From the Top: Piedra Parada’s namesake is a 750 ft tall rock just standing stark upright in a huge wide valley (Piedra Parada translates to “standing rock”); Aguja de la Virgen, an awesome spire, with a random pair up there doin their thing; the golden hour just outside of the canyon; my tent site, the location of my first even skunk sighting; how its done, Patagonia style -- a look at one of the first moments of cooking a sheep over an open fire at the campsite, which one dude said would take five hrs to cook and feed 15 people; one of my favorite walls in Piedra Parada, people small near the bottom; rocks r cool; vegetarian options found in nearby hippy town El Bolson; breakfast for royalty!
Piedra Parada and Cultural Values
or, My Own “What is Water?”
Touted as the greatest climbing location in the world by one dude I met, Piedra Parada is a sport climbing destination about 3 hours outside of Esquel. In the last 4 years climbers have put up great routs all along both sides of this astoundingly impressive canyon. Five kilometers long That means this spot is just a baby, even in terms of the young sport of climbing (which really got going in the second half of the 20th century). With time, and more attention from the surrounding cities an towns, especially Buenos Aires, this place is only going to get more popular. Most of the 200 people climbing at Piedra Parada while I was there were staying at a private campground nearby. The lucky owner is a dude named Mario, and he makes a killing providing (or, better said, because his wife provides) the basics and some running water to climbers. Turns out thats all you really need to provide to appease dirt bags from all over the place. To provide a framework for the atmosphere at Mario’s Wife’s Campground, one can follow logic of the late evenings that are central to Argentine culture. When you’re on vacation and you start cooking dinner at 9 pm, it turns out, you don’t have to wake up too early to give yourself a full, satisfying day of fun. These folks left the waking up early for the few and proudly overzealous (like myself and the other North Americans). The majority of the crew we had going down there were definitely out of the tent by 10:30 am (which is conFUSING to me because of the principle of tents getting super hot after being hit with the sun). But they weren’t eating breakfast by then, no. Mate for an hour or two, then get out the food to make it to the rock by 1pm.
I’m thinkin “how weird! in the states people wake up EARLY to beat the sun and get time in on the rocks!” especially with such intense sun. Then they break mid-day and get going after it cools down yada yada yada!
This was the moment, ladies and gentlefolk, that I realized for the first time the cultural lens through which that “early to bed, early to rise” type of mentality was born. Its not just LOGIC y’all! And while that method works really well for many and influences a lot of how i think when i have to be productive myself, the Argentines of Piedra Parada showed me elsewise. They did this by arriving to the rock as the days heat began to wane, warming up on their mate-fortified bodies for a while, then absolutely crushing routes in the late afternoon / evening. It should be noted that while I was around, the sun set at about 9:30 in good ol’ Parada. I stood in awe back at the campsite, thinking of all the times in my college career that I pressured myself to commit to going to bed early as possible to wake up on the “good side” of a day and build some productivity into my mornings that I cruelly told myself were too “lethargic” and “wasteful.” And I don’t think that all Argentinians are just hella blissed out and never worry about work and always achieve their goals due to this outlook, nor that this is a universal difference between people in the states and Argentina. The powerful message for me, I think, is becoming hip to a sort of monoculture regarding how to succeed, and, simultaneously, beautiful alternatives.