Mini-Trekking

(EDITOR'S NOTE: D Major. Heh heh, get it?)

(This is the second catch-up installment actually being entered in Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina, on the Atlantic Ocean, a town with VERY good pizza, though in the story we are only up to El Calafate, in Southwest Patagonia.

MINI-TREKKING.

Yesterday, Plotnik and Ducknik actually strapped crampons (grampons, in Spanish) to their feet and strode out onto the glacier of Perito Moreno.



In a group of around eighteen people, they learned how to walk up the side of the glacier and down the side of the glacier, and all over the beautiful and crunchy ice, and the guides led them around for an hour and a half, ending up with a glass of whiskey on the side of the glacier with nothing in view but blue ice, white ice, brown ice, gray ice, a fjord or two and the 34 degree river. The guides broke up the ice with their hammers to pour into the highball glasses and shot the whiskey over it all.



Plot was very proud of Duck who had been nervous about attempting the Mini Trek, but who ended up leading the group across the ice. The Plotniks were actually too old to take the tour but they did it anyway, figuring they have to be in better shape than most people of a certain decrepitude. It worked out great.



The tour guide called the Duck Princesa. She and Plot had the time of their lives walking on that ice, which was maybe hour 5 to 7 of a very long iceberg-viewing trip from El Calafate, the only reason they had come to this stupid town in the first place, and which made it all well worth it. Memorable.

The Perito Moreno Glacier is the size of Buenos Aires, but made out of ice. It is either stable or growing, one of the few in the world still doing so. The colors are indescribable, and it's really hard for Plotnik to remember he's in Argentina, not Alaska, when he looks at his own pictures.



Also memorable was the night before, when, after their first taste of Argentine bife de chorizo (a cut of beef from somewhere in the loin, huge, grilled perfectly on the asado), and an entire bottle of Argentinian malbec (yeah, it's true -- wine seems to be easier to drink here, maybe because it's delicious and also very inexpensive), the two tango dancers walked into the restaurant and began to make love to themselves on the dance floor.

Or something like it. He was tall and skinny. When he sat by himself between sets he had buck teeth and looked kinda goofy, but when he was dancing he was upright, aloof and magnificent in his rakish hat and black slacks. She, who looked like some kid from Brooklyn when she was outside between sets smoking her cigarette, looked like the Vamp of Buenos Aires when she was dancing with him, her leg and high heel turned up at the end of each phrase, her expression that of a fire that is currently just smoldering but just around that next turn and bend may break out into an open conflagration.


He never looked at her, but over her shoulder. She never looked at him, but down at the ground or off into the distance. It was magnificent.

They have danced together for two years. This is a steady Saturday night gig for them. Two songs at a time: ten minutes. Then half an hour off and two more dances. Plot doesn't know how long into the night they go because he and Duck were exhausted and ready for bed by midnight.

They don't even start dancing until 10:30 and by 11 people are filling up the restaurant, bringing their children and infants in strollers, ordering bifes de chorizo and bottles of wine, starting off the evening when most Americans would be tucked safely into their beddies.



It was SO much fun and the steak was SO good that it actually erased the b.s. of what happened next back at the hostel, which had to do with that worthless pile of poo place they were staying and which was so stupid Plot ain't even gonna talk about it. Beef and tango: priceless.

Also priceless: the herd of Ñandu that just ran across the road in front of this bus. They are the Patagonian ostrich, but they're not an ostrich, though they sure look like one. Wow. Guanaco and Ñandu in the same day and still (looking at watch) seven hours to go.

Beef and Tango. Glaciers. Guanaco and Ñandu. All absolutely priceless.