as you know from when we last spoke, we were headed to el finca peregrino to wwoof. we bought the worlds most poorly made tent for about 40 dollars brand new at the carrefours in mendoza, and the worlds most poorly made sleeping bags at some chinos in tunuyan, and headed off to find the farm.
finca peregrino is located about 3 hours south of mendoza, about 6 km from the nearest town of vista flores. the area is a paradise of vineyards and farmland, cut through with irrigation canals like perfect little rivers, all fed by andean snowmelt. the mountains tower in the background, absolutely gigantic, treeless, the tallest ones streaked with snow even now in the heat of late summer. the farm is run by anna and ignacio perez, and worked by them and their adult children, rodrigo and marie jesus, and marie´s french husband manu. and volunteers! the farm is essentially a permaculture operation, and the family and all volunteers eat almost exclusively what is grown right there on the land. all the buildings are made using natural building techniques, out of local mud and straw, with glass bottles embedded in the walls for light and decoration. the volunteers live either in a little casita full of bunk beds, or in tents set up alongside the river, under a canopy of trees. the farm grows tomatoes, basil, arugula, chard, many kinds of lettuce, peas, carrots, potatoes, beets, peppers, hot peppers, eggplant, corn, summer and winter squash, cherries, pears, peaches, plums, nectarines...and much more! there are hidden gardens all over growing many other vegetables and all kinds of herbs. there are also a few horses, and an area for bees. most of all though, the farm has several apple orchards, which they harvest for sale directly and to make apple juice and apple vinegar. anna takes the nicest looking vegetables to the farmers market in mendoza every saturday, but the majority of them go to feed the family, the many volunteers, and into preserves to sell in the farm store and to last through the winter.
march is the busiest month at the farm, and they need as many volunteers as they can possibly get. scott and i were part of an overall group of 14 volunteers for the two and a half weeks we spent at the farm. the volunteers come from all over the world, though mostly from western europe, israel, and north america. with us at the farm were young people from spain, france, ireland, belgium, brazil, colombia, germany, rhode island, western massachussetts, and even a girl from our home state of washington. we all spoke spanish at mealtimes and with the family, but we did sometimes slip into english (or french, depending on whats easy) while working. and WORK we did! four hours in the morning and four at night with a much needed siesta in between, but often much more due to just how much there was to do. we weeded giant vegetable patches, harvested tomatoes, potatoes, eggplants, and peppers, picked and sorted thousands and thousands of apples, cleaned and prepared vegetables for sun drying, canning, or the market, and learned the ins and outs of pressing, bottling, and pasteurizing apple juice, among other things. the farm is completely organic and totally sustained by volunteer labor.
as volunteers, we were fed spectacular, gigantic vegan meals twice a day, prepared by anna. all vegetables we ate came from the farm itself, and the food was absolutely incredible. deep dark blood red tomatoes the size of your face, grown 15 yards from the table...piles and piles of roasted kabocha and butternut squash, eggplants galore, sugar sweet carrots, baby onions...on and on and on! the food was totally incredible. it would be so easy to be vegan if someone like anna lovingly prepared a groaning table of vegetables and polenta cakes and sauces for every meal, but you have to eat so much of it to get full! i mean, like three piles of arugula and tomatoes with garlic cilantro sauce is such a bad thing...but really, you have to eat a ton. and after 8 hours of HARD labor, you´re pretty hungry too.
the apple juice we made at the farm is DELICIOUS! the farm grows two kinds of apples, granny smith and "red" apples. i asked what kind they were and rodrigo just shrugged and said "manzanas rojos" so, they might be red delicious but they taste awesome and red delicious apples tend to suck. i guess a lot of it has to do with how they are grown, so they might just be the best red delicious apples in the world. anyways, we made juice from the red apples and drank ourselves sick while pressing and bottling it. before pasteurization, it really tastes like a whole apple in your mouth, you can almost feel the texture of the apple...all the flavors, its just amaaazing. not to say that there isnt great apple juice in the states too...i had some realllllly killer apple juice in western massachussetts one time, that i have to say might even have been better. but yeah, this apple juice was out of control.
anna also has extensive training in natural medicine, and with that many people living so close together and working so hard, she has many opportinities to use it. scott came down with a killer sinus infection, and decided to ask the mama for help. she promptly grated a raw onion and pressed out a bit of juice, which she put in a spoon and handed to me to help him snort. scott leaned back and i poured it straight in! talk about fun to watch. you know how it feels to cut an onion? yeah, times a million. after a few days and three administrations of onion jugo, he was cured! no joke. anna also gave tinctures of artichoke for upset stomach, recommended lemon and olive oil for sun protection, and could perscribe certain foods for however you were feeling that day. it was awesome! for cuts there was a mysterious brown salve to apply, and then shreds of gauze to cover.
i guess i should also mention, all the volunteers shared (and shared cleaning duties for) one composting toilet, the baño seco. when properly maintained, its a beautiful system. no water is wasted, it doesnt smell, and its rather pleasant to use, with a big window facing the river. inside is a vase of herbs and there are glass bottles embedded in the mud walls. however, emptying the bucket and scrubbing it down is an unenviable task that we all had to do at least once. really, it makes you appreciate indoor plumbing so much, but also realize how wasteful it all is.
anyways, we had initially planned to stay a bit longer on the farm, but after two weeks we were throroughly exhausted. the only days off were saturday evening and sunday, which we generally spent laying around taking naps, washing our clothes by hand, and trying to hitch hike into town to (wait a long time) to use the internet and eat ice cream. (dairy!) our main reason for leaving, however, was that i needed to get to santiago to renew my swedish passport, which has been a long saga of failed attempts, both in the states and in sweden this past summer. the longer i waited to get the process started the longer it would be before i get it, and my american passport now has only one blank page, and there are many more border crossings in my future. i dont know how it filled up so fast! why dont border control people stamp in the corner of the page? why do they insist on doing it dead center and taking up so much room?? come on you guys!
so we said our goodbyes and left the finca peregrino with some new friends, cara and xav, and set off for chile! but first we stopped in mendoza for a few nights, where we took our first hot showers in 20 days (the finca had what was essentially a hose connected to the wall at head height in a dark cement cell...sufficient but not what you´d call comfortable) and washed down some gigantic steaks with two bottles of excellent wine. (latitud 33, if you have an interest in argentine malbecs, give it a try) sorry anna! i loved your salads but i also loved that ribeye and french fries with mayonnaise.
anyways, after a few days in mendoza, a failed attempt at going to a winery in maipu (really EVERYTHING is closed on sunday, dont bother trying to do anything but flop around in a park) and an awesome impromptu outdoor concert, we took the bus through the andes and landed ourselves in santiago de chile, where we are right now! while here we plan on wandering around, getting my swedish passport at the embassy, eating chorrillana (google THAT if youre feeling carnivorous, hungry and fat) trying to understand chilean spanish (which is competing with coastal ecuador to have the hardest to understand, least spanish sounding spanish) and just generally getting some things taken care of in this first world (expensive...) city.
from here we head to valparaiso, either tomorrow or the next day, to spend the weekend by the sea. we might try and do some camping around here, there are some pretty incredible looking hot springs to the north...and we are also trying to find somewhere to wwoof for another couple 3 weeks, hopefully by that time my passport will be ready to pick up. ideally we would like to go south into the lake district or to chiloe, but its getting chilly down there now and as i mentioned, our tent is less than stellar. we shall see. in the end we dont have any plans, because life is more fun that way. we will be in bolivia by sometime in may, and thats about all we know.
peace and love
Z+S
here are some pics, totally out of order and a weird sampling, but yeah. because i think it might be a long time before i update flickr.
perro caliente, cordoba
lunch
buenos aires
buenos aires rooftop
i weeded all those onions! look how proud they are
apple break. weird faces.
we went to a beach on a river with a lot of mica in the sand. scott let me decorate him.
climbing trees in la reserva, BA
everything for the sickness, santiago
the pre incan civilization that built this wall of mud in a thousand years ago (in what is now lima) worshiped the sea as a god, and ate sharks, the strongest of the sea creatures, to feel closer to the divine. it is earthquake proof and the walls are original.
our brazilian friend wellington, and yours truly, at cuesta blanca.
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