____blog busters___

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The final finale

So, here's a few photos from our final week in Argentina...we visited Los Alerces National Park in Patagonia and had a wonderful time. The weather was perfect and we did some great camping and hiking. As you might know, we arrived in Tucson last week and are safe and well. Thanks for reading our blog! Maybe we will continue using it to share our lives with you in Tucson and beyond...maybe not, we'll see. Chao!

Got to love the Quilmes

Glacial lake

Island

German "hotel bus"

Ovejas--Sheep

Another vista of the Andes

Sunday, November 29, 2009

More photos.

Trecking in the snow at Hielo Azul Refugio hut

Wintery blast coming from above

Look, I was really there!!

The famous glacier named ¨blue ice¨. We couldn´t get up to it, due to incliment weather. But we tasted the water and it was very fresh.

A family with two young children lives here. We thought how some days might feel like the movie ¨The Shining¨ when youre stuck with too much snow and nowhere to go...at least they have lots of bread and beer.

Lichen covered trees

Lake on the hike up

Our refugio was somewhere below in that valley...

Old growth Legua trees

Thanksgiving, CIDEP style. Chris made chicken soup from the rooster he killed, someone else made french fries and homemade mayonase, someone else made a stirfry, and I (Beth) picked rhubarb from the garden and made pie. Everyone at CIDEP humored Chris and I and partaked in our ¨Accion de Gracias¨ or Thanksgiving. The dinner was very Argentine style...we ate at like 10 30 pm after a long day of shoveling sheep poop and hauling it to the garden to fertilize the soil.

Sweet truck a friend brought in to haul sheep poop to CIDEP. He bought it off of the Argentine army, who previously bought it off the US army. Aparently it was made for the Vietnam war. We however, rode it along the backroads with panaramic mountain vistas with the driver shirtless and with stylist sunglasses to a nearby farm to get the goods. Wow, what a day in el Bolson.

Hungry? I harvested these veggies from the garden for lunch, and yes, I´m using an old TV satilite dish...now thats permaculture for you, reusing everything!

¨Permaculture Movement: Lets be the change we want to see in the world¨

Here I am stuffing pieces of plastic into old bottles...this is how these permaculturists deal with waste....theres no trash disposal service, no burning of trash, so after stuffing the bottles they use the bottles in natural adobe construction of buildings....I kind of felt like I was in 2nd grade again, but boy was it fun!

Serving platter made out of a rubber tire crafted by a previous volunteer. Breakfast in bed!

Straw bale construction

Living roof of house of CIDEP staff

Mosaic table

10 days until Tucson

We are wrapping up our trip here in Argentina, we have a day left at CIDEP volunteering and plan to camp a few days in a park with 3000 year old trees a few hours south. Well then take a 30 hour bus to Buenos Aires, complete with bingo, meal service and wine if we win at bingo. We will pack our bags full of mate (kilos), and fly to the U.S. We spent our last weekend on a marathon hike, up to the snow level, where it indeed snowed the night we arrived at the refugio. Here´s some photos of the weekend adventures.