Great Argentine warning signs

Beware Feral Cows! Seriously, though a Feral Cow will kick your ass if she thinks you are messing with her Feral Calf. And let's not even talk about Feral Bulls.



OK, I can see forbidding dogs in a national park. Apparently, even a leashed dog will scare off rare Andean deer because they won't go anywhere they can smell dog pee. But who takes their cat camping and hiking? I have a feeling some obscure Argentinian anti-discrimination lobby is at work here.


My favorite of all. But quite serious, apparently something like 23 people have been killed by standing too close to the glacier when it is calving (glacier speak for having icebergs break off of it).

NSFW: The Vagina Iceberg

Don't tell me you don't see it!

Fear and Jim Leff in Santiago

So, Monday I did my final hike, climbed to a glacial lake, scrambling over boulders up and down, and enjoying the company of a huge gang of 20 somethings from Rio -- apparently everyone in Rio flees town when Carneval starts -- they all talked about it exactly the way we´d talk about New Year´s Eve in Times Square.

Monday night the last succulent lomo, and then bright and early Tuesday morning it was Don't Cry for Me Patagonia time, as I bused five long hours to Punta Arenas, and then flew north to Santiago.

My heart was racing as I deplaned in Santiago. Everywhere I've been people have told me lurid crime stories about Santiago, the nicest looking old ladies or well-dressed young girls are apparently all trained thieves, my guidebook more or less advised handing over your wallet to the first Santiagan you meet so as to avoid being knifed, kidnapped and fleeced down to your underwear, and the email of Santiago highlights I´d received from a native friend of a friend concluded with equally dire warnings. As I got ready to leave the relative safety of the airport, I reviewed everything: no jewelry -- check; wallet, inside pocket - check; watch -- cheap timex bought for this trip -- check; clothes, non-descript -- check; purse, zipper on the inside, hand over zipper, arm clutching bag to body-- check; facial expression, hostile - check. Then I touched my head. Oh, shit. Prada sunglasses. I´m done for. According to all my info, I might as well strip naked and crawl pitifully to the U.S. embassy right about now. I am a TARGET. Maybe, I hoped, the hordes of wily street thieves will mistake my sunglasses for cheap Chinese knockoffs....

When I miraculously reached my hotel with all my possessions intact, I started thinking about the similar warnings I´d received about Nairobi, Bangkok, Palermo and a host of other places where nothing has ever happened to me. I thought of Armando, heading off to Brazil wishing he had an armor-plated vehicle. The fact of the matter is that the only places I have ever been robbed are New York and New Haven. I´ve never had so much as a lira taken anywhere else. But I get terrified by the horror stories every time! I remember the first time I took an overnight train in Spain, I was terrified to fall asleep because of those probably urban myths about the thieves who would pump knock out gas into the sleeping cars... I couldn,t have slept even if I wanted to, since I was lying on top of all my possessions and it was freaking uncomfortable.

Anyway, after all the warnings, I couldn{t bring myself to go out to dinner, and ate in the hotel restaurant. It was actually decent, and the waiters were super nice, although I didn{t share their enthusiasm for the local liqueur (boldo) that they made me try. Nonetheless, I was haunted by a different type of fear the whole time: I could just see the spirits of Jim Leff and Calvin Trillin materializing before my eyes and saying: "First, you turned down the chance to eat the Nandu the bus driver´s cousin was going to catch for you, and now, you have one night in Santiago, and instead of searching out back alley shacks where Mapuche grandmothers grind their own corn and make mysterious penguin ceviches, you are EATING IN A HOTEL RESTAURANT."

So, today, after a visit to the Museum of National History and a coffee in the Plaza des Armas, I was ready to make amends to the Gods of Chow. Clutching my purse in the perscribed manner, I made my way through thronged downtown Santiago (busy, a little dirty, sad begging dogs and people; the light, the mix of decripit and elegant, the palm trees and the colors all reminding me more than a bit of Palermo). I was in possession of that Chowhound piece of holy writ: A Local Tip. The friend of a friend who e'mailed me about Santiago had told me that I couldn{t leave Santiago without trying a Chilean hot dog with the works (known as el completo), and that the best hot dogs were to be had at a place called Domino on Huerfanos. In time-honored Chowhound fashion, my tipster hadn´t given me a cross street or an address, so I had to EARN my hot dog by walking the length of Huerfanos.

After a few blocks of suspiciously glaring at every well dressed woman (cutpurses all of them!) who came within a few feet of me, I spotted Domino "Fuente de Soda" across the street. I stuck my head in and my heart sank. It was a counter operation (major Leffpoints), with no seats (even more Leffpoints), the local patrons were piled three deep, with nary a tourist in sight (Leffbonanza)and there seemed to be a ritual associated with ordering, eating and paying that wasn´t readily apparent to outsiders (off the Leff charts). None of this was the problem. The problem was that every single one of the probably 60 patrons crowded into the counter space was male. All probably kind and well-intentioned, but I just couldn,t deal. I backed out, hot dog less.

I spent the next few blocks kicking myself mentally. You call yourself a foodie? A traveler? You, you,re no better than a TOURIST, with your hotel restaurants and easily scared off nature.

Before I could go too far down that path, I spotted my salvation: Antoher Domino Fuente de Soda! True it wasn´t the Domino on HUERFANOS, which as we all know, can be the key in these situations. But it was a Domino, it was slightly less crowded, and it had some women in it!

I shouldered my way to the counter, wedged myself elbow to elbow between two business suited guys intently eating hotdogs, ordered my El Completo, and had one of those not quite meaningful Spanish-Italian conversations with the (rather handsome)counter man. He shouted my order to somewhere in the back, and with some ritual seeming wipes and flourishes gave me a glass of Coke and a paper napkin.

After a few seconds, the El Completo appeared. It was a (nicely meaty) hot dog covered with lots of mayo, some salsa, some ketchup and a lot of chopped tomatoes. It cost less than $2.00, and it was quite tasty, as far as really mayonnaise-y hot dogs go. More importantly, it gave me back some of my dignity. As I wiped the last bits of mayo from my cheeks, chin and fingers, I felt I had at least partially redeemed myself for the hotel restaurant. If I could eat some roasted sheep entrails before my plane leaves, I{d be in like Flynn....

Of course, as I walked away, a little voice (Leff? Trillin?) in my head muttered "Yea, but it wasn{t the Domino on Huerfanos... You really should go back and COMPARE THE TWO."

Mula!

So I lost my heart today to a small brown mare called Mula. I don't know enough Spanish to know if that's like naming your dog Wolf, or maybe worse, Mutt, but she didn't have a mulish disposition at all. I was actually quite scared when I got on her -- I didn't have that adolescent horse thing that many girls have, and I can count the number of times I've been on a horse on one hand. Then I got worried that horses can smell fear, and that made me more afraid... But of course, she was a well trained trail horse, and she knew exactly what she was doing, and all I had to do was murmur, "Who's a good horse, then?" and scratch her behind her ears from time to time. She scared me anew when she started to canter, but once I got over worrying about falling off, it was exhilarating. Hi ho Tonto and a way, and all that.

I've actually been scared many times this trip -- scared ice climbing on the glacier (I was in a small group of 3, and the glacier guide decided to "be a little crazy" -- we had the complete opposite of the North Korean catamaran experience -- over ice hill and over ice dale for 3 1/2 heartstopping hours); scared rock climbing along the lake near the glaciers when my 25 year old rock climbing guide said to Cecilia and myself, "since it's just us, fuck the trail" [what's with these Argentinian guides? I never met a group of people so ready to throw away the rulebook -- I guess this is exploring nature without worrying about liability -- I haven't signed a waiver form since I've been here, pretty cool in the end] and proceeded to dash off swinging from rock to rock at 25 year old speed, while a not-so-little voice inside my head was screaming "dude, I'm gonna be 40 soon!" and another not-so-little voice screamed back, "don't let them see THAT -- better to die crushed on some rocks first." And now scared because I've decided to do a mega hike tomorrow for my last day in the park -- hard, long, with a major boulder scramble at the end.

But I think it's good to scare yourself, ESPECIALLY when you're staring 40 in the face. It's easy to feel old, or at least middle-aged, getting fat at your desk in New York, and the things I've done this trip have made me feel better about the impending BIRTHDAY. If this is middle-age, it's not so bad.

Urgh. I don't want to sound all preachily How Stella Got Her Groove Back (and I already had THAT experience a few years ago in Italy, and anyway, it's obviously not about the gaucho boys...or it will be obvious when I can post pictures) so I will leave you with a puzzling conversation I had with a British journalist today.

She is taking a vacation here after working for a month in Antartica, where she was writing a number of articles on climate change, environmental impact of tourism, etc. there. I was talking to her very excitedly about the FOX that I finally saw (cute as a button and very clever looking, exactly as advertised), as well as the literally hundreds of guanaco alive and dead (puma kills) that I saw today.

She: "I can tell you are the sort of person who is really keen on wildlife." (Said disdainfully, for reasons I cannot tell). "In that case, you might be the sort who would actually enjoy Antartica."

I: "Yes, I would love to go. It's just that it's very expensive..."

She: "Of course, if you really love wildlife, you should stay home."

I: "From Antartica?"

She: "From Antartica. From here. From anywhere. From an ecological standpoint, people are destroying the pristineness of these landscapes by visiting them. Someone who is really dedicated to conservation and wildlife should stay home."

[Brief interlude where we discuss carbon emissions and plane travel, and she tells me of a confusing sounding British system where you absolve your conscience by paying 100 extra pounds for your plane ticket which is then used to conserve the carbon load of your particular plane journey somewhere else.]

Returning to the subject of wildlife, she says again "So, I'm surprised that you are here, given that you seem passionate about animals."

I (half joking, half annoyed): "Yes, but you're here, surely, you are destroying the pristineness of their habitat too?"

She: "Yes, but I don't really love wildlife..."

Hmmmmm.

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....

They eat guanacos, don´t they?

A bit of sad news to report. On the bus back to El Calafate this morning, we stopped at the same little roadside ¨truck stop" that I stopped at on the way to El Chalten. These truck stops are just like you would imagine them from movies about the pampas, or the wild west for that matter. A tiny wood house by the side of the road. Hens and dogs in the yard. You walk into a dark smoky room, and an impossibly old guy in the corner with a beer in front of him and a marlboro in his mouth stares at you like you are the first foreign woman he´s ever seen, while his granddaughter serves you coffee or beer from behind a small flyspecked counter. The sign says that there are six kinds of empanadas, but both Sunday and today, when I ask hopefully about the exotic sounding banana and cheese empanada, the granddaughter shrugs, points to the empanadas, and says ¨carne.¨ It´s OK. They´re yummy anyway, only a little grease, a lot of yummy carne and a few onions.

The closer the Argentininans stay to carne the better the food is. I have a sneaking suspicion that Marcel from Top Chef was cooking at my last hotel, Los Cerros, because there was ill-considered foam bedecking most everything, from an ill-considered in and of itself beet and lemongrass soup (goat cheese foam), to the much sounder seasonal fruits (vanilla mint foam). The meals were exquisitely presented, to match the truly lovely decor (you can see it on the website ), but everything that wasn´t simply lamb, beef, or pork was inedible. There was a lot of scraping off of glazes, and garnishes. Because underneath, the meat -- I can´t decide which I love more, pink soft non'muttony lamb or richer, redder beef -- is perfect. To mix things up the other night, I got a pork steak, and it had the nutty flavor of a happy pig. But the sickly sweet wild honey port glaze was DISGUSTING. And the ¨Andean potato-onion rosti¨ turned out to be a bizarre strip of shoe-leathery potato skins topped with gluey onion jam and coriander sprouts?! I didn´t eat it. And that was a feat, making the local potatoes inedible, because I´ve been loving the yellow moist potato-y potatoes, and even considering the heresy that the Argentine potato might even be more deliciously simply lovable than the Argentine steak.

Another night a deconstructed (argh!) cherry tomato basil and goat cheese salad left me puzzled why the chef would take the time to peel the cherry tomatos, but not to check and see whether the goat cheese was good for anything other than scooping into cherry tomato size and shaped balls.

Go back to Vegas, Marcel! That El Bulli guy really has a lot to answer for. I´m sure most of the high-end tourists turning up at this place (they wouldn´t be here if they weren´t some of sort of naturalist types, there´s literally NOTHING to do in El Chalten except hike, climb, ice climb or horseback ride) would rather have solid simple Argentine barbecue. Maybe with some decorative gauchos for effect. But everyone at the hotel is from Buenos Aires, Madrid, New York, LA -- they don´t come to El Chalten to learn about the used-to-be-latest (poorly rendered) annoying trends in Continental cuisine. The wine is great-- and cheap. The meat is great. The potatos are great. The smoked trout and salmon is good. There are the ingredients for simple, unforgettable meals.... I´m going to get a t'shirt made that says ¨Stick to the Steak!¨

Anyway, you can see I´ve been avoiding the sad news I mentioned earlier. When I first came to the truck stop on Sunday, there was an adorable baby guanaco in the yard that the family of the Hostaria was keeping as a sort of a pet. It loved humans, and would bound up and lick you and kiss you, and sniff in your pockets to see if you had brought it treats. Kind of a hairy soft llama-like Pogo. You can imagine how much I loved it and wanted to bring it home! I thought Grady could practice herding it.

Guanacos are much diminished in population, like the buffalo, I guess, but contrary to what I heard before I got here, they are not much eaten, except perhaps as a curiousity. They WERE eaten by the indigenous people, but as Cecilia explained it, the meat is sweet and very tough, like horse, and once cows and sheep became readily available, eating guanaco went out of fashion. (¨Since I can´t post my pictures at the moment, here is what they look like: )

Anyway, I was looking to seeing the guanaco today, on my way back to El Calafate, but when we stopped at the rest stop, only the chickens were in the yard. I wandered around a bit, to see if it had gone down to the river to get something to drink, but it was clear it was no where to be seen. I went inside, and since I can´t understand anything the impossibly old man says (I don´t know that native spanish speakers would understand him either -- there´s always a guy like him, isn´t there? I know in Sicily, every bar worth its salt has a toothless old guy in a coppola who speaks a dialect so thick that his own children don´t understand him....), I asked the granddaughter.

¨Guanaco? Guanaco?¨

¨Muerto,¨ she shrugged. Then smiling, happy to be practicing her English, ¨he got eat¨, pointing towards the back of the room.

I thought she was pointing at the sinister old man. I knew I didn´t like him! Puffing away, staring at my boobs, and now, indulging an atavistic taste for guanaco meat....

Before I could get too carried away with my fantasy, the real culprit, a lovely thick haired Alsatian, came over and licked my hand. I didn´t want to pet him, and backed away. ¨Bad dog! Murderer!¨ He nosed my side, and eyed my empanada hopefully, wagging his tail.

So that´s the sad news. I guess the moral of the story is, don´t get too attached to baby animals in a land of huge ranch dogs.

Happy Valentine´s Day, everyone. I had the excitement of using a telefonica to call my Valentine this morning, which took me back about 20 years to my first trip to Europe. But the hotels don´t have phones in the rooms! Outside of town, there´s no cell coverage even, and everything is satellite. So, telefonica it is

Too tired to type

I didn´t mean to disappear, but these mountains are kicking my ass! Yesterday, an early morning bus from El Calafate to El Chalten, a town of just under 1000 near the Fitzroy Range. A 12 mile hike yesterday, and another one today, incredible views, hot sunshine changing to blisteringly freezing winds in the blink of an eye, sore feet, great talks with my hiking guide Cecilia . The first Argentinean I´ve had a chance to have in depth conversations with, very beautiful, smart, interesting woman. Ecologically passionate of course. Although, seeing as she moved to Chalten 10 years ago after graduating in math and physics from a top university in Buenos Aires, and fell in love with the mountains and then a mountain man, her thoughts about Argentinian politics and the like are probably about as representative as if you tried to get insight into American society by talking tol Alfred B,. or another one of the many similar prep school rebels, who after graduating from Yale moved to Aspen to smoke dope and teach skiing and then somehow stayed and stayed and stayed.


Besides being tired, this is a fricking Mac. More tomorrow when I´m back in El Calafate with a NORMAL computer. Ducking!