Trip to Villa Pehuenia - Neuquén - Argentina

Here is a small collection of pictures from the trip I've made to Villa Pehuenia, Neuquén, Argentina, on August 2003.

(Click on the pictures to enlarge them. In the text, some links point to pictures and some to related websites)

This is the result of a short vacation time, escaping from Buenos Aires, to a lovely place called Villa Pehuenia, still in the Patagonia, over the Andes mountains. I have good friends there, who are devoted to tourism, trying to make their way there in spite of the Kafka-esque obstacles they find with the local government and the local people. I have learned many things from this journey, things that must be lived to be learned. First of all, the place where I was going to stay lacked the most elemental things from city life: electricity, water, and gas. The first one was not a real problem: the most important issues (light and refrigerator) could be substituted with batteries and the natural cold outside, respectively. As for water, there was a lake near the house, and every morning we had to go down and get full buckets to fill the tank for the house. Walking through a steep slope with a heavy bucket in each hand is not a pleasant feeling, but it's good to realize how many things we take for granted in the city. We used gas bottles for the kitchen and wood for heating. To chop trunks is not an easy task, and soon learned about new ways of using my arms. Every bit of heat in the house cost muscles and sweat. They say work purifies body and soul, and I must admit that is true.

Villa Pehuenia
Villa Pehuenia is a really small village (about 300 people live there, mostly aboriginals), almost seventy kilometers or forty three miles from the nearest important town, at the foot of a volcano called Batea Mahuida. The volcano is used for skiing, and that's the thing that attracts more tourists to a town where white people live almost entirely from tourism. I say white people because they are the minority; the aboriginals -they call themselves Mapuches, more information here and here- would call us "huincas", or white demons. The Mapuches own the land because they were there in theory before the Spaniards (in fact they were chased from the East of the country and after three centuries they remained in the mountains, unreacheable), and there are very few huincas who have property papers where they live. Most have grants on the land for ten years, or a hundred years, but they don't own it. The government naturally pays all the expenses of the aboriginals: they give them food, money, land, gas, electricity, all for free. The aboriginals are ashamed of being Mapuches, they just want to forget that fact, such was the influence of the white man during the centuries. As they live for free, they have their cattle, ask the white man for every other need, and they just got drunk for a living. A sad thing: their culture is about to be lost because noone is interested on it. They would never speak their original language in front of a huinca, they don't do their traditional things anymore. I spent some time with them, trying to grab something. With some kids I learned how they fish with a small lasso, and how they hunt wild boars with big ropes. Foxes are a problem, so hunting foxes is not a legal problem there. There is also some kind of puma that they call "lión" (a confusion with the Spanish "león", lion), but I could never see but its footprints in the snow.

The Snow
The house where I stayed was just lovely. From the window, you could see the Aluminé lake, in all its splendour every morning. As days went by, I felt how all the noisy machines from the city in my head were being turned off, one by one, and finally it all remained in silence. At night, the sound of the logs being burned in the heater; in the mornings, the wind. I had excellent weather. Only one day it snowed. The first snow was heavy, but left no trace in the ground, curiously. The second snow, few hours later, painted white all the landscape immediately. I went outdoors. It was simply incredible: the snow silenced everything, the only sound was the sound of the flakes falling on the ground. I felt the horrible presence of myself there, like an intruder, every step an intolerable noise in the silence, the colours of my clothes too non-white, me, unnatural in the yard of a human house. I was a heavy body in a landscape of ghosts: the trees, perfectly fitting there, tall, splending figures, were telling me I was superfluous. Even the cold was a stranger: I would have expected some decrease of temperature, but no. I also thought of that snow globe Orson Welles holds at the beginning of Citizen Kane, while saying "Rosebud". I felt inside that snow globe, isolated from the world. Just like the movie, as time quickly passed by, the lanscape turned black and white. The sun hid, and soon what was formely green went black. Nevertheless the lightness remained the same, and the snow became suddenly phosphorescent. The moon, almost full above, provided enough light: it was light above, light below, and black figures: me, the trees, the night, all but mere shadows. Any phantasmagoria could be possible under such scenery. With my friend we began to walk, into the woods. Our feet were deeper into the snow with every step. Eventually we found the house of the oldest Mapuche woman around. Like gargoyles, huge turkeys were motionless tolerating the heavy snow over the fence. A horse in the stable neighed, and it was better than ringing a bell. Inside, the fire, dogs, people, mate (a typical infusion), light, heat. We spoke with the ancient lady, her daughter and one of her sons. People here flee from words, they prefer silence. We watched the fire: Borges said that we always watch the fire as if it was the first time. The flames can be also coloured ghosts. Outside, when we left, we faced again the other ghosts, black ghosts in the unreal world of the woods, as it was an inverted picture of a spirits session. Like a frightened bird, I hid in the house besides the fire, not searching for warmness, but searching for human things, things of my size and my sense of reality. I slept very deeply. The next morning I saw the snow in the road coming from the house, and it was all normal again, I was happy and fulfilled. We decided to go and walk to the top of a volcano, the highest place around, the Batea Mahuida.

The Batea Mahuida
As seen from the town seems like a horseshoe, and there is a lagoon in the crater. They say they could never prove that the Batea Mahuida is a real volcano, but it certainly looks like one, and all the maps attest that impression. It is not very high if it's to be compared with other peaks in the Andes (only 2000 meters, 6500 feet), but it was attractive enough to try. The slope is steep (75 degrees) in the last section, and there's a small forest halfway through. We had to use sunglasses (because of the snow), suntan, lip protection, special snow shoes to walk without sinking, ice claws in the soles, walking sticks, gloves, a cap... After liters of sweat we reached the forest, and it was like being inside a children's tale. A deserved prize, but also a difficult and dangerous place, full of ups and downs. We rested for a few seconds: the worst was still to come. Near the top, panting, ice was waiting for us, and that was a hell of a relief for our tired legs. We finally made it. There was an unceasing wind howling, and we could not enjoy our conquest for much longer. We took a look below, to the crater, and the lagoon was frozen. All around the lanscape was stunning. We could see several volcanos and mountains, both in Chile and Argentina. The Villarrica, that erupted the last time almost twenty years ago; the Lanin, whose anger lives in the Mapuche mythology, though we have no records of its last eruption. We wanted to put the flag of my friend's agency, but the wind rendered it impossible. Coming back, we almost flew until we reached the forest again. All the trees were exclusively Araucarias, or Pehuenias, or Pehuenes, all the names of the same species. They are ancient trees: they grow only one centimeter a year. One meter, a century. And man they were tall! From the tree comes the name of the town, Villa Pehuenia, a Mapuche name. People do all kinds of things with the fruit of such tree, the piñón: bread, alcoholic drinks, cookies, and an exquisite coffee. But coming back to the forest, we had a lunch there, sitting in the snow, thinking that the return will be fairly easy. We were wrong: the forest was difficult to cross, and after that our feet sunk too deep in the snow, in spite of the snow rackets, and we were tired. Finally we opted to walk in our own footsteps, the deep footprints we left when we were ascending, and we discovered that the snow wasn't sinking much more than that. We reached safe and sound, before the last lights of the day went out.

Adventures
Next day we went to the Aluminé lake for kayaking. The lake was pure tranquility, and the very idea of rowing, looking below and seeing the bottom down deep because the water is so transparent, is a refreshing experience. There we saw a tall rock wall, excellent for climbing and descending with ropes. We promised to come back there. At one of my sides, the Batea Mahuida, and I felt proud to have been up there the day before. Always rowing, we eventually reached to an inner bay with some islands, a very attractive place to stay, fresh, green, quiet. In the shore we had our lunch, surrounded by cows. A bull was severely watching our movements, but we didn't feel disturbed at all. Coming back, we saw several houses of the Mapuches living there; other than that, there were no signs of human life all around. In the rest of the days, we went to other beautiful places, climbing, walking, and always the sensation of an open place empty of people. A little house here with animals, and a million trees. An old car through an old path there, reduced to a tiny dot by the huge mountains all around. Our footprints in the snow, and the snow extended like a sea through all the visible horizon, making our footsteps look insignificant. Two children trying to fish in the shores of an endless river. Me, carrying trunks in a wheelbarrow, surrounded by countless tall trees. Me, eating cochinillo (a piglet days old) and mamón (a calf few days old) in a place where such animals are killed in the moment by and for the people who live in the house. The feeling that very few people stepped certain places I've been to. Suddenly war, politics, money, seemed things that were too far away and almost incomprehensible to me at that moment.
One day we came back to that rock wall we saw from the kayaks, this time walking. Helping us with ropes, we descended the fifty meters (170 feet) down to the shore. Adrenalin, you, your feet against the rock, the air so thin around, the lake, the tall trees below you as you go down, things that can't be compared with anything else. People from a touristic TV show came few hours later to do the same things with us. They were charmed with the place and the activities. The people who discover Villa Pehuenia and finds my friend to do things like this are always lucky. Pity that this is an almost hidden place, that my friend is an almost hidden person. Every big city inhabitant should do this once in a while, to awake forgotten things inside him. Someone once told me that he climbs mountains to see things in its proper size. I think such assertion is closer to this feeling.

(if you're interested, there's a map with the location of Villa Pehuenia here. For more information on tourism of Villa Pehuenia, here.)

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