This is the final post about my trip to Patagonia. Our final stop was in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. There wasn't much of geological interest that I saw there, but you might like to check out these images of the Recoleta Cemetery, a famous cemetery there. It's full of charming masoleums which are unique in design, and in various states of repair. (Eva Peron is buried here, which is what draws in most visitors.) Here's a view down one of the labyrinthine alleyways:


This masoleum looks like a miniature cathedral:


Several had art noveau details:




This one had an awesome stained glass onion dome bulging out the top:


Two-faced angel statue:


This caught my eye:


The grave belongs to an Argentinian surgeon, Francisco Muniz, who was also into paleontology:


Muniz apparently discovered the first glyptodont (though was not the first to publish it), and corresponded with Charles Darwin. There's a neat little review of his life here, at a website documenting the people interred at Recoleta Cemetery (a great resource if you ever visit it yourself).

Rising from a prominent intersection of pathways in the cemetary was this prominent Araucaria, which I think is a monkeypuzzle tree:


Monkeypuzzles are native to Patagonia, though other members of the genus may be found in New Caledonia, New Guinea, Norfolk Island, and Australia. I love monkeypuzzles: mainly for their awesome name, but also because they look like my idea of what prehistoric plants should look like. Here's one in El Calafate that someone decorated for Christmas:


Closer in, to see some details of its scaly leaves:


Perhaps this is a good image to close out the Patagonia series with, considering it blends the exotic monkeypuzzle with lovely old traditional holiday spirit (at least in my culture). What do I take from this?...

...Amid the prickly hazards of travel, you can find some exceptional gifts.

Labels: argentina, art, fossils, geologists, in-memoriam, patagonia, plants, south america, travel

Yesterday we looked at some other aspects of Argentina's Parque Nacional Los Glaciares (and the nearby town of El Calafate). Today, some pictures of ice.

Let's orient ourselves first, courtesy of some satellite imagery via Google Maps:

You can see the bright blue of Lago Argentino, including its southern arm, the Brazo Rico. Separating the Brazo Rico from the main part of the lake is the Magallanes Peninsula. And poking out from the white mass at left (the South Patagonian Ice Field) is a nice big valley glacier, the Perito Moreno Glacier. Notice how it pokes right into the Magallanes Peninsula, like a pin approaching a balloon. Occasionally, it surges forward and smooches the opposite shore, cutting the Brazo Rico off from the rest of the lake. When this happens, some spectacular collapses can occur.

The Perito Moreno Glacier is remarkably stable, due in part to its large catchment area and relatively narrow zone of ablation. This means that a bunch of park infrastructure has developed on the Magallanes Peninsula: viewing platforms and docks. The glacier moves forward at the same rate it loses ice through calving/melting: very consistent. We started off with the boat trip up to the glacier's terminus. Here's a view of the boat from above:


...And a view of the glacier's face from the boat:




Ice meets bedrock (plants watch warily):


Looking north from the viewing platform:












A little panorama (two shots spliced together):


So, at this point, I hope I have established that Perito Moreno Glacier is very accessible and very photogenic. It is also a lovely shade of blue. Thank you very much.

Labels: argentina, glaciation, patagonia, south america, travel

When you cross the border from Chile into Argentina, you see this sign:

If you aren't familiar with "Las Islas Malvinas," that's because they go by another name in English. Perhaps the detailed map will help clarify the location? The sign refers to the Falkland Islands, currently held by the United Kingdom. So the sign translates to, "The Falklands are Argentinian." The British and the Argentinians faught a war over the Falklands in 1982. The UK won, but Argentina maintains their claims of sovereignty. And as soon as you enter Argentina, they remind you of it. I think they hope you will take pictures of the sign and post them on your geology blog so the world is reminded of what they consider to be an imperial injustice.

The bus ride from Puerto Natales to El Calafate was long -- something like five hours. It went through some very empty country:

As we headed north, with the mountains to our west and wide-open plains to our east, I was reminded of Montana, specifically the Front Range southeast of Glacier National Park. It was very familiar feeling.

The landscape was semi-desert, as the eastward-moving air is drained of its moisture as it crosses the Andes. The rainshadow effect leaves this an area of steppe. The golden grasses draped on the dry hills bring to mind similar landscapes in Mongolia or Africa.


And there are even some birds that you might mistake for African species:

That's our best of many lousy pictures of the Lesser Rhea, also known as "Darwin's Rhea." It's a ratite bird, related to ostriches, emus, cassowaries, kiwi, and elephant birds (the last of which are extinct). The coolest rhea sighting we had was a family of little ones following their mom. The little ones look just like scaled-down miniature adults: Comical!

We stopped at an estancia (ranch) before entering Parque Nacional Los Glaciares, and Lily made friends with a horse there:

She used to have a horse on Hawaii, so this was sweet to see. When we walked off towards the rhea, he followed along, looking for more lovin' from his new American girlfriend.

We were in Argentina to see the massive Perito Moreno Glacier. It is the #1 tourist attraction in Argentina, and is located in Parque Nacional Los Glaciares ("The Glaciers National Park"). Here's our first view of it:


Now here's a test to see how true-blue your geological inclinations run. When you looked at that last picture, did you think to yourself, "What's up with those strata in the lower right? Are those turbidites?"

Yes, indeed. They are:

Alternating sand (blocky) and mud (weathered into low relief) remind us of the Magallanes Basin, which (like most geology) does not stop at the border...

Um, there's two clear joint sets there too.

Around the corner we saw some bivalve fossils and a few clastic dikes ("injectites"). Here's a small clastic dike:


When I brought up clastic dikes the other day when discussing Torres del Paine, Brian responded with some injectite photos of his own. You should check those out. Here's a bigger one from P.N. Los Glaciares:


I've got a ton of photos of Perito Moreno Glacier to show you, but it's really worth saving them for a second post. For now, let's just say: "We went and looked at the glacier for several hours and were very impressed." ...More on that tomorrow.

Then we were bussed back to El Calafate, the town which serves as the main access point for the park, and walked from our hostel towards downtown for some dinner. Along the way, we saw this cool outcrop:

That's very-poorly-lithified silt, peppered here and there with a few cobbles and boulders. The clasts bear scratches, suggesting they are glacially-delivered. The town of El Calafate is on the shore of a big lake called Lago Argentino, and I interpret this outcrop to mean that the lake was much larger and deeper in the past (perhaps dammed by a moraine which has since been partially breached?). In this deeper, earlier version of the lake, icebergs calved off of Perito Moreno Glacier and floated out to melt and drop their sedimentary loads in the offshore sediments. The big boulders and cobbles are therefore dropstones, though I wasn't able to confirm this diagnosis by looking for squished or truncated sedimentary laminations beneath them. (Given that this is earthquake country, I didn't want to be standing underneath those boulders for longer than it took to snap a photo!)

That evening, we had a really world-class meal. Salads and breads and fine Argentinan wine (we skipped the Mendoza stuff and got the Patagonian label, "Saurus." (Yes, as in lizards -- as in "giant, fossilized, terrible lizards"). And for the main course? Well... let's just say that if you're a vegetarian, you should probably stop reading at this point.

The Patagonians herd a lot of sheep, and so they eat of lot of lamb. They have one particular method of cooking this lamb which I was very keen to try because it seems so utterly brutal. Meat is murder, as they say: delicious murder. I am quite aware of the loss of life that comes with the consumption of meat. I have hunted, and I have killed animals in order to eat them. Many people opt not to think about this, and to access their meat in a box or a bag. But to the Patagonians, the death of their animals is both obvious and inoffensive. They slaughter their lamb, gut it and skin it, and then (this is the part that's brutal) they string it up to an iron cross, which is then tilted over a campfire so the lamb can roast slowly. They call it "crucified lamb."

It was delicious -- though the photo may appear shocking to some readers. But, hey: Catholics claim to eat crucified flesh every time they take communion, right? (Apologies in advance to all the transubstantiationists that I just offended.) ...Back to the lamb: I have a special place in my heart for the taste of mutton (I served in Peace Corps Mongolia in 1998-1999), and that familiar gamey tang was present here as well. But it was so much more tender, and served with a garlicky oregano olive oil-based sauce. Oh man, it was good. (Mongolians could learn a lot from Argentinians about how to spice their lamb.) I devoured it, and Lily had to roll me down the street, back to the hostel. Mmmmm....

Okay -- tomorrow you'll get some glacier photos.

Labels: argentina, birdies, england, food, joints, maps, mongolia, national parks, patagonia, sediment, south america, travel

I'm a birder. Birds were my first professional interest, before getting turned to the Dark Geology Side. I still carry my binoculars on most of my trips, and have a shelf full of bird field guides from dozens of regions of the world. Chile was a lot of fun for me, birding-wise. The ferry trip from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natales gave me access to dozens of pelagic bird species I've never seen before, including hundreds of albatrosses. As a birder, you have to love a country that has both flamingoes and penguins! Chile also isn't overwhelming in terms of huge numbers of bird species (unlike, say, biodiverse Ecuador). It was pretty easy to see a significant number of the native species in two weeks. However, I confirmed a couple of these with better looks subsequently, during my brief time (4 days) in Argentina. Here's my list of identified birds for the whole trip:

Silvery grebe
Royal (or maybe Wandering?) albatross
Northern giant-petrel
Black-browed albatross
Sooty shearwater
Magellanic penguin (my first wild penguin!)
Peruvian pelican
Red-legged cormorant
Neotropic cormorant
Rock cormorant
Imperial cormorant
Darwin's rhea (my first wild rhea!)
Great egret
Black-crowned night heron
Black-faced ibis
Chilean flamingo
Black-necked swan
Coscoroba swan
Kelp goose
Upland goose
Flightless steamer-duck (one of the world's five species of flightless duck)
Crested duck
Yellow pintail
Chiloe widgeon
Red shoveller
Andean (ruddy) duck
Turkey vulture
Black vulture
Andean condor
Black-chested buzzard-eagle
Cinereous harrier
Southern caracara
Chimango caracara
American kestrel
White-winged coot
Red-gartered coot
Red-fronted coot
Southern lapwing
Magellanic oystercatcher
South American snipe
Parasitic jaeger
Chilean skua
Kelp gull
Dolphin gull
Brown-hooded gull
South American tern
Rock dove
Eared dove
Austral parakeet (WTF? A parakeet next to a glacier? I love Chile!)
Chilean flicker (sadly, I did not manage to see the Magellanic woodpecker, and that makes me quote sad. I think I'll have to go back...)
White-throated treerunner
Thorn-tailed rayodito
Magellanic tapaculo
Dark-faced ground-tyrant
Spectacled tyrant
Austral negrito
Fire-eyed diucon
White-crested eleania
Tufted tit-tyrant (yes, really!)
Rufous-tailed plantcutter
Austral thrush
Austral blackbird
Yellow-winged blackbird
Long-tailed meadowlark
Patagonian sierra-finch
Mourning sierra-finch
Rufous-collared sparrow
Black-chinned siskin

...That's 69 species of birds, mostly brand new to me. Plus there were a bunch in Buenos Aires that I have no idea about... Oh well.

While I'm at this listing business, here's a list of wild mammals I saw:
Guanaco (a llama-like camelid)
Bottlenosed dolphin
Sea lions (sp?)

...Significantly shorter list, eh? That's why people go into birding so obsessively... and why you never hear about anyone going "mammaling."

Labels: argentina, birdies, chile, mammals, patagonia, travel

So I'm in Patagonia right now, doing the thing I love to do most: travel across my home planet, checking out its less explored corners. Chile and Argentina are my 20th and 21st countries to visit. It is my second trip to South America. I've also travelled twice to Africa, four times to Asia (including my stint in Peace Corps Mongolia), and extensive travels in North America. I've only hit North Atlantic island nations as far as Europe is concerned. I've been to Australia once. I have not been to Antarctica.

So why am I listing all of this?

Because I'm a freaking hypocrite. I'm very concerned about how humanity is altering atmospheric chemistry, and what that's going to do to our (shared) planet's natural systems. Because I am convinced that we are releasing carbon into the atmosphere at a faster rate than natural systems can remove it, we are endangering ourselves (or at least some of ourselves) and also endangering the ecosystems that we depend on. I recognize the role the individual can/might/should play in reducing their personal carbon emissions through efficiency and lifestyle choices. I drive a Prius, use energy efficient light bulbs, recycle my cans and bottles and paper, serve on the College's "Green Committee," and teach (and blog) about the science underlying environmental issues, like climate change. I'm spreading the word, see?

But I really love to travel, and travel is a high-carbon endeavor. The best thing I could do for the world would probably be to stay home, but home gets stale. The world is big and diverse and full of landscapes and people and food and culture and birds and all kinds of interesting things. And there is nothing like getting out there and experiencing it firsthand. My time on this planet is finite, maybe close to half used up (assuming an average lifespan). What am I going to do during my time here? I figure I should live morally, attempt to improve things a bit, and enjoy myself. And I enjoy travelling more than anything else. I don't have kids (or an interest in having them), I'm not a religious person, I'm not tied down to a garden or a dog or a network of people that can't live without me. There's little to keep me in town when the opportunity for travel arises. And I have a career which gives me three and a half weeks off each winter and three months off each summer, plus a week of spring break. I have chosen my career in no small part because of the tremendous amount of free time it grants me each year. (Having a third of the year "off" makes up for the fifteen hour days I work during the fall and spring semesters, I reckon.)

My philosophy of life is essentially to facilitate and accrue a suite of fond memories and cool experiences. My goal is to enjoy my limited time here. Secondary goals: be a good person, help others out, learn as much as possible about the world I will spend my life in, share this perspective by spreading an understanding of the natural world, be creative, be responsible (but not so responsible, CO2-wise, that it cripples Goal #1). I am aware that this is a fundamentally self-centered approach, and I accept it.

So I know that there is a tangible global negative to my jetsetting habits, but the personal positive is what sways me. I'm going to keep travelling, because although environmental concerns mean a lot to me, experiencing the world means even more.

So that's my philosophical postcard from the austral hemisphere. ...Wish you were here!

--Mr. Hypocrite

Labels: argentina, chile, climate change, CO2, energy, environmental, global warming, patagonia, science and society, south america, travel

Here's a Google Map I made up to show you where I'll be for the next few weeks. Hopefully, by the time you read this, we will be arriving in Puerto Montt, Chile. Tomorrow we get on a ferry and sail down the Chilean coast.

Zoom in on the southern area to see our hiking route (red) around Torres del Paine National Park. More details available by clicking on the different bits. I'm very excited.

Labels: argentina, chile, patagonia, south america, travel

Lola helps me plan a winter break journey...

She goes berserk for large expanses of paper... A few minutes after I took this picture, the little brat punched a hole in the map and ran off in a sprint. Sheesh.

Labels: argentina, chile, lola, maps, patagonia, south america, travel