Week Three

This week started out with a car crash and ended with a whole lotta cheese. Let’s start with the exciting stuff. Nick Roberts, fellow PhD student of John Clague’s and good friend/officemate/travel buddy of mine, was scheduled to fly into Rio Gallegos at about 2:40am this past Tuesday morning. As is my nature, I was confused about what time he arrived, and thought his plane touched down at 3:30am. I sweet-talked Justine into getting up in the middle of the night and driving out to the airport with me to get Nick…although unbeknownst to me, he had arrived 30 minutes earlier and taken a taxi to the hotel, assuming that I had decided to sleep rather than chauffer him around town. Justine and I drove out to the airport 30 minutes later, and after an unfortunate sequence of events, ended up getting side-swiped by an airline employee with a lead foot in the parking lot. I got out to talk to the dude, a very friendly yet fast-talking (and fast-driving) local who eventually realized that my Spanish skills don’t go much beyond “Good morning!” and “It’s windy today, yes?” We headed into the airport, where a stewardess who spoke about as much English as I do Spanish told me that we would have to meet the next day to go to the police station to make our declarations. The next day was filled with paperwork, made so much easier by Hugo Corbella, an Argentinian volcanologist who has been incredibly helpful to me in more ways than one. Dante, my rental car agent, seemed unsurprised and nonplussed by the event, stressing that I should just continue with my work and not worry about the accident. Our big diesel truck survived the collision with minor damage…no more than a loose bumper, while the other guy had much more destruction to worry about. The next day, John and Nick assessed the damage, applied a little duct tape magic, and we carried on with our daily routine of field work followed by dinner and vino tinto.

Nothing a little duct tape can't fix!

 

The next day, John, Olav, Rachel and Justine piled into a car and headed back to Punta Arenas, Chile to catch a plane back to Santiago and onward back to Canada. Wave One has left the continent, and Wave Two is in full swing. Nick and I have spent the past few days wandering the Atlantic coast south of Rio Gallegos, and checking out road-cuts to the West of the city with Hugo. We’ve also nearly killed a bottle of Glenlevit scotch that Nick bought at the duty free shop, but that is another story. Last night, we went out for dinner with Michelle Valvano, the daughter of Bettina Ercolano, a fantastic local geologist who I’ve spent quite a bit of time with in the field. Michelle studied abroad in Ireland, and we had a great time talking and hanging out with her. We had a Pizza Fugazza, a type of pizza that is common in these here parts, with an olive oil base and cheese and white onion as the topping. Argentinians are not shy about their cheese, which is AOK with me. Now, Nick and I are preparing for another week of field work together. We’ll most likely spend the next few days exploring the Atlantic coast south of Rio Gallegos, and then take a few days to look at glacial sediments along the coast of the Strait of Magellan near the “town” of Posession, Chile. While I had a great time with Wave One, it is great to transition into field work with just one other person…particularly with Nick, who I have spent a lot of time with both in the field, in the office, and in the laboratory over the past year or so. It sure helps that he brought his iPod adaptor for me…there’s nothing like blasting some Nine Inch Nails while zipping across the Patagonian plains. 

Me, 3/4 of Nick, and a bunch of penguins!