Wednesday, February 26, 2014

There's No Place Like Home -- Almost

There's No Place Like Home -- Almost

Yesterday, I rode Judy down to Cholila from the lakeside farm of Ivan Hueche, the young guide we hired to take us (successfully this year) up to the Tigre Glacier. It was a destination that locked gates and, as we learned last week, a circuitous and challenging route prevented us from reaching last year. It was an amazing 7 days of spectacular mountain views, revelations about the canniness of our equine friends, new appreciation for the campesino life that continues to rule in this stretch of the Andes Mountains, clear blue skies and starry starry nights -- and, of course, dust, lots of dust.

For the three-hour ride into Cholila, I had the other two horses in tow since Alex had picked up a bit of an intestinal bug and was running a low fever. We'd been a bit concerned that it was Hanta Virus, but a quick trip to the doctor satisfied us that it was nothing more than an Argentian form of Montezuma's and pretty mild at that -- says Nikki! (Yes, a quick trip to a doctor without an appointment is possible here. And after a brief examination and handing Alex half a dozen pills to bring the fever down and two packages of salt to rehydrate him, the doctor charged us nothing.)

Ivan and his young girlfriend Jessica accompanied me for the first 30 minutes of my journey, proving that not everyone in Patagonia can ride a horse. Seems that while Jessica can swing a mean axe, her skills do not extend to a horse. (Though if the romance continues she likely will pick up the skill.) When they turned back, I was on my own. The three horses made a long shadow as the sun neared the spectacular mountains we'd enjoyed for the last few days. The humidity level hovered at Saskatchewan levels so the sky was beyond blue. Nary a blade of grass moved in the windless evening. I couldn't have been happier.

Twenty minutes further down the road, which was little more than a dirt track, a red Volkswagon appeared up ahead. The car pulled over and as I came alongside, out jumped Aldo. A neighbour of Ivan's, he'd joined us at Ivan's for breakfast the day we'd set off for the Tigre, and waved farewell as we rode away that morning. Aldo was excited to hear about how our trip had gone and vowed that if we did it again, he would accompany us. He climbed back into his car and I followed the narrow road down to valley bottom, riding past only one other house. It was as simple as Ivan's, and sheep, cows and a few horses nibbled bits of dry broken grass around the pole barn. One horse was saddled up and tied to a tree ready for who knows what; the dogs barked my passing, but no one came out. Half a dozen horses lounged on the road ahead until my approach caused their ears to perk up. They separated to let my train of horses pass through. An indignant cow jumped into the ditch to give us space as he snorted his displeasure.

Eventually, I arrived at the narrow single lane bridge that crossed the Rio Blanco. Old wooden boards spanned the bridge. They were punched through in places by bucket-sized holes. Over top of these decrepit planks were two lines of thick boards lying in a perpendicular direction. They were set wide enough apart to accommodate the wheels of a car and were ample for an automobile's tires and, therefore a horse's hoof. Judy wasn't keen on the hollow sound when she stepped on the bridge, but walked on with Canela and Moro following. I had to trust they would not step in one of the bucket-sized holes. We made it across safely and I breathed a sigh of relief. The bridge had actually been worrying me. I reached the paved road, but there was a small dusty path in the wide ditch made by the dozens of horses that pass along this route on a given day, so I was able to keep clear of the odd vehicle that passed by. In Cholila, you are more likely to see someone ride by on a horse than a bicycle.

As I arrived in the small town at about 7:30pm, the sun was still above the mountain tops. It wouldn't be dark until after 9pm, but the air was beginning to cool after a sizzling hot day. When I passed a field where a farmer was cutting a rich crop of dark green alfalfa, I smelled hay and was reminded of days spent tossing haybales as a kid. I'd looked forward to this little excursion on my own and wasn't really ready to enter the civilization, such as it was, in this sleepy town. As the horses and I walked up a paved street lined with modest houses set behind low wood or wire fences with green lawns and an occasional rose bush, I noticed a thin rake of a man standing on the narrow grassy area that separated the concrete sidewalk from the street. A long thin pony tail emerged from a wide-brimed felt hat. At his feet was a large toolbox. He seemed to be looking my way. "Juan," I said when I realized it was the vet who had treated Canela, and had Alex, Beto and me over for a lamb asado at his small house in the campo outside Cholila. "How was the Tigre?" he asked. It seemed everyone knew about our journey. "It was fantastic," I said, explaining how amazing it was and how much we'd enjoyed getting to know our guide Ivan. "Ivan's dogs caught two jabali (wild pigs)," I told him. "We kept the first one (which Ivan gutted, skinned and then slung over his horse's haunches), but let the second larger one go. It was a mother who was obviously nursing babies." Juan took a quick look at Canela's now mostly healed wound and announced her in perfect health before we said our goodbyes.

I decided to ride up the wide main street. Some, likely Peronista, goverrnment in Chubut Province, where Cholila is located, had decided these little towns should have great boulevards as main streets. In Cholila, a stretch of grass the width of most streets in a Canadian town, separated double-laned streets running in either direction. Well tended gardens dotted the grassy strip between tall, arching lampposts that ran the full length of the boulevard. Whereas, these grand boulevards often seemed more fitting to Paris than a small Patagonian puebla, in Cholila's case, the grandeur was balanced since the street led right out of town and into a spectacle of snow-capped, jagged peaked mountains that gleamed under the setting sun at my back.

I tied up the horses outside the small grocery store and picked up a few supplies for dinner. Dry crisps for poor Alex, a nice Pinot Noir, some yoghurt and a grapefruit for me -- all things I'd craved after a week of eating goat every night since Ivan had packed an entire goat along for our dining pleasure. Goat is very good and Ivan certainly knew how to cook it -- barbequed, in soup and in stew -- but after six days I was ready for something different. I would have picked up some vegetables, but in this carne-mad country where people go their entire lives without eating anything green, the limp zucchinis and carrots didn't entice me much.

Back in the saddle, I continued down the main thoroughfare when I heard someone call out. I looked over my left shoulder, and across the wide street, I saw Don Aviles waving madly. We had run into him a number of times in our wanderings and his smile for us was always as wide as his healthy girth. I  waved back calling out my greetings and continued on my way. The pavement gave way to a dirt road recently upgraded and the horses picked up the pace. They knew there was good pasture and access to water in Lago Mosquito at Camping Ricardo's where we'd stayed previously and where Alex was hopefully recuperating. As the sun dropped, a 1970s panel truck rumbled past and I recognized it as Cholila's old ambulance, now a regular truck for some campesino.

Cholila and the Rio Blanco and the Andes Mountains that it cozies up to will never become home for me like Belfountain and Caledon and the Credit River and the Niagara Escarpment are home, but I relished the sense of belonging that I was coming to feel. A wave from a friend, an inquiry about a wounded horse, a familiar truck.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Rolling With the Punches (Part 11)


You can make out the round corral and paddocks in the grassy area where we camped
among the mice and a raging bull near the Rio Argentino.

Rolling With the Punches (Part 11)

 If you read my last (and first) post of this trip, you’ll know that Canela sustained a nasty wound, caused, for all we know by a randy Billy goat. Beto had sewed up the gapping hole in her leg, but my Pony Club alter ego turned out to be right. It became infected though we caught it before it made its way too deeply into her knee. The vet said that once infection gets into an articulated joint there are problems. Cleaning up the damage wasn’t pretty – lots more blood and needles and leather contraptions and tranquilizers to keep poor Canela still – but it worked. The heat and swelling were down in a day though the vet had to see her twice. When Canela seemed to be on the mend, I asked the vet what would have happened had we not had him treat her. He said the swelling would have kept increasing and she would not have been able to use her leg, which would have meant circulation would basically stop. The short story is that for 800 pesos (about $100), we saved Canela’s life.

Given we were now down two horses (Canela had to rest for a few days) and had no guide, since Beto had to stay with Canela to care for her, we altered our plans. With three riding horses and one packhorse, we set off with Danny on foot, leaving Beto, Canela and his other horse behind at Julio’s. We rode over the low mountain pass behind Julio’s lodge and set up camp in the Pedrigoso River valley below. The previous year, the horses had found a grassy spot near the smaller Argentina River that runs parallel to the Pedrigoso. It had lots of pasture and a number of fenced paddocks and we set up in this place. It was a sublime place to camp. The horses had water and grass and we found a spot tucked in among the niri and mosqueta and retamo trees for our tents and campfire. It was a winter camp for Julio's neighbour and Julio had told us it would be okay to use the corrals.

The valley is wide and flat, perhaps 2 kilometres across and is reminiscent of Montana in my mind – but with better weather. The summers are longer and the winters are more mild. Puma wander in these hills, wild boar are evident by patches of disturbed soil where they have been digging and we watched enormous Caranchos (large hawks) ride the thermals above high cliffs, veering off from time to time like an escape car leaves the scene of a bank robbery. But as we would learn, it was none of these critters that plagued us.

When I went to clean up, the crystal clear water in the Argentina River gave me a headache when I poured it over my dusty head of hair. But as I stood there in the middle of that sandy-bottomed stream with the morning sunshine warming my back, I was confident that no one might happen along to disturb me. Those parts of my body that seldom feel the heat of a hot sun or are touched by a fresh breeze tingled. I stood in the cold knee-deep water and gazed at the mountaintops – a few sporting a white cap of snow. Some people talk about the freedom they feel sailing on an open ocean, others have a similar sensation when they climb a vertical rock face or soar off a mountain top in a paraglider. But the intimate privacy of standing buck naked and freshly clean in air so fresh you want to drink it trumps all other ways to shed yourself of the shackles of our 21st century hectic lives in my opinion.

Alex and Danny fished; we followed an old road to the glacier-fed, see-to-the-bottom Pedrigoso River where it cascaded from a deep mountain canyon and on to the dry desert. Twenty kilometres on it would empty into Lago Cholilo.

One day as the sun neared the mountain peaks and evening, with its soft buttery light was catching hold, I saddled up Judy. We climbed up a ridge behind our campsite and followed our noses and a complicated network of cattle tracks picking our way around low-lying, thorny bushes toward a distant ridge made visible by the dense green evergreens that populated it. We had no destination in mind; there was no obvious single path. We just wandered in the general direction of the ridge as the sun sunk lower in the clear blue sky. As we did, we moved past the shoulder of a rounded hill. Behind it I could now see yet another series of jagged snow-capped peaks. Behind that was likely another and then another – all part of the Andes that form the border between Argentina and Chile. In all likelihood, I was actually looking at Chile.

At the end of our wander, I turned Judy around, gave her her head and let her find our way back to camp. She picked her way confidently, sometimes following her own hoof prints clearly visible in the sandy dusty soil, but other times she just using her senses honed over centuries to find our way home.

After three nights out camping, we returned reluctantly to Julio’s. We had to get Danny back so he could catch a bus and then a flight home to England. We also had to escape the plague of mice that were becoming an increasing problem to anything plastic including Alex’s camelbak water bladder, his sunscreen and a foam pillow. We hung our food in trees in tightly sealed bags to avoid problems. Having to leave due to mice might sound as if we are awfully urban, but it turned out that we had arrived during an actual plague of mice or ratones as they are called locally. They actually have a name for these outbreaks, which is a ratada. The dramatic rise in population of these small rodents was due to the flowering two years previously in 2012 of the colihue plant. Colihue is a local bamboo that only blooms about every 70 years. (Some studies suggest it is only one type of bamboo that blooms so seldom. The others bloom in cycles ranging from 12- to 30-years. Either way, it doesn’t bloom very often.) In the years that follow, there is so much seed around that the population of mice explodes in areas where bamboo is common. While mice are generally not much more than an inconvenience, these mice often carry Hanta Virus and while we were there there were several cases of the resulting ailment that can be lethal. In fact, we had to change our plans again because we were advised to not go up the Tigre valley at all due to the mice, and the campground near Lago Chililo had been shut down for the season because of the mice.

During the 3-day festival they consume 10,000 kilos of beef and 300 sheep,
making it the world's largest barbecue. 


We returned to Julio’s for a night and then headed down into Cholila for an afternoon to attend the enormous asado (Argentinian barbeque) festival and rodeo there. Although it’s quite a spectacle – imagine dual lines of 50 or more cattle and lamb carcasses roasting crucifix style over open wood-burning fires, but we didn’t have a huge stomach for the busy crowds and blaring music. It was a bit too much for us after the peace and quiet in the Pedrigoso valley (broken only by a vocal, dirt-scratching bull that became Laura’s nemisis) especially given the lake trip Julio treated us to that morning. He took us out on his boat to tour the mirror-like Lago Lezana on whose shore his Lodge resides. This spring-fed lake that is 11k long and about 2k wide sits in the shoulder of a low-lying mountain. A steep forested ridge frames the lake on the side of Julio’s lodge. On the other side, a lower rolling hill hems the water in. There are only four houses on the entire lake. The original farmstead is cozied in at the western end of the lake on a gentle sloping piece of land that was cleared decades ago. There are a few simple wooden buildings, cows graze. Our horses, who we allowed to run free (except escape-artist Moro who we tethered), discovered the pasture at this site. They looked up in surprise as we pulled in close to them in Julio’s boat. But curiosity was no competition for the rich green grass on the lake’s edge. We watched them munch away contentedly, their legs hidden from view behind the slender reeds on the lakeshore. They seemed unaware of the backdrop of mountain peaks behind them.

Sunday, February 16, 2014

Rolling With the Punches

Don Fuentes allowed the five of us plus our six horses to camp in his back field.

 Rolling With the Punches 

"Canela has been badly bitten," Beto tells me. I'm sitting enjoying my first maté on the first day of our second year on the horses. We are back in Argentina, back in the same area as we rode in last year since we have Alex's daughter and son-in-law along with us and we thought they would enjoy meeting some of the characters we spent time with last year. The Spanish word for "to bite," however, sounds a lot like "to die," and at first I thought Beto was telling me that Canela, his lovely strawberry roan mare, was dead. She had been tethered overnight in the field behind Don Fuentes' house where we had also set up our tents. When Beto went to find her, he discovered the problem. 

It wasn't an auspicious start to our month-long trip given that Beto had already lost one of our horses. You might remember Beto, our very lovely paralyzed-down-one-side, blind-in-the-other-eye guide who drove me batty last year. I'm not sure how I was talked into hiring him again, but here we were. To Beto's credit, he had done a great job of looking after the horses over the winter. When we drove out to see them about ten days ago, they were fat and sassy well, the two of our horses that were there were fat and sassy. According to Beto, our ever-faithful, though mulish packhorse el Moro and Mosquito, the big flea-bitten grey gelding who Alex had ridden the previous year, had jumped the fence a few days earlier. Beto assured us that the duo had made the two-to-three-hour trip back to Manuel Mol's from where Moro came. Though you would never guess it given Moro was more Volvo sedan than Jaguar convertible in appearance, he was a notorious escape artist. Beto told us, No problem, dont worry.

I should have known better.

A few days later when we showed up at Manuel's the man I described last year as a cross between Ben Cartwright and Florence Nightingale given how smoothly he moved between caring for his bedridden wife, baking excellent fry bread, tending his sheep, playing his guitar while singing milongas soulful made-up songs that often, as in Manuels case, describe the day's events and mending Alex's damaged knee, we learned that while Moro had indeed gone "home," Mosquito had not accompanied him. In other words, he was lost a condition that a friend gracelessly advised us could mean that he had been killed and eaten. We hoped not. While Beto and Manuel assured us Mosquito would eventually turn up, we were in need of a horse to rent for the week that Daniel, Alex's son-in-law, would be riding with us. When we didn't have any luck with that plan, we made arrangements to have our gear transported by truck to our next spot, hopeful that we could continue on in this way for Daniel's leg of the trip. We would ride two of our horses and three of Beto's and have only one packhorse.

Despite this complication, I was enjoying the sun and the fresh air and my maté in an open field behind Don Fuentes' small farm. So when Beto told me about Canela, I hoped the injury wasn't serious -- how bad could a bite be anyway? But it did occur to me that we were already short a horse. "Can we ride her?" I asked. He assured me we could and then scurried off.

Curious, I walked up to Don Fuentes's barn where Beto had tied up Canela. On the front of her left front leg above the knee, her skin had been peeled back from a patch of flesh the size of a deck of cards, maybe larger. Thankfully, there was no gash, no torn muscle, but a flap of skin hung from the bright red wound. Blood dripped from where it was collecting in the pocket behind where the skin dangled lifelessly. It had obviously been bleeding for some time because now-crusted black rivulets extended the length of her leg to her hoof. Her lower lip was red from where she'd been worrying the damage. Though superficial, it was big and nasty.

Soon Beto reappeared carrying a large, bass-clef-shaped needle and some thick black thread. "You are going to sew it up yourself?" I asked doubtfully. He assured me he knew what he was doing, as he threaded the needle, something not easily done when you have partial use of one arm and only one eye. "Are you sure?" I asked again as he untied Canela and handed me the lead rope. Meanwhile, he grabbed the piece of hanging skin and pulled it up to cover the wound. "How about we clean it first?" I suggested, my Pony Club training (and basic first aid) kicking in. "No, we will spray it afterwards," he insisted. It seemed like a really bad idea to me, but it was his horse and he's a very stubborn man. "Well, okay," I said, "but at least clean your hands and the needle." I had some antibacterial lotion in my pocket and he used that to clean up as best he could.

With me holding Canela, Beto did his best to jam the needle through the upper edge of the flap of skin. Not surprisingly, Canela pulled back before he could insert the needle properly. The needle ripped a bit of her hide. He tried a couple more times with the same result. Despite his best efforts and Canela's stoic nature, there was no way she was going stand still. Why would she? Beto then grabbed the long rope that was attached to her halter, looped it around her back legs and then around her neck using a system common to Argentinian gauchos. If she tried to step back with her hind legs she would only pull against the rope that was looped around her neck. In this way, she would be easier to keep still.

As it turned out, I had to haul on the rope around her back legs while holding onto her lead rope and encouraging her to be brave. Meanwhile, Beto methodically stitched up the flapping skin, something that would have been tricky for anyone, and quite astounding given his disabilities. Unfortunately, I let my amazement at his handiwork override my logic. I knew it was a really bad idea to close a wound that had not been thoroughly and meticulously disinfected. Sure, after being stitched up it looked much better, in fact you wouldn't have noticed it was there unless someone pointed it out to you, and Canela did return to grazing the short grass around us as soon as Beto was done, and it was only superficial, but it was huge and now bacteria was trapped inside a nice warm environment perfect for it to grow and turn into a nasty infection.

Again, I let my faith in Beto get the better of me. He led Canela around. She was perfectly sound; the wound was virtually invisible and she seemed quite unperturbed by the whole event. "We can ride her?" I asked hesitantly. "No problem," said Beto as if I were some nitwit. We drenched the wound in disinfectant spray, then I asked Beto what he thought had caused the wound. He wasn't certain, but he told me he'd seen an enormous billy goat nearby the evening before. Then he pointed to the wound and showed me what looked like a pair of tooth-sized shallow marks that were about the width of a goat's mouth apart. He said that maybe the ram had bitten Canela who had been tied up for the night. It didn't seem very plausible, but upon reflection, there didn't seem to be a better or more obvious explanation. Poor old Canela, bitten by a goat!

A bit shaken, we managed to arrange for our gear to be driven up to our friend Julio's Lago Lezana Lodge, where we planned to stay overnight. We conferred about whether Canela was okay and then, with Beto's encouragement, decided that keeping her moving was likely the best way to prevent swelling and, hopefully, keep any infection at bay. We tacked up the horses and rode on. For the first two hours, Canela seemed fine, but for the last hour on the downhill leg of the trip, she began to favour her injured leg. By the time we arrived at Julio's, she really was sore. But there was no heat in the wound that would have indicated infection had set in, and there was no swelling. We reapplied the disinfectant spray and decided that it was best to call the vet just in case. He agreed to come the next day, and we hoped that she would be okay until then.

The view of Lago Lezana from the lovely Lago Lezana Lodge.

 It was a lovely evening with our good friend Julio. The stories about his time spent as an Argentinian politician before the corruption became too much for him entertained us, Alex's daughter Laura and her husband Daniel and even Julio's 80-plus-year-old, long-suffering mother who was visiting from Buenos Aires. Julio, with our encouragement, told Laura and Daniel about how, after he left government, he took a job with the United Nations in Rwanda and ended up in jail in Kigali, not once, but twice before deciding to leave the revolution-torn nation. Wine flowed, the pasta tasted as it only can after a long day spent in the fresh air, and we went to sleep in Julio's comfortable beds hopeful that all would be well in the morning.


Unfortunately, when I ran down to check on Canela the next day, her leg was swollen from the top to below her knee. It was warm and sore, and she dragged it along when I encouraged her to walk. It wasn't terribly infected, but it was on its way to becoming a real mess. I hoped the vet would come soon. Meanwhile, we changed our plans and Julio graciously invited us to stay another night. Making the best of the delay, we made ourselves useful by building a brick walkway through Julio's vegetable garden and weeding where it was needed. We looked longlingly out over Lago Lezana, the 11-kilometre-long, crystal clear blue and normally warm lake upon which Julios lodge, Lago Lezana Lodge (lagolezanalodge.com.ar) sits. But it had been unusually cool and swimming was not in the cards.