Salta la Linda

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Rosanna

Salta the Beautiful.

It’s true. Salta is beautiful. It’s the most beautiful city I saw in Argentina.

They like that word in Salta. A girl asked us where we were from. Her response, “Qué linda!”

Want to do something beautiful while you’re in Salta? Visit Cloudhead at their lovely Arthouse (see the view in the picture above) and get involved with their community projects.

Farm Film Shorts

Posted on May 18, 2012 by hermshu

We were volunteering on a small farm in middle-of-nowhere Chile.

“I’ll be back tonight,” Mario told us after we finished the tough work of squeezing the last juice out of tangled grape vines and not dodging the wasps who were extracting as much sugar as they could from the plastic, rectangular vat of unfiltered wine. Like junkies, they eventually ODed, drowned by their own addiction, to be filtered out later.

“Like people, if you don’t try to hurt them they won’t hurt you. Behave like they don’t exist.”

I took his advice until one crawled up my pantleg and couldn’t find its way out.

“Ow! It’s in my pants. Ah! It got me again!”

I stripped down to my underwear and watched the stupid thing fly away.

“I’m going into town. I’ll be back by 6 or 7 tonight.”

Mario didn’t return for two days. This kind of thing became common. We found ourselves with a lot of time without the distractions of civilization; there was no Internet, no TV and no people.

To entertain ourselves we made movies with Rosie’s iPod touch.

Title: Dinner in Olmué
Genre: documentary
App: Reeli and Splice
Music: “Maisie” by Syd Barrett

A fairly straightforward look at the twice daily chore of feeding the animals on the farm. Splice allowed us to make several short cuts, which we then imported into Reeli. Using Reeli allowed us to add the soundtrack.

Title: The Machinist 2
Genre: surrealist
App: Reeli
Music: “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” by Klaatu

Let’s just say that watching The Machinist earlier in the day didn’t put us in a dark or reflective mood. Sorry you lost all that weight, Christian Bale.

Title: La Negra
Genre: horror
App: Reeli
Music: “Am I Demon?” Bonnie “Prince” Billy (covering Danzig)

La Negra is the oldest dog on the farm. She eats dried horse poop, drools on everyone and likes to rub her body against you to relieve her various itches, but she’s a sweetheart.

Wwoofing in Olmué, Chile

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Rosanna

We spent two weeks volunteering on a small farm in the mountains around Olmué (a village outside of Santiago). The owner had built the house himself, learning about the process while he went along. His aim, as he frequently told us, is to become self-sufficient and live ‘outside the system’.

Oh yeah, we didn’t have Internet.

After a tough first morning learning the ropes, the rest of the two weeks were spent house-sitting while the owner worked with his wife at their pizzeria in town.

on the way to the farm

It’s an indication of how social media has become ingrained in my life that I automatically began formulating facebook status updates, knowing full well I couldn’t post them. Instead they became a sort of distilled journal about life on the farm.

Day 1
Things I learned today: 1. Hand-making wine involves A LOT OF wasps 2. I’m not allergic to wasp stings

Day 2
Disconcertingly woken in the night by second earthquake in as many days: 6.3 causes no damage, but does rattle the house quite a bit.

Day 3
Limited ingredients mean I have to be more ‘creative’: beet root fried rice, anyone?

Day 4
Must remember not to walk near the goats unless it’s feeding time – they headbutt the door so violently I’m afraid they’ll break it.

Day 5
No matter how many times you rinse old wine bottles with water and grit, at a certain point you have to agree any leftover residue will be a ‘flavour enhancer’.

Day 6
Home-made wine is starting to taste like home-made vinegar.