Route 40 -- Next Stop: Chacra Millalen

We had a layover night in the small town of Perito Moreno on our two day busride up the RN 40, which consisted of arriving at a hostel around 11pm, getting our room assignments in cattle call fashion, eating a quick and okay dinner, then departing at 7:45 the following morning. But we were placed in a 3-bed room with Vanessa, a cool woman in her late-20s from Buenos Aires, who was on a little vacation to see more of the country. She spoke some English but did not feel super comfortable speaking it, which was great for us and the three of us along with the Spanish woman who had been assigned the seat next to her on the bus had a nice evening and morning of conversation in Spanish before we settled into another 10-plus-hour day on the bus.

(Watching the full moon rise over the desert of the RN 40. When it first came up over the mountain it was huge and awe-inspiring. The bus driver kindly stopped for a photo-taking moment.)

The RN 40 runs along the length of the Argentine Andes and has a similar kind of mystique as Route 66 in the Southwest US – it runs along thousands of fairly wild kilometers of ranchland (“estancias”) and also connotes legends of cowboys (“gauchos”) and wild frontier. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid fled the US and set up a ranch along the Rio Blanco in the Chubut province until they were accused of robbing a bank, fled to Bolivia and died in a shootout. Argentina and Chile have had many skirmishes and all out wars over exactly where the border lies. El Chaltén itself was only established in 1985, when Chile was making efforts to populate its side of the area, and Argentina hastily established a town to beat Chile in the land grab. In 1898, Perito Moreno was also established in a land grab from Chile – the border had been defined by the Río Fénix, which the Argentines simply re-routed. Sneaky.

(Below: Birds of prey, wild (baby!) guanacos, horses, and cattle along the Route 40. We got to see a mama guanaco nursing her baby.)

We rolled through some pretty small, random towns along the way, including Gobernador Costa, home to one of the only gyms we have seen so far on our trip.

(We both agreed that Cristy could kick our asses if she wanted to.)

(Coffee and pit stop in Río Mayo. The national capital of sheepshearing. We are sad to have missed January’s festival where the national sheepshearing queen gets crowned.)

The bus we were on was headed to El Bolsón and then on up to Bariloche. We were headed to the tiny town of El Hoyo (pronounced “el hoyjo” here) about 35 minutes south of El Bolsón right on the main route. We had asked the bus driver if we could hop off in El Hoyo and he had adamantly said that it was not a scheduled stop. However, as we rolled up into town around 6:30pm, he pulled over let us know this was our stop, dropped us off, and wished us luck.We were right in front of a small convenience store like market that advertised that it had internet. Perfect. Since the farm (“chacra”) would not have any, we decided to stop in to check our email before catching the 12 peso (3 dollar) cab ride there. As in many smaller towns here (and even some larger towns), convenience stores will often have 3 or 4 computers and a couple of phone booths for internet and phone calls, both of which are extremely cheap to use – even to call Hawaii – and the computer stations are often inhabited by pre-teen boys playing computer games. With payphones having mostly gone the way of the dinosaurs in the US, it has been unexpectedly easy to stay connected.


Across a very small bridge over the local river and up along a winding dirt road, past neighbors selling frutilla (little strawberry), frambuesa (raspberry), and sauco (elderberry) dulces (jams) and homebrewed beer along the side of the road, the taxi brought us up to Chacra Millalen. It is the height of berry season here and we have landed pretty much in heaven… once again.


We opened the wood gate and walked down a winding little road, past many varieties of apple trees, a pear tree, and lavender fields and were greeted by one of the three dogs here (“Bob”) who ran up, and led us back to the house. We knocked on the door. Inside, the one-roomed kitchen/dining/living room smelled like delicious food and 8 or so people were hanging out, listening to music, cooking food, playing ping pong, and reading. A couple from France, a couple from New Jersey, a guy named Zach from LA, Abby and Rose, friends from Maine who are working full-time of the farm for two months, and Juan, the 15 year old son of the family that owns the farm. The French and Jersey couples were heading out first thing in the morning to continue their travelling, making our stay here a little cozier and more typical of the number of travelers here at any given time.

Everyone was speaking Spanish – some better some worse. Juan and his dad Fabio don’t speak English, so out of respect for not leaving anyone out of the conversation, and a shared desire to practice speaking Spanish, the culture here at Chacra Millalen is to speak Spanish – even one English speaker to another, particularly when Juan or his dad are in the vicinity. This has turned out to be a *major* highlight of our stay here, and our comfort in speaking Spanish has grown by leaps and bounds. On top of this, a neighbor and friend of the family, Viviana, offers Spanish lessons to anyone staying here and we have spent an hour and a half with her on three different days. She is a really interesting person to have conversations with – she spent 15 years in Zurich, Switzerland working as a psychiatric occupational therapist and is now back at home in Argentina, prioritizing fresh air and a quieter life, trying to piece together a living (occupational therapy is a professional field that does not fully exist here yet).

People sign up to cook meals, two at a time – both lunch and dinner, and two others clean up. So after meeting everyone, we were reassured that dinner was under control and that we should just go set up our tent and enjoy the evening – dinner would be at 9pm. We moseyed on over to the field alongside the lavender bushes and set up our tent just as the sun was beginning to set over the farm, then headed back over to eat – one of the best meals we’ve had this trip.


At dinner, nearly every ingredient was directly from the garden, and for dessert: a huge bowlful of fresh strawberries from the garden with whipped cream and an apple crumble made from their apples. Everyone staying here takes a lot of pride in the meals they cook and the effect is not so much a competition as an attempt to give back to everyone an equally good or even better meal, using as many ingredients as possible directly from the garden -- and allowing ample for seconds and thirds. The result: we are eating even better and even more elaborately than at home – and with Rebecca as the Ulveling-Meyer household head chef, that is a big statement.

We signed up to cook on Friday night and Rebecca was getting giddy as she poked around the well-stocked kitchen and gardens for 2 days, checking out what ingredients we could use – or rather – that she could dream up into a veritable feast.

(Apples? Which kind? Kale? Rosemary? Leeks? Heirloom tomatos?)

With me standing in for herb harvester, sous-chef, and idea-bouncer-offer, we started cooking at around 7:00pm for a 9:00ish dinner. We are a smaller group now with just us, Abby and Rose, and the family -- Juan, Fabio, and Josephine.

(I harvested some rosemary, parsley, oregano, and sage from the garden in one of the baskets they have by the kitchen door for that purpose. And, the final result, with Fabio in red and Josephine in blue.)

Well-roasted butternut squash, garbanzos mixed with a browned butter sage sauce, deeply caramelized onions, and apple purée, fresh picked broccoli lighly sautéed, roasted tomatoes stuffed with a fresh farmer’s cheese, brown rice, and herbs, and fresh lettuce salad. Needless to say it was a big hit and Rebecca glowed as everyone returned for seconds and thirds and commented excitedly on the large amount of leftovers for the weekend (no organized group meals on the weekends – though since folks are often here hanging out anyhow, people still cook together.)

The farm is a member of World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), a large and loose network of organic farms around the world that participate in a program where you can stay on the farm for free or cheap in exchange for working there. This is how we, and everyone here, found the farm – or by word of mouth, since clearly this place has a good thing going. At any one time Fabio and Josephine have two people here working full-time (8 hours) and staying and eating bountifully for free and a handful of others that ebbs and flows who work half-time (4 hours), pay a small amount, and camp out in the field.

(The homemade bread and homemade jams and chutneys bar. Open 24/7.)

For the whole week here we are paying 550 pesos for the two of us combined (about $140) to stay, eat an incredible amount, and work in the mornings doing “farm” stuff – ahhh the things that us city-folk pay for... But really, Josephine and Fabio have created an amazing space and culture here. In the mornings we all make our own breakfasts – with as much homemade bread and homemade dulces (jams) as we can eat, as well as oatmeal, eggs sometimes, and plums and apples from the farm. Then around 9ish, Josephine lets us all know what needs to be done that day and off we go.

(Below: They have built all of the buildings on the farm using homemade adobe bricks. We mixed the mud to the “consistency of dulce de leche”, rolled smalled bundles of hay in it, then fashioned it all into bricks using a rudimentary mold. Rebecca mixing mud. Blake and Zack, putting the bricks out to dry in the sun.)

(Below: Rebecca picking apples. Some mornings our “job” is to harvest berries or apples. Other mornings we have spent weeding the vegetable beds.)

(Below: Rebecca and Rose weeding one of the beds, under the watchful eye of el jefe kitten.)

(Below: Rebecca learns to split wood. Some mornings include dump runs or helping round the neighbor’s cow and calf into the back field for a little bovine vacation on new grass.)

At 1:00 we all gather for a yummy lunch, and then it’s siesta until 4 or 5. The full-time workers put in a few more hours. We’ve spent our afternoons walking the 20 minute walk to the river, hitching into town for a beer, or hitching the other direction up to Lago Epuyen. It’s a small town, and hitchhiking down the dirt road is no big deal. Often we’ll get picked up by a bus driver who was driving the bus back to his route after siesta, or even a taxi driver who doesn’t charge us fare because she was heading in that direction anyhow.

(Fabio on his bike while Josephine cooks in the kitchen.)

(Josephine in the Panadería – the small building they built specifically to make bread.)

(Blake enjoying an afternoon cup of coffee.)

BLOG CONTEST #1: Who can observe why I look so happy drinking this beer in El Hoyo, a tiny town in Argentina? The answer is right in this photo, below. Your comments welcome.

(Enjoying a beer at the local watering hole/wi-fi café/school supplies store and copy center.)

-- Blake