huellas de chocolate

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

a quickie

Not that kind.

Gross.

So we´ve hitched from Ushuaia, the Southermost city in de world (nearly escaping the cold after four nights of beautiful and foul weather lakeside in the Tierra del Fuegian wilderness), to El Bolson, the hippiest town in South America in good time and with plenty o good times. Bouncing around with granite rocks and dodging rain in a janky cargo truck, watching rumbling clouds of hot breath by headlamp in a cold cold cold and dark trailer of a refrigerated big rig, marinating in the sweet smell of dead chicken, hopin the winds don´t knock us over like it did to two other trucks a few hours earlier.

We´re alive though and planning new adventures. The cold is officially here in Patagonia. Look out. I´ll try and write more next time. We´re gonna go make us sum dinner.

Love you.

subiendo el sur

dudes broes pals, dudettes hoes n gals,

We be in the Comodora Rivadavia waiting for a bus to Rio Gallegos, where we bus and ferry down to the southernmost city in de world. But we´re mostly here for the petroleum museum, that is, if it´s free. YPF owns most of de land down here, but we hear there´s an ocean to be seen so we´ll do that too.

Brux puked last night on de bus, no he was not drunk just a stomach flu thing, wish (or not) that Robin Eleanor and I could say the same, as we do not remember finishing that dang third box of wine. Can´t blame us; they played the movie adaptation of GhostRider with the volume too too pumped up. Pump up the valuum please.

Sancho is fattening up for the cold lurking ahead. We´re discussing the possibility of fitting and knitting him a sweater. Everyone we meet tells us of how crazy we are, of how frio it already is down there.

Well, we´d like to see fer ourselves.

In other bodily news, my mustache will now stay in a smart curl on each end if I use enough earwax n spit, thus saving me money on Qtips, which I never bought anyway, but hey, the possibility is enough to tickle my empty wallet. Regardless it´s putting beard trimming thoughts into me head, you know, to accentuate the mustache since it´s still not that long, but they´re thoughts that startle me, I´ve grown quite fond of it you see. Maybe a little touch up on de sides. A Jesus Cristo beard like Shawn´s. Shawn do you read this? Is your named spelled Sean?

That sed, I must go venture out into the bustling late morning city to build up more wax in de ears for future mustache curling.

Catch you in the fiery lands of the south.

Man oh man. What a month.

Ma and Pops came down for some farmin and backpackin. After a few days in Tunuyan, we hightailed down to San Martin de los Andes, Bariloche, and El Bolson, then back up for another few in Tunuyan and Manzano Historico. Turns out travelling with your folks ain´t so bad afterall. They both ditched their cases and lived for nearly two weeks out of small daypacks. Of course, I had the larger pack with quite a few larger essentials of their´s (shoes, warm jackets, make-up (Mom´s of course; despite various circulating rumors the Colonel does not, in fact, wear make-up)) but regardless they did well. More than well. Above all they treated me to such Patagonian regional delights as trout, wild boar, sheep and deer, plus microbrewed brews and much wine. Throw in warm showers, cute hosterias and fancy buses, and all possible complaints get thrown out with the cans of tuna and shitty hostels.

Note to other young, supposedly broken-free and liberated South American traveller: it ain´t so bad inviting your parents down for a short visit.

Next stop was the Andes. 4300 meters up in the Andes, complete with snow, howling winds and a touch of altitude sickness and/or a bug from an undercooked asado. Speaking of which, when embarking on multi-day treks in mountains, always invite at least one Argentine. All mountains bound Argentines come with mules, horses, meat and wine. Not a bad way to hike at all. But you can´t blame a kid whose never been nearly as high for getting a little tummy and head ache. And because I charged, denying offers to mount a horse. We spent the first night at 3000 m in a refugio to rest up for a nine hour walk up and through EL Portillo, the 4300m pass, then down into a river valley called El Real Cruz to stay at another refugio. There we spent the next day collecting sorting garbage, exploring, and eating more asado. Then it was back out again, another 8 hours back from where we came through slushy melted snow and ice. I´ve never been so challenged both physically and mentally.

And now I´ve got the bug. Trying the cram in as much of the Andes as possible while cruising down and up to and from Ushuaia. We´re in Bariloche at a campsite outside of town right now waiting for Brux and Robin.

And yes, Sancho Panza is along for the adventure! He´s managed to escape several times from various makeshift transportation homes. Turns out he can chew not only through linens but plastic bottles as well. We woke up thrice on the busride from Mendoza to Bariloche with La Panza crawling around us. Last night he got himself stuck halfway out a chewed-open airhole in a plastic water bottle. Poor guy. Today we´re looking for a better more durable and breathable option. Otherwise he loves exploring sites on our shoulders or in our hairs. He´s quite the traveller.

Pic A Ture time.

bombachos

Today I purchased a pair of bombachos, or gaucho pants.

Granted, they´re not the huge, baggy uber traditional kind but they sure have a loose knee and tapered ankle, alright. Not to mention fancy pleats going all the way down the leg sides. I wish I had appropriate boots, but one can´t be too picky on a 20 peso budget.

Besides, I don´t have a horse.

That is all.

keep on keepin´ on

It´s about time I go now.

The farm has been so much more than (and not just more than but different, something else and beyond) any grouping of words I can manage to find up in the realms of me noggin. So I spare me the effort and you the difficulty required to comprehend whatever I might manage to come up with.

He came, he dug holes, he ate a tomato.

The first day I arrived I planted a small row of tomatoes among and jungle of weeds and purple and green spotted, striped, wrinkly lettuces. I never got to eat these tomatoes, as they died, but as the months crawled and sweated on, more were planted (and replanted and re-replanted and so on) and now that I`ve eaten these (small Mexican sweet delicious variety), I feel a completion of sorts.

Time to go then he says. Time to see what´s up down south before the cold´s hairy white fingers clutch bonely the southern tip of the Americas, reining down snow and ice and winter. Got me a new sleeping sack and all, ready for a fist fight or a brawl. Let´s go cold.

Frankly this heat up here in Mendoza is too much but the freak thunderstorms we´ve had make up for some of it. Regardless it´s down south with Robin and Brux and Eleanor. Down till we can´t bajar no more.

So last chance for burrito slash monetary donations being sent to the farm. After two weeks then on I´m technically lost, uncharted, what have you.

I gotta get my mouse some travelling pants.

a pink My Little Pony strapped to my pack keeps bad spirits away

Dearest friends,
Please send carnitasburritos and chile rellenos. Vegetarian life on an organic farm is fine and all, but sometimes a man just needs some taqueria. Especially after a hard day´s work.
Spencer and a couple volunteers and I hitch hiked up to Manzano Historico to go mountaineering. And when I say mountaineering I mean setting up camp near just 2 km from the rest of the campsites but next to a not so large river that sounded a lot like a waterfall. Hitch hiking involved rain and hail and low spirits, butI put on my magic pants and we made it in time to pitch tents and gather firewood for much choripan and plenty of fireside whiskey. Leaving was tough and mouths were quiet.

Right now I´m in the cyber cafe and it´s hot and I´m sure the reason the woman keeps spraying air freshener is because of my pits. Really they should bottle my scent and spray it all over theworld. It would probably end hunger and war and fast food restaurants and Hugh Grant movies.

Speaking of which, I heard Matthew MacHaugnawacahooey died or whatever. A volunteer shared this with me and how difficult her day was because of it. It was hardnot to laugh.

The farm is beautiful. We´re getting tomatoes and squashes and melons very soon. We´re testing a new irrigation method based on what the Incans did. I´ve been sleeping in my tent instead of the dorm for the sake of sanity and privacy. They tend to go hand in hand on a farm that hosts volunteers.

It´s past my bed time.

Love,
Patch

breezy Saturdays and lomitos and beers

Chile was chillin brah.
Ef yah brah. like totally.

After a teary faced departure from Spencey Poo and Mama K in Concepción, I headed northish to Chillàn, a city not worth mentioning much, aside from an undulating Saturday market with howling veggie vendors and ancient prunes of women selling baskets and a bus terminal next door that would take me to the coastal towns of Cobquecura and Buchupureo that Spencer told me about. Whew. I should work on my run-ons. Two hours in a rickety minibus brought me to a beautiful wooded coast struck with chunks of slate.

But like a good and patriotic UnitedStatesean capitalist, I neglected to bring sufficient funds, expecting an ATM, and ended up stranded in said 1000-some person town with no bank but a two-year-old ATM that did not accept foreign debit or credit cards. I had enough money for a night of camping and fortunately had brought some for a day or two, but not enough to get by (comfortably at least). I met kids who had met kids, incredibly nice and curious Chilean kids, who ended up squeezing me into their already undersized tent and feeding me a few meals. I wove them bracelets and trenzas in exchange. When they left back home for Chillán via bus, I found myself on the side of the road with no food no money no place to stay and no choice but to stick my finger out and hope for the best. Hitching down here is easier and safer and after an hour I was being sped through mountain terrain back towards the next town of Querihue, 45 minutes away to look for an ATM that ended up being just as testy as the one in Cobquecura. Luckily the guy I received the ride from was a Buchupureano ex-pat living in Canada, building a house in his home town every summer. He brought me all the way back to Chillán, 2 hours, to the very bank he was headed, a bank with a very nice and willing ATM I might add, then to the bus terminal to catch a perfectly-timed bus back to Chillán, than another hitched ride to Cobquecura before nightfall.

The friends I crashed with knew the tourist info center employee, a local kid my age who I ended up befriending. He let me stash my goods while I hitched to Chillán. The night I got back his mom fed me dinner and coffee and we went out for a local`s tour of the town that actually ended up being more or less everything I had seen days before looking for a campsite. But the town is nonetheless perfectly quaint and South American in every way and the family´s hospitality was unending as was the list of Chilean slang Juan (aka Bonito, Pretty, to just about everyone in town) shared with me over beers. Turns out I can`t remember much besides a couple basics that Spencer had already taught me as well as the phrase for ¨giving a blow job¨, which is ¨darse una conferencia de prensa¨, or to give a press conference.

After taking too much sun with a wild sea otter who even let me pet him and after too much bread and canned tuna (except for some clam and crab and cheese empanadas I splurged on once), I decided to head back home on a relatively uneventuful 20 hours bus and terminal session (my legs did swell up again though) to a farm renewed and bustling with at least 8 volunteers. The alternative construction is speeding up and the tomato plants have pretty green tomatoes. Lettuces, beets, and a bunch of other plants are ready for seed saving and replanting. Things are good there. Sancho Panza was fed a lot and gained weight. He´s even cuter and things are good.

This morning (since we now have Saturdays off) I received many crotches in my face and bums on my back. A new volunteer taught us acrobatics. Turns out I´m a pretty good base and had a 6 foot 5 or so Scot on by back for a while. Sounds a lot sexier than it actually was. Surely nothing like giving a press conference--I mean--er, listening to one?

ops

It has come to me attention you guys can`t get into the photo site. Or maybe you can. But my sister can`t. So the username is as before, RinconMadreTierra. Guest password is ¨farming¨.

So check out how cute farm animals and farm kids are.

new photos

These photos and the newly updated photos on www.dropshots.com are courtesy of Ryan of Canadia and Christine of Michigan. (RinconMadreTierra, organic)


Patch here, bi/tri-weekly transmission currently being transmitted from Concepcion de Chile in the cute room Spencer has lived in for the past I don´t know how long. He´s asleep on the bed next to me with Mama K nestled quietly under his arm. His feet can be smelled from over here and speaking of feet, mine are swollen and look like elephant feet. I´m known for my cankles but man if you could see them now. My whole leg from my calf on down is swollen. Both of em.

The three of us spent some time on a tourist-swept beach in La Serena. Camping was expensive in compared to the rest of South America ($6US compared to $1 or 2US) but we had running water, a barbecue space and a picnic table. Nights were passed with plenty of pisco and choripan, so I was plenty pleased. Throw in beers on the beach with babes in bikinis and vacation really starts to feel like vacation.

Three or four horrible movies later we´re here, planning to go to Spencer´s host family´s campo house later on. They leave Friday and from there I have another week or two to roam around. And although I would like more beach, the prices here are killing me and I might make my way back into Argentina.

Do not see: Evan Almighty, The Condemned, the new Robin Williams movie with that one singer and the guy from the American Office about getting married and ish. These movies are not good.

Meanwhile, pick up What is the What by Dave Eggers. I wasn´t crazy about his other books but this one is worth reading.

A little over a month and ma and pops come to visit me. I really can´t wait. That sentence looks pretty boring and does not convey the excitement that I really do have inside. But I don´t like exclamation points much and therefore dont use em. You´ll just have to believe me.

Over and out.

Unwilling to be that guy who didn´t wear a costume to the New Year´s costume party (you know the type) I broke down, made an index card eye patch and tied a bandana round my head. It was tough and I left without looking in the mirror. I could not bare to see myself dressed as such.

You see, I hate pirates. Hate is a strong word, I know, but there is nothing redeeming about pirates. I like stink, I like booze, I like ocean and although I´ve never touched them, I imagine gold doubloons and shillings and what have you are pretty neat too. But in excess, these things result in a ridiculous Hollywood craze over a historical personage no one has ever liked but suddenly do now, ridiculously so, just because of a certain actor whom I cannot truthfully deny liking as well. But come on, if Johnny Depp starred in a ninja movie everyone would think ninjas are the dopest shit ever. But he hasn´t and they are apparently not. Remember how cool persons with mental disabilities were after Benny and Joon came out?

Moral of the story is I swallowed my pride and wore the costume because I had no other option besides a woman, and those who have known me for some time would probably agree that I´ve ended up in a few too many skirts than should be considered healthy and sane. The saving grace was that I perched Sancho Panza upon my shoulders to be my parrot (Oh and that´s another thing. Parrots are not cool at all). He peed on me but I´m quickly getting used to that.
Of course, fate or perhaps Capt´n Silver himself had it that no one else got the memo and I show up on the other farm the only one shod for the occasion. Azucena and the other volunteer brought their costumes to ¨change into¨and the other volunteers were getting dressed to go to a disco down the street. I knew the idea of dressing up on New Year´s was off. And that the fact the others ¨brought¨ their costumes as well. But the food was great as it always is at Peregrino and the neighbors shot plenty of fireworks.

If I had a ninja costume it would have been better.

And yes, there is a disco dance club in the middle of farmland, Argentina. All Argentines, no matter where they are, insist upon at least one boliche a week.

I´m in the Santiago de Chile bus terminal waiting for passage to La Serena tonight. I arrive up there at 6am and plan on finding a sandy beach to greet the sun on.

Today comin over the mountain (when we come) we passed a couple thousand meters below Aconcagua, the highest elevation in the Americas. It looked skinny, undaunting and mostly naked and I felt big; big not just in a physical way but some other way I´d rather not start digging into right now with stinging eyes and a cacaphony of beeping computers, blinking arcade games, horrible 90s music from the US, the hungry gases in my stomach and the resevoir of pee expanding my bladder.

There´s a tarta galicia with my name on it somewhere around here.