I'm home!

I haven't posted on the blog in a while, which is a shame because I have a lot of stories.. but the big update is that I am back in NYC! I will work on finishing up the stories from the trip over the next few weeks, and I hope to catch up with all of you in person!

--Chase

A few pictures from Scuba Diving

Yesterday I completed my open water scuba diving certification. The final dive for the test was to go through a sunken ship 30-40 meters down in the shore off Puerto Madryn (this was not standard protocol, lol). The certification I received after the dive is only valid for depths of up to 18 meters. Here are a few photos from the experience:

I don't have any pictures of diving with the sea lions, but that was a cool experience as well :)

El Bolsón, part 2

As one should expect from a partially constructed organic house, the adobe was rustic. The building lacked windows, a proper floor, a bathroom (this would not have made much of a difference, but I will get into that later), or a kitchen. It did have a temporary gas stove, electricity, a mat for me to share with Dan the man, and a whole lot of dust. I was to live inside the house with Emile, and Dan—a Swedish video-game designer.

There were five other people at the chacra. Three French backpackers who had dropped out of college to live as far out of the system as possible, a plastic art/movie maker name Mate—he dropped out of college because the art critics at his school were hacks, and finally Bruno ‘Mono’ Mendoza—who got his nickname for being born on the day of the mono entonada in the Mayan calendar.

Food was interesting on the chacra, and the characters had an interesting relationship with it. Mostly one of hate, I think. We more or less ate vegan camping food. This is to say we had one stove and few pots, Accordingly, we used the big pot to boil potatoes, rice, or pasta, and then let that sit while we cooked some sort of seasoning (if we were lucky). We always had salad made with fresh produce from the garden, and as many apples and oranges as we could muster. In general the idea was to remain as self sufficient as possible.

I don’t think people actually hated food in Bolson, in fact many, including myself, enjoyed to cook. I think people simply felt superior to the majority of humanity by eating vegan food and living without products made by the man. This being said, work was hard, and every person was willing to cave, drink a beer on occasion, or maybe (maybe) some butter.

Emile had a particularly interesting relationship with his food. He ate cruda. That is to say he refused to eat anything (except for the time he had home made pizza, lol) that had been cooked above 40 Celsius. His diet mostly consisted of a small mountain of apples at 11 am, a salad at 1pm, and then oranges at 6pm. He refused to eat in the mornings or at night, and fasted 2 days a week. His rational for fasting was that all great thinkers fasted. He felt closer to his thoughts and a better at meditating when famished. So he abstained from the act of eating.

Emile would go on about the merits of not eating and how he was tracking the movement of the moon in order to paint a better picture of it than anyone else in the world. In his previous life, Emile was a theoretical physicist from Switzerland. A daily ritual of his was arguing about spirituality and the merits, or lack there of, of movies, books, and all things not spiritual. Another was discussing the merits of vida cruda. I am not quite sure what to make of Emile, his character should be in a movie at some point though. I am not sure if he was a genius, or is going to be the next ghandi, but he certainly looked he could be.

Dan the man was way into the work on the farm. He liked the ‘structure’—effing overachiever. He graduated from high school and then made an interesting career choice. Instead of going to college decided to go work full time as a video game developer. He actually got paid 20 euros an hour to design levels for first person shooters. I really can’t think of a cooler job. As you know all good things can’t last, and after 3 years of mismanagement by his bosses, he was out of a job, and the company out of business. He decided to go to South America to find himself, decide if college was right for him, and landed on the chacra. Three years of the ‘real world’ job of video game design had given Dan a love for authority. He was tired of the all-nighters and pizza at work, and was ready for some good old-fashioned manual labor. You know, real man stuff, organic style.

The work we did was needlessly difficult due to the lack of ‘non-essential’ tools. We mostly were plastering the walls of two different adobe houses. Adobes are wooden framed houses with reboke—a natural cement mixture (two buckets of clay, 6 buckets of sand, and 1 bucket of finely cut up hay). Before plastering we had to prepare the reboke. This consisted of chopping up hay with a machete—could have been easier with a grinder, preparing clay—we had to take it from its dry form, add water, and mix it to a milkshake consistency with our feet. After those ingredients were prepared, we threw them into a concrete mixer and added the sand. After a few minutes.. Reboke!

Once the mixture was made, each person would fill a bucket, take a large cement knife and have at the walls. The first few days of this work was difficult, but after a little practice, it turned out to be pretty pleasant. This being said, I was not eager to do extra work, unlike some people, and took the first opportunity I could (without slacking of course) to take a break or end work.

quick update

A quick update, after El Bolson I spent the weekend in Bariloche where I went mountain biking and paragliding. I am now in Puerto Madryn where I am going scuba diving with sea lions for the next few days. Here are a few pictures from the weekend:

A picture from the air:

I will finish the Bolson story later in the the week when I have time.

El Bolsón, part 1

I am going to have to tell this story in parts because it is rather long. Here is what I have so far:

El Bolsón. Oh El Bolsón. Where do I begin to describe my experiences there? A lot can happen in a week.

Maybe it was because I was homesick, or just sick of city life, but I was ready to leave Buenos Aires. My language program had gone on for about a week to long and I was itching to see something new. Getting on the bus at Retiro, I was excited for the journey ahead. I didn’t know what to expect for farm living. I realized I was going to the woods, but hadn’t given the actual day-to-day existence much thought. I was going to a ‘farm’, whatever that meant. I figured I would be milking cows, or something. I probably would have had a better idea if I had actually read the description of the place before arriving.

The bus from Buenos Aires to El Bolsón was relatively painless. The bus, comprised only of first class seats, had great food and lots of alcohol. The twenty-plus hour ride passed very quickly due to the combination of many movies, fully reclining seats, and lots of cocktails in Styrofoam cups. For the record, Julia and Julia is a very cute movie.

After arriving in Bolsón, I pulled out the directions for the chacra (organic farm), and found the first remis (local taxi). I handed the directions to the driver and told him to take me to the farm. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but he had no idea where the place was. I should have taken this as a sign. After driving for about 20 minutes away from Bolsón, and towards the middle of no-where, he had to pull over to ask for directions to the farm. As it turned out, the distance from where he first pulled over to the chacra was less than a kilometer, but the 3+ stops for help made it feel much longer.

After arriving at ‘Aqui y Ahora’—here and now—he let me out and told me I should walk the rest of the way. He promptly drove off and I was left at a fence in the middle of the forest with a road behind it leading off into the distance. I opened the fence and walked down the road with my bags to a house around the bend. It was at this point that I started thinking ‘What have I gotten myself into?’.

‘Hola’ I shout. No response.

‘Hola, me llamo Chase Hensel. Soy un miembro de WWOOF’ I shout a second time.

‘Hola! Me llamo Emile, mi hermano Arturo esta tomando una siesta adento. Un Segundo' someone shouts. There was a man sitting in a lawn chair in the grass in front of the house. The man, Emile, gets up, walks over to me, gives me a hug, and walks inside the house to grab his brother, Arturo. Thank god I thought, I am in the right place. Arturo was the name of my WWOOF contact.

Arturo, Emile and I had a brief conversation about how strange it was that I was from New York City, exchanged pleasantries, and hug a second time. The two brothers then lead me to the adobe in which I was to live and work on for the next two weeks.

Last day in Buenos Aires

Today is my last day in Buenos Aires. This afternoon I take a 20+ hour bus south to el Bolsón Argentina (two hours south of Bariloche). If you want to hear anything more about the trip let me know.

--Chase

Buenos Aires at night

Here is the Buenos Aires skyline at night from the river: