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

Big Glacier and Even Bigger Mountains

BIG announcement: Our NEW NEPHEW, August Ulveling was born in early February (Rob and Jodi’s first kid!). At the time we left Oakland, he was due any day and Blake called Rob several times to encourage Augie to hurry up so we could meet him. Sadly we did not get to see him in newborn state, but can’t wait to hang out with him when we get home!

(It's looking like we may have another redhead in the family!)

And now…. Grab your favorite beverage and pull up a chair, this is going to be a long one! (Our access to wi-fi has been sparse.)

As I write this, we are in El Chaltén, the gateway town to Argentina’s Parque Nacional de los Glaciares (Glacier National Park), home to the legendary and stunning Monte Fitz Roy. It is a very small town though it seems to have as many restaurants and hotels as permanent residents – with more being built at breakneck speed to accommodate the expected droves of tourists who will be taking advantage of the newly paved roads to get here. The town has a nice quiet, chill, and utterly serene mountain town feel for now. It is a beautiful place to spend a couple of restful days while waiting to take off north for a week on an organic farm near El Bolsón. We are feeling lucky to be here at the cusp of new development, before it gets too overrun.

After our last post, leaving Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine National Park in Chile, we got on a bus for El Calafate, a town named after the Patagonian berry that looks like a small blueberry and tastes something like…. a sour raspberry? No, a strawberry? No wait, maybe a huckleberry? Well anyway, it makes a darn good jam (“dulce de calafate”), which we have been enjoying lots of. El Calafate is the destination town for the glacier Perito Moreno, one of the only glaciers in the world that is advancing. So we cozied up into our cute cabañita and signed up for a trip the following day to see the glacier – including a short boat ride and a little splurge to take an hour long hike on the glacier itself.

(Our cozy little 2 story A-frame cabin in El Calafate. Tiny and cute and like being on a sailboat – everything has its place.)

We then found ourselves drinking coffee and eating empanadas at the corner of May Day and Liberation.

(Yummy empanadas + café con leche = happy Blake.)

Taking the advice of the sweet grandfatherly gentleman who helps his son run the cabañitas, we made sure to sit on the left side of the bus so as to get the best views of the Perito Moreno glacier and the surrounding mountains. Having been to Glacier National Park in Montana, we were excited to see some BIG glaciers rather than the tiny, far away and ever shrinking ones there (supposedly the Glaciers in Montana will be all gone within the next 15 years). Perito Moreno is like nothing either of us had ever seen -- so huge you couldn’t see the end of it even from the lookout above it.

The glacier advances about 2 meters (6 feet!) each DAY. It is advancing against the land, therefore as it advances, it has to “calve”, meaning that ginormous chunks fall off about every 20 minutes into Lago Argentina, with deep awe inspiring rumbles and huge rippling waves. There is a series of boardwalks set up to view the glacier right at the point where it calves. So we set up camp to wait for the decisive moment of calving and snap our perfect photos (in the tradition of photographer Cartier Bresson’s decisive moment of course … for thphotography geeks out there…).

We piled back onto our bus and were whisked off to a dock for a short boat ride to the trail head for our hike on the glacier. We were blown away by what we got to see - the formations of centuries old ice shaped by the weather into deep blue gulleys, granules ranging from the size of golf balls down to fine sand crystals, waterfalls made entirely of ice and water carving out deep mysterious holes.

At the end of our hike a little table was set up right on the glacier, with ice plucked right off of the glacier and into our glasses -- never has whiskey tasted so good.

Neither of us think of ourselves as the tour-taking-type, but we both agreed the whole thing was pretty damn great.


Back in El Calafate we took a walk to the huge marshlands right on the edge of the town, home to a colony of pink flamingos and dozens of species of ducks and other water birds.

One of the wonderful things that we are settling into and really enjoying is the freedom of making plans from one day to the next based on whim. So, glacier having been trekked upon, we opened up our handy Lonely Planet book Trekking the Patagonian Andes to the Mount Fitz Roy section, checked the internet for the weather forecast and saw that El Chaltén was in for a rare sunny and non-windy week. We decided to embark the next day on a 4 night backpacking trip. We got on a bus in the morning, rolled into El Chaltén at 10:30am, found a hostel to stash our extra things, picked up some last-minute food, ate yummy waffles with dulce de calafate (at the Wafflería), and hopped in a cab for a short ride to the trailhead.

With the sun staying up so late here (it doesn’t get dark until well after 9pm), starting a 2-3 hour hike at 3:30 was absolutely no risk. We started off in an unexpected and extreme wind tunnel, which made us feel a bit nervous about the rest the hike, but once we got on our way, it was perfectly calm the whole time.

(Blake pretending to be Bono in the Mysterious Ways video, or, that he’s at the Pali Lookout on Oahu... or, just trying not to blow away.)

The hike in took us up the valley of the Rio Eléctrico, through a forest of many varieties of windswept beeches (“lenga” trees), and across several smaller creeks. It ended at Piedra del Fraile, a refugio (hut) and campsite with a very cheerful host named Guillermo, and a very busy kitten named Puma. We had our tent and food with us, but you can sleep there in bunk beds and eat all your food at their little restaurant with beer. We worked very hard to resist the yummy looking pizza in favor of the polenta we had brought, reminding each other how much lighter our packs would be if we ate our own food.

All the while Fitz Roy towered over us. Chaltén was the mountain’s original Tehuelche name, meaning “smoking mountain,” because at almost all times there are plumes of clouds wisping up from the snowy peak, looking like smoke rising out of stack. The Fitz Roy range is also famous for its presence in one of our favorite books, The Little Prince -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's illustrations show the little prince on the peaks of mountains, unquestionably those in the Fitz Roy Range according to our expert called the Lonely Planet. (And, one prominent peak is was named Saint-Exupéry).

On day 2 of our backpacking trip we left our packs at camp and took what was quite possibly the most beautiful hike of our whole two lives, combined! The first half was pretty much straight up, granting sweeping views of the valley at every turn.

(My finger in the lower right corner is pointing to the spot where the refugio is, tucked behind the hill, protected from the worst of the wind, when there is wind, which there was not.)

When we reached the top, we were in the bowl of a glacier with a frozen lake, surrounded by peaks, each one a different color than the next – black, orange-red, granite, deep red.

And since the day was perfectly still and warm, and since we are fools for an amazing view, and since the ridge just didn’t look that far away, we followed the established trail of footprints across and up the glacier for a vista out over the other side of Fitz Roy.

(Rebecca crossing the snow field, above, heading to the ridge. Below: the views from the top. The day was impeccably clear and we could make out a giant mountain rising above the distant mountains in the first photo below, which we think -- with the help of the rangers back in the station -- is Monte San Lorenzo up in Perito Moreno National Park, over a hundred miles north. We probably hit one of the few days of the year where it can be seen!)

Back in camp, we resisted the pizza once again, despite being ready to fall over after our hike. After all, who needs anything other than oatmeal, fry bread, and polenta? We have impressed ourselves with just how many flavors polenta can have. And we now have backpacking food down to even more of a science – and perhaps a more laid back science – than before … small sigh of relief from all who have ever backpacked with Blake.

Never ones to rush unnecessarily, we slept in the next morning until 9:30 and managed to get ourselves out of camp by around 1:30 or 2. Between taking time to stretch and take pictures of pretty flowers, and Rebecca’s new maté habit, there’s a lot to do in the morning!

On our way out we chatted with two guys from Austria, a father and son, the father in his late 70’s and carrying just as much as we were. Apparently they recognized us from the pizza restaurant in Puerto Natales our last night there. They had already been hiking for several hours and were heading to the same camp site, 8 miles up the trail. Needless to say, they beat us by a long shot. As we finally hiked into Campamento Poincenot, our joints protesting, the son asked, “What took you so long? We already finished dinner!” Unfortunately I think the “stopping to smell the flowers and enjoy the day” excuse only takes you so far, especially when a man twice our age had so clearly whooped us. And the next morning, as the rest of the camp woke to do the popular dawn hike to the lookout over the lake at the base of Fitz Roy, we once again slept in until about 9:30. Hey, we’re on vacation. We might not have caught the sun rise, but we did get to see this amazing sunset right from our campsite that evening as we sipped hot cocoa…

(Mt. Fitz Roy is the tallest peak, all the way to the right, then the next large one to the left of it is Poincenot, and the third obviously large one to the left of that is Saint-Exupéry name after the author of The Little Prince.)

We ate just a “little” more polenta. (Note our gigantic appetites – those tupperwares are practically the size of our heads. Plus we had dessert! -- and Rebeccas muy suave backpacking fashion.)

Another day hike took us to another glacier that fed the pristine river, the Rio Blanco, that ran right along the Poincenot camp. As we sat mezmerized by the view, we watch chunks of it cascade down from the cliff into the lake.

(By the way, thanks to the NPR RadioLab podcast we listened to on a very long bus ride the other day, it turns out that the term “mesmerize” comes from a certain Dr. Friedrich (Franz) Mesmer, a German physician and astrologist, who invented what he called magnétisme animal and other spiritual forces often grouped together as mesmerism, in the late 1700s. Mesmer's ideas and practices led to the development of hypnosis in 1842.)

People in Patagonia are very proud, and rightfully so, of the purity of their water – much of it coming straight from the nearby glaciers. And since there’s not so much big wildlife around, giardia is not an issue. It’s been a real luxury just scooping up water from the rivers and gulping it down.

(Before ... After ... Ahhhhhh.)

The whole way back we talked about what we should have for dinner. Polenta or polenta? With chicken soup mix and powdered parmesan or cheese soup mix and veggie bouillon? So many decisions. So many boulders to climb over. Fortunately we got distracted by the beautiful views.

On arrival back at camp, we found that there were much bigger fish to fry…. we had left my maté leaves to dry out in our fry pan in the sun and a huemul (the endangered Patagonian deer) had come and spread them all over the place, and carried away my new maté cup!

(Here at the ranger station is a clear representation of the maté-stealing huemul having anxiety about dogs and getting his picture taken – It seems huemul gets way too wired on maté to just chill and make friends -- at least that is our interpretation of this PSA.)

We are positive that it was a huemul because we found deer like poo near our campsite – which Blake cleverly took a photo of to verify with the actually quite interested ranger. (Ok, so there’s a very small chance that it could have been Patagonian skunk that we smelled lurking about that day, but we’re going with the huemul option.) Fortunately, we found my maté cup 15 feet away – the point at which the huemul realized it had no need for the maté cup itself.

In the morning we got an early start (12:30!) on the hike back to town, leaving our campsite in the lenga forest behind.

(View from our tent up into the trees.)

One cool thing in El Chaltén is that the trailhead is right in town. So we hiked to our hostel in high backpacking fashion per usual, set down our things, and took ourselves out to a nice dinner with great beer. Mmmm. Local lamb and trout.

(Rebecca + post backpacking Patagonian microbrew = happy.)

We ended up sitting next to a Dutch couple a bit older than us, and we struck up a conversation towards the end of the meal. Turns out they had been creating a whole story about us as we sat and ate next to each other: we had just met and were having a travel romance, one of us was Irish and the other Argentine. We’ll let you guess which was which.

Since we’ve been back in town we have continued to make friends with the local wildlife, including the friendly guanaco that was hanging out by the street yesterday.

(Friendly guanaco or guanaco ready to defend turf? Unclear.)

And Blake finally got to meet his first Patagonian armadillo after lamenting their shyness on our trip.

We both agree that now, one month into our trip, we are finally operating at that slow-paced, fully present, and totally relaxed place that makes every aspect of travelling a total joy. As we set out for our 22 hour ride up to El Hoyo, a farming community just south of El Bolsón and the Lakes District, we are looking forward to reading our books, enjoying the scenery, and rolling up our sleeves for a little hard work on a small organic fruit and vegetable farm, Chacra (“Farm”) Millalen, for the next week.

-- Rebecca (and Blake)