FTTN: Puerto Iguazu- Tourist towns

I saw it in many places: a town (or village) whose very existence is linked in steel cables to its tourist attraction. Puerto Natales and Puerto Iguazu are great examples, I think. And they feel right for me as examples, being at opposite edges (of the countries and of my trip), so they somehow encase or include all the others, at least figuratively. The tourist attraction that is next to both these towns casts a very large shadow on anything and everything in them. This includes the names of restaurants, hostels, shops and even streets, photos of the attraction everywhere, many services linked to it, the majority of the townspeople working in something that has to do with it, and last but not least, a sense of local pride (or small-scale patriotism) that you get when talking to locals about the attraction.
I would love to know how residents of Puerto Iguazu really feel about the waterfalls.

God is in the small details, #4

Wow, haven't done one of these in a while. So this one will be an extended one.

- Ivana's Tshirt in a hostel in Bariloche, with "es lo que hay" (that's all there is, a common expression in Argentina) printed on the chest.
- Getting into a very deep conversation with three Cordobesas, about all the men that have cheated on them. I had heard that Argentinean men are known for being unfaithful, but man, was that a tough conversation to have ended up in.

FTTN: Fictional email from Jerusalem / A plan / Reduction

[While in Mendoza, my mind was still very much occupied with the issue of tourism, how I perceive the places I visit, and how traveling means constantly having to reduce them into the "main attractions". The next three fragments in the tattered notebook reflect that. In the email I took the liberty to invent some mistakes based on what I think can be common misconceptions. I hope I don't make such blatant mistakes about the places I visit...]

A fictional Email from a tourist visiting Jerusalem

Hey Everybody,

Well, you don't have to worry, I haven't been blown to pieces yet J (I'm just kidding, calm down… it actually feels pretty safe here).

Valparaiso- early April 2008

The day after the Villarica trek's soaked ending, I woke up thinking I was going to Mendoza, decided by midday to go to Santiago, resisted persuasions from my latest group to go to Valdivia, and ended up on the bus to Valparaiso. I had left Patagonia after about 2.5 months there. But before I reached my destination, there was an unpleasant surprise: I was careless enough to leave my camera in plain sight and fall asleep on the bus, and when I woke up it was gone. Fortunately, I had spent a good chunk of time uploading and backing up all my pictures just before boarding this bus, so nothing was lost. Except, of course, the camera itself. But I had found that camera anyway (that's a different story, though...).

Valparaiso (AKA Valpo) is probably the most “south american” city I had been to at that point: loud, busy, unorganized, blending many European/colonial, local, and just plain strange architecture styles, colourful, and most of all- full of life. It's strange that it's in Chile...

Puyehue, Pucon and Villarica- end of March, early April 2008

From Bariloche I went to Parque Nacional Puyehue, to do a 4-day trek to the Puyehue volcano and its surroundings. I did the trek alone with 11 more people, which means I met three people on the highway going into the park, and 8 more in the first night's refugio. By the way, 9 of them were Israelis- apparently this is a highly Israeli trek, for some reason. 

The trek goes like this: you go up 1700m in 7 hours, to reach the crater of the volcano, which is inactive, filled with snow and has a great view of the area. Up there we made the obligatory "black coffee up on a viewpoint", and saw a group of condors flying high above us. Then you go down (only the last 500m, not the whole 1700...) and walk for half a day in a desert interspersed with basalt, obsidian and other volcanic rocks, sand dunes and multi coloured hills. Amongst my favorite sights on the way: a mass of jagged, shiny black obsidian that looked like a petrified dinosaur's tail jutting out of the yellow-white sand; a pretty big cave (probably 3m high and about 30 across) that had basalt boulders for a floor and a mini-glacier for a ceiling; and ice hiding beneath desert sand.

FTTN: Futaleufu- trip economics

The incredible ease with which I spent 120$ on the rafting trip in Futaleufu (especially considering that when I was first told it would be 80$ I said “no way I'm doing that”) is part of the trip economics. You're sometimes frugal on ridiculous things, often foregoing the most basic comforts (easy examples: spending 5 hours sleeping on the floor of Aeroparque airport in Buenos Aires to avoid paying for a hostel before my 6am flight; choosing the bed on the low gallery over the common room in the hostel in El Calafate to save 5 pesos, and losing at least 3 hours of sleep because people were playing cards under me; sleeping in the plaza or in parks several times) and then drop 120$ for a one-time, 3-hour experience. In a sense it's logical- eating, sleeping and transportation are routine, continuous occurences, and represent the bulk of your expenses. Saving small each time ends up being a major swing upwards in your remaining budget. And the one-time expenditures are exactly that: unique and one-time-only. And why are you traveling, if not to have new and unique experiences you wouldn't have had otherwise. It's hard to come to a place that is purportedly “one of the three best places to do something” and not do it, especially when you do have the money. For example, I regretted not spending the 250 pesos for the 8-hour glacier boat tour in Los Glaciares National Park for a long time.

The Aysen Region- End of Feb. 2008 (2nd part)

The day after we came back from the trek, we continued up the Carretera Austral, into Coyhaique. Coyhaique is a surprisingly big city in the middle of the Aysen Region. It has around 50000 inhabitants, a couple of big-ass supermarkets, traffic lights, a big central plaza, ice cream places. Even after being told "it's a pretty big city. Much bigger than you would expect", we didn't expect it. Especially not after 4 straight towns where you could count the number of families even if you don't know what a hundred means.
I think we were caught off guard, and didn't quite know how to deal with Coyhaique. I'm not really sure what we even did there besides internet, window shopping (jeje) and eating ice cream. We were also staying with an especially apathetic (should I say passive aggressive?) family in the hospedaje (in the Aysen Region there were barely any hostels, it's mostly families who rent out rooms in their house by the night. I should write more about that later...) our first night, so we didn't enjoy it that much. But just the fact that there's a city in that setting, so cut off from the rest of Chile (the only way to get to Coyhaique without a boat/ferry ride is through Argentina) was a cool thing to see.

FTTN: The Cerro Castillo trek- does hard mean good?

Let us begin with this question: do I go trekking for the challenge? The surroundings and views? The fun of being outdoors? I would say the challenge is last on that list. But you have to wonder...
The Cerro Castillo trek, besides being in a beautiful area and the pleasant company I did it with, was also made more fun by the complications and the hardship, not to mention the danger. And I should add to the pot the fact that it's less traveled (I'd like to say that's important only because of the quiet and aloneness and ability to do whatever you want, but let's face it- the desire to be different plays a part) and you've got probably the best trek I've done.
But the complications, the badly marked trails, the places where you just identify the destination and walk there in whatever way seems right to you, Ohad's fall into the river and the rock that rolled down from behind me are all things that added to the trek. Part of that is the solitude, the distance from the “real” world, and the wild and untamed feeling (after all, the tamed quality of the Torres Del Paine National Park bothered me). But a meaningful part of it was that it was hard.
The fact that danger attracts and excites us needs no stating or explaining- it's obvious and probably scientifically proven. But if you ask me, I don't trek to conquer, succeed and prove myself, but quite the opposite: I love the feeling of being small and powerless against nature's great forces. So where does the attraction to hardship come from, if not from competitiveness?
I guess it's another question to open and probably never close...

FTTN: Rio Tranquilo- Randomness and the single serving friend

Meital and Inbal, the two girls we met in Rio Tranquilo, epitomized the idea of the ‘single serving friend’ (apologies to Palahniuk for the plagiarism). Getting into town, meeting a (fairly grumpy, kinda sick and Peruvian-looking) girl, talking to her a bit about the trip, where she’s been and where she’s heading, meeting her (much nicer) friend, making the boat trip to the marble caves together, getting back into town, trying to hitch, Uri and I north and Meital and Inbal south, failing and giving up simultaneously, finding a hostel together, cooking a very nice dinner together, letting the wine flow (but in moderation), having a great time, developing some fatherly care for the grumpy girl… and the morning after having the two of them leave without even saying goodbye. And it’s strange, but it doesn’t really bother you, because that’s what the trip is like. To stretch the plagiarism: “you meet a beautiful stranger, you dance all night, and then…” (way different context, but it works well here, I think).

The Aysen Region- End of Feb. 2008

After El Chalten (and a 12-hour bus ride on gravel roads up to Los Antiguos, and my second border crossing into Chile) came the Aysen region, commonly known among backpackers as the “carretera austral” (southern road). This is an area in the south of Chile where until the 80s there were no roads, and the only way you could get to the towns was on horseback or boats. Obviously, not too many metropolises grew in this area, and it remains fairly unspoiled (as of a year and a half ago, at least… it’s getting more and more touristic down there, plus there are plenty of industrial dangers looming). The road was completed only in the year 2000, and named the Carretera Austral (road number 7, for those who prefer numbers). It’s around 1200 km long, only 150 or so of them paved. The region is extremely beautiful and wild: in the south there's the huge Lago General Carrera (the 2nd largest lake in South America, and divided between Argentina and Chile. In the Argentinean side it’s called Lago Buenos Aires), and there are many rivers, lagunes, waterfalls, glaciers and springs… basically water in every form and every imaginable shade of blue and green, plus some grey and brown water too... I’ve never seen so much water in my life.
Bus lines in the area are inconsistent and expensive, so most backpackers either rent a car or hitchhike. After some doubts, I opted for the hitchhiking, along with Uri, one of the Israeli guys I was with in El Chalten (fun fact: we went to the same high school in Jerusalem, but he’s 5 years my senior. And we met in Puerto Natales, of all places…), and I don’t regret it for a second. You get to meet some interesting people hitching. We had two rides with Chilean families on vacation, two in the back of trucks, one of them a garbage truck (best ride ever- sitting on top of a big pile of garbage, above the truckbed’s “walls”, facing backwards and looking at the majestic mountainous landscape receding as you climb steadily on a curvy road, not smelling the garbage at all because of the wind hitting against you from all sides… perfect), one with a pair of local horse-ranchers (who were also giving a ride to a marine engineer who was working in the area, and kept talking about how they had only stopped because there were two girls hitching next to us, and they got stuck with us instead), and last but not least, with a local guy who told us all about the ‘proyecto andino’ conspiracy.
I don’t like to generalize, but most people who live in this area gave us the feeling that they’re either afraid of us, don’t like us, or just want our money and nothing else. It’s probably the only place where I can say that I felt a general hostility (never direct, though, Just the feeling) and unfriendliness, and I’ve talked to a lot of people who felt the same way there. I think that the Pinochet years, coupled with the fact that the area used to be pretty much closed off to outsiders, the sudden rush of tourism and the land buying by outside sources cause what can only be called xenophobia. The proyecto andino thing is a great example: in this area, I’d say that about 50% of the tourists are Israeli, 35% Chilean and 15% from the rest of the world (I don’t think I’m exaggerating at all). Take that little fact, add to it the fact that foreign companies had been buying land in the area for good and bad purposes, mix in the much publicized conflict in Israel, and voila! You’ve got a cool conspiracy theory about how all the Israelis in the area are actually scouts, sent by a population that is sick of the war and wants to find a new country, and the Aysen region is being targeted for that. That’s why the US businessmen (who may or may not be Jewish) have been buying land in strategic locations, to divide Chile in two and give the Israelis the Southern half. Nice, eh? I actually had to sit there and deny being an emissary, and swear that I am in fact traveling for fun and the Israeli army is not paying for my trip.
The serious side of this is that foreign companies are taking advantage of the (amazingly not yet completely depleted) natural resources of the area. It’s nothing new, of course. It’s been going on for over five centuries, and continues to happen all over Latin America (and elsewhere, of course). When we were there, there was a lot of protest against several hydroelectric plants that were supposed to be built in the region, amongst them one on the river Baker, third fastest flowing river in the world, which would inundate a huge area, only to then build the longest high-voltage power line in the world all the way to Santiago (remember what I said about the area being unspoiled for now?). If all this is not complicated enough, you can throw Douglas Tompkins, (former?) owner of The North Face, into the picture. From what I heard, he left his businesses to become an environmentalist, bought huge quantities of land in several areas, the biggest one in the northern Aysen region, and turned them into conservation parks. After legally making sure the area would be conserved and has to stay a national park, he “gives back” the land to the country in which it is. From what I heard, it sounds very positive, but he’s pretty controversial in the area and sparks plenty of ideas in the theorists’ heads. The park in Aysen, Pumalin, is the one that “cuts Chile in half”.
Getting back to what I actually did: we spent a day in the tiny town of Rio tranquilo, where we did a nice little speed-boat trip to see some marble caves (which apparently are only made of some marble lookalike rock, but who cares? It looks cool) and then made dinner with two girls in a hostel- chicken in a honey and chili marinade - more about that in the next post.
After that we went on to Villa Cerro Castillo, from where we set out on a 4-day trek on Cerro Castillo, which is a pretty wild trek- the only way to get to the “entrance” is by walking 13 KM on a 4X4 road, and the only way out is climbing over (or under, I guess) several fences and walking back to town through what looks like private fields; but the paths themselves are mostly marked and it is in a national reserve. Some highlights and lowlights: climbing a mountain that looked (to me, at least) very similar to the black and white mountains in the Eilat desert in southern Israel, but when I got to the top there was about 40m of snow that I had to walk and slide on because it’s smack in the middle of the path. Plus, looking back from that point, you could see mountains of five different colours: green, black, white, brown and red; one of the guys I was with slipping while trying to cross a strong flowing river that had no bridge over it and almost getting swept away; a very impressive glaciar perched on a very impressive mountain, with a full wall of waterfalls falling to become a river; sunrise at our campsite the third day; talking for hours about progressive rock bands and permaculture with one of the guys I did the trek with (probably a horrible conversation for the other two guys...); a side trek climb to the top of a mountain that wasn't really on the path, and being rewarded with the incredible panoramic view of the valley below; almost breaking my legs when a basketball sized rock slid from behind me, jumping aside at the last second (the guy behind me, who had initiated the slide, yelled “Ofer, Ofer Ofer!” and, fortunately, my instinct was to jump to the right. Not jumping, or jumping to the left, would’ve probably ended in me having to be carried the next two days); and of course, swimming in and drinking from freezing lagunes, where you can see the glacier and the waterfalls the water originates from.
Back in town, we had a nice campfire barbeque in our campsite in town, with 3.5 Kg of meat for 5 people and lots of red wine (in cardboard boxes… But I must say that Chilean box wine is pretty damn good, and at 4$ for 2 liters, it’s a great deal).
Shit, rereading this and editing it a year and a half later, I’m struck again by how fucking lucky I am that I was able to do these things.
Since this post is way too long already, I’ll leave the rest of the Aysen region stuff for later.

This is probably a good time to invite whoever wants to see my pictures to my Picasa page. There's a link on the right side of the page. The pictures from this area are especially good. As I've said to several people several times, if the pictures are good, it's not because I took good pictures; it's because no matter where I pointed the camera, the picture that would come out would be beautiful.

God is in the small details, #1

- Crazy coincidence on my first day in Argentina: on the way out of the airport, and Israeli couple that was on the flight from Houston with me asked if I wanted to share a cab into the city. We did, and I found out that besides arriving on the same flight, we booked a place in the same hostel and would fly south on the very same flight to Ushuaia three days later. After Ushuaia, I saw them once more in Torres Del Paine, but that was it. They were on a month long honeymoon in Argentina, so they were moving much faster than me.
- The first mate I drank in Argentina was an extremely non-traditional one: it was mate leaves with orange and mint flavouring, and sugar. In the "cebadora"'s (the one who pours the water and passes it around, usually the host) own words: it's mate for people who don't like mate. And it was in a regular cup (!!!), for Christ's sake.
- Abu Ghosh, a big store in both Punta Arenas and Puerto Natales. Abu Ghosh is the name of an Arab town very close to my home in Jerusalem, and when I asked Omar at the hostel where I can buy a notebook and he said "Abu Ghosh", I was very confused.
- Watching "The Big Lebowski" with Spanish subtitles in Omar's hostel. For those of you wondering at home, The Dude is translated as "El Fino".

Torres Del Paine- beginning of Feb. 2008

Puerto Natales, like many other towns and cities I would visit later on, is a small, one-dimensional town. Or, I should say, that is the way in which it is perceived. There’s no doubt that the town’s character and economy are highly influenced by the huge tourist attraction near it: the Torres Del Paine National Park. I’ve heard it said that it is the second most visited national park in all of South America (trailing the Macchu Picchu, of course). I’ve looked for some corroborating evidence for this claim, to no avail. The park is really an amazing place, with calm and stunningly coloured lakes, black and violent mountains (they looked a lot the way I had always imagined Mordor, in Lord of the Rings, would look), huge granite towers, waterfalls, and most impressive of all: 6-7 glaciers, part of an enormous ice field.

Public Transportation: intercity buses in Argentina and Chile

One thing that fascinates me while traveling is public transportation. In fact, it really interests me while at home, too. Exhibit A in this case would be the small short story collection I wrote about bus rides in Jerusalem (very originally named "buses"). But I digress. From time to time I will write a bit about the subject: what you use to travel in different places, how it works, who you meet, etc. So first of in this series are the intercity buses in Argentina (and Chile, which are very similar), that are, in my own humble opinion, shaped by visiting about 3% of the world (that number is completely and entirely made up...) the best in the world.

Bereshit

I guess the first instinct (reflex...?) is to explain, expound, reason and generally write, write, write. Instead, I decided to start with a thousand words' worth: maybe my favorite of all the photos I've taken, from Puyuhuapi, in Chile.