Well Hello Hielo

As a child I was always fascinated with icy things. Pop-out ice cube trays, frozen puddles, Flinstones push pops (I just threw that in because I really was obsessed with those), and icicles. Especially icicles. I was the kid who could spend hours outside stomping on frozen ice hoping to release the air bubbles (and be dumped into freezing water, little kids have no brains). Or running back and forth in a poor attempt at ice-skating, because constantly falling on your face is the epitome of graceful (remember, brains are not fully developed yet). When we got a snow-cone maker in middle school it was like winning the lottery and buying an ice cream parlor in place of our old freezer. The main point is seeing Perito Moreno, one of the largest glaciers in South America, brought back that sense of child-like wonder and awe. It was like I was seven again and fascinated that if I left juice in the freezer and returned an hour later I would find popsicles. Pure magic...

In the case of this unbelievably blue, unbelievably huge glacier, it was not magic that came to mind at all. Hellllllllo, maravillosa Mama Tierra, you’ve outdone yourself once again. As if looking at a huge snowflake, only the minutely etched crystallic patterns are huge cracks and contours of a giant glacier face, so blue that staring at it makes one even forget other colors even exist. Blue, blue, blue. Fresh pure blue, as high as a 15 story building, it’s a marvel that something so powerful is at the same time so delicate. This transient mountain of frozen water, is one of our most valuable resources and one of those we are least able to protect from disappearing. Standing before the massive glacier listening to all the pops and cracks of the ice expanding and moving, it seemed unimaginable that if I returned in 40 years later with my children it’s more probable they would find a completely different than the one I was so enchanted with right now. If I could live in a snow globe as perfect as the moment was right now, I could live every day feasting on the wonder surrounding me.

El Chalten, it ain't no Chateau

An early morning bus ride through the Patagonian badlands found us nestled for the night in El Chalten, a small climbing town tucked into the curves and corners of el nord de la Parque Nacional de Los Glacieres. The bus ride itself, was uneventful, each and every minute was filled with the most breathtaking landscape, husky purple and green hills dipping into turquoise lakes and stretches of cold plains stretching farther even than the early morning sun rays. It was a dream so arresting I couldn’t close my eyes for fear of missing it. A land where there’s one single solitary road cutting through the heart of landscape, the land of wild llamas and wilder beauty. A land of scarcity, mountains, ice, a wild land, hard but not without its share of promises.

Any other town in Patagonia wouldn’t quite fit like El Chalten. The town itself was small, one road that only branched off for beaten tracks, hiking trails, and mountain routes. The road was new, just put in the past year. The town was lacking much infrastructure, for this it was filled and over-running with beauty. A place in nature, it is the access point for climbers and trekkers to reach higher planes, the summits of glacier Mt. Fitz Roy. We made the 8 hour hike, just to get to a viewing point of the glacier, we all had to have siestas at the top...

Looking for Loot

Every good historic tales starts out “Legend has it...” But in the case of barrio San Telmo “History has it ...”. Dating back to the late 18th and early 19th century San Telmo was once the preferred stomping grounds of the wealthy European immigrants arriving to Buenos Aires. Later on in the 19th century, yellow fever swept through the calles and casas of San Telmo, and those with the plata abandoned their mansiones for the more saludable campo ringing the outskirts of the city. Most abandoned their mansions intact, believing their possessions were inhabited by the fever, and started over afresh. Soon after, the less affluent immigrants with nowhere to go moved into the un-claimed mansions or simply started storing away the fine china to be sold.

Hoy en día San Telmo is one of my favorite barrios in Buenos Aires, every one of its streets is a different treasure hunt, a portal into the past. Filled with fanciful facades off the street of Paris, the bottoms stories have been ransacked, gutted, and turned into antique stores. If you adore old junk as I do, sifting through a different era is more satisfying than going to a museum to see by-gone relics housed in glass cages. I like to pretend I can actually afford the things I admire, and can spend hours touching tiny details on inventions I never knew existed, turning over shelves, and drooling over old books, postcards, and stamps from a time when the world seemed bottomless. At the end of the day I’m always walking away with a little piece of history in my pocket and rose tinted ideas of a once and more worldly romance now settled to dust.