Futbol (don´t call it soccer)

A post about futbol is long overdue. I know. Give me a break.

Futbol, the official religion of Argentina (other than the state sponsored, a.k.a. tax payer funded, Catholicism), is widely celebrated and played by 100 percent of Argentine men. To have some idea: take american football fans and make them lose some weight and get in shape. Then have them play the game 3 times a week with their best buddies at the indoor american football stadium after work. That is your average Argentine male. Buenos Aires, the capital area, with 3 million people (not counting the area of the suburbs and the conurbano where the other 10 million live) has 17 soccer teams each with their own stadium! In contrast, Barcelona, a city not quite as large but an important metropolitcan center none the less, has one team and one stadium.

Hopefully every knows this already, but for those who don´t, the world cup is currently taking place in South Africa. Now, us Americans don´t really watch the world cup, or care, for the most part, about it. However, the rest of the world does, and Argentina, whose team has recently made it to the final four, is no exception. You can´t walk 3 feet in this city without seeing a newspaper with soccer on the cover, a magazine with the face of Diego "The Hand of God" Maradona, the current Argentine selection coach and best soccer player to ever walk the face of this earth (in the 70s and 80s), or a TV showing games or replays of goals. It is absolutely insane. And even more insane has to be the city when Argentina plays....

For anybody that has seen 28 Days Later and remembers the opening scene when the main character is walking through the streets of London and it is deserted completely. There is not a person to be seen. Store fronts are closed. Taxis and buses stop running. Sidewalks empty. Well, that is Buenos Aires when their team plays. The city shuts down and cafes fill up.

As Argentina advances to the quarterfinals, they face Germany this saturday, the 3rd, at 10 AM, US time. I urge everybody to watch the game. While I fear that Germany will slaughter Argentina, I am hoping for the best. And if not. Since the US is out...Spain, let´s go all the way, baby.

Window Shopping

So, a phenomenon that is certainly not unique to Argentina but is too amusing not to write a blog about: Argentine women window shopping for boots. Argentina is full of shops, and the majority of these shops sell some combination of clothing and leather boots. Now, a word about boots in Argentina. They´re hip. Or so I hear. And they´re cheap...but only for Americans. For an Argentine that makes 1200 pesos a month and has only 100-200 of that (25-50 US$) for disposable income, a 300 peso pair of hand stiched leather boots (for us, 80 US$) are a little out of the price range. But, they want them really bad. So, what do they do? Easy. Stare at them through the window. You can literally walk past any store window with a display of boots and there will be 2 or 3, and sometimes upwards of 6 or 7, women with their faces against the glass, salivating, I am assuming, over the prospect of owning some new silky soft leather. Then you look past the boots into the shop and there is nobody but a lonely sales lady staring back. The solution to this apparent problem? I got it! Argentina needs some more aggressive credit card companies. Let´s get these people some plastic, some boots, and some severe debt...American style.

Long overdue

Forgive the typos, the changes in verb tenses, and the run on sentences. This blog post about Patagonia is long over due, long, and since it took me so long to type, I have no desire to edit it before posting. Enjoy.

The end of May I traveled to Patagonia, Argentina with a friend of mine here at Flacso. I wasn't going to go because you need a good 4 to 5 days there, it is pretty far away, and rather expensive for a trip in Argentina. I am so glad, however, that I finally did.

We arrived in El Calafate airport on a tuesday. Looking out the windows of the plane would lead one to believe that they were looking at Mars. The place is deserted. There appear to be no homes, no trees, no people and few roads. The dull brown landscape is studded with pock marks, wind swept low shrubs, and shallow valleys formed by trickling rivers and streams. I realize that we are truly in the middle of nowhere.

The plane disembarks at the Calafate one gate airport. The wind is whipping across the runway, inflating the airsock that helps flight crews tell the wind direction and it is cold. It is quite clear that we are near antartica. The air, however, is fresh and clean, far nicer than the dirty polluted air I am used to dealing with in Buenos Aires.

In the airport we gather around the luggage belt with the other couple dozen passengers, grab our bags, and look for transport north around two large lakes to El Chalten, the trekking capital of Argentina. We first inquire about a taxi just for the hell of it. 700 pesos. Never mind. The bus is 80 pesos a person. The man that is sitting behind the bus information booth tells us to sit tight for about 15 minutes and the bus will leave then. He sits at the desk fiddling with him phone staring out the window for a few minutes and then tells us we can go. We are the only two passengers and he is the driver. How intimate. It is quite obviously off season for Patagonia. However, we don't realize how truly out of season it is until we arrive at El Chalten but I will discuss that in a second.

The ride is beatiful. The wind, which typically blows with outstanding strength for 3/4 of the year is actually rather tame. The sky is bright blue and cloud free for as far as I can see. Off on the horizon snow capped peaks rise from the flat plains, their white peaks reflecting the sun with a blinding brightness. We pass hundreds of llamas (guanacos) on the route often having to dodge them as the crossed the road to graze on the other side. Small groups of cows feed on whatever small shrubbery dot the plains. We pass condors circling up above looking for carrion and at one point pass one on the side of the road. The van startles it and it takes off. Its wings open up and it takes off. The wing span has to be about 10 feet wide.

As we get closer and closer to el Chalten, Cerro Fitzroy (http://www.treklens.com/gallery/South_America/Argentina/photo72656.htm) and Cerro Torre come into view. In the photo, Fitzroy is on the right and cerro torre on the right. Fitzroy is the tallest peak in Patagonia. Its sheer granite walls rise above the surrounding mountains to a height of 11,073 ft. The mountain range is breathtaking.

The mountain is called El Chalten by locals (now the name of the town) which means “smoking mountain” due to the fact that clouds usually surround the peak. Its more common name, FitzRoy was given to it by the explorer, Francisco Moreno, when he first explored the area in 1877. He named it after the Robert FitzRoy, the captain of Darwin’s HMS Beagle, who charted large parts of the Patagonian coast in the early 1800s (thank you wikipedia, I hope your information is correct).

The small town of El Chalten sits at the foot of the mountain range on the eastern side of glacier national park, the third most important body of glaciers in the world behind Antarctica and Greenland, and is occupied by about 600 people who moved there in the late 1980s to claim the land for Argentina (after a long standing land dispute with Chile) and create a base for climbers and trekkers of all sorts.

We pull into Chalten around 3 PM and the shuttle driver asks us where we are staying. We had no idea because we did little research before arriving. We had heard of a few places that were good hostels and mentioned the names to him. He told us that they were all closed for the season. So, he drops us off at the first place that he sees, a small bunk attached to a restaurant that has beds for 25 pesos (6 dollars) a night. We agree to stay, thinking that the rest of El Chalten had to be closed down. We unpack our gear into the room. There is nobody at the front desk, the beds are uncomfortable, and the place is freezing cold. The kitchen in the hostel is the size of my bathroom here in Buenos Aires and has absolutely no room to cook. The accommodations were hardly worth the 6 dollars a day we were going to pay. We throw our stuff down, bundle up in winter gear and head out. The town is abandoned. Nobody is in the streets. Store shops are plastered with newspaper to block out the sun. What do people do for work when all of the tourists leave? It is a ghost town. On our adventures we find a bigger hostel with computer access and warmer rooms. They are ten dollars a night but well worth the switch. We go back to the old hostel, pack our stuff up, and sneak out the front hoping that they don’t see us leave. The change of hostel was the best choice we had made. The new hostel had a large warm lounge area, clean bathrooms, plenty of showers with hot water, food, and large kitchens to cook in. On top of it all, they have a very friendly staff.

Before hitting up the supermarket to buy food to cook for the night we head to an outdoor rental shop to try and find shoes. Some friends of mine had previously made the trek to El Chalten and had no trouble finding nice shoes to rent for their hikes. I, foolishly, just assumed they would have size 13 shoes for me. We stop in the one open rental place in town that isn’t closed down for the season and they don’t have anything bigger than a 12. Damn. I try them on and cant even get my foot in the boot. The co owner hears our commotion and comes in. He walks into the back room and brings back a pair of broken, smelly, and overall horrible hiking boots, size 13. They tell me that they weren’t going to rent them anymore, their next destination was the garbage, but that if I really need a pair that I can try them. I do, they fit and are horribly uncomfortable but I had no other choice. I take them. We walk 5 minutes to the supermarket and my feet are burning in pain from the shoes. We had an 8 hour hike ahead of us in the morning. I planned on experiencing intense foot pain by the end of it all.

Day 2.

We get up at 8:30. The sun isn’t up. It turns out that it comes up around 9 AM in May and even later during the height of winter. Bummer. Shower, breakfast, pack up a lunch, grab a map, and hire a remise (taxi of sorts) to take us to the alternate trail head for the FitzRoy hike. We bomb along a gravel road for 15 km until we reach a closed gate that marks a trail leading to a small summer hotel that has been closed for the season. The trail will lead us along the riverbed for about 2 miles until we reach up with the more popular main trail that will lead to the summit. The 2 mile hike is pretty surreal. We don’t ascend at all but rather hike along the side of the river through these ethereal forests. The trees no longer have leaves on them and are twisted and mangled trunks of wood. The whole trek reminded me of a Tim Burton film. On our right we see a panorama of the Fitzroy peak catching the sun’s rays. It is one of the most beautiful things I have seen in my life. When we join the main trail we pass through two campgrounds. They are obviously abandoned, as nobody is hiking or camping this time of year. But we take advantage of the streams nearby to fill up our waterbottles with glacial melt water. The taste reminded me of my childhood and eating snow. After all, glaciers are just made of heavily compacted snow..I guess it makes sense.

There are warning signs about the last ascent to Lago de los Tres at the base of Fitzroy. 500 meters of nearly vertical climb. Professional gear and expert climbing skills are recommended. The trail, I can imagine, would be hairy enough during the summer. The ascent is switchbacks up a very steep hill. However, seeing as how it is winter, the trail is covered in snow and the switchbacks are slick with ice. The water, naturally, finds the trail as the easiest route down the mountain and covered the steps with solid thick slabs of extremely slippery ice. The climb is slow and treacherous. I cannot even imagine how it would be if it were windy. I think we would have had to turn back. But we slowly and carefully made it up to the top, stopping occasionally to catch our breaths and pray that we wouldn’t fall and slip down to our deaths. It was well worth it. At the top, there is a small lake formed by the glacial melt water from the glacier that encircles Fitzroy. It is dead silent and sunny. The view is amazing. We eat our cold salami and cheese sandwiches and take in the sights. This moment alone made the trip completely worth it.

We hike down, about 4 hours, and make it back to the hostel in time to eat, drink a beer, and crash early.

Day 3.

Recovery. We do a small and easy hike to a nearby waterfall and eat lunch at the top of the falls. The view is once again beautiful. We return to the hostel, I send some emails and relax in the hostel preparing for another tough hike the next day. I find another rental shop that is open for the evening, rent a better pair of boots and return the old ones. The new pair, although they aren’t comfortable, are far superior to first days. Good choice.

Day 4.

We decided to try the other big hike to Lago Torre for good views of the other large peak in Patagonia and the lage at its base which is fed by an even larger blue glacier. Luckily, apart from the first 30 minutes of hiking, this trail is easy in comparison to the first. The trail is flat and accessible. The peak we hike to see, unfortunately, was shrouded in clouds the whole do but the views we saw during the hike made it worth it. The most fascinating part of this day’s hike was the lake at the end. The lake is filled with little chunks of glacier ice that calve off of the face and fall in. These mini icebergs join with regular broken ice to form a chorus of clinking and chimes as they bang into eachother in the water. Natures symphony.

We return tired and hungry, load onto the bus, and book it back to El Calafate.

Day 5.

Perito Moreno, the most accessible glacier in the park. It is extremely cold today. We prepare for the cold but not for rain. The park, where the glacier is, we are told is a micro climate. Moisture sweeps down across the pacific, rises through the mountain range where it condenses, and dumps, in the form of snow, usually, across the Andean range. The park receives, on average, about 10,000 mm of precipitation annually, making it one of most humid and wet places on the planet. Only 80 km east, in the town of El Calafate, the annual precipitation is only about 250 mm.

We get to the park, hop on a boat which brings us along the face of the glacier. It is starting to spit cold rain. We are not wearing waterproof clothing. The wind picks up and the rain hammers us sideways. Oh well, hopefully it won’t get too bad. We hike through the woods to the side of the glacier, which is massive. They tell us that it is the height, roughly, of a 20 – 25 story building, formed over many years, as snow falls, compacts itself under its immense weight, and compresses into ice that is much heavier and denser than ice formed from melt water. While Perito Moreno is not the largest glacier in the park, it is the most accessible and is the only glacier in South America that is not retreating. During the summer it actually advances and quickly. It can move upward of 2 meters a day. This process of rapid acceleration causes the glacier to consistently break off in massive chunks that crash into the water below causing huge waves and a spectacular explosion sound. From time to time the glacier advances until it crashes into land and blocks off water from both ends of the lake. One of the of lake will rise, as it has no natural drainage, and create a huge difference in the height of water on either side of the glacier which eventually gets so great that the water causes the massive glacier to collapse as the water rushes from one side to the other in search of better equilibrium. It happens infrequently but is supposed to be an amazing sight to see.

We strap cramp-ons to our shoes and, with the help of guides, trek up the side of the glacier. We get to look down amazing melt water holes, some of them meters wide and up to 160 feet deep, and massive crevices formed by the glacier’s motion. Unfortunately, by the end of the trek it was pouring rain and freezing cold, so I didn’t get to enjoy my whiskey treat with glacier ice, provided at the end, as much as I would have liked to.

All in all, it was an expensive trip and I had to miss some class to do it but it was well worth the money and the extra make up work. I would return in a heartbeat.

Pictures, thanks to Monica, http://picasaweb.google.com/Monica.Scheid/ElChaltenYElCalafate#5482292284480708146