The Hippie Convention

I left Bariloche on another fantastic bus, just long enough to watch Eddie Murphy´s Meet Dave. It was in English, so it was so hard to turn away. We stopped on a rainy, gravel intersection of El Bolson, my new home for the next few weeks.

While planning this trip, I thought it would be cool to stay in one spot for a while and try to score a small glance at life in a quiet Argentinian mountain town, similar of course to Tom Cruise´s experience living with the Samurai for a summer when captured in the masterpiece the Last Samurai. This eventually manifested itself through an organization called Worldwide Web? of Organic Farmers, or WWOOF. So I´m a WWOOFer. Basically, you pay $30 for a list of all farms in the country that are involved, and then email them directly. It was pretty down-to-earth, low budget, which I liked. After numerous emails (in tenuous Spanish) with a farm along my route, it seemed like I had a perfect way to enjoy the Austral summer and improve my Spanish.

I went to check the place out once I arrived. Mostly it was just to confirm that they weren´t axe murderers. I drank some mate (the favourite Argentina tea herb) and sat with a family friend called Victor until the family got home. They had a little kid named Silvestre and I invented some games for us to play (basically I donned him).

Paz and Pastor arrived home, and indeed they were not axe murderers. They were really animated, friendly people and were pretty excited about the YouTube video I had sent them a few weeks early. Another WWOOFer was already living with them, so all seemed well. I made arrangements to start the next day.

El Bolson sits in a beautiful valley, ideally located to be wiped off the map in the event of a bad landslide or avalanche. It´s known as a hippie hangout, and boasts one of the biggest open-air markets of homemade stuff in all the land. I went with Paz to sell windchimes. I think we sold a few. I saw some gift ideas, saw some crap. It was a pretty good market as far as they go.

Then I went back to the house and helped Pastor make some food for some event he was catering that night. First I was charged with chopping up what can only have been very naturally farmed apples. There were big holes in most of them, some of them were as heavy as red peppers owing to the mass of material missing from the inside. There were some insects inside a few of them, and I was troubled by having to separate good apple from bad apple. We made some incredible berry and apple pastries, and tray after tray of empanadas.

The convention, as it turned out, was a lecture from famed natural farmer Panos Manikis from Greece. Apparently this old guy had studied with the true nature master in Japan, and now travelled all over spreading the technique. He spoke in English and they translated, which was nice. He had some interesting thoughts, and spoke about the rise and growth of deserts due to mankind. It´s true, Iraq, Egypt, and Greece were all rich areas in the past, that are now reduced to desert. His method advocates planting many types of clay-wrapped seeds in the same area, and letting everything grow naturally. The many species ensure agricultural success without pesticides, much the same way that nature does it.

The lecture was the kickoff for a weekend to celebrate a new community farm in El Bolson. The audience, almost two-hundred strong, showed off the largest collection of wool-knit clothing, hemp, dreadlocks, and beards I´ve ever seen. The children ran around like mad in the back and backpacks were everywhere. We sold tons of food, the all-natural blackberry juice being a huge favourite.

We dined on leftover empanadas that night, with a bottle of wine. Pastor showed me and another WWOOFer his old house, a lofty adobe treasure in the mountains south of town that they had just moved out of. He showed off his marijuana plants and some of the features he had built into the walls of the building. We swung on a rope suspended from giant trees in the yard. He spoke animatedly about building his house and how a house should represent who you are.

And thus commences life with the hippies for the next little while. I was planning to be here for three weeks, we´ll see if I make it that far....