snrtobias

 

Written on 30. enero 2009

 

We went up National highway 7 to Aconcagua regional park, and took a little hike in the hills. We were at the foot of Mount Aconcagua, which I now know is the highest peak in the Western Hemisphere, and second only to the Himalayas. Nearly 7,000 meters, 23,000 feet. We didn’t go that high, we were in the neighborhood of 2,500meters I suppose. There were climbers around, and we learned that the trek up is two weeks, while the trek down is a couple of days.

 

But I was very satisfied with where we were. There are plenty of words in English that are overused, “promiscuous” words, one is breathtaking. What we saw today really deserved that word in its strictest sense. Neither words nor pictures can convey it, but Rebecca was snapping away so she’ll likely give you some little fragments through images.

 

For my part, I made some great contacts. That’s what I do.

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Written 8. febrero 2009

 

Three Conversations in the High Andes last January 28^th

 

First was Juan Sebastián, his father Coco and his family. Next to us in the parking lot at Aconcagua Departmental Park as we had our lunch and prepared to take our walk a ways up the summit trail, a family was returning from their own walk. A little boy about three was among them and of course I had to ask him his name and how old he was. He was Juan Sebastián, and his father was also called Juan Sebastián, but people called him Coco. Coco and I got to talking and one thing led to another, and so after we had talked about Obama and the election, and how I had gone door to door on election day and how glad people were to see me and how they had told me they had already voted at seven that morning, Coco told me some of the “must-see” sights in the south of Argentina. He told us to be sure to go 400 km. south of Bariloche to Esquel, to Parque nacional los aceres. Alerces is the name of very old trees, he said, that are very tall, and can be thousands of years old. Sounded very much like Sequoia National Park in California, which I also haven’t seen. I’d love to see the alerces, but I’m not sure we’ll be able to fit them in.

 

At the end of our day in the high Andes, we met up again with Juan Sebastián and his family, which included, I think, a sister-in-law whom I hadn’t met at the park’s parking lot. Coco recounted to them the whole story of my election day experience and the whole family shared our joy at Obama’s election. Sadly, neither Rebecca or I thought to take a picture of Juan Sebastián and his family.  But we did follow up on his suggestion so here I am publishing from Esquel.

 

Then came Padre Oscar, coming down the mountain with a friend as we were walking up. He was bearded and very hip looking, wearing his t-shirt over his head, un-self consciously protecting him against the sun, and was reciting some kind of poetry as he walked down toward us; I remarked, ¡que palabras hermosas! what beautiful words! I asked him what he was reciting and he explained that he wasn’t reciting, but improvising. He explained that Argentineans have a tradition of improvised gaucho poetry, called “payada.” Oh, yes, I said, I’ve learned something about payada, since I’m working on reading Martín Fierro. “Oh, but Martín Fierro doesn’t follow the traditional meter and rhyming scheme of the payada.” He then pulled out his cell phone, on which he had recorded some payadas he had heard, or downloaded, from the national payada contest in Buenos Aires, and played one for me.

 

He further illustrated the form by showing me. “The rhyming scheme follows x-o-o-x-x-o-o-x-x-o.” He used x and o the way we would use a and b in plotting the rhyming scheme in an English poem. “What’s your name? Steven? Here, I’ll compose a payada for you.” And he proceeded thus, in my notebook (without punctuation, of course):

 

x Yo te doy la bienvenida I offer you welcome

o Amigo Steven que no eres retoño Friend Steven, you who are not [young] like a bud

o Tu eres otoño You are autumnal

x En el arbol de la vida In the tree of life

x Y te lo digo en esta subida And I tell you this during this climb

o En esta simple canción By means of this simple song

o Con mucha unción With much unction [?]

x Por tí me saco el sombrero For your sake I doff my hat

x Amigo verdadero True friend

o Que dios te de la bendición May God give you blessing.

 

signed, P[adre]. Oscar, vocacionista

 

Oscar, it turns out, is a priest, and had recently spent a good deal of time in Rome. He and his friend had been accompanying an Italian friend, a bicycle racer, who was summiting at Aconcagua in order to expand his lungs for a forthcoming bike race. He sprinkled Italian into his Spanish conversation. Oscar called himself a vocacionista, meaning that his priestly vocation is vocational – he helps young people prepare themselves for productive careers. He gave me his email address, and among the many homework assignments I’ve picked up on this journey is to contact him.

 

His companion gave me another near impossible assignment, to take the time in Chile to see Torres de Paine at the very south of the country.

 

Sometimes you put yourself out there, anywhere, and beautiful gifts fall into your lap. With the amazing privilege of being on this trip at all, these things continue to take my breath away.

 

And then, on the way back to Mendoza, we met Juan _________, I forgot the second part of his name. Juan was at he overlook of the Puente inca, a must-see rock formation, bending over a bicycle. The bicycle was pointed toward Argentina, so I assumed he had come up the Chilean slope, and indeed he had. “How long did it take you?” I asked him. “About six hours” was his reply, but that didn’t sound quite right. “I mean the whole way,” I said, and he replied that he’d been on the road for two and a half months.

 

Juan spoke in the unmistakable cadence of a madrileño. He had flown over with his bicycle. To comply with the requirement that you have a return ticket in order to be admitted into the country, he had bought a Madrid-Buenos Aires-Montevideo ticket. “Pero nadie ha averigüado,” he said. Nobody checked and he could have come with a one-way ticket. The same went for his taking the bicycle on the plane. He should have been charged extra for the bicycle, but nobody charged him. From Buenos Aires he had flown with his bike to Ushuaia, the southernmost Argentinian city, and he had been working his way northward ever since. His plans involved continuing on at least to Peru, and possibly to Colombia, by next June.

 

“What are your plans for your return?” I asked Juan. He said that he had worked in the insurance business, but had no expectation of being employed easily because of the economic crisis. “I can always be an alpinist,” he went on; he had a lot of experience as a mountain guide in the Alps. “The form of traveling you’ve chosen is cheap, at any rate,” I suggested. “I don’t spend much money at all,” he replied. He gets put up in places like fire stations, or he camps out, so that he rarely pays for a place to sleep; groceries are just about his only expense.

 

We spoke about bicycles at some length. “Did you do a lot of research to choose a bicycle?” I asked. “No, I just brought the bike I had.” It was a pretty fancy bicycle though, an expensive looking American mad mountain bike – was its brand Merida? “From California”, he said. “At home, they were advising me to buy these 80 Euro tyres so that I wouldn’t have any flats. These are six Euro tires. I’ve had to patch them maybe five times, and they are fine. “Do the shock absorbers absorb energy, and make pedaling harder?” I asked. “You can lock the shock absorbers,” he replied, and went on to say that he would never have been able to handle some of the roads he’s traveled on without them. He wasn’t sorry to be on a mountain bike rather than a touring bike. Unfortunately it looks like my camera strap got in the way when I took his picture so you can’t see all the details of his bike. You can’t see his waterproof paniers.

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