It ain't easy adjusting back to a normal-sized life after the super-sized landscape mojo of Patagonia. I'll post some thoughts in the coming days when I can come out of this discombobulated fog I'm in. I think because the flight home is an overnight one, I missed a distinct transition point or something, because I'm swimmy-headed w/ the incongruity of looking at familiar little Chapel Hill when the pictures in my head are still of 3000-ft mtns, huge skies, and gorgeous bays.
At 9:30 a.m. on Monday morning I was riding a horse through incredibly beautiful farm landscape overlooking Ushuaia Bay, and at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning I was arriving at RDU. Hunh? My rhythm is off, and I don't mean jet lag. In fact, I don't have jet lag, as we were travelling in the same time zone (Argentina is 2-hrs ahead). I've got spirit lag. What vitamin do I take to alleviate the effects of that?
Patagonia's like Switzerland + New Zealand + the Lake District (UK), and that's just getting close. Lordy. Add the Northern California desert and you're a notch closer. Here's one of my fave pix, taken on Sunday during our two-hour hike along rolling grasslands on an island in the middle of the Beagle Channel. Note: db is not a professional photographer. Looks like something out of National Geographic, doesn't it? Par for the course down there, I assure you.
Argentina is lovely in every measure for travellers -- people, landscape, food, quality of amenities, strong transportation infrastructure. We zipped from place to place with nary a thought or a problem; everyone was unfailingly gracious and hospitable; all of our guides were incredibly knowledgeable; we ate like kings and queens; and we hiked and canoed in pristine places that I can barely believe still exist.
It's not that the US, for example, does not have gorgeous lakes, mountains, and grasslands; it does, of course, and I've seen many of them. It's that all of these elements are together in Patagonia in breathtaking choreography on such a grand scale. And it is no small benefit that you do not experience these wonders amidst packs of loud-ass turistas chugging from one photo-op to another in an SUV (and I say that as a turista -- not loud-ass -- who's chugged from one photo-op to another --not in an SUV). Silence. Imagine it!
It is sad, I suppose, that I had no construct in my mind for such splendor. I mean, I've seen Mirror Lake and been to the Grand Tetons and hiked in Yellowstone, but nothing prepared me for what I experienced in Tierra del Fuego. The whole time I thought, Land of the Lost, Lord of the Rings, the Enchanted Forest. It's so real, it's unreal.
The default setting for Patagonia being extravagant splendor, I fear that rampant development is going to move in. I don't know enough to suggest this is happening, but the perfectness of what's there suggests just what could be lost. The idea that Patagonia could be spoiled is beyond heartbreaking. I see now (if I didn't before) how people chain themselves to trees and lie down in front of bulldozers. To think that a McDonald's (or whatever) could rend its way into a world as unsullied as this is an affront to humanity, and I'm not being dramatic. Seeing Patagonia, all I could think was, This is how it should be.
There's more, of course -- politics, consumerism, a run-in with Donald Rumsfeld -- but I'll save that for later posts.
Bueno, bella. Bueno.
Posted by: The Heretik | Thursday, 24 March 2005 at 09:48 AM
Heretik! Hola, amigo. Thanks for your faithful visits. Did you notice I cleaned up the place a little bit, changed the nightstand list? I needed something to distract me from the distraction of not being in Argentina. Must return immediately to that gorgeous country.
Posted by: ae | Friday, 25 March 2005 at 10:48 PM