chile, he could take me to meet his cousin who could get me one and his wife would cook it for me. I think.

I declined the offer (a true Chowhound would have taken it, I know), and tried to draw Martin out on other subjects, including that failsafe, soccer. But he lapsed back into silence, and didn't talk to me again for the rest of the ride. Even a discussion of other Argentine delicacies, like lamb, only brought out a few grunts. I'd clearly stumbled across one of his few passions -- eating wildlife.

I wished I could have introduced him to Francis, the guide who took Stephanie and I on a jungle walk in Belize a few years ago. Everything we saw, squirrlels, birds, gibnuts, deer, Francis would briefly describe the animal's habits and habitat, and then conclude with a heartfelt "good game meat!" (When he looked appreciatively at Steph, I was half afraid that what he was really thinking was "good game meat!")

It's an interesting thing -- I love eating and I love wild animals, but I get very nervous when people want to eat wild animals. Pretty hypocritical of me!

There is a line for this computer, so I'll sign off for now... even though I wanted to write about ice trekking, wine tasting, and glaciers....