“Southern Argentina is a very dark and cold place at 5:00AM in May.” That was the only thought I managed to squeeze through my brain as I hauled my duffle up into the bed of Carlos’ pickup truck. By 6:00 we were on the road, heading west for two days of hard driving into the Andes. The sun would not rise for another three hours, yet I was not permitted to drift back into the pleasures of slumber. Instead I found myself enslaved as a mate brewer and server – the very traditional act of pouring hot water into a hollowed gourd full of a tree tea and sucking that juice through a filtered metal straw. Mate is the centerpiece of Argentine culture, and I have grown to dig it.
The preceding Saturday night was my first “milonga,” a large public dance with live tango band. I’d worked with Carlos’ tango dancers every night that week, and was ready to demonstrate my new abilities: rhythmically walking in a straight line while clumsily holding a woman. Harder than it looks. Later in the night, after loosening up with a bit of malbec, my confidence grew to the point of spinning and dipping bewildered, high heel-wearing females. Perhaps my form was not perfect, but it was very fun.
I returned to my cage-like hotel room at 3:30AM and dismayed at the narrow angle between the hour arm and the alarm arm on my radial clock. This insomnia was encouraged, however, because Carlos was the tango band’s bassist, and staunchly refused my early departure from the milonga when I proposed the idea at midnight.
These entertaining memories sustained me as I fumbled to pour crumbled tealeaves and hot water into a small gourd while bouncing down a dirt road. Carlos, or “Cokie” as he would have me call him, was driving us into “el campo,” the field. Cokie continued to explain the fundamentals of transmission systems, turbine-generators, electricity and magnetism, power plant development, and his extensive career, as he had done for the preceding week. He’d also given me a textbook, literally a layman’s guide to building micro-hydroelectric power plants, which I’d studied in between tutorials on using AutoCAD to plan and design transmission systems.
Our four days in the field would entail surveying terrain for the construction of a small hydroelectric power plant, which would power a remote alpine valley near the town of Chalten. “Chalten?” I wondered, “Why does that sound familiar?” I could not place the name, but knew that I’d heard it before.
Earlier in the week Cokie had driven me and the tango dancers to El Calafate, another name I vaguely recognized, but could not place until we arrived. When we arrived I remembered seeing a photo journalism piece about the site’s glaciers. We gawked at the Perrito Moreno Glacier, the ice-throwing monster that slides down from the Andes and occasionally calves house-sized blocks of ice into the surrounding lake. This World Heritage Site certainly deserves the credential. So, I wondered why Chalten sounded familiar, and if it was similarly spectacular.
As the sun rose (an it was a stunning moment, featured below), the horizon illuminated and exposed a far-away jaggedness – the mountains that would later envelop me. We drove for hours, initially on well-paved roads, then dilapidated blacktop, then eventually a dirt double track cutting through the desert. Our voyage was a virtual safari, and included continuous wildlife sightings. Flamingos, Guanaco (like a llama), horses, an emu-like flightless bird, condor, geese, rabbits (I accidentally ran one over during my driving shift), and multitudes of sheep.
Then a strange thing happened. I had been searching the horizon for greater resolution. What do these mountains really look like? I’ve always liked the idea of the Andes – the young, volcanic, impossibly long, and frequently deadly mountains that form a continental spine. I glanced down to prepare another mate gourd, and when I returned my gaze forward I was startled to see that the mountains were all around me now, and they were huge masses capped by knives of snow and ice.
“Did not bring adequate clothing,” I scrawled in my journal next to the words, “Intimidating, severe, ominous, harsher than the Himalayas, totally beautiful.”
“Welcome to the foothills,” said Cokie. “Foothills?” I asked, because surely he was mistaken and we had somehow teleported to the center of the range. “Yes, and here is where we must do our first work,” he replied. We turned off the dirt track next to a sign reading “Fundo Dos Hermanos,” or Two Brothers Ranch.
Fundo Dos Hermanos:
Moments later I was shaking the hand of a Chilean man with four fingers and enough gold in his teeth to make Lil’ Wayne jealous. This man, one of the Hermanos, wore a tattered black beret and a heavily frayed navy jump suit. He invited us inside, and regaled us with the graphic tale of killing a mountain lion to avenge a small lamb that was dragged away from the farm during the previous day. We had more hot tree juice before Cokie and I accompanied the Hermano up the valley behind his farm.
In the valley we crossed a bridge that Cokie had designed, and which was still being constructed - essentially a high wire with handles. We scrambled along the valley walls to the place where Cokie intended to build a small hydropower plant, which would power the farm and their textiles operation. I learned that Cokie and I would spend the day here making measurements, calculations, drawings, and plans. But first we retuned to the ranch. Cokie silently handed me an ornate silver knife in a leather sheath. I knew what I had to do… eat!
The following hour could easily constitute a cardiologist’s nightmare. We ambled back to the farmhouse where another gruff Chilean was slicing strips of meat from a freshly killed cow’s skeleton and frying the steaks in a deep skillet of brown oil. Adjacent to the meat on the wood stove was a pan of frying onions covered in herbs. There was also dough being deep-fried in melted lard, and eggs, which were not only fried, but literally spooned over with additional coatings of grease.
We sat down at a sturdy wooden bench, and, as has become customary after months in food obsessed cultures, I was stuffed to the point of begging for mercy.
Following this feast I labored my way back up the valley with Cokie and spent several hours working with a Total Station (not the gas company, but a highly sensitive surveying tool). Total Stations require two people – one mans a device that fires low intensity lasers, while the other person stands up to two kilometers away with a prism that receives the lasers. The result is a highly accurate gridding of points in 3D space, which can be used to create drawings and engineering models. This system requires the prism holder to trudge around and intermittently stand very still while one hundred lasers per second fire into the glittering sphere fastened to the top of a pointed shaft. The other person remains still and manipulates various dials and controls to aim the laser gun into the prism (and not the eye ball).
After hours of surveying, Cokie and I went to inspect a turbine-generator that had broken down nearby. We had to cross the sophisticated and sturdy bridge featured below, then spent some time assessing the turbine situation and how Cokie would proceed to re-power the site. Subsequently we packed up our gear and continued driving. Apparently this was only an appetizer project, and the big gig remained ahead.
Cokie, you see, is a very dear, kind, and gentle soul. He is a mechanical engineer, an electrical engineer, a passionate musician, a dancer, and a lover of the outdoors. As an outdoorsman, he enjoys working as a consultant on projects that demand frequent and arduous fieldwork in beautiful settings. I was beginning to realize what a sweet life he had carved out for himself. At one moment he spontaneously exclaimed, “I love my job!” I had to agree – I loved his job too.
Hours of night driving later we arrived at Chalten. We immediately drove to the restaurant of Cokie’s friend, where we would eat for the following three nights, and where they serve absurdly large and perfectly prepared steaks (most of Argentina does this, actually). We talked and laughed and ate with Cokie’s local friends, and merriment abounded. I felt comfortable with my Spanish.
In the morning I again awoke hours before sunrise and was promptly filled with coffee and mate and shoved into a freezing truck and again found myself bouncing down a dirt track and struggling to pour dry leaves into a small hole. When the sun rose it illuminated none other than the Fitz Roy and Cero Torres – two of the most famous, deadly, and iconic peaks in the mountaineering world. This is why I knew the name Chalten, the base camp for so many epic climbs, and this is where I would spend the next two days endlessly ascending and descending through valleys and forests, and along river banks.
“Now you see why we’ve been eating so much,” said Cokie with a grin, “you are going to need it.” But I didn’t believe him yet, and I hadn’t gotten used to the heavy diet.
People who know me well, know that I’m fairly disciplined about diet and exercise, and that I generally don’t eat lard-fried dough with deep fried steak and eggs. So it was somewhat of an aggravation when we arrived at a dilapidated shack in the woods, and were greeted by a tremendous lumberjack, Gonzalez, offering more lardy dough. I politely nibbled, but discretely hid the majority in my pocket.
Gonzalez and his enormous compatriots (ogres, actually) are the valley’s manual laborers extraordinaire. Cokie told me that they had built every house, hotel, trail and road in the valley by hand. These were real men. Gigantic banana-like fingers covered in dirt and calluses that crushed my dainty palms with each vigorous shaking. They smelled and looked like hard workers deprived of all female interaction. In the distance I could see a few men throwing huge logs to each other and splitting them with ease. These men would build Cokie’s hydroelectric plant, and Gonzalez was the one in charge. He’d been scrambling through these mountains since the age of eight, or so he said, and knew the terrain in terms that a doctorate geomorphogist couldn’t begin to approach.
Cokie and I zipped between houses scattered in the valley. We met various colorful characters, including one man who I believe was actually an elf, and who later prepared for me a cauldron of stew filled with robust steaks (literally).
Finally we set off with an altimeter to find the perfect hydroelectric site in the valley beyond. Several hours and several hundred meters of climbing later Cokie informed me that we would not be eating lunch because we hadn’t found the proper site yet. The lard dough began calling my name.
I’m dividing this story in two because it is a long one, and because I don’t have time to do it justice at the moment. Patience, please.
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