I just completed a monster bus journey breaking my previous record of 23 hours, my new record is 33 hours but actually it took 34 and a bit due to some complications at one of the stations. I would have extended this journey to at least 40 hours but the bus schedule prevented this task so I now find myself back in El Bariloche. My original intention was to go down the Atlantic side of the continent and come back up the Chilean coast on the Pacific side. Unfortunately this was made impossible by cost and seasonal variations in transport. So I have just revisited many of the places I have already seen, I thought I would be more annoyed but instead I just think that there is a certain symmetry to the entire journey. Sometimes its nice to return to places you have already seen, it gives you a sense of the passing of time and what you have seen and done in the intervening period. I think between my first visit to El Bariloche and my current one, it has been the most intense period of travel for all the time I have been away from home. It has been the most difficult due to the sheer distance between places and the inaccessibility of places I had intended to see. I am always trying to calculate the value of any journey or destination, ‘worth’ or ‘value’ is difficult to calculate. This isn’t an obsessive need to categorize experience, sometimes it can be simple economics. It is worth travelling so far on a bus and using up so much time to see..a rock, or a building, or a town? A lot of the time it’s very subjective and based on who you are travelling with and even the weather. If you trying to come up with an equation it would be something like:
p / t + m = value
p = number of photographs taken
t = time
m = money
Actually that’s complete bollocks. I really hate maths. The idea of working out an equation for how good a place is or how worthwhile an experience is… is total crap!! Being in horizontal snow with Antarctic winds on the Beagle channel is beyond the realms of calculation. Looking at 1000m plus granite pillars after a half hour scramble is impossible to compare with anything. Watching a 50m ice tower collapse into a lake off one of the most impressive glaciers in the world… you just cannot describe in words, pictures or anything else
Tomorrow I´m going back into Chile and visiting the Lakes region; Pucon. I feel this is a halfway stage in South America before I head up to the Atacama Desert and eventually into Peru. The thing I cannot believe is that the best is yet to come, I´m really glad to have finished up in South America as everywhere else would have been slightly disappointing after here. It might be premature to say it, as I have much to see, but Argentina is still the best place. This is especially true of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. Travel is often just A to B, a bus taking you to a town then minibus to a hostel. Travelling in Patagonia is totally different, you can stare out of the window for hours and see nothing, I actually thought I could see the curve of the Earth because there was such emptiness. I think of all the photos I have taken the ones from Tierra del Fuego will be the best. I sometimes took a photo, and immediately after looked at it on the view screen and just stared in wonder. For some reason photographs can make something more real, I don’t think video cameras have the same effect. I have really been heavy on the editing, this saves money for development and forces me to take higher quality, or more pertinent pictures, the Brazilian girls I travelled with take millions, half of them with themselves doing catalogue style posing. They asked me why I don´t have myself in the photo and I said there are 3 main reasons:
1. I don´t actually want to see my face next to some of the most beautiful scenery in the World, it detracts from how Impressive something is.
2. I am usually the one taking the picture, I don’t trust other people to take a picture, even if they say ‘Is it ok, do you want another?´ I never have the heart to say..actually you cut my feet off and it’s lob sided, your visual sense is questionable and reflects your poor choice of clothes, haircut and general way of life.
(where was I ?) oh yes, number 3
3. The most important reason why I don´t like to be on photos is vanity. Vanity is one of the most common modern sins and one of the most difficult to detect. Pictures of people next to famous monuments and mountains inevitably get blown up and framed then left on the mantlepiece or in the office. I and most others don´t really need to remind ourselves that we have been somewhere which means that in general these type of pictures are done for the benefit of other people, as if to prove you have been somewhere. The people pictures I have taken are generally from meals or just to remember faces and faces in places. Having said this I do usually take a picture when I have just got up a mountain or something, this is some human weakness to show man´s power over nature, I’m sure Freud had a name for it.
As for the moment I’m staying in a homestay type place again, no English in sight. It´s veryt nice and tasteful and the owner looks like the comedy actor Luke Wilson (brother of Owen). I´ve got a mere 9 hours on the bus tomorrow, so I´ll get some token sleep……………….hasta la vista y buenos noches (manana para ustedes!!)
The Happy Wanderer 