Rhubarb in my hair

(click on pictures to enlarge)


Meet Sunna. She is 6 years old, and fluenty trilingual—Icelandic, German, English, enjoys Mozart, and has recently learned the middle finger.

Langamyri

Tsuki, sheep-herding genius, otherwise intelligence is questionable

New friends in B & W
Tried to formulate a joke about the sheep-as-dog's-parents,
but that's as close as I got. The hyphens.

View from the farm

The chickens, where the dinner scraps go.

I went out to catch the Lights but it was too cloudy tonight so instead
I found this luminescent mush in the sky.

Langamyri

Arrived at Langamyri, it looks like I'm going to learn Icelandic. Also, it's dark but rumor has it there are lots of horses and sheep outside. And rhubarb. Also there is very little to do here in the winter, except feed the horses and sheep and marmalade-ify the rhubarb.

góða nótt

To all concerned parties

I opted for a haircut in Buenos Aires considering it cost two empanadas and I would be entering Euro territory soon. My hairdresser was a gently commanding woman who spoke no English, which was fun, constraining my picky impulses by a severely limited vocabulary besides 'un poco mas' (a little more) and "me gusta" (I like) and "esto es como el corte de pelo de Boy George." Felt a bit like David Sedaris overemploying "d'accord" until he ended up unwittingly agreeing to a colonoscopy. The worst I've ended up with so far is goulash and my colon remains untouched but the product on my head is something between a bowl cut and these—



crazysexybutch.

I have found that navigating Icelandic streets is slightly less intuitive than finding my way around in Spanish. Thames, Honduras, Costa Rica, Avenida Santa Fe, Humboldt...Þingholtsstræti, Bólstaðarhlíð, Skerjafjörður. I sound something like a Swedish cow with marbles in its mouth.

Off to the protest.

Shnow & Kvennafrídagurinn

Heading to the farm in Selfoss today, but I have a problem. Today is Kvennafrídagurinn, National Women's Day, which in Reykjavik means a goliath-scale demonstration during which tens of thousands of women descend on the city and protest the disproportionately lopsided payscale between men and women in Iceland. They leave work at 2:25, an hour symbolizing the time after which they theoretically do not get paid (if their hourly rate were comparable to the men's). BUT, the woman I am farming with is in Reykjavik today and can pick me up two hours before the protest starts, or I can stay and pay a slightly exorbitant fee for a bus down to Selfoss and actually see the demonstration. $#^$^#*&^($*&(#_. The money is dwindling but I think I have to stay. Mundane problem but we're all ethralled, no?

'Twas the first day of Winter two days ago, free soup in the streets. At first I thought it was something like a food stamps line so I stayed out, but then I saw the fur coats clammering for cups of soup and decided this was for everyone. Icelandic lamb and vegetable stew. Takk.

Also, first snow since I arrived today.

Also also, I saw the Northern Lights from the roof of my hostel last night. It's incredible how quickly they change. They were not the most vivid since I am in the city, a soft green arc that blended perfectly in line with the streak of white light from Yoko Ono's "Imagine Peace Tower"— a light beam she built here in memory of John Lennon that is turned off every year on his birthday and the anniversary of his death. Why she chose Iceland I have yet to find out, but kudos to the gods and the woman that broke the band for that momentary luminescent synchronicity.

32°

So I'm in Reykjavik, and I just washed my face with oatmeal. The products in the shops around me smell like coriander rosebushes but they are also too many Kronur. So I'm using oatmeal and milk. And the rustic times begin. I also chanced upon a book about sex with elves, real advice for the mountain people, titled Please YoursELF. Reykjavik has changed so little since the last time I was here. I walked past the Mexican restaurant where I had the otherwordly tortilla soup two years ago—sadly replaced by bland and overpriced burritos, and the sushi restaurant where Brandon and I went with our mulleted but fashionable and sexually ambiguous Icelandic friend. The streets look the same, except there are a handful of second hand stores where there were none before...recession? Also, the only English books available in a few bookstores were primarily about the market and how to handle systemic and personal economic woes. eh.

I am staying in the city for a few days before heading south to my first farm in Selfoss. Until then I'll be planning and trying to get all the point of interest photos for my work, which are luckily on my street. I've been sifting through my leagues of patagonian photos to prepare an update on that end, it will be coming soon. But for now Molly needs to sleep. It's been 30+ hours. Oi.

PatagoniaBalonia

I landed in Reykjavik yesterday but, continuing my habit of backlogged posts, I will launch the Patagonia update before providing anything about my realtime wherabouts. We began October with a flight to El Calafate—a backpackers paradise in the southwest corner of the Santa Cruz province of Patagonia. El Calafate serves as a kind hub for the glacier trekkers, situated about one hour from Perito Moreno (glacier) and a smattering of other things that one would like to do with a backpack. We bussed to Perito Moreno, took a long hike around the landscape stopping often for gorgeous glacier vistas. Poorly clad in less-than-hardy winter gear purchased from a sketchy camping store in BA, we put on crampon’s and hiked the ice itself for a good hour and a half ending with a toast of Famous Grouse in the “only place where the ice is older than the scotch."
The most awe inspiring thing, if I might use grandiose nature tropes, were the sounds of the ice cracking, which was something like a muffled sonic boom at the end of a towel-lined tunnel. Alright, that was less than colorful analogy but picture a woolly mammoth falling off a trampoline onto a giant's bass drum.

View from the ferry

Perito Moreno

ice.

Our getaway boat

Famous Grouse

Crashing glacier bits

El Chalten
A few days after El Calafate we bussed to El Chalten, a small town thrown together in 1985 by Argentina to stake the land claim from Chile with one ATM that usually runs out of money before noon. The town is a ramshackle model village nestled between goliath cliffs and Cerro Torre, a glacier, and the salmon-pewter tinted mountain ranges surrounding the iconic peak, Fitz Roy. Because of the hasty job (land politics) throwing the town together, there is quite literally no infrastructure or tourist resources besides two offices which aren’t really open before October 15. In fact, very little is open before October 15th which is when the backpacker season started. Luckily, we got there when prices were still low and the hiking was uncrowded. El Chalten is the most spectacular hiking I have ever done in my long, weathered and worldly life.

Lil' model village, waiting for a giant man with glasses and a sweatervest to peak over the back holding a house in a pair of tweezers

Lil' Chalten

Café chess, post Roquefort pizza (and pre-three-day-oatmeal-hiking-diet)

Fitz Roy (the tallest peak) from the town. Peak to the left is named after Antoine de Saint-Exupery, who was a
pilot over this region while in exile. Apparently a good deal of his creatures come from the geographic shapes (from an aerial view)
here and near Puerto Madryn.

Outdoors with a makeshift flimsy pack.

For our sponsor

First signs of spring in Patagonia

Refilling the water boteille—all the stream water was drinkable

At the furthest and highest point of our trek, steep snowy ascent to the base of Fitz Roy. And a view of the valley.

Fitz Roy, again

Zen spot

Man vs. nature reaches a symbiotic conclusion

This is what was under the ground, beneath a thin later of dirt, in the morning.

Largest lagoon in Patagonia

Puerto Madryn
The week ended 1338 km north at whale-watching Nirvana in Puerto Madryn. So many whales. Puerto Madryn is a small city in the Chubut province.

Whales from the beach

Penguins in Peninsula Valdes

Patagonian 'dillo

Topaz waters of Peninsula Valdes, the tip of that little sediment peninsula shifts shapes and length constantly

Elephant seal harbor

Penguin colony—Peninsula Valdes

These are pregnant female Right Whales, suspending themselves upside down in the water and
stretching their bellies, hence theabundance of tail fin pictures.