Twenty and Impulsive

Today I woke up in a tent in Patagonia for the first time. Eager to step out of the tent into the warm morning sun I slowly opened the zipper. After being greeted with the fresh mountain air and the sight of 30 tents scattered around the footsteps of Cerro Torre, I walked to the river. Barefoot and well-rested I sat on the banks of Rio Blanco and admired the colors of the landscape. Not yet fully lit, they were shades of brown and grey that would later turn in to purples, blues and reds that I had only before seen in paintings.

It was going to be a great day.

A morning breakfast of dry cereal and an orange was all I needed to give me energy to take on the rugged terrain. Nick, (my travel companion) was operating on a different wavelength. We ended up splitting up for the day and he went back to town to get a new pack while I hiked ahead to the campsite to wait for him. That day of solo hiking ended up being one of my favorites on the trip and the number of pages it takes up in my journal are indicative of how much I loved it. It took up 15 pages. The hike was excruciating but the scenary made it a place that no picture could do justice. 

Walking through my last 1/4 mile of trail to C.B. Poincenot in El Chalten, I had nothing on my mind except trying to remember what it was like to sit down. I walked into the campsite around 6:30 with the sun still high in the sky and began searching for a desirable tent spot. The popularity of Los Glacieres National Park in the summer leads to more of a group camping experience rather than one of solitude so strategic tenting is always beneficial: not to close to the old guys but still far enough away from the crazies.

I had just set up my tent when a guy came to ask me about Lago de los Tres. I told him it was about an hour and a half each way and continued laying out my sleeping bag. When they asked me to come along with them I enthusiastically replied, "Yeah! That would be awesome!" Their little smiles accompanied by the "Are you American?" response told me that this was going to be an adventure. I hate to admit it, but sadly I fell into the American stereotype - everyone does it once in a while, right? Before I knew it I was back on the trail with my two new friends from Israel: Roy and Yotem. An hour and a half hike? Eh. No problem...

The hike up to Lago de Los Tres was one of the hardest treks I had ever done. Each 15" stair that had been blasted into the rockface seemed like a mountain. The five hour hike I did before this made my thighs shake with exhaustion but I refused to walk down something that I know I can climb, so I kept going. We were ten minutes into the hike when I learned that these two guys were in the military and had just finished their service. In other words, they were in shape. And I was not.. My competitive nature was the only thing keeping me going... there was no way I was going to be the last one to reach the top. I transferred as much weight as I could onto my poles but my quads a gluts were really feeling those extra ice cream cones that I had a few days before. Doing this with my full 40 pound backpack would have been impossible.  The conversation stopped at about 30 minutes when we were all panting like dogs. At one point Roy jokingly called the mountain Mt. Olympus. This climb was the second part of the one-two punch Los Glaciares threw at me that day. Reaching the top and seeing for miles in every direction made it all worth while. We were 100m from the base of the Fitz Roy massif, 50m from the glacier and 1m from Lago de los Tres. I took two pictures before my camera died but I worried not. Both the guys had cameras and were very enthusiastic to take pictures with me.

At school some people have told me that I am an instigator and tend to initiate mischief... I don't believe them. I think that everyone is thinking it but I'm just the one who says it out loud. I figured that here it should be no different. I looked at Roy and Yotem, looked at the water, looked back at them and told them that we were going swimming. Five seconds later Roy was lakeside and ready to jump in. Wow. I didn't actually think they would listen, but here we go!

Yotem only got in until his belly button and then turned back because he was too cold, but there was no way that I was going to lilly-dip my way into the glacier water. Knowing that increased thinking time results in decreased probability of doing said activity, I dove into the water. My core body temperature plummeted to just above freezing and I hoped that the blue-skin/smurf look was one that I could pull off. With the two boys fighting over whose coat I would wear to keep warm all I could think about was hiking back down the mountain, and the fat icicles that would soon be made out of my pudgy fingers. This might be a good point to tell you that the sun had been down for about 45 minutes and the summer winds of Patagonia weren't helping us warm up.

Small talk and chit chat of our favorite colors and bands ensued on the way down, and every opportunity to take a picture of the three of us was seized. And then... I started to itch. All over. It started on my stomach and worked its way over my whole body. Being an idiotic 20-year-old I scratched the itch just to find out that my skin was not only red, but I was covered in little white bumps. Given the fact that I had just met these guys I tried to suffer in silence. From my experience, as noble of a cause as it may be, it usually ends in me drawing the most abusrd conculsions about my current condition, whatever it may be. For this particular case I was convinced that I had just gotten Herpes. Why I landed at that conclusion I cannot tell you. The only thing I could think of was a quote from the movie The Hangover: "Whatever happens inVegas stays in Vegas. Except for Herpes. That shit will come back with you." Great. Similar to many other people hiking I tend to jump to the worst case scenario and then work my way back to rationalization from there. It wasn't until I worked back far enough that I realized that I probably didn't just get the Herp from the lake. My justification? Well, if the water is good enough to drink without a filter then it probably isn't overrun and infested with STDs. Ending at this conclusion, though, didn't seem to slow the annoying rash from spreading. Commanding myself not to scratch it and then commending myself for obeying, the rash then spread to my butt. This was going to be a problem.

Not to bring the story to an anticlimactic ending or anything, I took some benadryl and went to bed. Woke up the next morning rash-free and cool as a cucumber.

Looking back on times I've jumped into really cold water I realized that I awlays get a weird rash afterward. Maybe it's some weird disease that only affects one in 2 million people. I would feel honored to be that one person. Especially since the biggest inconvenience is trying to to scratch my butt like a monkey.

This morning I woke up in patagonia. Not knowing the events the day would bring me I seized every moment that I could. After a day like today I think that there is something to be said about the importance of impulsivity in a situation that can only end in a good story. More simply put, don't hesitate and say "maybe" to something you know you won't regret.

Until next time folks.

You Seriously Want Me To Eat That???

After I took two weeks of intensive Spanish classes in Buenos Aires I had a three week break before my hospital internship started. I had toyed with the idea of going to Easter Island instead, but before I left the good ol USA I knew that mountains of southern Patagonia were calling my name. All that was left to do was to get there.

The forty hour bus ride from Buenos Aires to El Calafate would make some people cringe just at the thought, but Nick and I (my travel buddy that I met four days before leaving) took it head on. As much as I wanted to see Southern Patagonia, there was no way I was going to fork over $600 for a plane ticket when I could get a tour of Argentina by bus for a third of the cost. Little did I know that the pampas extend over a majority of the landscape, leaving us with the lovely sight of thick sagebrush that stretched to the horizon in both directions.

The food on the bus was... deliciously unique. By that I mean that I would rather have eaten a brick of cheese than eat that food. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of the queso, so that's saying something. The first meal (dinner) was by far the most memorable, and for that I will share a little anecdote:

It started when the bus people came around and gave everyone a plastic lunch tray for their food. Another plastic tray sealed with our dinner inside quickly followed - and this is where the fun began. Before the ride we were joking that they were only going to give us a roll for dinner... well.. they gave us a roll, a slice of ham, and a slice of cheese. Starving, I massacared the food on the tray until the warm food was brought out. The mysterious tin foil container had me guessing what was inside, but nothing could have prepared me for the greased-soaked steak that I was about to discover. Apprehensively I finished it and moved on to what I thought was dessert. My choice of eating in the dark led me to believe that what I had saved for last was an individual sized pie - like the ones that you get in elementary school for the grand Thanksgiving Dinner that the school district kindly provides. To me, it looked like it was chocolate cream pie with frosting on top. I asked Nick if he had eaten his yet and he said, "No, but the meat here is supposed to be pretty good so go for it." ....uh... whaaaat? It didn't look like meat to me. I thought he was a little consfused so I asked the question again and he said he thought it was an empanada thing. Slowly, I reached for the light above my seat and pressed that little red button that would determine the fate of my dinner. click... click. click. click.... oops. That's the fan switch. Click. The light lit up my dinner tray with as much light as the recycled bus air would let through. The verdict? We were both wrong in our guesses. Unless Dr. Seuss was in the kitchen, this wasn't meat or dessert. It was green and chunky and looked like a pile of cow dung strategically placed in a mini pie crust to appear appetizing. Epic FAIL. Running the risk of being sick for the next 30 hours on the bus, I took a bite. My only reasoning was that since I paid for it I'd might as well try it. Bad decision. As I took a bite of the soggy crust filled with this mysterious flavor I began to sort through the many foods of my past to match it with a taste that seemed familiar. It didn't take long for me to land at a taste that all children know and few adults care to admit they've tried: grass. Yes. Grass. or weeds. Whichever you prefer, that's what it was. And the white stuff on top that I thought was whipped cream? It was rock hard cheese.

I've tried many foods since I've been here but I don't think this one is going to make it into the list of "Argentine Recipes to Remember."

My adventurous taste buds seem to have backfired on me in this particular instant, but worry not. I'll still be the one trying the mussels at the Shenanigan's Mother's Day brunch.