When we arrived at the Los Gigantes bus stop, I was reminded of my kindergarten days waiting for the bus (which I would inevitably end up puking all over through most of that grade, as well as on Jimmy, the quiet boy who was in the wrong place after a particularly unfortunate lunch involving cheeze-its. ya. gross.) at my friend Jane's house, in the little hut of a bus stop that the neighbors had built. Except there is NOTHING around this bus stop except a few houses that you have to walk a good 15 minutes across the Pampas to get to. We said what's up to some cows as the bus swerved around them, and then hopped off to be greeted by our guide, Ivan. This kid was pretty cool, as he was still in high school and had been coming up to do work in Los Gigantes long enough to know the way up without hesitation. From there, we hiked up, and up and up, until we reached a hiker's refuge at what we calculated to be roughly 7,000 feet. While my mind said "That was awesome," my legs and butt said something akin to "I will get you back so hard in the morning, you just wait."
After meeting the rest of the volunteers, all of whom were thankfully Argentine and very cool, we got to work restoring "el medio ambiente" (literally the half environment, which our project director Ricardo laughingly pointed out). A lot of erosion has occurred because the cows that somehow make it to the top of the mountains (they just wander everywhere, there aren't really any boundaries) eat all the Tabaquillo plants, which naturally maintain the soil structure. Because the land has become so eroded, it's getting inhospitable to Tabaquillo. After resting por un ratito, we got to work digging up Poa plants, which are big grass clumpy things. While the guys planted the Poa in an eroded hillside to reconstruct the integrity of the land, Olivia and I dug. And dug. And fell down. A lot. Mostly because we were laughing too hard.
That night we had an awesome asado in the refuge (which has lights and water because of a solar panel on the roof. very cool.) and played Chancho Va!, which is a card game that is translated to Pig Go! We played that with the guys in Tanti about a month ago and were very pleased to continue. The next morning we leisurely awoke around 9 because Argentina is awesome and not concerned with schedules, and I brushed my teeth outside with some extremely gorgeous nature around me. Needless to say, I felt pretty lucky to be there.
Before we headed down the mountain we moved a bunch of buckets of sand and rocks, which is about as physically fun as it sounds but was made infinitely better by some awesome conversation on Argentine and US environmentalism. This is Olivia and me (I used correct grammar, Dad. I think.) in front of the refuge, nice and dirty and loving Los Gigantes.
The title of this blog comes from the backwards hat Fresh Prince in his prime look that I rocked all weekend with Martha's prized Bodega hat from Mendoza (which I returned a little dirtier than it started out as, but otherwise unharmed). After the Great Flood passed (it rained REALLY hard for about half an hour) we started the hike down sporting the latest rain gear, trash bags. The hike down was quite a bit easier to swallow than the climb up, let me tell you. At one point when we were walking across the plains and could look out for miles and see nothing but cows, Olivia turned back to me and said, "We're in Argentina." Sometimes we have to remind ourselves just how fortunate we are and how amazing this experience is, because Argentina already feels like home and we're so comfortable here. However, I fully appreciate that I spent my weekend giving back to the land that's supporting me for 6 months and basically walked across a scene from National Geographic for two days. But just to emphasize, I'm in Argentina. It's fairly cool or whatever.
No comments:
Post a Comment