Week one over

Me working to remove invasive plants in Valle Chacabuco, Chilean Patagonia

Hey everyone. Since the last time I wrote I went camping for 4 days while we worked to narrow a 1 lane road and revegetate the shoulder, and today we all went horseback riding for like 9 hours.


Working on the road was hard and pretty stupid. We pretty much raked and picked up rocks and threw them into a bulldozer, then re-raked everything. We thought we were going out to pull out the sheep fences, but plans changed, which is pretty common around here. Apparently the big boss, Doug Tompkins ordered it to be done from where ever he is around here.


We had a little asado (barbeque) with lamb for Saturday lunch, and a party Saturday night. Lots of cheap beer and Chilean wine.


Today we went all the way to Lago Cochrane and back. Hung out with some gauchos, and I took a lot of pictures. I´m trying to get some up here so you can see how awesome this place is. It was a pretty epic ride, I hope we get to do it again before I leave. Which I´m sure we will.


Tomorrow morning we are going out camping in the field again. This time pulling fences for real. We actually saw the fences today. So, I´ll be back in like 4 days.


Things are going great. We got another volunteer today. She is from New York, and just spent 7 years in Ireland. Our group is 11 now, and everyone is really interesting.


The coolest guy in the world is our volunteer crew leader. His name is Louigi. He is a serious gaucho, always making fun of us and swearing in English. Most of the Americans can barely forma sentance in Spanish, and he is the same in Enlgish, but he is so funny it doesn´t matter. I´m pretty sure the guy can do everything. Expert horse rider, can make anything, knows all the plants and animals, knows EVERYONE. He is super cool and a blast to work with.


So I´ve been trying to upload one picture on this blog, and it is taking forever. I might put some up on facebook to see if it is faster. I think anyone reading this is my facebook friend.