Chromeo Makes Me Jiggy

Loyal Blog enthusiasts.
It is I, Eli the hairy, sending his regards, safely recharged from his journey all the way south, and do unfortunately use a much overused quote in the hippie world that I once was  apart of, “What a long strange trip its been”
Strange yes, awesome, yesser. But before I delve into the story of my journey, I must include a silly pre-departure adventure that happened right here in B.A. 2 days before I left, and the night before the entire group’s Spanish final, was one of my roommates 21st birthday. I felt bad, because no one, including myself, wanted to drink to excess like what has become the unfortunate norm in America. I feel extra bad because the kid goes to Madison, so I am sure his friends would have shown him an extremely good time, however, we tried our hardest by taking him to the most American spot in the country next to the U.S. Embassy and McDonald’s, and that of course is Hooters. That’s right, the owl sanctuary of short shorts and big breasts, what better a place for a man to celebrate the day he emerged from the womb. It was his first Hooters experience, and while I am no expert of the place myself having only been to one in rural Indiana returning from Bonnaroo a few years ago. It was a Wednesday night, around 10:00pm when we arrived, we being 2 other guys, the birthday boy and myself. The place was not ‘jumpin, jumpin,’ as about 10 other people we in the building. The waitresses had on the short shorts, but for whatever reason, were wearing jean jacket like tops over their white hooters shirts, but in all honesty, did not have a lot to hide. At this point in the story, I would like to apologize to the females reading the words I have written, but you need to understand that this restaurant has certain expectation to live up to, which I do not condone and really want when eating food in a restaurant, but that issue is a topic of debate that I do not wish to indulge in at this point in time. Anyways, the chicks did not large breasts, no one was really drinking, except for a couple of beers and the music they were playing was too loud and was pretty shitty, so it was not a good start to the evening. Hooters is known for their wings and breasts, and since the breasts were in shortcoming, we hoped that a large plate of wings might lighten the mood. We ordered 50 wings for the four of us, not to mention an entrée for each of us to truly stuff our large American bellies The wings came, we began our devouring of chicken, only to discover about 25 wings in that some of the wings looked a little strange, and kind of tickled when eating them. Upon closer examination, we realized that some of the wings still had feathers on them, noticeable feathers that made my stomach hurt from looking at the them. It was gross, plain and simple, but we managed to laugh it off, pay our bill, let the birthday boy get his picture taken with the waitress and went on our way. Perhaps not an ideal 21st b-day, but when in which he should be able to remember.
Now onto the journey, it began last Friday at 1:00pm, hopped on a 15 hour bus ride to Puerto Madryn, Argentina in Northeast Patagonia. Arrived there around 10:00am or so, decided to rent a car to travel to Punto Tomba to the Magellan Penguin reserve. While 2 of our 5 person crew (1 girl, 4 guys) went rent the car, myself and the 3 others walked down to the beach on the Atlantic Coast. While there, we saw whales, I believe Orcas, not too far from shore, swimming in the water, diving, blow holing etc… we walked down the pier for a closer look but I didn’t manage to snap any photos. We rented the car, and all 5 of us piled in and drove to the penguin reserve, which was fucking awesome. The reserve has about 500,000 penguins, tiny penguins, that maybe go up to the shins, all living on this dessert like coastline with llamas and rheas (ostrich like bird) wandering about as well. While you are supposed to stay on the path, the birds were everywhere, walking on the path, in the water, hiding in their nests in the ground, in bushes, I was basically surrounded by penguins and I couldn’t be happier. My goal while I was there was to be bitten by this flightless bird, so that I might have a permanent scar with an amusing story to tell how I acquired it. The problem is however, I didn’t really want to provoke a favorite animal of mine, but I decided I would try it with one and see what happened. All you had to do was put your hand close to their mouth, and they would bite it. I wasn’t sure how sharp their beaks were, so I was wary, but eventually let one chomp down, but the thing is that they don’t bite very hard. I got bit 3 times by 2 different birds, but neither left a permanent mark, only what looked like a scrape. I was disappointed but happy to say that I got bit by one. I did pet a few and got many a picture. We spent a few hours there, the scenery was beautiful, it wasn’t too cold and all in all it was one of the best days of my time here thus far. From here, we returned the car and headed over the bus station to travel west to Perito Moreno which would then take us to a very old cave that has hand printings from thousands of years ago.  We left at 10:00pm, arrived at Comodovo Rivadavia at 5:00am and luckily found a bus at 5:30am to take us the rest of the way. This bus station was depressingly small, dirty, smelly and full of weary travelers, the kinds that wear their stories on their wrinkly, beat up faces. We got to Perito Moreno a little later then we hoped, and with it being Sunday, found it extremely difficult to get to the cave cheaply because with 5 persons, it is difficult to all fit into 1 automobile with our luggage, the only way we could get there would be in 2 cars, which was not affordable. We decided to simply cut our losses and planned to head farther south that night to Rio Gallegos bus terminal, then transfer to El Calafate where we would spend two days surrounded by mountains. In Perito Moreno, we did manage to find a wonderful little brother and sister fruit stand and had one of the best apples I have ever tasted, picked up a bag of peanuts for the group that ended up being our lunch as well. We tried to make the trip as cheap as possible, traveling by night to avoid paying for a hostel as much as possible.  The bus ride were long and sometimes uncomfortable, they showed horrible movies, most in English but some in Spanish. I saw The Guardian with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kunter about the coast guard or something, The Pink Panther with Steve Martin which was funny, but woulda been funnier if I was…. And A Good Year with Russell Crowe about wine and love and fightin around the world. I don’t quite get who decides what to watch on the buses, but they sure have strange tastes. We were fed on most buses, which was always ham and cheese sandwiches, which is something I would never eat at home, they tasted fine to me, but I was sick of them after 9 days.
Anyways, El Calafate is a beautiful city in SW Patagonia, small, quiet, and surrounded by the Fitz Roy Mountain Range. Our first day there, we put on our hiking boots and head out to climb one close by, but it was kind of a pain in the ass to get to, as we had to trespass across some private property to start the trek. We walked upwards for about 2 hours, saw some large hares and hawks, got some great pictures and simply took in a wonderful view. We didn’t stay up there as long as we would have liked as the sun was beginning to set and it looked like a storm was moving in, so we returned to out hostel, found an all you can eat Parrilla (Asian influenced buffet with a large choice of freshly grilled meats to choose from, for about $10) then hit the hay in our first bed of the trip, a private room for the 5 of us including our own private bathroom. We got up early the next day to head to the Moreno Glacier, a huge blue chunk of ice that entertained us for 5 straight hours. We first took a boat tour and got up close for about an hour, then spent the next 4 on land watching from a series of lookout points on trails not terribly far from the glacier. It calved( chunks of ice falling from the glacier into the water) once every 20 minutes or so, but nothing terribly huge but still plenty exciting, The weather was pretty cold, it was raining and snowing on and off while we were there, which called for a reheating mate session on the bus halfway through. All in all, the surrounding landscape, lush green forests and huge snow covered mountains made it quite an amazing place to spend a day. The rest of the day was spent wandering, trying semi-successfully to find the biggest lake in Argentina; it was found, but not the good part of the lake, the lame part of the lake. On the way I saw two disturbing images, dead dogs. There are dogs everywhere in this country, tons of strays everywhere you go, and coincidentally dead ones as well. However, it appears that El Calafate is the dead dog capital of the world, as I saw 6 in two days, but the two I saw on this trip to ass lake stick out. The first incident occurred on the side of a small road with little houses upon it. A dead dog was lying near the driveway, while a young boy, at most 9 years old, held a hammer in his hand. I don’t know if he killed the dog, or was about to play doctor with it, either way, it was neat. The other dead dog was found while staring at a bird sanctuary in town. This dog had a clear, plastic bag over its head, like it had been strangled Mafioso style. Ay grosso
Thus ended our exciting time in El Calafate, and we continued south, this time on what would be an 18 total bus trip to the controversially southern most city on planet Earth.
This would be no ordinary bus trip, as we were forced to kriss-kross (gonna make ya jump jump) back and forth from Argentina to Chile and back to Argentina. The trip became even longer as our bus, along with 20 other automobiles got stranded at the Strait of Magellan for 6 hours while waiting for the ferry to take us across. That place is windy, possibly the strongest winds my young nubile body has ever faced, so strong that I saw a seagull unable to move forward, stuck in a vertical motion, of course causing me to laugh deep from within my belly. I killed the time by writing postcards, napping, and exploring and eventually we crossed the dangerous seas to emerge back onto Chilean soil. The remaining 7-9 hour bus rides was spent praying that the headlights of the bus would remain on, as periodically they would turn off, leaving me frightened, like how I felt after watching Sleepaway Camp. We arrived in Ushuaia at 2:00am, tracked down our hostel which we had reserved the night before, and laid our heads down for some shuteye.
The following day, we took our sweet ass time preparing for the last few days of our trip, drinking mate and eating toast before deciding on hitting up a couple of museums in town, and deciding to stay in the hostel for the remainder of the trip despite it containing felines which often times cause my eyes to turn red and my nasal cavity to clog. The museums were cool, one of which being an old prison, preserved close to perfection, which has now been turned into this massive museum that has exhibits not  only on the prison itself, but other stuff like boats and Antarctica and rainbows. We stayed in that night, made spaghetti in the hostel with the notion of waking up at 7am the next morning to climb a mountain behind the city, which at its peak, would be a glacier. It was a gorgeous climb, most of it on snow, which proved to be difficult but a great workout for the calves. We climbed as high as we could with the time provided, and supposedly would have seen the glacier if it hadn’t been covered in snow, who knows. The way down was ten times more fun, as we simply used our asses as sleds and cruised down the mountain.
Later that day, we went on a too expensive boat cruise that took us to Sea Lion colonies and other somewhat cool islands, however we weren’t allowed off the boat. It was ok, but I probably would’ve chosen to do something else with the money instead if I had a second chance. The Sea Lions were pretty sweet, the adult males look like a huge fucking bear, they really should be called Sea Bears, which I think is also a cool name for a band. We ended our trip by splurging on some king crab at a fancy restaurant in town. 2 bottles of wine and crab, which the waiters let us hold up for some quick pictures, we then went to some Irish themed bar until 3:00am, and left their as loud, drunk Americans which I never wanted to be.
It has taken me 5 days to finish this long and boring blog, since then I saw Knocked Up, which was absolutely hilarious, and Oink got shut down, which is absolutely shitty beyond belief. I can’t afford no cd’s unless I start selling organs again.
That’s all for now, keep on keeping on
Trenton Hassel