Valley of the Dinosaurs

A couple of weeks after our camping trip out to the lake with Adrian and his family, his brother, Omar, invited me to spend an afternoon with his own family. The journey was to be a small road trip to the village of El Chocón, about 80 minutes south of the city of Neuquén on the road to Bariloche. It would include a picnic lunch by the Rio Limay, a visit to the dinosaur museum and an afternoon Mate on the shores of a large reservoir made lake.

I quickly agreed to go because my curiosity for the village had been piqued in early March when I had seen the dinosaur billboards of El Chocón on the way back from Bariloche. I was curious to see what the village was all about for another reason as well. In early March, the local Neuquén papers had a story on the fact that there was a NY Times article written about dinosaur mania in the province of Neuquén. For those of you who don't read the Times all that often, here is the link to the article.

So Omar and his family picked me up and we made our way out to El Chocón. Our plan was to eat lunch on the far side of the river and lake. In order to get across the river we had to drive across the dam, which like all good dams doubles as a road. This dam was one of the first built on the Rio Limay and it is hydroelectric. The river is the boundary between the provinces of Neuquén and Rio Negro and for whatever reason there are guard posts on either side of the dam.

When we arrived at the guard post on the Neuquén side of the dam, we were stopped by what is more or less the equivalent of the national guard in the U.S. and asked if we had any meat in the car. I was somewhat confused by the question, and I wanted to ask the guardsman if it were in fact a trick question. It was close to 1:00 in the afternoon. Lunch in Argentina usually occurs between 1 and 3, and in Argentina, food equals meat. So, by my way of thinking, asking an Argentine if he or she has meat in the car is like asking that Argentine if he or she is currently alive. We told the guard, yes. He then asked what kind of meat. We told him lamb. He told us we couldn't cross the dam into Rio Negro.

I couldn't stop laughing in disbelief when I heard this. I asked Omar if we could ask the guardsmen if we could cross if we only had chicken? Then when they explained to me that Rio Negro was perhaps worried about some type of meat contamination, I told them that my initial thought when I heard the guard ask "Do you have meat?" was that he needed some meat of his own for lunch and was going to ask if he could buy some off of us. When Omar and his family heard this, they couldn't stop laughing at me.

So we drove down to the shores of Rio Limay, built a fire, threw the lamb on the grill and began snacking on some homemade empanadas and pizza, perfect picnic appetizers. After lunch, we made our way up to the village of El Chocón and the dinosaur museum. And it was there that I learned just how ridiculous the names of dinosaurs can be.

Remember the T-Rex -- that giant that walked the earth and ate all sorts of smaller dinosaurs, esp. the raptors on that island of Spielberg's? Did you ever think that there could be something larger? Well, if you just mumbled to your self, no, then you thought wrong. There is or, better put, there was. There was one bigger, and since the T-Rex was already very large, this one is best described as gigantic. And that is precisely why its scientific name is Gigantasaurus Carolinii.

















The museum was a smallish affair with two life sized replicas of the Gigantasaurus - one in the ground as it may have been discovered (remember that I don't speak Spanish that well) and another that is a recreation of what one of these fierce creatures would look like standing up. What I gathered from the tour guide during her talk is that Argentina is very proud to be the home of so many dinosaur fossils, and that El Chocón is especially proud to be the home of the largest meat eater. I also learned that this dinosaur in particular loved grilled cow and spent hours every Sunday watching Boca Juniors play soccer (I am pretty sure the tour guide said this too), and that it was because of these time intensive habits that they didn't notice it when all their friends starting dying off and that the birds were taking over some 65 million years ago.

The signs for the restrooms in El Chocón.

The day's sunset.

A Day and Night at the Lake

One of the best things about living in Neuquén has been the time we have spent with our Argentine friends and their respective families. Mercedes and Adrián are the two good friends of Sarah with whom we have spent a number of afternoons and evenings. Mercedes is our age, she is Mapuche, has dual citizenship with Chile and Argentina, and she lives with her parents and brothers and sisters on the far side of town. Sarah met her a couple of years ago at a few Mapuche ceremonies, and they have stayed close friends ever since. Adrián is another friend of Sarah’s from 2006 who has a keen interest in Mapuche culture, esp. with the communities out in the rural areas (what Argentines would call out in the campo and near the Cordillera). Sarah met him in a Mapuzungun class, and his wife makes the world’s greatest Pie de Limón (lemon meringue pie).

Both families have been more than generous with their time and advice. They have had us over for lunch or dinner on numerous occasions. They love it when we come over to share some yerba mate and most importantly, both families have been equally hospitable and patient when I try to speak with them in the mother tongue of emotion, Spanish.

Upon returning to Neuquén after my time in Bariloche, Adrián invited us to join his family for a camping trip. We readily agreed, and he told us that we would be leaving the following weekend (March 15th and 16th). We all decided that it would be fun to include a tour of a local vineyard in the road trip. When we asked what we could do to help with the preparations, they replied, “Pack your bags!”

When the Saturday arrived, I went over to their house early to see with what I could be of help. Patricia, Adrián’s wife, was in the kitchen baking the last of the 4 pizzas. In the fridge she already had the 36 hamburger patties and on the counter were 3 tartas. (A tarta is a cross between a quiche and a pie.) I turned to Patricia and asked, “How many nights are we going to be gone?” and then I turned to Adrián and said, “There is enough food here to feed an army!” While Adrián raised his eyebrows in agreement, Patricia said, “Paul, you don’t want to go hungry on a camping trip.”

Later, as we were pulling away from their house, Patricia remembered that she had forgotten a frying pan for the hamburgers. Adrián told her not to worry as he was anxious to get on the road. Patricia insisted, so we drove around the block and returned to the house. Patricia ran into the house while we waited in the car and I turned to Adrián and said, “It is the same throughout the world. The husband wants to leave quickly and the wife insists that all the equipment be brought (in this case, the entire kitchen) along for the journey.” At this Adrián laughed. When Patricia returned he told her what I had said. We weren’t two blocks away when I said, “Patricia is the general!” Everyone laughed, and then I turned to Adrián and said, “That makes you the private!” Everyone laughed again and Adrián said, “What’s Sarah?” I nodded my head and said, “Yes, she is my general. But when Patricia is around she is the captain!” Again laughter, and I added, “And I am the private first class.”

It took about an hour to arrive at the vineyard. It was fun and I won’t go into too much detail as the Mendoza vineyards (and their pictures) from our more recent trip up north are much better. However, the coolest aspect of the Schroeder vineyard is the fact that when they were constructing the foundation for the cellars and main building where the wine production would take place, the building crews came across some dinosaur bones. Instead of obliterating the bones to dust or ignoring them, the owners of the vineyard called in the experts and had the entire area examined for further fossils (and to make sure that they did not inadvertently crush any other important fossils). Because of this the Schroeder Bodega’s main line of wine is called Saurus, and to top it all off, a few of the dinosaur bones are on display next door to their tasting room.

After an hour or so at the vineyard we made our way to Lake Mari-Menuco, a man made reservoir on the Neuquén River. In Argentina, when you want to camp by the lake, you drive to the shore’s edge, park your car and double check to make sure your campsite is off on its own. And that is exactly what we did; we drove up to the lake, parked the suburban under the lone tree and set up the tent in front of the car. Our camp was our car.

When we arrived we had about 90 minutes of daylight left and as the sun set, the bugs came out on the attack, and the wind picked up with a steady howl. We all decided to sit in the wind as Adrián went for a swim. Adrián and Patricia have one daughter, and one of their nieces is staying with them, so we totaled six.

As night fell, we began cooking dinner, the hamburgers on a gas-fueled stove. After 10 minutes Adrián shook the stove and thought it needed some more gas. He started looking in the car for a couple of minutes before he realized that he had forgotten to pack the extra camping fuel. Needless to say, the general was none too pleased! Soon the flame died out and we had only been able to make one hamburger for each of us. The general decided that it was best to dig into the tartas. We cut up some slices and opened the bottle of Malbec Espumante (Champagne) and toasted the camping trip! Soon we were all in bed (the family in the tent, Sarah and I in the truck) and asleep with the wind continuing its unrelenting howl.

The next morning we had to make a camp fire in order to make tea and to heat the water for yerba mate. Within 2 hours or so, some friends of Adrián showed up with homemade empanadas. We stoked the fire, added the lard to the pot, and soon were frying up the empanadas. By now we were 11 and the empanadas tasted terrific. We cut the tomatoes and rolls and began cooking the hamburgers, while snacking on 3 tartas. Within another hour or so, Adrián’s brother arrived along with his wife and children and the parents. Now we totaled 17. We all went for a swim and later lounged about on the rocky beach, taking in the sun, enjoying the steady breeze of the wind, and sipping on yerba mate. It was the perfect Sunday at the end of a hot Neuquén summer weekend.

The pictures from the Vineyard.

The sunset at the lake.

Cooking the empanadas.

Some extra photos...

The ‘Bueno’ Culture

*The last dispatch from Bariloche.


For those of you who have never been to Argentina, consider the following post a cultural experience primer. Some of the basics you need to know include the fact that all double ‘L’s are pronounced as ‘sha’, the people of this great land speak in a sing songy voice, meat consumption is the number one participant sport while futbal is the number one spectator sport, yerba mate is the drink of choice, high drama is the glue that keeps this society together as it manifests itself in overly dramatic stories, wild gesticulations of the hands, and protest marches that occur almost daily in cities throughout the country. However, perhaps the most important cultural aspect of the Argentine national character is the word “bueno”. Simply put, it is indispensable and it underpins everything.

At first I thought nothing of all the times I heard “bueno”. It was becoming a given that any given day I would hear that word from hotel clerks, café waiters, ice cream shop workers, cashiers, cab drivers, street cleaners, convenience store clerks, bus drivers, the vegetable sellers, our friends and even people we met on the street. It really wasn’t until I took my Spanish classes in Bariloche and experienced the repeated use of “bueno” by my teachers that this word meant more than “good”.

This word is like a small dagger; it is a multifaceted tool and with an experienced user it has power. The good news is that most Argentines use the word in a relaxed, taking life as it comes kind of way. You see, “bueno” does not only describe or label something as good. It is also a word that signals transitions, whether it be a transition from one thought to the next, or a complete changing of the topic of conversation. “Bueno” is also used as a way to clear the air and create a space for a new beginning, much in the same way as someone in English might say, “Let me start at the beginning and bring you up to speed.” Lastly, “bueno” signals an acceptance of the facts and, perhaps more importantly, a closure, as in “its time to move on”.

Before living in Argentina, I always thought the best translation for the word was “good”. But since living here for a short while, I have come to understand, use and translate ‘bueno’ as ‘Right’ or ‘Righto’, as in the way any good Englishman say those words, best exemplified, of course, in the Monty Python skit, Marching the Square.

All of this comes back to Bariloche because it was there that I had my enlightening experience. This enlightenment was not quick, as I had to learn to listen to “bueno”’s use more closely, and the more I witnessed its use, the better I understood. But as in all things, my understanding was incomplete in its singularity until one sunny afternoon in the park by the cathedral on the shore of Lago Nahuel Haupi, when I got to talking about Argentina with another student from Ireland, whose name happened to be Sarah.

I think I may have started the conversation topic with the subtle question, “And what’s up with everyone using ‘bueno’ all the time?” She laughed and said that she too had noticed something peculiar about its omnipresence in this culture. And so we began swapping our stories, which, when taken together as whole, one can eventually come to see the multifaceted meaning of this lovely word.

Bueno Story Number 1

It is 8:40 in morning and I am sitting in the language school courtyard having some yogurt and eating a banana. Our classes start at 9 and I am early. Most students arrive at 8:57, so right then there is a trickle every couple of minutes. As most of them open the wrought iron gate to get into the courtyard none of them pay any attention to that fact that there is a key stuck in the lock. I had noticed it as I came into the courtyard but thought nothing much of it. After 5 minutes, one of the teachers walks up, sees the key in the gate, and knowing that something is out of whack, tries to pull the key out.

Nothing happens. The key may have turned, but it certainly does not come out. He decides that this is too weird and puts his bag down so that both of his hands are now free. He tries again. The key doesn’t move; it won’t come out. Next, he grabs hold of the gate with one hand, and takes hold of the key in the other and starts to twist and turn the key, while jangling and shaking the gate. Still nothing. Keep in mind that I am watching this entire process and he has yet to notice me sitting 15 to 20 feet away.

Next, he bends down to peer closer at the key, to see if something is jammed in the keyhole. He can’t make anything out. It is stuck. He tries twisting the key one more time and the key is as solidly in the door as Excalibur was set in its stone. He looks at the door for a couple of seconds. He mutters, “Bueno”, picks up his bag, and proceeds through the courtyard and up into the school.

I sit on the bench and think to myself, “What is good about a key stuck in the door?”

After I tell this story, Sarah, the Irish woman, laughs and begins to tell one of her favorite bueno stories.

Bueno Story Number 2

On the second day of our first week at the language school and after our classes are finished, 5 or 6 students volunteer to visit a local grade school. The goal is to be with the kids for a couple of hours. The local school kids would get to practice some English while the foreign students would get to practice some Spanish, and everyone would have a chance to have fun and play some games.

So Sarah and the foreign students get on the bus and head to the school which is built in such a way that the activity room doubles as a community center space. Upon arrival, there are no children in sight. They wait a few minutes and find the kids busy with some other activity in another part of the school. The volunteer coordinator talks with the teacher in charge and is informed that the day’s activity will be in the activity room / community center space.

The key is gotten and the coordinator, a woman, asks the foreign students to wait outside while she goes to ready the room. She opens the door, looks around, comes outside, shakes her head, locks the door, and says, “Bueno.” She tells the students that the day’s activity will not be inside the activity room. Plans have changed and the activity will now be outside revolving around playing games with the local school kids in the field.

After a few minutes, Sarah asks the coordinator why they will not be helping with teaching English in the activity room. The coordinator tells her that it seems as though the day before the community’s vet had used the room as a place to operate on a dog. No one had bothered to clean the room up and now it was not in a suitable condition to teach a class.

Sarah, the Irish woman, says to me with a laugh, “I thought to myself, what is ‘good’ about a half bloodied activity room that is now completely useless to the community!”

We talked some more that afternoon about traveling and then went back to our homestays. A day or two later, 6 of us, including Sarah, the Irish woman, get some food to go and eat a lunch out on one of the city’s park’s. And at the end of our lunch we just sit about and chat and it is during this lunch that we have our next “Bueno” experience.

Bueno Story Number 3

We are in one of Bariloche’s parks, 6 foreigners, eating empanadas, drinking beer, sitting under a large shade tree. Andrew, an Australian, has bought too much ham and cheese for his sandwiches. As we lounge about chatting about Ireland, England, the U.S., Australia and travel, a dog begins sniffing around our food. The dog is a Husky with grey blue eyes. He is the type of dog that you would want for a pet if you lived in a cold climate. But he is undoubtedly a street dog looking for food.

One of the Australian women is convinced that the dog is in fact a wolf and doesn’t want it anywhere near her. We all laugh, tell her to calm down and tell her that everything is going to be alright. Andrew meanwhile has decided that he is going to feed the dog his extra ham. “After all,” he reasoned out loud to us, “I can’t very well take this home seeing as I have no cooler.”

So he begins to pull out the extra ham and the dog sees him and smells the ham and comes around and gobbles up the ham. We all have a laugh and then one of us asks Andrew if he plans on taking the extra bread home too. He says, “That’s a mighty fine idea.” And he proceeds to feed the bread to the dog. I tell everyone that I am convinced that the dog will not eat the bread as there is no meat on it.

The dog sniffs the bread, is about to eat it, thinks better of it and picks up the bread and trots off 20 or so feet and begins to dig a hole next to some rose bushes. He puts the bread in the hole and begins to cover it up with his snout. We are all laughing at the cleverness of the dog and when the dog finishes we laugh again because his entire nose and half of his face is covered in dirt. We go back to talking and the dog comes back looking for more food.

While all of this takes place, a young Argentine male has sat himself down not 10 feet behind us. He is leaning against a lamp post, with some headphones on and he is smoking a joint. It is fairly obvious by the smell that it is not a cigarette and it is fairly common in this country to walk down a street and find yourself in a cloud of marijuana.

So there we are laughing about the dog hiding his bread and there is this young man, who has just finished his pot. He has adjusted his headphones, turned up the volume and slipped into a comfortable posture in the sun with the lamppost still at his back. Next to this guy is his lunch, a sandwich in a plastic grocery bag.

Remember the dog? Well, this little husky, as all street dogs tend to be, was still hungry. He walks behind our backs (we are sitting on the ground in a circle) and waits for some more food to materialize from our group. We have none to give and so the dog begins sniffing in other directions and that is how he finds his way to the plastic bag with the sandwich.

Very slowly, very carefully, the dog approaches the bag. He is not swatted away or yelled at by the young Argentine. Next thing we know, the dog has the bag in his mouth and has retreated and begins opening the bag and eating the sandwich as fast as he can. We all start howling with laughter and one of us yells to the young man (he has headphones on), “Hey, that dog has your lunch!” The young Argentine, turns his head from the sun, lifts his ear phones, processes our broken Spanish, lifts his sunglasses 4 centimeters, peers at the dog wolfing down his lunch, gives a slight shrug, mutters, “Bueno” and returns to his high in the sun.

We all laugh. Sarah, the Irish woman, and I look at each other and laugh some more. Another example of Bueno at work!

Bueno Story Number 4

On the last day of my first week of Spanish language school we had an eventful class. Think of eventful here in terms of emotions, as nothing really happened other than we heard another chapter in the thoroughly riveting and slightly caustic “Life and Adventures of Ursulla, a German who Tries to Learn Spanish”. It is entirely possible that a whole blog could be written and maintained on the life and times of this German classmate of mine. Her mis-adventures never cease, her overly negative outlook on life continue to prune her face into a constant pucker, and her intolerance to let go to the rhythms of other cultures would make wonderfully, if not woefully, funny reading. They would in fact give stiff competition to Roald Dahl's literary character of Uncle Oswald, only with Uschi (short form of Ursulla), we would have a female, early 21st century travelogue.

In order to truly appreciate this story, you need to know some background on my first week of class. We were 3 students. The teacher and the two other students were women. (This did play a role in class dynamics.) One of the women was a recent college graduate from a school in the US and the other was Uschi, a late 30’s/early 40’s German who was riding a motorcycle throughout Argentina and Chile. And there was the teacher who was the highly passionate and highly dramatic Argentine, who would beat her chest and be near tears when listening to a Tango, who loved talking about Mate, and who spoke 4 or 5 languages.

Everyday, for that first week, we would begin class with what we had done the afternoon before, and without fail, everyday, there was something bad that had happened to Uschi. She would share with us something that had either happened to her, that she had to endure or that she did not like about Argentina. In short, nothing was good. The paper was of poor quality. The roads were made of poor grade gravel. The wind was too strong. The coffee was not as good. What Argentines call milk should not be graced with such a beautiful name. And on and on and on it would go.

What made matters worse (or funnier) was that if someone else in the class had a bad experience or even a good experience, Uschi would interrupt and she would trump that person with some experience of her own which was worse. And she didn’t stop until you surrendered and acknowledged that her experience was the worse of the two. It was as if she took pride in living a life that always left her on the short end of the deal and holding the shorter straw.

Usually, her interruptions began with an “Oh, no…” and then we would hear how it was she had experienced the dust of southern Argentina and we had no idea how badly it would be getting into her clothes, making its way into her helmet, even stalling her engine when she was 100 kilometers from the nearest ranch. (This of course is an exaggeration but you get the idea.) I first realized that this dynamic was happening when I shared one morning that I had had some of the best ice cream, ever, the day before at the artesinal shop Jauja. I was ready to say that every Barilochian I had met felt that shop to be the best in the city, when Uschi said, “Oh, no. I tried ice cream from that shop and it was terrible. In fact, I tried ice cream from other shops on Mitre street and none of them tasted that good…”

And so it went for several minute outbursts for that first week of class.

On the Wednesday morning class Uschi came into class with a frown. The teacher looked at her arm and asked, “What are those marks?” And Uschi began to tell us that she thought they were flea bites. For the next 7 minutes we sympathized and tried to help her think of ways to overcome the problem. Wash all your hair. Wash all your bedsheets. Wash your sleeping bag. Wash out your tent. And each time we offered a suggestion she told us that the offered solution would not work or that she had already tried it. “You see,” she told us, “I know fleas because my roommate in Germany had a boyfriend who had a dog which brought fleas into the apartment. The only solution is fumigation.” We were out of suggestions and she was all ramped up to give a lecture on the nature of fleas.

She told us that she was convinced that these fleas had come from a hostel that she had slept in. (What was weird about this was that she was staying in a homestay with a family.) And soon we found out that she thought everything would be fine as she had taken all of her clothes to the cleaners. We considered the whole problem solved, and went back to studying the past tense after learning the Spanish for such important words like bedbug, flea, itch, bite, etc.

Friday arrives and I am sitting in class with the college grad and the teacher and it is our last day, and the teacher asks us how we are doing and we say fine. Not a moment later, Uschi huffs into the room with a huge frown. The teacher asks what the problem is and Uschi says, “They’re back!” And we see that her entire arm is covered in bites.

My mouth begins to drop in shock and the teacher is horrified. For the next 15 minutes, Uschi regaled us with the fleas, that they must be in her tent, that they are in her clothes, that she can’t leave Bariloche, that she won’t be able to go anywhere, that her trip is horrible, that this country is the worst and that her life is not worth living. You name it; she said it in regards to how badly she had it. And oddly enough as she was telling this story of the fleas and as I was looking at the bites on her arm, I started to feel a scratch. I found myself slowly, microscopically moving away from Uschi while she told us of her predicament.

After hearing the trial of flea induced woe for 15 minutes, we all had had enough and were ready to move on to a new topic. I was an inch further away from Uschi, our teacher was aghast and probably felt that the reputation of Argentina was ruined by the fleas, and the college grad was bored because she had heard the entire story before classes began.

At this point our teacher clasps her hands together and says, “Bueno.” And Uschi, with lips fully puckered, with the utmost seriousness and without a shred of understanding of the power of the multiple meanings of this word, says back in a scornful voice, “There is nothing ‘bueno’ about my situation.”

During our break on that Friday, I told Sarah, the Irish woman, that I had just heard the Bueno story that tops them all. She listened as I recounted the story if the fleas and the use of the Argentine bueno and complete misunderstanding Uschi had. We had a long laugh.

As I read over these 4 stories, there is an element to the fact that all of us misunderstood why the Argentine’s would say “bueno” in times when things were not entirely “good”. I don’t know if I will ever truly know when it is okay for me to say “bueno” other than when I am trying to say things are fine. But I do know that, for me, there is somewhat of a brighter light for cultural tunnel of Argentina. And I also know that if I ever have fleas, I will email Uschi for advice.