Reko

Settled in at the farm!

At the moment we´re in El Bolson for our weekend and quick reunion in a campground with Jon, Lis, Sarah and now Angus McPhail, too. I love that we all managed to reconnect again.

Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day and we walked the 4km to where the local rural transport bus (el Colectivo) picked us up and brought us to town. We tracked everyone down at the campground and cooked dinner and hung out around our fire and had a fantastic time. It´s great to see everyone again. Today is windy and cold and we´ll head back to the farm this evening sometime.

The farm is crazy. We´re living in a house with a bunch of WWOOFers and getting into some sort of rhythm. There is not a lot of structure to our days and there is a fair bit of chaos as part of the house is under renovation, the shower room. The people running the farm are Paula and Gerard, wild happy hippies with three out-of-control boys Apollo (age 10, Lao (age 4) and Rio (age 1.5) Gerard´s two brothers are in Italy and Leo should arrive sometime this week and Gabriel near the end of our stay.

We have a nice eclectic group of people living with us. Kierian and Alex are fresh out of high school, small town Colorado boys and are hilarious and hardworking and fun. Miriam is from Bologna, Italy, and Karen and Emma are from Stockholm, Sweden. More people are arriving continuously. This isn´t a farm that brings anything to market, just a collective of people living as sustainably as possible and bringing in volunteers for the last few years to help develop the 250 acre property. We do things like cut down brush and trees, work on the buildings, weed the massive vegetable garden, and naturally Nate and I have been relegated to much kitchen duty to feed the crowd.

Our kitchen is cozy and cluttered, with no refrigeration and our only oven is a beautiful brick wood fired oven outside, which we are learning to use. What a learning curve! It´s so hard to read its temperature. We have a living roof on the building, solar panels, and straw and mud insulated walls and it´s cozy warm inside. Outhouse and to shower we heat water with a fire under a water tank.

My lack of spanish is a handicap, I really wish I was further along... the others have fairly workable spanish and Nate´s is significantly better than mine but Paula´s english is limited and we struggle to understand each other.

So far my impression of the farm is so-so...and I´m trying to give it a proper chance. It´s a beautiful place, and there´s lots of nice people, but we wish there was a little more structure and clarity about what needs doing. After Sarah Delong´s glowing stories of her 10 days on another farm nearby, one where they do not ask for any financial contribution (we´re paying 80 pesos a week, the equivalent of about $20 dollars, towards food) I´m feeling kind of lukewarm. A factor is the kids, who I feel need some disciplining and limits and maybe some chores, they drive me pretty crazy. They´re underfoot a lot and seem to use tormenting the volunteers as a primary source of entertainment. I´m sure my health is a factor in my general experience there, but if I don´t like it more after another week I´m temped to bail early.

I went to the doctor here in El Bolson yesterday to address the gross cold I´ve had for 10 days that won´t leave. My cough just doesn´t seem to be changing. My experience in emergency at this tiny hospital was excellent and I was astonished it was free, I didn´t need to file an insurance claim. Anyway, she was confident that it´s still just a bad viral cold, that it hasn´t progressed to bronchitis and that it´s nearing its end. I´m just to take medicine for my symptoms and be patient but that if I develop a fever to come back.

Hopefully when I´m healthier my patience will improve and I´ll like the experience on the farm more... it´s hard to explain what doesn´t feel right, Nate is more enthusiastic but also not totally happy. It has nothing to do with living conditions, I can deal with roughing it just fine, but the chaos and confusion are tedious. I think the kids driving me nuts.

We are concerned we can´t afford to go to the deep south of Patagonia. It´s well documented that the prices just increase the further south we go, and we´ve already pretty much blown our budget for Argentina already. This is not due to extravagance at all, quite the contrary -we buy nothing but necessities, stay in the cheapest hostels we can find and do most of our own cooking. Backpackers around us are in the same boat, overwhelmed by the costs of being here. I´m told it´s comparable to Europe. This seems to be recent, Argentina has had 30% inflation in the last year. Prices are much, much higher than our guidebooks, and although we are both disappointed at the prospect of skipping the south it might be the most realistic choice. It will always be there and we´ll just have to come back another time, with more money. There are lots of good times to be had in Peru, Bolivia and maybe Colombia where our daily costs will be less than half of what they are here. So a tentative plan is to head north to Bolivia as soon as we´re done at the farm.

OH I´m seconds from being out of time on this computer. I´ll write again when I can. No time to proofread, hope it´s not a mess!