Alpacas, Argentina, Austin...Oh My!: Hitchhiking for the Holidays

This week we did more plastering on the house, and more gardening! I’ll let the photos and their captions talk about this more, but it’s been a great week. In addition, we’ve had a couple of rainy days (thank goodness) and during one of them we made and jarred some delicious pineapple chutney! (recipes to follow).

Also this week I had some energy work done by Kimberly in the form of reiki and chakra balancing. It was incredibly relaxing and feels like a positive step in my personal growth. It is an experience I would rather describe in person, but I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at how much it affected me and how good I felt afterward. If you’re feeling like you have a block in your personal or spiritual growth or something that is bothering you that you can’t quite pinpoint, I would recommend seeking some energy work as a helpful tool.

This week and month ended with 3 days off of work in which we were free to hang out at the farm or to explore the surrounding area. Sarah, Aubrey, myself, and Ariel decided to set out and see “Los Saltos de Mocona,” a series of waterfalls where a fault line occurred in the middle of a river, resulting in the upper part of the river pouring into the bottom part. We set out from the farm in the early morning to beat the heat for our 3km hike uphill to the road to catch a bus or try our hand at hitchhiking. It was muggy and the temperature difference between the valley and the top resulted in some amazing misty views of our home. Once at the road we heard from a passerby that there might not be too many buses because today was some sort of holiday. With this in mind, we decided to hitchhike and see where it would take us. We were dropped off at a bus stop 12 km or so down the road, at which point we were approached by a couple of military dudes looking to intimidate us by telling us we needed all of our documents on us, and they were going to talk to their boss about whether we were allowed to be there, etc. etc. They left after a while and we decided to call their bluff and keep on going. We caught another ride a few minutes later and found ourselves in the small town of Santa Rita, 70km from El Soberbio where we wanted to end up. It was there that we found out that this holiday was a new holiday just being celebrated this year, and it only applied to certain companies- including the bus company that would have taken us to El Soberbio. Luckily for us, after lunch a remis (private taxi) spotted us and we were able to get to El Soberbio by the late afternoon. We scored a sweet hostel, made some friends, and set up two remises to take us and our new friend Alejandro to los saltos the next day.

The waterfalls were located in a national park, so after visiting the falls we were able to have an amazing picnic lunch (we ate a mango the size of my HEAD), hike some trails, and hang out with the guides at the park drinking maté. On the way back, a few of us stopped at a flower farm that works at restoring native species to the jungle (singin’ my song!) and has gardens of native species from which they make essential oils, teas, jams, etc. We were taken on an awesome tour and hike through the jungle, and bought a few wicked cool gifts from them (pickled edible wood, anyone?! Delicious!).

Today we had a lovely sleep in and showers (in a real shower!) and then pieced together the bus schedule for the day. It was a bit confusing to figure out details such as this because El Soberbio is located directly across the border from Brazil (when we were in the boat at the falls we were almost close enough to touch it) and so besides the fact that Argentine accents are a tad confusing, and accents in the Misiones province have a bit of a “hick” inflection, residents of El Soberbio spoke with some very distinct Portugese influences. In fact, most residents there spoke Spanish and Portugese. In addition, many residents of Misiones also speak Aleman, which is German, because this area was populated after the war by a lot of German immigrants. So despite the fact that I look a bit different, it’s actually not all that strange to see blonde-haired, blue-eyed people walking around town! However, we got it all figured out, and I'm currently sitting in everybody's favorite gas station that has some fine empanadas and chipas, soccer games on television, and the best internet in town.

Tomorrow we welcome 4 new interns to the farm, and start back up for the month of March! More to come soon, but check out Mama Roja's blog here to see some photos of yours truly!

Before the photos, recommendations for this week are...

Life in a Day- available for free streaming here on YouTube.

There’s a description on YouTube, but basically the people who put this together asked people all over the world to film their life for the day one year in July. They then viewed, cut, edited, and put together this film that shows a bit of what it was like to be alive on this particular day on planet Earth. Obviously it’s not completely comprehensive, but it’s incredibly interesting and so heartwarming to know how much commonality stretches across us all no matter where we’re from.

Human Planet

This documentary is like Planet Earth but about human cultures. It’s so well-filmed, incredibly brilliant, and FASCINATING. I can’t do it justice in words. Your library should have it and you should invite your friends and family over to watch it with you. You’re guaranteed to learn a lot and be utterly enthralled by the diversity of ways our species survives on this planet.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle- Barbara Kingsolver

I just started this book, so more on this soon, but basically it’s about the year Barbara Kingsolver (author of The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, The Bean Trees, and more, MSc., all around genius and bad-ass, and the “74th most dangerous person in America” for her denunciation of the industrial food system and other such dangerous thoughts) and her family swore to eat local in every regard, as much as possible. This is about their adventures in food-growing, in “giving up” a few exotic treats to discover the meaning and joy in eating foods in season, grown locally. I’ll fill you in more next week, but I’m loving it so far!!

Part of the 3km walk to/from the farm- red earth and green jungle abound!

The bathroom in the house we're helping to build illustrates one of the ways that glass bottles can be used in natural building to let in light and enhance aesthetics.

Getting the knack of plastering- I love it! Cool fact about plaster- cow poop is an essential ingredient because of the processed fibres in it, as well as the enzymes that help bind the plaster to the wall! Horse poop is actually the plaster poop of choice, but cow was more readily available for this project.

Karolina snags the camera to show off some of the beautiful glass bottles.

One of our several river bathing spots, complete with a rock for lounging.

Siesta naptimes in the hammock are complete with some Monkey-spooning

If you want clean laundry, the options are river washing or hopping on the bike-powered washing machine!

The tree sculpture on the living room wall sprouts leaves as Kimberly gets her hands dirty and her creative juices flowing. Recycled windows let in light and air, and above you can see the recycled car windows. Gorgeous!