Farewell South America

(And another unpublished post, from March 22).

We leave in four days.  I never did finish my thoughts on Patagonia, but I can say with certainty that I miss it. Uruguay is lovely, but after four weeks here I can definitely say I am not a beach person. What do people do on the beach all day? A person can only lay in the sand for so many days.  The kids, of course, have loved it.  Lots of swimming in the pool, and in the ocean. But the weather is turning cooler, and they’re finding it too cold to really go in.  I have become more intimately acquainted with changes in the ocean. How some days the waves are so wild, and other days the ocean is completely calm.  Changes in the wind, changes in the height of the waves.  Some days you can walk along the beach, other days it is completely swallowed up.

I am excited to return to Minnesota. Though I am desperately trying not to wish away these final days of vacation.  I am guilty of always wanting to return when I near the end of a vacation instead of enjoying the last bits.  With such a long vacation, that means the end of my vacation is still a week of time. I am trying not to waste it by wishing it away.

The wind here is relentless. Although it is beautiful outside much of the time, the wind can be so intense it makes my eyes water. It makes me want to go inside, which is not really what I want to be doing. I want to be enjoying the end of our nice weather before we return to Minnesota.

Uruguay has been hard for our family, though.  There have been no other kids around.  There has been barely anybody around at all, because it is no longer high season here and everyone has left. It is like being on Cape Cod in September. It’s a little depressing.

My dad and step mom visited for 10 days which was a lovely reprieve. We got to hang out, they watched  the kids a bit so we could have some time by ourselves (a first on this entire trip!).  We ventured to a town called Cabo Polonia, which is completely off the grid.  The only energy source was solar, and supposedly at night they just use candles. To get there we had to take a giant, two story dune buggy a few miles (five, maybe?). We only stayed for the day, but it was an interesting little place.  I think it's where you go if you're hiding from the law, or perhaps if the rest of the world moves too fast for you.

One thing I will not miss about Uruguay: spiders.  Epic numbers of spiders, epic sizes.  One night we mistakenly left a window open (there were no screens and it was hot!) and the house was infested by mosquitos.  The mosquitos were so small, they looked harmless, and you couldn't feel them bite.  But the itch that developed was intense.  Greta's room became infested with mosquitos, and the poor girl got completely covered in bites.  The next day, after we learned our lesson, hubs and I tried to kill all the mosquitos in her room.  I pulled back a curtain and the largest spider I've ever seen in my life crawled out.  Like, maybe the size of both of my hands.  It's probably grown larger in my mind, but I'm not sure.  It was really freaking big.  We had no idea if it was poisonous.  Thankfully, the husband was willing to deal with it.  We covered it with a bowl and put a pizza pan underneath to trap it, then took it outside.  We flooded the bowl with water to drown it.  It was far too large to imagine the crunch that would occur if we squished it.

Based on internet pictures we couldn't quite figure out what kind it was, so we asked an online spider geek, who identified it as a Huntsman spider (also called a giant crab spider because it looks like a crab.)  They don't have webs but just wander around "hunting" at night.  Very reassuring.  Not fatal, but basically flu-like symptoms if you get bit.  Also, in our research, we learned far more about Uruguayan spiders, only adding to our terror.  Among the common spider sitings: the most poisonous spider in the world, the Brazilian Banana Spider.

Although that was our largest spider encounter, it was by far not our only.  One night I woke up about 2 am and went to get water in the kitchen.  The floor of the kitchen was covered in hundreds of very small ants.  We lovingly called these ants "housekeeper ants".  They would come out about the time we were getting ready for bed, then carry away all the minuscule crumbs on the floor.  At first we tried to aggressively sweep to avoid them, but they appeared anyway and found crumbs we didn't know exist.  But they never got into anything else, so we came to appreciate them for helping us tidy. Anyway, on this night there were hundreds of them, more than I had seen any other day, and in one corner was a fairly large huntsman spider, waiting to pounce on them.  It seemed like too large a problem for 2 am, so I went back to bed.  The next morning, there were no signs of any of these insects.  Retreated into the walls, no doubt.

But on the subject of ants, we discovered that there are leaf-cutter ants in Uruguay.  I remember these guys from Costa Rica, years ago, and have always found them fascinating.  They carry bits of leaves, often 5 times their size, down paths to the hole in the ground they live in.  The paths are so well worn you an see them from a distance.  They will carry these bits of leaves long distances, often passing up nearby leaves that look just the same to me.  The kids and I watched some fascinating youtube videos about them, and the kids became a bit obsessed with them (as did I).

There is a small kitten we have been feeding while we've been here.  At first I was conflicted about feeding it, knowing we would be leaving and it would be abandoned.  But it already appeared to be abandoned, with no parent around, so at least, perhaps, we could try to fatten it up a bit until it can more easily fend for itself.  That was my thinking, anyway.  The kids named it Gentleman, after the kitten on the farm they also fell in love with, which it looked so much like.

There is so much more to say, but I will leave it here.  Perhaps I will have more to say in Minnesota.

Farewell Patagonia

( I started this on February 27, but never posted it.  Here's my edited version. )

Alas, tomorrow we leave Patagonia.  This signals 2/3 of our trip done.  A few weeks ago I might have looked forward to the end, but less-so now.  Apart from our our first two stops, we have been in Patagonia our entire time.  About 1.5 months.  I’m guessing that locals have varying definitions of “Patagonia”, just as I’ve noticed  so many towns like to claim “fin del Mundo” (end of the earth.). But, within varying definitions, nearly everywhere we’ve been has been within Patagonia, and we have loved every moment.

Our time in El Calafate has been mostly filled with glaciers, and the Youngs.

Glaciers: I underestimated the intensity of Patagonian glaciers.  I assumed they were tiny little deals, like the persistent snowpack on some volcanoes in the Cascades.  NOPE.  These are real deal, glaciers coming out of the mountain, that have all the characteristics I learned about way back when in Glacial Geomorphology. I found them fascinating to watch.  Because they are giant,  and they are in the calving season.  If you are patient and watch for long enough, you will see a bus size piece of ice (or larger!) fall off and make a noise like a bomb, with a wave to match.  But, even though the chunk may be bus sized, or larger, it will still look minuscule when compared the glacier as a whole.

The blue of these glaciers is a color I didn't know exists in nature.  It's the kind of electric blue I am used to seeing in fabric.  And then the "glacial flour" (ground up rock) that washes out turns the entire lake turquoise.

We drove to Perito Moreno twice, and took a boat trip that took us to Uppsala glacier and Spegazzini glacier (spelling unguaranteed).  Although Uppsala is larger, it is calving so much that you can't actually get close to it.  The iceberg floating away are house sized, or larger, meaning that the amount falling off is prob 30 times that.  So hard to conceptualize these quantities and sizes.

We met up with a family, the Youngs, that we had met in Chile at the farm we were staying at.  They are from Washington State and in the middle of a year-long trip through South America.  Our kids are similar ages to their kids, and their oldest has been facetiming and messaging with MJ.  I think they connect so well because they are experiencing something that nobody back home can relate to.  Something they can't really talk with their friends back home about.

It was so lovely to connect with this family.  I will definitely miss them in our travels.  Easy going, adventurous and loads of fun.  I'm hoping we can connect with them again someday back in the States.

But of all the beauty in El Calafate, one of the kids favorite things has been climbing in and out of the window at the little cabin we're staying at.  It's pretty low to the ground, so they figured out they can easily climb in and out, and have thus been refusing to use the door as a means of transit.  Go figure.  I think this will be what they remember about El Calafate.

We also did a geology nature hike up the base of the nearby mesas.  It was so fun to teach the kids about conglomerates, and geologic timescales.  Also lots of puma and/or fox dens, filled with animal bones, which they were probably more excited by.  It's fascinating that El Calafate is basically a high-desert with a glacier down the road.  It feels incongruous but isn't.  Another great learning opportunity, teaching that it's not how cold it gets, but how warm it gets that determines if a glacier is built.  Cold winters with lots of snow don't build glaciers if the summer is hot.  But a cool summer (which El Calafate has) means that whatever snow accumulates in the winter has a chance to stick around through the summer, thus building a glacier.

I will miss Patagonia.  I will miss El Calafate.  One of the most beautiful places I have ever been.  I will miss the guanacos, the stray dogs, the abundant geology.