El Bolson

My first impressions of El Bolson are very favourable.

Using Canadian cities as examples, it´s perhaps how I imagine Canmore, Alberta was 75 years ago, fused with Saltspring Island, BC. Nestled between two bands of mountains in a wide valley, there are peaks on all sides. Outside of the mellow town, winding country roads are peppered with adorable family farms, little hippy hobby farms, no big industrial production farms at all. Plenty of gates made from foraged treefall, cluttered gardens with random rocking chairs in the middle of them, dogs everywhere. The town has lots of artisanal breweries and incredible ice cream. Nate´s ice cream cone yesterday was cinnamon ice cream with a ribbon of crushed raspberries that had been macerated in malbec wine. I chose passionfruit and raspberry.

We were just wandering the weekly craft fair and it was the spitting image of the Ganges Saturday market. Lots of hippy jewelry, pottery, soaps, jam, knitted stuff, wooden crafts, food. We bought a jar of delicious pine mushroom compote from mushrooms foraged nearby. Instead of chopping the onions and mushrooms finely there´s tasty ribbons of caramelized onions and big chunks of mushrooms. I also ate the best empanadas I´ve had so far on this trip.

The last few days the air and sky have been dazzling crystal clear, but today the wind has shifted and there is a thick haze of particulate. We´ve just been told that this is a common occurence lately due to remaining airborne ash from the volcanic eruption at Mount Hudson in Chile on October 28th.

Yesterday Nate and I went on a hike up one of the mountains to see a waterfall, which turned out to be spectacular. Our hike was just shy of 20km and we had a great day together. Our trail came out on a boring gravel road and we were still a solid four or five kilometers from town so we hitchhiked and a lovely woman picked us up in her battered farmtruck. Plump and glowing with a deep leathery tan and a wide smile, I´d say she looked about sixty. She spoke no English and our Spanish is minimal but we chatted and she took us to the edge of town. The back of her truck was full of wooden trays of honeycomb evidently being taken somewhere for processing.

For the moment we are hanging out at our hostel, Refugio Patagonico, waiting to hear back from our farm with the directions to get there...they are expecting us today or tomorrow. If ever we don´t make it to the farm today we´ll camp another night. The climate is ideal for me - the days are hot and sunny, in the upper 20 degrees, and the nights cool, around 4-6 degrees. I felt a huge wave of relief to be out of big cities, it´s so nice here. We´re both really excited to meet the Barrio family. We´ll be living with three brothers, one of whom is married to a woman named Paula, their two children, four dogs and four cats. We´ll be living with up to four other WWOOF volunteers in an adobe house.

And contact has just been made! A taxi to the farm will cost us less than $10, so off we go.