Steph Davis
Well dear readers, here is the moment I've been dreading. There is no easy way to break this to you, and I didn't want to have to do it. But the bad news is that a lot (most) of the time there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING exciting going on when you are in Patagonia!! Depending on your capacity for entertainment and what you find interesting, this may vary. But it's the truth.
The weather is still terrible. The locals are now saying that this is the worst season in 10 years, as there has been no good weather whatsoever since October. However it seems to me that I've heard that before....
When I first came to Patagonia, I was aghast that all of my determination and skill and willingness-to-try-no-matter-what couldn't get me up a peak in bad weather. I was equally aghast that I could spend a whole season here and not climb anything, and that others could show up in a lucky window and climb to their hearts' content. It violated my sense of fairness and basically drove me insane.
Over the years that followed, and with a lot of lessons from life, I realized that there is no "fair" in the real world. And Patagonia exemplifies that perfectly. You can be the best, most fit and motivated climber in the world--willing to schlep loads daily and brave the worst storms that Patagonia has--and climb nothing. And you can be an average-Joe climber and summit Fitz Roy.
That used to make me crazy. Now, in some strange way, I kind of enjoy that about Patagonia. I'm not sure why, really. Now, in some strange way, I don't even really mind the fact that we've been here for two weeks and haven't even come close to actually climbing any peaks. The weather will break, and we will climb, or it won't. If you had told me five years ago that I could say that, and with complete nonchalance, I would have called you an idiot and probably stomped off in a huff.
One reason Patagonia is so alluring, compared to say, Alaska, which is another place you can spend more time in a tent than on a rock wall, is that the culture, the history, the climbers, and the community of El Chaltén are so engaging. When the weather is terrible, you can run down to Chaltén (after all, it's only two hours and beautiful hiking), and suddenly be swilling a Cristal beer and munching papas fritas [french fries], waiting for your bife [steak] to be grilled.
Over the last five years since I started coming here, I've seen huge changes in the tiny village of El Chaltén, but most of the faces are the same. Everyone still laughs at me for never learning Spanish (I know primarily words for food items), and I get the traditional affectionate cheek kisses just the same.
As you walk along the dirt streets of El Chaltén, you see constant and seemingly endless construction in the beautiful green dandelion-studded fields below the foothills. However, it is charming construction, done meticulously by hand. The houses are very small by North American standards, and very sturdily built (they have to be or they'll blow away) with local stone and wood. The metal roofs are sharply peaked for the winter snows, and the windows are always beautiful framed in hand-carved wood. The furniture is usually made at the same time as the house, all in sturdy, simple dark wood.
The Argentines take obvious pride in living in such a beautiful and wild place, and try to be enterprising in making restaurants and hostels to keep up with the trekking industry that flows in during the summer season.
Yet they don't have the callous or mercenary approach that I've often seen in the States in areas where the economy is supported through tourism. And the Park Service seems to content itself with providing educational signs, trash containers, and a few pit latrines for the trekkers, without demanding entrance or camping fees or trying to establish concession services or "improved" camping areas. It seems strange and free, from a North American's viewpoint, yet completely normal and practical. I hope it lasts.
Walking down the incredibly wide main street in El Chaltén is either a battle or very accelerated, depending on which direction you're going and whether you're walking with the wind at your face or at your back. Pickup trucks rumble slowly by, and often Don Guerra, the local horseman, will gallop past with a string of his beautiful, strong-legged Patagonian horses.
Don Guerra and his wife Ysolina have lived here for probably longer than climbers have ever been coming to this region. Ysolina daily bakes small, crusty hot loaves of bread to supply the whole town. If you eat in a restaurant, you're served a basket of Ysolina's bread. If you buy bread in a grocery store, it's Ysolina's. But the best thing is to go stop at her small white house and buy it fresh and hot out of her kitchen.
If you ask for huevos too, she'll walk out to her chicken coop and bring out a handful of small brown eggs. I've finally learned to be careful in buying staples at the beginning of a trip to Patagonia, because if you have your choice you'll live almost primarily on Ysolina's bread, soft cheese, and Cristal.
For some reason, the national drink, maté, always tastes good to me here and only here. Maté is the word for the hollowed out gourd that you pour yerba (tea made of dried grass) into. Carefully, you then heat water in a teapot only to the point of first boiling, and then pour the water directly into the maté.
You drink out of a metal strainer-straw, called a bombilla, and keep refilling the maté and sipping over and over until the grass starts to float to the surface and most of the flavor is lost. It's a bitter, grassy taste, with a bit of a caffeine-like effect, and for some reason it's quite delicious in Patagonia.
More than anything, maté can be a social and hospitable event. Many Argentines wake in the morning and need their maté, like Americans with their morning coffee, but whenever you visit with someone, they will most likely whip out a tiny aluminum teapot or a thermos and a maté, and it will be passed around companionably.
Of course, like every tea ritual worldwide, maté has its rules and decorums. If it's your maté, you must drink the first serving before pouring another and passing it--often the first brewing of the yerba has some sediment that the host tries to sip out. I haven't yet figured out if it's more polite to make slurping noises or not when you've reached the end of your drink.
Luckily in Patagonia, the locals are outrageously warm, friendly and natural, and it would be hard to really offend any of these good spirited people. Every year I get hooked on maté down here and bring home more mates and more yerba. And every year I make it at home and it tastes horrible. It must have to do with the green grass and the fresh, earthy smell in the air, or with the ritual of sharing maté with the happy, kind Argentines, that makes the taste impossible to capture anywhere else.
I once brought home a jar of dulce de leche too, and I never ended up eating it. In Patagonia, dulce de leche is the equivalent of peanut butter in the States. It's basically caramelized sweetened milk, a rich buttery brown spreadable delicacy. In Patagonia, it's everywhere. In rows on supermarket shelves, spread between layers of chocolate cake at the Chocolateria, in every type of cookie and candy available. You can put it on pancakes, on bread, on crackers, in oatmeal, in coffee, in tea. I'm sure it's terrible for you, given its delicious sweet creaminess.
There are so many things that are so unquestionably Patagonia, that I start to wonder if I'll ever get tired of coming here, as much as I complain about my lack of climbing fitness at the end of every trip. For me, my time in Patagonia has become a part of my coming of age, both as a climber and as a person. I guess for that reason, it will always be an incredibly special place for me.
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Steph Davis, MountainZone.com Correspondent
