The few weeks before I left, Nacho came to the garden every day with us to watch us dig the new irrigation ditches and find our boot prints in the mud.
They were huellas de chocolate, chocolate footprints, and he'd sell them real cheap.
- EY. Mira, mira, mira. Mira. Mira, mira. Ey mira. Son huellas de chocolate. Mira.
And we'd look and act excited and ask him how cheap and pretend to eat them and in three to four hours it would change from below or at freezing to the mid-60s, frost turns to grasshoppers and lunches never last long enough, sometimes you'd want to sit it out until the wintertime early dusk.
Back in Southern California and, well, until the next adventure.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
For those who still put up with this poot and who still give a hoot (ie Ma and Amanda and Tori from Denver), I may have added a few more pictures to the photo site. I may have not. Go and check it out fer yerselves.
anywayz, www.dropshots.com
and RinconMadreTierra then organic, the username and password, respectively.
I´m fine so don´t worry yerselves. Bringing wine to the internet cafes is a brilliant idea I should have thought of much much earlier.
Love
Patch
anywayz, www.dropshots.com
and RinconMadreTierra then organic, the username and password, respectively.
I´m fine so don´t worry yerselves. Bringing wine to the internet cafes is a brilliant idea I should have thought of much much earlier.
Love
Patch
Sunday, June 1, 2008
Woke up on a bus to Mendoza that didn´t serve food with a hunger-bloating stomach and no boots (forgot them in Salta) to snowflakes outside the window. I was in flipflops and shorts in the north and suddenly it´s snowing in Mendoza.
And that´s the city. Imagine the campo. A wondrous winter land, to steal the lyrics (wintry wonder land? I aint good at allusions) , that I couldn´t enjoy because of my damn flipflops and now I´ve got a bit of a cold.
The snow melted the next day and it´s been cold enough to snow with a lot of clouds but no snow, which is the worst. Sometimes the sun comes out and working isn´t that bad but otherwise...shit. And for those who have visited the cabin and remember it´s unremarkable ability to insulate, uninsulate, whatever, you can imagine what mornings are like outside yer sleeping sack. Ice box.
Complaints aside, the campo is beautiful under a layer of fresh snow. And once you get that big oil drum stove going good with some hot cocoa or tea or a mate and a warm kitty in yer lap the cabin is pretty cozy and romantic.
Sed it before and here it is again, I´m a sucker for these things so deal with it.
And that´s the city. Imagine the campo. A wondrous winter land, to steal the lyrics (wintry wonder land? I aint good at allusions) , that I couldn´t enjoy because of my damn flipflops and now I´ve got a bit of a cold.
The snow melted the next day and it´s been cold enough to snow with a lot of clouds but no snow, which is the worst. Sometimes the sun comes out and working isn´t that bad but otherwise...shit. And for those who have visited the cabin and remember it´s unremarkable ability to insulate, uninsulate, whatever, you can imagine what mornings are like outside yer sleeping sack. Ice box.
Complaints aside, the campo is beautiful under a layer of fresh snow. And once you get that big oil drum stove going good with some hot cocoa or tea or a mate and a warm kitty in yer lap the cabin is pretty cozy and romantic.
Sed it before and here it is again, I´m a sucker for these things so deal with it.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
yungas
I just got back from a few days of chewing on coca leaves in the Northern Argentine subtropical cloudforests, hanging out with monkeys and tucans and elementary school kids on a field trip.
And no, Mom, coca leaves are not a drug. It´s just like drinking a lot of mate, which you´re guilty of now. So basically you do drugs, too. Mom I´m so disappointed in you.
From Salta, I took a bus to Ledesma, or Libertador San Martin, I´m not sure which really. The two towns seemed to melt into eachother along route 43 or 86. I arrived on a feria day with a huge outdoor market full of smoking grills separated by your typical Argentine street vendors with some Bolivian influence. From there I walked what would have been 10 km but a logging truck picked me up along the road about 30 minutes in and I hopped in the back with a mumbling old fat man with a chipmunk cheek full o coca and holes in the crotch of his pants, holes unnavoidable to the eyes because he sat on a side-turned tire with his legs opened real wide. We bounced down the rocky road together, his beaming grin toothless save for the few green-black guys that were still hanging on despite years of chewing the leaf. He told me things but I can´t say I understood any of it. I smiled my gringo smile back and we watched as cliffs below the road grew and the river in the valley shrunk into a worm.
I thought myself real tough cruising through the jungle road like that until I saw said group of elementary school kids on a field trip. They all stared at me long and hard, which is what little kids do best in the sweaty DEET and dirt stained face of the unknown. The bugs didn´t eat me as much as I was told, the campsite was comfortable, and there was water provided nearby. The ´technical´trails were the same as the begninner´s leveled trails except longer. There were supposedly jaguars but I didn´t see any.
And just when you think Patch couldn´t be any more of a whiney little b sting he hears a noise in the trees and there are MONKEYS! Two of them, hopping around on the branches and making the sounds you hear in movies. THEN a little later on I saw a tree full of tucans. And as I became more excited I started to notice all the varieties of butterflies and the biggest grasshoppers I´ve seen. I even saw two butterflies doing it, which they do ass to ass. One hangs while the other flies it around from leaf to leaf. It was sexy. Real sexy. Who knew the jungle was so sexy?
I made a great fire despite wet rotting wood to keep the mosquitoes away and dined to a can of lentils and some hard cheee.
Leaving the place I had no luck, and had to walk all 10 of those hot and humid kilometers back to dine and then discover that I was left with half the money I needed to bus back to Salta where I had left some things. So I hitch hiked, having waited more than 2 hours roadside before a trucker brought me to San Salvador de Jujuy at nightfall. Took a bus back to Salta and had some barbecue and some beers with some new friends.
Oh and my insect repellent exploded in the pocket of my pants and it´s real oily and was a pain to wash out this morning.
Today I went to the giant mercado central and bought all kinds of spices and five different kinds of potatoes and sweet potatoes. And chili peppers the size of TicTacs. And some tamales, which are apparently a traditional food down here too. There were papayas the size of my head and the smallest and oldest Bolivian people you´ve ever seen.
Alright, running out of stories and this one´s getting boring. No moral this time.
And no, Mom, coca leaves are not a drug. It´s just like drinking a lot of mate, which you´re guilty of now. So basically you do drugs, too. Mom I´m so disappointed in you.
From Salta, I took a bus to Ledesma, or Libertador San Martin, I´m not sure which really. The two towns seemed to melt into eachother along route 43 or 86. I arrived on a feria day with a huge outdoor market full of smoking grills separated by your typical Argentine street vendors with some Bolivian influence. From there I walked what would have been 10 km but a logging truck picked me up along the road about 30 minutes in and I hopped in the back with a mumbling old fat man with a chipmunk cheek full o coca and holes in the crotch of his pants, holes unnavoidable to the eyes because he sat on a side-turned tire with his legs opened real wide. We bounced down the rocky road together, his beaming grin toothless save for the few green-black guys that were still hanging on despite years of chewing the leaf. He told me things but I can´t say I understood any of it. I smiled my gringo smile back and we watched as cliffs below the road grew and the river in the valley shrunk into a worm.
I thought myself real tough cruising through the jungle road like that until I saw said group of elementary school kids on a field trip. They all stared at me long and hard, which is what little kids do best in the sweaty DEET and dirt stained face of the unknown. The bugs didn´t eat me as much as I was told, the campsite was comfortable, and there was water provided nearby. The ´technical´trails were the same as the begninner´s leveled trails except longer. There were supposedly jaguars but I didn´t see any.
And just when you think Patch couldn´t be any more of a whiney little b sting he hears a noise in the trees and there are MONKEYS! Two of them, hopping around on the branches and making the sounds you hear in movies. THEN a little later on I saw a tree full of tucans. And as I became more excited I started to notice all the varieties of butterflies and the biggest grasshoppers I´ve seen. I even saw two butterflies doing it, which they do ass to ass. One hangs while the other flies it around from leaf to leaf. It was sexy. Real sexy. Who knew the jungle was so sexy?
I made a great fire despite wet rotting wood to keep the mosquitoes away and dined to a can of lentils and some hard cheee.
Leaving the place I had no luck, and had to walk all 10 of those hot and humid kilometers back to dine and then discover that I was left with half the money I needed to bus back to Salta where I had left some things. So I hitch hiked, having waited more than 2 hours roadside before a trucker brought me to San Salvador de Jujuy at nightfall. Took a bus back to Salta and had some barbecue and some beers with some new friends.
Oh and my insect repellent exploded in the pocket of my pants and it´s real oily and was a pain to wash out this morning.
Today I went to the giant mercado central and bought all kinds of spices and five different kinds of potatoes and sweet potatoes. And chili peppers the size of TicTacs. And some tamales, which are apparently a traditional food down here too. There were papayas the size of my head and the smallest and oldest Bolivian people you´ve ever seen.
Alright, running out of stories and this one´s getting boring. No moral this time.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
autumn afternoons in manzano
Nacho, recently turned five, shared a hammock with me at his grandparents´ farm last week or before, exhausted after harvesting squashes and rolling around in falltime fallen leaves turned all kinds of rusty colors, both of us dripping with sweet post summer pumpkin smell and crisp decomposing leaf smell, the kinds of smells that makes you want Halloween candy and roasted turkey and a nap.
According to Nacho, five-year olds should be smarter than four-year-olds. He proved this first by fixing his pronunciation of ´four´(in Spanish) from ´cuaco´to ´cuatro´ with much pride and smiles. Next, he almost made a 23-year-old cry, on a bright and chilly afternoon on the hammock.
¨Patcho, will you build your own mud house one day for your family?¨
¨Yeah,¨ I told him. ¨Of course. Why?¨
¨Well, when you build it,¨ blue blue unSouthAmerican blue eyes fixed serious and piercingly in mine, ¨I will bring you the front door.¨
That´s when it hit, when he hit. When I realized how hard leaving this place will be, and how desperately I need to keep returning for, well, forever, how special these kids are. He caught me, though, before I could manage to squirt a tear.
¨But you have to build it down here. I don´t think they´ll let me onto the bus to the United States with a giant door.¨
The only thing you can do at a time like that is laugh and hug and spend the rest of the afternoon lying on a Maytime breeze-rocked hammock in silence, then swallow your pride later on and admit yer a sentimental hippy and let everyone else know how much of a sucker you are for cute kids.
According to Nacho, five-year olds should be smarter than four-year-olds. He proved this first by fixing his pronunciation of ´four´(in Spanish) from ´cuaco´to ´cuatro´ with much pride and smiles. Next, he almost made a 23-year-old cry, on a bright and chilly afternoon on the hammock.
¨Patcho, will you build your own mud house one day for your family?¨
¨Yeah,¨ I told him. ¨Of course. Why?¨
¨Well, when you build it,¨ blue blue unSouthAmerican blue eyes fixed serious and piercingly in mine, ¨I will bring you the front door.¨
That´s when it hit, when he hit. When I realized how hard leaving this place will be, and how desperately I need to keep returning for, well, forever, how special these kids are. He caught me, though, before I could manage to squirt a tear.
¨But you have to build it down here. I don´t think they´ll let me onto the bus to the United States with a giant door.¨
The only thing you can do at a time like that is laugh and hug and spend the rest of the afternoon lying on a Maytime breeze-rocked hammock in silence, then swallow your pride later on and admit yer a sentimental hippy and let everyone else know how much of a sucker you are for cute kids.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Sancho Panza doin the ol´ fat-kid-stuck-in-a-hole trick.
More pictures to be seen at http://eleanorchandler.blogspot.com/.
A week in El Bolson, back into Chile, onward fat girl, let´s get outa the south already and warm up and dry out.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
RATS
Pun meloncholily intended: this message is a fairwell to the most fearless mouse ever to scurry the Earth, or even the universe... the mighty Sancho Panza de Mendoza.
The critter valiantly made the who-knows-how-many-kilometers-long voyage by bus and thumb through Patagonia and into the unknown, the Tierra del Fuego, to the southernmost city in the world. He made it through border crossings between Chile and Argentina esconced in socks, tucked under seats, and concealed in pockets, explored the Tierra del Fuegian wilderness despite rains and winds, fearlessly mounted on my shoulders through valleys and over blustery mountain passes, surviving the occasional sub-freezing night by nothing more than the warmth of his own breath. Alas, after crossing borders to get back onto the Argentine mainland, a last minute flustered transfer of trucks left the poor guy stuffed in a jacket and under the seat of a certain Hugo de La Rioja´s cargo truck, never to be seen by mine eyes again, eyes deafeaned by the pitch dark two day ride in a refrigerator big rig´s trailer gripped by the Patagonian cold season, eyes iced over by emerging tears quickly frozen in place, eyes burnt by nothing more than the absence of his fiery mousiness.
Alright so I didn´t cry but my heart is a bit broken. He was a good mouse, and with his wit and charm is surredly in the hands of a caring grandchild of Hugo´s.
God speed you little white rodent. I´ve always envied your whiskers, so this mustache´s fer you.
The critter valiantly made the who-knows-how-many-kilometers-long voyage by bus and thumb through Patagonia and into the unknown, the Tierra del Fuego, to the southernmost city in the world. He made it through border crossings between Chile and Argentina esconced in socks, tucked under seats, and concealed in pockets, explored the Tierra del Fuegian wilderness despite rains and winds, fearlessly mounted on my shoulders through valleys and over blustery mountain passes, surviving the occasional sub-freezing night by nothing more than the warmth of his own breath. Alas, after crossing borders to get back onto the Argentine mainland, a last minute flustered transfer of trucks left the poor guy stuffed in a jacket and under the seat of a certain Hugo de La Rioja´s cargo truck, never to be seen by mine eyes again, eyes deafeaned by the pitch dark two day ride in a refrigerator big rig´s trailer gripped by the Patagonian cold season, eyes iced over by emerging tears quickly frozen in place, eyes burnt by nothing more than the absence of his fiery mousiness.
Alright so I didn´t cry but my heart is a bit broken. He was a good mouse, and with his wit and charm is surredly in the hands of a caring grandchild of Hugo´s.
God speed you little white rodent. I´ve always envied your whiskers, so this mustache´s fer you.
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