Category: US embassy

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Climb every mountain

“If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you, too?” Apparently, yes.

The Whole Enchilada, by Carol L. Douglas, 12×16, available.
Because I’m an early riser, to some degree I exist outside others’ routines. I went to bed last night intending to write about the fine job our state department has done in interfacing with us. My friends keep sending me horror stories from the big national papers about other stranded travelers, complaining that our embassies aren’t helpful. Our experience has been nothing like that. Dalia Sava at our embassy in Buenos Aires has communicated efficiently and quickly with us.
At bedtime, our airline tickets were confirmed, the embassy would be issuing us a pass to travel through the quarantine area, and El Chaltén’s doctor would write health certificates saying we have completed quarantine. Things were looking pretty good for us to get home by the 29th of March.
Jane Chapin and me climbing down from our aerie. Photo courtesy of Kellee Mayfield.
And then I made the error of looking at Facebook while my laptop booted. Jane Chapin posted an hour ago about our Copa Airlinesflights being cancelled. If that’s the case, we’re in the soup again. I hope she’s sleeping now; she spent four hours yesterday gathering, formatting and sending our passport and license information to Dalia.
We can’t stay here. Termination dust—the first snow of the year at high elevations—appeared on the mountains yesterday. Hosteria el Pilar closes for the season on April 1. This isn’t a business-driven, Maine-style winter closure, but an absolute necessity. The water lines must be drained and the rooms closed up before winter descends on the Southern Andes in all its fury. Leaving my room this morning, I was buffeted by wind whistling down the corridor. It was strong enough inside to wrest the door from my hand and slam it.
Not content with climbing the mountain behind the hosteria, Kellee and I attempted to ford the river on rocks. We ended up with wet feet and no paintings to show for it.
Jane did take some time to paint yesterday. She and Kellee Mayfield and I climbed the nearest mountain to get a different view of the glaciers. We followed a trail, thinking we would meet up with our fellow painters. Not finding them, we hared straight up the steep hillside. About halfway up, I told them I’d already had my quota of falling off cliffs this year, having tumbled down one in Parrsboro, NS last July. None of us had rappelling gear and we were suddenly in a maze of granite ridges.
“If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you, too?” is a famous parental question. I now know the answer is yes. Faced with a choice of being left behind or staying with your buddies, you soldier on. The good news is that none of us fell, even descending into a wicked headwind. The view from up there was sublime. We hunched down behind boulders as the wind increased in force. All of us painted well, although there can be no detail when your easel is bucketing in a fierce wind.
I was spent from the climb. All I had left in me was this very tiny (8×10) view of our hosteria.
Packing up, we realized we had no idea how we’d gotten up there. A mountain looks very different from the top than it does from the bottom. But Kellee and Jane are both half mountain goat, apparently. They found a route down, one that was actually easier than our route up. My knees are protesting, though. The rest of the day, I limped around the hosteria, going no farther than the bench in front to paint.

POSTSCRIPT: Our return flights are indeed cancelled… Again.

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Capturing the rainbow

I don’t think we can count on them sending the helicopters any time soon.

By the Rio Blanco in the rain, by Carol L. Douglas, 9X12, available.
My friend Barb made it back to Maine from Thailand and slept for 19 hours straight. Then she woke up and tried to figure out how to wash her travel-tainted laundry without access to a laundromat. Not that she’s going back to work any time soon; she works in a pre-school.
It’s good to know that somewhere in the world there are flights moving. Why they’re moving in Asia, the epicenter of this disease, and not in South America, is beyond me. But our carefully-laid plans of the weekend are now thrown into confusion. We have ascertained that we can take the cars to Rio Gallegos but we have no idea if we have a flight when we get there.
Jane Chapin is having vivid dreams, all reflecting her anxieties. She dreamt she was trying to keep a box of baby hedgehogs alive, and that she was naked at the mall. During the day, she’s her usual level, funny self, of course. In the dark hours, the fruitless effort and endless conversations are starting to wear.
We have no idea whether flights in Argentina will resume on the 28th or the 31st or some date in the future. Nor do our representatives at the Embassy, who are now in regular contact with us. Yesterday, the State Department sent out a survey to collect information about American nationals stranded overseas. There are some 13,500 of our fellow citizens who have requested help to get home. I don’t think we can count on them sending the helicopters any time soon.
We use WhatsApp to communicate with our Embassy reps. “That’s the same group as Doug Perot?” they asked each of us. How Doug became the point man for our group, none of us know, but I felt very important being married to him.
Painting by the window.
Some of my friends back home have told me that I don’t know how bad it is in the US; that I’ll be coming home to a police state. We have exactly the same news as the rest of you. With that, exile in Argentina isn’t markedly different from exile in Maine. I prefer the chipper attitude of my Uncle Bob, who’s in his eighties and immunosuppressed from cancer treatments. I couldn’t go see him before coronavirus, either. Instead of complaining about my absence, he said, “I’m not going anywhere near anyone!” and then told me all the news from Buffalo.
Also in Buffalo, my technologically-impaired brother-in-law saw Kellee Mayfield’s interview with an Arkansas television station. Stuck at home, he’s learning to surf the internet. I didn’t think the old boy had it in him.
Downpour, by Carol L. Douglas. That’s the first rainbow I’ve ever tried to paint.
Yesterday started with a halfhearted rain and moved to a downpour. It’s impossible to paint outdoors in these conditions, so we painted from the windows, or read, or played Scrabble. David Diaz set up in the greenhouse, where he was nearly deafened by the roar of rain hitting the plastic roof. Natalia Andreeva painted Lynn Mehta; if the bad weather continues, she’ll have painted us all by the time we go home. Katie Cundiff taught two university classes.
I spent a lot of time looking out the window, like a child deprived of her recess. The meteoric weather shifts remind me of Frederic Edwin Church’s The Heart of the Andes, that magnificent, show-stopping canvas that now resides at the Met. Even though it was painted in the northern parts of the continent, it captures something of the character of Patagonia as well.
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On the road with COVID-19

What does the word quarantinemean? It changes every day.

Glaciar Cagliero from Rio Electrico, by Carol L. Douglas, 11X14, available.
Yesterday I outlined the problems we will have if we break quarantine to head back to the airport. These were reinforced by an email from the US State Department, which told us to comply with local authorities. However, just as the United States is suffering a lack of toilet paper, rural Argentina has a lack of information.
When we left, I asked Jane Chapin what the word quarantine meant. I wasn’t trying to be a jerk; I just wanted to know what was expected of us. It turns out to have been a prescient question, because the meaning of our quarantine has shifted over time. In the beginning it was enough that we traveled in a self-contained group. Now it means we stay in place, and strictly so.
Our host Cristina managed to talk with someone at the US embassy in Buenos Aires. Later, Guillermo suggested that we fill our cars against a possible gas shortage. (They happen here, coronavirus or not.) We duly drove the washed-out, rutted gravel road to El Chaltén’s single gas pump to top up. Although short in mileage, the trip took two hours.

When we returned, Cristina sadly informed us that—by the newest rules—we had broken quarantine. We were required to file documents and copies of our passports and are now confined to the immediate area of the hosteria. From now on, only Guillermo can go to town for supplies.

Painting with Lynn Mehtain front of Cerro Fitz Roy.

Yesterday, the town of El Calafate announced its first confirmed case of coronavirus, in a French tourist. We wince; it was not our intention to bring plague to the Southern Hemisphere. But we Americans in El Chaltén remain resolutely symptom-free. We have sufficient toilet paper, although this is a cash-based economy and we will certainly run out of greenbacks before we’re allowed to leave.

Meanwhile, the Argentines, having no work or school to go to, have decided to use this time for vacation. Despite quarantine, the streets of El Chaltén are full of young people skateboarding, trekkers huffing dutifully towards the mountains, and bicyclists. To counter this, the government is closing down all internal flights as of tomorrow.

Natalia Andreevadrew this wonderful portrait of me in front of the fire. You’d almost think I talk a lot.

This is a relief. Gone are the endless discussions of what we should do. There is nothing we can do except paint. This morning I shall gather up some hiking poles and head toward the mountains with some of the others. Apparently, there is a point along the river where we can get close to a glacier face. My husband, who is less enamored of glaciers than me, will try to do a few hours of paid work.