Snow, Sacrifice and Sweet Reward

Another cold, gray, windswept winter day stretches out before me. After such a tantalizing taste of spring, this harsh return to winter desolation makes me feel apathetic at best, hopeless at the most critical moments. It also makes me feel introspective, as I am once again shuttered up inside four walls, unable to tolerate the cold, dry wind as it whips up little piles of trash into desperate, South American dirt devils that dance forlornly in the streets. Even my language tends toward the literary and obtuse on a day like this, as you can see. And so it is with resignation and regret that I sit down to write this afternoon, while my newly acquired bicycle remains depressingly inert on the back balcony. No sunny rides through the park for me today, alas.

So the winter is back with a cruel vengeance made all the more acute after a blissful week of sun that made me momentarily giddy and optimistic. Just three days ago, I was telling Patrick how much I enjoyed my long walking commutes across Mendoza now that I can linger in the numerous parks and plazas that dot this city. Not long ago, the first blossoms began to emerge from the stubbornly skeletal trees and I picked a handful of fragrant lavender outside the bleak industrial office complex where I teach every Tuesday afternoon. In a spontaneous fit of spring fever, Pat bought me two dozen fresh daffodils from a corner vendor outside our local panaderia. Their vibrant yellow color now looks almost grotesque against the bleak gray color of the sky. Oh, how long I could wax morose about this never-ending winter! How many endless dark entries I could compose in honor of this unique and slow-suffering form of torture! But in the end, there is nothing I can do except offer up words of frustration to the unfeeling gods of weather and wonder at the irony of a winter storm blanketing Mendoza with deep cold just a few short weeks after our last-ditch effort to embrace the winter at a balding ski resort.

In my almost feverish desperation about the return of winter, I had fitful dreams all night about returning to Santa Barbara, where we resolutely unpacked our boxes and went to live indefinitely in a Bedouin tent by the sea. Amongst the comically stereotypical embroidered walls of our elaborate new shelter, we placed Pat's thick memory foam mattress topper on the sand and laid down together to listen to the ocean lap gently at our feet. The California sun was shining in a particularly golden way, and everything felt warm and cozy. When I opened my eyes I could only see the harsh red glow of my electric heater and feel the weight of my thick pile of blankets, pulled all the way up over my cold little head. When Pat made it home this morning at 9 am, I simply refused to emerge from my restless delirium, and peacefully dreamt on until noon.

Despite this mournful soliloquy about the winter, I know that spring is coming. I know that soon, the weather really will be warm and golden (probably even excessively so) and that this means the conclusion of a full season here in Argentina. Since we continue to struggle to earn enough money to live sustainably here, our projected time-frame for living in Argentina has been progressively shrinking. Although our official plan was "indefinite," we internally maintained a more definite goal of staying here for about one year. During this year, we intended to see the many worthy attractions of Argentina, as well as travel to some neighboring countries for a more comprehensive taste of South America.

Unfortunately, our expansive travel plans have encountered two serious obstacles: money (as mentioned above) and distance. For most seasoned (or novice) travelers, South America presents a unique challenge: the immense size and the scattered sparsity of major areas of habitation (and thus home to the various necessities of travel such as: hostels, food, and transportation) make it incredibly time consuming to travel around to various destinations. To illustrate this point, I offer this example: from Mendoza to Bariloche, the next major destination to the south (as in, not just empty desert) is a grueling 17 hour bus ride. And if you entertain hopes of seeing the far south (Patagonia!), you best prepare yourself for a 40 hour ride in seats that recline just enough to hint at comfort but rarely enough to encourage actual sleep. To the north is the same story: 31 hours to Salta and Jujuy, over 40 to the outer stretches of Igauzu. Mendoza to Santiago, Chile, just a mere hop on any map of the region, is a 8-10 hour bus ride.

In India, I solved the problem of distance by buying cheap, one-way airline tickets on small charter services, often not securing my return passage until my day of departure. But air travel in South America is expensive, usually reserved only for the most affluent and a one-time expense for the budget traveler at best. Like most major industries in Argentina, air travel is a joint venture of the government and private business, making it a more or less a monopoly that doesn't bother with competition. Thus, flights are more expensive during times of high traffic and there are no cheap deals to be found. In addition, only the largest cities in Argentina have an airport, and these all form a belt girdling the center of the country. There are airports in the far north and south, but they are a little complex. You can fly to Igazu, for example, but you have to land on the Brazilian side, and then wrestle your way through customs in order to see the park.

Expensive air travel doesn't make ground transportation any cheaper or more convenient, either. A round trip ticket from Mendoza to Calfate, in Patagonia, is just slightly over $400 USD per person, or roughly 2 months wages for this poor teacher. That is transportation only, making our planned December trip to Patagonia not only an incredible feat of endurance but also hopelessly out of our price range. At this rate, we will be lucky to take just two or three major trips to all the incredible sights in Argentina, with both of us working grueling hours in the intervening weeks to earn enough to keep us afloat.

Thus, our "grand adventure" is slowly turning into a more modest undertaking, our ambitious plans scaled down to just a few incredible experiences. We are forced to choose our few "must-see" destinations and pursue them with dogged determination and yet still embrace the realization that getting to Patagonia will probably leave us in debt. All of my visions for "weekend getaways", modeled after my sister's enviable weekly excursions to different countries in Europe last year (while she was working in The Netherlands) are unfortunately dashed by the constraints of time and distance. To pay the bills, Pat works an opposite schedule from me, and even with two free days a week, most destinations are too far away to be a feasible weekend destination.

For our friends who have expressed an interest in visiting us while we are here, I would suggest you start planning more seriously for a trip in the near future. Already, our plans to stay a full year have been scaled back two months, and the unfortunate realization we have come to recently is: every trip we take costs us in time: the time we get to stay down here. So Patagonia in December also means that we forfeit the month of May. Iguazu in February means that our return tickets are now scheduled for March 1. This is a sad trade, but our joint monetary practicality (considerably less as individuals) forbids us from sinking too far into debt in the service of an extended adventure.

Psychologists say that the emotional reward for a task that you work hard to earn is exponentially greater than the emotional payoff for something that comes easily. But I have learned through this experience that sometimes working toward a goal requires you to sacrifice many other, equally satisfying goals. Perhaps in this heartbreaking act of pruning we learn to value what is most important and we manage to find our true destinies. Or perhaps we just experience our emotional payoff for the goals we do reach so much more sweetly because it is washed in the sourness of sacrifice.