Leaving CIDEP (Day 16)

Today, I leave El Bolson to head for Parque National Los Glaciers (Glacier National Park). This also means leaving the farm. It´s been a wild, wild ride. This farmstay has turned out to be nothing like what I expected. It´s been a crazy emotional rollercoaster, full of challenges for me. After the initial day of "wow" when I arrived, I had a few days where I wondered what I had gotten myself in to. I was struggling with the language (and felt a little distanced from the pulse of the group) and with the sedate pace of the farm. It took some getting used to the openness of the people at the farm- everyone is family, hugs, kisses- which immediately became incredibly endearind and ultimately what made me stay. And I´m sooooo happy that I stayed to be a part of the natural building process, which has been a growing curiosity of mine over the last year or two. I had to learn to learn by watching, by listening. A struggle for sure, but a skill that I think I´ve improved and will hopefully continue. I learned to be extremely dirty, to sleep with dried clay between my toes, mud in my hair and dust on everything I own. And it´s wild, but I think being so dirty was actually really cleansing. It felt really good to get into something completely organic (can´t get much more organic than dirt) and to eat incredible food that will spoil the rest of Argentina, I´m sure. And to be welcomed, whole-heartedly, by a complete group of strangers. These people open their homes to people from all over the world, in return for a little help and a lot of fun. It´s been an amazing experience and I´m truly thankful for it.

So after a lazy morning and slowly packing up all my gear, we said goodbye to everyone. Since there were 5 of us making the hike up to the road, the farm owner packed us all into this station wagon (vintage about 1950-something...wicked) and hauled us up to the road to wait for the bus to town (El Bolson). We ended up getting a ride with one of the workshop participants, in her truck that needed 1L of water and a running start to get going. True story. So, we bumbled along the bumpy road in the bed of a truck. Crazy, but really fun (and will make a good story to tell years from now...right Mom?)

We arrived back in El Bolson in time for the weekly feria (fair) which is pretty spectacular for a town of maybe 5000 people. The booths stretch all around the central plaza and pond, music and buskers everywhere, and you can get every kind of jam, sweets, clothes, mate gourd, wood pieces, jewellery and food you can imagine. I wandered through the fair, making note of what I would come back for, then made quick trip to the grocery store to stock up for my next trip leg. I of course returned to the fair for some goodies and managed to break all but one of my $100 pesos, which apparently aren´t very popular in the small town I´m headed for. With about 7hrs to kill before the bus that would take me to El Chalten would arrive, I made a serious dent in my backlogged blog (which you are now partaking). Then around 10:30pm, I gathered my things, grabbed a homemade helado (icecream...yummm!) and headed for where I thought the bus would be. When I rounded the corner and saw no one else, I started to worry. So, I slightly quickly hustled over to the Tourist Info centre, only to discover that the bus to El Chalten picks up four blocks away (about 20m from the Internet cafe I had just left). So, now 10:58pm, I ran (yes ran), backpack bouncing on back and dripping icecream in hand, the four blocks. This time, as I rounded the corner, there were about 20 other backpack-toters waiting. And, as luck would have it, the bus was 35min late. So, I was in fact early. As I licked the melted chocolate and almond icecream off my hand, I laughed to myself about how ridiculous I must have looked hoofing across the park and made a note to add this saga to my ever-growing travelling tales.