The Long Road North Part II: Buenos Aires

Arrival

My overnight trip from Bahía Blanca to Buenos Aires was uneventful. The bus showed up more or less on time at the central bus terminal, I wasted a bunch of time once again being thwarted by an unhelpful Argentine information booth occupant who fed me all sorts of misinformation, but eventually made it onto the bus (which I had looked up in advance with the help of Constanza and her mom) to my hostel. It was 8am, and apparently the male hostel staffers were still recovering from the night before because their eyes were bloodshot and they seemed very, very high.

It was too early to check in, but the female staffer ushered me upstairs for breakfast and coffee and I sat there and enjoyed the spotty wireless for a bit before claiming a locker once the dwellers in the room I was checking into woke up, and then going for a walk. A little on edge about being in a BIG CITY again for the first time since Santiago way back in October, I didn't bring much with me and was all paranoid, eyeing everyone suspiciously and peevishly glaring at every bit of graffiti and thinking, "Ugh, humans" every time the wall or sidewalk smelled of piss or feces.

Thank you Buenos Aires graffiti artist.
That pretty much sums it up.

But I eventually got to the spot that was my goal:

The U.S. Embassy.

Calm down, I wasn't in trouble. I was just out of room for stamps in my passport (uuuuuuugggggh firstworldproblems) and needed to get me more before I moved on from Argentina. I showed up at the giant gated complex, walked right around the long line, flashed my passport, and got VIP treatment. Ameeeerrriiicaaaa!! (it made me feel more than kind of bad). They did confiscate all of my stuff, though, not trusting me with whatever electronic devices and mystery liquids (Nalgene bottle of water) I was carrying with me. I took a number, waited 30 minutes, filled out a form, paid the fee and handed over my passport, and was told to come back in four hours.

So I walked across the street to the large green spot on my map which turned out to be a perfectly acceptable city park and curled up on the grass and read a book for a few hours, then getting stiff, got up and walked around, discovering an immense and beautiful rose garden where I stopped and, you guessed it, smelled them roses.

Rose garden. Okay, maybe this city stuff isn't all bad after all.

The four hours up, I wandered back over to the Embassy, skipped the line again, had my stuff confiscated again (although this time I was handed plastic retrieval number 69 with a wink and an obscene comment from the Argentinian guard who thought he was being awfully clever). I then waited 40 minutes behind a VERY ANGRY woman, cut straight out of a SNL-style mold for a middle-aged butch lesbian, who, impatient about her 40 minute wait time, kept turning to me and mumbling variations on "fucking cunt" under her breath anytime the mini-skirted and heavily made-up and bejeweled Porteña in epic platform heels currently being served at the desk loudly vented her difficulties in obtaining a fiancé visa.

Meanwhile, some great propaganda was playing on the televisions hanging in the waiting hall. Fascinating and successful ethnic-looking people talking about how the U.S. is the Land of Opportunity and how they've managed to Maintain their Cultural Identity while enjoying the Great Mixing Pot that is Ameeerrriicaaa and making lots of blonde friends. Features of Women and Muslims Conquering the Business World. A segment on Black History Month. The funny part: 90% of it was recognizably filmed on USC's campus, and of course the "Universities: The Nation's Jewels" was all about TROJAN PRIDE! Fight on!

Anyhow, I eventually got my passport back, now fat with lots of new pages that I'm going to have a hard time filling before the passport expires, especially at my rate of travel (2 countries in over 6 months? Come ON).

By then I was starving, so I rolled into the first not-sketchy looking sandwich shop I found and ordered their biggest sandwich, with fries and a beer, and sat on the street and ate my sandwich and drank my beer, all while attempting to not be angry about being in a city. I felt like crap. I was tired, exhausted. I felt unduly emotional and grumpy. I had weird cramps. I was dizzy a lot. I was bloated. I had been nauseated almost daily for a few hours in the morning for almost two months. It was like really bad PMS, except...I was still months overdue in the monthly bleeding department, so I was also worried, and I worried about that while I ate my sandwich.

I couldn't be pregnant, having not engaged in the requisite activities, apologies to Mary Mother of God. And I'm normally a bombproof regular bleeder: I've never missed a period despite long periods of heavy exercise, crazy travel, serious stress, major illness, and several of those combined. I worried that something serious was wrong, and wondered if I should see a doctor. Or could I be pregnant? That would have pretty disturbing implications involving being drugged and raped, something I assumed I would at least have had a clue about after the fact. I finished my sandwich, and skulked back to the hostel, now in a decidedly worse mood.

I was finally allowed to check in, and promptly claimed a top bunk as My Domain, and sat there catching up on emails and stuff for a few hours, avoiding conversation and avoiding smiling at people like an antisocial jerk. The others in my room were a group of sick Norwegians, which made me even grumpier. Fed up with my sulky self, I kicked myself out of bed, put on running clothes, and went for a run to my newly-discovered park. Which was full of kissing lovers. Which made me even grumpier. I returned back to the hostel in a supremely foul mood, showered, drank a huge happy hour beer by myself, still avoiding people, went out for a lonely and mediocre dinner, returned to the hostel, stuffed the earplugs in, and went to sleep.

Black Market Dealings and My Imaginary Fetus

I went running again the next morning, attempting to shake my funk that had started on the way back from Antarctica and that had been following me like a shouldered albatross. I ran and ran and ran, then did situps until I felt like I wanted to puke, then thought about maybe being rape-pregnant again. To distract myself, I decided to go have an Argentine Adventure and head downtown to do some black market money exchanging. I was wildly successful, shopping around for the best rates, hunting down the best traders, doing shady behind-dumpster deals, discreetly hiding my multiple stashes of cash money obtained from various sources so that nobody would know how much I was actually carrying, and coming away almost twice as rich as I had started the day. I bought myself some semi-stylish, inexpensive sandals to celebrate, my cute Chiloe shoes having been completely worn to sole-less. And I went to a pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test.

Downtown BA

Parktown BA

Then I decided to go explore another of the green spots on the city map, a big nature reserve nearby. It was surprising nature-y and I found a nice spot to sit on a bench and read more of my book, but I couldn't focus. I kept thinking about being pregnant. What if I was?

I thought about it. I've always wanted kids. I sure didn't ever want to have them under the circumstance of having been drugged-raped, but I still thought that if there was a child inside me, I wanted to be its mother. Then I remembered all of the drinking I had done in the past months and felt immediately terribly guilty, and apologized profusely to my imaginary fetus. I assumed everyone I knew would think I was crazy if I decided to have the baby, but an abortion was out of the question for me. I'm not the sort of person to picket abortion clinics because for me it's a personal and not a black and white moral issue (besides, it seems to me that picketing abortion clinics is an ineffective and jackass way of going about an extremely sensitive and personal issue). But for me, ever since seeing a collection of pickled fetuses at various developmental stages at a museum, it's been burned in my head that a fetus is little human, and humans have a right to live, and that right to live outweighs my right to anything except maybe my own physical safety (and in a battle of self-defense, sorry fetus...I've got a bit of an upper hand). I also never bought the "life worth living" argument because who am I to judge what sort of life is worth living? Someone I had the Abortion Conversation once asked me if I would feel the same way if I found out my fetus had Down's Syndrome. Of course! I know it would be difficult, but I would happily be the mother of a child (and adult) with Down's. Some of the nicest, happiest, and arguably wisest people I know have Down's. Anyhow, I knew that was a discussion, and a difficult one, that I would have to have with many of my best friends, most of whom are militantly pro-choice. Not to mention the "no, I don't want to give it up for adoption just because I would be a single mom," conversation with my family.

All that thinking made me need to pee, convenient, since that's what is needed for the pregnancy test, which in the middle of all that thinking, I had sat and read the Spanish instructions for (having never had the occasion to take a pregnancy test before). I needed a 10-second stream of 3-hour old pee. Whatever that meant, but I was pretty sure I had that. I looked around, crawled off into the apparently alligator infested (? really?) bushes, and peed on the end of a little white and purple plastic stick, which yes, was weird.

Modo de uso: How to find out if you've got a 2-month old proto-human incubating inside you in three easy steps. The fact that urine probably shouldn't be blue doesn't seem to bother these people.

Not in the pregnancy test directions but conveniently posted elsewhere: avoid getting eaten by alligators.

Then I capped it, and decided to not spend the next 5 minutes obsessively watching it to find out my fate for the next rest of my life, and went off to walk to the beach. I got to the beach, sat down, held my breath, pulled the stick out of my purse, and...

BAM

Not pregnant.

I was simultaneously relieved, a tad disappointed, and suddenly scared. Because if I wasn't pregnant, then I probably had Cancer Part 4 involving a tumor the size of a basketball that had taken over my overies, or had been infected by aliens, or was otherwise Seriously Messed Up.

The Recovery

Back at the hostel, I vented my concerns to the Former PhD Advisor Known as Frank, who asked me if I was maybe anemic. Anemic! Yes! That would explain everything! I had always had problems with mild anemia, and with the exception of the occasional asado, had been eating very little in the iron department. Excellent, I thought, I'm only in the best place in the whole world to fix this problem: Argentina, the land of Great Steak. So I immediately set out to eat ALL THE STEAK. (yes, I know there are other ways to get iron, but I love steak, and when in Argentina...)

So I asked for advice about where to go to get steak, and was told that if I hurried, there was a restaurant a 15 minute walk away that had a Steak Happy Hour that involved showing up at the door and getting in line 20 minutes before opening at 6:40, getting seated at 7:00 and quickly ordering, and snarfing down the food before the clock hit 8:00, when the classier customers would start showing up and the cheap backpackers would get booted from their tables. Perfect. So off I went, and I found the place, and in line I met Londoner Rob who was a Steak Happy Hour regular, and who suggested we share a table in a sort of blind speed date, "The best part is if we hate eachother, we know we get kicked out in an hour!" Except Rob was a super fun guy to talk to and also knew which steak to order, which meant that we ended up with this:

All that...for me?
(note the look of excitement mixed with terror on my face)
And yes, I ate it. For health purposes.

Needless to say, I immediately felt a whole world better. Seriously. And it was steak for every meal I could get from there on out. And it was like I was a whole new person.

The next day I went running again and didn't mind the lovers making out in the park so much. Good for them.

I braved new adventures, like the post office, which turned into a big freaking fiasco that took two hours and involved me using every trick in my feminine portfolio short of offering sexual favors (actually it was the getting all feisty and argumentative that finally did the job, the whole "I'm going to be such a pain in your ass that you're going to beg me to let you do what I want so that I'll shut up and leave you alone" trick) to get them to ship my damned box. I eventually won.

Just SEND THE DAMNED PACKAGE! uuuuggghhhh

Then I went to go track down a place to buy ferry tickets to Uruguay, since I had heard that Uruguay was the Magical Land of Dollars where I could get more money to smuggle back into Argentina. Except that after a solid hour of wandering around getting lost trying to find the place they would only let me pay in dollars. "If I had them, why would I be going to Uruguay?" I asked. I didn't have any more dollars, and the tickets were really expensive, which totally defeated the purpose. Grumpy again, I consoled myself with more steak. Or rather attempted to, but the place that promised they had what I wanted didn't after I sat down, so I had to settle for chicken smothered in cheese which is what they brought me as the replacement, which both sucks and I'm allergic to. Grumpiness level increased. Plus I had blisters. Damnit.

But then I went with my roommate--fellow transplanted Angelino Emily, a vivacious Hollywood costume designer--back to the steak restaurant and all was well again. Well enough that we decided to go out and get ourselves some tango lessons at a milonga. It was pouring rain when we finished our meal (promptly, of course, at 8:00), so we took a taxi to the dance hall. Lessons, it turned out, weren't going to start for another two hours. So we ordered a bottle of wine. Tango music was playing on the speakers and there was a dance floor, so some intrepid young gentlemen found their way to where we were sitting and spun us around a bit, patient with our lack of skill.

That's me in the green dress

When the lessons started, I was immediately grabbed by a dashing young man who turned out to be a pediatric surgeon doing his residency in Buenos Aires, and who loved to tango and danced very well. Why he picked me as a dance partner I will never know, but I didn't argue, because he was fun, and it meant that I got to go to the advanced class with him. While practicing, I chatted with my partner, Ariel, and half fell in love as he told me more and more about himself and his world-saving dreams, except he confessed that he didn't like snow so I knew there was no future for us. Class ended and we rejoined the rest of the group, but I danced with the surgeon until morning, arriving back at the hostel just in time to sleep three hours before the hostel owner woke me up with a gentle shake, telling me they needed me to check out.

He woke me from one of the most vivid, colorful dreams I can ever remember having, probably a result of all of the iron now flooding my system.

Buenos Aires Dream Sequence

In the dream, I was back in the tango club, except the club not a dance hall but a dingy and cavernous warehouse, dimly lit with a few lamps on the tables scattered by the bar and one hot spotlight on the unpolished wood dance floor. The bare concrete walls were decorated with a chaos of abstract paintings on unframed  canvasses, held together by red tones that were probably pulled straight from memories of La Luna Negra, my favorite Spanish tapas restaurant back in Pasadena. The giveaway that I was dreaming was the massive anatomic heart sculpture, the size of a room, hanging red and bloody looking from the ceiling above the bar, seemingly pulsating slowly to--or was it the source of?--the beat of the nostalgic tango music.

My pediatric surgeon was back, but he was a gaucho now, lost and out of place in this big city but at home among the bola performers and wistful old couples. He took my hand and we danced, not in the solid open frame I had learned, but the close embrace of lovers. He led me through the slow walks and twirls with the pressure of his cheekbones alone and my steps were long and elegant and sensual like how I always imagined tango being.

In the middle of tango-ing, we were treated to a bola show at the Milonga

We melted together in my dream.

"I have a secret." He whispered. "I am a gaucho."
"I know," I whispered back.
"I live on a secret Ranchito in the city."

Then he took me to his Ranchito, except he was driving my car, except my car was white. He parked at a pediatric hospital in the middle of an old neighborhood, and led me to a tall black gate. "Welcome to my Ranchito," he said, as he opened the gate.

Inside was a secret garden. There were bushes of rosemary, jasmine, and thyme. In pots he was nursing a dozen exotic flowers that looked like jewels. He picked one with long red petals, like one of the tubeworms from hydrothermal vents, a tube of red lipstick, and gave it to me with a kiss. I followed him through rows of squash and tomatoes and corn. It was my friend Vicky's backyard garden, except everything was oversized, including an avocado tree the size of a house with avocados like hard, green grapefruits. It was lit through the fruit trees by the full moon. The city had disappeared.

In the middle of the secret garden was a round, orange, one-room earthen hut, sculpted in Cobb, straight out of one of my sustainable building books. On the outside were reliefs of serpentine trees. On the inside, sculpted onto the wall, the word AMOR. Love. Wine bottles built into the earth walls let the moonlight shine through in glittering green. Gritty tango music from a hundred years ago played over a radio that seemed at least as old.

We danced. Kissed. Sat down on his small bed covered in a wispy canopy of mosquito netting. "Do you want a baby?" he asked, "Un pequeño gauchito?"

And that's when I woke up to the shaking of the hostel owner back in the dorm room with Emily, who was still passed out.

I wrote this down because that is how I want to remember Buenos Aires: romantic, surreal, haunted with nostalgia, and saturated with the sound of tango music. And also because when I woke up I found an inexplicable, hard, green, grapefruit-sized avocado and a flower in my purse.

Emily and I decided that the proper course of action
was to leave the avocado as a ritual welcome gift for
the next guest a the hostel, hoping that it would lead
them to their own Buenos Aires adventures.

Epilogue

In various states of hangover and exhaustion, Emily and I went out to brunch to soak up the fun of the night before and then went to check out the colorful neighborhood of La Boca, which turned out to be crazily, but sort of fun in a Disneyland-esque way, toursity. We were both exhausted so we didn't last long, but we had some fun before crawling back to the hostel to take naps: her in a comfortable bed, me on a couch in the computer room since I had been unceremoniously kicked out of my bed.

Me and Emily, reliving our crazy previous night

La Boca

Emily and I and a few others from our hostel room (including the Mexican guy who I had been sleeping on top of the whole week but who had such an opposite schedule to mine that I only knew he was there because every time he rolled over the bunk would threaten to shake me out of the top bed, but he turned out to be really cool) went out to a final dinner, and then I said goodbye to this lovely, bizarre, magical city and hopped on an overnight bus to Córdoba.

Check out the story from Emily's perspective told on her blog.

Navarino VIII: The Feral Swampbeast returns to civilization

Part VIII in the story of my 7-day solo trek on Isla Navarino, continued from Part VII: Blizzards and Beavers. To start at the beginning or to see the full list of Navarino episodes, click here.

My morning view

Although it was cold when I woke up on my final day of my hike, the sun was shining. Having slept a fairly solid 9 hours I was ready for my only early start. I had woken up with “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” stuck in my head for no particular reason that I could think of, and so began my day singing out loud in my best gospel voice, alone in the mountains, like a true crazy hermit. After a final breakfast of runny oatmeal while my sleeping bag and tent dried a bit in the sun, still singing, I was ready to go and was on the trail by 8 am.  And this time there was a trail, at least way markers that were more often visible than not for the first few hours.

She's alive!!

Despite the trail, and despite the singing (or maybe because of it?) I was moving slowly. My cold had moved to my lungs and I was wheezing and short of breath, and with my sinuses completely plugged, breathing was hard (and you can imagine how good the singing actually sounded). I would get out of breath walking downhill, when usually I can charge up hills with a pack without too much problem. But I had all day, and although the distance I had to cover was comparable to some very long days I had had, the good weather, spectacular  views, and presence of a trail made me hopeful that I could made good time for a change even at a slow, steady pace.

The hike was beautiful, and the snow lent everything a certain additional air of solitude and romance, but I was very cold and my feet were soaked all day, which they had also been most of the previous days, but the cold made it especially hard. And, of course, I couldn't escape the beavers and once again landed in beaver terrain. Beaverland turned into bog again and my path continued through miles of swamp. I could smell my own feet with each step, which by now smelled distinct from and significantly worse than the bog water in which they had been incubating all week.

Footprints in the snow at the end of the world.

I crested the small pass that marked the longitudinal backbone of the island and suddenly I could see the ocean again, the Beagle Channel. I had returned to vistas where I could no longer say “no humans as far as I can see”. With mixed feelings, I was returning to civilization: looking forward to warming up and drying out my feet and resting off my cold, but very reluctant to leave the delightful solitude I had so much enjoyed. I felt like some feral thing, emerging stinking and filthy from the bogs and peaks and blizzards of the wild south and skulking warily into the habitat of other humans.

And civilization met me that early afternoon with dusty dirt roads and swarms of black bugs that got up my nose and in my eyes and down my shirt and everywhere. And I emerged from the road in the woods into the wood-smoky air of Puerto Williams, simultaneously relieved and reluctant.

My first stop when I returned to Puerto Williams was the info center to ask where I could book a plane ticket, since I needed to meet my friends for my birthday trek in Torres del Paine in a few days. She looked at me and suggested instead that I take the long ferry to Punta Arenas, commenting, “I can see from your face that you have had…an experience. It seems you need time to rest.” I later saw what she meant. I was windburnt, had dark circles under my eyes, bleeding scratches on my face, and matted hair decorated with sticks. And then there was the stench coming from my feet.

View of the Beagle Channel from a crest in the trail

I stopped by the DAP office to ask about the plane anyhow, the ferry would get me to my friends too late. All flights were full for a week, contrary to what I had been told before I left that I should just book when I returned from my hike. But they said to come back in a few hours and check for cancellations. I thought that was a fine idea, maybe I’d have better luck after a shower.

Next I stopped by the Carabineros to register my safe return. The officer on duty seemed surprised when he checked the records and saw when I had left and heard where I had been and asked me about it, saying he had never been out there, or even past the Cerro Banderas. I showed him some photos (my camera having successfully mostly dried out) and told him a bit about the trip. He commented about all of the others who had turned back that week because of the weather and wondered how I got on. “It was cold, wet, and snowy,” I said, “but beautiful. Incredible.” As I was there, two more guys—one a seasoned Pacific Crest Trail distance hiker—showed up. They had also given up on their trek due to the weather and lack of trail.

I walked out feeling like a warrior queen, trailing broken hearts and taking swigs from a flask full of tears milked from her conquered enemies. Although to be fair I had also not finished the Dientes circuit. But give up, tuck tail, and return to town? The thought had honestly never crossed my mind. With the exception of the fall in the swamp, at no point did I feel scared or in over my head. I had only wished I had more time to go back and finish the circuit after my wander to the south. I wondered what it would have taken for me to have actually returned early. A legion of pumas chasing me down off the pass, I decided. Or running out of food. I need to learn how to hunt and clean an animal, I decided, thinking of the beaver. Or a wet sleeping bag that I couldn’t dry out.

Church in Puerto Williams

Finally I returned “home” to Patty’s. I stripped off my gaitors and boots and socks at the door, walked in, and was met by a giant hug from Patty. It was like coming home to mom. “The best time of my life,” was all I could say. Despite the cold, the wet, and the rain, it really had been. “Mira!” She responded with a grin. She saw that I had fallen deeply, madly in love with the island that she, too, loved.

I started to unpack and was about to take a shower when I met my roommate for the evening who appeared in the door and asked if I wanted a beer. Beer. Ohhellzyess I wanted a beer. A cold, glorious, delicious beer (Austral Yagán—a very good dark beer). So I sat, sipping and delighting in the beer, looking like a wild creature and smelling worse, chatting for an hour with Fernando about life, careers, and adventures.

And then I finally showered, clumps of hair coming out as I tried to shampoo my matted head. I put on clean clothes, brushed what was left of my hair, and even put on mascara. And just like that I went from feral swampbeast to domesticated human, but a domesticated human who had been reunited with her strong and independent heart and fiercely wild soul.

I cleaned my stuff, re-packed, and then had dinner with an older Canadian couple who had cycled all the way from Bolivia to Punto Arenas, including the entire length of Argentina’s legendary Ruta 40. The food and shower and beer having made me feel like a new person, I decided to go out to the Club de Yates for a beer—just one beer, to check in with people, I told myself.

Panorama of the Club de Yates

I ended up staying for much longer than one beer, chatting and laughing and dancing until 4 am with the other wild souls who had also been drawn by the gravity of the romance of adventure of the end of the world to land at that bar (and the entirety of the Chilean navy posted in Puerto Williams…as the only woman at the bar, I was popular that night).

Poor Fernando, who also showed up, was obligated to escort me home (I bullied him into staying later and later for round after round of beer, because I’m a terrible person and a despotic drunk, and also had no idea how late it was). The skies were stunning, with the light just coming up and turning the clouds an eerie pastel.

On the walk back to Patty’s Fernando and I shared the stories of our lives: our dreams, our passions, the lessons we had learned from our adventures that had brought us to that night.  When we tucked into our bunks in otherwise empty hostel, the conversation had turned to our love lives, and he said, “You are an interesting person, I think you will find someone very soon.” 

I laughed and replied that the challenge isn’t finding someone. It’s finding someone who enriches your life instead of tying you town and eating your soul. 

There was a long silence followed by a quiet yes, and we fell asleep.

Or rather we both laid there staring at the ceiling for a while absorbed in our own silent conversations, mine between my heart, which the minute I made that comment ached to find that someone, my head, who countered that it seemed relationships are having another person tie you down and eat your soul, and my soul who wrapped its wings around my head and my heart and said quietly “Sssh, it’s okay now, we’re okay now.” And, reassured and agreeing that, indeed, everything was okay, very much more than okay, (and my soul, being fierce and wild, was not about to be eaten without a good fight) the three of them snuggled into the squishy sack of exhausted flesh that was my body and I fell asleep with a smile.

THE END

Bus to the end of the world

I took a bus from Bariloche to Ushuaia. It took 36 hours, and covered over 2000 miles of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. For my U.S. friends, that's like taking a bus in a straight shot from the border of Canada to the border of Mexico, with about 80% of the drive through scenery reminiscent of the mojave desert (but a good portion of that was at night). It was pretty rad.

36 hours watching Argentina go by in my La-Z-Boy on Wheels. My seat was the one in the window at the upper right.

What follows is the 36 hours in all of their detail, as narrated by the voice in my head. In case you've ever wanted to spend 36 hours inside my head. Also a lot of pictures of bus food because most of the photos I took of the landscape didn't turn out but the pictures of food did.

Or, for the scenery without the words, here's the video (cut down significantly from 36 hours to 4:20 minutes, you're welcome).

The play-by-play

06:15  My friends at the Green House Hostel had thrown an asado the night before my departure, and so I was full of wine, beer, and Fernet when I went to bed, and still full of it when I woke up 40 minutes before my alarm when the sun rose. I showered, then attempted to pack without waking up the six snoring guys and two not-snoring girls in my hostel dorm room.

08:35  Brian the hostel owner called me a taxi as I scarfed down my breakfast in my normal frantic way. I have Brian a hug, "Voy a te extraño!" The Green House people had been my family for the month, and I really was going to miss them.

08:50  I arrived at the bus station, dropped my backpacking backpack in the luggage bay, and boarded with my remaining two bags: my backpacking backpack, my little school backpack full of Spanish homework and my computer, and a third bag full of food for the 36 hour journey: bananas, water, chopped up bell peppers, mandarins, crackers, cookies, and a half kilo of good dark chocolate from Bariloche's legendary Mamuschka. I settled into my VIP seats (the advantage of booking early--you get to pick your seats) on the top deck of the double-decker Marga bus in the front, my glass bubble for the next 24 hours. The bus was empty so I "nested" by spreading my mountain of stuff all across the front row. Anyone who has ever been on a road trip with me can guess what this looked like.

And for those of you who have never been on a road trip with me, "the nest" looked something like this.

09:05  The bus departed and rolled through Bariloche. The upper deck gave a different vantage point on the city that had been my home for a month. We passed the slum part of town, which I hadn't seen before, small shacks squished up against the huge city garbage dump just north of town, with Cerro Cathedral and Cerro Otto in the background as the bus joined the legendary Ruta 40.

The view as we pulled out of Bariloche

09:20  OMG Road trip!!! I love road trips!! There were lakes and pointy snow-capped peaks streaming past my windows on all sides. My excitement built, I couldn't contain a grin, and might have even let out a squee. As each minute brought new and more spectacular peaks with storm-colored lakes at their feet and hills and meadows full of scotch broom and dandelions accenting the layers of green, purple, red, orange, and magenta of the mountains and the sky with pinkish clouds. I kept thinking "most spectacular effing road trip ever!" (and I've been on some pretty spectacular road trips).


09:45  The bus passed the turnoff to Tronador. I felt a pang of sadness about leaving my splitboard behind. I wondered where my badass guide friend Melitta was in her Patagonian adventures.

10:00  Passed a pair of cyclists. What an incredible trip that would be, I thought. I thought about the shoulder injury I developed during my last big cycling trip (a month through the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Eastern Germany), realized it was over 7 years ago, felt sad that I haven't managed to heal my shoulder yet and get back on a bike, and nostalgic about what a great way to travel it had been. I had done that trip and other memorable adventures around Europe with my boyfriend of the time, a long relationship that was difficult and rocky from the start but held together by the glue of our mutual love of outdoor adventures. Although after the breakup both of us had felt bitter about all the time (6 years) we had "wasted", I realized in retrospect I wouldn't trade that time for anything. I did so many cool things with him and I learned so much. He didn't mean to be a confidence-shattering, insufferable asshat. He had done the best he knew how to do, and gave me some very happy memories. At the same time, I felt very glad that relationship was long over and that both of us had moved on in our lives. As I thought about the cyclists with the mountains rolling past my fishbowl windows, I felt layers of scars, having healed, dropping off.

Mountain, viewed from my Fishbowl of Awesome

10:30  When dreaming about this South America trip, I had originally had big plans to drive the whole way, and would often daydream of driving for endless hours in the wild wasteland of Patagonia. Dreamed of the music I would listen to, the things I would see, the freedom I would feel. Here I was on a bus, certainly a different experience but, I thought, far more comfortable and relaxed. I realized that I was sitting there, watching my childhood and adult dreams come true as the mountains continued to roll past. I felt achingly happy.

10:40  Crossed a turquoise-covered river with views of distant mountains covered in snow. There were a few wood lean-tos announcing a small human population, but not much else.

More mountains. Curva peligrosa = dangerous curves.

11:20  I woke up from a short catnap to a caramel-filled dark chocolate on a napkin on my armrest, a gift from the Canadians sitting behind me. The bus arrived in El Bolson, with horses being ridden down the main streets, little hippie shops, lupine lining the road in their pink and purples, and huge mountains looming at the outskirts of town. "Mom would love it here," I thought, as I savored the chocolate.

11:40  The Canadians and I made lunch, combining our food stashes: baguettes smeared with butter and meat pate with some of my sliced bell peppers. It was filling and we felt clever, having brought such a nice picnic with us.

11:45  The bus steward came upstairs with trays to serve us lunch: raviolis, cornbread, little savory pastries, rice with carrots and peas, and juice. This came as a complete surprise to the Canadians and me. Not one to ever waste food, I shoveled it in, and felt utterly and overly stuffed.

Lunch #1

12:00  Uuuuuuhgggghhhhhh why did I eat so much? But I still couldn't keep my hands out of my bag o' chocolate. Someone please take it away!!

12:10  Chubut. The landscape looked like Wyoming with big snow-topped mountains on the right side and rolling steppe to the left. This was the Patagonia of my imagination. Road still paved, despite rumors of this trip being a poorly-maintained dirt road nightmare.

12:20  The driver's assistant curtained off half of my fishbowl windows, reducing my view to half. Tempted to open them back up, but don't want to be That Entitled Jerk who keeps the rest of the bus from napping.

12:40  Now I'm napping, too. Zzzzzzzzzzzz

13:45  Stop in Esquel with a 10 minute bathroom break. It took me 5 just to extracate myself from my seat-nest. No toilet paper in the bathroom. Good thing I had my tissues on me.

14:00  On the road again. There's some movie playing in the background involving the pope...and aliens? There's a stargate or something. And religious opera music. Ooooh, I hear Tom Hanks, I know what this is.

14:20  Flamingos! Hanging out in a salt pond. No photos, blew by them too fast.

15:00  Tubut. There's a big Argentine flag and a road sign: Las Malvinas son Argentinas. This would not be the last of these huge signs I'd see on the trip. I had been warned: never ever ever call them the Falklands in Argentina.

15:30  Now I'm suddenly driving south on Hwy 395 with desert on my left, snowy dry mountains on my right, driving south along the Eastern Sierras. I've been here dozens of times before. Except this time I'm in the magic rolling La-Z-Boy that I always wished I had for the drive. I pulled out my Spanish books, I schlepped four of them with me, hoping to do enough review so that I could abandon them somewhere and stop hauling them around. Over 6 weeks later as I finally write this post, I'm still hauling them around.

Hi, Eastern Sierras. Except in Argentina.

16:00  Stop in Chubut.

17:00  It's now a less-dry version of the Mojave. The road is smaller and older, but the scenery is the same. I flew across the world to road trip through California.

17:30  Pavement ended. Dirt road started.

18:10  Back on pavement in scrub desert.

19:00  The road signs no longer say Ruta 40. Still in the desert, but still pavement. Braved my first on-bus toilet experience since I brilliantly timed this trip for a heavy day of my period. Dealing with the DivaCup on the bus was a surprisingly non-unpleasant experience.

19:20  Lake! Big lake! Looks like the sort of place that would have good microbial mats. Alas, no stop.

20:20  Desert desert desert. Onto Kindle reading now: Cheryl Strayed's Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar. Downloaded this out of curiosity when I saw it mentioned in her list of books after finishing Wild (her bestseller about her time on the Pacific Crest Trail). Admit to crying several times at particularly touching stories and responses. Say what you will about Cheryl Strayed, but we could all learn from her empathy and kind way of viewing humanity.

Oil derrick at sunset in Patagonia

21:00  Now it really looks like California, oil derricks everywhere. They kind of look pretty at sunset.

21:20  Dinner served. The food on this trip has been surprisingly good (if very benadryl-requiring for this allergic-to-milk-products-and-eggs little defective human)

. All that's lacking is a bottle of wine.

Dinner

The final rays of sun reflected in the bus window.

21:30  Wait...is that the ocean? Where are we?

21:45  Now the ocean is on my right. This is all wrong. I am so confused.

21:50  Okay, ocean is back on my left. I think this is acceptable...

22:45  Sleep.

01:20  Stars! Look at those stars!!

05:15  Sunrise over the pampas.

07:20  Breakfast.

That's right, breakfast. Cake, cookies, and candy.

08:30  We were supposed to be in Rio Gallegos by now. We're still in the Pampas. My bus connection to Ushuaia is in 30 mins. Will I make it?

08:45  Still no Rio Gallegos in sight.

08:50  In the outskirts of Rio Gallegos. Asked the bus driver if I'll make my connection or what my options are. Bus driver briefly panicked, then called ahead. My bus will wait for me.

09:00  I am packed and ready to jump off this bus.

09:13  Bus pulled into the bus station at Rio Gallegos. I was quickly ushered off, my bags found and thrown into the bus to Ushuaia, and swept onto the Ushuaia bus. My Canadian friends still sleeping, I didn't get to say goodbye.

09:15  Ushuaia bus departed, the assistant handed out Chilean immigration cards. But...Ushuaia...is in Argentina... Chile? I looked at a map. Oh, duh. I suck at geography. Do I have any food products to declare? Yeah, only a giant grocery bag full. Let the frantic eating fest begin! Also, if they confiscate my chocolate I'm going to throw a screaming crying fit.

This is a photo of the sun starting to go down the day prior, but I ran out of photos for this part of the story.

09:30  Reading Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle, which seemed appropriate reading given my destination. I now have an easy answer to that "If you could go back in time and meet any person, who would it be?" question: I would go back and apply for the job of cabin wench on the Beagle and relentlessly follow young Darwin around on his adventures. I love the mix of nerdy observation and absolute joy he takes in the beautify of the natural world. Charles Darwin, I want to look at your slightly phosphorescent self-regenerating jumping pyrophores in your cabin with you.

Prior to being one of history's most recognized names in science, Charles Darwin was a kid who loved being outside, loved collecting beetles and studying geology, and annoyed his father by not being too interested in medicine. One day during summer break he comes home to a letter offering him a spot as a 'gentleman naturalist' (i.e. his dad would have to pay his way) and companion to Captain Fitz Roy aboard the H.M.S. Beagle for a planned 2 year voyage (it ended up being 5) around the world with a focus on developing hydrographic maps of and surveying coastal Brazil, Argentina, and Chile as well as returning a few kidnapped natives of Tierra del Fuego to their native lands.

He was 22 when he left aboard the Beagle. He was still learning: studying books--especially on Geology--given to him during the voyage by Fitz Roy. Reading the Voyage of the Beagle is like watching a movie of Darwin's formation as a scientist. The best part is he was young, and had a passion for adventure, asking Fitz Roy to let him off on land to, say, ride a while across the pampas with gauchos or climb a mountain. While sitting in the bus reading, I developed a serious crush on young Darwin (even if he was only 22...).

Here's one of my favorite endearing passages, about Darwin playing gaucho and trying to use bolas:

"One day, as I was amusing myself by galloping and whirling the balls round my head, by accident the free one struck a bush, and its revolving motion being thus destroyed, it immediately fell to the ground, and, like magic caught one hind leg of my horse; the other ball was then jerked out of my hand, and the horse fairly secured...The Gauchos roared with laughter; they cried out that they had seen every sort of animal caught, but had never before seen a man caught by himself."

10:00  Border. Saw and chatted with a Korean guy I met in the hostel in Bariloche, random. I got another pair of stamps in my passport, bringing the South America count to six. We will get at least two more today and even more in the days to come. This is starting to look like my previous passport with the pages full of Slovakia/Poland stamps from biking back and forth across the border along the Tatras. So far, I still have my chocolate. The world is safe.

10:45  Still at the border. Made a bathroom stop. This one was less fun with the DivaCup: hovering over a shit-smeared toilet seat in a bathroom with no soap and non-working sinks while trying to wipe out and empty the cup with nothing but kleenex without getting my hands too bloody...ick. It's been nice on the bus trip generally but the changing thing is still a trick I haven't quite gotten used to. Those assholes better let me keep my chocolate or heads are gonna roll.

11:10  Border checks complete. They let me keep my chocolate. Thank God.

11:15  I'm in Chile. Plains, ocean, sheep, and guanacos. This is the other side of Patagonia!

11:45  We arrived at the end of mainland South America. Loaded the bus onto a ferry to cross the Strait of Magellan (another one of those almost mythical places that I am totally geeking out about visiting). We didn't even get out of the bus, bus just drove right onto the ferry, no big deal, ferry crosses the Magellan, as we cross lunch is served. We offload from the ferry into Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego! I made it!!

Lunch. Eaten, of course, in the fully-reclined La-Z-Boy position. Not sure what half of this was, but I'm pretty sure it was egg and cheese. More benadryl.

12:10  Phone battery died. Using my solar charger for the first time on this South America trip. Lunch must have had cheese somewhere I didn't see, loaded myself up with Benadryl. Naptime.

12:50  More flamingos! Still no photos, though.

13:10  Dirt road begins.

13:30  And now...I'm in Scotland? Sheep everywhere. Except there are also guanacos.

14:50  I really, really have to poop. But No Pooping Allowed on the Bus (there are actually signs that say this). Popped a mystery blue pill (not so mystery: immodium to stop me up for a while).

15:00  Border crossing number 2 at San Sebastian, the air is significantly cooler here. They have bathrooms! Hooray! After doing my business (and, yes, washing my hands) I ran into the Mainguys--my French friends from the Green House hostel. Friends! Also heading to Ushuaia on a different bus! I was so busy chatting with them that my bus almost left without me.

16:00  Still in the Land of Many Sheep. Sheep, sheep, nothing but sheep. I am out of water. Do I open up the box of juice? If I open the juice, I'm almost certainly going to make a giant mess of spilled juice everywhere at some point.

16:30  I opened the juice.

The Juice

17:15  Naptime. Sheep sheep sheep sheep sheepzzszzzzzz

17:50  Woke up to a very different view. Is this Darwin's "impenetrable forest"? No more sheep.

18:00  I SEE MOUNTAINS!!!!

18:30  Aaaaand, now I'm in Norway (bus trip: North Cascades to the Eastern Sierra to the Mojave to Patagonia to Scotland to Norway). Oh I love mountains. Love love love mountains. Not just "I think mountains are beautiful and I appreciate them" love mountains but "this bus just turned a corner and there's a  really good-looking mountain and now my heart is beating all crazy and I want to jump out of the bus and run up to it and give it a giant hug" love mountains.

19:30  This place is stunning. Wow. Huge mountains, sparkling lakes and sounds, more huge mountains...wow.

19:45  Ushuaia sign, really? We're...early??

20:00  Arrival, a full hour early. Unheard of! Now, to find a hostel...

Ushuaia! The "end of the world" (= fin del mundo) sign.

Splitboarding the Refugios of Bariloche Part II: San Martin (Jacob)

Part II of the Splitboarding Patagonia series, continued from Part I: Refugio Frey

Refugio San Martin / Jacob

I don't know tu madre well enough to verify this statement, but I assure you this is a complimentary comparison.

The next trip Fernando recommended was to Refugio Jacob (officially Refugio San Martin, but after getting puzzled looks whenever I asked mountain people about it I quickly discovered that it is universally known as Refugio Jacob. Why? No idea.) when I stopped by the Club Andino the week following my Frey adventure and pointed on his map to the pretty, snow-covered ridges I had seen from the top of Cathedral and asked the best way to get there. The trek to Jacob involved a longer hike and a taxi ride to the trailhead.

The night before I planned to leave friend-of-a-friend Yuki arrived in Bariloche following a month of hitchhiking north from Ushuaia after a 6-month stint in Antarctica (see, those of you who think I am crazy, I can only aspire to be as awesome as Yuki). Not wanting to miss out on hearing some of his stories but also not wanting to miss out on a weekend of splitboarding, I talked Yuki into joining me for part of the hike up. And by "talked into" I threw out the idea and he immediately jumped on it.

Me and Yuki on the trail to Refugio Jacob

So on Friday after my Spanish class let out, we hopped a bus to the point where we were supposed to catch a taxi, and decided to hitchhike (because, inspired by Yuki's greatness, paying for a taxi seemed megalame). Which mostly meant walking. And walking and walking and walking. Occasionally vehicles would pass us, but they didn't seem interested in dealing with a girl with a big backpack and a dude carrying--for no apparent reason--a snowboard (Yuki generously offered to carry my snowboard while we hiked). After 40 minutes or so along dusty gravel road a dump truck pulled over and motioned us in. Or rather motioned us on, as in, "Go ahead, hop in the back of the dump truck!" which Yuki understood but I did not, as I climbed up into the cab despite the driver's protests. I explained where we wanted to go and he rolled his eyes because it wasn't anywhere near where he was going and we had just delayed him by a good 5 minutes due to my inability to navigate the ladder into his cab, but he drove us a kilometer further down the road before dropping us off at an intersection.

And we were back to walking, and walking and walking. About a kilometer before the trailhead, a carful of young guys pulled over, rolled down their window, and asked if we were lost. I didn't think I was lost, but walked over with my map to verify where I thought we were just to be safe. He pointed us in the right direction but then asked, "why the snowboard?"

"I'm going snowboarding," I replied.

"There's no snow."

"There is in the mountains."

"No, there is no snow."

"No, really, there is."

"Definitely no snow. Snow all gone. All gone," my friends were making increasingly grave hand motions.

The conversation went back and forth like that for a while before the guy driving finally shook his head and asked if one of us wanted to get a ride down the road, he couldn't fit both of us. I wasn't about to go without Yuki, so we opted to walk. The driver shook his head again, raised an eyebrow, and wished us luck before driving off.

Pretty sweet and totally safe bridge on the way to Jacob.

I was worried that maybe there really was no snow. That it had all melted during the week. But I had made it that far, and wasn't going to turn around at the trailhead, so on we walked, Yuki regaling me with his awesome stories of his adventures as we did.

An hour or so later, having convinced me to make Puerto Williams my next stop after finishing my Spanish lessons (thank you a million times over for that recommendation, Yuki!), Yuki turned back in order to make it back to Bariloche in time for a meet-up with my friend José with whom he was going to stay that night before continuing on hitchhiking to Buenos Aires and then...Bolivia? So we hugged goodbye, I strapped on my board, and continued.

Pretty trail.

The extra hour and a half of walking meant that I wasn't sure if I would make it up to the refugio before dark, but I kept up a good clip and thought that my chances were good as I hiked along a stunning turquoise-blue river. I listened to my learn Spanish podcasts on the way until the going got steep, then switched to music, and my MP3 player's random function apparently decided that today was a banjo day.

I hit the waterfalls just below the refugio at sunset, and stopped for a bit to eat a snack and watch the spectacular light show. I hiked the rest of the way to the refugio in the snow in the starlight and thoroughly surprised the refugieros (a dad and his sons?) and their dog (the only souls there) when I finally arrived in the dark. They invited me in for tea and dinner, but I was too tired to eat (a mistake), so I drank the tea and chatted a bit, then pitched my bivvy sack and passed out.

Waterfalls below Refugio Jacob at sunset

I woke up the next morning as the refugieros headed down the mountain with their dog, leaving Ari, the youngest and the cook (thank you thank you for leaving the cook), behind. Ari was off on his own adventure that day and suggested that I join him, but I had already set my heart on a nice-looking line I had spotted in the starlight the previous night. I lost an hour trying to make my way through the bushes and over the creek above the waterfalls before finally stumbling across an unmarked path with a bridge that crossed the creek. Duh.

The plan: hike up that nice diagonal white line to the ridgeline, snowboard down other side, climb back up and snowboard down something cool on the other side, etc. Reality: Impassable Jungle of Bushes and a river crossing, followed by low-blood-sugar-induced crawling up the hill.

I didn't make it far up my chute on skins before I had to switch to crampons. It was a slow slog up the hill, taking 2 1/2 for a stretch I had optimistically thought would take less than an hour. I was wiped out when I got to the top, but dance partied, had lunch, enjoyed the view, and then dropped off the other side of the ridge, which looked beautiful.

View off the other side of the ridge above Refugio Jacob

The snow was terrible. I bit it almost immediately. I picked myself up, dusted myself off, glanced down at my board, and OOOOOHHHH SHIITTT the GoPro was gone! My heart dropped, and I quickly scanned the hill when, off to my left, I spotted a GoPro-sized object bouncing rapidly toward a cliff below. I mentally calculated its trajectory and speed vector for about half of a millisecond, decided I might be able to intercept it before the cliff, and shot off to catch it.

Bounce.
Bounce.
Bounce bounce.
SMACK.
Thunk.

I got below it and hit it with my board just as I crossed its bouncing path, launching it into the air, and I dove and caught it, sliding and stopping about 20 meters from the cliff. I shoved it into my pocket and scooted off to the right out of the cliff danger zone. I sat down, re-attached the thing to my board, and, heart now thoroughly jump-started, I continued down the hill.

Video of the snowboarding, including the GoPro bouncing down the hill

In retrospect I could have just let the damned thing go over the cliff and would probably have been able to pick it up from the snow beneath, but that didn't factor into my millisecond decision.

Those are not the cliffs I almost went over.

And then I boarded down, camera rolling, and "enjoyed" what could only be generously described as a "marginally satisfactory" run. I then skinned most of the way back up another ridge before cramponing the rest. Getting down from the ridge was a trick, involving some rock climbing with the splitboard on my back that I'd rate at around a 5.3 (super-easy if you're a rock climber climbing with protection and no snowboard on your back, scary as shit with the board on) to get down to snow. Once safely planted in snow, I boarded back down the other side on slow slush, then into a gully that I knew was snow bridged over a creek but it was that or fight through a mile of thick bushes, so I crossed my fingers and bombed it, bracing myself for a swim and stopping just in time to avoid going over a rocky waterfall.

Crampon damage to my ski pants

I had told Ari that I'd be back by 5pm (why didn't I say 7?) and it was already 4pm, so I had no time to hike another line and maybe actually get a good run in. I kicked myself for the late start, the hour spent trying to cross the creek, the snow ascent, for not following Ari up what was probably a much shorter climb to the top, for not eating enough food the day before (I was feeling pretty tired and drained), and for picking lame lines. And then I spent an hour fighting my way through the thick bushes that rimmed Laguna Jacob back to the refugio.

Once again I returned to a refugio that was fuller than I had left it, including two quiet Argentine girls and a separate group of four wild friends from Bariloche who, between them, had schlepped up a liter each of rum and whiskey. They insisted that I join them (they didn't have to insist hard, given the rum and whiskey), and we drank as I struggled to understand the fast and stoned conversation. Meanwhile, Ari was prepping dinner, starting with fresh bread, made-from-scratch in the refugio. The meal arrived: warm bread (ooooh, I loooove hot, fresh-baked bread; if I were to make my own version of Maria's "My Favorite Things" song, hot fresh bread would be one of the Things), soup, and pasta with sun-dried tomatoes (lovingly re-hydrated in water heated on the little refugio wood stove). Delicous. And I was SOHUNGRY.

Ari baking bread in the refugio kitchen at Refugio Jacob.
♡

Ari, if you're out there, I know you are like, 10 years younger than me, but will you marry me and we can live in a mountain hut together and make and eat gourmet meals every night?

The crazy drunk/high friends proved too difficult for my tired brain to understand, so after a few more shots, I excused myself, crawled into my bivvy sack, and nestled into a snowbank. I was there for all of 3 minutes (and almost asleep) when suddenly Fernando of Team Bariloche appeared, said a bunch of stuff I couldn't understand, laid down in the snow next to me, and spooned my bivvy sack while talking nonstop about god-knows-what. He occasionally asked questions about the bivvy sack, my sleeping bag, my snowboard, and whether there really only was room for one in there. Yes, there really is only room for one, I kept replying.

This is my bivvy sack.

Seriously, only room for one.

It's not that he wasn't attractive, it seems this continent is full of Fernandos who, so far, have all been glorious specimens of Man and very nice to boot. But I was pretty sure that this Fernando was legitimately crazy (and not just Argentinian crazy), I was really tired and couldn't understand most of his blabbering, and there really, truly was not room for another human in my bivvy sack. Eventually Crazy Fernando got cold, kissed me, and stumbled off in the dark.

It was a "Hello, stars, I am in Argentina! People here are fucking crazy and I love it!" moment. And then I passed out.

I woke up early the next morning having slept like a champ after loading up on Benadryl following the cheese-laced meal of the night before, and found my sleeping bag iced over. It had been so cold that night that the condensation resulting from my being a heterotrophic organism froze the second it left my sleeping bag and hit the cold air inside my bivvy sack. When I moved, the thin crust fractured, but holy shit, it was so cold that my sleeping bag iced over.

Ice on my sleeping bag. Formed inside the bivvy sack.

I got up and hung everything up in the sun to melt and dry off while I had breakfast, chatted with Ari, and packed. Just as I was about to leave, my friend Crazy Fernando showed up (he may be crazy, but I was relieved that he apparently made it back inside and didn't freeze to death in the night). I showed him how the splitboard worked and let him try it out before strapping it onto my pack and heading out.

The hike back was lovely, and I spent it listening to more Spanish podcasts. I ran into Papa Refugiero on his way up the trail with a group of 40 some students. Too. Damn. Many. People.

The views on the way down were beautiful.

I arrived at the trailhead at around 2pm hopeful that, as so many people had promised, my petite blonde (I am officially no longer a redhead--the sun has bleached out my hair to a just barely perceptible strawberry blonde. Even if that hadn't happened, I have been informed that I would still be a rubia = blonde and not a pelirojo = redhead unless I was in possession of truly red--like cherry red--hair) lonesome self would have no problem hitching a ride back to town.

But nope.

I hiked the whole damned way from the trailhead back to the bus stop, passed over by at least a dozen vehicles, all with plenty of space. I got a whole lot of odd looks, but no takers.

Was it the snowboard, which probably made people think I was completely, totally out of my gourd? My scruffy, filthy appearance? The smell?

My filthy, filthy self after getting back after my trip to Refugio Jacob

But my feet hurt, and I had run out of water and was hungry and hot, I had welts on my hips, and please? Somebody? Anybody??

In total, it was just over 20 miles of hiking with the snowboard on my back for a whopping two shitty runs.

Of course I couldn't wait to go back out.

Continued in Part III: Refugio Italia (Laguna Negra)